Top Shop Concentrates on Automating Processes for Automotive Plating

Successful companies have several characteristics in common, most of which branch from building a strong “family” culture. When employees feel appreciated, achievement is easier to attain for the entire organization.

It did not take long in the conversation with Wolverine Plating Corp. (Roseville, Michigan) to realize that its accomplishments are the result of good management and a staff that takes pride in its work. Product quality is priority, employee retention is high and leadership possesses a growth mindset. With these traits and others, this Products Finishing Top Shop’s success has occurred organically.

During a discussion with Tom Braciszewski, president; Ken Wrobel, vice president; Rich Sorensen, CFO; and Zack Keith, engineering and sales, I inquired about what it means for Wolverine Plating to become a Top Shop, what innovations the team is pursuing for organizational growth, auto industry trends it is experiencing, challenges it is facing and more.  

PF: Tell us a bit about Wolverine Plating’s background.

WP: Wolverine Plating is a bulk handling processor that runs 24 hours a day, five days a week at about 65% capacity (status as this article is being written). Our seven plating lines do not always run simultaneously, but could if business demands increase.

We’ve been ISO-17025 test-lab approved since the 1980s, and our quality system has been certified since then. All the products we use are approved by the automotive industry and are accredited and certified. 

Our niche is probably the fact that we can process a small quantity of parts or up to a full truckload or more. Our turnaround time is fast — three to five days, most of the time.

Our quality is very good; we put a lot into inspections where we meet all CQI-11 AIAG requirements.

We completed our last building expansion in 2022 and wish to continue expanding, if the opportunity presents itself.

We are an ESOP (employee stock ownership plan) company, so half the company is owned by the ESOP and the other half is owned privately. Our employees have a vested interest in the company’s performance.

PF: What makes Wolverine Plating unique compared to your competitors?

WP: The nice thing about having seven lines is that it gives us flexibility. So, if we’re running one line that’s busy and another line is not, then we can shift work from one line to the other and it is all the same process, chemicals, handling — everything. This enables us to process jobs that need to be turned around quickly.

We try not to promise something we can’t achieve. That’s always been one of our biggest philosophies along with telling the customer the truth. Our rate for customer rejects is less than 0.02%.

We think we’re competitively priced for what we do. The zinc market tends to be more competitive because it’s more of a commodity. But we have some big zinc customers. Zinc-nickel gives us a little bit more profitability, and there’s not as many zinc-nickel platers as there are zinc platers in our area.

PF: What do you think makes Wolverine Plating a Top Shop, and what are some new initiatives the company is working toward?

WP: We would say our dedication to quality, and when we make a promise, we keep it. In this business, we’re often the last service to touch the part before the customer receives it for further assembly. Metal finishing plating tends to be one of the final operations. Occasionally, our customer is delayed; we may get the part today, when they need it tomorrow. Our customer satisfaction is phenomenal. We care about what we do.

One of the things that I hear often from customers is that they’ll try other platers, and are not satisfied with them because of the quality of the appearance. When we process parts, they look good. Although we provide a functional finish, the part appearance is becoming increasingly more important.

Our commitment to capital investment is another reason I believe we are a Top Shop. We have a new line that is alkaline zinc-nickel and is integrated with a post-treatment robotic system as well as a continuous bake oven. With our building expansion — it was necessary to make room for the new line and then the line itself and all the components — we spent more than $10 million. This is an example of how we are committed to investing in the future.

We also continuously update our lines and look for ways to improve our processes. We try to automate as much as we can. We’ve got two robots in here that, 10 years ago, we would have never considered. We’re trying to figure out how we can automate other processes in our facility. Robots eliminate a lot of manual labor. We have people that repetitively do this job, and we run heavy parts. Robots are not integrated to replace people, per se, but the goal is to make people’s jobs easier.

PF: What trends are you seeing in the automotive industry?

WP: We find the electric vehicle (EV) mandate/push interesting in that it appears to be diminishing. We’ve seen in the last three to four months that automotive is starting to push back on their EV initiatives. For example, the [Ford F-150] Lightning plant where there has been a pause in vehicle production. And we hear about dealers who have EVs sitting in their lot, but they can’t move them. We do feel that there is a niche market for EVs, but it is maybe 20% of the population.

We’ll see what happens in 2025. I’m looking forward to a better year with a different direction for the ICE [internal combustion engine] vehicles and automotive getting back on track and building what they can sell — what the consumer wants. But pricing is much higher for a new vehicle than it was five years ago. I think automotive needs to have a clear-cut direction.

PF: What are some challenges Wolverine Plating is facing, and how are you overcoming them?

WP: We spend much more on our products and our chemicals and the upcoming tariffs being discussed could result in further increases. That will make things worse for us. Because of that, we must constantly keep a pulse on what these costs are — we must constantly reexamine them because they are continuing to increase. Our other raw material costs, too; we buy zinc and we buy nickel, which are also increasing. Our overhead costs have increased since 2020, and our wages have increased for our employees; we spend much more on our employees. Our starting rate has increased. Insurance costs and shipping costs have gone up.

We don’t want to raise prices every year for our customers, but we must look at that. We do a review annually of old pricing, and sometimes a part doesn’t change for 10 to 15 years. We might be working on the same costs have ince part number for a customer for multiple years, and it’s quoted. The cost of processing that part has gone up, but what we get paid to do hasn’t always changed. So, we are more diligent with doing that now and must continue to do it.

PF: What’s your vision of Wolverine Plating’s future?

WP: We’ve built as much as we can on the property that we own. If someone is willing to sell us a piece of property next door to us or abutting us, we will consider that for further expansion.

We also want more automation or automatically processed parts to meet some of the automotive requirements we are working on. One of our lines is older, so we are in the process of getting that updated. There’s not enough room sometimes to integrate a robot because it takes a big footprint. You might not be able to automate with a robot, but you might be able to do it with some kind of automated basket hoist system. We’re looking at those.

We have a pollution control system, waste treatment system and we’ve also installed a reverse osmosis (RO) water saving system, so we are starting to recycle a fair amount of our water. Right now, probably 50-60% of the water that we use is being recycled, and we use a lot of water here in our process. We committed to purchasing a new RO system that should hopefully save us about 80% of our water that should be up and running by the second quarter of 2025. So, we’re trying to do things for the environment as well, but also for the bottom line.