Issue link: http://www.insightdigital.biz/i/563465
Springing into the foam industry N eed is what led C3 into the foam industry. A foam mattress industry leader had a laminating problem. A contact from the laminating industry approached Van De Hey and said, "'You know, Joe, this might be a good one for you,'" he says. "I came back a month later and said, 'is is the way I would do it.' I laid out the room, had pictures of everything, I had all these models, and he bought it on the spot. at was my first foam project." e project involved fully automating a laminating line, gluing together a four- layer mattress every 30 seconds. ere are only two of these machines in the entire world, says Mark DesJardin, business development and marketing coordinator. "It put us on the map in the foam world." at was in 2004. C3 later found its way into the automotive industry in much the same way, through a sales team member who worked with Marinette's KS Kolbenschmidt, which needed a pick-and-place machine. At any given time, C3 might have nine or 10 or 17 projects underway on the floor. One of them is a new gantry system that will help bi-directionally pick and place heavy blocks of foam. "You can't find anything like this on the market — it's the first of its kind," Van De Hey says. "Hopefully, we'll sell 10 of them in the next year." C3's Smart Identity System, also launched in 2014, operates through a web-based application, letting workers create streamlined, accurate labels that vastly improve the marking system on a manufacturing floor. It's a relatively small investment for a company — the labeler might cost $20,000 or so. But "dumb labelers" sometimes have a high failure rate, causing a delay that affects millions of dollars' worth of products, Van De Hey says. "is is a product that I can put in any industry, so we're not industry- dependent," Van De Hey says. "So it could be in cheese. It could be in tissue, it could be in bedding — it could be whatever. Everybody needs a label." Growth and evolution C 3 started in an office at the corner of Ballard Road and Highway OO, near its client Appleton Papers (now Appvion). Later it moved to Lynndale Drive and in 2005 it moved to its current location in the Appleton North business park along Interstate 41. Its offices are bright, decorated with colorful murals and accented with leover machine parts — another innovation of Van De Idea Team c o n t i n u e d "We thought it was probably the most innovative way to package a mattress. Our Internet bedding business continues to grow, and we decided it would be a good addition to our existing equipment." — Darrell Nance of Pacific Urethanes in Ontario, Calif., whose company uses C3's foam compression machine 26 | I NSIGH T • S e p t e m b e r 2 0 15 w w w . i n s i g h t o n b u s i n e s s . c o m