In today’s fast-paced manufacturing industry, embracing technology is essential for boosting productivity and achieving operational efficiency. At Dane, our innovative mindset naturally leads us to strategic technological advancement which allows us to better serve our customers.
One strategic investment, our STOPA automated storage and retrieval system signaled a significant shift forward in our capabilities and efficiency in serving our customers.
What is STOPA?
STOPA is the world’s leading manufacturer of advanced automated storage systems designed for storing raw materials, semi-finished goods and tools. Renowned for its accuracy, dependability and scalability, the STOPA system seamlessly integrates into our current production operations, offering numerous benefits including autonomous material handling, real-time inventory management, and unlocks 4th shift automated production.
Implementing STOPA was a complex and time-consuming task, and our implementation reflects years of expertise in manufacturing operations, combined with our innovative forward-looking mindset to leverage the new technology. The project began with the first piece of the system arriving at Dane Manufacturing in October 2022, and continued until April 2023, before becoming operational.
Unlocking 4th Shift Automated Production
STOPA is more than just a material handling and storage system. By integrating automation modules within the STOPA system, we are able to unlock fully automated processes expanding production capability and efficiency.
Currently, our STOPA system is integrated with the following equipment:
- Two Trumpf 5000 Punches
- Two Trumpf 3030 Fiber Lasers
- Trumpf 7030 Automated Panel Bender
“STOPA is more than just an automated storage tower and material handling system. It allows us to feed sheet metal through various processes without ever being touched by a human. Since integrating STOPA into our daily operations, we’ve seen performance improvements that have benefited our customers directly.”
Al Wenger — Production Manager
These performance improvements are evident in several key areas including efficiency, space optimization, inventory management and safety:
- Efficiency: Automating our storage and retrieval process has cut down on time and labor, resulting in faster processing times, fewer errors, higher productivity and shorter lead times.
- Space Optimization: By maximizing the use of vertical and horizontal space, we can handle more materials and products without needing additional floor space. This increase in operational efficiency supports higher production volumes and scalability for our customer’s future growth.
- Inventory Management: Enhanced inventory control with real-time tracking and precise counts helps us maintain optimal stock levels and improve order accuracy. This translates to timely updates and accurate deliveries for our customers.
- Safety: Automation has reduced the need for the manual handling of heavy materials, leading to less forklift traffic on our production floor. This creates a safer environment for our productions team and ensures more reliable, consistent service for our customers.
Improving the Customer Experience
Our STOPA system has resulted in a number of significant performance improvements enhancing the speed and accuracy of our customer’s manufacturing processes. In addition to increased capacity positioning us to handle our customer’s growth, we’ve tightened our inventory management processes resulting in increased efficiency, real-time reporting and reliable production lead times. Perhaps most notably, the overall efficiency that our STOPA system creates, allows Dane to initiate production starts more than 48 hours faster than was possible prior to its implementation. Additionally, we have been able to reduce cell-to-cell and process-to-process starts by 24 hours.
Looking to the future, our STOPA system, and the automation it provides, creates numerous growth possibilities for our customers. We are well-positioned to leverage technology as our customer’s needs continue to grow. Our inventory storage is tightly managed and kept at optimal levels, and we also have the capability to add additional state-of-the-art machinery to our STOPA system. As a result, we are positioned to scale rapidly and efficiently, while maintaining the efficiency gains we’ve realized, keeping costs favorable to our customers.
Innovation is part of our DNA. The implementation of STOPA represented a significant strategic leap forward for Dane. Many months of strategic planning culminated in one of Trumpf’s premier integrations of STOPA, which has subsequently been studied and reviewed by third parties as a model to be duplicated in future implementations. As a result, Dane is well positioned to leverage technological advancements to exceed our customer’s expectations well into the future.
Have questions about our automated STOPA system, or want to take a tour of our facility to see it in person?
We’d love to talk. Contact Us.