Automation Showcase

In the mid-2010s, Adam Hansen toured granite quarries and processing plants in China’s Xiamen province and came back with a stark conclusion: American manufacturers couldn’t win by competing on labor costs. The only path forward was to make American manufacturing something people would genuinely want to do—careers worth having, supported by real wages. And the only way to get there was through increased productivity by way of automation.

That conviction sent Hansen, founder and president of St. Joseph-based Hansen & Co. Woodworks (HCo), on a decade-long research tour. He visited nearly 200 factories across the United States and Europe, studying how leading manufacturers were using automation in cabinetry, woodworks, and beyond.

The result came online in February 2026: a 92,000-square-foot facility that Hansen believes is the most fully automated frameless cabinet line in North America. The $25 million plant will increase HCo’s manufacturing capacity by 400 percent with only a modest increase in its current workforce of 55. It will replace two smaller facilities HCo operates outside St. Joseph and is expected to reach full production capacity by mid-2026, producing up to 500 custom, built-to-order cabinets per day—more than triple the company’s current output.

The plant is a showcase of advanced manufacturing technology. Production involves robots, scan-coded part tracking, CNC machines, edge banding, and automated hardware installation, all before an HCo employee touches the product. One of the most inventive solutions Hansen landed on involves two massive, silo-like “libraries” with robotic arms that store thousands of cut parts and retrieve them in the precise sequence needed for assembly. The result is a cabinet line that runs at one cabinet per minute at full speed.

Everything in the plant is designed for visibility and efficiency. Walls and machinery are painted bright white, an advanced vacuum system keeps dust from interfering with equipment, and most robots can be observed directly from the floor. “You don’t see that level of foresight often with automation,” says Ryan Steinert, an Enterprise Minnesota business growth consultant. “He’s set it up so that problems are easily identifiable, allowing team members to become more effective problem solvers so the automation can continue to do its job.”

Automation, in Hansen’s view, isn’t about reducing the number of employees, it’s about elevating the work. Because of the technology used in the new plant, workers will need new skills in industrial engineering, robotics, process engineering, and technical manufacturing. To develop that talent, HCo has invested in a training partnership with nearby St. Cloud Technical and Community College.

“My priority isn’t adding jobs for the sake of headcount,” Hansen says. “I care about the people we have. How do they make more money? How do we take the stuff that is redundant and make that automated? And leave human beings doing what they are best at—that is, reasoning, intellect, observation, seeing things that are anomalies. So, you elevate the human experience.”

Writer Mary Lahr Schier’s full-length feature in the next issue of Enterprise Minnesota magazine—set to be published in late May—traces Hansen’s journey from a 21-year-old making fireplace surrounds in 2004 to the owner of what may be the most automated cabinet facility on the continent. It’s an outstanding case study in implementing automation that boosts productivity while keeping employees engaged and invested in the work. It’s a must-read for every Minnesota manufacturer. We have pre-published this story on Enterprise Minnesota’s website.

Read it here: Factory of the Future.

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