Houston, TX-based Hisco, a $191-million distributor of die-cuts, adhesives and MRO materials to the electronic assembly industry, wanted to optimize the balance between branch autonomy and centralized control in its 30 locations in the U.S., Mexico and Puerto Rico. It used the front-line experience of its branch employees to make it happen.

Hisco is 100-percent employee-owned, giving it an entrepreneurial feel, with no employee or executive holding more than 3 percent of the company’s stock.

And so while branch managers at Hisco are empowered to run their branches, make hiring decisions and manage assets to best-serve the needs of customers in individual markets, it was important to Hisco that some functions be centralized for efficiencies and that the …