At age 24, Miller left the community because of convictions regarding the seventh-day Sabbath. “I’m just an Amish guy who lost his hat,” he says. With years of experience and ingenuity under his belt, he started his own business in a two-car garage, and had the audacity, as he calls it, to name the company SUPERB Industries Inc., aligning with his vision of superb-quality people and products.

Created with his brother Daniel, SUPERB is another link in the family’s legacy. “Dating back to the late 1700s, Miller family craftsmen, beginning with Christian ‘Schmidt’ Miller, have been making the world a better place,” states the company. “At SUPERB Industries, this remains the mission for every engineered component manufactured.”

Smarter thinking
Founded in 1986, SUPERB Industries has emerged as one of America’s leading-edge hybrid high-speed manufacturers. Based in a 70,000-square-foot facility in Sugarcreek since 2000, the company has grown from a team of six to almost 100. The company’s many in-house capabilities include development, product and process design, engineering, assembly, die stalking, welding and more, making SUPERB a one-stop shop. Always aiming to add value, the company’s experienced engineers seek to make products faster and more affordably for customers.

A solutions-based business, the SUPERB team doesn’t see problems; they create opportunities. The company’s decades-long legacy has resulted in countless products being designed—and sometimes, re-designed—to be lighter, more durable, and more efficient. In one case, a die-cast locking system for a truck cap handle was “costly and cumbersome,” heavy, and prone to rust. Faced with this challenge, SUPERB’s engineers re-designed the lock system. Instead of heavy die-cast components, parts were manufactured using high-strength engineered polymers. Instead of the old system, the truck cap handle was remade “to include a field activate-able integrated e-lock system,” Miller explains. The result: a durable, lightweight, patented integrated e-lock system that was now more cost-effective to mass-produce.

Hybrid high-speed manufacturing
One of the many ways SUPERB has stayed ahead of the competition is by continually investing in technology, growing from a handful of production lines to over 20 today. The company’s home of Sugarcreek is renowned as “The Little Switzerland of Ohio” owing to the many Swiss immigrants who settled in the area 200 years ago. Familiar with European quality, the company utilizes the high-performance stamping presses of Switzerland’s Bruderer with the exceptional stamping, assembly, and welding systems technologies of Germany’s Bihler.

“We married those two systems together, and that’s what we call hybrid high-speed,” says Miller, who knew of the two companies because of his time in Germany and working with some Germany-based businesses. “We acquired the technologies over time and integrated them into our platform. We also have direct personal relationships with the ownership.”

Thanks to combining Bruderer and Bihler’s superior-quality equipment with SUPERB’s expertise and automating processes, the company produces quality components in great volumes more efficiently. “We do over a billion parts a year out of our facility in Sugarcreek, and we make just over five million parts a day,” says Miller.

“I call it leveraging time and space,” he adds. “Speed is a component. We have one particular automotive contact component where we make 24,000 parts a minute. So that’s speed, but another component is space.”

Made-in-America quality
At SUPERB, the company’s state-of-the-art technology and in-depth manufacturing knowledge often lead to 20 to 30 percent less material being used, which saves clients money in turn. “That’s how we’ve been able to compete with offshoring; when that was in vogue, that’s how we survived that,” Miller shares. “And now, tariffs and policies of the Trump Administration have made it a bit easier to compete in the United States, so we’re well-positioned going forward and pretty optimistic about the future as manufacturing comes back to this country.”

In SUPERB Inside 3.0, Miller wrote about how American manufacturing has been at a crossroads for years, “torn between rising costs and fierce global competition. SUPERB Inside is the story of a small-town company that bet on itself and beat the odds.”

Unlike some other American companies who farmed-out cheaper—and often substandard—overseas manufacturing, SUPERB invested in domestic capabilities, “proving that efficiency and scale don’t have to come at the cost of quality.” This commitment sees SUPERB ship more than 1.4 billion components annually with an on-time delivery rate of over 99 percent and under 0.01 percent of parts falling short of customer standards. “What’s even more remarkable?” adds Miller. “More than half of what we make is exported to low-cost countries like Mexico and China, places many domestic manufacturers left for.”

SUPERB’s at-home manufacturing and dedication to American values keeps earning the company recognition, including regularly earning a spot on Inc. Magazine’s list of the 100 fastest-growing, privately held U.S. manufacturers.

