Hynes Industries partnered with a warehouse automation company, which creates robotic systems around storing, retrieving and moving inventory to reduce labor costs. The company offers autonomous mobile robots, modular structures, palletizing solutions and software that work together as an automated system.

At Hynes Industries, we are very proud of the clients that we’re fortunate enough to call partners. Here’s a quick story to highlight how valuable that partnership is throughout the design and manufacturing process:

As sections become more complex and the cost of tooling continues to escalate, it is more critical than ever for engineers to make sure the designs they come up with for a product work as expected prior to a major investment in tooling. Even designs created with the best computer programs, FEA’s, and computer models are not always right. With an investment of tens of thousands of dollars in tooling needed to make some of the sections, companies need to be certain all aspects of design, fit, form, and function work for that product.

A leader in aluminum extruded roof mounted systems approached Hynes Industries with a new design for both a steel roof mount and steel ground mount system. Along with the steel structures, this company also needed to develop all-new steel clips, clamps, fasteners, tubes, and other assembly items that would now all be made from steel instead of aluminum. Although their engineers were experts in aluminum parts, they were not as well versed on the steel side.

Chamberlain has been giving garage doors a lift for 35 years. The company sells its garage door opening devices to some of the country’s top retailers: Sears®, Lowes®, Home Depot®, Menards®, you name it.

You’ve seen them in stores. And you’ve watched their infomercials. Yes, the Little Giant® brand has been a household name for more than 30 years. In fact, Little Giant ladders are now one of America’s best-selling ladders thanks to their safety, stability, and versatility.

A Great Ladder Needed to Reinvent Itself

Although the Little Giant had been a favorite for three decades, it did have a few issues.

• First, because its designers gave it the most-robust performance characteristics possible, the ladder was simply too heavy for some customers.
• Second, the last of the patents protecting their standard multi-use ladders expired in the early 2000s. Soon thereafter, the market was flooded with cheap imitations from both the United States and outside the country.

Goal: lighten up.

The company’s first goal was to cut the ladder’s weight by a full 20 percent, yet still maintain the strength and quality that Little Giants are known for.

Goal: step it up.

Little Giant needed another breakthrough. It had to be a revolutionary product that was so unique it couldn’t be knocked off – a ladder that would provide as much protection as possible from competitors.

Hynes Industries approached one of the leading producers of solar panels and mounting systems in the United States and around the world. For years, the company had been producing a mounting system that required three different-sized weld nuts or rivet nuts placed in the 20-foot-long parts. These are expensive and time consuming to put in -- especially on such long sections.

Leading maker of roof mount solar systems had four issues. 

First, it was having its light-gauge mounting systems fabricated by small fabricators who were accustomed to low-volume quantities. 

Solar power is hot. But how do you bring down the sky-high cost of solar energy? With solar panels getting cheaper, the new cost-reduction drive is to achieve substantial reductions in the cost of mounting these solar systems.