Strength is Built In

Degelman manufactures precise, robust farm implements

Strawmaster® management

(left to right) Blair Flavel, general manager; Justin Kleckner, operations manager; and Jack Degelman, Degelman Industries Ltd., review production details in the Regina, Sask., plant. Strawmaster® harrows are being assembled in the bay behind them.

Wilfred Degelman found a better way to clear rocks from his farmland in Raymore, Saskatchewan, than by hand. His ingenuity and time spent in the shop in his red barn led him to design and build a piece of equipment to do the job. That implement not only cleared the rocks from the fields, it planted the seeds that grew into a successful farm implement manufacturing company.

Neighboring farmers coveted the luxury of clearing land with a rock picker until the red barn was converted into a factory and local fabricators were added to the payroll to begin production. Sales took off quickly. One shift became two to meet demands, but within two years the lack of space and manpower kept the new branch of the family business from fulfilling orders. That was in the early 1960s.

Jack Degelman, Wilfred’s son and one of the Degelman Industries Ltd. family owners, said, “We had about a dozen people working two shifts because of limited space. So we moved to Regina in 1966.” The 70- mile move relocated the manufacturing to a 10,000-sq.-ft. facility. Within the first year the first expansion was underway to double the footprint. Further expansions in 1973, 1975, 1995, and 2007 have grown the plant to 160,000 sq.ft.

Built-in Strength

Labor and time savings gained by the Degelman rock picker caught the attention of the agricultural community. High quality, robust construction, and the longevity of the equipment kept the sales coming.

Nearly 50 years later, 1970-era Degelman rock pickers are still occasionally seen in a field. “You have to give a lot of credit to our dad,” Jack said. “When we started he was big on the quality of the weld. Back then there were a lot of manufacturers that didn’t have that focus and we really stood out. He insisted on building strong, quality products. If there was any doubt about a product’s strength, he’d add more steel. As president of the company, it’s still his thing. He takes an active role in working on our new designs.”

Degelman added more than steel. The rock picker was joined by prong pickers, rock rakes, and rock diggers. Tillage equipment, rotary cutters, sidearms, manure spreaders, land rollers, and harrows began rolling out of the plant. All were designed to withstand decades of heavy-duty use and with the least amount of moving parts to reduce maintenance.

Then there were the dozer blades. “In 1969 we started developing blades for tractors. They were very successful and we ended up producing them for John Deere on an OEM basis. We made thousands of blades for Deere over 16 years, and Deere’s main blade competition was our own Degelman-branded blade. That really grew the company,” Jack said.

The complexity of the manufacturing processes kept pace with the increasingly complicated and diverse product mix. As an example, Jack said, the number of models of dozer blades used to be limited because tractor designs had some longevity. “Now, it’s like cars. The tractor manufacturers are introducing new models every year, so our research and development team has to be on top of the changes and constantly design different blades. Even mounting a blade on a tractor has gotten more complicated. The suspension systems make it more difficult to attach the blade. And customers have also gotten more demanding. They want more height or more angle or more lifting power.”

Degelman’s web page helps dozer blade customers determine exactly what they need with its 56-page “Build a Blade” section that spells out blade options by tractor manufacturer.

Flails Rock Bypass System

Flails on the heavy-duty RBS (Rock Bypass System) manure spreaders collapse when they hit a stone.

Proven Designs

New-product development is driven by the industry, by listening to the farmer. “My dad being a farmer and teaching his children how to farm helps. You have to speak the language, listen, and be on top of your game. Farming is a high-tech business now. When you’re talking to a farmer, you are talking to a very educated person,” Jack said.

Once the company decides that a new implement fits with its product family and manufacturing capabilities, the designing and prototyping are handled in-house. All designs are put through finite element analysis (FEA) to identify stress points or potential break areas. Any weak points are beefed up with more steel.

Prototype testing begins on the Degelman family farm. Jack said, “We put new products through the farmer test beginning on our own farm and moving to a Degelman user’s farm. He works the equipment as hard as he can for a year while we monitor results, further develop, and fine-tune the implement based on the experience.”

A pilot run of 10 is produced and made available for sale. If all is well, full production kicks in shortly after.

The next company expansion is across the border. By the end of November, Degelman will have opened its new 27,000+-sq.-ft. distribution and assembly plant in Hillsboro, N.D. “We’re breaking ground in the Corn Belt with our new Pro-Till® highspeed disc and we’re excited about that. For now we’ll be doing parts, service, distribution, and assembly there, but we’re doing it right. We’ll have everything we need for future growth,” said Jack.

