June 2018

84 85 For steel plate buyers who need quality product & services, reliable delivery, & competitive prices, Chapel Steel stocks the widest variety of steel plate in the United States. OUR SERVICES OUR STEEL DYNAMIC SOLUTIONS. DEPENDABLE SERVICE. STRUCTURAL, CARBON & HSLA STEEL PLATE HIGH STRENGTH & ABRASION RESISTANT STEEL PLATE ALLOY STEEL PLATE MARINE & OFFSHORE STEEL PLATE PVQ STEEL PLATE ARMOR & BALLISTIC STEEL PLATE PLASMA & OXY-FUEL CUTTING PLASMA ETCHING & PLATE MARKING BEVELING DRILLING MILLING TAPPING COUNTERBORING PLATE BENDING PLATE ETCHING & MARKING SHOT BLASTING www.chapelsteel.com 800.570.7674 for Columbia and its customer base expanded. This division has grown through the years and, today, Columbia Machine dominates the pallet- izing market with a full product line from small, to medium, to very large, high-speed, high-level palletizing machines –both conventional and robotic– that can be used to palletize just about any product or package that can fit on a pallet. “In the palletizing market, both the convention- al and the robotic, we can engineer what others are not capable of providing,” claims Goodman, “including mixed product palletization. If you’ve got products that have different sized boxes, we’re able to palletize them automatically. It’s easy to put the same type of Legos on the pallet, but when you start putting different size Legos, that’s a pretty big challenge.” Beginning in 2008, the Great Recession cur- tailed much of the company’s concrete block manufacturing business, when a lot of construc- tion was put on hold. In order to keep its staff em- ployed, Columbia established another division: Co- lumbia Manufacturing Services.“This division allows us to build and manufacture parts for other OEMs, up to and including complete assembly of the final product,”Goodman explains.“We have the ability to supply critical componentry–hydraulic power units, electrical control panels, or entire systems that a company would need to be built.” Most recently, the company has forged into the automatic bagging of industrial goods. “We’re combining some of our robotic technology, with some of our conveying technology, with some of our weighing and palletizing technology, to develop fully integrated bagging lines that will bag goods automatically,” Goodman notes. The PREFERRED VENDOR n Chapel Steel www.chapelsteel.com THE COLUMBIA MACHINE COMPANY company’s line of bag fillers, conveyors, and bag palletizers can handle a wide variety of materials, including concrete, stucco, mortar mix, granular minerals, sand, cement, fertilizer, and more. Columbia Machine’s vision is to be the pre- ferred supplier of engineered product solutions in the targeted markets it serves: Concrete Prod- ucts Equipment, Batching and Mixing, Produc- tion Equipment Molds, Conventional Palletizing Machines and Robotic Palletizing Systems, and Contract Manufacturing Services. “Our tagline is ‘everything we do is through the eyes of our cus- tomers,’” says Goodman, and that the company’s mission is to provide them with superior solu- tions through innovation, quality, reliability, and continuous improvement. “That’s a pretty bold statement,” he admits, “but the key driver in our growth through the years has been to understand what our customers need to be successful, and figure out how to assist them with different business solutions. This could be as simple as offering them Vendor Managed Inventory, or as in-depth as working with them to develop an engineered-to-order process solution. In the case of the latter, understanding the technol- ogy needs of our customers drives the focus in our product research and development efforts.Once the new products are developed and in operation, we will then work with our customers to identify opportunities to continuously improve the overall process.This customer experience focus keeps all of our teammembers focused on the most import- ant element of our business -our customers,who thrive with our equipment, in over 100 countries worldwide.We believe that if we take care of our customers,we will be able to take care of the other three most important contributors to our success, our teammembers, our shareholders, and our local communities where we operate. But it all starts with taking care of and supporting the needs of our customers better than anyone else. ”