Project Highlight
What initially took 8 people and 8 hours to produce was achieved through automated rollforming with just 1 person and 2 hours.
Industry
Building & Construction | Residential Building Components
Customer Challenge
A leading manufacturer in the building and construction industry specializes in producing window wells—an essential safety component installed outside basement egress windows in residential buildings across North America.
Window wells provide a critical emergency escape route by creating a safe passageway from basement living spaces to the exterior of a home. Due to their importance in residential safety, these products must meet stringent requirements for strength, durability, and consistent quality.
Prior to partnering with Samco, the customer’s manufacturing process involved multiple manual fabrication steps. Production was highly labour intensive and required significant operator involvement throughout the process.
The existing workflow included:
- Manually cutting steel coils to required lengths.
- Hand punching holes at precise intervals.
- Forming and corrugating the material to achieve the required window well profile.
- Performing multiple handling and fabrication steps before the finished product was completed.
This approach created several challenges, including:
- Longer production cycle times.
- Higher labour requirements.
- Increased material handling.
- Greater dependency on operator accuracy.
- Limited production scalability.
The customer needed a solution that would improve efficiency, increase production capacity, and create a more consistent manufacturing process.
Our Solution
Samco worked closely with the customer to transform their manufacturing operation from a multi-step manual fabrication process into a fully automated coil-to-finished-product window well roll forming line.
Through a collaborative engineering approach, Samco gradually automated each stage of the production process, integrating multiple operations into a single continuous manufacturing solution.
The automated roll forming line included:
- Coil handling and material feeding system.
- Automated material processing directly from coil.
- Precision punching system to create consistent hole patterns.
- Roll forming and corrugation process to achieve the required window well profile.
- Integrated cutting system for accurate finished lengths.
- Streamlined product handling for improved workflow efficiency.
By combining automation, precision engineering, and advanced roll forming technology, Samco delivered a complete manufacturing solution that enabled the customer to produce finished window wells faster, more efficiently, and with consistent quality.
Results
The implementation of the automated window well roll forming line delivered significant improvements across the customer’s manufacturing operations.
Key Benefits
- Transformed production from a labour-intensive process into an automated coil-to-product solution.
- Reduced manual handling and operator dependency.
- Increased production speed and overall manufacturing capacity.
- Improved dimensional accuracy and product consistency.
- Reduced production complexity by integrating multiple fabrication steps into one continuous process.
- Created a scalable manufacturing platform to support future growth.
Customer Value
Through close collaboration and continuous process improvement, Samco helped the customer modernize their manufacturing operations and improve the way window wells are produced.
The automated roll forming solution provided a reliable, efficient, and repeatable production process—allowing the customer to manufacture a critical residential safety component with greater speed, precision, and confidence.
This project demonstrates Samco’s expertise in developing customized roll forming solutions that help manufacturers move from traditional fabrication methods to highly efficient automated production systems.
Project Evolution: A Four-Phase Automation Journey
This project was successfully completed over four strategic phases, with each phase building on the previous one to create a scalable and future-ready manufacturing platform.
Phase 1 – 2008: Roll Forming End Curling
- Automated the end curling process using roll forming technology.
Phase 2 – 2014: Automatic Blank Feeding, Punching & Corrugation
- Introduced automatic blank feeding.
- Integrated punching and corrugation into the production line.
- Continued roll forming for end curling.
Phase 3 – 2017: Complete Window Well Profile Formation
- Achieved the full window well profile through an automated bending system.
Phase 4 – 2020: Direct Coil Feeding
- Replaced blank feeding with direct coil feeding, creating a fully integrated and highly efficient production process.
Each phase was developed with a long-term vision, ensuring seamless integration into the next stage while creating a scalable manufacturing platform capable of supporting future growth and increasing production demands.
