With more than 2,000 employees, 1 million square feet of manufacturing space, 450 molding machines and 19 locations worldwide, Westfall Technik, Inc., Las Vegas, Nevada, is one of the fastest-growing injection molding and tooling companies in the world. When the company was looking to open a facility in the greater Chicago area in 2021, it chose the former MGS Manufacturing Group, Inc. plant in Antioch, Illinois. The plant, which had been closed for more than a year, was the perfect location for Westfall as it was looking to open a molding facility to serve the medical market in the Midwest.
Roy Boyd was hired as general manager of the new plant and was charged with getting the plant up and running with new employees, machinery and equipment in just six months. Starting with two employees and an empty building in May 2021, by December 2021, Westfall Technik had 25 employees, 15 molding machines, ISO 13485 certification and most importantly, a lot of new product orders.
When deciding on what machinery and equipment to purchase for the new facility, Boyd said for robots and auxiliaries, it was an easy decision.
“I have worked with Wittmann robots and equipment for over 20 years in my career,” he said. “They were our preferred supplier for a lot of reasons, not the least of which was their service. They were with us from day 1, helping us integrate their robots and auxiliaries into our molding machine cells.”
In the new Chicago plant, Westfall is running 15 injection molding machines ranging from 55 to 280 tons. Three Class 8 cleanrooms with ISO 13485 certification house molding cells making medical diagnostics and lab ware components. A wide variety of materials are used including commodity PP to engineering grade materials.
Westfall has numerous Wittmann sprue pickers in operation at the plant, as well as more sophisticated Wittmann robots. In addition to needing consistency in picking parts out of the molds, Boyd cited Wittmann’s product availability as crucial.
“As we all know, sourcing machinery, equipment and materials over the past two years has been difficult,” he said. “Ramping up during the global pandemic was a challenge. We needed to get everything quickly. Wittmann not only had the robots and auxiliaries that we needed, but they also were willing and able to send their technicians here to our plant to integrate their equipment and train our operators, onsite.”
For more information, visit https://www.wittmann-group.com/en_us or https://westfalltechnik.com/.
