Here’s what happens at Spudnik Equipment Company
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BLACKFOOT — Members of the Greater Blackfoot Area Chamber of Commerce toured the facilities of Spudnik Equipment Company on Friday.
The tour of Spudnik was the chamber’s first, and the organization intends to schedule more business tours so other businesses can show what they offer the community. This is also a part of the chamber’s efforts to rebrand itself as more of an asset to businesses as the community grows.
“We have so many businesses in our community that people really don’t understand what they are or what they do,” said Jamie Popejoy, director of the Blackfoot Area Chamber of Commerce. “We thought it’d just be a good idea to start these tours so that other chamber members, and members of the community can come and see what our little area has to offer.”
Emma Forrey, a marketing specialist at Spudnik and the vice president of the chamber, conducted the tour for a group representing the six businesses that attended. There were people from the Community Council of Idaho, BBSI, Porter House, Portneuf Medical, Valley Office Systems and Dawn Enterprises.
Spudnik is an international company that manufactures potato-farming equipment. It has clients in Canada, South America, Australia, New Zealand and Europe, “basically anywhere there is potatoes,” Forrey said. Spudnik has a sales team that spends the majority of its time traveling, but it also has offices in its Blackfoot headquarters.
“We make sure they have a spot because, really, our business starts with a sale,” Forrey said.
Once the salespeople have entered a customer’s order, it’s put on the build schedule by sales support staff. Then, the documentation goes upstairs to the purchasing and production control departments. Spudnik sales people said that the companies should make their equipment orders well in advance so they can be slotted into Spudnik’s production schedule.
“We’re so customized per grower, it’s hard for us to just build a inventory that just fits,” Forrey said. “We’re so customer-based that we would rather have a customer name tied to a machine.”
Orders are customized in the research and development buildings, the next stop on the tour.
After seeing the office side of Spudnik’s operations, the tour moved to the belted chain department, where employees assemble the belted chains for harvesters and other equipment. These parts are dipped in coating to protect them from rust and the elements.
Forrey showed the group the fabrication department, where raw steel is delivered and cut to specifications by “a saw, a laser or all of the above.” From there, she showed them where the materials go to be cleaned before moving onto welding.
There are 74 weld stations where the materials are welded into the order’s specifications and become farming equipment. The larger pieces are set up on jigs, which are braces that hold the material stable, while smaller pieces don’t need to be jigged.
From there, Forrey showed the group the paint area, where the newly-welded parts get scraped and air-gunned off. Then the equipment goes in one of three large booths, where it is painted. These booths appear to be lit by red lighting, but Forrey said that they just look that way because the vast majority of the time machinery is painted red.
Then the equipment moves to assembly, where the hydraulics and electronics get added. Once the machine is fully assembled, workers hook it up to a power unit to make sure it works properly.
The machinery is then shipped off, and “we do it all again,” Forrey said.
Popejoy said that she was impressed with how Spudnik, “build(s) that equipment from the ground up. They cut every piece of metal, they weld every piece, they paint every piece. It really is from beginning to end right there in that shop.”
Anyone who’s interested in learning more about Spudnik can sign up on Spudnik’s website for a tour.
Popejoy said the chamber’s next tour will be in May, and it will release more information as it finalizes those details. She also encouraged people with businesses in the area to contact them to schedule times when they can do a tour.
“I’d love for them to reach out to the chamber and we can get that all set up for them and taken care of,” Popejoy said.