Building for the future: Tooling, training and service under one roof

Dec. 8, 2014

In this Plant Profile, a German manufacturer stakes a claim in Michigan to optimize service to North American customers.

Global manufacturer of tube and bar processing machinery Rattunde held an official ribbon-cutting ceremony this past summer to celebrate the July 25 opening its new manufacturing facility in Caledonia, MI.

Rattunde President Rick Stadler cuts the ribbon to officially open the company’s new facility in Caledonia, MI.

Rattunde Corporation is the subsidiary of Rattunde & Co. GmbH, based in Ludwigslust, Germany. Rattunde machinery systems process bar and tube stock into various end products used by manufacturers in the auto, appliance, off-highway, transportation and other industries throughout North America.

Their new 30,000-sq-ft facility employ 16 people, and was erected to build tooling for Rattunde machinery systems as well as to act as a sales, service, parts, and customer training center. Highly complex, multi-station metal tube and bar cutting and processing systems are imported from Rattunde GmbH, combined with tooling produced at this location, and then test-run prior to shipment to the customers in the North American market. Long-range plans call for an expansion of this new facility up to 100,000-sq-ft or more for eventual machine builds.

“Everyone in the company is excited by the potential of this new facility," said Rattunde President Rick Stadler. "It will create an energy that will translate into a great working environment for our team, plus we’ll have more capabilities to better serve our customers, immediately and into the future. The growth of Rattunde sales in North America and especially the hard work of our team made this all possible.”

The new 30,000-sq-ft facility officially opened on July 25, 2014.

The addition of tooling manufacturing in the US allows Rattunde to expedite customer tooling orders, minimizing downtime for the customer by lowering order lead times on orders and providing tooling solutions in a more proactive manner. The new facility also houses a complete spare parts inventory, training areas for both company and customer personnel, machines for demonstration purposes and testing, and a state-of-the-art machine shop where machine- and application-specific tooling will be manufactured, making the company more responsive to customer requirements.

"Working closely with the sales force, key customers, and the architects allowed us to incorporate input from many sources to create the optimum plant, office, and IT infrastructure to suit current and especially emerging company needs," said Rattunde Project Manager Janelle Crum. She added that the plant would support other improvements made by Rattunde in CRM, IT, and computerized order entry that will enable the company to be more responsive to the needs of current and future North American customers.

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