The Association has served as a trusted and vital part of the Canadian tooling industry for 60 years now.

According to CTMA Executive Director, Robert Cattle, a part-owner of the precision machining company MicroMetric and a CTMA member since the early 1970s, the Association has given him a stronger voice in the Canadian tooling industry as well as the opportunity to network with his peers, while providing that same voice to the tooling industry at large.

“Being part of an association helped me feel represented,” Cattle says of his early days in the industry. He explains that it can be difficult to get one’s work out to the public and to improve a company when launching and maintaining a brand necessitates a single-minded focus.

CTMA offers many additional benefits including plant tours and the Annual Wage and Business Survey which documents statistics like average pay, benefits, overtime, and more among the participating companies. CTMA Vice President, Louis Jahn, whose company Jahn Engineering has also been a long-standing member, emphasizes the promotional boost that the Association offers its members and how it enables sharing of common resources, technology, and industry knowledge.

Alex Mazerolle, a CTMA board member and the president of Archer Precision, adds that the organization’s support for members is excellent, as is its advocacy on behalf of the industry toward the Ontario government.

One of CTMA’s biggest initiatives is its Career-Ready with CTMA: Expanding Opportunities program, funded by the Ontario provincial government through the Skills Development Fund, a type of apprenticeship opportunity. Cattle describes the program as both significant and very successful. In fact, its initial success has allowed it to expand further within the past two years by building more contacts throughout the province.

This initiative—along with CTMA’s Apprentice Awards, which have been given out for decades, as well as the High School Awards, which were established in 2022—promotes career paths within the industry and outreach to schools and educational institutions.

“If we don’t expose high school students at a younger age [to] opportunities in the precision metal industry, how will they get exposed to it?” Cattle asks.

This has also led to the Association working even harder to keep tooling careers an option for interested young people, including helping to install computer numerically controlled milling machines (CNC machines) in nearby education centres like Ottawa Technical Secondary School as well as many other schools throughout Ontario. While a gesture like this is not inexpensive, it allows students to develop a hands-on understanding of how much the tooling industry has changed in recent decades.

Louis Jahn adds that the Ontario Youth Apprenticeship Program, a co-op style of student opportunity program, is another way in which CTMA is helping young people realize both the skills necessary to succeed in the trade but also the latent rewards and opportunities in the field.

Recruitment and retention are especially vital after the events of the past few years. During the most restrictive times of the COVID-19 pandemic, the manufacturing industry was considered essential and never really stopped working. Despite many challenges, CTMA saw its membership increase during this time and the trend continues today.

The Association was able to resume its regular in-person activities like its Annual General Meeting & Dinner—sporting the largest number of participants to date in 2022—and its yearly golf tournament, among others. These welcome returns are a sign of the tooling industry righting itself after a long period of doubt, especially as it continues to shift toward new trends.

Cattle and the CTMA staff have been privy to many industry changes over the past half-century, with a current change being an intensified focus being put on the automotive industry. The sector is going through notable changes, such as the switch to electric motors and hybrid vehicle models, and these will take decades to truly see in full effect. CTMA member businesses are involved in processes important to industries like these. “We are the tool and die makers, the mould makers, the machinists,” Cattle says, “We are the people who make the tools to make the parts.”

Industries like aerospace, defence, communications, and nuclear are consistently demanding more product from CTMA members, even more so in the wake of global events like the ongoing war in Ukraine. During this busy time, other factors will shape the industry, such as artificial intelligence (AI) and computerized technology. Louis Jahn says that in the automotive industry, AI will continue to be relied on for aspects like influencing how products will look, and more processes continue to be run off computers than ever before.

These developments favour the fortunes of young workers who are already familiar with computerized learning and development and further open opportunities for underrepresented populations in technical fields. There is another push within the industry toward greater roles for women, and technical trades are no longer a male-dominated industry as more women enter every year with skill sets that are much better suited for modern industry.

Traditional manufacturing technology is now being handled in lower-cost countries like South Korea, China, or India, and this continues to affect manufacturing in North America. It is providing a new challenge in which, with traditional businesses being run offshore, companies can find that there are not enough trained technicians in the business back home.

As 2023 unfolds, a very interesting development in local Ontario education will see high school students have to complete a mandatory technical course, a development Alex Mazerolle feels is huge for the industry. The CTMA board will soon be meeting to see what this announcement means for the industry at large and for the evergreen goal of building a pipeline from education centres to the sector.

The Association is “very encouraged by this news and the willingness of ministers to engage with CTMA and its members to understand the industry’s needs,” Mazerolle adds. The priority of addressing this comes second only to continued expansion and funding of the Career-Ready program, especially with the momentum gained by new members and increasing engagement levels.

CTMA is currently celebrating its 60^th anniversary, which Cattle admits is a big deal within the Association and a huge achievement for the industry overall. “You don’t survive for 60 years unless you’re providing a service that’s needed and valued.”

Mazerolle feels that Robert Cattle has been a fantastic leader and that this anniversary is a testament to the strength of the Association’s leadership over the past several decades. Its members are extremely grateful for the hours that Cattle and his team have put into rolling out programs and answering questions. The organization is staying true to the core values with which it started, and it will continue to refresh its focus on these in the future.

The post Bringing Attention and Support to Canada’s Tooling Industry<p class="company">The Canadian Tooling & Machining Association (CTMA)</p> appeared first on Manufacturing In Focus.

And so they should be. Launching the business on the sharp edge of COVID-19 in July 2019, they themselves, no matter how optimistic, could hardly have predicted the success they’d achieve in this short time. Today, a range of the company’s quality products are CSA-certified and contribute to the local economy.

Custom solutions
In the broadest sense, Black Controls automates industrial processes—everything from material handling conveyor systems to automotive assembly lines. Alongside its automation skills, the company provides its customers with custom design, manufacturing, and programming offerings.

“The services and processes that we implement are custom. What we do is very broad; we don’t typically have a standard offering. And that’s why our customers are seeking us out,” says Rick Black, founder and owner.

Based in a 13,000-square-foot facility in Barrie, Ontario, the company services clients’ facilities as far afield as Malaysia, Thailand, Germany, and the United Kingdom, as well as the whole of North America. Its skills have been well-honed in automation technologies like programmable logic controllers (PLCs), industrial robot systems, and advanced human-machine interface devices (HMIs), which form the backbone of communication and interaction of humans with machine controls and vice versa.

Black Controls also specializes in developing and implementing the latest autonomous mobile robot (AMR) technology, best known for material handling in large- to mega-facilities. These machines are popular as they are strong enough to lift factory skids and move bins around storage facilities for shipping, replacing the need for forklifts in warehouses.

Leading with quality
In this field, quality is imperative. To help drive consistent quality throughout its facility and product selection, Black Controls holds numerous industry certifications. These include its Electrical Safety Authority and a CSA and Special Industrial Control Panel (SICP) certification. The team is preparing for its ISO 9001:2015 certification audit governing quality management systems, and is also a member of the Canadian Tooling & Machining Association (CTMA).

“CTMA has been a good organization for us,” says Black. There’s different funding that they can connect us with for hiring our new graduates and then training them. So that’s helped us with some of those initial costs in getting people up to speed.” The company was also highly gratified when one of its team members received the 2022 CTMA Apprentice Award.

The company also participates in the Workplace Safety and Insurance Board (WSIB) Excellence Program and the A3 Association for Advancing Automation.

With demand rising, ensuring responsible resourcing is crucial. To this end, Black Controls strictly upholds the OECD’s Due Diligence Guidance for Responsible Supply Chains of Minerals from Conflict-Affected and High-Risk Areas. The company goes to great lengths to deal only with reputable firms that uphold the same standards and values. Black Controls regularly collaborates with other firms referred to as integrators that serve the automotive industry with automation projects. Here, the team serves as an extension of the integrators’ businesses, offering support and overflow services such as design, programming, wiring, and the like.

