Rowland Emergency Brings Production In-House with Schleuniger Machines
Rowland Emergency, located in Toronto, Ontario, is a family-owned and operated custom manufacturer of emergency medical solutions. While the company produces a wide range of equipment, its core focus is emergency vehicles and special response units.
Early on, Rowland produced low volumes of highly customized vehicles, building simple wire harnesses entirely by hand. As the business expanded, Rowland received higher volumes of more generalized vehicle builds, creating a need for faster turnaround, and more complex wiring harness systems.
To help handle the growing requests, Vice President Blake Rowland and his team outsourced production to an external auto harness manufacturer. However, upon outsourcing, they faced challenges of delayed lead times and quality inconsistencies—calling Rowland to pivot back to an in-house approach. Additionally, Mr. Rowland explained, "A general company goal is to try to do everything in-house. This gives us control over quality and delivery timelines."
To ensure the reintegration of in-house production went smoothly, Mr. Rowland sought tools to bring unparalleled automation, quality control, and efficiency to his production team. After learning about Schleuniger solutions in EP&T magazine, Mr. Rowland contacted Schleuniger and worked with Canadian Sales Manager Harry Coates to select the appropriate machines to meet their wire processing needs.
The company purchased an EcoStrip 9380 to cut and strip their wire, and a UniCrimp 100 to crimp terminals onto the stripped wire. Since implementation, Mr. Rowland shared, "With the EcoStrip 9380, we were able to bring manufacturing of wire harnesses in-house, improving delivery times and project flexibility, as well as production output.” He added, “The UniCrimp 100 greatly improved crimp quality and increased operator productivity. Before purchasing the machine, we had crimps fail due to improper crimping, and operators of hand tools had to take frequent breaks. That is no longer necessary with the UniCrimp 100.”
In addition to improved production, Mr. Rowland also expressed his satisfaction with Schleuniger’s customer support stating, “We are very happy with the support Harry and the team provide when it’s needed most.”
Today, the family-owned, custom manufacturer continues to conquer the challenges of specialized production, even stating, "Schleuniger machines are the core of our harness production.”
