Nord Powers Omi Crane Systems Heavy-Duty Components

Whether it’s moving a coil of sheet steel to a stamping line or setting a massive cast iron forging onto the bed of a CNC boring mill, manufacturers depend on cranes, trolleys, and hoists to lift and transport heavy objects. This is the job of OMi Crane Systems, a company that’s been designing, building, and servicing industrial lifting systems since 1969.

Founded in Dallas, the manufacturer has long since moved to nearby Royse City, where it now boasts a 76,000-square-foot manufacturing facility, more than 100 skilled employees, and a support network that includes three full-service branches in Houston, Dallas, and Alabama, along with satellite service teams operating out of Florida and Ohio.

OMi sells many of its cranes to companies in its home state, but as Vice President of Operations Brandon Rue proudly points out, the manufacturer has customers in New York, Washington, Ohio, and many places in between. “We ship all over the country,” he says.

Unlike companies focused on ports or marine work, OMi specializes in indoor overhead cranes—mainly electric overhead traveling cranes that operate inside steel warehouses, coil handling plants, and metal fabrication facilities. Its products aren't mass-produced, however. “Everything we make is engineered to order,” Rue explains. “That’s because every facility is different, and every customer calls for different lifting capacities, travel speeds, duty cycles, and so on. That said, probably 95 percent of the gearmotors on our heavy-duty OEM components come from Nord Drivesystems.”

It’s a relationship that spans more than 25 years. At first, OMi began using Nord gearboxes and motors on a fairly selective basis, but the partnership deepened around 2011 when OMi started building its own hoists. That move called for bigger gearboxes and more horsepower—and it made ready-made drive solutions even more critical. Nord provides a complete, preassembled unit that fits neatly into OMi's production flow.

“We didn’t start using Nord almost exclusively until we started offering a complete hoist that we build inhouse," Rue says. “A lot of suppliers in this industry will make a gearbox and then put a motor on it, and sometimes vice-versa, but not only does that slow everything down, it also makes it harder to get parts. We didn't want to go that route, so we decided to standardize on Nord gearmotors—motor, brake, and gearbox—roughly 15 years ago. Since then, we’ve found that using pre-engineered drive units directly from the catalog makes it easy to customize to our customers’ needs, which is where we differentiate ourselves from the competition.”

At its core, OMi specializes in the design and manufacturing of electric overhead traveling cranes. Unlike many suppliers that offer off-the-shelf systems, OMi takes a customized approach, tailoring every crane to the exact specifications of the building and the application it serves. "Yes, there are similarities between jobs and customers, but every crane fits a specific building layout and a specific application, so the ability to optimize each one is hugely important."

Most of OMi’s cranes are designed for indoor environments such as manufacturing plants and coil handling facilities. While the company can also produce outdoor gantry cranes, its primary focus remains on precision indoor lifting, with steel processing and warehousing centers representing its largest market share.

The demands of these industries are unique. Steel coils, for example, can weigh tens of thousands of pounds, and facilities often run 24/7 operations where a stalled crane can halt production. Many of OMi's customers require cranes that not only lift heavy loads but also perform a high number of cycles each day without overheating or wearing down prematurely. That makes the engineering behind each crane and its components critical to long-term reliability.

One of the standard and most requested options on an OMi crane is the company’s “built-up hoist and trolley” system. As Rue explains, these assemblies are often the most customized and technically demanding parts of the crane. “The hoist does all the work, which is why we’ll often use one of the bigger Nord units, such as the SK 10 with a hundred horsepower motor.”

This broad horsepower range—from half-horsepower travel motors to the 100-horsepower hoist drive just mentioned—gives OMi the ability to spec out each crane's lifting capacity exactly to the application. Yet speed is also crucial. In high-throughput environments like coil warehousing, even minor differences can significantly impact production, which is why it’s not uncommon for customers to request lifting speeds tailored to the flow of their assembly lines or staging areas, where even seconds shaved off a cycle can add up to meaningful gains over time.

“We cater the hoist to our customers’ needs, "Rue says. " For instance, a couple of feet a minute on a hoist, when spread out over several days or a week, makes a big difference in the number of picks they can make. So, if they want the hoist to go 21 feet per minute instead of 19 feet per minute, we make it go 21.”

As any manufacturer knows, delivering this level of customization day after day can be expensive. Piecing together motors and gearboxes from different vendors wasn’t an option for a company focused on delivering made-to-order systems at scale. Eliminating assembly steps inside OMi’s factory also reduces risk during final crane assembly, since every matched set arrives from NORD already configured for integration.

“To remain competitive, we need to build a crane as quickly and efficiently as we can,” Rue says. “Ease of manufacturing played a big role in our decision to partner with Nord.”

Using standardized components also helped to streamline OMi’s engineering process. The company’s design team can size and select drives from Nord’s catalog without relying heavily on external technical support, and they routinely use myNORD online customer tools to quote units, download 3D models, and generate drawings directly compatible with OMi’s internal CAD libraries. “We size it, we pull the drawings, and we drop it into our models,” Rue explains. “It’s simple and it saves a lot of back and forth.”

Several recent projects show the scale of their partnership. One job in Bowling Green, Kentucky, required eight cranes and 56 Nord units, with motor ratings from three to 100 horsepower. Another in nearby Brandenburg involved 16 cranes and 110 Nord gear motors across six bays, while a third—this one supporting an aluminum processor—used five cranes and 50 Nord units.

Each facility came with its unique challenges. In Bowling Green, for example, OMi built the cranes for a completely automated coil handling system where cranes communicate with the facility’s ERP software to manage inventory movements without human input. In Brandenburg, the facility required high-speed coil stacking capabilities and extremely high service levels able to withstand the company’s continuous operation. And the aluminum processor project, though smaller, demanded precision movement with fine load control to protect delicate material during handling.

In every case, OMi designed each crane to fit the customer's plant layout, throughput needs, and uptime goals. "If a customer loses a motor or gearbox, Nord can usually get us a replacement very quickly, sometimes within a day or two,” Rue says. The service side has been just as strong. “With some vendors, we might have to call several times before we can get somebody on the line,” he adds. “With Nord, we don’t have that problem. Even when our primary contact is unavailable, we quickly get routed to someone who can help, avoiding costly downtime.”

OMi has never had to use Nord’s 911 emergency breakdown hotline despite running a high volume of the company's products over many years. Instead, their engineers work independently, sizing components, pulling drawings, and submitting orders directly through myNORD, Nord’s online customer portal, without having to stop and make phone calls to sales or technical support.

If a crane goes down, production can grind to a halt, Rue concludes. For OMi Cranes and its customers alike, having a reliable drive system supplier isn’t just about convenience—it’s about keeping material moving efficiently and without fail. “We’ve enjoyed very steady growth over the years. I attribute most of this to our employees—our engineering team, the sales and quoting people, and our team on the production floor. That said, Nord deserves at least some of the credit. They’ve been great to work with and have an equally solid product line. We’re quite pleased with the partnership.” 

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