1. 28 ELECTRICAL APPARATUS / MAY 2015
Model motor shop expansion
How an Indianapolis company used all the resources at its command
for a state-of-the-art expansion
By Kevin Jones, EA Senior Editor
INDIANAPOLIS—A company that
has acquired five other companies in
the past 20 years—and has received a
tax break from the city in which it’s
headquartered so it can expand even
further—must be doing something
right.
That’s the position in which Horner
Industrial Group of Indianapolis finds
itself as it completes an expansion
that’s adding 20,000 square feet to its
motor shop.
With the expansion have come sev-
eral new pieces of equipment that will
expand the company’s already-broad
service capacity even further. And it
was made possible, in part, by a tax
abatement granted by the City of In-
dianapolis.
One thing that makes the Horner
motor shop expansion unusual, apart
from the tax arrangement, is that the
expansion has been supported by other
Horner divisions that provided materi-
als and components for the project that
most motor shops wouldn’t have been
able to provide on their own.
This is a company that knows how to
use the resources at its command.
All of the lighting in the new ex-
pansion, for example, came from the
Horner Lighting Group, which de-
signed and built the LED linear lights
that provide bright, even lighting
throughout the facility. (The effective-
ness of the lighting is apparent in the
photo on this month’s cover.)
The Lighting Group designed the
lighting controls as well. In the new ex-
pansion, lights will be dimmed to 25%
of maximum when no one is present,
and motion sensors will brighten the
lights when someone enters. A control
panel on the wall provides real-time
monitoring not only of the lighting but
of every other electrical process in the
facility as well.
The lighting fixtures were designed
and built by Horner’s Fan Fabrica-
tion division—an enterprise whose
expertise in high-tolerance machining
and laser-cutting has brought it busi-
ness far outside that of a traditional
machine shop. The Fan Fabrication
division also built the steps and railing
leading up to the new catwalk.
Thanks to these synergies, the com-
pany stands poised to expand further,
and there is certainly room for it to do
so. The company owns about two acres
of vacant land to the west of the motor
shop and a total of about ten acres at its
primary Indianapolis location.
The company has grown steadily
over the past 40 years, even with down-
Horner Industrial’s new expansion can be seen through the doorway in the upper left corner
of this view of the original motor shop.
The new motor shop expansion includes a new test panel, an isolated test bed with an accom-
modation for vertical solid-shaft motors, an observation room behind shatter-proof glass,
and, overhead, a 50-ton crane.

2. turns in 2001 and 2009, and customer
service remains its primary focus.
There are constant requests for work on
larger equipment, and for the company
to fulfill this demand it had to add both
crane capacity and square footage.
There was also growing demand
from locations outside of Indianapo-
lis. Horner Industrial operates satellite
service centers in Ohio and Kentucky
as well as in Indiana, and established
customers in those areas were asking
for more.
“We started getting requests for larger
work,” explains company owner Alan
Horner. “We looked at how much ca-
pacity we had.” Then they determined
what they wanted to be as a service
business. “We decided after we repair
the machine, we want to be able to test
it as well,” so an expansion of testing
capabilities appeared necessary.
“People were asking, ‘gosh, when
can you do this?’” sales and marketing
manager Terry Thorne says of the plan
to expand services. Growing customer
demand had previously been the impe-
tus for opening a service center in Lou-
isville, and, Thorne continues, “that
same customer desire was a strong mo-
tive for the addition—plus, we needed
the space. We can do very large equip-
ment,” Thorne says, “and that helped
us make the decision for an expansion.”
Management spent months working
on a layout to make sure it would fit
the company’s needs and streamline
workflow. As with many other service
operations around the country, Horn-
er’s shop had evolved over the years
and workflow patterns were less than
optimum.
Creating the perfect workflow would
have meant starting over or moving to
a different location. Management was
not interested in relocating, because
the company operates several facilities
in the vicinity of its primary location
and moving those operations would
have been impractical. What’s more,
the City of Indianapolis was willing to
offer an incentive in the form of the tax
abatement for the company to stay (see
accompanying box on page 31).
Planning the expansion took about
18 months. Construction took six.
What was it like working around
the construction during the expan-
sion? “It was horrible,” says Horner.
“It was a huge inconvenience for
everyone, including our customers.”
And it wasn’t cheap. “It’s a huge in-
vestment,” Horner acknowledges.
During construction, the company
lost the use of three shipping and re-
ceiving doors and had to install a new
overhead door in the side of the exist-
ing building to maintain access to a 25-
ton crane. Significant logistical effort
was required just to keep work flowing.
Jobs that were in process needed to be
stored, and there were further delays as
parts were moved to a different build-
ing to make room for work in progress.
