Hangcha was founded in China in 1956, and in 1974, its first forklift rolled off the manufacturing line. Since then, the company has become an international leader in the industry. Figures from Modern Material Handling (MMH) magazine place the company eighth worldwide in sales volume. Today, that market leadership continues, with over 80 subsidiaries in countries around the world and industry-leading technology.

Hangcha forklifts have been available in Canada for some time but, in 2019, the company deepened its footprint here. Robert Pitzul, Vice President of Sales for Hangcha Canada, was the catalyst. At the time, Hangcha forklifts were entering Canada’s dealer network through an importer. Pitzul approached the company about putting facilities on the ground in Canada, and with a U.S. expansion just under their belt, Hangcha Group agreed.

Hangcha Forklift Canada was incorporated in 2019—just in time for COVID to put a damper on its plans. The delay was only temporary, and the team picked up the keys to the warehouse in the fall of 2020.

Today, most of the company’s 35 employees are located at the headquarters just outside Montreal, in Vaudreuil-Dorion, Quebec. That first location was only one piece of the puzzle: the company also has a 30,000-square-foot warehouse showroom in Mississauga, Ontario and another 14,000-square-foot warehouse in Vancouver, British Columbia.

Louanne Rioux, Sales and Marketing Director, explains that the locations are strategically chosen, as is the inventory. “We wanted a presence from the West Coast to the East Coast because there are different applications and needs from one region to another. This way, we can provide the units best suited to the market.”

That line of units is broader than most, offering forklifts from Class I to Class VII, all manufactured by Hangcha.

The distribution facilities are a key differentiator between Hangcha and its competitors. The Mississauga warehouse has over 300 units on display for its customers, representing its full line of products. With that volume of inventory on the ground and a robust distribution system in place, Hangcha can offer customers much faster access to needed equipment. “Our lead times are second to none,” Rioux says. “Even if we have a factory order for a unit that isn’t already here, it only takes 16 to 20 weeks to deliver on average. Waiting periods of 12 to 24 months are more typical [in the industry].”

Randy Thistel, Regional Sales Manager for Hangcha in Ontario, points to that investment as an indicator of how Hangcha Group approaches its international expansion. “Hangcha has invested in the warehouse and put product on the floor. They made that commitment to have the units available for the dealer network and the end users. This is essential to what our success is going to be,” he says.

When it comes to forklifts, Thistel has “been there, done that.” He has worked in every corner of the industry for 30 years, from service to operations to sales. The decision to join Hangcha was an easy one for him. “I had known Robert for about 10 years. When he talked to me about Hangcha, how they were investing so many hours in development, taking a top-notch product to market at an affordable cost, I couldn’t say no.”

Rioux may be newer to the forklift industry than Thistel, but for her, Hangcha completes a circle. “Previously, I’ve worked in international shipping and logistics. My role here is closing the loop from ocean freight to logistics on the road to forklifts. It’s an exciting industry; it’s challenging, it moves fast, and it’s necessary.”

Working to establish Hangcha’s presence in Canada has been a whirlwind. “I was employee number three. It’s been an interesting ride. I worked with Robert to develop the structure, the dealer network coast to coast. Then we worked to build the sales team, starting with inside sales first, then the outside sales territories.”

The company has grown quickly in a short period, and it is intentional about the culture it is building. “It took some trial and error over the four years, but we have a dream team now. We’ve got over 100 years of combined industry knowledge and history on our team.”

Both Rioux and Thistel stress that the values of the company are not just words on the wall. The values of integrity, teamwork, responsibility, and sharing are embedded in the way the company does business, and decisions are made collaboratively.

“We’ve got a great foundation with our people,” Thistel says. “Every puzzle piece makes us so much better, and we make key decisions together, as a group. We’re creating things the right way.”

One of the challenges involved in expanding the company’s business and presence in Canada is introducing a technology that is still relatively new to the market: lithium-ion batteries. Traditionally, forklifts have been operated by either diesel, propane, or lead-acid batteries.

“With lead-acid, the more the battery drains, the less power you have,” Thistel says. “Your lift speeds will slow; your drive speeds will slow.” Lithium batteries, on the other hand, deliver full power continuously, and they are designed for what Thistel calls ‘opportunity charging.’

“With lithium technology, the battery wants to be charged all the time. The operator can charge them when they’re on break or at lunch, and you’ll never run out of battery. We have them in 24-hour applications, which would have been impossible for a lead-acid battery.”

