Operations

Manufacturing Excellence Plant Tours: Charter Steel, General Motors, Vitamix

Oct. 24, 2022

Major manufacturers in Northeast Ohio opened their doors to the visitors of the Manufacturing & Technology Show last week, offering a glimpse into advanced facilities.

Ryan Secard,

Jill Jusko,

Laura Putre,

Robert Schoenberger

Manufacturing excellence is a great topic for conversation, but nothing beats a hands-on look at how top companies actually make their products. As part of the 2022 Manufacturing & Technology Show on Oct. 20, Charter Steel, General Motors and Vitamix opened their doors to about 100 show attendees.

Charter Steel

Located near Cleveland in the suburb Garfield Heights, Charter Steel's mini-mill includes a state-of-the-art melt shop and a rolling mill. The tour focused on safety solutions that reduce employee exposure, automation solutions to optimize efficiencies/performance and advanced manufacturing solutions such as a billet ID Robot.

General Motors

In the Cleveland suburb Parma, GM's Parma Metal Center sits on Chevrolet Blvd. The high-volume stamping plant makes many of the parts that drivers never see on their cars, such as inner door supports. The facility includes massive stamping presses and a robotic laser welding line. The plant tour was run by the plant's manager and its United Auto Workers local president.

Vitamix

Fans of high-power blenders visited the company's newest plant in Strongsville, Ohio, a 10-year-old plant south of Cleveland. The tour focused on the company's lean journey, quality, blade automation cell and shipping departments. Vitamix manufacturing experts gave a presentation at the show about continuous improvement using quick Kaizen cards, so the tour gave visitors a chance to see those principles in action.

About the Author

Ryan Secard | Associate Editor

Focus: Workforce and labor issues; machining and foundry management
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryan-secard/

Associate Editor Ryan Secard covers topics relevant to the manufacturing workforce, including recruitment, safety, labor organizations, and the skills gap. Ryan has written IndustryWeek's Salary Survey annually since 2021 and has coordinated its Talent Advisory Board since September 2023.

Ryan got started at IndustryWeek in August 2019 as an editorial intern and was hired as a news editor in 2020 before his 2023 promotion to associate editor, talent. He has a Bachelor of Arts in English from the College of Wooster.

About the Author

Jill Jusko

Bio: Jill Jusko is executive editor for IndustryWeek. She has been writing about manufacturing operations leadership for more than 20 years. Her coverage spotlights companies that are in pursuit of world-class results in quality, productivity, cost and other benchmarks by implementing the latest continuous improvement and lean/Six-Sigma strategies. Jill also coordinates IndustryWeek’s Best Plants Awards Program, which annually salutes the leading manufacturing facilities in North America.

Have a story idea? Send it to [email protected].

About the Author

Laura Putre | Senior Editor, IndustryWeek

As senior editor, Laura Putre works with IndustryWeek's editorial contributors and reports on leadership and the automotive industry as they relate to manufacturing. She joined IndustryWeek in 2015 as a staff writer covering workforce issues.

Prior to IndustryWeek, Laura reported on the healthcare industry and covered local news. She was the editor of the Chicago Journal and a staff writer for Cleveland Scene. Her national bylines include The Guardian, Slate, Pacific-Standard and The Root.

Laura was a National Press Foundation fellow in 2022.

Got a story idea? Reach out to Laura at [email protected]

About the Author

Robert Schoenberger

Editor-in-Chief

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/robert-schoenberger-4326b810

Bio: Robert Schoenberger has been writing about manufacturing technology in one form or another since the late 1990s. He began his career in newspapers in South Texas and has worked for The Clarion-Ledger in Jackson, Mississippi; The Courier-Journal in Louisville, Kentucky; and The Plain Dealer in Cleveland where he spent more than six years as the automotive reporter. In 2014, he launched Today's Motor Vehicles (now EV Manufacturing & Design), a magazine focusing on design and manufacturing topics within the automotive and commercial truck worlds. He joined IndustryWeek in late 2021.