Over 73 years ago, G.C. Evans Sales and Manufacturing Company got its start manufacturing products for the beverage industry. Beginning in 1934, G.C. Evans was manufacturing state-of-the-art gas-fired heating units that could wash and sterilize bottles at a rate of 20,000 bottles per hour. The heating units created over 40 years ago are still in operation today and G.C. Evans has manufactured over 25,000 units to date.
By May 1989, G.C. Evans was under new ownership and expanding rapidly. The McNamer family reengineered, retooled and updated the existing equipment line. They now offer manufacturing of a large variety of equipment including bottle and can warmers, case and crate washers, cooling tunnels, pasteurizers and conveyors.
The Choice Provider
Having manufactured over 30,000 pieces of equipment over the years, G.C Evans has made a name for themselves in the food, beverage, and dairy industry. They now serve over 4,000 companies around the world including familiar names such as Coca Cola, Pepsi, Quaker Oats, Tropicana, and Unilever. G.C. Evans is also the largest purchaser of stainless steel sheet and Allen Bradley components in the state of Arkansas.
Nothing is out of reach for G.C. Evans; no job is too large or too small. Having manufactured machines up to 20 feet wide and 120 feet long, they specialize in being able to customize for the clients. With a staff of over 40 engineers and service employees, G.C. Evans prides themselves on the use of advanced technology to design and create a product to exact specifications.
Above: A cooling tunnelb eing manufactured in G.C. Evan's facility in Little Rock, Arkansas.
Ahead of the Competition
One of G.C. Evans competitive advantages is their ability to bring their products to market quickly while customizing their products to consumer demands. Having all of their engineering, design, and testing done in-house, they are able to bring most projects to completion in just 12 to 16 weeks.
G.C. Evans understands that in order to provide such quick turnaround and accuracy for their customers, they need the best in digital design software. That’s where D3 TECHNOLOGIES and Autodesk products come into play.
Designers at G.C. Evans had been using AutoCAD since version 13. By 2007, they realized the need to switch to 3D modeling to improve their competitive advantage. After comparing several 3D packages, Autodesk Inventor offered G.C. Evans what they needed.
“We were looking for a seamless transition from AutoCAD to a 3D package and Inventor was able to offer us that. It didn’t take us a long for us to realize how much faster and easier it was to make changes and updates using Inventor,” mentioned Jason Jones, Director of Engineering at G.C. Evans.
G.C. Evans was also impressed with the interface Inventor offered them to present their designs and ideas to their customers. With Inventor they were able to show their 3D model and specifications to their clients, explaining them in an environment much simpler than 2D.
But the benefits didn’t stop there. By using Autodesk Inventor for their design to manufacture process, designers were able to create a digital prototype of the end product, cutting down on design flaws and end manufacturing issues.
“In a 3D model, our designs have to be 100% correct and workable. With our flat patterns for example, we didn’t have as many problems cutting the wrong parts on our laser. Inventor really helped us cut down on scrapped parts,” comments Jason Jones.
A True Partnership
Making the transition to Autodesk Inventor was made much easier for G.C. Evans thanks to their partnership with D3 TECHNOLOGIES. After receiving Autodesk training and CAD support on the software, D3 was able to go even further and customize Inventor specifically to G.C. Evan’s needs.
Jason added, “It was very important for us to be able to update our flat patterns easily. D3 was able to come in and customize Inventor so that our flat patterns could be updated automatically.”
D3’s certified experts also came on-site to take G.C. Evans through the implementation process and train their designers. They also recently installed Autodesk Vault to help manage their job associated documents for large projects.
‘I would say having Inventor and our partnership with D3 has increased our productivity dramatically. It is important to us that we always stay on top of our game to remain competitive in this market,” concluded Jason Jones.
A Look Ahead
Although G.C. Evans is proud to represent 80 to 90 percent of the current market for beverage coolers and warmers, they continue to look ahead to the future growth of the company. They hope to grab more customers in the brewing business and continue to work to improve the efficiency of their customers’ processes.
G.C. Evans plans to stay ahead in their rapidly changing industry by always keeping the customer’s needs and the quality of their products at the top of their list.
Special thanks to Jason Jones for his contributions to this article.
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