And yet through it all, the company
sustained its pace. “We maintained full
capacity here,” says Horner. Feeding
work to the satellite shops is “pretty
continuous” in the best of times, he
crane. “If we can get it in the build-
ing, we can work on it,” says Thorne,
and with the new test panel “we can
go from 0 to 13,800 volts without any
bumps.” To accommodate the 50-ton
loads the new crane can lift, the foun-
dation in the expanded part of the shop
is 10 feet deep, the floor is eight feet
thick, and the fittings for the cranes ex-
tend 10 to 12 feet beneath the surface
of the shop floor. An 85-foot drive-in
bay can accommodate a semi-trailer.
Next to the new test panel, “we put
in a new isolated test bed, and we made
an accommodation for vertical solid-
shaft motors,” Thorne explains. “When
we do a vibration test, we can have it
certified by a Level 4 vibration analyst.
There are very few in the country who
can do that.” The company has three
Level 4 and three Level 3 vibration
analysts among its employees.
An enclosed control room is separat-
ed from the test area by shatter-proof
glass. This room is for customers who
want to come and observe tests in the
shop. Also, “we will be able to video-
tape so a customer can view his test
live, without being here,” says Horner.
Eventually the company will have the
capability to webcast tests for custom-
ers who want to observe tests remotely.
Already the expansion has resulted
in changes in the way things are done,
and as thorough as the planning was,
Horner expects to make additional
changes.
Management spent months
working on a layout to make sure
it would fit the company’s needs
and streamline workflow
Company owner Alan Horner demonstrates the control panel that provides real-time moni-
toring of all electrical processes in the shop, including the new lights. The control was de-
signed and built by Horner Industrial’s Lighting Group.
Please turn to next page
ELECTRICAL APPARATUS / MAY 2015 29
says, but the expansion didn’t add to
the volume.
Maintaining the flow of work was
essential; after all, as Horner explains,
“material handling is the key to our
business.”
With the expansion, the company has
increased the size of its local shop staff
by eight full-time employees—from 35
to 43. Also part of the expansion are a
new 50-ton crane, a new test panel to
test up to 10,000 hp at no load and up
to 13,800 volts, and a water-cooled dy-
namometer to load-test up to 2,000 hp.
The size of machines serviced will be
limited only by the capacity of the new

3. The company’s organizational struc-
ture will be altered to ensure the new
capabilities are maximized. “We need
more people,” Horner says, adding the
common plaint, “but finding good peo-
ple is difficult.” As of mid-March, the
company had six job openings.
The new lifting and testing capaci-
ties mean Horner can service higher-
horsepower motors for current cus-
tomers and make a stronger pitch to
potential ones.
“There won’t be new departments,
but there will be more defined lines,”
says Horner. “There’s no question that
on the management side we’ll have to
make some changes.”
The company is performing machine
modifications for motor manufacturers,
and some of these manufacturers have
expressed an interest in Horner’s test-
ing. Motors have been shipped to Horn-
er Industrial from overseas for testing,
and this is something “we’re definitely
going to pursue,” says Thorne.
Over the years, Horner Industrial
has tried to be a one-stop shop that can
fulfill most of its customers’ needs.
This doesn’t mean the company is ev-
erything to everybody. Specific areas
of expertise have been chosen, and
the company has tried to hire the best
people available to lead its specialized
segments. This has been true of all the
company’s divisions, from Fan Fab-
rication to Thermal Spray Industrial
Coatings.
“One of the things we’ve tried to do
is create an atmosphere where a cus-
tomer can come in and get the service
he needs” in one location, Alan Horner
says. “The more you can do for a cus-
tomer, the more loyal he’ll be.” Seek-
ing new customers isn’t a high prior-
ity, Horner says, because “we’ve had
so much work at all of our locations.”
What advertising the company does is
generally limited to help wanted.
The expansion is one indication
that Horner Industrial is committed
to its location, which lies less than a
mile east of the heart of Indianapolis
at Monument Circle. It’s a commit-
ment the company has demonstrated
for many years.
SHOP EXPANSION continued
30 ELECTRICAL APPARATUS / MAY 2015
Mary Horner recently celebrated her nine-
ty-third birthday with a motor-shaped cake
baked by Classic Cakes of Indianapolis.
—Horner Industrial photo.
In this panoramic view of Horner Industrial’s entire motor repair shop, the expanded part of the shop can be seen to the left.—Horner Industrial photo
Alan Horner (left) and Terry Thorne stand among work in progress at the Horner Industrial
motor shop. Seven hundred motors pass through the motor shop in a typical month.

4. Horner Electric was founded in In-
dianapolis in 1949 by Alan Horner’s
parents, George and Mary Horner, and
has grown to what it is today through
numerous expansions and acquisitions.
George and Mary were the company’s
first two employees, and company lore
has it that Mary once cured a stator in
her kitchen oven. George Horner, who
served as a sergeant in the U.S. Army Please turn to next page
ELECTRICAL APPARATUS / MAY 2015 31
during World War II, died in 2003.