What about durability? “We have some units with 4000 hours on them, and the batteries are still running perfectly. We stand behind them. We offer a 10-year warranty on larger units, five-year on the smaller units. It’s a strong warranty, and I believe we’re changing the industry for the better.”

Thistel and Rioux are clear: for Hangcha, the future is lithium. “By the end of 2024,” Thistel says, “we’ll have lithium in every unit, from a 100,000-pound capacity forklift right down to a 2,000-pound walkie. We’ll have lithium technology for it all.”

One reason this technology makes sense is cost savings, and for owners, those savings add up. “We’ve done the research,” Thistel says. “Over the first 10 years, between the purchase of the unit, charging, fuelling, and repairs, the cost savings amount to about $150,000 per truck.”

Although relatively new technology to the forklift market, lithium is catching on. In fact, Hangcha is putting these batteries into service with forklifts from other manufacturers.

“With our universal lithium battery system program, we can put lithium technology into any brand,” Rioux says. “If someone has a forklift with a lead-acid battery that’s no longer useful, we can install a lithium battery to replace it. The owner can keep it running, instead of scrapping the whole machine.”

“We’re even doing that for new trucks from other brands,” Thistel adds. “Dealers are putting our lithium batteries into new forklifts with lead-acid batteries because the technology is just better.”

For Thistel, the support Hangcha Canada receives from the manufacturer is key to the company’s continued growth in Canada. In addition to supporting its dealers and end users through the adoption of lithium battery technology, the engineering team in China also responds directly to input from this market. “We can take something to the manufacturer, and they’ll implement it immediately if it makes sense. We don’t have to wait until a whole new line comes out.”

How can a company respond that nimbly? The scope and scale of the facilities in China are part of the answer. The company has one million square metres of manufacturing space there and is continuing to grow and expand. If you are having trouble imagining that, it is understandable, and Rioux has a helpful parallel. “It’s the equivalent of 633 arenas,” she laughs.

“When we took our dealers there,” Thistel adds, “it helped them understand what Hangcha is doing and how they’re doing it. They saw the quality of the facilities firsthand and the sheer professionalism of the people.”

Hangcha Group’s expansion into Canada is a textbook example of how to do it well, and it is all about commitment: investing in the right spaces, putting quality products on the ground, and hiring and empowering a ‘dream team’ of the right people. This approach is not a one-off, either; in the few short years since its Canadian expansion in 2019, Hangcha has employed the same principles and expanded to Mexico, Brazil, Australia, and the Netherlands.

“Hangcha has committed to be the best at everything we do,” Thistel says. “We want to have the best product, the best availability, the best parts department. We’re continuously improving. We want to be the best, to set the bar for the industry in Canada.”

The post Lifting the Industry Higher<p class="company">Hangcha Forklift Canada</p> appeared first on Business In Focus Magazine.

An ISO 9001 certified company, Mahler uses SPC (statistical process control) quality control practices as well as final quality control examination on the components it produces for a host of industries that include clean technology, aerospace, medical, forestry, sonar, pulp and paper, and deep sea submergence. The business has the flexibility in capacity and skill to handle complex prototype jobs all the way up to production runs that deliver parts in the thousands per month.

With a 20,000-square-foot climate-controlled environment designed to facilitate ideal production flow, Mahler utilizes the latest in CNC technology to ensure superior quality and provide the ideal working environment for its skilled machinists.

“The business has changed over the last 40 years in a number of different ways, but always stayed dedicated to manufacturing high-complexity parts, which is our sweet spot,” says Nik Paukkunen, Co-CEO and Owner. “And that hasn’t changed for decades.”

Now in its third generation of ownership, the business was originally started by Adam and Trudy Mahler, then acquired by an employee, Pedro Fernandes, and his wife Carlynn 16 years ago, and is now owned as of a year ago by Nik Paukkunen and Aaron Kennedy, the other Co-CEO and Owner.

“Over those four decades, there’s been a real dedication to high-calibre manufacturing, a consistent focus on developing people, equipping those people with industry-leading technology, and also the systems and processes to produce high-quality work,” says Paukkunen.

Setting Mahler apart from its competitors, machinists at Mahler are rigorously trained in how to program, set up, operate, and run jobs from start to finish as opposed to more traditional models with a dedicated programmer and a team of operators. This is how Mahler uniquely keeps its talent pool progressing and upskilling while holding industry-leading quality metrics.

