Winco’s Eubanks wire cutter has been with us since 1984. That is 37 years of service. I don’t think there are any original parts left in it. After so many years it is always a little sad to see something familiar leave. At the same time, it is exciting to announce a new tool for our team.

Our manufacturing engineers are responsible to ensure our employees have the best tools so they can focus on doing their best work. Our wire department has had significant capacity restraints to keep up with production. The engineers selected and installed a new Artos wire cutter. It is already showing significant improvement. We recently processed a job in 15 minutes that used to take just under 4 hours. This will free up additional labor to increase our production capacity. Take a look below to see some of the features of our new machine.

Fun fact: Each WL22000VE has over 45 wires that stretch almost 35 feet in each receptacle panel.

The Artos can be programmed off-site by our engineers. This allows the operator to spend more time cutting wire and less time programming at the machine.

Another improvement is our new wire carousel. When the Lowe’s in a nearby town closed, we were able to purchase their wire carousel. Now, we can store all of our wire in a location for quick and easy access. The good news is the operator doesn’t have to lift the spools for every job anymore. The downside is they don’t get paid for weight lifting anymore.

This is just one of the many improvements we are making to our facility and processes to provide you with better generators more cost effectively. This new machine will definitely be apart our of factory tours! Hopefully we can see you soon!

– BIG DOG

Handling freight isn’t always an easy job. Its frustrating to receive a shipment that is either damaged or missing a component, so we are working hard to make it better.

We track freight issues that arise and are regularly adapting how we prepare our shipments.

Each shipment that has freight damaged or lost parts is logged into our quality tracking system. This tracking allows us to clearly see where the most common issues are. We then take corrective actions to work on reducing the number of problems that occur on the trip between our dock to yours. The following changes are in response to what you are reporting from the field.

Over the last four months, there was a dramatic spike in the number of shipments that are split or have lost components. In order to deal with this issue, we initiated a policy that requires all loose components to be banded or shrink wrapped to their pallet. This policy was initiated roughly four weeks ago. We have already seen a dramatic decrease of accessories getting separated or lost items.

Broken Pallets

We have seen some pallet designs that were not up to the job. Our engineering team has been working on creating new pallet designs that will reinforce their strength. Our generators travel a long distance and in most cases are needed right away. Giving them a durable shipping base will help reduce damage.

R&L Handling Issues

At Winco, we partner with vendors and work together to find solutions for our customers. R&L carriers has been our primary LTL shipper for over 8 years. As we have seen an uptick in handling related issues, we have been working with their quality team in order to resolve our issues. They are currently taking two major initiatives to reduce freight damage.

Over the course of one week in January each dock worker at R&L will be trained. Each daily courses will be about the quality issues they have with Winco freight. This will raise awareness of the issues throughout the company and has been proven to help reduce customer specific issues.

The R&L quality team has initiated a monitoring program to help identify exactly where the damage is occurring so they can track the problem down to the terminals where more aggressive corrections are needed.

We are excited for these new initiatives and look forward to this new year with a better shipping experiance.

– Big Dog