When you purchase an 80-year old metal fabricating business with an eye on the future, there’s a lot to do: Get to know your employees, take stock of your equipment, meet with customers to learn how to serve them better, start making improvements, all while a novel virus complicates day-to-day life.
But engineering is about solving complicated problems and manufacturing makes things work. In other words, we’re ready to roll in 2022, and beyond.
Saying YES to Onshoring Custom Sheet Metal Fabrication
Since purchasing one of Ohio’s most well-respected custom sheet metal fabrication companies back in 2020, we’ve managed through these crazy times alongside our customers, suppliers, and employees. Together, we are committed to keeping finding ways to make things work.
We have to. The products our customers make in Northeast Ohio and beyond - things like medical trolleys and carts, surgical sterilization baskets, custom electronic enclosures, those ubiquitous sheet metal brackets, panels, and various other pieces - are all critical to keeping their businesses, and the economy, rolling.
After years of lamenting the offshoring of products, “onshoring” is the watchword now. We are seeing a renaissance of American manufacturing! While supply chain disruptions may have taken us all a little bit off guard, facing those challenges have made saying, “yes, we have open capacity and we’re shipping orders” more satisfying than ever.
Yes, we have open capacity and we’re shipping orders!
Positive Culture, Resilient Employees
Our employees have been models of resilience, bringing not only their experience and hard work (as always) but also sharing their insight and fresh ideas with us as we’ve implemented a new approach to our business. All the while, they’ve kept quality custom sheet metal products rolling out to our customers despite the pandemic. Our diverse and talented team has grown from 17 shop floor employees in 2020 up to now 30 with a total of 41 employees (up from 21) when we started. We love our team!
Our customers have been very open with us as we’ve implemented these changes, as well. While they, too, have dealt with supply chain challenges and labor shortages, they have been willing to share their business needs with us and worked with us to find new solutions together.
Read about our Fans-First, Team-Always Culture
Sometimes that has meant getting creative in working with our suppliers; or, offering suggestions to customers to make a product more manufacturable and less expensive. It could be recommending a slight change to the size of an assembly part to make more efficient use of a sheet of metal. Other times, it meant proposing a different material or gauge to something more readily available. We’ve found our customers are willing to discuss their business needs, and that they sometimes don’t realize all of the capabilities we offer, from sheet metal deburring, laser cutting, and powder coating and steel sheet metal fabrication to precision sheet metal welding, sheet metal assembly, etching, and screen printing.
Many of our customers are surprised to learn that we can help them with Design for Manufacturability (DFM), too. It turns out that communication is key to making what matters.
Sheet Metal Specialists Serving Many Industries, Making New Products
Among the many industries we work with, we’re finding our experience (Mika became a custom sheet metal fabrication shop even before WWII!) translates very well into manufacturing new products for our customers in 2022. While retail parcel pickup lockers and vending kiosks may be a new idea in customer service (thanks, COVID), Mika’s experience in sheet metal bending and sheet metal fabrication prototyping means we are ready to serve many new markets as well as our existing customers.
What new needs do you anticipate in 2022? We’re here to help.
Updated Equipment, More Capacity, and Capabilities
Even as the industry struggled to continue producing during the past year, Mika’s employees and management team continued to add capabilities and additional capacity.
In addition to buying new equipment and training team members on new techniques, in October, we met with other sheet metal fabricators and suppliers at FABTECH, the country’s largest metal forming, fabricating, welding and finishing event.
The keys to success in 2022 - and beyond! - will be making strategic use of automation and thoughtfully reviewing data from all departments and suppliers. We are confident in our team to put their experience to good use.
Custom Sheet Metal Fabrication in Cleveland, Ohio
Here’s to 2022!
The pandemic isn’t completely over, but here in Northeast Ohio, we’ve managed just fine. Our employees have risen to every challenge and we’re looking forward to putting Covid in the rearview mirror so we can all have a great 2022. Our customers have been smart about navigating and even avoiding backlogged orders, and we’re happy to help.
We look forward to working with you this year. Let’s get started!
Like many other organizations in the custom sheet metal fabrication business, we’ve had quite a year. We’re enjoying the process, and even the challenges, and look forward to meeting every opportunity.
How can we help YOU make what matters? Contact us today - we’d love to work with you.
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