A new need for automation
Beginning with a single partnership with a leader in medical and food sterilization enabled the company to grow and stabilize before it began expanding its reach. While hard evidence on reshoring manufacturing to North America remains hard to find, Black Controls reports that its growth has certainly been fanned in part by customers bringing their fabrication outfits back. Ongoing labour shortages are also driving the uptake of automation across the continent.

Black also notes the growing presence of novel technology such as that used in autonomous mobile robots. “We’re currently installing a project for a large automotive supplier in Ontario which is automating the movement of materials around their facility. Our customers are investing in AMR technology because it allows them to automate the movement of materials throughout their facilities. This helps them to combat the ongoing labour shortages, and also makes their facility safer by reducing forklift traffic,” he says.

In addition, the company serves a host of specialized fields in many other industries like construction and warehousing.

The core secret
Part of Black Controls’ superpower is the experience and commitment of its five-person leadership team.. “We have a really strong foundation, and we work well together,” Black says of the management team. “Our leadership team has done a fantastic job creating an environment where we can push and support each other to continually grow as individuals and as a team.”

Beginning life as a core group, expansion naturally followed as the demand for the company’s services grew. Building its team with a selection of graduates and co-op students from a nearby college, the company places significant importance on providing its staff and apprentices with continuous, quality training.

“If someone is coming out of school and is looking to join a company, I think there’s an extra appeal here because of our initial success as a young company,” Black says, referring to the company’s great record of signing on quality staff. Today, the company has electrical designers, licensed electricians, electrical apprentices, automation programmers, and an accounting and administration team.

To be sure, Black Controls’ approach to business is working. The company won the City of Barrie Mayor’s Innovation Award in the Pivot Point category for 2021 and in addition, Black was named in Manufacturing Automation’s Top 10 Under 40 for his achievement in building this flourishing company while still in his early thirties.

After completing his studies, Black began his professional life as an apprentice and eventually became a programming team manager at a large automated systems integrator. He worked as a professional integrator for over a decade, but his dream was always to establish his own firm. In 2019, he took the plunge. At first, the company operated from his home but very quickly outgrew that. Even its first 2,500-square-foot facility only sufficed for about 12 months.

Black and his team believe in sharing this good fortune with organizations and community projects that do good for local businesses and those in need. As such, the company is part of the Barrie Chamber of Commerce and The Sandbox, an innovation and entrepreneurship centre.

Black also serves on the Georgian College Electrical Technology Program committee. Every Year during the summer season, Black Controls makes it possible for a child to take part in a Barrie Baycats camp. The company also supports the Barrie Food Bank and a Hospital Activity Book for Children. Through Barrie & Area Christmas Cheer, the team sponsors a local family which benefits from its generosity during the festive season. Several other worthy causes benefit, too.

Optimism for the future
Contemplating the future, Black casts his glance back to 2008 as he recalls a lot of automation being outsourced to companies in Mexico at the expense of North American outfits in the industry.

“I think that after COVID, companies are realizing that labour is hard to keep. So companies are looking to any processes that can be automated,” he says. Black adds that the current mood around automating processes in manufacturing, from basic to complex, can only be called optimism.

Concerning a predicted recession, he notes that he hasn’t seen any changes in the company’s bottom line yet. Either way, the company continues to upgrade its internal processes to stay at the leading edge, with a new enterprise resource planning (ERP) software package that will improve efficiency and standardization. It looks very much like this automation leader will continue to expand and develop its capabilities and employee base with the speed and deftness it has shown so far.

Sidebar:

Key projects

AMR (Autonomous Mobile Robot) Integration, March – May 2023
Five AMRs were used in this project for an automotive manufacturing company in Southern Ontario. The AMRs are used to complete part handling between the factory warehouse and the production lines. The AMRs move both bins full of completed parts from production back to the warehouse for shipping as well as empty bins from the warehouse to the production line. Bins are loaded and unloaded from four staging locations in the warehouse, which has a TV display to direct the forklift operator as to which bins to load based on colour of bin (12 colours total) and which full bins are required to be unloaded. From the warehouse, robots will pick up the correct colour of bin and bring it to the desired location on the production floor. The robots move throughout the production floor traveling to 14 different lines and 34 total locations, running 24 hours a day completing the finished goods material handling for all 14 production lines. The robots used in this application can carry bins weighing up to 600 kg in a safe and controlled manner.

Clip Cell Vision Upgrade, Summer 2023
A reliable automatic method is required to inspect the automated clip installation at a Southern Ontario automotive plastic injection moulding supplier. Black Controls recommends integrating a camera into the existing cell above the automated clip installation escapement cylinder and having the robot present the part to the camera before releasing the part on unload conveyor. The camera will verify the presence of the two clips, as well as check that each clip has both tabs on the correct side of the part. If the camera inspection passes, the robot will place the part onto the unload conveyor. If the camera inspection fails, the robot will place the part into the existing reject chute / bin.

Conveyor Controls Systems for Sterilization
The customer for this project is a world leader in the sterilization industry. They are Black Controls’ first and continuous customers, an electron beam accelerator manufacturer with various systems throughout North America, Europe, and Asia. “We have designed, built control panels, wired and programmed over a dozen conveyor systems for them over the past four years. We have successfully implemented a number of improvements iteratively over each project to assist with troubleshooting, system cost, and shortened installation timeframes.”

Vision – Black Rail Vision Inspection, January 2022
For an automotive sunroof manufacturer in Southwestern Ontario, a new inspection system was needed to provide a reliable method to inspect black Velcro on black sunroof rail, as the existing inspection equipment could not detect the black Velcro pieces situated on the black rails due to the lack of contrast. Black Controls’ solution required minimal line changes and modification, with the result being a high-contrast image that produced a reliable inspection.

Vision – STN80 Inspection Booth Vision, February 2022
For this existing customer’s assembly line, a new inspection method was required to check if the clip feature was properly engaged in a larger frame assembly. The region of inspection was small, but the camera could not be mounted close to the part as it would obscure other inspections. With these parameters in mind, Black Controls installed a high-resolution camera to reliably check for clip install without impacting the existing inspections. Programming also had to incorporate existing inspection sequencing as flashes from each inspection would impact the results of the other cameras.

The post Much Ventured, Much More Gained<p class="company">Black Controls Company Inc.</p> appeared first on Manufacturing In Focus.

B. Elliott PLC began to expand worldwide with facilities in Australia, South Africa, and Canada. B. Elliott Canada started its operation in 1950, located in Port Hope, Ontario.

Over time, Elliott evolved into representing various computer numerical control (CNC) machine builders around the world; in 1988, one such builder, Matsuura Machinery Corporation Japan, purchased controlling interest in Elliott to facilitate its presence outside of Japan.

Company President Vince D’Alessio believes that Elliott Matsuura Canada’s hybrid identity makes it stand out in its field. Whereas competitors in the Canadian machine tool industry tend to have a solidified office and brand identity, this company instead carries a range of products to meet different disciplines of manufacturing.

“Compared with other dealers with multiple products,” D’Alessio says, “we are the largest and only coast-to-coast dealer.”

The services, application support, and engineering of the company are all provided in-house, with the business boasting thirty-five service engineers and fourteen application engineers in its employ.

The company keeps close ties to its industry as well. Vice President of Sales and Marketing Frank Bolieiro cites the company’s membership in manufacturing associations like the Canadian Tooling & Machining Association (CTMA) and Canadian Machine Tool Distributors Association (CMTDA) as key for allowing the company to bring its information and technologies to the associations.

Bolieiro says that CTMA broadly serves the company’s customer base, while the CMTDA is aligned more directly to the business. Membership with both allows the company to be in closer association with competitors and customers and promotes a sharing of expertise that is beneficial for the company and the machine tool industry at large.