“That’s how we have such industry-leading quality metrics, and why people love working here,” says Paukkunen. “Our retention of staff is so strong because they get ownership of the part from start to finish, and are constantly problem-solving and working on different parts—Mahler being a manufacturer of thousands of unique parts annually.”

One reason Mahler continues to grow after being around for 40 years is the diversification of its customer base, adds Kennedy.

“We serve customers in a wide variety of industries with no one industry making up more than 30 percent of our business. We do a lot of work in growing industries like robotics, clean technology, deep-sea submersibles, medical, aerospace, and in different natural resources sectors like oil and gas and mining.”

This breadth of expertise benefits both customers and the company alike as the economy goes through different cyclical patterns.

“One of the unique things about Mahler is we are typically the primary or sole manufacturing partner for our customers,” says Paukkunen. “Most of our clients don’t have internal machining capabilities or CNC machines in-house; they rely on us to make parts that ultimately go into their end product.”

The business also acts like a high-calibre sports team, he adds, with a “fantastic” group of individuals on the team. “It’s a credit to the previous owner Pedro for fostering that type of culture,” says Paukkunen. “It’s very learning-focused; everyone’s trying to upskill to new jobs and collaborate on projects and new parts. If you work here, you’ve typically got a passion for complex machining and you love what you do.”

It’s also very performance-based. With quality as the most important aspect of the business, Mahler ensures any parts shipping out the door have gone through a rigorous process and bear a quality stamp of approval. Naturally, employees take great pride in ownership.

“We’re trying to continue and preserve that at all costs,” Paukkunen says. “We’re also trying to put more ownership and autonomy in decision-making onto the rest of the team.” He adds that the leadership style is very collaborative in terms of getting the right people in the room with the right information.

“Everyone’s an expert in different domains within the business, and we’re empowering them to make decisions that are right for the company,” he says. “We do that because it’s our leadership style, but also because we’re not machinists. It’s a benefit because it means we need to elevate people to make those decisions, which is exciting.”

The spin-off bonus of this attitude, Kennedy says, is that the culture found in a lot of manufacturing environments which involves employees protecting their discrete knowledge doesn’t exist at Mahler.

“Everyone here is so excited, passionate, and ready to explain not just how to do something, but also the why behind the approach they’re taking. I can’t emphasize enough how lucky we are to have inherited a culture where everyone’s just so passionate about sharing their knowledge and levelling up as a group and a team.”

Addressing the ongoing challenge of recruiting qualified workers in the industry, Mahler has taken several different successful approaches this year including setting up a partnership with the British Columbia Institute of Technology (BCIT) to bring in machining apprentices, targeted hiring of experienced machinists, and a grassroots program that takes individuals with mechanical aptitude and trains them into Red Seal certified machinists.

Receiving input from employees is also important, whether it’s speaking informally while spending time on the floor or in a more formal sit-down twice a year.

“The key questions we like to ask our staff are, ‘What are you enjoying about your job?’ ‘What takes energy away from you?’ ‘What are you missing that would make your life easier?’” shares Paukkunen. “We synthesize that feedback from the group and say, ‘here are the sorts of priorities we want to fix within in the business.’”

One also cannot overstate the value of the training that happens organically on the production floor with younger staff working alongside the more experienced members, adds Kennedy, and the company has also invested a time and money into training opportunities for staff, which include CAM programming courses from Mazak and Westcam (Gibbscam) and sponsoring multiple operators to attend BCIT in pursuit of becoming Red Seal certified machinists.

“Our objective is to grow the business,” Paukkunen says. “From a capacity perspective, that’s both labour and machines.”

Before buying the business, the duo had gone through what the utilization of the existing equipment was and found there was a lot of existing capacity with the fantastic equipment the company has today.

“We run top-quality Mazak machines from Japan. Plus, as we’ve moved more into the medical, mining, and mineral processing industries, we’ve received a ton of demand on the small turning side, so we’ve added a new Mazak Quick Turn 100MSY,” explains Paukkunen. “That not only gives us more capacity for small turning, but new capabilities adding y-axis cutting and a sub spindle for efficient higher volume production runs.” Additionally, this year Mahler added a Mazak VC500 vertical mill to enable rapid lead times for customers and another machine centre focused on training new staff.

Mahler has added 18 customers this year, and while the company has historically serviced the majority of its customers in B.C., right now 15 percent are located outside the province.

