Yep!
When Bill Ruger finally decided that the company needed to start making their own barrels around 1990, he did a lot of research and decided on hammer-forging, buying machinery from a company in Germany. The consistency of Ruger barrels immediately improved considerably, but continued to improve: One of Ruger's production honchos told me this was because even though hammer-forging sounds like an "automatic" process, it still requires some experience from the operator(s) for the best results.
All of which is partly why Ruger American Rifles immediately acquired a reputation for grouping very well: RARs appeared in 2012....