D’Alessio reflects that the pandemic actually helped the company rebound. One of the best years for the machine tool industry in North America, in terms of investment, was 2018. However, the industry did have an investment pullback in 2019 and was showing a strong rebound prior to the COVID pandemic starting in March 2020. After a brief slowdown that year due to initial pandemic measures, the economy rebounded in August 2020 and has not stopped since.

Work and production came back strong to North American manufacturing, due to much-needed assistance from local suppliers and supply chains. D’Alessio and the company saw that many companies suffered during the pandemic because they relied too much on supply chains in different global regions. This need for multiple supply chains led to a greater look into using local suppliers at any cost to minimize risk.

D’Alessio is pleased to see a lot of work like this returning to North America now but acknowledges that this sort of move does not happen overnight. Manufacturing companies are trying to bring supply chains back to North America while consolidating suppliers, so there will be very strong investment opportunities for the company’s clients coming in the next few years.

Indeed, the machine tool industry is bouncing back from one of the most turbulent periods in recent history, but businesses are not out of the woods yet. D’Alessio has noticed a downturn that began at the end of 2022 in the industry and says that companies are pausing investments due to negativity caused by soaring inflation and interest rates.

There continues to be a large amount of reshoring happening as more work returns to Canada from overseas, which is bringing big opportunities while leaving clients simultaneously busy and gun-shy about investment plans. There is also still a demand for its clients to innovate and improve efficiency, so the company is focusing on working with its customers and getting them to move forward in improving production capabilities.

“We are still very busy,” D’Alessio says, and the overall outlook of manufacturing for 2023 is bright; looking further ahead to the next five to ten years, he believes that the machine tools market in North America will ultimately be better than it was a decade ago, thanks in no small part to reshoring and the ongoing automation in the industry. “If you can automate a process, it doesn’t matter where it’s made.”

Bolieiro is pleased to say that the company will be continuing with its pre-COVID machine tool shows, with an open house scheduled for May and shows in Edmonton and Toronto scheduled for June and September, respectively. He shares that COVID necessitated changes to sales processes, meaning that regional sales and product managers had to adjust in delivering information to customers. Many of these implementations, such as Zoom meetings and virtual presentations and demonstrations, will continue alongside the return of face-to-face meetings.

The company is confident in its set of around twenty machine tool suppliers and is also representing automation and robotics companies that are moving further forward in plant automation endeavours. It also has associations with additive manufacturing outfits, which D’Alessio feels will continue to grow in importance in the industry in the next five years.

Along the way, the company’s goals will be to strengthen its market reach and find products that complement what it offers while helping it discover new possibilities, especially as many of its machine and technology builder suppliers are doing the same. The company will also be on the lookout for new talent, especially from across different disciplines, to succeed older company personnel who are beginning their steps toward retirement.

Above all, D’Alessio is firm that the company will stay true to its core beliefs, especially the idea that service and support is the main pillar of what it does. “The value we provide for our community… the equipment we offer is world-class, as are our builders. We are always looking for ways to strengthen our capability; we view it as the most important aspect of the company,” he says.

With seven decades under its belt, Elliott Matsuura Canada is more capable than ever before.

The post Living a Legacy<p class="company">Elliott Matsuura Canada </p> appeared first on Manufacturing In Focus.

While the Max Die Group enjoys an enviable reputation for its parts and services, the company is particularly proud of its training centre. This was established in 2016 at the Manor facility to prepare apprentices for the workforce.

“We are training young people… This was very much a strategic decision because we want to grow Max Die… but also going forward [we want] to support the community as well,” states Max Die Group Chief Executive Officer Johann Szlavik.

The training centre was launched, in part, to address the skills shortage within North American industrial and manufacturing circles. As existing workers approach retirement age industry-wide, young people are not flocking to replace them. The company’s training centre is intended to alleviate this situation, although admittance is not a sure thing; candidates require a high school diploma and need to pass a screening.

The Training lasts four years and involves classroom instruction, plant floor work, and evening courses at St. Clair College in Windsor, Ontario. Apprentices are taught practical die building, bench working, metal cutting, welding, how to read engineering drawings, machining, trade math, tool design, and laser cutting. If students work hard, opportunity beckons. “They all have a job guaranteed if they finish their apprenticeship program,” states Szlavik.

The Max Group provides a range of services from engineering and design to estimating, program management, machining, tool building, tryouts, hot stamping, and creating prototypes, as well as laser cutting and production. Its full-service metrology department uses coordinate measuring machines and 3D optical scanners to measure tools, die components, and parts quickly and accurately. The company also provides on-site metallurgical testing.

Its products include tooling for ultra-high strength parts, structural / thermal acoustic parts, class A and hot stamp parts. The tooling includes transfer dies, progressive dies, line dies, hot stamp dies, and blanking dies.

As befitting the company name, dies are a mainstay, with the automotive sector accounting for most die sales. Among Max Die’s other top markets are heavy equipment, lawn and garden, and alternative energy. Tier one manufacturers like Magna and original equipment manufacturers Daimler, Caterpillar, General Motors, and Freightliner are prominent customers.

Max Die employs a broad lineup of machines, software, and technological solutions. “On the production side, we have mechanical presses and hydraulic presses ranging up to 1500 tons. On the machining side, we have medium to large CNC (computer numerical control) machining centers. We also have two hot stamping lines supported by 3D lasers,” Szlavik says.

Some of the newer machines are hooked up to online networks so performance metrics can be remotely monitored. For engineering and design, the company uses 3D computer-aided design modeling programs such as SolidWorks and CATIA. For machining and surface profiling, the team can accept conventional 2D prints or cutting-edge 3D models submitted by customers.

The group can trace its heritage back a century to a company called Windsor Tool & Die, founded in 1923. This company used to make car parts for the likes of Henry Ford. Over the decades, it grew, and in 1981, the owner helped an employee and fellow entrepreneur named Max Ofner establish a separate company called Manor Tool and Die Ltd.

Manor acquired Sigma in 1998 and Lakeshore in 2004, after which the Max Die Group moniker was adopted. Its headquarters is located at the Manor facility. Windsor Tool & Die closed in 2008, but the roots it planted continue to grow.

Each company within the group has its forte. Manor excels at designing and building production stamping tools, prototype tooling, press tryout, and CNC machining. It has an 80,000-square-foot facility and performs computer-aided design / computer-aided manufacturing work as well. Sigma Division focuses on die repair, press try-out, and CNC machining. Sigma has coil-feeding equipment and seven press robotic tandem lines to do low-volume production runs in a 56,000-square-foot facility. Lakeshore Stamping Inc., meanwhile, produces small- to medium-size metal stampings and assemblies and is housed in a 65,000-square-foot facility.

Besides quality, Max Die Group’s longevity likely has something to do with measured growth. Since the company hasn’t indulged in frenzied expansion, it can still offer the kind of customer care for which smaller firms are renowned.

“We kind of grew out of Windsor Tool & Die,” says General Manager Robert Ofner, son of Max Ofner. “We’ve always been a fairly small company; I think Windsor Tool & Die was around 100 people when it closed up. We’ve always been around the 150 to 200 mark.” The Max Die Group currently has 195 employees across all branches.

In addition to the apprentices in the training centre who will eventually join its workforce, the company remains on the lookout for talented toolmakers and machinists. “We’re looking for a positive attitude, motivated, self-driven, reliable, and willing to learn,” says Ofner.

COVID had an impact here as it did on every other industrial and manufacturing company in North America. The group did not have to shut down, “but it was still a tough time to go through,” recalls Szlavik. Modified workstations, masks, hand sanitizer, and social distancing protocols were all introduced.

This concern for the well-being of its workforce was a natural outgrowth of a value system called the ‘three-way thinking model.’ Szlavik was introduced to a variation of this concept while working at Magna and brought his own, tweaked version to the Max Die Group. The foundations of the model are people, investors, and customers.

