Page 29 - MetalForming Magazine August 2022

POWERS VERTICAL INTEGRATION
FABRICATION
CNC Punch- Shear Combo
Switchgear lineups are engineered-to-order products with a lot of variation among jobs, including fabricated sheet metal parts. Enabling the new JST Power Equipment switchgear-manufacturing plant to excel at taking on low-volume production:
an automated punch-shear combination machine.
BY BRAD F. KUVIN, EDITORIAL DIRECTOR
Traditionally a manufacturer of transformers, JST Power Equip- ment has spent the last several months charging up a new manufac- turing location in Lake Mary, FL, to pro- duce a new product line: air-insulated switchgear. The firm, originally located in New Jersey and also operating trans- former and switchgear-production facil- ities in Mexico and China, sought to
make the Florida plant as vertically inte- grated as possible. That project landed squarely in the hands of Mark Smith, vice president of operations.
Smith joined JST in July 2020 with the assignment to formulate a plan for the initial startup operation at the Lake Mary facility. This included purchasing updated fabrication capabilities. “Part of my scope in 2020 was to decide how big the expansion needed to be,” recalls Smith. “In my previous positions with other companies, I’ve had experience with both fully integrated manufactur- ers and a company with absolutely no vertical integration.
“Today, our facility here in Florida is completely vertically integrated, ensuring product quality while reduc- ing lead times,” explains Smith. “Our sheet metal capabilities include punch- ing, shearing, forming, bending and powder coating.”
On the Floor: CNC Punch-Shear Combo, and Electric Press Brake Smith began his efforts by conduct- ing weeks of research and hosting sev- eral meetings with equipment manu- facturers to evaluate fabricating- equipment capabilities for the plant’s sheet metal fabrication shop—a new 6000-sq.-ft. addition to the existing
57,000-sq.-ft. building the firm acquired in 2019. Soon after, he led the JST man- agement team’s efforts to purchase a servo-electric punch-shear combina- tion machine (a Shear Genius from Prima Power) equipped with a Prima Power Combo Tower for metal-sheet storage. Also on the docket: a Prima Power model eP-Press servo-electric press brake.
“Prior to building up our fabrication department, we outsourced sheet metal work overseas,” Smith says. “The development cycle back then for bring- ing a new product to market—as sig- nificant as our new switchgear proj- ect—lasted 5 to 8 years.
“In this case, leveraging the new fabrication department,” Smith con- tinues, “we were able to roll out the new product line in just 14 months. Switchgear are engineered-to-order products; there’s a lot of variation from job to job, and that variation normally affects just a handful of fabricated- steel components, which doesn’t inter- est too many contract fabricators. The same holds true for rapid-prototyping work. Our new sheet metal fabrication equipment allows us to excel at taking the low-volume and rapid-prototyping work away from our sub-suppliers, so that we don’t disrupt their operations.”
26 MetalForming/August 2022
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