Minnesota

Uponor North America was recently named to the Top Workplace USA 2022 list for companies with 500-999 employees. This award is based entirely on feedback from an employee engagement survey conducted by an independent, third-party research company, Energage, and celebrates companies that prioritize creating a people-centered culture and giving employees a voice. This honor marks the first time Uponor Read more

Uponor North America was recently named to the Top Workplace USA 2022 list for companies with 500-999 employees. This award is based entirely on feedback from an employee engagement survey conducted by an independent, third-party research company, Energage, and celebrates companies that prioritize creating a people-centered culture and giving employees a voice.

This honor marks the first time Uponor has been recognized as a Top Workplace in the U.S., and the eighth time the company has been recognized as a Top Workplace in the State of Minnesota since 2012.

The survey asked employees to rate Uponor on 15 drivers related to engaged work environment, company culture, leadership, and overall job satisfaction. Rankings for Top Workplaces lists are based on companies meeting criteria built upon more than 15 years of engagement survey data from over 70,000 global companies.

Habitat for Humanity, Northfield MN, VTO, 2021 VTO, 7 Blue Crew Members, 49 VTO hours, Worked on a single and multi-family home in Northfield, MN

“We are so humbled that our employees’ anonymous feedback resulted in Uponor being recognized as a top workplace in the U.S. We pride ourselves on having a very distinct employee-driven culture, and strongly believe that if we take care of our employees, they, in turn, will ensure positive experiences for our customers. The fact that we’ve been recognized by employees as a top workplace in our state, and now in the U.S., indicates we’re on the right track,” said John Reutter, interim president and vice president, Finance, Uponor North America.

Cherne Industries, part of the Oatey Co. family of brands, recently completed a historic move of its headquarters and manufacturing operations — its first in more than 60 years — to a newly constructed, 130,000-square-foot facility located in Shakopee, MN, situated 25 miles southwest of downtown Minneapolis. Opened in March, the manufacturing portion of the Read more

Cherne Industries, part of the Oatey Co. family of brands, recently completed a historic move of its headquarters and manufacturing operations — its first in more than 60 years — to a newly constructed, 130,000-square-foot facility located in Shakopee, MN, situated 25 miles southwest of downtown Minneapolis.

Opened in March, the manufacturing portion of the new, state-of-the-art headquarters was built to Cherne’s exacting specifications by the OPUS Group, as management sought to more fully integrate all its operations under one roof. Shakopee combines automated robotic manufacturing pneumatic pipe plugs, mechanical pipe plugs and testing equipment with a new research and development laboratory for product testing, extensive customer training facilities, and an in-house machine shop for making all the needed tooling on premises, rather than depending upon outside sources.

In addition, the new building contains ample storage space for raw materials and finished product, so that Cherne no longer relies on outside warehousing for storage and shipping. The resulting, more efficient material flows have already cut lead times and increased operating efficiencies since the move.

“Cherne has been growing at a double-digit pace for the past seven years,” says General Manager and seven-year company veteran David Biron, explaining why the former, 66,000-square-foot facility in nearby Edina was no longer suitable. “We had acquired some robotic equipment and other automation components in recent years, but as the business grew, we simply ran out of space.

“The R&D and testing operations demonstrate Cherne’s newly fortified capabilities as we maintain world class, industry-leading new-product development that provide the safest, most productive value-added solutions for our end users,” Biron continues. Cherne can now test its entire production on premises, instead of relying on outside facilities, as had sometimes been the case in the past.

“The old building did not offer a setting large enough — and therefore safe enough — to test larger plugs and testing equipment, which expand up to 120 inches,” says Biron. “No other plug maker can offer as comprehensive or as safe a testing facility as what we’ve built in Shakopee.”

Robotics = safer, longer-lasting plugs: The most impactful upgrade with the new Shakopee operation is the inclusion of a pair of automated robots for producing Cherne’s industry-first and industry-leading offering of pneumatic plugs. The robotic technology creates a mechanical bond to more securely join the plug’s aluminum end plate to its premium natural-rubber core.

The result is more precise and consistent fabrication, from plug to plug, minimizing field failures sometimes found with the manual, chemical-bonding connection process long used by other manufacturers. Cherne’s robotic-made plugs are a significant industry advancement, offering best-in-class safety, durability, and premium performance.

“No other North American manufacturer is building plugs with one robot, let alone two,” says Biron. “Other producers still assemble them by hand, as they have been for decades. This entire facility demonstrates the enduring strength of the Cherne brand and why a customer can be comfortable buying and installing plugs and related piping products from us.”

Rapid turnaround: Until this past March, every plug sold by Cherne over the past five decades and more had been made in the company’s former Edina facility, erected by founder Lloyd Cherne in 1970. (Oatey Co. bought Cherne in 1990.) So, it may seem surprising that the relocation to Shakopee required only seven days, as Biron reports, with the new plant successfully running 70 percent of the company’s catalog by the end of that first week.

Biron expects to employ 130 personnel, a gain of approximately 20 over Edina. Among the reasons Cherne chose to move to Shakopee was to tap its “wide cross-section of qualified workers” to fill the diversified roster of skilled technical positions needed to operate and maintain Cherne’s large, automated equipment at a high level.

“We drew it all up on a napkin two years ago,” recalls Biron, “and spent another 18 months meticulously planning the move down to the smallest detail. It was unbelievable how our team came together, and it could not have gone any more smoothly — even with all of our large pieces of equipment and despite the pandemic. In a year when everything seemed to go wrong, this move and its aftermath have gone exceptionally right.”

Some key partners that were critical to making the move go as well as it did were Cullinan Rigging and Erecting, OlympiaTech Electric, Voson Plumbing and Allen Mechanical. “Without their attention to detail and customer focus,” says Biron, “this move wouldn’t have been successful.”

To learn more about careers and opportunities available at Cherne Industries, visit oatey.com/careers.

Sometimes its fun to step back and see the whole process from start to finish. Here’s a time lapse video of the prep and install for the radiant in-floor heating at the #duluthbuild project in Northern Minnesota. I’ve been trying to document each step along the way for this project we are building for my Read more

Sometimes its fun to step back and see the whole process from start to finish. Here’s a time lapse video of the prep and install for the radiant in-floor heating at the #duluthbuild project in Northern Minnesota.

I’ve been trying to document each step along the way for this project we are building for my little sister and brother-in-law and I’m starting with the over 7K sq ft of radiant. If you’d like to follow along you can search the hashtag #duluthbuild on either Facebook or Instagram, doing so will show you all the posts from the project.

If social media isn’t your thing or you’d just rather stay put here on The Hub check out these recent videos:

What is permanent? What will be there in 100 years? 

Uponor Ecoflex pre-insulated job site install