Investing in our Future and our Customers

Perhaps we are counter-intuitive, but we, at Bud, feel this is a great time to invest in our business.  With our greatest focus on North America, we feel now is the time to upgrade our equipment, take advantage of the tax policies, and continue to improve our offering.  With that in mind, in the last 3 months, we have acquired a new panel bender and brake, investing over $1 million.   These pieces of equipment offer a number of advantages:

1. Reduces setup time per bend from 30-40 minutes to 2-3 minutes including programming on repeats
2. Reduces the need for old style experienced brake operator who have become very difficult to find – allowing for a more flexible work force
3. Increased product run flexibility – can run one piece, can run large quantities, can run all components in series vs production runs, reducing inventory and increasing throughput.  It eliminates the need to focus on an economic order quantity, allowing production to focus on customer needs.
4. Improved energy savings
5. Ability to make new products here cost effectively.  For the last 15 years, virtually all new products have been made with our overseas partners.  Now that we have this equipment, we are developing two new product families that can be produced in our facility.

We have a video of the new panel bender that you can view.

As you see in this video, our capabilities to improve the throughput on cabinet racks has been significantly enhanced.  We look forward to continuing to exceed our customers’ expectations with this and other innovations here at Bud.