The people side encompasses “fair treatment, safety, problem-solving, and development and training. The customer side talks about productivity, efficiency, on-time delivery, and competitiveness, while on the investor side, [the model involves] strategy, standards, and problem-solving,” he explains.

On the people front, Max Die offers employees a fairness committee, plan-do-check-act sessions—a protocol for a continuous-improvement, entrepreneurial operating system—a way to evaluate what’s important for a company, and five-why problem solving. The last is a workplace concept in which the question ‘why’ is asked five times to get at the root of a problem.

Not counting COVID, Ofner cites recruitment as one of the company’s biggest challenges. Even with the training centre, finding new workers can be difficult. To this end, Max Die does presentations at high schools and places advertisements on online employment sites. Rising costs and offshore competition are additional challenges, he adds. In the face of offshore competition, the company offers “experience, innovation, a strong commitment to customer relationships, and providing local follow-up and support.”

While it might be cheaper for a company to source tooling in Asia, such products need to be shipped across an ocean, and COVID-related supply chain woes can drag out delivery times even further. Once a delivery has been made, the problems do not necessarily end; any warranty issues with parts or products are difficult to resolve because of distance.

By contrast, the Max Die Group can promise speedy delivery to domestic customers and direct support if issues arise. Product quality is high; the company has ISO 9001 certification and a comprehensive quality management system. In addition to constant checks during production and machining, “we also have a quality department to make sure everything going out conforms to customer standards,” says Szlavik.

As for the future, the Max Die Group is closely monitoring the explosive growth of the electric vehicle (EV) sector with new business prospects in mind. “The market is pretty crazy now, switching over from combustion engines to EVs,” notes Szlavik.

He acknowledges that change and turmoil in the automotive sector, compounded by COVID which shuttered some workplaces and wreaked havoc on supply chains, hurt the industry. “A lot of small tool shops are going bankrupt,” he says.

For all that, though, he offers an optimistic forecast. “Our goal is to grow on an annual basis of ten to fifteen percent. The only time we didn’t reach that goal was during the pandemic,” Szlavik says. “This is our goal for our next business year.”

The post World-Class Tooling, World-Class Training<p class="company">Max Die Group</p> appeared first on Manufacturing In Focus.

Supplying both the automotive and general industries with tooling, welding, and mechanical assemblies, this privately owned Canadian company continues to flourish, expanding the stamping operation in 1993, and continues to operate out of a new 175,000-square-foot facility.

“Tooling has been our focal point of strength for years and years, because we began as a tooling shop started by our father,” explains General Manager Robert Zeni. “We have the experience, the dedication, and the individuals who can take difficult concepts and make what our customers need in a way that’s cost-effective, efficient, and imaginative.”

Utilizing the newest 3D CAD/CAM technology in tool design also enables Clover Tool to share files with clients and accelerate product development with its complete prototype service.

A young core
Clover Tool has also always had a strong apprenticeship program, which means that in a field with a shortage of toolmakers, the company boasts a young core of toolmakers who have grown with the company’s standard and its way of doing things and are now in leadership positions, continuing to push forward in the field of automotive tooling. While the tooling area at large has a deficit of skilled workers, Clover Tool was wide awake and saw the writing on the wall in time, managing to keep ahead.

“In the last five to six years, we’ve excelled,” Robert says. “We’ve always done stamping, but now we’re really making it cost-effective and leveraging our efficiencies, quality, and safety. We’re looking at some above-average numbers, and we’re pushing to get to world-class OEE.”

Clover Tool has also excelled in the assembly department in the last several years, developing strong systems and pushing the outer limits in quality and product realization to customers.

Millwrights wanted
“The maintenance areas are where we’re facing challenges, specifically with millwrights,” Robert says. “We have young electricians that we’ve grown, but with our millwrights, there’ve been few apprentices that we could develop.”

The advent of COVID also created some losses by way of retirement, he adds. “Otherwise, internally, we’ve always been able to train people, even coming off the street, and been able to develop and train individuals into different skill positions in the organization.”

In finding those individuals, Clover Tool has spread its net pretty wide, working with high schools, colleges, social media, and the penal system to locate and train workers, along with the immigration population.

“We’ve done a number of things to try and get people in because we understand that, first of all, our industry isn’t well-known,” says Robert, adding that the government’s putting an end to the funding of skilled trades in 2008 hasn’t helped either. To combat this, the company has worked with several local organizations in Vaughan, such as area businesses and the Chamber of Commerce, to lobby for students.

“It’s not [seen as] a glamorous industry that people want to go into,” says Vice President George Zeni. “It starts right from elementary school; as parents, we all want our kids to do better than we have, and they all want to become doctors, lawyers, and accountants, but not go into the skilled trades.”

Clover Tool is striving to make a difference, however, leveraging its impressive decades of experience, knowledge, and growth within a company performing quality work in a facility where it can build and maintain tools and continuously evolve and adapt.

“We’ve also expanded over the years into the production side of things, which is metal stamping, growing that to 20-plus presses under one roof,” says Robert. “And inevitably we went into the value-add—the robotics and robotic welding, robotic assembly, and spot welding—where we really focused on the automation side of things.”

Understanding that there always challenges that come with labour, Clover Tool has automated more and more, creating a new set of employment opportunities for programming and for maintaining these robots. The company also established a second location in Breslau, Ontario, adding a business called Ultramet industries Inc. to its family of companies.

The big one
In terms of upcoming projects, Clover Tool has been awarded a “big” contract with several customers, involving the largest investment the company has ever made in new stamping equipment: a 1,650-ton press which is double the size of the previous largest.

“We’re hoping to have that all operational by the end of the year, which will increase employment, increase sales, and hopefully attract a diversified new group of customers,” says Robert. “It puts us on a new level of stamping that not too many players are on at this moment.” He adds that in this industry, especially in Ontario, there are only a handful of companies that have this type of equipment.

“It’s challenging because it’s a lot of money and a lot of moving parts. There’s not only the equipment, but there are also the facilities that have to be modified so they can accept this piece of equipment—or pieces, actually. It’s a combination of equipment from different companies that you put together along with the auxiliary equipment to support the expansion.”

While Clover Tool could have purchased the equipment overseas to save money, the company stayed local, buying from Ontario-based companies, a point of pride.

The company also prides itself on making its working environment and culture a top priority, with 80 percent of its staff having been employed there for three to four years minimum.

“We also have staff who have been with us for 30-plus years,” says George. “Employee engagement has always been something big. We’ve started to emphasize that in terms of policies and procedures and always being an employee-first organization, because we couldn’t do any of the things we’ve been doing without our great employees.”

This has translated into loyalty “through thick and thin,” with employees always on board.

“Part of that is we have very welcoming accommodation policies,” says George. “We work with everybody. If anybody talks to us about changing a shift or working hybrid hours or working from home, well, we’ve been doing that since well before 2019.” Clover Tool has always accommodated its employees as much as possible, he adds, even in a manufacturing industry where workers are required to be on site to run machines.

A family approach
“We’ve always brought our people together to work together, and to make sure that people’s families are taken care of first,” George says. “That’s very important too, especially coming from a family organization. We know the importance of trying to keep everything going well.”

This includes limiting overtime, not only because it saves costs but to ensure people are well-rested and not burning out.

“We work five days a week and we don’t put in massive amounts of overtime as a lot of people do in manufacturing,” he adds. “We always try to balance our staff and ensure we don’t rely on temps. We have maybe a maximum five to six temps at a time and typically, when we bring in temps, we’re doing temp to permanent.”

While in some manufacturing organizations 40 percent of the staff is temporary labour, Clover Tool always avoided this practice. And when COVID hit, the company once again rose to a very challenging occasion.

“There has never been a shutdown of that magnitude in automotive,” says Robert. “It was surreal. In the beginning, we were able to keep as many people as we could pay to try to keep people with food on the table.”

