Superior Crane manufactures overhead material handling systems including cranes and hoists for various-sized industrial users throughout the Midwest.

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Not every industrial manufacturer can say that they’ve become a fixture in their clients’ businesses. Fortunately for Waukesha, Wis.-based Superior Crane, evidence that the company’s product plays an essential role in its customers’ operations can be seen in many of their facilities.

Superior Crane manufactures overhead material handling systems including cranes and hoists for small, medium and large industrial users throughout the Midwest. Its clients include steel fabricators, machine shops, paper mills and manufacturing companies. In addition to designing, engineering and manufacturing the product, Superior installs, services and refurbishes its own brand of cranes, as well as all other brands of cranes and hoists.  

“My competitive advantage is that I’m multifaceted and I have a very strong sales force that is really knowledgeable and can sell the equipment,” CEO Andy Sharp says.

While the company’s sales force might help push product through the door, it is the quality of the cranes and hoists that keeps it there, Sharp maintains. In comparison to its competitors, Superior operates a medium size facility – roughly 80,000 square feet of manufacturing space – which Sharp says keeps it attentive to the job at hand and flexible enough to react quickly when change orders are made.

“Our customers range from a two-man machine shop to very large steel processing and handling companies,” Sharp says. “We can accommodate a wide range of possibilities when it comes to our industrial clients.

“The economy has been robust in the past three years,” Sharp notes. “I think there was a pent up demand for new equipment because people were afraid to spend money on capital earlier. Finally the dam burst and we’ve seen a lot of expansion from our customers who are looking to replace old equipment with new cranes.”

In the past two years, about 80 percent of Superior’s business has been in manufacturing new equipment while the remainder has been refurbishments.

To support increased demand, the company has added 10 people, including shop laborers, fabricators and engineers. “Even though I am fixed in terms of the square footage of the facility, the way that we can get production out faster is to add personnel to a second shift,” Sharp notes.

Exceeding the Standard
Sharp was part of the sales force for the company for seven years, until 1995, when he and two coworkers purchased the company when its owner was looking to exit the business. Founded in 1951 in Milwaukee, the original building was no longer conducive to production and, in 1998, Superior relocated to its current facility, nearly doubling in size.  

The move gave Superior the capability to expand its sales force, but according to Sharp, the trickle-down affect of moving to a larger facility was “that we had to add service techs to handle the additional business.” Adding people to the team allowed the company to expand into a greater geographic territory, and Superior added two regional offices in Minneapolis/St. Paul and Chicago.

In addition to its sales force, Superior has cultivated relationships with distributors throughout the continental United States. “Even though we don’t have a formal distributors program, it has to do more with the fact that people know about us,” Sharp says.  

No standard design exists for the cranes because the company regards each project as unique. “The complete fabrication and assembly of an overhead crane is different to some degree,” Sharp says. “These are not off-the-shelf items – everything is designed to fit the application.”

The sales team and client together analyze the requirements of the application to determine the best design of the crane or hoist. The team is supported by the production engineers who develop the shop drawings. The company designs and manufactures the cranes, including welded box girders. It also use vendor-supplied components such as hoists and motor controls. An advanced machine shop supports the manufacturing process and is outfitted with roughly 10 CNC machines and 30 other manual machines. Because the cranes are too large to store in Superior’s facility for long intervals, the company practices a form of just-in-time delivery, typically followed by installation. Upon delivery, the company also offers training opportunities through its service department for an additional fee.  

According to Sharp, the latest advances in the industry have been largely connected to electronics. “The product line does not change tremendously in that small to mid-range of business that we’re in,” he says. “The primary advancements that we have made have been in electrical controls, which we buy from a local company in Milwaukee, so essentially we are benefiting from their R&D efforts.”

The majority of the motors and lift hoists in the company’s cranes are built by Yale Lift Tech in Muskegon, Mich., and R&M Materials Handling based in Springfield, Ohio. The lifts are used in its monorail and bridge cranes.

Streamlining Production
Production Manager Jim Helman says creating centralized locations, or pods, on the production floor has helped quicken the assembly process. These production areas are broken down based on stages in the assembly process, including box girder assembly, welding and electrical installation.

Helman says the company recently completed a 115-foot, 100/25-ton double girder overhead crane for Kansas City Power and Light plant located in Weston, Mo. The crane will be used for the installation and maintenance of power generators at the plant.

In 2007, to better streamline production, Superior dedicated a portion of the floor in Waukesha and staff to producing cranes under a 50 feet span. Because the team is better able to focus on a consistent product, Helman says production time has decreased from 20 weeks to six weeks.

Staffed by three people, Helman says this focused production factory is able to work on two or three cranes per week. “I think Superior is a relatively easy place to work because our people know what needs to be done,”  he says. “If we have a schedule that coincides with what our customers want, we know our deadlines and we can hit our schedule. We empower people to be a part of the process of deciding what deadlines we can hit.”

A Dependable Supplier
Long-term clients such as Miamisburg, Ohio-based NewPage Corp., a coated paper manufacturer, depend on Superior’s products and service technicians.

Superior first became involved with NewPage’s Escanaba, Mich., location in 1989 when it installed eight, 25-ton overhead cranes in the facility’s paper coating division. According to NewPage Maintenance Supervisor Russ Ponzio, Superior has been key in helping the company maintain and upgrade its cranes.

Each overhead crane is in use 24/7 to transport paper rolls through the various stages of production. Although electrical upgrades are needed almost annually, the cranes and Superior components hold up well to the everyday wear and tear. When emergency maintenance is needed, Ponzio says Superior’s service technicians are never more than a call away and are available 24/7. “They are very dependable and they make a good product,” he says. “They’ll drive up within four or five hours of a call if we need them.”

Other value-added services performed by the company’s field technicians include operator training and training for crane and hoist maintenance, preventative maintenance examinations and OSHA inspections and equipment upgrades as it pertains to technology.

Despite the company’s hard-earned reputation as a quality supplier, Sharp says his biggest source of pride “starts with the personnel.” From sales and manufacturing to machining and fabrication, all 65 employees have contributed to the success of the company. “Our people come at the top of the list and below that come our vendors and our facility,” Sharp notes.