K&M Machine-Fabricating Inc. is known for its production of enormous parts for wind turbines, but it's far from all the company does. K&M didn't get into the wind-power business overnight. Fabricating very large, precision parts for heavy off-road vehicles, mining, drilling and exploration, and conventional power generation has been the Cassopolis company's niche for more than two decades -- wind power was just one more application. "We got into the wind business a little over 10 years ago," CFO Gary Galeziewski said. "It was very complementary working with very large pieces of iron and all the nuances that come with very large size and weight." "It's essential you not only have very good processes, you have to have very good equipment," he continued. "So when we buy equipment, it's absolutely state of the art, because our customers demand that kind of quality in their products." K&M took delivery last fall of a large high-speed bridge milling machine, as well as two Mitsubishi boring mills. Two specially-built boring mills are expected from Italy in May. They took 22 months to build, Galeziewski said. That's not an unusual lead time for the type of equipment the company requires. The acquisitions are the last in a $21 million capital investment spread over 18 months. It included 12 new pieces of equipment, eight robotic welders, six more CNC machines, four cranes and a 52,000-square-foot addition to K&M's machine shop. The expansion brings K&M's facilities to 335,000 square feet. The new equipment was ordered in the spring of 2007. The company has grown to 245 employees to meet customer demand. "In our business, you can't land an order from a customer and then go buy a machine to fill it," Galeziewski said. "We consistently have had to buy machines and expand capacity very speculatively." The third-generation family owned company has made some very good guesses. It anticipated the need and had the equipment on hand as its core energy customers have required ever-larger components for new enterprises. The new equipment, for instance, enables K&M to build virtually any size hub, bedplate or gearbox in the wind industry. The world's largest maker of mining and construction equipment, Caterpillar Inc., is presently K&M's largest customer. Among the parts it makes for Caterpillar are components for mining trucks so big the tires are 13 feet tall. "One of the things that makes K&M unique is that we offer a complete vertical integration of three processes: burning, fabricating and machining," Galeziewski said. "We have three separate facilities: One burns metal plate into the desired shapes, secondly, those would go to the fabricating shop, where they are manually and robotically welded, third is machining. So we take responsibility for a total turnkey solution. "We also do some light assembly adding hoses, bushings, bearings. So it's really a complete solution, and that's unique in the large-scale stuff that we do." K&M refers to itself as an outsourcing partner, because the company doesn't have a line of its own products -- it builds its customers' products, Galezieski explained. "It's important for us to keep up with their demands, to provide all the innovative solutions and equipment to keep up with their demands," he said. "Oftentimes people ask who are our most formidable competitors? Our customers." K&M must demonstrate it can build the product better and more cost-effectively. "At that time, the customer can say, 'Manufacturing is no longer a core competency, we'll outsource,'" Galeziewski said. http://www.mlive.com/business/west-michigan/index.ssf/2009/01/km_machine_fabricating_inc_gro.html