Looking at the 12,000-square-foot assembly area of AssemTech Inc. busy with 20 full-time harness assemblers, it is hard to imagine the company’s early days back in 1986—when founder Chuck Hall and various family members assembled harnesses in his garage.
"At the time, I worked in the controls division for AJ Antunes and much of my job involved assembling wire harnesses,” says Hall, president of AssemTech Inc. “The company needed someone to assemble lots of power cable harnesses. I offered to do it for the company after hours. So at night and on the weekends, me, my wife and kids would assemble the power cable harnesses in my garage.”
Hall and his family did this for 5 years while he still worked for AJ Antunes. Over time, they built up their production rate to 500 harnesses per week. In 1991, Hall decided to leave his employer of 10 years and make AssemTech a full-time business. However, the company continues to do work for AJ Antunes.
After leaving the family garage, AssemTech was based out of an empty house for awhile before leasing a unit in an industrial complex in West Chicago, IL, in 1992.
“Initially, we hired three full-time people to do assembly,” says Hall. “My mom supervised production, while my dad made fixtures and also did assembly.”
Company growth has been steady the past 20 years or so. AssemTech incorporated in 1996, established a working partnership with Unicom in China in 2002, purchased the assets of Crest Engineering & Machining in 2006 and opened a sales office in Houston in 2009.
All four of Hall’s children still work for AssemTech. Bonnie runs the Houston sales office. Brannon is operations manager. Michael handles product delivery, and Brianna works at the office periodically as needed.
GREAT TIMES
Business is booming at AssemTech. The company had its best year ever in 2010—producing more than 600,000 wire harnesses—but will surpass that amount by 33 percent to 35 percent in 2011.
Despite these impressive numbers, wire-harness assembly only accounts for about a third of AssemTech’s business. The company also assembles thousands of cable harnesses and lead sets. Other services include harness design and engineering, PCB assembly, custom molding and overmolding, and ultrasonic welding.
AssemTech’s wire harnesses are used nationwide by more than 100 customers serving many industries. About 30 percent of the harnesses are used by manufacturers in the electric power industry. Half of the harnesses are used by manufacturers of industrial machinery and commercial products. ITW Paslode, for example, purchased 140,000 harnesses from AssemTech last year.
AssemTech has nearly doubled its workforce during the past five years. Currently, the company has 39 full-time and three part-time employees. Besides the 20 assemblers, the company has several office workers, four quality control personnel, a quality assurance manager, three PCB assemblers and a wire department supervisor.
AssemTech leases a 15,000-square-foot facility, but Hall is hopeful the company will be able to move into a much larger building within two years. The goal, he says, is to double assembly space and hire many more assemblers.