Fathom HQ Facility Tour

Transcript - Fathom HQ Facility Tour

Transcript – Fathom HQ Facility Tour

Hey everyone, it’s Jake Hall, the Manufacturing Millennial. When it comes to manufacturing and the growth that we want to see in the industry, it’s all about people, it’s about processes, and it’s about the equipment that’s going to be moving the industry forward. I’m here in Wisconsin at Fathom to learn about their manufacturing capabilities that’s helping contract manufacturing and assembly move your company and organization forward. We all know that labor shortage right now is a big thing. Losing skills across the industry and how do we keep moving our solutions forward is critical. So join me as we walk this manufacturing floor to learn about their people, the process and equipment they have, and most importantly, how they can make products for you that get shipped to your door. Come along.

Rush, how are you doing, sir?

Hey, Jake. Great to see you.

Thanks so much for having me. Well, I’m here with Rush Liselle. He’s the CEO here at Fathom here in Heartland, Wisconsin. Man, it’s great to be here today.

We’re excited.

I can’t wait to take you out back, Jake, and introduce you to what we do here at Fathom and the wonderful people we have out back.

You ready to go?

Love it. Let’s get started.

Alright. Let’s go.

So, Jake, we’re here at our headquarters.

This is our our Hartland site.

It’s one of seven facilities we have across the United States. And I think what you’re gonna find today and what your viewers are gonna appreciate is we’re not just a print and ship house. Yeah. You’re gonna meet some folks today, and, really, what we’re doing is we’re trying to satisfy the hardest challenges that our partners might have to bring to us. And we have over thirty five capabilities, and I couldn’t be more excited for you to spend some time with mister Rosbach and to balance the team today.

Man, I really appreciate it. A hundred and twenty different pieces of equipment that we’re gonna walk through today.

Yes, sir.

It’s gonna be a lot of fun. Rush, really appreciate your time today.

Absolutely.

Meeting you and looking forward to getting this tour.

Thank you.

Hey, Jake. It’s great to meet you. I’m Michael Rosblach, general manager here on-site. Great to meet you too. Alright. Let’s go for a walk around the floor. Awesome.

What we’ve got here today to show off is a hundred and twenty thousand square feet of manufacturing space, ninety of it dedicated just to manufacturing. I’ve got a hundred and twenty five production machines here on-site, seventy of them dedicated to polymer and metal production additive.

Man, you guys have a wide variety of equipment. What are some of the different industries that you’re touching when it comes to both handling the additive and, you know, metal manufacturing part?

Yeah. So we are ITAR and ASI one hundred certified. So we’re handling everything from aerospace and department of defense all the way to robotics, automotive, off road vehicles, and just about everything in between.

Man, this is a lot of fun equipment. What else do we have on the tour for today?

Yeah. So the next stop is gonna be our CNC department.

Alright, Jake. Now we’re going from additive into subtractive. On this side of the plant, I’ve got about forty pieces of CNC equipment, everything from horizontals, three axis, five axis, large format, and some other things in between here and there. And, basically, I’ve got one of everything to solve some of the toughest problems in the world, which is that’s what gets me up every day.

You know, and I think it’s really cool, the wide variety of different applications that you’re seeing. It could be medical. It could be places with ITAR, with defense contracting. It could be drones. You guys are really touching all different aspects of what companies need when they need parts manufactured.

Yeah. Absolutely. And, the fun part is I’ve got a whole team of project engineers with over a hundred years experience combined over there. They’re out they’re here on-site.

They’re working with the guys who actually make the parts out here, working together to solve problems, and that’s what we call white glove service.

Absolutely. And and the one thing that I think when companies are seeing this video and they’re walking through, the sheer scale of different parts that are being manufactured. Right? Yeah. You you walk into a typical contract manufacturer, you might just see basic additive manufacturing, and they’re just making parts and parts over again.

You guys have paint booths now where it’s no longer just Yeah.

You’re making parts.

You guys are doing the quality, the finishing Yeah.

The assembly going right into this whole, you know, ship product of finished goods. Yeah. Exactly.

And that’s that’s one of the big things that we do here is we’re not just making parts. We’re making products. Right? We take we’re taking things all the way from the three printers or the CNCs or the fiberglassing booths, and we’re running all all the way through.

We’re finishing. We’re sanding. We’re painting. We’re doing in a stall of inserts and everything in between, then running it through a quality lab to make sure that’s gonna fit on that customer part when it gets to their dock door.