Of course, “Reshoring is great, but you need qualified people, and there’s a shortage of them,” says Miller, adding that the current immigration system needs work, as SUPERB needs legal immigrants. “We’re having a really hard time finding enough qualified people because there’s just no unemployment in our area.” The company currently has several legal immigrants on its team; part of the challenge, Miller says, is that the H-1B Specialty Occupations visa is connected to a costly $100,000 fee. “That’s something that has to get fixed.”

Making the world a better place
While SUPERB Industries serves customers worldwide, the company has always been there for its local community. Post-pandemic, the company responded to a request from the Amish Mennonite community for home canning lids, since there was a shortage. SUPERB ended up engineering a lid that was superior to existing products, holding its seal for 36 months instead of 18. Independent labs evaluated meat pressure-canned almost six years ago, and it was still fresh and edible. This not only got the attention of the leading brand of canning lids but also saw the creation of Superb Canning and the company’s entering the retail market.

“It’s like inventing another soft drink and competing against Coke,” says Miller of the lid, which has earned over 60 per cent confidence from the Amish Mennonite community and captured 2.5 percent of the market. From the time of the first call the week of Thanksgiving 2020, SUPERB designed, validated, and shipped a million lids by canning season 2021.

An IATF 16949 certified company (the international standard for Automotive Quality Management Systems), SUPERB is audited annually for automotive standards, and Miller says he was surprised by the lack of standards for canning lids. The company applied its own rigorous engineering standards and disciplines in doing the lid validation, benchmarking the competition and far exceeding existing standards. At present, the company is now validating an even better lid.

“I like to tell my employees that our mission is to make the world a better place,” says Miller of the company’s many products. “By noon on Monday, they will have made enough components to control 3,000 hot water heaters, which is enough to put a new one in every residence in our immediate area. So that’s what I want them to envision—they are not just making parts and putting them in a box, but rather making the world a better place, because thousands of people are going to get hot showers instead of cold ones.”

Turning 65 this year, Miller is working on a succession plan which will see his son, a trained electrical engineer, assume control of SUPERB, “and take the company where I couldn’t.” In the years to come, Miller sees the company growing, largely because of the SUPERB Technical Institute, a joint training initiative between SUPERB, the Buckeye Career Center, and L.I.G.H.T. Founded in 2012, the Institute offers a range of apprenticeship training programs to the technicians of tomorrow. “Employment opportunities in this area are phenomenal,” Miller tells us.

Planning to be operationally out of the business by 70, John Miller looks forward to traveling. Publishing one book this past year, he is working on three others, “and then I’ll have to figure out something to do to not go stir-crazy,” he laughs.

As for SUPERB, which represents 10 generations of craftsman going back to Colonial times, Miller confidently says, “We’re not going anywhere.”

The post SUPERB in Name, SUPERB in Nature<p class="company">SUPERB Industries</p> appeared first on Manufacturing In Focus.

With the support of its parent company ISGEC—a multi-billion-dollar publicly traded corporation based in India—Eagle Press & Equipment has access to impressive research and development and artificial intelligence resources. “Some of the most brilliant people I have ever spoken to are part of that company,” says Ken Polewski, Sales Manager and professional engineer.

While Eagle Press & Equipment primarily serves the automotive industry with fine mechanical press technology, it is fast becoming increasingly popular with appliance, energy, and solar technology, as well as with defence manufacturers for the fine accuracy of its heavy-capacity hydraulic presses.

To maintain premium quality, the company ensures that its staff is well vetted before being appointed. A firm grasp of technical complexity and an aptitude for engineering are preferred in most hires as creating solutions here requires thinking like an engineer. This has led to the entirety of the sales and operational teams being mechanical engineers. The total team of about 70 is composed of machinists, assembly personnel, technicians, project managers, controls and mechanical engineers, an accounting team, and a sales department, all supported by an executive management team.

Operating from a 150,000-square-foot, state-of-the-art facility in Oldcastle, Ontario, Eagle Press & Equipment boasts ample assembly space and a fleet of equipment that includes CNC lathes and boring mills, four large horizontal boring mills, an assembly pit that can accommodate presses exceeding 40 feet in height coupled with more than 300,000 pounds of crane capacity, and much more. The company also offers a full-service facility next door to its main facility and a smaller welding outfit that takes care of smaller components.

