Over the past year, GNB Global has had an increase in demand for steel and fabric in their fabrication plant. With an increase in frequency and size of projects, more production volume was needed to maintain its high standards for production quality and efficiency making it necessary to expand its fabrication plant.
GNB also wanted to have the capacity to handle an excessively heavy product and needed to increase its capacity to handle the weight of a 10-ton crane so it could do “bigger, larger, heavier pieces.” At the beginning of this year, critical moves were made to obtain it quickly.
It was apparent that they needed to find additional space off-site since extending their current plant was not an option. Fortunately, a conveniently located distribution warehouse was found less than 500ft down the road from their Dallas office and was swiftly leased to be their new fabric and construction department.
With the building originally being used for electricity distribution, renovations had to be made to make it functional for their daily operations. “We rebuilt all the offices. We built a big conference room. Redid all the flooring, lighting, heating, and air conditioning. Everything was redone,” said Ryan Hunter. “We also removed all the demising walls so we’d have a clear open span area to lay the fabric down.”
The original fabric shop area was expanding from an area that was only about 80 feet wide to a new building that was 25,000 square feet. The former area for fabric production has now been converted into additional steel production space, expanding the steel shop from 15,500 to 40,000 square feet.
“In the former fabric shop, we had to put all the overhead cranes, which was a lot of work. And We had to add another 20 weld stations, all electrical. We brought independent power in. We upgraded the lighting; we did everything,” said Hunter.
With nearly double the space, the new fabric plant and other renovations will keep GNB Dallas operating at optimal capacity and increase productivity by about 62%. These improvements to the fabric and steel fabrication plants will also further their initiative for superior quality management, which was marked at the beginning of this year with GNB Global obtaining ISO 9001:2015 certification.
