Thursday, June 25, 2009
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Good Morning.
Volume three of our newsletter focuses around valuable advances. Albert Einstein said, "The only source of knowledge is experience." By continually evolving our manufacturing processes, we are gaining knowledge that can help our customers today and bring trusted and proven new processes to the manufacturing environment for a sustainable future. 
In The News
 Nod from Across the Pond
Materials World Magazine, a publication through the Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining out of London, England, picked up our story about advancing manufacturing feasibility of fuel cells. The story was featured in their June 2009 edition, and showcased American Trim's current steps and our future goals. Material World gained comment from Dr. Dan Brett, Co-Director of The Centre for CO2 Technology at University College London, UK, "the speed of production and potential dimensional tolerance of the American Trim plates shows promise."
US Secretary of Commerce Visits American Trim
Secretary of Commerce Gary Locke held a town hall meeting at American Trim on Tuesday, June 2, 2009. The meeting gathered local businesses from the Lima area to hear how current federal recovery efforts could be used to benefit manufacturing in Ohio. He selected the American Trim location based on our use of the Manufacturing Extension Program to advance manufacturing technology and bring the hope of new jobs to the area.
Read more about Locke's visit and watch a video of the town hall meeting
HVMF Finds its Way into New Applications to Increase Precision and Drive Out Cost
In addition to the fabrication and joining of fuel cell bipolar plates, we are finding increased interest for HVMF in the areas of crimping, precision stamping and decorative stamping. And, with the potential to save money on equipment, floorspace and utilities, now is a good time to call us to learn about the possibilities within your organization.
Read more about HVMF
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Keep updated with recent news
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Contact Us
1005 West Grand Ave
Lima, OH 45801
phone: (419) 228-1145
web site:amtrim.com
email: Newsletter Questions
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Advanced Energy Developments Attract US Secretary of Commerce
In March 2007 the Ohio Department of Development (ODOD) granted the team of American Trim, General Motors, and The Ohio State University's Department of Materials Science and Engineering one million dollars to research and develop an economic way to manufacture fuel cells. A short two years later, fuel cell manufacturing was successfully demonstrated using High Velocity Metal Forming (HVMF) in our American Trim facility. The completion of this important project drew the attention of the US Secretary of Commerce Gary Locke to visit American Trim during his stop in Ohio's manufacturing region. President Obama had sent his administration to discuss the federal recovery efforts in the regions hit hardest by the recent failures of the automotive industry.
During Secretary Locke's visit to American Trim he toured the development center to see the advancements made in fuel cell production capabilities. "We were able to demonstrate, in real time, technology which will play an important role in enabling the Administration's alternative energy program as well as change the face of American manufacturing," commented Rick Pfeifer, American Trim's Vice President and Chief Technology Officer. "And, importantly for Ohio and American Trim, this technology will create jobs."
Locke remarked after his tour of the facility that, "This factory, American Trim is a great example of the Department of Commerce use of the Manufacturing Extension Program (MEP) to help private sector companies drive growth."
The mayor of Lima, David Berger, and Ohio Lieutenant Governor Lee Fisher were also on hand to support American Trim's accomplishments.
American Trim plans to continue fuel cell advancement by designing a process for joining the plates together thereby combining operations and reducing process cost. Fuel cell technology can help prevent oil consumption from skyrocketing in the next few decades and will reduce the United States dependency on foreign oil. American Trim's goal is to reduce the time to market for fuel cells from around 30 years to making it a reality within the next decade. View video of town meeting to hear US Secretary of Commerce's news for Ohio businesses |
Mexico Plant Celebrates 5th Anniversary
American Trim de Mexico was established in 2004 as a subsidiary of American Trim. The new location has since prospered and continued to grow during the last five years exemplifying superior quality standards and production capabilities. The facility is strategically located in Monterrey, Mexico, which provides an excellent workforce, competitive pricing, and access to the North American marketplace. While the operations were established to support our North American customer base, a significant portion of our associate base is bi-lingual which gives us the ability to work effectively with both English and Spanish-speaking clients.
Recent improvements include:
- Flexible Fabrication
- American Trim recently installed new flexible fabrication equipment at our facility in Monterrey, Mexico.
- This will allow for the production of a variety of low to mid volume components including value add processes such as weldments and assembly to drive total cost improvement.
- Contact us today to learn more about this new capability.
- Coordinate Measuring Machine (CMM) installed
- A CMM was recently installed with the purpose of performing precise, consistent measurements on our customer's parts. The CMM not only has the typical probe available, but it also has a vision system for non-contact measurements on parts too small and difficult to measure. This will allow for tight tolerances to customer specifications.
Visit our American Trim de Mexico site for more information
Design News
American Trim welcomes Julie Gonzalez to our sales department as a representative for automotive decorative metal for interior trim. Julie's background is in automotive engineering; even her first job was centered on automobiles as an engineering co-op at General Motors. She has been working closely with the automotive industry for over 25 years developing a good relationship with automobile companies and suppliers from all over Europe and North America.
We met Julie at the SEMA show in November of 2008 when she discovered our showcased capabilities on the Lincoln MKS. Julie commented that, "OEMs I've worked with have said American Trim is doing things other suppliers were not." Julie has explored our over 700 unique decorated metal designs and believes they are a good fit for the interior trim trends she is seeing today.
See new decorative metal trends
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