Detroit contractor says it knows how a sheet metal shop should flow

WIXOM, Mich. — When you’ve been around as long as Dee Cramer Inc. — the sheet metal and HVAC contractor was founded in 1937 — designing a sheet metal shop is not a novel task.

It’s an activity company officials have done numerous times: It built a massive new 56,000-square-foot headquarters off I-75 in Holly, Michigan, in 2001, and in recent years, it opened facilities in the Michigan communities of Lansing and Wixom. A new shop in Saginaw is currently under construction.

The privately owned Dee Cramer is one of the largest HVAC construction firms in the country. The Engineering News-Record (like Snips, a BNP Media publication) puts the company at No. 355 on its 2016 list of the top 600 specialty contractors in the nation.

Dee Cramer invited Snips into its Wixom shop, located in an industrial park about 30 minutes northwest of Detroit, for a tour and talk about what went in to putting the facility together.

Unlike some sheet metal contractors (see sidebar), Dee Cramer is a company that has long prided itself on being a full-service company, with large commercial and residential service operations.

“We pretty much do it all ourselves,” said Glenn Lamb, a 25-year Dee Cramer employee who works as the company’s fabrication division manager.

After almost eight decades in business, officials say they typically know how they want a shop to function when they move in or build a structure.

“We pretty much know the flow we want,” Lamb said.

The Wixom facility is 20,000 square feet with three loading docks running in and out of the rectangular-shaped building. It has a 6-foot coil line from Engel and a Vicon plasma cutting table. Lamb estimates that Dee Cramer processes around 50,000 pounds of ductwork here each month. About nine people work in the sheet metal shop.

One practice that the company has discovered improves shop efficiency is the use of carts wherever possible.

“We always try to keep it moving in one direction,” he said. “Always keep it moving toward the dock.”

Like many shops, workers try to minimize steps. Duct-forming machinery is situated close to cutting tables, and parts of the floor have mats and other materials that make the ductwork easier to move around.

“If I have to touch the duct more than once, I’m wasting money,” Lamb said.

Company decides to only fabricate what makes sense

Sometimes, you may decide that it’s a better idea to downsize your ductwork fabrication capabilities and free up some of that floor space.

That was the decision officials with Partlan-Labadie Sheet Metal Co. made about eight years ago. The Oak Park, Michigan-based firm chose to purchase the overwhelming majority of its ductwork from fabrication-only contractors and full-service contractors with extra capacity.

Craig Pessina, president of Partlan-Labadie, estimates that at one time the company made 95 percent of the ductwork used in its projects. Not anymore. The company’s sheet metal shop — still the majority of its 25,000-square-foot building — does not have a coil line or a spiral duct machine.

The shop sees far less activity than it once did, said Jeff Walters, Partlan-Labadie’s vice president. It just makes more sense to buy the duct on demand for its automotive-heavy client base.

But the company still needs its sheet metal machinery, Pessina pointed out. Five to six employees work in the shop, depending on the season and demand. Partlan is member of the metro Detroit Sheet Metal and Air-Conditioning Contractors’ National Association chapter, and its employees belong to Sheet Metal Workers Local 80.

“We fabricate almost all of our fittings,” Pessina said, adding that it often does custom sheet metal forming as well. “We know that we can build ductwork whenever we need to build ductwork.”

The sheet metal shop, which was quiet the day Snips visited, still contains a Roto-Die press brake and other machines from companies such as Wysong, Cybermation, Lockformer, Lion and Pearson. Some equipment is up to 50 years old, officials say.

Even though it’s not as busy as it once was, the shop is still designed to maximize efficiency, officials said. There are staging racks around the perimeter and 5-ton cranes overhead to assist in moving stock. Before Partlan moved in, the building was the longtime home of a concrete company.

There are four large garage-style doors, used for sheet metal fabrication, equipment loading or handling accessories.

Equipment is laid out to minimize problems for the sheet metal workers in the shop, Pessina said. He and Walters consulted with them, ensuring the design was one they liked.

“It flows,” he said. “It’s almost like a circle, where before it was like a star.”

Pessina acknowledged that material handling could be improved and that sometimes it involves workers “tripping over” each other.

“It’s not perfect. It’s worked for us pretty well,” he said.

And if the market warrants it, Pessina said they’d consider adding a coil line or spiral machine. They have the space, he added.

For reprints of this article, contact Jill DeVries at (248) 244-1726 or email devriesj@bnpmedia.com. 