Dawson Doors, Making a grand entrance

Manufacturing in Action, Source : The Manufacturer US

Custom architectural entrance manufacturer Dawson Doors remains focused on quality and continuous improvement. Linda Seid Frembes talks to David Dawson to find out more

The name Dawson Doors may not ring a bell to the average consumer, but to those in the architectural and commercial industries, the company is well known for its top-quality products. In its 60 years of existence, the company has gathered an impressive roster of clients, including Tufts Dental School in Boston; the Marist College Library in Poughkeepsie, NY; the Paris Hotel in Las Vegas; the Detroit Institute of Art in Detroit; and the Ford World Headquarters in nearby Dearborn, MI, as well as international projects in Asia and the Middle East.

The company began in 1945 when founders Axel Dawson and his son George discussed the possibility of forming an industrial and architectural metal fabrication business. One year later, Dawson Doors and sister company Dawson Metal opened their doors in Jamestown, NY. In 1954 operations moved to a larger complex to accommodate increased demand for their quality products.

Decades of growth and several expansions later, Dawson Doors manufactures from a 100,000-square-foot facility with 110 employees. Today it produces custom stainless steel entrances, custom bronze entrances, and related products such as fixed frames, sidelites, and storefronts. The company is led by the third generation of Dawsons to enter the family business; David Dawson, current president and CEO, joined in 1980. “In the architectural entrance industry, we’re the top of the pyramid in terms of quality and uniqueness,” he explained. “We supply the ‘wow’ factor to the entrance of a building.”

All doors produced by Dawson are custom projects. The company works with architects who design the entrance or with the glass house working on the project. The company then engineers and manufactures the entrance system to design specifications. Materials used in production include high-end, bright metals such as stainless steel and brass, as well as other metals like aluminum.

Dawson Doors uses just-in-time delivery for materials to reduce inventory and costs. The software used to manage in-house operations is ProfitKey’s Rapid Response Manufacturing, a world class integrated manufacturing resource planning system. The MRP software enables both Dawson Metal and Dawson Doors to schedule resources, manage capacity, control jobs, manage costs, and deliver their products on time.

“We run a shared manufacturing floor with Dawson Metal, which serves over a dozen Fortune 500 companies. At any given time, we have 500 open jobs on the manufacturing floor, of which 15 jobs are in the architectural area,” said Dawson. The company’s production equipment includes two turret presses, a 4,000-watt industrial laser, and 12 press brakes with a maximum 400-ton capacity. With the addition of the Trumpf Trumatic L6030 4,000-watt laser, Dawson Doors more than doubled capacity for size and speed. In addition, Dawson’s L6030 is the largest industrial laser in the Northeastern US utilizing two interchangeable beds, each over 7 feet by 20 feet. It enables Dawson to cut stainless steel or bronze up to 1/2 inch thick while maintaining a 0.003-inch tolerance.

“After the CNC laser cut, bending, polishing, or finishing of the material, the door goes to the bench department,” said Dawson, “where bench mechanics take the hundreds of parts and assemble them into a working entrance system.” The company’s manufacturing specialties include short-run fabrication in all different materials, long-run fabrication and enclosures, prototype and design, paint, and final assembly. The final step is to fit the door and frame for a custom-built white pine and waferboard crate for shipping.

“A big driver for growth is our proprietary balanced hardware in the doors. There can be static pressure in a building that won’t allow the doors to open or close easily,” he added. “We have proprietary balanced hardware so you can open the door with as little as eight pounds of pressure.” Known as the elliptical arc operation of the Dawson Balanced Door, this design is also ADA compliant. And while other manufacturers produce one-piece cast arms and door pivots, Dawson Doors manufactures stainless steel and bronze castings to match the door material.

According to Dawson, the company’s continuous improvement initiative focuses on core segments of the business. Dawson Doors uses lean manufacturing techniques, and “all processes are fundamentally lean,” he explained. “We also have idea teams that brainstorm new ways to be more efficient and competitive in the market. There is a great deal of competition, so taking hours out of the operation is the best way.”

That can mean finding better ways to salvage material, learning to bend the metals better or to weld them better, faster and to look at the geometry of cutting. From the human resources perspective, finding efficiency also means investing in constant training and certification. The company is also innovating and will introduce a new product line at the American Institute of Architects (AIA) show this spring. The new line will include bronze and stainless steel sliding doors for high-end residential projects.

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