HACTC STEM Students Visit Hypertherm

The students at the Hartford Area Career and Technical Center’s STEM program recently visited Hypertherm to learn about their manufacturing process. Not many people know quite what Hypertherm does or what it is. Hypertherm is a state-of-the-art facility designed to manufacture plasma cutters. There is high demand for plasma cutters with many car companies and other metalworking companies requiring a very efficient way to cut their material, and with that high demand there is a lot of production.

Hypertherm was designed from the ground up for efficiency. There is barely a lost second between stations when parts are being produced. Hypertherm achieved this efficiency not by fitting their assembly process to a building, but instead constructing the building around their manufacturing process, allowing seamless transitions throughout the entire building.

Touring the plant, we saw many places where they subtly hid ways to make the manufacturing process more efficient which you probably wouldn’t notice it unless they told you. One way was the office positions. All of the offices are against the wall and never go more than two cubicles deep. That way, when everyone leaves their office, they can go straight to where they need to be; the work floor. Another is the way the workers moved through the floor, always in straight lines, never needing to weave through machines or turn corners to get to where they are going.

Each part of the floor is dedicated to manufacturing exactly one part. For example, the part of the floor dedicated to making the cutting tip, only makes the cutting tip. There is never anyone from the another section crossing through the cutting tip section because anything another group could possibly need is always within twenty feet of their area.

The work area was also amazingly clean. For a manufacturing facility with countless lathes, drills, and punches, there was not a single metal shaving or drop of oil in a place that it shouldn’t be. The work floor closely resembled a hospital with its cleanliness, and the people looked very professional. The students that visited said that it would be an amazing place to work and quite a few of them wanted to apply as soon as they could. “The plant was amazing, and the people seemed so nice. It would definitely be one of the first places I would choose to work” senior Zach Moote told me.