And I think it’s a great balance of using a lot of automated equipment, but you have people here right now who are who are manually sanding processes by hand Yeah. To give it really that quality finish that I think you guys wanna see.

Yeah. So this is our EDM department, and this is where we take our customers when they want extremely precise tolerances all the way down to micron manufacturing levels. So we’ve got a handful of wire EDM machines, hole poppers, and sinkers as well.

Well, I’m out here with Mike Clark. He’s the director of commercial operations. Mike, great to meet you.

Yep. You too, Jake.

You know, it’s amazing walking the manufacturing floor right now and seeing all the different types of manufacturing equipment that you have from additives, subtractive manufacturing. When companies approach you and you might not have the capability in house or across one of your seven different facilities here in United States, what’s that next step to make sure that Fathom is helping those companies find the right parts?

Yeah, Jake. So excited to talk to you today about Fathom Edgeworks, a program we have that really expands our capacities and our technologies here at Fathom. So if we don’t have a technology that we offer here in house, we can pair that technology with a fully vetted globally partner network and help place that customer order within that network and maintain the same deliverables for our customers.

Absolutely. When I look at this, it’s all about reducing risk. Right? There’s a lot of unknowns that are happening right now in the supply chain. There’s a lot of unknowns when it comes to tariffs and how that’s gonna affect production and people getting the parts when they need it with the cost that they’re looking for. How does Fathom help reduce that risk through that program?

Global uncertainty is the name of the game these days Yeah. Right, within global manufacturing. And Fathom Edgeworks is built around that resiliency. Supplier diversification is top of mind for a lot of our customers, and Fathom provides that for them.

Yeah. Okay? So we provide US based customer support and engineering support across a globally vetted network that spans multiple regions. Yeah.

So we’re already diversified. Okay? But one thing that we do that in particularly helps and it provides an advantage to our customers is providing all of the inbound logistics and visibility up front. And what you get with Fathom Edgeworks is a fully landed cost up front.

No surprises. And you’re also then managing the quality right back here in house as well.

You guys have a lot of equipment that’s making sure that the products that are being manufactured wherever they’re being made keeps up with that Fathom standard that you guys have.

Absolutely. So in the end, when you choose to go with Fathom Edgeworks, you not only get the cost efficiencies, the US based support, you also get the US based quality that Fathom prides ourselves on. Mike, thanks so much for your time. Alright, Jake. Pleasure.

I’m now here with Caprice Perez. He’s the chief human resource officer here at Fathom. You know, the one thing that I really enjoyed on this tour was seeing all the manufacturing processes, the different equipment that you’re using. But what was really important is the people. Yeah. The people is what’s making the difference here at Fathom. Why do why why do people matter so much to you as a company?

Well, you know, despite all the great technology, none of it works about the people here.

Yeah.

Okay? We have, in this building alone, so many experienced, tenured machinists, craftspeople, engineering, and that’s true for all of our sites across the entire Fathom platform.

Yes. And so when you look at raising these people, tell us about how are you engaged in the community? How are you taking a person who might start off as a basic finisher and elevate them into a leadership and a skilled position?

Yeah. It starts with building those relationships of local schools. So each of our sites, we have connections at the high technical schools, right? We bring people in for internships in the summertime, or if they’re able to work part time for us as they are going to school, right? And then for those people that are in high school, right, not really sure what they want to do, we bring them here. We bring them on a tour. We show them what manufacturing is all about and how you can have a fantastic career doing just this, what you see today.

And that’s what’s so exciting. Kids from high school can walk on the floor, and they can see all the different industries Yeah. That Fathom is manufacturing components for. And then all of a sudden, manufacturing feels a lot closer to that when they realize, oh, that’s a part to a drone I might fly. That’s something where it might I see in a hospital or or other things. It it it creates that connection that gets people excited about manufacturing, and that’s what you do with the people here.

Absolutely. You know, sometimes you’re working in a machine, you’re working on this very small piece. Connecting that very small piece to the end product, to the customer, to the end user Yeah. Is what generates that excitement.

Awesome. Well, Caprice, thanks so much for your time. I really enjoyed learning about what here is happening at Fathom. And, of course, if you wanna learn more about Fathom as an organization, I’ll have some more information down below talking about their products as their services, and more importantly, continue to highlight the people that make manufacturing great. We’ll see you guys again.