THOMPSONTOWN - To say that Armstrong Cabinet Products has overcome adversity would be an understatement.
Walking through the now bustling factory in Juniata County, it is hard to believe that this company had been brought to the very brink a couple of times because of past fires and recession.
In 1992 a blaze nearly ended Armstrong's run in Thompsontown, but the business rebuilt and forged ahead. Then in January 2008, an accidental fire destroyed a 5,000-square-foot warehouse at the cabinet plant, resulting in the loss of about $2 million, and again, Armstrong rebuilt and bounced back. The fires, plus the recent recession hit Armstrong hard, but now things are little different.
Lancaster-based Armstrong World Industries Inc., has invested millions of dollars in recent years in the production facility in Thompsontown, which appears to be paying off.
Jim Hanna, with the Human Resources department, said there are currently 460 people employed at the Thompsontown plant with two full-time shifts and there is the possibility of a third shift being added in the future. Armstrong's cabinet division, which manufactures fine kitchen and bath cabinets, is the nation's largest direct distributor of cabinetry.
"We have exhausted our recall list," Hanna said of those employees who had once been laid off by the company because of the economic downturn.
"Plus we have close to 50 new employees," he added.
Hanna said in the two years he has worked at the Thompsontown plant there have been some changes in the way things are done and creating a "leaner manufacturing" company was a key component of that.
"It has been quite a journey over the last couple years," Hanna said.
Pushing back the swinging doors to the factory floor, Hanna and Quality Service Rep. Randy Warner escort a group of educators who have shown up for a tour of the place to get a better idea of what kind of employees local companies need. The educators have signed up for the Juniata River Valley Chamber of Commerce Business and Education Committee tours, which are done at a variety of local companies every year. This year the educators are touring Standard Steel in Burnham and Kardex in Lewistown in addition to Armstrong Cabinets.
Wearing slip-on steel-toed galoshes over their shoes, the educators shuffle into the 250,000-square-foot facility where the sound of forklifts, buzzsaws and air-powered tools fills the air.
Zig-zagging between state of the art equipment and piles upon piles of wooden-cabinet components, the educators take it all in, stopping occasionally to watch an employee stain a cabinet door by hand or wrap a finished drawer for shipping.
Warner said production levels currently range from 3,500 to 4,000 cabinets per day, which is good, but in the past production levels were a little higher than that, something he said all the employees would like to see happen.
