In order to better serve our customers’ need for improved speed to market, we are combining our Estes Express Prototyping department and Product Development team into an all new group called Estes Accelerator! Estes Accelerator is a dedicated product development and prototype shop designed to respond to customers’ product development and speed-to-market needs. The Accelerator…
Estes’ Desire to Help With the looming crisis and global effects of the COVID-19 pandemic reaching far and wide, Vice President of Operations, Ron Estes, was actively seeking for ways Estes Design and Manufacturing could help meet some of the needs created by the spread of the virus. With this desire to contribute on a…
The road from product conception to full production is often full of unexpected obstacles, twists, and turns along the way. A prototype, which you can test in the real world, helps to smooth out that road on a smaller scale. The prototype process allows you to pivot quickly to rectify errors or omissions before…
The Hitzfield Group is a group of companies that design, engineer and install state-of-the-art building envelopes and structural façade components. They serve a wide variety of industries across the nation and have partnered with companies such as FedEx and Eli Lilly on various construction projects. Estes Design and Manufacturing recently had the privilege of partnering with…
We are here to help! The COVID-19 virus has brought changes to almost every industry in some form or another as well as disrupted many facets of our personal and professional lives. While many industries have seen rapid declines in business over the last month, other industries have seen spiking increases in demand and are…
Faster, More Efficient Welding Laser welding isn’t exactly new. After all, it’s been used in automotive manufacturing for many years. Outside of the auto plant, however, laser welding (and its potential for savings) is less familiar. When parts made of thin-gauge sheet metal need nice-looking welds, lasers don’t immediately come to mind; labor-intensive TIG or MIG…
Although 3D printing is quickly becoming a popular choice for manufacturing, there are times when sheet metal can serve as a better alternative. Depending on your project, sheet metal may be a superior choice over non-metal options or other metal manufacturing processes. But not all sheet metal is created equal. Each material type has…
Kaizen is defined as the Japanese philosophy of continuous improvement. As a company Estes strives to follow the kaizen mindset instead of just working on “fixes.” Continuous improvement serves as one of the four pillars of our company philosophy, and Estes is constantly looking for ways to improve all facets of the business. To ensure this continuous improvement…
What is just-in-time (JIT) management strategy and how can it reduce costs? The just-in-time (JIT) management strategy traces back to early in the auto industry, first introduced at the Ford Motor Plant and later perfected by Taiichi Ohno for Toyota as a means to improve operational performance. With JIT, goods arrive exactly when they are…
