Business profile: Highline Manufacturing

TRUMPF LiftMaster that accompanies a TRUMPF laser cutter.

The modest, almost humble, appearance of Highline Manufacturing’s facility along the side of highway 27, across from the turnoff to the small town of Vonda, fails to paint the picture of the full-blown industrial assembly line complete with modern sophistication that exists within its walls.

Vonda, population 300+, is located about 30 minutes northeast of Saskatoon, and it was on a farm not far from here where the origins of Highline took shape. The product that laid the foundation for the business was a rock picker device that was developed on the Bussiere family farm in the early 1960s and proved to be popular in the area.

The original name of the company was Rock-O-Matic Industries. By the mid-60s a plant on their family farm was producing 100 units a year, so in 1970, with product line expansion in mind, the manufacturing moved into its current site in Vonda.

It was 18 years after moving to Vonda that the company name changed to Highline Manufacturing, and in 1993 its Bale-Master product was developed and became a hit. Before long the manufacturing plant grew to 70,000 square feet on 160 acres of land.

In 2006 Raymond Bussiere, owner of Highline, eventually sold the business to another local agricultural machinery manufacturer, Bourgault Industries Ltd. of St. Brieux. Another family-owned business that started on a local farm, Bourgault is Saskatchewan’s largest agricultural equipment manufacturer, known internationally for its seeders and other large, high-tech, farming equipment.

Although now a wholly-owned subsidiary of Bourgault, Highline Manufacturing maintains its own head office in Vonda and continues to develop its core products including rock pickers, bale movers, bale processors and an innovative mower design. All of the Highline products are non-motorized, towed agricultural implements.

The company has had success with its products across North America and worldwide. A major setback to manufacturing was experienced July of 2007 when a fire occurred at the plant. “About a quarter of the building was burnt and gone,” says Blake Neudorf, research and development team leader with Highline, adding, “The ownership was committed to the company and the plant was repaired and rebuilt.” The repair was followed by a 12,000 sq. ft. expansion in 2008.

The new section of the plant includes the plant’s fabricating area where the raw metals are received into the facility and cut to size and shape. Among the machine tools on in the fabricating area is a TRUMPF 5Kw laser cutter fed with a TRUMPF LiftMaster, which was installed after the company’s expansion. Laser cutting was previously being outsourced, so by bringing the process in-house Highline is better able to control its processes. A lot of the work done in the fabricating area is preparing parts for welding.

Just beyond the fabricating area the company has installed a Hofmann balancer for precision balancing its rotors.

An ABB robotic welding cell.

Neudorf, who has been with the company since 2007, is a mechanical engineer from the University of Saskatchewan who grew up in southern part of the province. He was personally involved in the addition of the balancer to the plant and is proud of what it can do. He was also part of the team involved with introducing the company’s robotic welding cell.

Installed two years ago, the system uses an ABB robot and MIG welding. “It’s great,” says Neudorf, “It’s fast and efficient, and the guys aren’t having to do this repetitive work.”

Before installing the cell there would be up to three welders working in this area, now there is one person loading and setting up a vertically-integrated fixture while the robot is working on the opposite side.

“It is quite an investment in time, but once it’s set up and going it really makes a difference,” he says. “It just runs.”

The day of our visit, welding teams on the assembly line were putting together structural pieces that made up the solid bed for one of Highline’s bale mover products. “This is typical what we do,” notes Neudorf. “We bring in prepared tubing from fab and hand-weld structures and then take them through paint.”

Each structure starts with a jig fixture that is marked to easily identify where the weldments are required. The company has been doing more to simplify processes throughout the facility. “We’ve started to do a lot of job method documentation,” says Neudorf, explaining, “Drawings are great for showing the welders what it is they’re supposed to build, but how do you build it? So now with each weldment we also provide a job method that gives the welders instructions on how to do it.”

As he explains, it’s like step-by-step instructions that are very helpful especially when new models or products are introduced to the assembly line. On the shop floor there is a range of ages and experience among the welders. Throughout the plant there is a focus on training. The facility has in excess of 100 employees, including the shop floor, administration and the engineering team. It runs two shifts in the plant.

The company’s culture has an ingrained dedication to training, safety and a culture of continuous improvement. The production flow through the shop is organized and logical with parts constantly moving forward towards assembly. The company is constantly incorporating Lean principles at every stage to cut out any wasted steps or processes.

All team leaders meet regularly to discuss quality issues, safety issues, and talk through current projects, with representation from every facet of production including the warehouse, fabrication, welding, paint line and assembly.

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As they are always seeking efficiencies, in a room that leads to the shop floor there is a meeting area with a tabletop scale model of the entire assembly line, complete with 3D-printed models representing every structure. Every piece is movable. The physical model gives team members the ability to visualize different scenarios and allows them to suggest and demonstrate more effective ways to operate.

On the shop floor the parts are produced in sequence based on the order the assembly department requires them. The floor runs two production lines that meet at the paint line. Before paint, there is an automated in-line blast booth that shoots very fine metal pellets at the parts to clean them up. Installed around 2009, according to Neudorf the automated booth has really sped up that process.

There are three paint lines, and although the painting itself is manual, they have control systems in place to optimize paint flow and reduce material handling by the operators.

The racks come through the paint line in a predetermined way, again based on the order the parts are required. Depending on the product being assembled, there may be about a 1,200 total parts, with about 300 that need to be assembled. When a new product starts on the line that production run may last for up to four months.

Highline is dedicated to product development, and according to Neudorf there are always more projects underway by the company’s research and development group. Looking forward, the company will continue to explore automating its manufacturing where it can, and will continue on its lean journey to keep the assembly line running. And continue shipping world-class products from the small town of Vonda.