Menomonee Falls-based gun barrel manufacturer Vortakt Barrel Works is nearing the end of a $1.5 million improvement project at its Shawn Circle facility. Vortakt’s facility improvement plan includes a revised shop layout that reorganized several CNC machining cells, the addition of a crane system designed to support large-volume government barrel contracts, a new 50-ton air
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Vortakt's new warehouse space.[/caption]
Vortakt manufactures 500 to 1,000 gun barrels a day at the Menomonee Falls facility. Despite lingering supply chain issues, Weister says the company has not had any issues securing the metal it needs to manufacture its products. He attributes the company’s success in gaining materials to how Vortakt emphasizes treating suppliers the same way a customer would be treated. The company did not diversify its group of suppliers but instead focused on working things out with the ones it already had.
“To make that many barrels a day, you need a lot of steel. We kind of doubled down on the suppliers that we did have. When it was hard to get stuff, our suppliers kept us at the top of the list,” said Weister. “Our main suppliers of metal and tooling… we didn’t really have an issue with.”
Vortakt shares the building with