HOBART, Wis. — The highest point of the nearly-finished printer is several feet over Matt Delvaux’s head.
Building large equipment like that is part of the draw to the job for the electromechanical assembler at EMT International in Hobart.
“I’ve had people ask me what I do. I make wide web machines and they print everything,” Delvaux said. “Your books for Amazon and your labels for pretty much everything you touch.”
The point in production where Delvaux is adding the main pneumatic panel is a long way from where the machine starts.
“You get to see it go from a bare frame and then we bring it to conclusion,” he said. “It’s really cool to get your hands in and know you built something that’s actually running.”
EMT has about 20 open positions ranging from assemblers to machinists and electrical and software engineers.
Mark Weber, EMT’S vice president of business excellence, said the machines EMT builds make labels, packaging and other products consumers touch every day.
That’s everything from beverage labels to direct mail and bank checks.
“Possibly a U.S. postage stamp was made by a machine we recently produced,” he said. “If you order a packet of photographs on Shutterfly, that may have come through our machine.”
Tim Hatch started working at EMT in March as a temporary employee. He now works there full time as an electromechanical technician.
“I got to experience a convention in Chicago. It was pretty cool to go there and see what we all put together and the customers are asking questions. You’re able to answer the questions and give them input and insight into it,” he said. “My kids always ask me, what do I do? I build machines to keep the world going. They like that.”
Human resources manager Kari Brunette said the company puts a premium on employee development.
“We as a business can’t grow if your employees aren’t growing,” she said. “That’s a big focus of who we are and what we do. To the point that we’ve eliminated all of performance evaluations and we have development discussions in place of that which is much more forward looking and focused on how do we help you continue to grow.”
Brunette said the company is already booking business well into the New Year.
Delvaux said there’s satisfaction is watching the machines come to life.
“It’s kind of almost easy to forget that it started as nothing,” he said. “Before I worked here, I didn’t build a lot of things from scratch with my hands. Here, I’m doing it every day.”
Careers at EMT International can be found at https://emtinternational.com/careers/.