Auxiliary equipment maker ACS Group plans to move manufacturing from two plants - at its headquarters in Wood Dale, Ill., and its Milwaukee factory - into a single, 180,000-square-foot building in the Milwaukee suburb of New Berlin, Wis.
ACS will retain its Wood Dale building to house its headquarters, finance, marketing, sales, and parts and service operations, said Steve Petrakis, vice president of sales and marketing at ACS' Sterling unit in Milwaukee. Some engineering functions also will remain in Wood Dale.
Petrakis said ACS will begin moving next month into the leased New Berlin plant. Company officials call the move, to be completed by year's end, an expansion that will make ACS manufacturing more efficient.
``Over the last four years, we have expanded our presence in the plastics extrusion and blow molding markets, domestic and foreign,'' said Tom Breslin, president and chief executive officer. The company also has expanded beyond plastics machinery into other industrial markets.
Breslin said the growth reflects a business plan adopted in 2000. Privately held ACS has been owned since 1995 by St. Louis holding company Harbour Group. The company does not release sales figures.
The 120,000-square-foot Wood Dale facility employs 200. The plant makes blenders, dryers, resin conveying equipment, chillers and cooling systems. The factory in Milwaukee measures 70,000 square feet and has 130 employees making mold temperature control units, robots and equipment for the steam heating industry.
``By putting it all in one building, there are savings as far as the purchasing aspects of it,'' Petrakis said. ``You consolidate your manufacturing in one area. There are fewer parts. You don't have two part stocks in two different buildings.''
Petrakis said the move does not include any layoffs, although he said some employees may not want to move from Wood Dale, outside of Chicago, to the New Berlin plant.
To ensure a seamless move, ACS plans to continue manufacturing at all three plants during the move. ``We're going to have redundant lines, so there should be no disruption,'' Petrakis said.
Other ACS plants are not part of the move and will continue to operate. They include a factory in South Attleboro, Mass., that makes granulators and shredders and a Wabash, Ind., plant that makes injection and compression molding machines. ACS also has a technical center in Flint, Mich.