Skip to content

Scaling Up to Higher Profits

By Bluco Corp.
Bluco-Getman_768x432.jpg
Getman Corp. produces explosive chargers and mining support vehicles. The customized products required upgraded fixturing.

In 2019, the team at Bangor, Mich.-based Getman Corp. knew it needed upgraded fixturing. While the company has been making high-quality mining equipment for more than 65 years, the increasing level of customization it provided was making dedicated fixturing impractical. Repeatedly tearing down fixtures built to hold one-off frames cost time, resources, and profits. The alternative, putting parts on a flat table with random magnets, C-clamps, and homemade fixturing, wasn’t the answer either.

”There was no consistency,” explained Getman’s product integration manager Jeff McCain. “The quality wasn’t where we wanted it, and the time required to do the job varied greatly.”

So team members began to evaluate fixturing options. “We checked out pretty much everything that we could think of,” said consultant Jeff Losey, who spearheaded the project. “Custom fixturing and modular fixturing were evaluated. There were a lot of hybrid theories as well—crossovers of all of the above,” he added.

Bluco Corp., Naperville, Illinois, made the short list and brought its demo trailer to Getman’s Bangor location. “We had welders and supervisors there,” McCain said. “It’s hands-on during those demos, so they got to play with the toys. That really sold everyone,” he continued.

Getman was founded in 1954 and opened its Bangor facility in 1980. The 62,000-sq-ft [5,760-sq-m] plant employs about 180 people and makes explosive chargers and various vehicles (ground support, material transport, and production support) for mining applications.

Expert Advice Included

“I had a general idea of what I wanted to do,” McCain said about the prep work he and his team did before meeting with Bluco. “I also knew we didn’t have all the answers, so let’s talk to people who are in the industry, who see things in the field that we may not see. You have to trust people that know more than you,” he added.

In that mindset, the Getman team shared its ideas with their Bluco counterparts. Jason Jackson, Getman’s manufacturing engineer, pulled up rough CAD models of a complex rail system.

After reviewing the models, Bluco senior sales engineer Todd Bennett suggested a different approach: Start small and grow from there. “Start with small fabrication and get a feel for it,” he said. “Because you don’t want to install a rail system and put tables or u-forms on it and wish you’d done the other. Or maybe you don’t need a rail system at all.”

So Bennett roughed out CAD models of a solution that started with tables, but could be scaled up to include rails. “By starting with a smaller piece of the solution, the hope is that people fight over it because it helps them do their job better,” Bennett reasoned. “Then you can expand the system, and you’ve already got the full buy-in of your team.”

This was exactly what Getman wanted. The company wasn’t just looking to execute a plan—it wanted expert input, which the team hadn’t received in meetings with other fixturing providers.

“I asked them for some input and they said, ‘Nope it looks great—fantastic,’” Jackson lamented about the meetings with other vendors. “When Todd came, I showed him the same models, and he said, ‘No, you don’t want to do that.’ And then he basically led us down a path that was much more cost effective,” Jackson added. “He knew his stuff.”

Validation Center Opens Door to Options

The Getman team then visited Bluco’s Validation Center (VC). Members were already sold on the tables, but the visit allowed them to envision how they could scale up.

“Seeing the rail system, and seeing how we could utilize a lot of the things in the VC really opened up our eyes to more possibilities,” said Jackson. In addition to experiencing a rail system in use, the team tried a manipulator and decided to eventually add one to its modular solution.

During the visit, Jackson watched a welding table laser-tested for flatness in Bluco’s on-site manufacturing facility. While 99 percent of tables tested are within Bluco’s tight certification tolerances, he saw one of the few that wasn’t.

“This particular table, you could see where it was dished in the center,” Jackson said. “Todd explained that’s why you measure before advancing to heat treating. That really reassured us that we would be getting a quality product. That was a big thing for me, just seeing the quality process,” he added.

Based on everything team members had witnessed during their visit to Bluco’s VC, Getman placed an order that day.