Just over half of sales are domestic. About 40 percent are in the U.S., and about 5 percent of implements are shipped to Russia, Kazakhstan, and Ukraine. Recent unrest has slowed sales into the European market, but they are expected to pick up when the political climate calms.

Quality Control

Degelman considers itself a selfcontained unit. Processes from plate cutting to bending to machining to hydraulics to finishing are done by about 250 employees with shifts running virtually 24/7. Even so, the company is past capacity and outsources to four fabricators to keep the orders flowing.

Blair Flavel, general manager, said, “We are absolutely over capacity, which is a great problem to have, but it is still a problem. We have technicians visiting outsourcing companies all the time to make sure all is up to our standards. The people we have partnered with have learned what Degelman’s expectations are.”

Dozer blade

A dozer blade, one of Degelman’s 7900 series, is the largest of the bulldozer blade family.

One closely monitored goal is to put repair parts in any North American customer’s hands in three days. Common wear parts are stocked at the plant or a distribution center, but when an order for an unusual part or a 20-year-old part comes in, the drawing is pulled and the order is shoe-horned into the manufacturing flow.

Advanced Technologies

The landscape of the plant has changed along with the product mix. As the products evolved, so did the manufacturing processes.

Operations Manager Justin Kleckner explained, “In the 1970s and 1980s we had about 350 employees working with cutting torches, ironworkers, and shears. Now we have two Whitney 4400 MAX punch/plasma combinations and a Messer 400- amp high-definition cutting table producing components from steel up to 3 in. thick, and three CNC saws. Two of our three press brakes are CNC, and one of them is 26 ft. by 1,100 tons, one of the largest in western Canada. Then we have a full suite of CNC machining equipment, four lathes, two mills, two paint lines, and numerous welding cells that include three robotic welding systems. We’re definitely a technologically advanced factory.

“The only thing we don’t do inhouse is really large machining, and lately we’ve been outsourcing parts from material thinner than 3⁄16 in. for laser cutting.”

The shop has morphed from producing 1,000 rock pickers at a time to a high-mix, low-volume production. It has become lean. A typical run for a piece of farm equipment is 10. Dozer blades are scheduled using a min/ max system and usually go through in batches numbering between four and eight.

Even though batches of like parts are very small, robotic welding capabilities were tripled this year. Two new Lincoln robotic welders joined one that has been working on Degelman equipment for 17 years. Purchased to open capacity, the new welding systems offer essentially the same capabilities. One is set up for large frame work and the other for small piece work.

Jack said, "Building one dozer blade today is like building five blades before. The welding is complicated. A little pivot frame used to be nothing to build and required 45 minutes of welding. Now there can be 14 hours of manual welding on a huge pivot frame.” Moving to a robotic weld system with two independently programmed torches reduced the time to complete a complex frame from five hours down to 90 minutes.

Finishing is another area gaining new equipment. Large weldments receive their two-part urethane finish on one of the paint lines. The second line, used for the smaller components and subassemblies, is being outfitted with a halogen convection oven, a green alternative to the batch convection oven.

It’s one of the lean and green company initiatives. Kleckner explained, “It utilizes halogen elements. The temperature of the part is being measured, not the ambient temperature of the air. Mirrors on the wall reflect the heat to the part so there is no energy expelled outside of the part being processed.”

torsional spring bar

The torsional spring bar design of the Strawmaster® allows the application of downward pressure from zero to 1,900 lbs. per harrow section. Tines are tungsten carbide-tipped.

Investing in state-of-the-art equipment is an ongoing focus along with investing in the people.

“You can fill your building with expensive, fancy equipment, but if you don’t have the staff with the knowledge to back it up, that equipment will sit idle,” said Kleckner. “Everybody has an opportunity to grow with the company.”

That growth comes in technical training to operate the advanced equipment and in lean practices. The current goal is to complete three kaizen events a month in different areas of the company. They may focus on process improvements or the implementation of a 5S project. Every employee is trained in the continuous improvement process. Every employee and partner also focuses on the company’s core values of delivering the best product at a reasonable price with unfailing support.

“We set ourselves apart from the competition by building an extremely robust, quality piece of equipment. Our customers know what we stand for and the service that comes with our products,” said Kleckner. “When people call in for service, they talk to a person. Dealers talk to a person to place an order to make sure the customer is getting the right product. We could easily go to an automated system, but the personal touch is part of who we are.”

www.degelman.com