The Chelsea Acquisition
Expanding the company’s sales volume ten-fold in less than ten years
did not come without growing pains. By the middle of 1994, Ann Arbor
Machine was operating out of nine different buildings—all of them
rented. Coordinating information and material among nine buildings in
order to produce special machines was no easy task.
Just as AAM was bursting at the seams, a 200,000 square-foot building
providentially became available. Dana Corporation had decided to move
out of its manufacturing facility in Chelsea, Michigan. This facility
nicely matched Ann Arbor Machine’s requirements for size, location, and
function. AAM added a two-story engineering facility, and raised the
assembly bay roofs to a height of forty feet. All of the company’s
machine-building operations were moved to Chelsea by mid-1995, with
AAM’s Production Division moving to occupy the original buildings just
west of Ann Arbor.