Mary Horner recently celebrated her
ninety-third birthday.
The company has seven operations
in Indianapolis at four locations. The
company also operates facilities in
Cincinnati, Fort Wayne, Louisville,
Terre Haute, and Springfield, Ohio.
“The other shops are feeder shops
to this shop when it comes to larger
work,” explains Terry Thorne. The
main Horner facility has been at its
present location since 1969. The latest
expansion is the sixth expansion since
that year. The company currently em-
ploys about 360 people.
“All of the shops are about two hours
away” from Indianapolis, Terry Thorne
explains. “It seems people are willing
How Horner Industrial
received its tax abatement
The recent expansion of the motor shop
at Horner Industrial has been aided by a tax
abatement granted by the City of Indianapolis
in return for creating new jobs.
Requests for tax abatements in Indianapo-
lis are evaluated by the city’s Metropolitan
Development Commission. Other companies
that have recently received tax abatements
from the city include engine manufacturer
Cummins, Inc., for a distribution headquarters
downtown, and the retailer Lowes, for a cus-
tomer service center on the city’s perimeter.
Horner Industrial’s primary location is less
than a mile east of Monument Circle, the
heart of Indianapolis’s downtown. The area in
which the company is located was historically
industrial, but much of that industry has dis-
appeared. Many in the city’s government had
come to see the neighborhood as needing an
economic boost. Today the city is effectively
seeking to reindustrialize a formerly indus-
trial zone, and Horner Industrial has been a
beneficiary of this impulse.
The neighborhood in which the company’s
main facility is located was designated an
Economic Development Zone, and in 2007
the Fan Fabrication division applied for a
tax abatement. “We learned the ropes” in that
process, explains Tom Berkopes, Horner In-
dustrial’s chief financial officer.
The application for obtaining a tax abate-
ment for the Fan Fabrication division went
smoothly, and it didn’t take long for the com-
pany to fulfill the employment requirement.
The experience served the company well
when it came time to apply for a tax abate-
ment for the motor shop expansion. The com-
pany applied for the abatement in May 2013
and received approval in November of the
same year.
There are two facets to a tax abatement like
the one Horner Industrial received: it applies
to both real property taxes and to personal
taxes. “We had to spend certain amounts of
money” under the terms of the agreement,
says Berkopes, “and we met that handily.”
The company is “well on the way” to meeting
the employment requirement as well, he adds.
Once a company is granted an abatement,
it must report employment annually. The re-
cipient of the abatement starts with a base
number—the number of people currently em-
ployed—and reports the number of new em-
ployees above that number. The tax abatement
expires after five years.
At the beginning of Horner Industrial’s tax
abatement application for the motor shop ex-
pansion, there were around 35 employees at
the primary location. The Industrial Coatings
division, as a new venture, reported all 10 of
its employees as its base. Without naming a
precise figure, Berkopes says the number of
employees the company is required to hire to
fulfill the terms of the new tax abatement is “a
significant increase.”
What’s it like to go through the application
process?
“They ask you a lot of questions about the
project—how much you’re going to spend,
how many you’re going to hire,” Berkopes
says. “Otherwise it’s pretty boilerplate.”
Company officers had to go before a council
at Indianapolis’s Dept. of Metropolitan De-
velopment for approval, but the experience
with the Fan Fabrication application had
taught them what to expect.
Politics were not a consideration in the fil-
ing process. “It’s very straightforward,” says
Berkopes. The city has an incentive to make
the process as uncomplicated as possible,
because “a lot of people are competing with
Indiana” in the tax abatement game, Berkopes
points out.
Horner Industrial has invested more than
$20 million in the primary location over 20
years—a figure that served the company well
during the application process.
In addition to asking about Horner Industri-
al’s plans for spending on the physical expan-
sion, the city also wanted to know which local
companies Horner does business with every
day. The company responded by listing ma-
chinists, trucking companies, a bearing sup-
plier, a steel company—even the restaurants
where Horner employees go for lunch.
On the whole, the experience was straight-
forward and held no surprises—largely
because Indianapolis has streamlined the
process to keep companies from leaving the
city. When it comes to expanding a business,
Berkopes points out, “it’s a lot easier to get
out in the cornfields and do this.”—KJ

5. to send their work out about two hours.”
The exception is large equipment that
might be shipped to the Indianapolis
shop from much farther away.
The satellite shops are key to the
company’s strategy to have facilities
near customers for quick turnaround
on emergency service or in case a
customer wants to come by and see
equipment being rebuilt. The recent
expansion gives Horner Industrial the
capacity to repair large equipment that
can be easily shipped using the compa-
ny’s fleet of trucks. Each satellite shop
is self-sufficient and has the authority
to decide when work needs to be sent
to Indianapolis.
