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HTT addition pitCompany management anticipates a 15% gain in output as a result of these projects, derived from increased run rates, quicker setups, reduced downtime and overall familiarity with the system. 

“To have that common language, we made a big standardization push on our documentation, to try to have everything look the same so that we have one standard in communicating with the workforce,” Karrels says. “Importantly, the controls are multilingual, helpful since we have several Spanish-speaking operators. So, along with having the QC documentation in English, we have it in Spanish as well.” 

Consolidate, Enlarge Plant

HTT additionSince purchasing an existing company in Sheboygan in 2014, HTT had been straddling its operations between the two plants about 6 miles apart—161,000 sq. ft. in total. That meant frequent transporting of parts, equipment and personnel. “I was driving between the two plants nearly every day,” Karrels relays.

HTT’s original location in Sheboygan Falls was landlocked, restricting facility- and business-expansion opportunities. The company decided to consolidate that facility’s operations with the Sheboygan plant and another building in proximity that it used for storage. The Sheboygan plant became the headquarters. 

HTT Addition pressAs part of its expansion, HTT closed a couple of roads to enable the site expansion in two directions. “That gave us the green light to work on consolidating and growth, realigning and moving. Consolidating our facilities really lends a lot of efficiency gains and the common synergy of having everybody under one roof,” Karrels says.

“The number of times that we need to interface with a product now is greatly reduced,” adds Bob Lischka, director of supply chain, and also a recent company partner. “With warehousing and operations spread across two locations, we were touching product three, four, even five times, depending on how many different transactions were needed. Now, a product comes off of a paint line to inventory directly to the shipping truck. That in itself saves dramatically on handling time and costs.

“Some of our value proposition is to remove steps in the supply chain and to be an end-to-end source for our customers,” Lischka continues. “So we take out those extra touches. Customers are not having to cut multiple purchase orders and manage more than one supplier. That’s a competitive advantage that we are trying to harness going forward.”

Karrels adds, “It allows us to leverage everything from work centers to the people side of things. We can share knowledge by bringing everything inhouse under one roof; to have more collaboration, to have more leveraging of resources overall.” 

HTT partsThe company broke ground on a new, 32,000-sq.-ft. building at the Sheboygan site in May, and finished the building at the end of 2024.

Reduce Vibration

When it comes to running mechanical presses, no vibration is good vibration. It negatively affects tooling, loosens press components, and—when your plant is located in a residential and multiple-business area, vibration renders your press fleet unwelcomed by neighbors.

John Karrells_HTT_Dir OpsIn constructing the addition to house its four largest mechanical presses, HTT leadership made an unusual and substantial investment in stilling the vibration generated by the presses by ensconcing their foundations in vibration-holding pits.

“When we built this addition to house four presses and feed lines and our work-in-process, we wanted to improve some things,” Lischka says. “One thing we did differently in the new building is to completely isolate vibration in our press installations. We didn’t want to create any problems with surrounding businesses and residences. So we’ve invested pretty heavily into the pits and vibration-reduction systems to minimize any kind of issues with the neighbors.”

A 330-ton, a 500-ton and two 400-ton presses are installed over four specially designed and constructed pits. Unisorb designed and performed the pit isolation. Layers of vibration-absorbent pads and isolation pads buffer vibration between the factory floor and the concrete foundations. The system isolates the presses from conducting vibration or movement into the ground surface. “That gives us almost a 100% reduction. The presses won’t conduct or transmit anything farther than the perimeter,” Lischka says.

HTT-controls-upgrade“It was important to isolate the vibration because we have a lot of close, surrounding businesses and on the north side, the neighborhood is residential,” Lischka adds. “We want to be considerate of the neighbors. We realized that when we came into this area and closed some streets, there were some learning curves with neighbors. We didn’t want to cause issues and we want to be good neighbors.”

The presses and their pits are positioned diagonally to improve accessibility for lift trucks and maintenance. And, as more presses are added in line, eventually an overhead gantry will service all of the presses.

In addition, the pits enable HTT to position the passline heights at operator level to make it user-friendly. “We want to try to make things as safety-oriented for our 130 employees as possible,” Karrels says.

All actions were intended to improve customer relationships, employee work environments and efficiency, Karrels concludes. “We’re taking a collaborative look across different dimensions; everyone from our procurement team to supply chain to manufacturing and engineering to see where we not only can be more efficient internally, but where we can share that value with our customers. We’re looking at ways that we can really partner with customers to make our processes better.” MF

Industry-Related Terms: Die, Forming, Lines, Model, Run, Surface, Forming
View Glossary of Metalforming Terms

 

See also: SEYI America, Inc.

Technologies: Pressroom Automation, Stamping Presses

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