Surveying the Damage

Other than some tooling, only one forklift under a section with a metal roof survived. All 11 presses, in capacities from 90 to 500 tons, and all of the machining equipment were completely destroyed. A 6-in.-thick granite inspection table was blown apart. Parker’s daughter later searched through the rubble hoping to find something to salvage as a memento, but found nothing.

Fortunately, two separate buildings on the property escaped relatively unscathed. They housed an 800-ton hydraulic press that had stamped wings for aircraft in World War II, some 60-ton presses, laser cutting machines and press brakes.

The charred building had constituted about two-thirds of the company’s manufacturing space.

Rebuild or Not?

The four partners—Parker, his two sisters and sister-in-law—weighed whether to rebuild or not. “That was the obvious question,” Parker says. “From my point of view, the math was simple because if we cashed out on the insurance, we wouldn’t get as much money as we would if we rebuilt. And, with 60 employees at the time, the community depended on us.” 

Having taken over as company president from his mother at the onset of the 2008 Great Recession—made worse by the loss of his brother and mother that year—Parker and his family had already ridden out some difficult storms. “This wasn’t the first crisis we faced,” he says. “And so, we decided to rebuild. 

“Plus, I always wanted to be involved in a startup,” Parker adds. “I didn’t think it would happen here, this way, but that’s how I framed it in my mind.”

New vs. Used

Once the partners agreed to rebuild, the discussion moved to whether to buy used or new presses. “There was discussion internally on whether to purchase used presses again,” Parker says. “All of our previous presses had been used and were about 25 yr. old at the time of the fire. They didn’t have tonnage monitors or die protection. Our team had to clamp the dies in manually.” 

Parker recognized the obliteration as an opportunity to buy new, better and more efficient presses with productivity-enhancing features. “I said, ‘This is probably our only chance to acquire new presses, so let’s take advantage of it,’” he explains. “If we bought used presses, we wouldn’t know how long they’d last before requiring a major rebuild. Plus, we would have to pay a lot more to put in tonnage monitors, die protection and quick-change clamping—all of the technology that we identified that would help improve our productivity.”

Rebuilding the plant consumed all of the insurance proceeds, which required financing for the presses. Knowing that equipment purchases had to be paid for with future revenue, Parker deliberated on which press fleet to purchase. “In the pre-fire days, sometimes we bought equipment that just met our requirements, and then we would find that had we stepped up just a little bit more, we would be able to do another job,” he says. “On the other hand, I also wanted to avoid taking on excess debt. I suffered from decision fatigue because there were so many decisions. So my number one, Kevin Toler, head of engineering, stepped in and made some of the decisions or consulted quite a bit with me.” 

Then, Jack and Doug Bray of equipment integrator Stamping Concepts, Greenville SC, helped the partners assemble a workable, efficient fleet that would match and exceed the company’s former fleet. “With their help, we realized that using new technology, we could accomplish with four new presses what took us 11 presses before,” Parker says. 

The four new presses, all from Seyi—a 330-ton, 440- and a 660-ton mechanical and one 176-ton servomechanical—replaced the 11 destroyed mechanical presses. “The presses were installed by August of 2021 and we moved back in March of 2022,” Parker says. 

Operating During Rebuild

In addition to facility insurance, the company also had carried business-interruption insurance, which covered everybody’s salaries for a year. 

“We made it a priority to try to minimize the effect on our customers and employees,” Parker says.

The manufacturer served its customers during the rebuild period by performing the operations it could on the machinery in the two other undamaged buildings, and outsourced the rest.

Customers—many of whom had been loyal clients for 40 yr.—and colleagues came forward with offers to help take on some of the stamping jobs that the company could not perform on its hydraulic press or smaller presses. “Customers/vendors—friends basically—took on some of that work,” Parker relays. 

New-Press Features, Upgrades

Parker had analyzed the previous presses’ deficiencies and tried to address them with the new-equipment purchases. 