Building on Success

Once the modular system arrived at Getman, it was quickly assembled and on the plant floor the next day. Bluco’s proposal provided details on load sequencing, instructions for component placement, and tips on assuring accuracy. CAD models were also provided for easy fixture building and changeover. The team immediately saw major improvements.

Before the Bluco solution, Jackson explained, “It was ‘here’s a drawing, tape measure, plumb stick, right angles, whatever it is, and go to it.’ There were really no instructions at all. They just had the drawings,” he noted. As a result, fixture building techniques were inconsistent.

“By going to the Bluco system for small parts and for sub-assemblies, we were able to get that consistency, plus better quality and time savings on almost all of them,” McCain asserted. “That translated into the assembly process to build the equipment later on down the line. Because they were better quality and more consistent, we could build the machines better and faster,” he added.

Starting with the tables also gave Getman a leg up on phase two of the project. “We were able to show there was a return on that investment,” Jackson said. “And by showing those returns, we were able to put together an ROI estimation for the rail system, which allowed us to use capital assets to purchase it.”

Getman ultimately added a rail system to its solution. The company decided to keep the tables it already had for small weldments, but chose to go with u-forms for the rail system. The u-forms allowed more versatility and easier weld access, and added several positioning solutions—including the manipulator from the VC.

Improved Safety

The frame Getman put onto the manipulator had 4” [101.6 mm] thick frame rails, and getting to all the welds used to be cumbersome and risky. The manipulator eliminated that risk.

“It was actually being balanced on saw horses in some cases,” Jackson said. “Being able to clamp into tooling—it’s not going to fall over, it’s not going anywhere because it’s secure—it really improves safety.

“Our target was 10 percent of cost savings on weldments. And we’ve seen every bit of that 10 percent,” Jackson continued. “We also started building almost everything in house. We went from outsourcing all of our frames to bringing them all in because of the throughput increase that we saw.”

Losey also touted throughput gains. “In a lot of instances, we cut the production time in half,” the consultant said. Something that took 40 hours originally turned into 15 hours. McCain agreed, citing 40-50 percent gains in frame manufacturing capacity.

Comparing Getman’s other Michigan facility in Kalamazoo, which builds the same frames as the Bangor plant, crystallized the benefits. “In the (Kalamazoo) facility without access to a u-form rail system it took two days—nearly twice as long,” observed Shannon Smith, a Getman engineering technician. “They didn’t have the benefit of the u-forms, angles, and clamping devices to fasten, maneuver, push, pull, or modify to get the frame rails set in place to weld.”

Improved Quality = Higher Productivity & Profits

Improved final part quality also was a big win for Getman. “We found out where we were having internal quality issues that we would have never caught before,” McCain said. “Because the Bluco system is so accurate, and so repeatable, if we set something up once and we know the setup is correct, if we got it a second time and it didn’t fit, then we know that something is off in our process upstream.”

Significantly improved part quality also impacted productivity and profitability, according to McCain. “The welding group’s customer is the assembly shop,” he explained. “If we make the assembly process faster and more reliable, we get more equipment out the door and sell more. That’s been a huge benefit for us—the consistency and better quality of the frames in general.”

Given all the benefits the Bluco modular solution delivered, even the toughest critics on the Getman team came around. “I was the most skeptical person in the whole thing,” Losey said, acknowledging that he initially prioritized cost.

In the end, ongoing support and concrete results were more important. “You have to throw everything out the window at some point and look at results,” Losey said. “And the results were there. So I am a huge fan, in retrospect, of choosing Bluco.”

For more information about Getman visit https://getman.com or call 269-427-5611. For more information about Bluco, visit https://bluco.com or call 800-535-0135.

  • View All Articles
  • Connect With Us
    TwitterFacebookLinkedInYouTube

Always Stay Informed

Receive the latest manufacturing news and technical information by subscribing to our monthly and quarterly magazines, weekly and monthly eNewsletters, and podcast channel.