As a proud member of the Professional Engineers of Ontario (PEO), The American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME), the Precision Metal Forming Association, the Canadian Tooling & Machining Association (CTMA), and other industry representatives, Eagle Press and Equipment is a key stakeholder in the Canadian mechanical engineering industry, helping to uphold its strict codes of conduct and standards in every project. The firm is also passionate about supporting and developing its local economy through its industrial endeavours.

The company’s commitment to quality and innovation has led to a number of successful projects, such as the recent commissioning of a turnkey Eagle press with a coil feed line and a press feed system at a Tier 1 automotive supplier’s Canadian facility. One of its winning products is a servo hemming press developed in collaboration with an automation group in Windsor, and this partnership has built around 40 such presses for Ford facilities in the United States and Canada. These machines are used to hem doors and other closure components for Ford’s F150, Mustang, and other models. Servo motors power the hemming press, joining the edges of two sheet metal panels by folding and compressing them into permanent bonds.

Another servo-based press features a microinch system in its mechanical trial press, a testing drivetrain used to test customers’ tools. The unit enables accurate contact between lower and upper tooling surfaces. This is coupled with a 400-tonne capacity pneumatic cushion, which supports accurate contact between the lower and upper die. “We have some cool tech built into it,” Polewski says.

Founded in 1959 by Ted Polewski Sr., the company was later managed by his sons and now by the third generation. Impressively, many longstanding members of the team are still on board, driving success through generational knowledge of press manufacturing and mechanical engineering that would be difficult to match without their expertise. Newer arrivals typically enjoy the opportunity to learn, and Eagle Press provides significant opportunities for professional development and training.

Polewski makes it clear that the company’s suppliers are just as crucial to its success, with a carefully selected group of trusted suppliers stretching from Toronto to Windsor providing Eagle Press & Equipment with the finest in hydraulics, gear machining and design, welding supplies, and more. “It’s the wealth of knowledge and expertise built over almost 70 years and our core supply base that has helped us build Eagle,” he adds.

Having its products vetted and analyzed by third-party engineers outside of the organization, the company is confident in the uncontested quality of its work. “I would consider our team as the best people in the world for machining and designing presses,” Polewski says, adding that the third-party engineers “have been blown away. Our quality comes out of years and years of experimentation, trial and error, learning, failing, recovering, and redesigning. We are at a point right now where we feel we have an unmatched product.”

Of course, the company is supported by rigorous quality management systems that span the full range of design, fabrication, and testing processes. “Over the years, we have developed very strict fabrication and welding testing and qualification procedures. We have also developed an in-house inspection and testing plan,” says Polewski.

The quality of Eagle Press’s steel is regulated as per the official ASTM International standards, which means that its materials, typically a minimum of A36 steel sheeting, are chemically and structurally sound and can be traced back to their exact location and date of manufacture, providing its customers with confidence in its base materials. This requires meticulous recordkeeping and full accountability. Moreover, the company’s welding is also guaranteed to be performed by Canadian-certified professionals in the field. The quality of its welding processes is verified by third-party, Canadian-certified, Level-3 welding inspectors according to CSA W59 standards—Canada’s strictest national standard for structural steel work in metal fabrication for sheeting exceeding 3mm in metal arc welding on dynamically loaded structures.

Equally rigorous testing and quality protocols pertain to design, press start-up machining, and assembly. As part of this, a press is run for 30,000 cycles to ensure absolute functionality over multiple days, and Polewski is particularly gratified by these rigorous testing protocols. “We push it to its limits to make sure that it is going to function on the customer’s floor,” he tells us.

Amidst its many accomplishments, the company continues to cultivate a reputation for providing top-notch training for both customers and employees. To this end, it regularly welcomes engineering students from Ontario’s University of Windsor, not only providing fresh professionals with hands-on experience but also introducing potential new employees to Eagle Press’s systems. The approach has been successful, with at least two such engineers having served the company for around six years.

Polewski makes clear that when it comes to achieving its goals, the company is and will remain centred on delivering customer satisfaction on every project, and so it goes to great lengths to ensure that it maintains and increases its capacity. To achieve this, Eagle Press has procured all the property around its facility with the goal of doubling capacity. It is also building larger teams in its service, assembly, hydraulics engineering, and controls engineering departments.

