The adoption of properly integrated technology is a significant financial and proficiency challenge that is critical to the long-term success of manufacturers. Financial incentives for tech adoption such as the MRG program and the involvement of tech integration subject matter experts are each important components to the continued prosperity of Indiana’s manufacturing ecosystem; when paired effectively, their interaction can fuel transformative impacts to a manufacturer’s status quo. This case study is an example of a successful and continued partnership between two such firms.

TMF Center primarily manufactures structural steel components for customers in the mining, construction and paving industries. In 2021, they saw significant customer pressure to increase production capacities despite the tightening labor market. While they had seen success automating some material handling and low-mix, consistent product lines for increased throughput, their difficulty lied in seeing an automated future for low-volume, high-mix production. As Zach Van Meter, Owner/Operator at TMF Center puts it: “we didn’t have a good way to scale the competency that we had developed in high volume weld automation to these lines, and as they sort of stacked up and up and up and up, we said, we don’t have a capacity problem. We have a fabrication problem.”

Enter THG Automation, a local technology integrator based in Indianapolis, Ind., who was introduced by Conexus Indiana to TMF Center in 2021. Zach and his TMF team brought one of their high-mix parts to THG’s facilities to validate their cobot welding solutions – if THG’s system could produce the weldments required, it would solve their fabrication problems. After 15 minutes of general training on the cobot, TMF configured it specific to their part in about 5 minutes, and it welded a complete, ready-to-ship part in about 30 seconds less than they had quoted it for.

For manufacturers, successive steps into the technology adoption world will follow many roads. As tech integration becomes more of a necessity to stay competitive in an innovative global market, there will remain a space that is most effectively filled by a tech integrator. Often, manufacturers will leverage the experience and relationship with their first tech integrator and project to expand – using their first project as a template of sorts to adapt across other workflows. For example, TMF Center plans to continue their partnership with THG as they pursue the automation of fabricating large, 50-lb fixtures that currently require a fork truck, crane, and multiple employees to position and assemble.

The agility and personal commitment provided by a tech integrator that’s well-matched with a tech adopter helps to preserve the sense of community for future manufacturing operations and upgrade employee work roles – “We want to give employees a third arm – more power, more ownership, more time to be yourself, and less time where you have to follow a repetitive operation,” says Zach. Simultaneously, manufacturers can in-house technology expertise with an internal project champion to gain efficiencies and more effectively roadmap their company’s unique tech adoption journey.