Celebrating a half-century of HART Design & Manufacturing

Rachel Kroeger

Staff

October 20, 2025

GREEN BAY – HART Design & Manufacturing – a global, family-owned specialist in developing custom cheese processing and packaging solutions – is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year, marking five decades of engineering innovation and family-driven success.

President and CEO Timm Schaetz said HART’s story began in 1975 when his father, Gerald “Gerry,” and his business partner, Gilbert “Gil” Hannon, purchased a business that solely “made reduction pulleys at that time.”

“Both Gerry and his partner Gil worked at Schreiber [Foods as well], so they were familiar with the cheese business,” Schaetz said. “Then they started doing some rebuilds on some other equipment and then [the business] just morphed into [something] bigger from there.”

Over its half-century in operation, according to its website – hartdesign.com – HART has grown to “become a global leader in the design and construction of standard, specialty and proprietary stainless steel equipment for use in the food and dairy industry.”

“We [say] we have a standard product line, but no one ever buys that,” Schaetz laughed. “We essentially take our standard equipment and tailor it to customer specifications – sizes, speeds, electronics – whatever their case may be.”

With a staff of both mechanical and electrical engineers, designers and manufacturers, Schaetz said most of what HART Design sells is produced in-house at their 40,000-square-foot Green Bay production facility.

“We don’t laser cut, form or bend [materials] – but we do as much machining as we can, and then we assemble, commission and test [our deliverables] here,” he said. “Then we go on site and install [the machines], and we sell parts and service [them] as well.”

Currently, Schaetz said HART has products operating in roughly “27 countries” and “28 or 29” U.S. states.

“All from little Green Bay,” he said.

Quality company culture

All that being said, a half-century of success, Schaetz said, hasn’t come without challenges.

Above all, he said he credits HART’s longevity to one key factor: its people.

“We have 52 or 53 [staff] – so [our team] is not huge, we just have really good employees,” he said. “We’re a family-oriented, family-owned company, and everybody is part of that family.”

Heather Marconi, HART’s director of human resources, said maintaining a positive company culture is paramount to ensuring its employees’ job satisfaction and, therefore, its success.

“We have people who are very passionate about what they do – they’re incredibly talented,” she said. “It’s a really good group of people who care very much about each other and the products we’re putting out. They like coming to work, and that’s a huge thing for our culture.”

One way Marconi said HART has maintained its close-knit culture is through intentional hiring practices.

“It’s very important that the people we hire fit in… and that their ideals are very similar to ours,” she said.

Both Schaetz and Marconi said the number of tenured employees – both family and non-family – who are celebrating decades of work at the company is a point of pride that lends to the quality of HART’s culture.

“There’s not a day that goes by when someone doesn’t say, ‘Boy, I wish I worked at your company,’” she said. “We have a fun reputation that we’re really proud of.”

To celebrate HART, its employees and its milestone anniversary this year, Marconi said they held a company-wide party at the beginning of September.

“We invited our team, several retirees [and] some vendors that we’ve done business with who’ve really been instrumental in our success to come and celebrate with us, and it was just a great party,” she said. “We had music and food, and it was just really fun, particularly to bring the many generations of people together to celebrate what we do.”

Building on generational success

Schaetz said “on the smallest level,” HART’s specialty is the design and manufacturing of custom cheese-slicing equipment.

“Customers have various sizes of wheels and blocks [of cheese] they start with – from small wheels to the 640-pound standard blocks that people use – but they all want them broken down into something else,” he said. “So, we have wheel-cutters that will cut [cheese blocks and wheels] into exact-weight wedges of cheese.”

In addition, Schaetz said HART also produces “filling equipment” for soft cheese companies producing products like “cream cheese blocks,” cheese dips and spreads.

“And then we sell casting equipment that would make the slice-on-slice-type of cheese you’d see at a McDonald’s or a Subway where they’re peeling it off of a loaf [of cheese],” he said. “Everybody – again, based on the size of their company – wants a certain size of the equipment that can do a certain output based on their sales.”

HART’s ability to customize the outputs of its standard, proprietary machines, Schaetz said, is easier now than it was 50 years ago when the company hadn’t yet developed its specialty systems and processes.

“There’s not much we haven’t seen already,” he said.

Schaetz said the company’s delivery time is almost entirely subjective to what and when a customer is ordering from HART.

“We have equipment we stock that would take maybe a month to get it out the door – otherwise, bigger equipment is up in the 10-14 month range by the time we get everything purchased, made, put together and out the door,” he said. “Right now, we’re talking to people who want production to start in 2027, so they’re ordering equipment now.”

Schaetz said the cheese industry “is incredibly secretive.”

“We don’t talk a lot about customers [because] they don’t want other companies to know what’s happening,” he said. “Somebody may be increasing production, and they don’t want somebody else to know.”

On top of manufacturing, assembling, delivering and installing their equipment, Schaetz and Marconi said HART also offers part replacements and technical service to its customers.

“We have 50 years’ worth of legacy equipment out in the field and a big portion of our staff is [tasked with] keeping that equipment running,” she said. “We have such long-standing relationships with our clients, [which is] also something we’re really proud of.”

As a second-generation owner-operator, Schaetz said “it’s incredibly humbling” to build upon the business Gerry and Gil started so long ago and to ensure its continued successes.

“And we have a third generation – one of them is working here already, and my young, seven-year-old, spirited daughter could eventually come in as well,” he said, “but it’s just pretty neat to have that, and my dad was obviously a very important part of my development in my life. I’m glad I can keep this going for him and for his legacy.”

For more on HART Design & Manufacturing, visit its aforementioned website or Facebook page.