Enterprise Minnesota CEO visits Metal Services in BP

Mark O’Leary, president and CEO of Enterprise Minnesota, made a stop in Blooming Prairie Monday to learn about Metal Services of Blooming Prairie.

O’Leary, along with several Enterprise Minnesota staff members and Rep. Patricia Mueller, District 23B, were given a short tour of the facility by Metal Services CEO Kurt Schrom.

Metal Services is a metal fabricator specializing in custom fabrication, welding, and CNC machining for industries in a variety of industries including agriculture, manufacturing and industrial operations. They have services from design to production including laser/plasma cutting, pipe/tube bending and robotic welding.

Enterprise Minnesota is a non-profit business consulting organization helping small and medium-sized manufacturers in Minnesota grow profitably by improving operations, strategy and workforce. It is the state’s official Manufacturing Extension Partnership Center and helps businesses with continuous improvement, strategic growth planning, business management systems and talent and leadership development, said Robert Lodge, director of marketing, who also attended the tour.

Schrom is the vice chair of the Enterprise Minnesota Board of Directors.

O’Leary, who has been head of Enterprise Minnesota for four months, is visiting manufacturing sites throughout the state.

Schrom said that Metal Services began in 1984 as a farm equipment repair business. When the farm crisis hit, he said, the company reached out to other industries and has grown into one of the region’s most trusted metal fabricators, now employing 43 people.

Schrom said the company does not manufacture any products of their own but do manufacture the products that other companies need to make their products. He said they serve customers throughout the Midwest and have even done work for a company in Texas.

Working with Enterprise Minnesota, he said, Metal Services has developed a process that highlights people, quality, velocity and cost, Schrom said, that enables them to deliver on-time and with high-precision.

One of the areas Schrom showed the visitors was the robotic welding arm with a nine-foot radius, he said. A robotic welding arm, he said, does not reduce the need for human welders. The arm can do the basic welding, he said, and speed up the process to give the certified human welders more time to do the custom work. Another innovation that Metal Services is starting, Schrom said, is providing “kits” to their customers to make assembly easier. Instead of sending a pallet of each part, he said, they will consolidate components into pre-assembled kits, thereby simplifying operations and boosting efficiency.