More and more, big-box appliances have to be cool. The days of stoves, washers, dryers and refrigerators as necessary but unsightly household residents, consumer trends tell us, are over. And appliance OEMs have listened, rolling out products just as impressive for how they look as for what they do. Case in point are new refrigerators from Whirlpool featuring a first: deep-drawn door panels. The Benton Harbor, Mi-based appliance giant, now even bigger after its March 2006 acquisition of Maytag, set out in 2004 to upgrade its North American manufacturing capabilities with an eye toward rolling out innovative new products. On the list was the massive Whirlpool refrigerator-manufacturing facility in Fort Smith, AR. Whirlpool-Fort Smith, with 1 million sq. ft. under roof and nearly 4000 employees, produces refrigerators and some other appliances around the clock. Until now, the plant produced door panels via dedicated metal-sheet-folding machinery. Typically, prepainted coiled material would be cut to length in house then loaded onto the automatic door-bending machine-one of six at the facility. After bending, the panels were trimmed and traveled to another part of the plant for the addition of insulation and trim with edges covered with plastic caps.
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