Original Publication Date: November 29, 2021
In the chaos of 2020, our team at Hirsh Precision made the decision to double down and open a second facility in the Colorado Technology Center, located in Louisville. The additional space was intended to give our team room to grow, while expanding our precision manufacturing capabilities, and grow we did.
In the last 12 months, our team has accomplished a lot to strengthen our position as the partner of choice for innovative companies not just in Colorado, but also across the country.
So, as we all prepare for 2022, we wanted to take this time and look back on some of the challenges and critical growth areas at our new Louisville facility.
Looking Back on 2021
With customer expectations and goals to meet, our team was committed to bringing the new facility online before the end of 2020. And to ensure operational excellence was maintained, we implemented the Hirsh Production System – our quality assurance manual – and completed ISO 9001:2015 and 13485:2016 certifications before we ever began production at the new facility. But this wasn’t the extent of our growth.
After we opened our new facility and saw our assembly workload immediately increase, we strengthened our output by bringing on new team members.
A year ago, we knew that a second facility was the key to expanding the complex assembly work our team was already producing, and this new Louisville location provided us with the space to bring on more assembly equipment and projects.
Today, our Hirsh Louisville team is producing and shipping 27 different complex, precision assemblies on a regular basis.
"It was a good change that was needed. The job orders were growing at a fast pace and the assembly team, as well. It did take a lot of coordination since we were still doing production, but we managed to get everything organized when we moved into the new facility. After that we started a continuous improvement project to be able to do twice as much work and have twice as much inventory, too. That has taken a while to accomplish as we continue to make small changes but I can say with confidence that if we were to double our production, we now have the space and plan to make it happen here. We can also tackle bigger assemblies with ease. When we started thinking about how the assembly area should be, we knew that it had to be dynamic, easy to move around, easy to rearrange and still have access to electricity and air," said Luis Gonzalez, Assembly Supervisor.
"I think as we grow, we see the need to have a stable inventory management to make sure product is easy to track for traceability purposes, product quality can be upkept, and orders can be fulfilled efficiently and timely. Having the space at Louisville really helps us insure this, so we can accommodate more orders and more customer requests. My favorite thing about having the space here at Louisville is we have lots of space for growing and that it’s quiet and clean. We also created the space to work for us and our customers as we built the inventory storage from the ground up," said Caitlin Burg, Inventory Manager.
Charging into 2022
Looking ahead to 2022, and with the ability to now support larger and more complex medical device and aerospace projects, our team is better positioned than ever to be our customers’ manufacturing solution provider of choice.
Looking ahead to 2022, and with the ability to now support larger and more complex medical device and aerospace projects, our team is better positioned than ever to be our customers’ manufacturing solution provider of choice.
Our Louisville facility is a hub of activity for not just assembly and fulfillment work, but also sales, marketing, quality, and a host of other Hirsh team members who are all working tirelessly to support our commitment to serve our customers well.
"Successfully bringing a new facility online without missing any customer commitments, now that's teamwork. That future is bright for Hirsh Precision," said Wayne Fraley, Director of Strategic Projects.
Hirsh Precision