The company also strove to keep its employees as safe as possible. “We never had a work spread, or work case of COVID, where it spread internally, which we’re proud of,” says Robert. “From the beginning, we had all the countermeasures in place, from electronic screening to temperature checks, and everybody came on board. I’m so proud of everybody. They really tried their hardest to keep everybody else safe.”

That sense of camaraderie has extended to other areas as well. “That engagement and fulfillment has helped bring those results to our customers, and we also enjoy a lot of social events,” George says. This includes a recent outreach program with Toronto Conservation, cleaning up a park; potlucks, barbecues, and picnics; and charitable work for Sick Kids Hospital and Cortellucci Vaughan Hospital.

Staying safe, staying desirable
In terms of wages, while Clover Tool can’t necessarily out-compete everyone else with dollars and cents, it can compete very well with its company culture as well as its “next level” quality standard, especially in a stamping environment, says Robert. The company’s customer rejections have been well below industry levels—“pretty much near perfect” for a stamping environment.

“In terms of safety we’ve also definitely been well above the standard,” says George. “Our WSIB rates are lower than the industry standard; currently we are 1400 days without a lost time accident.”

He adds that in the past 15-plus years, with regard to safety, Clover Tool has enjoyed very good standing in terms of few or no incidents at work, creating a work environment that both attracts workers and keeps them safe.

“We go above and beyond with our employees, so much so that we’ve had employees leave and within two weeks call and ask to come back,” says George. “We’ve succeeded in creating an environment where people want to stay.”

The post The Tools of Success – Superior Products and a Stellar Work Environment<p class="company">Clover Tool Manufacturing Limited </p> appeared first on Manufacturing In Focus.

But then the 21^st century came along, bringing with it levels of technology that few long-time industry legends could have fathomed, let alone thought attainable in their lifetimes. As the Baby Boomer Generation passes its proverbial torch alongside its hands-on knowledge to younger generations, these younger generations are leaning toward advancement and improvement. And Integrity, one of the continent’s foremost tooling and molding giants, is committed to driving that change.

Far from shying away from meeting the future head-on, the Integrity team handpicks employees with a love of learning and an inherent understanding of service excellence. Here, people who embrace lifelong improvement find an employer ready to engage. With footprints in El Marqués, Querétaro, Mexico; Pulaski, Tennessee; and Troy, Michigan, the company’s headquarters is based in Oldcastle, Ontario, Canada. Established in 2000, Integrity is only two years away from celebrating a quarter of a century serving North America and customers further afield.

This is a team that means business. To illustrate, Integrity has a dedicated transportation division with around 17 heavy-duty vehicles that takes care of logistics across the continent and between its plants. Custom design, prototyping, fabrication, assembly, and after-sales servicing are all part of the outstanding offerings its international clientele benefit from, and the company works on a spectrum of project sizes ranging from surprisingly little to—quite frankly—gargantuan jobs.

Remaining current naturally translates into investing in the latest equipment and technology—a major deciding factor for clients who insist on the best quality available. Thanks to its immense footprint, the company’s facilities are well-versed in collaborating when necessary to deliver exactly what clients need. Its capabilities include computer numerical control (CNC) machining, feasibility checks, and product development alongside 3D printing and advanced measuring technology like software for in-depth Measurement System Analysis (MSA), alongside sophisticated engineering tools like geometric dimensioning and tolerancing systems.

In addition, the company’s impressive stable of expert designers gives customers access to a vast volume of in-depth development and design knowledge.

The company’s commitment to excellence starts long before the design phase, however. First, feasibility checks and testing are conducted in a specialized laboratory to ensure that what is developed is indeed what the customer needs—and that it will perform optimally within the systems it is destined for. “We partner with our clients to strategize and validate specifications to meet aggressive timing and meet short lead times. We will verify your part can be molded before a single steel chip hits the floor,” the company states on its website.

To this end, one of its most exciting pieces of technology, perhaps, is Mold Flow—a simulation program that visually represents the flow state and nature of a range of materials and how they behave under pressure within a mold. This is essential as every material moves differently under pressure and at different temperatures. By first mimicking the process with the use of this next-generation software, molding is made easier while preventing waste and error as well.

Flow analysis ideally renders high-tolerance molding and improved overall quality of the final component as design issues like compromised surfaces, impractical protrusions, or insufficient tolerances are quickly brought to light and corrected before high-volume production starts. In this way, molds can be fine-tuned in tandem with the molding material if and as necessary to render fault-free production of the final parts.

The company’s large team ensures that all machining and fabrication happen at high speed and at top quality throughout all its facilities. It is when it comes to validating tools, though, that Integrity’s technological prowess truly shines. By putting components through real-life testing, any possible weaknesses or desired improvements that could take parts to the next level quickly become evident. Some of the machines used to conduct this testing process include powerful industrial presses and robotic instruments that mimic the wear and stresses of everyday use.

Yet, no equipment deal is complete without the certainty of access to maintenance services. And here, Integrity again takes pride in providing for its customers’ needs. While the company offers in-house emergency repairs, it has trained teams to install and introduce tools off-site. In essence, Integrity provides clients with a well-thought-through service portfolio favoured for its dedication to high-performance outcomes and sophisticated capabilities. Always up for the next challenge, its team of designers is perpetually ready to put their heads together in search of the next big solution. And, with easy access to the entire company’s large pool of resources, they have everything they need to deliver innovation where and when it is needed—fast.

As many firms return fabrication to home shores, it is interesting to note that clients as far as Asia have opted to turn to this team for their tooling and holding needs—despite being surrounded by a plethora of industry competitors. Always in the market for good quality and longevity, European clients are also known for seeking out the depth of product and engineering understanding that Integrity hosts in its phenomenal team of people. As a result, the company takes great pride in investing in its people and is always looking for new talent to join its ranks.

Ultimately, no amount of technology can replace the relationships the company has built over more than two decades in a demanding and—at times—unforgiving industry. People are at the heart of Integrity and as such, its commitment to taking care of its customers in the exact way they need by providing solid, old-fashioned service alongside modern methods will continue guiding this team toward the horizon of a better tomorrow, where never-ending possibilities await.

The post Where Integrity Is a Core Value<p class="company">Integrity Tool and Mold Inc.</p> appeared first on Manufacturing In Focus.

Led by Tool & Die industry veterans, Nominal has earned the trust of clients across North America and Europe for its precision tooling, fast turnaround, and “no challenge is too big to handle” attitude.

Along with its Tool & Die and machining division, Nominal has recently launched a Robotics, Automation, and Integration Division, and is now launching its Stamping and Assemblies Division, for which the company has 22 stamping presses, a significant investment. With the controls electricians from Nominals Automation Division, and a staff of about 30 Tradesmen and Engineers, Nominal plans to increase those numbers with potentially up to 50 new staff members in time for the production startup of the new division later this year.

“For such a young company, we’ve gotten a great deal of attention worldwide,” says Nominal Machine Tool Co-owner Jim Mitchell. “We’ve even had an offer from the Polish government to partner with them.”

Founded on experience
Starting his career as an apprentice Tool & Die Maker, Mitchell’s well-rounded industry background includes metal stamping, hot stamping, stamping presses, production part quality troubleshooting and cycle time improvements, die repair, automation and robotics, plant management, and health and safety training. On top of his certificate of qualification (CoQ) for Tool & Die Maker, he holds a robotics certificate from FANUC.

Long before founding Nominal, Mitchell gained experience at automotive parts giant Magna International as an Industrial Mechanic-Toolmaker and then Tooling Engineer, and RC Tool & Die as a registered apprentice, where he first worked with Nominal’s present-day President, Brandon Cormier.

It was there at RC Tool that the decision was made to open their own shop one day. “And it took us twenty-something years before we finally pulled the trigger, but eight-and-a-half-years later, we have a 41,000 square-foot facility with three divisions.” Seeing an increase in its robotics, automation, and integration division, the company is presently quoting on several large projects.

