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June 15, 2026
SHAWANO – One of Marion Body Works’ largest investments to date is now up and running in Shawano.
Zach Brockdorf, the facility’s senior director of operations, said the company’s new, fully automated bonded sheet and post wall assembly system and automated floor assembly gantry system introduce innovative firsts to commercial truck-body manufacturing.
“From a safety perspective, quality and delivery, it all made sense for us to have an automation path,” he said.
Vice President of Sales and Marketing Calvin Kanowitz said the company’s embrace of automated systems also enables greater efficiency, consistency and production while better utilizing its workforce.
“The big thing for us was not to use automation to replace humans in the business, but to reallocate some of the bottlenecks in our business,” he said.
Kanowitz said due to Marion Body Works designing/constructing customized fire and emergency apparatuses, commercial trucks and defense products, the production process requires extra labor for the interior finish of the vehicle bodies.
“[Automation] allows us to move that more-skilled labor to the interior portion of the business, upfitting these custom trucks,” he said.
Brockdorf said area residents have found the highly advanced machinery to be “eye-opening.”
“[Locals have been] shocked at some of the automation we’re putting in place in their community in Shawano,” he said. “It’s something they weren’t aware of, so it was cool to see the community excited about the new technologies and things coming in their area.”
Taylor Heiden – director of sales and marketing – said the investment ought to affirm to residents Marion Body Works will be “around for the long haul,” continuing to build on its 120-plus-year legacy, which The Business News highlighted in its Feb. 3, 2025 issue.
“To be able to expand into a new area/community, provide those jobs for folks and then focus on that advanced technology speaks volumes that small-town Shawano has these investments in these large-scale operations happening behind the scenes, tucked away,” she said. “We’re very proud of that.”
Safe, productive and competitive
Marion Body Works’ chief concern has been and always will be, Kanowitz said, the safety of its workers – something the new technology helps to uphold.
“Anytime you put in automation, you’re removing some of the safety risks in that area,” he said.
Brockdorf said this approach factored into the selection of the two specific areas updated at the Shawano facility.
“When we look back to ’23, ’24, the hot spots of our business for safety incidents were within the floor [assembly area] and in the wall area, and it stuck out drastically compared to the rest of the business,” he said. “We needed to do something different, and ultimately landed on automation to eliminate those hazards going forward.”
Kanowitz said the upgrades required no expansion of the building as the old fixture and tooling were replaced with the newly purchased/implemented automation cells.
“The space it takes up is actually the same footprint [where] we had to historically do [the work] by hand,” he said. “It’s all fenced in now, so there’s little foot traffic through those areas, but the footprint itself is no larger than what we had.”
From this same amount of space, Brockdorf said the facility has been able to “greatly” increase its productivity and consistency.
“Not only have we increased capacity,” he said, “but we have also shrunk lead times – something our market demands.”
Brockdorf said the tech achieves a more consistent quality by eliminating human error, yet Marion Body Works has hardly scratched the surface of its potential.
“We’re still running at about 51% of the capacity of the equipment, for a couple of reasons: one being training, two being debugging and three just being the overall market,” he said. “So, we still have the opportunity to grow with that equipment, but it’s doing exactly what we wanted it to. In fact, it’s doing a bit more.”
Kanowitz said the purpose of the new automation systems is not to manufacture new products, but to improve the production of Marion Body Works’ current products.
The tech, he said, “basically doubles our capacity.”
Brockdorf said the necessary increase has been welcomed across the company’s workforce.
“[Prior to the new automation], we were working max overtime to get units out and keep customers happy,” he said. “We weren’t hitting on-time delivery, and that was a struggle for us. Employees were feeling that pain a lot with customers, so it was an easy sell, for lack of better words, to our shop floor, because they were working so much overtime at the time as well.”
Brockdorf said the upgrades have offered Marion Body Works employees “some reprieve from that,” with many also benefiting from the new advanced automation training they’ve received as new skilled positions have been created.
The training, he said, has gone “extremely well,” as the team has more deeply learned the nuances of the technology.
In addition to the increased capacity, Brockdorf said the new technology offers uncommon capabilities to give the company a competitive edge.
For example, he said the automated plasma treatment and tape application of the wall system ensure consistent surface preparation and adhesive performance – both of which are key for long-term wall durability.
“To my knowledge, nobody else in the industry uses plasma-treatment methods in their process, nor does anyone have a fully automated system to build bonded walls,” he said.
‘It’s where we’re going as a company’
Though Marion Body Works invested approximately $4.2 million into the automation upgrades, Brockdorf said the investment was “surprisingly” not as nerve-wracking as one might imagine.
After all, he and Kanowitz said automation is in step with the company’s longer-term plans.
“It’s where we’re going as a company,” Kanowitz said. “With our growth projections, it wasn’t a hard decision [to invest], because of where we want to grow this business. Support from the employees was key but also, support from the ownership.”
The pair said more automation is intended for Marion Body Works’ facility in Marion itself, where currently, a fully automated Trumpf fabrication system is being installed.
“Automation is a step in the right direction for us,” Kanowitz said. “There are not a lot of our competitors doing the same things, so we’re looking for ways to kind of separate ourselves, and this would be one of them.”
Brockdorf said enthusiasm is high among the company’s roughly 400 employees, driven by both the team’s success in completing what he described as a challenging upgrade project and the opportunity to expand into new markets.
“We’re not a large company, and we still pulled together and got across the finish line with the team we have in place,” he said. “I’m super excited and proud of the team we have to get this stuff across the finish line. We’re investing in our future at Marion and investing in our employees, so it’s awesome to see this team pull together and get this across the finish line and be successful in a project this large.”
Visit marionbody.com for more information.
