Serving the Automotive Industry
Next year marks ETBO Tool & Die’s 70th year in business. Etienne and Marie-Louise Borm originally founded the company in Belgium in 1953. The couple immigrated to Canada several years later and launched the company’s Canadian operations in 1958 as a tool and die company specializing in industrial engraving.
“Our first job in 1958 was manufacturing forming tools for the original steel-walled, portable Coca-Cola cooler,” said Etienne Borm Jr., plant manager, ETBO Tool & Die, Aylmer, Ont. “Upon completion of this first job, the company quickly developed into a complete tooling provider servicing the automotive and electronic markets.”
Today, the company continues to remain a family business with the second generation at the helm. Etienne Sr. and Marie-Louise transitioned out of their roles at the company and their son Etienne and his wife Heather took over. The third generation of Borms are focusing on higher education with engineering specialties to support the family business in the future.
The company has grown over the years from its humble beginnings to more than 125,000 sq. ft. of floor space with 175 employees, including 15 engineers for tool, automation, and process design, and 50 toolmakers and apprentices. Located in the heart of Canada’s automotive corridor, upwards of 99 per cent of the plant’s business is in automotive, although it does take on some non-automotive work such as components for heat exchangers for the HVAC industry.
“We are a Tier 2 and below supplier for the automotive industry,” said Borm. “Our niche market is working with very thin metals, and because of that we only compete with a handful of companies globally rather than the significant group of local competitors.”
The Shop
ETBO is a large-scale tooling vendor that builds around 200 dies per year, designs and builds automation cells, provides metal stamping services with 25 presses up to 800 tonnes, including multiple servo presses up to 600 tonnes, and is one of the largest EDM facilities in southwestern Ontario.
Its stamping dies segment provides in-die capabilities such as subassembly, welding, part measurement with 100 per cent data capture and documentation, and servo axis control. It also provides robotic nut welding with vision inspection, robotic gas metal arc welding, projection and spot welding, production washing to cleanliness specifications, and production CNC machining.
To continue as one of the leaders in automotive manufacturing, the company is focused on adopting the latest technology, refining manufacturing processes, and staying true to its roots.
“Working with materials as thin as 50 µm (0.002 in.) requires a high degree of technical skill,” said Borm. “Cutting clearances need to be extremely tight to achieve the tolerances needed with these parts. It takes a lot of know-how and attention to detail, and we have the exceptionally skilled workforce and equipment to be able to provide the tooling and production for this market segment.”
The company has developed an in-house ERP/MRP system to allow its machines to communicate automatically and provide traceability across all aspects of the manufacturing process. This traceability allows ETBO to track every component that is manufactured for its tools. It also has helped with productivity because it provides information about the machine it was produced on, machine uptime, the operator(s) who worked on the part, and more. This has allowed the shop to fine-tune its processes and ensure that every component produced has all relevant manufacturing history associated with it.
“This has really allowed us to drive quality actions across the board,” said Borm. “We were doing Industry 4.0 before it became popular, and I think that has really given us and our customers a huge advantage. We also tackle toolmaking very much the same way we do production. We are very vertically integrated, and this allows each department to work at their optimum efficiency.”
The shop takes on typical tool packages from 1 to 20 tools and a vast majority of that is tooling for electrification in items such as battery coolers, electronic module covers, fuel cells, and frame components.
“Our biggest opportunity and challenge as an industry is seeing how electrification fits within Canadian manufacturing and how our company can fit into that,” said Borm. “The change is coming quickly and we need to be willing to adapt and position ourselves accordingly. And we need to be able to support that with the capital investment that's required, whether that's for larger machining, higher-tolerance machining, or however that presents itself in a shop’s product line.”
When it comes to production CNC machining, the company has 25 CNC mills with up to 170- by 70-in. working envelopes, eight Sodick wire EDMs, and a Sodick CNC hole drilling machine.