Active in automotive and branching out into non-automotive areas, Windsor, Ontario-based Nominal is actively working on attaining certifications from ISO and the IATF (International Automotive Task Force). “Right now for IATF, we are at the point where we need to get a production job so we can finish our credentials, setting up all of our quality systems,” explains Mitchell. “But we were lucky enough to hire two people who are responsible for setting up quality systems at other companies, and both of them are people who train the auditors. So it’s a really good way to go. They have a lot of experience and are now helping us set all this up.”

Built for success
With the mission of assisting manufacturing sectors by providing trained staff, services, and technologies, Nominal Machine Tool is renowned for its abilities to engineer, build, prototype, repair, improve, and maintain dies.

Combining decades of Tool & Die experience with advanced level CNC machining and the latest CAD/CAM software, Nominal’s services and capabilities include building new stamping dies, die repair and refurbishment, custom 2D & 3D machining, die designing, replacement sections, stamping part quality improvements, wire EDM (electrical discharge machining) and many others, including re-shoring of overseas-built tooling.

Another advantage of working with Nominal is that it is a well-established Canadian company. This advantage became clear after the start of the pandemic as shipments of products from other countries were delayed, sometimes months at a time, and is still relevant to this day.

“Dealing with overseas right now is scary,” says Mitchell. “Is your tooling going to make it here on time? We all remember all those news stories about the ships stuck in the ocean, waiting to get to port. Unfortunately, one of the biggest factors or disadvantages when you deal overseas is you have to pay 100 percent of your tooling price before it gets on the boat, so what you get is what you get. Here in North America, we have to wait up to six months before we get paid for the tooling, sometimes even a year or more,” he explains.

With reshoring of overseas-built tooling a key part of its business, Nominal brings products from other countries up to North American standards, something it has done since the company was formed in November 2014. “What they do a lot of the time is have the tooling built and just put it in a press to make a part from the die / tooling—not even make the part fit the fixture, just get it to that point—and ship it to North America, and we’ll fix it here.”

The extra mile
To be sure, the team at Nominal Machine Tool has an upbeat ‘get-it-done’ attitude that extends to all areas of the business, including rush and emergency services, “as we get so much of that type of work. We’ve done that for some very grateful customers, often when there’s a big smash-up,” says Mitchell.

To get the word out about Nominal and its services, the company has built relationships with colleges, universities, and chambers of commerce. About a year and a half ago, Nominal joined the Canadian Tooling & Machining Association (CTMA) and is appreciative of the many benefits of CTMA membership, including exposure, connections, and meeting other companies.

The company is also part of the Chambers of Commerce of both Windsor and Detroit, its first venture into any type of association. “It has benefited us greatly: the networking and the introduction to people and resources have been a tremendous help and if we would have known about [the benefits] years ago, I wonder where we would be now,” says Mitchell, “That’s one of the reasons we joined other associations. We realized that we weren’t in enough associations and didn’t reach out to many people for things like that,” he says.

“We were just having our normal, loyal customers—we’ve never lost one—and we didn’t see a lot of need for it at the time. We didn’t look into anything like that, we were just busy.”

Ties to Poland
In recent years, the company has joined forces with academic institutions, including the University of Windsor, St. Clair College, and even a university in Poland. “I don’t think people realize and understand the many resources that the University of Windsor has, but they can really help our industry,” says Mitchell.

The company’s ties to Poland have their roots in a time many years ago when Mitchell was working for another company which took on 25 workers from Poland who, despite the language barrier, were welcomed and soon made at home.

Years later, after the EU-Canada Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) was signed, a senator from Poland and the Windsor Chamber of Commerce entered into discussions around immigration from the EU.

The men from Poland that Mitchell worked with long before remembered his, and his colleague’s kindness and help with filling out rent applications and dealing with the necessary bureaucracy. They were looking for a Canadian company to work with and, fitting the criteria of a company not too big or small and that would work well with Poland, Nominal’s name came up. To this day, the company has an open invitation to once again come to Poland to partner with the Polish Government in a manufacturing capacity.

Serving the community
Realizing that success breeds success, the team at Nominal takes pride in helping others whenever it can. This includes working with the March of Dimes and being nominated for two Canada-wide awards from The CASE – Wiltshire Award of Excellence in Supported Employment from The Canadian Association for Supported Employment.

Mitchell recalls getting a call from the March of Dimes one day, saying they had a permanently disabled worker looking at a new career. The charity said they would provide six months of wage assistance to give the man the opportunity to follow his desired career.

“When the six months was up, the MOD came to Nominal to interview him, and he said a lot of really good things about us,” says Mitchell. That care for staff is clearly characteristic of a company which provides a sit-down breakfast for all staff every Saturday and has an account with a local garage where employees can get their vehicles serviced, with a manageable amount deducted from their pay every week and many other benefits that are by no means common practice in industry. “It is like a family here at Nominal and we don’t ever want to lose that ‘small shop’ atmosphere as we grow.”

As Nominal approaches its tenth year in business, Mitchell is proud both of what the company has achieved in a short time and of the rosy future that stretches ahead, which will include expansion and more staff.

“We’ve really exceeded our customers’ expectations for timing,” he says. “We do a lot of work with one larger company in the area, and even they thought we couldn’t complete two of their dies in the timeframe they wanted—and from here to Japan there were a lot of eyes on those jobs. Not only did we do it in the impossible timeframe, but we did it great, ahead of schedule, and they were floored by that. So that’s incredible. We have been doing a lot of work with them ever since then.”

The post Uncompromising Precision, Unrivalled Commitment, Unmatched Quality<p class="company">Nominal Machine Tool</p> appeared first on Manufacturing In Focus.

“Even though we can do small scale production runs—maybe ten, fifteen, twenty gears—we really focus on large, low volume gearing that’s specialized,” says Vice President of Business Development Renato Foti. Industries served include mining, military, aggregate and cement, heavy industry, marine, power systems, presses and stamping, pulp and paper, and metals.

Rapid Gear’s size and capability immediately set the company apart. “We’re one of the larger gear shops in Canada,” Foti says. “I consider it a full-service house, where we make almost every type of gear that you can imagine. A lot of shops aren’t able to do that.”

The company’s production facility boasts a full range of equipment in various sizes, “so our versatility is very good,” he says. “And we’ve invested heavily in new technology and new equipment so that we can produce a wide variety of parts. It’s very rare that we have to turn down a job because we can’t make it.”

Rapid Gear recently installed a new 5-axis Mazak that allows “all sorts of configurations,” Foti explains. The team is currently installing a 200-inch diameter vertical mill that will be up and running soon. “It’s a turning lathe that enables us to rough out a large part, up to 200 inches, for heavy gearing applications.”

A few years ago, the company invested in a Gage Master for its reverse engineering abilities to ensure superior quality. “So we can guarantee that the gear is made properly. If we get a gear sent to us, we can reverse engineer it on our floor or we can even take it out to site and reverse engineer parts on site, which we do periodically in special situations. I believe we’re the only one in Canada to own that. There are only a few others in North America that have them and that gives us that extra capability to service our customers.”

Having the latest machining equipment is critical to staying ahead of the curve. “If you don’t have the proper equipment, you’d have to sub out parts or turn down jobs,” and the new equipment also increases quality. “We can keep things more accurate. We can pre-program complicated cycles into the machine and are able to maintain a high quality standard.” It also boosts efficiency, ensuring the team stays on schedule. “By investing in more equipment, we’re able to reduce our bottlenecks in the shop and meet on time deliveries a little bit easier.”

Employing in-house engineers is another factor that makes Rapid Gear stand out from the crowd. “We have a large engineering staff, which enables us to reverse engineer and support our customers full-scale, versus just looking at a print and making a part,” says Foti. “We have five engineers on our staff—for a medium-sized gear shop, that is a lot.”

