Van Wert company showcases new facility

SCOTT TRUXELL/independent editor    

What do you do when you have a still-new 140,000 square foot manufacturing and engineering facility that employs nearly 200 people and uses state-of-the-art robotic equipment? You showcase it to your clientele.

That’s what happened last Thursday and Friday at Alliance Automation in Van Wert. The company’s new facility on John Brown Road, just off U.S. 30, opened in early 2022 and, during last week’s client open house, customers from near and far had a chance to see it and Alliance Automation’s operation firsthand. It was billed as a glimpse into the future of automation.

For those who don’t know, Alliance Automation designs and builds robotic automation systems that optimize production processes for different industries, including automotive, manufacturing and material handling projects. Much of the focus of last week’s open house centered around wooden pallets.

“We are showing the recycled pallet industries our automation solutions for dismantled, sorting and repair,” Inside Sales Engineer Ashley Metzger said. “A lot of these people are our customers currently but they’re looking at other solutions for their industry. They’re from all throughout America but we also have some from Canada, Sweden, Iceland, and the Netherlands.”

All of the facility’s machines were running with experts posted at each one to demonstrate them and answer questions, with a focus on pallets.

“On a global scale, we’re one of the largest, if not the largest, pallet equipment producers in the world,” Chief Operating Officer Browning Sheenan said. “We’re dealing with the big players…we’re partnered with the largest whitewood and pooling pallet companies in the United States.”

“We’re starting to open up space in the European market right now and we have two companies that we’re partnering with,” he added. “We’re getting a lot of companies that are coming to us that have technology to roll out to the North American market. One of the biggest opportunities, we don’t know exactly what it’s going to consist of yet, is true pallet inspection so instead of using a human eye to do pallet inspection, they’re doing pallet inspections with an AI (artificial intelligence) vision system.”

Those attending the open house also heard information from President and CEO Doug Wenninger, who founded the company in Delphos in 2008. Alliance Automation moved to Van Wert two years later and after continued growth, consolidated four locations into the new facility.

The company also has a 30,000 square football engineering and manufacturing facility in León, Guanajuato, Mexico.

More information can be found at allianceautomation.com.