The new presses came equipped with quick-die-change hydraulic clamps. “You have a clamping plate, and just position the dies, pull the lever, and it clamps them into place,” Parker explains. “It’s much safer and quicker. Also, we’ve got more tonnage now than we’d had. We have been able to execute jobs with the 660-ton press that we had trouble running on the 500-ton. The three mechanical presses have large beds, so on some endcap jobs, we run two dies on the press at the same time. That improves our efficiency and competitiveness.” The presses also are equipped with tonnage monitors and die protection.

Parker realizes efficiencies with the servomechanical press, too. “On the 176-ton servo, we’re able to run parts faster because we can control the entire stroke and the speed; we can get more strokes/min.,” he says.

In the spirit of upgrading, Parker had a gantry crane system installed to help load coils onto the new presses. “We felt like that would be safer than the way we were doing it before using forklifts,” he says. “And, we added coil carts to allow loading of the next coil of material while the current one still runs.”

As significant as the new features is simply the fact that the presses are brand new, Parker indicates. “They stay up. They run all of the time,” Parker says. “Our 25-yr.-old presses had completed millions of strokes. We never knew when something was going to shut down. We had recently spent $125,000 on repairing one of the presses that we eventually lost in the fire. The new presses are tight and precise.”

Fortunately, Parker Industries had ordered the presses and contracted the building rebuild a few months before the pandemic. “We avoided the major effects of Covid that drove up the prices of the building and the equipment because we already were locked in,” Parker says.

“I’m very pleased with the new presses,” he adds. “Seyi has been very responsive. We’ve had a couple of minor issues and their team has been Johnny-on-the-spot helping us address them.” 

New Building New Layout

Just as Parker wanted to seize the opportunity to upgrade the plant equipment, he wanted to improve the plant layout with the new construction. The plant his parents first built in 1957 was expanded about a dozen times over the years, resulting in varying floor levels in the sloped property and a choppy layout inconducive to an efficient workflow. “The old main building was serpentine,” he says. “We wanted everything to be at one elevation and mostly rectangular to optimize the floor space.” Two side-by-side rectangles comprise the new 26,000-sq.-ft. building, with the smaller one housing the dock area with DoT-approved access to the road. And, a fortified cement foundation for the new presses was built into the new facility design. “We added vibration-dampening so that press operation would not disturb our machining equipment located just 40 ft. away, or the inspection equipment that is another 50 ft. away,” Parker comments. “Certain jobs that we ran prior to the anti-vibration cushioning would shake the floor area. We used to run a job there making air tanks. Whenever the ram broke through the material, you could feel it even at the house where I grew up 200 ft. away.”

The company also upgraded the plant’s heating system, installed brighter, more efficient LED lighting, and had the new floors epoxied to a brilliant shine. 

Results

Parker Industries approaches production differently now. “We tried to learn from our shortcomings,” Parker says.

In the past, setup was a much bigger consideration. “Typically, we would run everything we had on order for that particular part, which is not optimal,” says Parker. “We’d be sitting on finished goods and run the risk of damaging them. You run the risk of obsolescence.” Now the company runs only the quantities required because setup is quick and not physically challenging for the setup team. “Instead of a setup taking 2 hr. and a little bit of magic, setups take 30 min. or less,” he says. 

Parker hired a consulting company to help review jobs to see which ones the company was doing well and which ones needed attention. Then he brought the operators in to help analyze the jobs as well. “I don’t think that there’s been a job that hasn’t shown some level of improvement,” Parker says. “Working with the operators, we’ve gotten jobs to a level that I hadn’t thought possible.”

As a result of the many efficiency and layout improvements, Parker Industries realized its largest revenue in 2023 and 2024. “They were both the first years that we surpassed $10 million in revenue,” Parker beams. 

“I guess every company president faces challenges you wouldn’t have predicted. I’ve never seen a fire like the one we had and certainly hope to never see it again,” Parker relays.

The company didn’t lose any customers to the fire, though some jobs that were waylaid didn’t come back. 
Now that Parker Industries has upgraded with new presses and equipment, a smooth plant layout, and an even more engaged staff, the company is ready to take on more work. Concludes Parker: “I’m looking forward to us getting really busy again.” MF

See also: Stamping Concepts Corporation, SEYI America, Inc.

Technologies: Stamping Presses

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