Gaining a Competitive Position

The story of United Enertech Corporation (Chattanooga, TN) began in the early 1940s when Paul Tate, a Chicago School of Engineering graduate, aspired to open his own refrigeration business. Paul was drafted into the war and his dream was put on hold, but when he returned from the war he began constructing the building that would house his future business. Everything was in order but, at the last moment, tragedy struck and Paul passed away. His son, William (Bill) Tate, made it his life’s mission to finish what his father had started: to see his father’s refrigeration dream through. Bill diligently studied his father’s engineering school books and studied them so adamantly and thoroughly that, within a year’s time, he was able to recite the books verbatim.

By 1969 Bill had completed his schooling at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga where he had earned additional HVAC (Heating Ventilating & Air Conditioning) certifications. He decided it was finally time to open up his father’s dream business. Today, that business is known as United Enertech. Located in the heart of the Tennessee Valley in Chattanooga, it remains an American family-owned and operated HVAC company that supplies louvers, dampers, shutters, roof curbs, and many other air movement and air control products.

United Enertech makes it their goal to meet their customers’ needs for quality and speed while maintaining flexibility to produce custom HVAC products with custom specifications. This is their competitive advantage, and it requires a highly organized manufacturing process and realiable equipment. “Our niche market is being able to do quick turnarounds of just about anything. We have a rush program that allows customers to specify how fast they need something,” explains Jason Price, a manufacturing engineer with the company.

In addition to producing HVAC systems, they also manufacture a new line of blast resistant products that include blast resistant louvers and dampers for civil defense and petrochemical companies. With such a diverse product line, the accuracy of their various manufacturing processes is critical to getting products out the door in a timely manner. This is exactly why United Enertech’s local machinery distributor, Wakefield Equipment (Cleveland, OH), suggested they look into purchasing a material positioner from TigerStop LLC (Vancouver, WA).

“Before we were using these material positioners, we could have a completed product that would go to quality control and the measurement would be off, meaning the whole thing would have to be taken back apart and re-sawed. Any time you re-saw, you lose money,” notes Andy Schwall, the chief operating officer of United Enertech. Not only were products cut inaccurately, setup was taking a tremendous amount of time. “Before we had these material positioners, the setups were taking longer, repeatability was very bad, and the accuracy was horrible. The production throughput of the saws was extremely slow,” adds Schwall.

The shop’s previous way of measuring parts for cutoff with a tape measure was flawed. Achieving product conformity was difficult and a great deal of time and labor went into correcting miscut parts. “The material positioner made us realize that everyone’s tape measure was different and had a different amount of wear. Having a guy out there with a tape measure to inspect each individual piece or move a mechanical stop every time just isn’t cost effective or efficient,” says Schwall. This is especially true when using many thousands of miles in linear feet of extrusion per year, where non-confirming products can pile up rapidly. To keep inaccuracies at bay, United Enertech relies on their new material positioners. “All of your quality control starts with the TigerStop. You know everything else down the line is going to be correct,” smiles Schwall.

Integrating new equipment into a process can be a daunting task. Ensuring employees can quickly learn how to use a new system is not always an easy feat, but these new material positioners have a very low learning curve. Price describes his own experience: “When I started I had never heard of TigerStop. But within an hour, I was able to program the positioner to do whatever I needed to do and be able to help support the guys out there fabricating.” Because these material positioners work in multiple languages, anyone can use them regardless of language or cultural differences. “We have a diverse workforce and, in some cases, English may not be their first language,” added Schwall. “Even with that barrier, learning how to operate these positioners has never been a problem.”

When asked if price was ever an issue when the time to purchase came around, Schwall answered, “Because a TigerStop can be retrofitted to an older machine, it’s easier to justify that purchase because you’re not having to throw away your older machine. You can just add it on to your existing machine. Because a piece of equipment is old doesn’t mean that it’s worthless if you can find a new technology such as this to enhance what it does.”

The shop has also discovered that they aren’t limited to using a TigerStop on one type of machine. There are countless applications that are open for creative manufacturing solutions. For example, once United Enertech saw the success of the material positioning system on their cutoff equipment, they started using it for accurately punching parts as well. “The versatility of this system, being able to connect it to existing machinery and attach it to a hydraulic press or a mechanical press to do repeated patterns, has helped us save a lot of time,” explains Price. “In the situations in the plant where we use the TigerStop for something other than just cut-to-length applications, the Advanced Interconnect Kit (AIK) has allowed us to be nearly an autonomous operation.”

In those situations, an operator verifies the required pattern and then programs it into the TigerStop, where the AIK allows it to run through that program and punch the desired pattern without needing to stop and verify each hole. “A lot of our products have a very fixed spacing for the blades,” says Price. “A manual machine with a manual index can get that done, but it’s not the quickest way to do it. That’s why we use the TigerStop for that process. It gives us an infinite range of adjustability without making a mechanical index. There’s a lot of labor savings there.”

United Enertech has been very impressed with the longevity of their material positioners. “We run these machines every day and we run them hard,” states Schwall. In fact, the original machine they purchased from Wakefield 14 years ago is still operating daily.

Schwall describes the demanding nature of manufacturing HVAC systems in the U.S. “Every year it gets more and more difficult to stay productive and competitive as a manufacturer, so you have to think of ways outside of the box,” he says. Using TigerStop equipment has allowed his shop to reduce their manufacturing costs and, in turn, made it possible for them to expand into other areas. Today the company has over 200 employees carrying out United Enertech’s mission. To say that Bill Tate has fulfilled his father’s dream would be a huge understatement.

United Enertech Corporation, 3005 South Hickory Street, Chattanooga, TN 37407, 423-698-7715, unitedenertech.com.

TigerStop LLC (America), 12909 NE 95th Street, Vancouver, WA 98682-2426, 360-254-0661, Fax: 360-260-0755, www.tigerstop.com.