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Fox Valley Spring Company

Fox Valley Spring Expands with New Plant

GREENVILLE, Wis.--A recent expansion has added 28,000 square feet of manufacturing and office space to the headquarters of Fox Valley Spring, a Greenville, Wisconsin-based manufacturer of custom springs and wire forms. The new site, located adjacent to the original Fox Valley Spring facility in the Greenville Industrial Park, permits easy access to State Highway 96 and increases the company's total footprint to 53,000 square feet.

Fox Valley Spring Vice President of Sales and Marketing, Charly Klein, credited the company's aggressive sales strategy, hard work, and company-wide effort to make processes leaner for making the expansion possible. In the midst of a tough economy, the company boosted its sales budget and knocked on more doors in an effort to increase its market share, he said.

"When the economy took a downturn, instead of us holding back and drawing in, we actually expanded our sales calls and put our feet to the street," Klein said. "We made more calls than we ever did before, and I think that paid off. The last two years have been our best years. It definitely paid off, and the new expansion will help that cause."

As a direct result of these efforts, Fox Valley Spring has gained new customers while earning ISO 9001 certification and the 2009 Small Manufacturer of the Year Award from the Fox Cities Chamber of Commerce & Industry.

In addition to giving the company sufficient space to hire more employees and house equipment for an expanded product line, the new facility will make shipping and receiving operations more efficient, according to Klein.

"When we put the new addition on, we looked at how the material flows through the shop and out the back door, and we streamlined the operation so that the material flow works better than it did in the past. Instead of having cells, now everything flows in a line," he said. "Everything is streamlined. We've gone through the lean manufacturing and applied those principles to the new addition. Basically what we did was we doubled the shop and made everything more efficient."

Fox Valley Spring (www.foxvalleyspring.com) is ISO 9001:2008 and ITAR certified. The company manufactures a variety of compression, extension, and torsion springs, as well as wire forms, die springs, flat steel. Its equipment includes 14 CNC automated spring coilers, which enable the company to manufacture complex springs in one operation.