A delegation from Australia got the skinny on Gates Corporation’s hose-manufacturing plant Tuesday afternoon.
Two representatives from Hardy Spicer, a Gates distributor Down Under, and a Gates-Australia executive came with six others, preferred customers of Hardy Spicer.
Hardy Spicer is Australia’s only company that specializes in drive shaft and hydraulic products and services. It deals with automotive, industrial, mining and agricultural interests.
The Gates plant tour was a comprehensive lesson on how hydraulic and pole-built hoses are made and was the reason the Australians came to Iola.
Dennis Harding, quality manager, was a walking encyclopedia of the Gates facility as the group strode about the massive plant. Steel tables were filled with rubber mandrels. Braiders rapidly laced brass wire reinforcing onto seemingly endless hose. And racks held 200-foot-long steel rods used to make the hose capable of withstanding pressures of up to 8,000 pounds per square inch.
The plant, a mile south of Iola, is 450,000 square feet under roof. Employment today is 740, with some departments working 24 hours a day seven days a week.
Harding stressed Gates’ efforts to be “as lean as possible” to enhance profits but also with an eye to a work management style that has kept the 37-year-old plant on an even keel.
Almost as if on cue, wire in a braider got tangled and Harding showed the visitors a fail-safe feature that immediately stops the machine at the hint of a glitch.
At the start of the hydraulic line, Harding mentioned that the rubber mandrels, which must retain their shape to thousandths of an inch to provide the quality of hose for which Gates is noted, eventually would be replaced by longer-lasting plastic. He also traced in detail steps taken to produce the hose as they followed a horseshoe-shaped production cycle, eventually seeing where it was shrink-wrapped and stowed in the 170,000-square-foot warehouse.
The plant has 68 braiders where one or two layers of reinforcing wire are woven onto the rubber hose. The visitors also saw where some braiders had been reconfigured so that two runs of hose can be done simultaneously.
The higher-pressure pole-built hose is made on steel mandrels 60 or 200 feet long. When the plant opened, only 60-foot lengths could be made. The 200-foot line was added in the 1990s. It is reinforced with wire, put on in spiral fashion rather than braided. Yarn also is used. Harding said the hose, up to two inches in diameter, was made with pressure ratings from 4,000 to 8,000 pounds per square inch.
A third hose made in the Iola plant is rotary drill, a specialty for oil production. Reinforced with cable, rotary drill hose is handmade, a time-consuming process that means just two or three sections, capable of handling internal pressure of 12,000 to 15,000 pounds per square inch, can be made in a day’s time.
Couplings also are fastened to hose made here, to specifications included with orders, some which are filled in as little as a day in critical situations.
Harding said about 325,000 feet of various sizes and types of hose were manufactured each day and that the warehouse, on a given day, held $25 million to $30 million worth of products.
TUESDAY MORNING City Administrator Judy Brigham took the visitors about Iola in the Molly Trolley.
“They enjoyed seeing what we have,” she said. Included were stops at the Allen County Historical Society museums, for a whirlwind tour led by Director Jeff Kluever, and Russell Stover Candies store, where samples of several confections were tasted, and some purchased.
“One of the men also wanted to buy his sister a snow globe. We found him one at McGinty-Whitworth with a ‘Wizard of Oz’ theme,” Brigham said.
The Gates tour followed lunch at the plant. Tuesday evening the city hosted a barbecue dinner in Riverside Park.
“Steve Forbes (Hardy Spicer business manager) had e-mailed about where they might eat in Iola. I replied and asked if they’d like barbecue,” Brigham said. “They snapped up the offer.”
Wednesday morning members of the delegation went to Kansas City to tour the Royals Stadium. They then flew to Denver to visit Gates facilities there. The Australians concluded their visit at a trade show in Las Vegas before a 15-hour flight home.
