O'Neal Steel Plant tour March 26, 2009

On March 26, 2009 O’Neal Steel, a full-line metals service center headquartered in Birmingham hosted a tour for members of the local Chapter 143 of the Society of Manufacturing Engineers.

O’Neal offers a vast array of metal products from multiple distributions centers across the United States and Mexico along with recent activity as far away as China.

The plant tour featured a view of their automated metals storage and retrieval machine, manufactured by KASTO. This "parts picker" demonstrates how O’Neal continually works to increase efficiencies, improving upon their multi-stage processing capabilities. Automating processes trim costs of production, further enabling O’Neal to provide fabricators, job shops, and a wide variety of OEMs with exactly what they need, when they need it, at competitive prices.

The KASTO parts storage machine is seven stories tall with over 4000 compartments. With a single crane and multiple conveyor lines, this 21,000 ton capacity storage and retrieval system is awe-inspiring to view in action.


Our SME Chapter 143 membership regularly tours Manufacturing facilities across Alabama in order to view Leaner Manufacturing techniques. Through community cooperative manufacturing plant tours, these members are able to gain insight to share with their own companies to improve upon manufacturing quality assurance efficiencies. We are fortunate that O'Neal team members, Henley Smith, Marketing Director; Todd Johnson, a member of Sales; and Steve Holley, General Operations Manager for the Birmingham plant were able to schedule an afternoon shift tour for us to see their operation while under light production. We offer sincere thanks to O'Neal Steel for allowing their members to host our tour.

Directions to O'Neal Steel Offices:

Take I-20/I-59 to Birmingham, Exit Tallapoosa Street, take a left to go underneath the interstate. Approximately 2 blocks, at Stockholm Valve, take a left. Drive to the next block, 41st Street S. and take a right. Follow 41st Street across the railroad tracks. You'll see the corporate office on the right. We'll meet there preceding 3pm.

For more information, please, contact Brian Everling, BrianE@PrecisionGrinding.com or LaVada Varner, LVarner@atn.org.