Customers benefit from these improvements in marked ways. With a dedicated press service team and network in place, help is only ever a phone call or a message away. “Press expertise and press technicians are few and far between now. I believe we have some of the best in the world here,” Polewski says. Beyond these in-house professionals, the company has established strong relationships with other industry professionals across the continent.

“We’ve developed a good network of people that we believe are qualified enough to go and service on behalf of Eagle Press,” he continues. This means that, no matter where in North America a customer’s press is located, a trusted service provider is always ready to assist in any needed physical maintenance or repair. Moreover, predictive maintenance technology allows the company to monitor press functionality remotely, within customers’ security limitations.

“The customer is the only reason we exist,” Polewski says. “In everybody’s minds here, the customer is always right. That’s rule number one. Rule number two? The customer is always right. That’s it.”

Thanks to Eagle Press & Equipment’s size, ability to respond to customer needs with individualized care, attention to detail, and premium machinery, its high-end offering holds its own against even the largest competitors in the market. “We want to be known as the best press builder in the world,” says Polewski, and attaining that honour appears close at hand. While it grows from building 12 to 15 presses annually to building 20 to 25 presses annually, Eagle Press & Equipment is fast on its way to becoming known as the best in its field.

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“The company pioneered portable coordinate measuring machine arms, laser trackers, handheld 3D scanners, optical CMMs, software, and automated inspection solutions,” says Rich Nobliski, Director of Integrated Demand Generation.

Joining forces, FARO CREAFORM combines the complementary strengths of the two entities into a single, complete portfolio of portable and automated 3D measurement solutions, helping quality, production, maintenance, and design teams work faster, smarter, and with total confidence. “FARO CREAFORM brings together two pioneers in 3D measurement,” adds Nobliski of the company, which is a business unit of the multinational industrial technology solutions company AMETEK, Inc.

Trusted by thousands of clients
Today, FARO CREAFORM’s customers are among the who’s who of industry, including many of the world’s foremost automotive, aerospace, and manufacturing companies such as Ford, Boeing, Airbus, John Deere, and engineering organizations like Pratt Miller, to name a few. “Our solutions are trusted by more than 10,000 customers, including many major industrial OEMs,” says Nobliski. “We serve industries such as automotive, aerospace, heavy equipment, transportation, energy, metal fabrication, machinery, research, and general manufacturing.”

Customers use FARO CREAFORM’s state-of-the-art technology for many applications, including quality control and quality assurance, dimensional inspection, product development, reverse engineering, alignment, large-part measurement, automated inspection, non-destructive testing (NDT), and surface-damage assessment. And whether they are measuring small components or large assemblies, the goal is the same: capture reliable data and make better decisions.

Along with software programs like Creaform Metrology Suite™ and CAM2^® Software, the company is renowned for its handheld 3D scanners for metrology-grade measurement. “In simple terms, 3D measurement is the process of capturing the physical dimensions and geometry of an object and turning that information into accurate digital data,” explains Nobliski. “That can be done through 3D scanning, which captures thousands or millions of data points across a surface, or through probing, which measures specific features and dimensions with high precision. Many manufacturers use a combination of both approaches.”

Some of the biggest benefits of using FARO CREAFORM’s handheld 3D cameras are speed, accuracy, flexibility, and confidence. 3D scanning quickly captures complete surfaces and complex geometries, while probing is ideal for measuring critical features such as holes, edges, slots, and datum references.

For users, another major advantage is portability. “Today’s measurement systems can be brought directly to the part, whether it’s a small component, a large assembly, or equipment already installed on the shop floor,” says Nobliski. “This allows manufacturers to inspect parts faster, identify issues earlier, reduce rework, improve quality, and accelerate product development. Ultimately, 3D measurement helps organizations make better decisions based on reliable data and gives quality, engineering, and production teams greater confidence in their processes.”

Innovative offerings
The company’s expert metrology staff are on hand to help customers determine the most suitable product to meet their specific needs. This includes its world-famous 3D measurement solutions, metrology products, and application software. One of the company’s latest products is the MetraSCAN™ BLACK2, a portable optical 3D scanner designed for shop-floor inspection. By combining scanning and probing capabilities in a flexible system, it helps quality teams inspect parts faster while maintaining metrology-grade accuracy.

