Elevate Efficiency: Advancing Press Brake Automation

Great Dane is what we say the premium trailer manufacturer in North America. We have nine facilities in North America. We make a range of products, van, both refrigerated and dry freight, as well as flatbed trailers. Company's been around for over 120 years. Great Dane has grown over the years into a lot of plants making very similar parts. They were able to consolidate here the production from a lot of those plants into an operation that is very repetitive. Great Dane has changed quite a bit with the automation because now the opportunity to look at other operations and understand what we can do to streamline those with automation is now coming up front. We've always had a certain amount of automation in the plants, but it's never really been to this level with the number of robots we have, the assembly cells, the press brakes, the lasers. So I think that's really allowed us to broaden our horizons and say, what else can we go after now to get more efficient, more, you know, cost efficient and move forward with getting those products in an automated fashion out to our customers. Great Dane has changed quite a bit with the automation because now the opportunity to look at other operations and understand what we can do to streamline those with automation is now coming up front. So it's very important to have skilled individuals that understand those systems, robots, press brakes in your facility so that you have the ability to make those quick changes on new parts or if things go a little bit south and you have to touch things up. Very important. If you're walking around your shop and you see a machine that's idle because you don't have somebody to work there, a robot will help. Automating press brakes is really one of the hardest things to automate and we're good at it.