“We are fortunate to have had a lot of success this year and we owe that to the strength of our customer relationships,” says Kennedy. “The majority of our customer relationships extend decades, with over 60 percent of our customer base having been customers for 10-plus years. That statistic alone speaks volumes about the type of service we provide our customers.”

Analyzing the reasons for the long tenure of these customers, a huge part is what Mahler offers them, Kennedy says, which is a complete manufacturing partner and one-stop shop in many respects, with the company providing a wide variety of machining capabilities, from small, intricate parts such as medical device implants to large, complex milling and turning work. Mahler additionally utilizes a vetted group of suppliers, subcontractors, and vendors for finishing processes that include anodizing, plating, welding, heat treat, and testing whereby Mahler owns the final QC process on all parts.

“We have an ability to do unique things in inventory management for our customers who have repeat needs for parts, where we can build a safety stock here,” Kennedy says. “With this Kanban-style system, whenever we receive a release purchase order from our customers we have those parts ready on the shelf and can guarantee next-day or same-week delivery. Parts are always on time.”

This helps customers to maintain lower levels of their own inventory, which is a huge benefit. Taking these core offerings—which have been such a large part of Mahler’s tight relationships with its base customers—and offering them to new customers has played a key role in the company’s growth and success.

Processes, of course, are another important aspect underlying the company’s success. “The business has solid standard operating procedures, being an ISO-audited facility, but there is always opportunity to improve organization,” Paukkunen says. “In the first year of ownership, we have been focused on decluttering, organizing, and systemizing certain aspects of the shop with the goal of simplifying life for our staff especially the new joiners.” A small but significant tweak in process involves viewing mistakes as opportunities, he adds. If something goes wrong, there is always a root cause if you ask why enough times and a lesson that should be shared with the entire team.

“Something that Nik and I are proud of,” says Kennedy, “is that at Mahler we have over 250 years of tenure with our existing staff in the building. Not machining experience, but tenure with this business. And as new owners stepping in, one of the things we worried about was turnover of that core staff and how they’d react to the new ownership.”

They’re both proud to finish the year with zero staff turnover, and while there will likely be retirements in the long term, Mahler has held on to that core group.

The other quality that sets the company apart is industry-leading equipment that can handle a wide variety of jobs for customers from a manufacturing perspective. Mahler runs Mazak machines from Japan, which are of the highest quality in the machining industry. The dynamic fleet of CNCs range from small to large turning up to 24” diameter equipped with bar feeders, live tooling, steady rests, and sub spindles for high-volume production. Vertical milling ranges from high-speed mills with pallet changers to large-scale rigid milling with up to 84” by 40” tables for large workpieces. To run lights out, there are two horizontal mills with pallet changers and tombstones. Finally, there are two 7-axis mill-turns and a 5-axis vertical mill for high-complexity parts.

The broad array of equipment and redundancy in each machining centre means Mahler can take on the entire suite of products for any of its OEM clients. Over the 40 years, the team has worked on nearly every machineable material including 17-4, titanium, different plastics, aluminum, stainless, alloys, and castings to name a few.

“The equipment and our continuing investment in that type of technology put us ahead,” says Paukkunen. “Then, it’s our focus on service to customers and thoroughly troubleshooting anything that comes our way. We want to be the leading manufacturing partner—that’s our mission for our customers—as well as the best employer in manufacturing in B.C.”

Lastly, Kennedy and Paukkunen are young owners in an industry that is typically plagued with succession issues. They are proud to join a team with a 40-year history of success, but what they are most excited about is the next 40 years of local manufacturing.

The post Collaborative Leadership, Customer Care, and Shared Knowledge<p class="company">Mahler Machining</p> appeared first on Business In Focus Magazine.

That’s why shiny strips of 3M Scotchlite reflective materials are strategically placed on their uniforms to reflect back the oncoming headlights, alerting drivers and keeping the responders safe. These materials are a critical component of their protective gear.

Davey Textile Solutions, of Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, has been working with reflective materials such as these for nearly 23 years, building a reputation for premium textiles in western Canada.

A future in fabrics
When the family started the business in 1986, before reflective materials were widespread, it was a true case of humble beginnings. “They bought a tiny fabric wholesaler, about 2,500 square feet of space, and it was full to the rafters with fabric,” says Dan King, Vice President of Davey Textile Solutions. “They were buying and sorting fabric and seeing if they could find new homes for it.”

