THE FIRST 20 YEARS

 

As Omega celebrates 20 years in business we pause to reflect on the many services we have been privileged to provide our customers, and the important milestones along the way.

One characteristic stands out in my mind as our guiding principle, that we had a commitment to provide Service with Integrity.

Our early work focused on environmental services for Ford, Chrysler and GM for Paint Transfer Efficiency Testing. This was always a logistical challenge, and honed our skills for getting tricky work done on site. We had to develop a precision scale for measuring the few pounds of paint added to a 1,000 pound car body or truck. We noticed that many of the paint systems we were testing were not optimized for getting the maximum amount of paint on the job with a uniform film build. This was because the technology at that time did not allow all factors to be properly controlled. Testing showed that the spray booth environment, in particular the air movement, was a huge factor in getting a uniform film build in automatic paint zones.

After several years of research we developed a list of key operating parameters which we found most important for a precise paint job. We advocated for these to be monitored and controlled for consistent results. We started a service plan with several customers to monitor and adjust these key parameters for a robust painting system. We called it our Integrated Service Plan. This required a lot of manual data collection and interpretation so we then developed a computer based system which allowed us to dispense with the pencil and reduced the labor involved.

The computer based system became known as the Omega Airspecs system. When introduced in 1993 it became possible to manually fine tune the spray booth and oven system from a central control point and to see the results. This in turn led to some important operating cost savings for our customer, many of which were much more significant than we had suspected. We found that operating cost savings in paint, energy, cleaning and filters could pay for the controls in less than one year. One specific version of the Airspecs system even had an expert based computer program to provide the operator clues of possible problems and requiring maintenance.

Since the earliest days our customers have been looking for ways to minimize the energy consumption of their processes. To facilitate this work Omega developed a computer based energy use program which allowed modeling and optimization of a customer’s facilities. This tool helped Omega evaluate the most value added improvements for an existing customer facility as we could project the results in advance. Omega has now completed upwards of thirty energy saving projects for major manufacturers with an accumulated annual energy savings of more than $40 million dollars US at today’s fuel costs.

The need for finer and finer control led us to develop an instrument for monitoring the delicate air balance between booth zones, called the Omega Airstat. We manufactured these sensors for several years until a better instrument became available from a firm in England. We became the exclusive USA distributor for these devices known as the Airstat DX.

As the Airstat DX became accepted as the industry standard for measuring the delicate air movement in a spray booth we recognized the need for a portable unit capable of measuring air movement in two planes with data logging capability. This led to the development of the Omega Airstat PDA, which has been on the market since June 2004, and is used by many automotive manufacturers and their service companies.

Our company has always been focused on continual development and improvement of our customer’s processes. For this reason, Omega has had many development projects which were often lead by our younger engineers so they could gain experience. Many of these young engineers were part of our co-op engineering program with GMI and later Kettering University. Omega has graduated fourteen co-op engineers in mechanical, electrical, industrial and computer engineering.

We learned from our customers the importance of having an effective quality management system. We started with Total Quality Management in the early 1990’s and moved on to become ISO 9001:2000 Registered in July 2002. Our Quality Management system has helped Omega to produce consistent value added services for our customers over the years.

 Our mission statement sums up our attitude to business:

To provide paint system process improvement services through continual improvement of our Quality management System to enhance our customer’s satisfaction of services provided; on time, on budget, every time.