Described by the company as “engineered for accuracy, designed for usability,” the HandySCAN 3D EVO Series™ makes handheld 3D scanning more intuitive through its integrated display and real-time user guidance directly on the scanner. Portable, reliable, and efficient, the HandySCAN 3D EVO Series boasts a powerful, embedded graphical user interface, enhancing the user experience and delivering metrology-grade qualities, such as accredited accuracy.

For portable coordinate measurement, the Quantum X FaroArm® Series gives manufacturers the flexibility to scan or probe parts with metrology-grade accuracy, making it ideal for inspection, reverse engineering, and production applications.

For larger parts and assemblies, the FARO Vantage® S6 Max and E6 Max Laser Trackers provide fast, accurate large-scale measurement and alignment capabilities, helping manufacturers confidently measure everything from tooling and molds to complete assemblies. “Together, these products demonstrate the breadth of the FARO CREAFORM portfolio, from handheld scanning and portable CMMs to large-scale metrology solutions,” states Nobliski.

Industry expertise
Much more than a manufacturer of innovative 3D scanners, FARO CREAFORM is recognized globally for its customer support, services, and solutions. The company’s team boasts a broad mix of technical, manufacturing, and customer-focused specialists. Teams include mechanical, electrical, optical, robotics, automation, and software engineers, along with metrology specialists, manufacturing professionals, application engineers, technical support teams, sales, marketing, and customer success professionals. “What makes us successful is how those teams work together to combine hardware, software, application expertise, training, and support into a complete customer experience,” says Nobliski.

Having headquarters in Lévis, Québec and Lake Mary, Florida allows FARO CREAFORM to combine the innovation and expertise of two industry leaders while staying close to customers across North America and around the world. According to Nobliski, the company’s Lévis site is closely tied to Creaform’s innovation in handheld 3D scanning, software, and automated inspection, while the Lake Mary location has long been home to FARO’s expertise in portable measuring arms, laser trackers, and industrial metrology. “These locations are supported by a global network of repair and service centres, multilingual support, and technical resources that help customers maximize the value of their investment throughout the life of their equipment,” he says.

As a further commitment to quality, the company is supported by internationally recognized certifications and accreditations, including ISO 9001, ISO 14001, ISO 27001, and ISO/IEC 17025. Earlier this year, FARO CREAFORM’s HandySCAN 3D EVO Series received the prestigious Red Dot Award for Product Design, recognizing its combination of performance, ergonomics, usability, and industrial design.

Along with strong word-of-mouth business from satisfied clients, the company promotes its products and services through a mix of digital marketing, trade shows, webinars, social media, customer success stories, distributors, and direct customer engagement. Additionally, attending trade shows like FABTECH is mutually beneficial for the business and potential clients.

“Trade shows are especially valuable because they allow customers to see the technology in action and talk directly with our experts,” Nobliski explains. “We complement those events with educational content, product demonstrations, videos, webinars, and application-focused campaigns that show manufacturers how 3D measurement can improve quality, productivity, and decision-making. At the end of the day, our focus is less about promoting products and more about helping customers solve real manufacturing challenges and achieve better outcomes.”

A look ahead
Worldwide, manufacturers continue facing increasing pressures. These include quality improvement, accelerated product development, and the need to manage more complex production environments. With a focus on making 3D metrology more mobile, usable, and accessible through continued innovation in handheld scanning, probing, portable CMMs, laser trackers, automated quality control, and software solutions, FARO CREAFORM provides manufacturers with valuable technologies to increase efficiencies.

Certainly, the company is well-positioned for the years to come, and Nobliski says confidently, “The future is about helping manufacturers turn dimensional measurement into an even greater competitive advantage. We’re focused on improving the overall customer experience through integrated hardware and software, intuitive workflows, training resources, global support, and solutions that evolve alongside our customers’ needs,” he says. “With one of the industry’s most comprehensive portfolios of portable and automated 3D measurement technologies, we’re well positioned to help customers tackle everything from product development and reverse engineering to quality control, manufacturing, and large-scale measurement applications. Our goal is simple: help our customers work faster, smarter, and with total confidence.”

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