Eventually, the business would move to its current 25,000-square-foot facility and acquire other textile companies in the 1990s, with plans for expansion. By the early 2000s, however, more work was moving offshore and the entire North American textile industry was in decline, as King explains. The company couldn’t survive as a whole business.

At a crossroads, the team began looking into reflective materials and saw a significant opportunity to stay relevant in a changing marketplace. “We realized we had to pivot the company. So we started looking around and landed on safety,” says King of the team’s strategy of identifying labour sectors with a need for high-performance gear.

Alberta is one of the largest oil and gas producers in the world, and working on those rigs requires robust safety equipment. Significant new safety legislation was also coming into play. In the past, dirty gear was a badge of honour for an experienced firefighter or oil drilling operator, for example, but there were now strict protocols about clean uniforms to prevent inhalation and absorption of toxins.

“We leaned on our awareness and our contacts through our prior 20 years of history,” King explains, “then we looked at how we could redesign reflective material to make it washable.”

This was the foundation for the striped garment that Davey Textile Solutions developed, along with its water-wash solutions for the reflective stripes. The plan was to partner with 3M Canada but, early on in the new venture, Davey was selling less than $100,000 in reflective products a year and needed to top that in sales before it could work with 3M.

The research route
Another challenge was durability. Commercial laundries were losing money on uniform cleaning because the striping was destroyed after one wash.

Davey Textile Solutions’ perseverance and innovation paid off, as the company increased sales and collaborated with 3M Canada to improve the quality of safety garments and address industry concerns.

“What’s unique about Davey is that we put resources into research and development, which is not common in the textile industry,” says Lelia Lawson, the company’s R&D Specialist.

A recent example of ingenuity is the development of an end-of-life sensor for safety garments. An initiative through the University of Alberta in Edmonton focused on firefighters and their protective equipment in particular. While these professionals are outfitted in personal equipment to be protected from the fumes in fires, they’re still exposed to carcinogens through the garments.

“Traditionally, these bunker gear garments would be laundered at most twice a year. But the carcinogens from the fires are in the fabric,” says Lawson. “Every time a firefighter would take off their gloves and touch their garment, all of a sudden that contamination would happen on their hand.”

As a result of these findings, Davey Textile Solutions and the University of Alberta are working on a sensor that degrades at the same rate as the outerwear fabric, while accommodating exposure to water and heat, to measure and indicate if the fabric is still protecting the firefighters from contamination.

The concept is not easy to put into production; the sensor is made with graphene, which is a conductor produced by laser technology, Lawson explains. “Essentially, you are burning the surface of a polymer to create this conductive tract that degrades at the same rate as the bunker gear.” From there, a multimeter is used to measure the wear, and when it reaches a certain level, it’s time to remove the garment from service.

Safety, but make it sustainable
Also on the company’s priority list is the development of new, sustainable fabrics—an important strategy in an industry that has the potential to produce a lot of waste. Davey Textile Solutions stands out as a leader in sustainability, with a key project aiming at acquiring cellulous fibre from hemp, a crop that requires less water and other inputs for its growth.

Since Canada legalized cannabis, industrial hemp has resurged as an agricultural crop, and it just so happens that hemp grows well in a northern climate like Alberta. The long stock of the hemp makes some of the best fibre, but because of cannabis prohibition, processing hemp had become a lost art. And, like many other industries post-COVID, textiles have also experienced some significant supply chain issues.

“The question was, ‘how can we create a sustainable textile hub in Alberta?’” says Lauren Degenstein, Davey Production Team Lead, who heads environmental initiatives.

The solution was using lyocell, a popular new fibre made from the hemp cellulose. “This is different from other regenerative cellulosic fibres like rayon where the processing is extremely toxic and damaging to the environment and human health, whereas the lyocell process is not.”

When lyocell breaks down, it doesn’t change from its original form; it coagulates and essentially reforms into a new fibre which is far more environmentally healthy, says Degenstein.

“It can also be used in the manufacturing of high-visibility striping and daily textile products for our trim,” she explains. “So we’re currently working with the University of Alberta, looking at growing conditions and the different ways to cultivate hemp.”

Beyond producing more environmentally friendly fibres, Davey is also a leader in efficiencies, eliminating the defects and scraps that are so often a part of textile manufacturing.

“We’re also looking at our carbon emissions. This is so new for many textile companies that there’s no information on how to monitor our devices or how we integrate different products. We’re in the exploratory stages of that,” Degenstein notes. That means trial and error in the process of finding more sustainable options.

