First Posted: 2/18/2015
BLUFFTON — At DTR Industries, automated production lines are moving the company that makes engine mounts for the automotive industry into the future.
One employee who used to operate up to four machines now runs twice that many.
“When I say machines, it’s normally what we would call a curing machine, which is rubber to metal bonding,” said DTR Industries Vice President of Manufacturing Steve Unterbrink. The new production lines started in the past couple years and are the wave of the future, he said.
“It makes production smoother, but it also helps us to reduce labor cost,” Unterbrink said.
Make no mistake, Unterbrink said dedicated and skilled employees remain the backbone of the business. Those employees have embraced the evolution of the industry that has changed a lot in the 25 years since Unterbrink started as a production line employee.
“When I first started, a machine was a stand-alone machine, and you ran each process, one at a time. It was more of a work-cell assembly from where a person transferred the material from one machine to the next,” Unterbrink said. “Now it’s a person loading raw material and unloading the final product.”
The machines are computer-operated, and employees receive training from a week to six months onsite for their job.
DTR makes engine mounts for the automotive industry. Some are high-tech, filled with a liquid that absorbs energy and dampens engine vibration.
“Our primary business is liquid engine mounts,” he said.
DTR also makes mounts to prevent vibration from spreading from the frame to the cab of a vehicle, where the driver and passengers sit, Unterbrink said.
DTR, a Japanese company, has 700 employees, of which 550 are line workers. The Bluffton plant, which opened for operation in 1988, has three shifts and is one of three operations in the United States, Unterbrink said.
When he first started, Unterbrink does not recall a single computer in the building. Today, computers are everywhere, including the smart phones many employees carry to communicate.
The future is bright for DTR, and no question computers will continue to have a big influence.
“Computers will change the way we plan and run our production in the future more automatically,” Unterbrink said. “We are in a transition of going off spreadsheets to computer based.”
