Personally from the President
I’m proud to announce that GOEX has completely moved into our new facility in Janesville, WI.
Over a six-month period, the move began with installation of new extrusion equipment, followed by the orderly and sequential transition of equipment from our previous facility. Upon every transition move, we requalified the equipment prior to use in order to assure product quality and process characteristics were unchanged.
GOEX operates 24/7, so the transition plan demanded that we maintain full production throughout the transition period. Moving equipment was only a piece of the overall plan. An equally challenging aspect was managing the transition of raw materials. This was accomplished by the installation of new bulk storage equipment in conjunction with using our new 40,000 square foot warehouse stocked with raw material and finished goods.
In the new normal, material handling operations have been streamlined and simplified. Because the new building is much taller, we took processes that flowed horizontally and stacked them vertically. Instead of moving materials from point to point, adding time and labor, materials now flow vertically using the power of gravity.
We updated our blending and drying equipment, giving us more capacity in both. We can bring 50% more product to the process without adding labor, which gives workers more time for other higher-value tasks. Material handling specialists have more time to do analysis. The plant-wide blender upgrade also gives us sophisticated technology with a greater degree of accuracy and tractability. All Inventory changes are done “real time”, so inventory and consumption accuracy approaches 100%. Raw materials flow seamlessly through finished production.
Overall efficiency has improved significantly. We’ve greatly reduced changeover time from one material to another. It all ties into our philosophy of a facility that is safe, consistent and fast.