“There can be pros and cons to trading a specific chemical in our finishing process. It could be damaging to one type of aquatic life but not another, so we want to make sure that solutions aren’t just a Band-Aid and they’re actually making a difference.”

Textile recycling, as well, is really just starting to take shape in the industry, so manufacturers are in a bit of a waiting game for the demand to catch up and make these initiatives more viable.

Future-forward
The team at Davey Textile Solutions, though, recognizes the challenges and sees that the future of the industry lies in investing in automation and sustainable methods and materials.

Discussing these plans for new technology and efficiencies, King explains that, “Right now in our weaving department we have one operator per laminator and we’re running at about 125 meters a minute through that facility. We want to get that up to 600 meters per minute with the same number of staff,” he says.

“Textiles used to be really innovative. The first computer was a Jacquard loom for weaving complex patterns, but the textile industry hasn’t advanced like other industries. We’re working to change that.”

The post A Shiny New Future for Textiles in Alberta<p class="company">Davey Textile Solutions</p> appeared first on Business In Focus Magazine.

Tapping into talent
Headquartered in Waterloo, Ontario—renowned for hundreds of tech businesses and world-class universities and colleges—privately held Prime Automation is home to some of Canada’s best and brightest. With two locations in Waterloo and a third in Clearwater, Florida, Prime serves customers in Canada, the United States, and abroad. For all customers, many advantages come from working with Prime.

“With offices in Canada and the United States, we are building teams that are able to service our customers as efficiently as possible from either side of the border,” says Director Mike Taub. “Combining our local support with our team’s ability to provide remote support, we can provide our customers with quality service in a shorter timeframe.”

Prime’s way is to tap into the Kitchener/Waterloo talent pool by working with co-op programs and building its team through internal development and opportunities. Over the years, the company has nurtured relationships with Conestoga College. One of Canada’s fastest-growing colleges and a leading polytechnic institution, Conestoga is a source of co-op students for the company.

Prime hired many recent talented graduates from Conestoga’s robotics program and has been previously named Employer of the Year (Cooperative Education). Often, team members introduce their friends and new grads to the company because of its dynamic and successful relationship with Conestoga College.

“Our focus is to build people up from junior, entry-level positions,” says Director Chad Harrison, “and help them develop into a role of seniority rather than hiring for those types of positions. This grows the opportunities for everyone when we promote from within. We are also focusing on team-building events and team bonding, and don’t want to have just a 9 to 5 place where you work with acquaintances.”

The company believes that being innovative and providing cutting-edge solutions in markets like food and beverage, pharmaceutical, and automotive plays a key role in its success. By building and maintaining a great work environment, Prime can keep its team enthusiastic.

Known for its positive and encouraging environment, Prime’s perks for its people include paid training, paid travel, competitive wages, benefit packages, and great opportunity for growth. “This includes flexibility, supporting the junior team with the senior team—always being there for them—and creating an environment of mentorship for new graduates,” says Director Paul Puttick.

Value for customers
Seeking to “shake up the automation industry, challenge convention, and make the impossible possible,” Prime remains focused on providing superior automation solutions and outstanding customer service.

From food and beverage to packaging and palletizing, water treatment, life sciences, consumer goods, metal forming, and transportation, Prime’s strength is creating fresh and innovative ways to deliver real performance, peak efficiency, and cost-effectiveness.

Handling design, installation, industrial programming (including programmable logic control [PLC], human machine interface [HMI], and supervisory control and data acquisition [SCADA]), Prime provides everything needed to get automation systems up and running.

The company is skilled at picking up the ball at different stages, coming on board at the design stage of a new facility; when it’s already under construction; or even when completed. “We have opportunities where we’re working with customers at a greenfield level on a new plant and discussing automation at that stage, or on a retrofit plant that’s been operating for the last 50 years,” says Director of Automation Ryan Bauml.

Prime is also adept at performing decommissioning and modernization—when a system is old or no longer meets safety requirements—and offers remote support based on customer needs. “We are actively creating remote support systems,” adds Bauml.

Although Prime doesn’t advertise itself as a 24/7 breakdown business, it has programmers and electricians on staff who can get to customer sites at short notice. “If we get the call and we can do it, we’ll support it.”

Future-focused
Guided by a vision and values that include providing optimal designs, exceptional value, and support for the Canadian economy, Prime Automation is also deeply committed to making new team members feel welcome and creating an open, teaching-oriented workplace.

