The Davenport Rebuild
The most difficult task for us was to overcome the reputation of the old Davenport for high prices, poor quality and bad attitude. In the last decade, we have done that, I think.
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This article is about not giving up hope. In 2003, Bob Brinkman and Andy Laniak submitted the winning bid to buy Davenport Industries after it shut down in 2002. According to “Davenport: A 10-Year Update,” the facility was a mess.
“The company was in shambles, to put it mildly,” Mr. Brinkman says. “When we came in, the plant was filthy, the machine tools were in disrepair, and the customer base had eroded to a fraction of what it had once been.”
Mr. Brinkman and Mr. Laniak had their work cut out for them, but by taking one step at a time, they cleaned, repaired, inspected and eliminated bad inventory, and abandoned the CNC project. “Then we started the most important part—re-engineering the machine and tolerances that had been long neglected,” Mr. Brinkman says.
Read more about the overhaul Davenport received and about “The New Davenport” machines being created now, here.