Rapid Gear’s capabilities and quality have made the company popular with multiple sectors and the team has made it a point to diversify amongst them all. “I think diversification is good for all businesses,” he says. “If you put all your apples in one basket, it can be dangerous.” A portion of the company’s work is for the military, but the team is careful not to rely on any sector entirely. “It’s a good chunk [of our business], but it’s not a huge chunk, which is probably wise for us because at times it could be very busy and other times it could be very slow. It’s the same with mining and other facets of the industry like oil and gas—sectors that have their positives and negatives.”

The team has also been diversifying its sales geographically. Business with customers outside of Canada has been increasing significantly in recent years. “We sell quite a bit to the U.S. as well as international markets for mining and specialty companies. That diversification helps protect our business and gives us more experience into other marketplaces.”

Indeed, Rapid Gear is plugged into the industry, with multiple professional memberships. The company is a long-time member of the American Gear Manufacturing Association (AGMA), utilizing the association’s continuing education to keep the company’s engineers up to date with the latest knowledge and participating in AGMA’s conference each year. This involvement keeps the team in touch with the rest of the industry. “It’s great networking with other people in the gear industry because other gear companies are our customers as well,” Foti shares. “Even though they may be a competitor, they will still source from us for certain types of gears that they don’t produce or for sizes that they can’t produce.”

More recently, the company joined the Canadian Tooling and Machining Association (CTMA). This has been particularly beneficial because it helps support the industry as a whole, as well as Rapid Gear itself. “We are constantly looking for and also promoting skilled machinists in this industry, and the more we work with local organizations, the more we can help mentor and focus on being part of that growth and the future of these young people in the trades. It’s vital because we need these skills in our industry. When I travel across Canada, there are some areas where they just can’t find skilled people for these industries, and so it’s critical for us to have these memberships in local organizations within Canada and Ontario and be involved with the colleges as well.”

Finding skilled workers is not the only challenge that Rapid Gear—and the industry as a whole—faces. There is also the pressure to retain these workers through highly competitive salaries, and this can be particularly challenging for small businesses. “The smaller shops have a hard time matching these types of salaries and getting people,” says Foti. Rapid Gear works hard to match these high salaries. “Rapid gear does pay relatively well,” he says. “But it is a bit of a battle to make sure that you’re maintaining proper salaries and benefits for the employees because these are high costs.”

Rapid Gear President Tania Sabados emphasizes how important it is to overcome these challenges as an industry in order to keep manufacturing in North America. “It’s so vital to our industries and a lot of people don’t give it enough consideration,” she says. “Without manufacturing, we don’t have the steel industry, aggregate, food industry—anything. It needs to have more respect.”

“I think it’s very dangerous for countries to forget about these critical industries where you actually make something,” Foti adds. “We talk a lot at home about manufacturing, how important it is, right from mining minerals and having natural resources to being able to process those resources and supporting those industries that process them.” Rapid Gear offers this critical support. “We’re kind of a tier one, tier two for these large industries that are resource-related,” he says.

To be sure, Rapid Gear has earned its place within the industry, offering quality products to critical sectors within the North American market. From its recent investments in new technology to retaining top engineers, Rapid Gear is well positioned for ongoing success. “Because of these investments in equipment and in people, we feel the future of Rapid Gear is strong.”

The post An Industry Staple<p class="company">Rapid Gear</p> appeared first on Manufacturing In Focus.

Jancox Metal’s customers benefit from knowing that, when dealing with this team of industry experts, they are working with a one-stop shop. “Instead of customers multi-sourcing through multiple vendors, we can work with them and do the whole package. Instead of working with multiple vendors, they can work with us and complete their whole package of parts,” says Mark Gortnar, Operations Manager.

Although the company leads with its reputation for being one of the industry’s best in this field, Jancox Metal does much more than simply supply the automotive industry with checking fixtures and attribute gauges. This manufacturing legend also builds solid relationships with clients alongside durable custom components.

As such, clients enjoy easy access to the considerable industry expertise of its certified manufacturing managers alongside a fully-fledged parts development and engineering department. In addition, the company provides all the extras needed in this field, like anodizing—an electrochemical method for adding decoration and/or corrosion protection to metal—and a range of other metal finishes like plating, painting, and more—all tailored to deliver as comprehensive a solution as possible.

Jancox Metal’s precision-checking fixtures are famous throughout the industry. These inspection tools are applied to determine the quality standard of highly engineered, dynamically shaped machined metal parts and to class these components in relation to their prerequisite dimensions. Similarly, attribute gauges are also used for quality assurance but indicate a part’s compliance with a preset uniformity standard and help decide whether to retain or recycle parts.

As a supplier to some of the largest fabricators on the continent, Jancox Metal Products Inc. takes its mandate seriously. As a result, and thanks to its generous size, the company carries large volumes of stainless steel, aluminum, copper, brass, and other metals in all shapes and sizes. It even uses engineered plastics. That means better lead times than many of its competitors can offer. “We can handle from simple to complex and big to small projects,” says Mark. “We can also handle from one piece to thousands. We push to be a one-stop shop and a partner,” he says.

The company got its start fabricating stamping dies for the automotive industry, welcoming its first customers in 1968. From there, the team began exploring new possibilities, finally settling on developing and producing bespoke checking gauges and performing high-tech machining—again for the automotive industry. Over the years, the company worked hard to be recognized as a market leader, becoming known as an early adopter of change-making standards and industry innovation. In this way, the International Standards Organization’s ISO 9001: 2000 certification standards were a fundamental part of Jancox Metal’s operation long before most other gauge and fixture outfits even considered complying.

“Jancox has been operating as a family business for over 55 years. Joe, my dad, President of Jancox Metal, is still here every day—six, seven days a week. We persevere and we push through. We are determined to keep going,” says Mark. This get-up-and-go sense of tenacity has consistently underscored the company’s drive for quality and evolution for more than five decades.

Its facility is everything a client can expect from a quality bespoke components fabricator. At over 27,000 square feet, staffed with more than 30 team members, around 20 CNC (computer numerical control) machines, a fleet of hand-operated mills and lathes, and everything needed to execute comprehensive servicing like wire cutting, coordinate measuring machines (CMMs), and three- to eight-axis machines, this is an outfit that very clearly means business.

Even post-COVID, the business continued to grow. Amid economic drivers like local companies reshoring their manufacturing outfits from Asia and other parts of the world, Mark also notes a trend toward decreasing shipping costs with more components fabricated in North America. With regard to the pandemic period itself, this steadfast leader has nothing but praise for the company’s loyal and dedicated employees. “We had a great team of employees throughout COVID, and we still have those employees. It was hard on [them but] we made it work. Our employees are very dedicated. They understand our customers’ business,” he says.

As a result of strong family values and a commitment to its people, tenures here are typically long, ranging from a decade to three amongst older employees. One of the main pluses of this trend is the generational knowledge and skills that get passed down to the younger generation. Another is that because they have so many years of experience, older employees’ depth of understanding regarding customers’ operations goes a long way to ensuring ease of collaboration and consistent, top-quality parts. “As a family business, [our staff is] part of our family. Some have been here for a long time, and they are like an extended family to us. Some have known me since I was a baby,” Mark says of the company’s team.

To ensure this continuity, Mark and his father go out of their way to hire dedicated young people who, typically, are trained to meet its service and manufacturing excellence standards from the ground up. The approach seems worth the commitment and is evident in the impressive number of longstanding customers the company has garnered over the years. One of this leader’s greatest joys has been to watch the business evolve and expand over the past few decades. For him, the close bonds nurtured with customers over many years give life and vitality to the company and its future.

But leading Jancox Metal Products Inc. and its team through the life and times of North America’s economic fluctuations is not the only notable aspect of Mark’s role as a leader at work, at home, and in the world. He is also part of a much greater picture. Cure for Claire and the Canadian CLN2 Foundation are the family’s charities, established to help support the Gortnar children, Claire and Josef, who, in a rare and heart-wrenching stroke of fate, were both diagnosed with CLN2 as babies.

