Since its formation in 1987, the fate of B&W Trailer Hitches has been marked by a record of seemingly permanent success.
As testament to that fact, the company recently began work on a 114,000-square-foot expansion on the north side of its Humboldt plant. The expansion, the 11th of its kind since B&W moved into its original 30,000-square-foot shop in 1994, will boost the company’s operational space to a point just shy of 500,000 square feet.
The enlargement of the facility is a material outgrowth of the company’s increasing success in the marketplace. “This building expansion was born out of necessity,” explained B&W’s marketing manager Beth Barlow. “With increased sales, comes a need for more employees. With more employees comes a need for more machinery. And machinery needs a place to live.”
THE NEW extension will make room for more press brakes, more laser cutters, more robotic welders — the core instruments necessary for crafting the unique gooseneck, fifth-wheel and bumper hitches that have helped make B&W one of the industry leaders. (To give an idea of the breakneck pace at which the company has grown in recent years, B&W operated 18 robotic welding machines as recently as 2014. Today, it uses 36.)
According to the company’s safety manager Dan Willis — the acting project manager on the current expansion — at least a third of the new addition will be used to warehouse finished goods.
The handful of recent expansions, said Willis, has allowed B&W to streamline its work processes and bring the materials entering the facility into the “CUT-BEND-WELD” system that defines the company’s operational ethos.
CUT-BEND-WELD, in plainer language, looks something like this: A typical product at B&W begins life as a sheet of blank metal or steel, which makes its way to the high-tech laser cutting department, where it is sliced into a specific pre-programmed design. The piece then moves on to one of the shop’s hulking press brake machines, each of which can bend a steel plank as easily as if it were a piece of warm dough. From there, the shaped metal travels on to a robotic welding machine, where the joints are forged with a minimum of human intervention. Then it’s onto the painting department. Finally, it is assembled and packed and stored on floor-to-ceiling racks before exiting the facility via one of the six — soon to be 10 — loading docks.
“But if you look at all those storage racks,” said Willis, during a brief tour of the facility on Thursday, “there’s not much in them. Our business right now is so busy, we can’t build up inventory. So with more expansion space, we’ll be able to buy more equipment, hire more and more people, and balance our flow so that we can have the most efficient process.”
“FLOW” — this is an important word in the company’s operational lexicon.
“A lot of waste in manufacturing comes from the poor movement of materials,” said Willis, who strikes one as something of a soft-spoken scholar in the field of material flow management (MSM). “The goal is to have a place for everything and to have everything in its place, which is a common saying in the Japanese way of lean manufacturing.”
Every expansion that B&W has made in the last few years, continued Willis, has vastly improved the smooth transition of materials from department to department. “After this expansion, we’ll be as efficient as any place I’ve ever seen.”
B&W’s UNBROKEN insistence on high-quality, high-design, American-made products doesn’t hurt company value either.
The continued expansion of the Humboldt facility is in accord with B&W’s longstanding commitment to domestic production. (B&W even avoids buying recycled or imported steel, preferring to build with the raw, American variety.)