Believing in getting the next generation of potential employees interested in automation, the company has established several initiatives. These include a facility tour promoting the trades to new and low-income Canadians with the Waterloo Region business and educational partnership, and the Ontario Youth Apprenticeship Program (OYAP), a school-to-work transition program. Prime is also supporting local outdoor recreation programs, and sponsoring the 35 km long Hydrocut trail system, one of Ontario’s premier mountain bike riding destinations.

Prime is also active with the PAC Program out of Conestoga College’s Program Advisory Committee, an educational and industry collaborative initiative to develop better-trained and qualified skilled workers for the future.

Industry-wide, Prime Automation’s stellar reputation keeps growing. This includes being featured in the Waterloo EDC Automation ecosystem. In 2021, on the back of a 296 percent three-year growth in revenue, Prime made the Globe & Mail’s Report on Business list of Canada’s Top Growing Companies, ranking 149 out of 448.

Says Harrison: “We want to be as big as possible without sacrificing what we’ve got: a good work environment, a strong team, and quality work.”

The post Cutting-Edge Solutions<p class="company">Prime Automation Inc.</p> appeared first on Business In Focus Magazine.

Founded in 1926 in Munich, Germany by Ernst Grob (whose family still controls the firm), the company is headquartered in Mindelheim, Germany with a North American branch in Bluffton, Ohio and branches in Brazil, China, and Italy. It has earned an enviable reputation for its high-end machining centers, automated pallet systems, and industrial software. Alongside these products, the company recently introduced a revolutionary, liquid metal printer and a pallet storage tower.

While the company still serves the medical, die and mold, aerospace, energy, and military sectors, it has massively grown its presence in the electromobility market, exemplified by electric vehicles (EVs).

“GROB was primarily a machine tool builder throughout our almost 100-year history. That’s what we were known for [plus] some assembly work but, a few years ago, our leadership had enough vision to recognize there was an industry shift from combustion engines,” states Glenn Oshel, Director of Key Accounts for E-mobility at GROB Systems Inc., the firm’s North American operation.

The company “has made a tremendous investment in e-mobility research. We took engineers who only worked on machine tools their whole life and told them, ‘Hey, you’re going to work on a [battery] cell manufacturing system.’ It was a big culture shock for a lot of engineers but, in the end, we made that transition, and over the past four or five years, we’ve gone from basically zero percent e-mobility to fifty percent of our business being e-mobility now,” he continues.

This transition has also entailed a massive rethink of the services and solutions required by automotive manufacturers. “Everybody is worried about the displacement of machining centers for cylinder heads or engine blocks or transmission cases. We’re seeing a lot of that get replaced now with machining for battery trays. The message I want to share: ‘Don’t think that because there’s not a [gas] engine, all the machining opportunities are gone. They’re not. They’re just machining different things now. They’re [machining] much more structural, larger components,’” says Oshel.

Going forward, GROB is looking to offer “larger machines for frames. As e-mobility continues to expand, the types of vehicle frames are changing from primarily stamped types of material to giga-casting and mega-casting; the parts are getting huge. For example, look at a pickup truck. From wheel to wheel, you have a battery tray,” says Derek Schroeder, Universal Machine Sales Manager for GROB Systems Inc. Popularized by EV maker Tesla, giga-casting and mega-casting are methods of making vehicles with a small number of large-size parts using mammoth casting machines.

Given the rate at which it is adding personnel, GROB’s transition to e-mobility solutions has clearly been a success: since Manufacturing in Focus profiled the company in May 2021, it has hired 360 employees at its North American division. Total employment in Bluffton now stands at 850 people. The parent firm also recently hired hundreds of new staff members in Germany.

Among other tasks, the company designs and builds equipment and systems for making stators and rotors, as well as battery cells and modules and packs for the e-mobility market. GROB is investigating e-mobility opportunities in aerospace and keeping an eye on future technologies such as hydrogen fuel cells.

Last September, the company announced a partnership with German firms Manz, which specializes in high-tech mechanical engineering, and Durr, which specializes in plant and mechanical engineering. Working together, these three companies want to supply facilities to produce lithium-ion batteries for EVs.

The goal is to “be able to supply a complete turnkey solution from raw material to finished cell system. I think we’re the only one-stop shop for cell manufacturing,” says Oshel.