This genetic disorder and Battens Disease variant debilitates children by affecting the nervous systems, causing them much pain, discomfort, and suffering. Fewer than 20 children in all of Canada are living with this diagnosis, making medical treatment not only highly specialized but also very expensive as a result. Using these two charities as a platform for doing good, the Gortnar family helps to fund research and supports other families who live with the same devastating blow.

Just as the Gortnar family continues searching for solutions to improve the lives of their children, so the Jancox Metal family continues moving forward and evolving in the business arena. Thanks to its diversity, the company ensures that it always has an offering in high demand, irrespective of challenging market conditions. In this way, it continues to diversify and solidify its market share in the industry.

Mark Gortnar is confident that, following its continued stability, Jancox Metal Products Inc. will maintain its footing despite the unpredictability of sudden market changes. Especially since, with few exceptions, lead times on material orders are—for most metal types—past the backlogs that companies battled until recently. As long as they can continue to help stimulate growth and evolution for their customers, this team will continue doing what they do best—delivering quality innovation and fabrication that lasts. In good times and bad, excellence remains the lasting Jancox Metal Products Inc. promise.

The post Reimagining Custom Machining<p class="company">Jancox Metal Products Inc.</p> appeared first on Manufacturing In Focus.

Cars have come a long way since then and just keep on transforming. Through it all, Nickleson Machine & Tool has supplied multiple countries’ automotive industries with custom-designed work-holding fixture solutions.

Operating out of Windsor, Ontario on the border between Canada and the U.S., the business, founded in 1932, has grown from a machine tool shop manufacturing customized machines to a highly-sought after company that’s produced more than 500,000 projects for customers. The company is a longstanding member of the Canadian Tooling and Machining Association (CTMA), and in 2022, celebrated an impressive 90 productive years in the industry.

Growing with the giants
As the automakers grew from simply ‘big’ to the giant corporations they are now, Nickleson worked directly with them to produce machining equipment for automotive parts, including cylinder heads, engine blocks, and many more cast, forged, stamped, and extruded automotive parts.

Back then, as cars rolled off the assembly line, each element of the car and its engine did its own thing, with independently moving parts coming together to get the car from A to B. Work as it did—usually—it was a far cry from the smoothly humming, efficient systems cars have become, with forward collision warning, 360-degree camera systems, and fast USB charging, among numerous other features.

“CNC machines became so cost-effective and versatile that retooling a CNC machine with new fixtures rather than replacing the entire custom machine would result in substantial capital equipment cost savings,” says Daniel Desjardins, Sales Manager for Nickleson. “Rather than replacing the whole machine, you would just replace the fixture. A custom machine may cost you a million dollars; a new fixture may only cost you $20,000. Which would you rather replace every four years?”

For Nickleson, the CNC machine’s advancement meant adjusting its core business. The team pivoted from designing and building large, highly customized machines to designing and building CNC work-holding fixtures.

These industry changes and demands led to expansion and specialization. Nickleson previously developed custom machines that covered hundreds of square feet, at times nearly filling their entire assembly bay. These impressive machines became part of the company’s legacy, which evolved into holding fixtures; instead of constructing the entire custom machine for specific machining operations, they now build an aspect of it that can be replaced with new programs.

Open to opportunities
Desjardins says this cemented the company as an important contributor to the automotive industry and opened doors to other opportunities. “The bulk of our business is our work in holding fixtures,” he says. “While most of this work is for the automotive sector, we also support the aerospace sector in Canada. Now we’re even sending tooling to places such as Argentina, Mexico, and Thailand.”

It may not be widely known, but there are many aerospace manufacturers in Ontario that support the biggest commercial aviation names. Nickleson, for many years, has been involved in building machining fixtures for these manufacturers as well. To handle the business growth, the company is planning upgrades which include renovating an 8,000-square-foot bay on the east wing of its facility and replacing five older pieces of equipment with state-of-the-art CNC milling machines.

“We removed our vertical lathes, manual boring mills, and our jig bore machines,” says Desjardins. “This cleared the way for more modern machines, and we’ve been poring over all the new options available. This will allow us to do more advanced projects and offer better pricing because the new equipment can complete tasks more accurately as well as much quicker.” The combination of specialty work, speed, and cost-effectiveness has allowed Nickleson to gain even more traction in the market and build on its strong reputation.

Desjardins has seen how the company has grown and evolved to meet new challenges. He grew up with the Nicklesons when his family moved to LaSalle, a neighbouring city of Windsor. He went to school with the sons of the company’s current president, completing an apprenticeship program to start his career. He also worked for many years in the trade as a CNC programmer and machinist before moving to the sales arm of the industry.

Nickleson Machine & Tool has always been a family business, being passed down through five generations and never sold. A big part of the Nickleson family’s success has been maintaining close-knit working relationships with their employees, mainly promoting from within and offering rewarding, interesting work. There’s a lot of job satisfaction that comes with satisfied clients and delivering on complex jobs.

State-of-the-art solutions
In addition to creating a positive and supportive internal environment, the team also provides state-of-the-art solutions for its customers. For instance, Nickleson was asked to help a company scale up its operations from two machines to a full-blown cell, which included eight new CNC milling machines and custom fixtures to suit.

“They recognized the need to improve their work-holding capabilities for the new CNC machines that they would be installing. So they contacted us to discuss how to improve their existing process,” says Desjardins. “We ultimately came up with a complete redesign that allowed the holding fixtures to be rigid and easily repeatable, which is extremely important for CNC machining fixtures. We also designed the tool to remain modular, including the ability to retrofit the fixture for new part iterations and any other modifications that might be required later in their machining program.”

Building in flexibility, in many ways, is a must when it comes to improving and building on existing fixtures. And this is becoming a real necessity in the automotive industry as electric vehicles begin to take hold of the market. Rather than purchasing new fixtures for minor part changes, Nickleson left the option open for the tool to be modified without being in a situation where the customer would have to cut apart the fixture to make changes. This allows for rapid changes if the customer has an evolving work piece or prototype.

“With this program, a large part of its success comes from the dialogue, when we engage with our customer through meetings and video calls. We also do site visits, where we try to learn everything possible about an application so that we can add a lot of value.”

Through these discussions, the team learns where the most critical features are located and they gain insight into the process and the workpiece, beyond simply knowing the general dimensions and tolerancing provided in the blueprint. Collaborating with customers in this way delivers an end product that everyone knows will be functionally sound as soon as It’s installed.

Adapting to EVs
Looking ahead, Nickleson Machine & Tool continues to adapt to the changing manufacturing landscape as electric vehicles become more common and the supporting infrastructure falls into place. The team has a seasoned principal engineer in-house and is known for producing world-class engineering concepts with innovative strategies for difficult-to-hold workpieces, says Desjardins.

“This has translated into contracts for new fixtures used to hold body structure components used in the vehicle’s electrical systems,” he explains. “It comes from our engineering capabilities. We’re known for doing the difficult jobs other people may not want to get involved with, including breaking into some EV programs where there’s a lot less work for an EV than there would be for a standard internal combustion-engine vehicle.”

Ultimately, diversifying is key to staying ahead of the curve. As the large automakers ramp up electric vehicle production, they’re looking to tooling companies like Nickleson to provide solutions for new vehicle technologies. The critical work Nickleson contributes to making EVs can help make them more affordable for everyone through competitive pricing for tooling, which drives down the overall cost of the car.

“We recently pulled off a very difficult fixture program for the EV industry,” says Desjardins. “Right now, we have a real opportunity to demonstrate how we can support the automotive parts suppliers with these new ventures. We’re not turning away from our core business, but we are focusing on what’s coming up and how we can stand out.”

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