Airtex Products

Modular Controlled Environment Concept Expands to Entire Plant

Customer: Airtex Products

Location: Fairfield, Illinois

Application: Equipment Enclosure Room, Conference Room, Plant Separation

Product: XTRA TALL Wall Systems, OmniFlex 300

Benefits Provided:

• Consistent appearance throughout plant
• Effective environmental control
• Flexibility to relocate

The Situation

Airtex Products, a manufacturer of fuel pumps, needed to create an enclosed equipment room whereby they could control environmental conditions and improve their quality control process. The company also had plans to build other areas with conventional "stick" construction due to the consolidation of 3 facilities into 1 facility in the near future.

The Evaluation

As Airtex evaluated potential solutions for the equipment room, they gained an appreciation for the benefits and capabilities of modular construction and saw how modular systems could be an ideal solution for many of their inplant construction projects. Airtex personnel visited PortaFab's corporate facility and various jobsites to fully understand PortaFab's capabilities and see how modular systems were working for other manufacturers.

The Challenge

Airtex Products was faced with a real space problem to accommodate their requirements for a 2-story building. This application was difficult due to the lack of overhead clear height and because the enclosures needed to fit underneath existing bar-joists. It was going to be particularly challenging to tie the walls into the existing ceiling structure that contained multiple obstructions and wall height variations.

The Solution

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To accommodate the heights required in the application, PortaFab supplied Airtex with XTRA-TALL wall systems for the primary equipment enclosure and to separate their distribution area from an assembly area that needed to be climate controlled. Precision field measurement and engineering allowed the modular systems to be fabricated offsite to minimize disruption of the operation during construction.

In total, PortaFab systems were used to create not only the equipment room and to divide the plant space, but to also build a conference room and several individual offices that were placed throughout the manufacturing and distribution areas of the facility to centralize the individual department managers and respective employees. PortaFab supplied secondary products including border guards, overhead and high-speed rollup doors, Hi-Density shelving and much more.