The Texas Manufacturing Assistance Center (TMAC), through the University of Houston Cullen College of Engineering, recently worked with Champion Fiberglass to develop a new molding compound process by investigating and recommending specific actions in various areas.
Champion Fiberglass, a leading supplier of fiberglass conduit for the electrical market, decided to develop conduit bodies to complete their line of fiberglass conduit.
"The main obstacle we faced was adequate experience manufacturing parts using a fiberglass-molding compound," says Goran Haag, president of Champion Fiberglass. "This is a wide-open field and we needed some guidance on where to start. The specialists from the Texas Manufacturing Assistance Center provided the stepping stones we needed to go forward with this idea."
Using a completely new molding process, Champion Fiberglass now makes their own molds and custom manufactures directly to customer specifications.
"We now have about thirty different molds and can produce over 1,000 parts per week. TMAC helped us achieve the missing link to our product line," says Haag.
Because of this new process, the existing fiberglass conduit market has expanded in size by five-times, opening a new niche, with Champion Fiberglass leading the way. Champion Fiberglass was not only able to avoid potential layoffs, they also hired two new people and met their goal of increased sales. They also anticipate increasing their market penetration by 5% with the addition of many new customers.
Due to a steady increase in product demand, Champion Fiberglass is again utilizing the manufacturing expertise of TMAC to develop a formal quality system in preparation for ISO 9000 registration.
Champion Fiberglass, Inc. is a leading supplier of fiberglass conduit for the electrical market. Their headquarters and main manufacturing plant is located in Spring, Texas with a pultrusion manufacturing plant in Georgetown, Ontario, Canada that manufactures fiberglass cable tray.