NOMAD Lifts & Positions WEISS Growth Plans

For 50 years, WEISS GmbH has been recognized for manufacturing high-quality index tables. Today, the company is the leading automation component manufacturer in Europe. Since August 2007, WEISS North America, a wholly owned subsidiary, has been doing much of the same thing for North America, index tables, palletized conveyors, linear motor driven pick and place units, cam and servo driven assembly chassis, ring index tables, and machine bases and tool plates, while positioning itself for constant and sustainable growth.

WEISS North America, located in Willoughby, Ohio, leased its 100,000 square foot facility in 2007 for a reason. While the company expected to grow, fulfilling its mission to service North America, they could not begin to guess just how quickly it would grow, or even how long the Willoughby facility would be able to accommodate their growing needs. Consequently, the company decided on a year-to-year lease.

According to Kevin Talty, “At the rate we’ve been growing, we’ll be needing our own space sometime soon. And when that day comes, we’ll have to take everything with us.” WEISS inventory now includes three EMH NOMAD Replacement Cranes.

Nomadic Solutions

Modular NOMAD® Free Standing Workstation Cranes provided WEISS a perfect fit and solution. When WEISS installed its first of three NOMAD Cranes, WEISS needed seven tons of capacity, a 40-foot width, and an 80-foot runway. NOMAD is readily available in overall widths up to 50 feet and overall heights up to 25 feet, with capacities from 2 tons to 10 tons. Plus, and just as important to WEISS, a NOMAD Crane offers manufacturers a flexible solution when a traditional overhead crane installation is either difficult or impractical, and in the case of WEISS, when company needs change. Base plate design allows most NOMAD Systems to be installed without footers. Then, with easily bolted assembly, NOMAD Crane Systems can be easily dismantled, relocated and reassembled.

Customization was not an issue. EMH was able to easily customize the NOMAD installation to the WEISS floor plan and fit the company’s exact needs. For instance, after the four-day installation was completed without workflow interruption, WEISS was able to finally analyze workstation results. Tight spacing on the plant floor combined with NOMAD flexibility necessitated that the system be positioned above shelves. Consequently, WEISS asked EMH to come back after the fact and add emergency hard-stops so that the crane would never go past a certain point. WEISS needed to be sure that crane operators would never run into shelves with any given load. NOMAD flexibility enabled the workstation crane to accommodate WEISS tight parameters from the start, and also enabled it to easily adapt to a new concern after the installation was complete.