Industries served by Horner Indus-
trial include steel, utilities, municipali-
ties, food processing, aggregates, oil
refiners, pipelines, and hospitals and
universities. “I don’t think there’s any
industry we don’t touch,” says Alan
Horner. Adds Terry Thorne, “We’re not
your normal motor repair facility.”
A sense of corporate identity at the
company runs strong. “Each loca-
tion employs the Horner way of do-
ing things,” says Thorne. Customers
can expect the same level of service at
all locations, he says. “We call it the
Horner way.”
“I think at all shops you get the same
level of service,” adds Horner. “If one
loses, we all lose.” What unifies the var-
ious divisions is a common objective.
“Quality has always been our goal,”
says Horner. “Each shop is proud, and
they all want to keep the work at their
shop, but the larger stuff is sent here.”
“We try to be a single resource for
our customers,” adds Thorne, as the
company offers both new and remanu-
factured products in addition to repair.
The strategy seems to work. “We have
one hell of a loyal customer base,”
Thorne says.
But in the end, the quality, the
breadth of service, and the customer
loyalty owe to much more than an ex-
panded shop. “Say all you want about
the facilities,” says Horner. “It’s about
the people.” EA
Ken Jannotta Jr., manager of research development at the Horner Lighting Group, demon-
strates the various types of lights the company is capable of producing. The Lighting Group
designed and built the lights for the shop expansion.
SHOP EXPANSION continued
32 ELECTRICAL APPARATUS / MAY 2015
—Photos, unless otherwise credited, by Kevin Jones and copyright 2015 by Barks Publications, Inc.
How Horner Industrial
earned its safety qualification
Expanding its motor shop isn’t the only way
in which Horner Industrial has changed in re-
cent months. The company has also earned a
safety qualification that streamlines the pro-
cess by which it does work for customers that
requires safety training.
The qualification process is administered
by the Metro Indianapolis Coalition for Con-
struction Safety, Inc., or MICCS, which serves
as a clearing house for safety standards.
Under the plan, rather than undergo safety
training with each company you want to do
work for, you satisfy the standards of MICCS
and you don’t have to go through safety train-
ing for each customer.
“Most companies require prequalification,”
explains Amy Fletcher, Horner Industrial’s
Environmental, Health Safety Manager.
“Several companies we do business with want
to see our certifications.”
The MICCS Certification Program has three
statuses: Certified, Qualified, and Participant.
Certified, the highest level, means that a com-
pany exceeds OSHA standards. Qualified is
the standard that most owners and construc-
tion end users require. It means that a com-
pany meets the minimum criteria, which are
based on OSHA standards. A Participant is
a company that has submitted an application
but does not yet meet the minimum criteria.
MICCS isn’t just for Indianapolis firms.
Among its members are owners and contrac-
tors throughout Indiana. There are also sever-
al member contractors outside of Indiana that
have earned MICCS certification so they can
work on sites in Indiana.
Certified status requires fewer reported
incidents than Qualified status and is gener-
ally required by companies in industries with
stricter safety standards, such as mining and
nuclear energy.
Horner Industrial applied for and received
Qualified status. Large general contractors
might have an incentive to strive for Certified
status; Horner Industrial has no immediate
plans to do so.
Becoming qualified requires that the ap-
plicant fill out a lengthy questionnaire that
asks for information on the applicant’s safety
record, such as incident reports from the ap-
plicant’s office of human resources. Also re-
quired are written company policies covering
such things as personal protective equipment,
crane use, and the use of hazardous chemicals.
“Once our safety program qualifies, then
they come into our home office” for an au-
dit, Fletcher explains.Applicants are provided
with advance notice of what information the
auditors want. There are no surprises.
In addition to examining the safety practices
an applicant already has in place, MICCS
also prescribes certain things that must be
covered in written safety policies. If an ap-
plicant doesn’t have a written policy covering
the use of ladders, for example, MICCS might
require that such a policy be developed and
put in writing.
Horner Industrial applied for MICCS quali-
fication in 2013 and received its qualification
in November 2014. Now the company can ex-
pect an audit by MICCS every year. This isn’t
a “home audit”—an audit done at Horner’s
facility—but more of a review based upon re-
cords kept by Horner.
Some companies would be difficult for
Horner to work with if Horner didn’t have
Qualified status, because Horner would have
to undergo the customer’s safety training at its
own expense.
“And that doesn’t show up as a line item,”
observes Horner Industrial’s chief financial
officer, Tom Berkopes. “It’s just lost billable
time.” There would be the cost of lost time in
addition to the cost of training.
But earning Qualified status from MICCS is
about much more than saving money. More
importantly, it’s about ensuring the safety of
employees. “I would like to see more compa-
nies putting—as Horner does—safety above
production,” Fletcher says.—KJ