Business Profile: Grant Metal

The Shear Genius increases material productivity through efficient and versatile nesting programs. The level of automation can be customized through Prima Power’s flexible modular solutions for raw material storage, loading, unloading, sorting and stacking. PHOTO: PRIMA POWER

Three main rules for success in the real estate market are: location, location, location. And that same maxim could also apply to the dramatic success of Grant Metal Products Ltd. in Rocky View, Alberta, a custom manufacturer of sheet metal products for the construction, glazing, and signage industries. which found itself in the middle of the Calgary’s recent construction boom—it’s the fastest growing city in Canada. But geography alone only begins to tell part of the story of the company’s success.

Grant Metal Products was founded by Bill Grant and his wife Jean in 1980. Through the years, the company has evolved to become the supplier of choice for a growing list of customers who require high quality, consistent precision-made sheet metal components in British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, and customers who supply products around the world.

During this time, the company has grown from three to 34 employees and today is housed in a facility that provides 55,000 square feet for production, operations, storage, project management, and shipping. Grant Metal Products fabricates mainly light gauge material for its customers—everything from 26 gauge to ¼-inch in steel, aluminum, copper, brass, and stainless steel.

The company attributes its continued growth to its ability to respond to new business opportunities and the willingness to try new things. “We have continually diversified our services,” explains general manager John Reitmeier. “At one time all we produced was metal building flashing. Then we began servicing the glazing industry and then the sign industry. We also supply sheet metal parts to a company that builds theater sets that have been used in performances such as Phantom of the Opera, Showboat, and others.” Today, Grant Metals has expanded its services to provide contract manufacturing to other OEMs in the area. While slow, steady growth has been the foundation of Grant Metal Products’ success, the realities of today’s market are evident in the company’s changing philosophy. “The entire building industry is a big part of our business,” states Reitmeier. “With the explosive growth of the construction market in Western Canada, we’ve never been so busy.” This dramatic increase in demand for higher productivity and quality, coupled with the increasingly difficult task of finding labour in Alberta, drove a search for automation.

MORE PUNCH FOR THE BUCK

A good example of this new emphasis on automation was the company’s increasing need for faster and more cost-efficient punching. For many years, Grant Metal Products had used a strip punching system to handle its punching needs. “While this system was very slow and labour intensive, punching was not a big part of our business,” explains Reitmeier. “However, by 2005, the amount of punching increased so much that we had to find a more productive punching method.”

After attending several trade shows in Canada and the U.S., the company looked at three types of machines, including water jet, laser, and punch centers. After much comparison and evaluation, Grant Metal Products purchased the Prima Power Shear Genius flexible manufacturing cell. It was installed and operational the last week of January 2006. “We decided not to buy used or an entry-level punch center,” says Reitmeier. “We wanted to purchase the best equipment available.”

PUNCH/SHEAR COMBINATION

With the Shear Genius (SG) concept, the objective is to provide one machine capable of transforming a full-sized sheet into finished parts. These parts can be moved to final production stages for immediate integration directly into final product assembly.

The EBe servo-electric Express Bender is a bending solution that is designed specifically for each fabricator’s production requirements to achieve maximum productivity, quality, and repeatability. PHOTO: PRIMA POWER

Shear Genius requires minimal set-up times and allows for “lights out” operation, while also increasing material productivity through efficient and versatile nesting programs. The level of automation can be customized through Prima Power’s modular solutions for raw material storage, loading, unloading, sorting and stacking.

According to Reitmeier, the benefits of the Shear Genius to Grant Metal Products include increased speed and accuracy, additional product lines including more elaborate products and the possibility of new markets, such as small part brackets and heavier material products.

“There is a definite labour saving as well, since we are no longer having to pre-shear or go through all the previous manual steps,” says Reitmeier. “We’ve used the SG in a lights out application where we’ve loaded it and gone home and it is ready for us the next morning. We are now using it for repeat orders. We just pull the file and run the job. The Shear Genius has improved our production at least 20 per cent.”

ADDITIONAL AUTOMATION

In 2009, Grant Metal Products replaced their earlier model the SG8. The company also added the Night Train Material Management System to its arsenal of fabricating products. And in January of 2014, the EBe automated bender was purchased.

NIGHT TRAIN

The Night Train Material Management System, a material transporting center, allows the connection and operation of multiple flexible manufacturing units to a factory manufacturing system. The automated system provides a total solution for unmanned operation for sheet metal fabricators by controlling material flow within the system, including the supply of raw material as well as removing and storing work in process.

“The Night Train is a remarkable piece of equipment with 130 bays,” explains Reitmeier. “The more we use it, the more we understand everything that this system can do for us. The Night Train allows us to better control our inventory. It allows us to buy in bulk and store material, because we have a wide variety of small jobs. For example, we might make one or two products for one company and 300 for another. So we stock a lot of that material in there. We use it for work in process with the new bender. It allows us to store the SG parts for the automated bender with minimum space requirement. We used to store these parts on skids and racks and pulled them up when we needed it. The Night Train does the work of three employees and provides better control of our inventory and our entire process.”

AUTOMATED BENDER

The company’s EBe servo electric Express Bender is fully automated, from the loading of flat punched parts to unloading of the finished product.

“We purchased the EBe because we couldn’t keep up with just our four press brakes,” explains Reitmeier. “The EBe is an excellent machine. The accuracy is amazing.

Some of our parts have up to 16 hits, and they come out perfectly aligned every time. The savings the EBe has provided us have been huge. A number of our parts that were formed on the press brake required two men and took six minutes for each man to make the part. The EBe does it in 60-90 seconds...and it is more accurate.”

NEW MARKETS...IMPROVED ATTITUDES

“This is the busiest that we have ever been,” concludes Reitmeier. “The Prima Power equipment has allowed us to seek out new customers and seek out different markets. The equipment also has improved our accuracy, delivery times, the volume of our work throughput...and some attitudes too. Our guys are now working on better equipment. And they are happier to work with reduced manual labour and a different skill set that requires them to be computer savvy.”