Vocational Work Center History
In 1974 we opened up our first sheltered work center in St. Mary’s school. Later that same year we leased the laundry room at the Homer Folks Hospital. We were serving 4 individuals who worked on ceramics.

In 1975 The Arc Otsego started a furniture refinishing business. We had thirteen trainees and Joe Judd was hired as our Work Center Director.

In 1978 we purchased the former Medical Coaches building on 102 Browne Street. This was to serve as our agencies administration offices and work center. We had fifty-six trainees in our vocational program.

In the 1980-90’s our business went thru many evolutions in the past thirty-five years. We restored refinish furniture, operated a green house, provided bulk-mailing services, and were even potato farmers.

In 2005 we started our lean manufacturing journey by adopting and implementing the 5s principles. We revamped our work center operations under one roof and started to apply the 5s philosophies (Sort, Store, Shine, Stabilize and Sustain). To see before and after pictures click on 5S.

Today we serve over one hundred-fifty adults in our two vocational work centers. Our flagship shop is located at 102 Browne Street and we have a satellite work center located across the street at 101 Browne Street. We are a FDA certified medical device repackager, perform packaging sub-contracting, offer fulfillment services, are a distributor of Preferred Source products for New York State, and a major blister packager of novelty items.
Our sites are operated just like any other manufacturing plant. We have supervisors who monitor production, quality and assist in training. Most of our operations are set up on assembly lines and can be re-tooled with limited interruption. We have a variety of equipment: drop sealers, motorized conveyers, tape sealing machines, industrial staplers, L-bar sealers, shrink tunnels, blister packaging machines, banders, hot melt/gluing guns, semi-automatic box gluing machine, electronic scales, pallet scale, UPS/Fed Ex shipping systems, clamp trucks, pallet jacks, fork lift and pallet wrappers. We have a support staff of 30 employees such as Production Manager, warehouse staff, sales & marketing department and a rehabilitation team that help us run our operations.

Our operating budget is close to $6 million/year. Almost $4 million of that is generated from the sales of our products and enclave services. The bulk of our business is supplying New York State public facilities with Preferred Source products. Currently we have four New York State Preferred Source contracts: disposable adult incontinent briefs (diapers), disposable underpads, disposable examination gowns, and scratch & writing pads. We ship close to 125,000 cases of products annually to over 300 different customers.

Our state set-aside contracts are monitored by NYSID, New York State Industries for the Disabled located in Albany, NY (www.nysid.org). Last year people with developmental disabilities in New York State worked on 957 contracts. These service & commodity contracts provided over 7,200 individuals training on work resulting in $105 million dollars worth of sales in New York State.

We have performed sub-contracting work for the following local businesses: The National Baseball Hall of Fame and museum, Catskill Craftsmen Inc., Corning Inc., D2O, Gordon B. Roberts Agency, JLB Plastics, KMS Plastics, MAMCO, MeadWestvaco corporation, The Mid-York Press Inc., and t.s. pink.

Additionally the following local public facilities have purchased Preferred Source products from us: The Hospital in Sidney, Otsego Manor, Countryside Care Center in Delhi, The New York State Veterans Home in Oxford, Summit SICF, SUNY Oneonta, and SUNY Delhi.

“Working New Yorkers Helping New York Work"
For more information contact our Sales Department at (800) 401-8447 or via email sales@arcotsego.org for a brochure or quotation.