GROB has also positioned itself at the forefront of another burgeoning trend with the introduction of the GMP300 liquid metal printer. While additive manufacturing is not a new technology, plastics are the most common material used in the additive sector. GROB GMP300 uses a new technology to print aluminum components without the use of powder and without a laser. “Liquid metal printing represents a completely new technology with fast build rates, no health hazards, and a lean overall process. The parts can be removed and used directly after printing; no mechanical separation or heat treatment is necessary,” notes Stephan Kowalski, who works at the Center of Excellence Medical for GROB in Europe.

Unlike other additive manufacturing systems, the GMP300 is not only designed for one-off production, but can also produce small batches economically. Oshel suggests that the printer can be used to produce replacement parts, jigs and fixtures, and prototypes. Lightweight structures can even be realized in completely enclosed shapes with this powder-free printing process that produces the components without excess raw material.

For all this innovation, GROB still excels at making traditional equipment for manufacturing. The company’s G150 and G350 universal, five-axis machining centers, for example, are well-suited for machining medical parts. The compact G150 has working travels of 450, 670, and 665 mm in its X, Y, and Z axis, while the larger G350 has working travels of 600, 855, and 750 mm in its X, Y, and Z axis. It also offers four-axis universal machining centers such as the G440, G640, and G840.

Earlier this year, the G150 came in first place in a review of milling machines conducted by Produktion, a European trade publication. Produktion judged nearly sixty milling machines from various companies on criteria such as automation, maintenance, control system, and total cost of ownership.

GROB continues to design and build automated pallet storage and changing systems as well. The firm recently introduced the customizable PSS-T300 tower pallet storage system, which boosts part production throughput and can store 38 square pallets or 81 round pallets. When connected to a GROB G150, G350 or G350a machining center, the PSS-T300 can operate continuously without human assistance.

Manufacturing clients looking to enhance productivity and efficiency might want to check out the company’s suite of GROB-NET⁴Industry applications. These include GROB⁴Line, which allows machines to be controlled and monitored via smartphone, and GROB⁴Analyze, which identifies unproductive phases so that the causes of weaknesses can be quickly identified and corrected. GROB⁴Interface, which allows the transfer of machine data to other systems, regardless of the manufacturer, and GROB⁴TDX, which allows the automatic transfer of tool data to a machine, are two other important applications.

GROB’s cutting-edge machines and technology are complemented by an emphasis on quality and customer support. It has maintained its ISO 9001:2015 and ISO 14001:2015 certification and International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) registration. ITAR registration gives the company entry to American military-related aerospace projects.

Staff from the Bluffton division offer training to clients who purchase GROB solutions in North America. Training can be conducted at the Bluffton facility or the client’s worksite, an example of the customer-friendly approach that has been key to the company’s enduring success.

Hosting open house events is another way GROB demonstrates its client-centered ethos. In late March of this year, staff in Germany showcased new technologies and equipment and had industry experts on hand for a four-day in-house exhibition. The 3,500 visitors who attended had the opportunity to view more than thirty machines.

“You could spend a whole day and find on every corner a new technology and the solution to your problem,” says Kowalski of the German exhibition.

The Bluffton facility, meanwhile, recently held an open house of its own. “Every once in a while, we like to have the general public come in, tour the facility, and see what we do. The employees can bring in people they know and the public can see us. In Northwest Ohio, everyone thinks GROB is a factory; they don’t understand. It’s high technology. It’s not line work. Everybody has a complicated job to do,” says Schroeder.

The open house was a big hit, with more than 3,000 visitors on a Saturday. As a follow-up, the Bluffton facility will host a customer event in August, to “show processes from different industries.”

Like all industries across North America, GROB faces the challenge of attracting new skilled workers. The company has met this challenge in large part through its comprehensive, four-year apprenticeship program. Established over three decades ago, the program consists of a mix of on-the-job training and classroom education.

“We pay for their school, their wages, their instructors. It’s a huge investment for us,” Schroeder states, adding that the expense is worth it in terms of preparing well-trained workers.

The company maintains an optimistic outlook, as evidenced by the fact it is adding another 100,000 square feet to the Bluffton facility, with construction scheduled to begin later this year. “If you look at an overhead view of the plant, it keeps getting longer and longer,” he says.

In the future, GROB aims to continue to balance its presence in traditional markets with new opportunities. “Strategically, we want to keep it 50/50, as best they can, between e-mobility and machining,” states Oshel.

This view is echoed by Schroeder who says, “I think, in the universal machines, we have to continue to gain market share—for example, by expanding in the medical sector. In the e-mobility space, the challenge in the next five years will be to maintain the market share that we have.”

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