Riding a wave of post-COVID demand for commercial heating and cooling systems, the Johnson Controls manufacturing plant in Norman will hire an additional 300 employees in 2023, executives say.

Those hires are part of an ongoing operational expansion that already has added 100 new positions to the workforce in 2022, bringing the plant to about 1,100 employees. By the end of next year, executives say the plant will employ about 1,400 workers.

Operations saw a slump in demand amid the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, then struggled with supply chain issues last year, said Doug Schuster, vice president and general manager of duct systems, which includes the Johnson Controls facility near Interstate 35 and U.S. Highway 77 in Norman.

Now, with supply issues mostly resolved, the plant is actively hiring new employees, he said as the company celebrated the Norman plant’s 50th anniversary recently.

“We’re now in a surge of growth in the commercial sector, and we expect it to continue to be very strong through the next year,” he said.

He said the plant, which has never had a layoff, is in a good position to expand its production after adding 400,000 square feet of space in 2019. That construction nearly doubled the facility’s size to 900,000 square feet.

Each year, the Norman plant produces about 80,000 large commercial heating and cooling units, which are designed for installation on building rooftops. Johnson Controls’ market brands include Coleman, Luxe and Champion, and the company is among the U.S. industry’s top three manufacturers, along with Carrier and Lenox.

Schuster said the expanded plant has put Johnson Controls in position to compete in today’s growing market and to move ahead.

“We’re hungry and we want to continue to grow and outpace the market,” he said.

The Norman plant will bring in even more work in 2023 when the manufacturing operation expands its range of heating and cooling products, which will include a 150-ton unit, the company’s largest design.

The giant unit, which is still going through engineering and design, will cost customers from $150,000 to $180,000. Units will be so large that transporting just one of them would require three semi-tractor trailers rigs.

Schuster said the company has invested $10 million for new equipment in preparation for the manufacturing facility’s expanded role.

“We need the additional 30% increase in people because we’re increasing the output of what we already do,” he said. “We’ve invested in all the fabrication equipment and automation to build the steel and make the product. The next thing we’ll do is increase all the assembly workers on additional shifts.”

Plant Manager Neil Wachter says competition for qualified workers continues to be tight.

“Unemployment’s pretty low around this area. It’s a tough market to compete in, but we’ve been doing OK,” Wachter said. “We’ve been bringing in quite a few people as of the last couple months.”

He said the plant is hiring a broad range of skill levels, starting from entry-level assembly workers to engineers and people with technical ability.

“We’ve brought in some pretty technical equipment, and we have to have people who know how to work on those things, such as program robots and things like that,” Wachter said. “We have to have that level of people in the plant because there’s a wide range of functions with the engineering lab and with all the testing. Those guys have to have special skill sets.”

Schuster said the plant is attracting workers by offering competitive benefits and wages that average $22 per hour. But there are a lot of good employers in the Oklahoma City market, competing for the same people.

But he says they’re also having success recruiting from outside the area.

“We have a market we can pull from, but we also have a market that’s actually very pleasant to move to. So, it’s been very good from that perspective,” Schuster said.

This story originally ran on the JournalRecord.com.