Celebrating simplicity and flexibility on Manufacturing Day

This flexible connection between two extruded T-slot beams, from TSI Solutions, could be a metaphor for what makes U.S. manufacturing great, especially when it comes to being flexible and adaptable.

It’s Manufacturing Day, #mfgday16, when in more than 2,000 events we all celebrate what this industry has been, what it is, and where it’s going. This morning I visited an event hosted by TSI Solutions, an industrial automation distributor and custom extruded beam assembler based in Stone Mountain, Ga., outside Atlanta.

The company’s health could be called a bellwether for the region’s manufacturing sector. It sells into virtually every type of manufacturing business there is in and around the state of Georgia.

During a tour John Post, Jr., vice president of sales, told me that while sales fell sharply in July, August and September proved extremely robust, and he sees that trend continuing throughout October. That bodes well for the fourth quarter and beyond.

Besides being a distributor of various lines in industrial automation, TSI cuts, machines, and assembles T-slot aluminum extrusions using simple, flexible connections, like the one pictured here. If an assembly—say, one vertical extrusion abutting a horizontal one—needs to be changed, the connector just needs to be loosened, and the extrusion can be moved to another position along the T slot.

Using this approach, TSI can build various extruded frame assemblies in short order. The frames can be found anywhere in manufacturing, such as in material handling carts or as safeguarding around automated processing lines.

This may be a good metaphor for U.S. manufacturing, and for custom metal fabricators in particular. Everyone uses common tools, from laser cutting and punching to welding and powder coating. What sets a shop apart is how people connect those processes together into a single, adaptable system, ready to turn on a dime to meet ever-changing levels of customer demand.

Manufacturing Day co-producers have East Coast Floridians, as well as those who organized the more than 157 Manufacturing Day events in the state, in their thoughts. For more information on what you can do to help, or where to find resources in or around the state of Florida, here are the latest updates on Hurricane Matthew from www.whitehouse.gov.