ALL IN THE FAMILY
MANUFACTURING PROJECT MANAGER ROB WATERS AND PRESIDENT DAVE WATERS, PURITAN MANUFACTURING
Heavy Metal PURITAN MANUFACTURING COMBINES CRAFTSMANSHIP AND TECHNOLOGY Time was when companies like Puritan Manufacturing jostled for space and market share in Omaha — family-owned, independent shops where trades and craftsmanship were handed down one generation to the next. The passage of time and the changing manufacturing landscape shuttered many of those places while those that survived, like Puritan, look very different than they once did. “Things changed in the ‘70s and from there [technology] took off like a rocket,” said Dave Waters, company president. “At one time, we had 88 employees back in the early ‘80s. With that, we almost had more problems than solutions because of the inability to control variables. So, we started investing in equipment pretty heavily and buying new equipment. We started leapfrogging with the technology and have been trying to keep up with it ever since. We’re now in a technological age where we have machines that we can run unattended on the weekend. So, it’s quite different from what it used to be, for sure.”
Strengthening legacy Waters and his brother Bill have seen much of this change up close, having been involved with the business for multiple decades, ultimately taking over
for their father Joe who acquired the company in the 1960s. Over the years the brothers strengthened Puritan’s legacy industries such as custom fabrication, food processing equipment and storage tanks while expanding to include component manufacturing, ornamental metal work and laser cutting. “That’s one thing about our background and our history is that we’ve been diversified over the years,” Waters said. “We’ve always been kind of jumping markets based on demand. With that, the equipment that we purchase also kind of falls into place with that footprint. “For instance, we have a CNC drill that drills 60-foot-long beams, four feet tall and it’ll drill hundreds of holes in very little time. But it’s also adaptable to other types of projects.” The company’s latest investment employs that philosophy to the fullest: a German-made laser that can handle a dizzying number of projects at surprising speed. “Our latest investment is one of the largest pieces of equipment we’ve ever bought,” Waters said. “We had CO2 laser capability before, but we went to the sixkilowatt fiber laser, and it has automation. Basically, it loads and unloads itself and it
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