When one of the world’s largest companies came to us with a challenging project, our Minnesota CAHU team knew we had the opportunity to demonstrate our capabilities and support our sales rep.
Toyota, the world’s largest auto manufacturer by production volume, needed 27 air source heat pumps for a plant in Indiana. The request was big. It would become the largest project CAHU has
ever taken on. Our CAHU team got to work quickly, wrapping their heads around the size of the ask from Toyota. And with our customer-focused approach, CAHU team members didn’t shy away. Instead, they worked tirelessly with ElitAire and Toyota to understand all of the unique project requirements (like rigid conduit and individual panels for each electrical component).
When producing a unit that weighs more than 26,000 pounds, there’s a lot to understand and no room for assumptions. While a typical CAHU project flows through four to five office team members before being sent to our talented production team, this project required more than 20 people with a wide range of skillsets to handle the huge workload and master the project’s demands. The team had to set up more than 185 new parts, create electrical schematics that numbered 50 pages (they’re usually about 13), and find a way to shorten the production time by a full week from the first build.
The last unit shipped out in late October, closing a chapter that challenged our CAHU team in every way possible. This project showed that, time and again, our customer-focused team will find solutions to any problem. That was a huge moment, said project manager Madison Kahle.
“You could feel a sense of pride from each and every contributor, each person knowing they were part of this major project in our company’s history and had impacted it positively in some way,” said Kahle.
Toyota’s needs for this project challenged our team to build a product that used our diverse experience, and the CAHU team rose to the challenge. One Toyota visitor dubbed the units as the “best they’d ever seen.” Our work showed Toyota that we are well positioned to take on a wide variety of projects in the future.
Thank you to our Minnesota team for delivering big on our company value of being easy to do business with.
