Crane Plumbing LLC (Evanston, IL) manufactures sanitary housewares. Its Dallas division, which was started in 1985 and has approximately 250 employees, manufactures porcelain-on-steel bath products, such as sinks, lavatories and bathtubs.
No one, especially a shareholder, is happy with a company that doesn't grow. The three most common and obvious ways companies achieve growth are by increasing market share, introducing new products and buying another company. The first two are often successful but, as competitors counterattack to defend their turf, they can also lead to price cutting, shrinking margins and loss of bottom-line profits.
Analogic Corp. (Peabody, MA) manufactures advanced systems and subsystems for medical, industrial and telecommunications original equipment manufacturers.
Lasko Metal Products Inc. (West Chester, PA), a manufacturer of ventilation devices and household appliances, needed a welding method for the assembly of reservoir jugs for its humidifiers. These oddly-shaped reservoir jugs are large and can hold several gallons of fluid.
The Marshalltown, IA, plant of Lennox Industries, a manufacturer of residential and commercial heating and air conditioning equipment, required automation for a new portion of their gas furnace manufacturing process.
BG Laboratories Inc. (Binghampton, NY) manufactures space-saving miniature transformers for laptop computer modems, and the thin-wall molding capabilities and other properties of DuPont's (Wilmington, DE) Zenite LCP 7130 play a key role in the manufacturing process. Zenite LCP 7130 is a 30 percent glass-reinforced resin with a heat-deflection temperature of 552 F and UL94 V-O flammability rating.