CAPT provides brief history on business

If you drive west along State Route 29, just before you reach Celina, you’ll notice a large building on the south side of the road. On that building is a bright green sign, with white letters that spell out ‘CAPT’. CAPT stands for Celina Aluminum Precision Technology, and if you drive a Honda, there is a good chance a part of your car was made there.

CAPT was incorporated in 1994, and opened production in January of 1996.

“CAPT was mainly created because Honda was going to start making a V6 engine in America,” said Tom Rable, Senior Vice President of CAPT. Rable explained that as Honda looked at getting into making larger vehicles, they created a supplier for those parts. Since the facility has opened, it has expanded three times, with the most recent addition being a warehouse.

Currently CAPT employes around 450 associates, and produces a variety of parts for Honda and Acura. From a slideshow presentation those vehicles include from Honda: Odyssey, Ridgeline, Passport, Accord, Civic, Insight, CRV, and

Pilot, and from Acura; NSX, TLX, MDX, RDX, and ILX.

“Over the last 27 years we’ve made 89 million pistons, 16 million cylinder heads, 11 million water passages, 7 million lowers, and 21 million knuckles,” said Rable. Rable said that the knuckles, a part of the suspension, are the future for CAPT. “All of the original equipment manufacturers are going to battery electric vehicles. This is a good opportunity.”

Rable said that in April of 2021, Honda announced their move towards electrification, and that he gets industry related e-mails every day talking about the industry going that way.

“They’ve set these goals that by 2030 Honda wants to be 40 percent electric vehicles, and by 2040, 100 percent,” said Rable. Rable said that CAPT worked on creating a vision for 2030 that they finished in June of 2022. “We talked to Honda about how we can transition into it. We want to solidify our place as a supplier in the electric vehicle market.”

Like other areas of the economy, Rable said that they were also adversely affected by COVID.

“We shut down for six weeks, then ran hard. We ran into problems with supply chain. In December of 2020, the supply chain was empty, and there were no parts coming except air freight,” explained Rable. Rable said that trying to get the supply chain back to stability, was a process.

“During that time, globally and in US, companies were fighting to know if they’ve got enough manpower to meet demand,” said Rable, then continued. “There are ongoing supply issues due to COVID.”

He said that Honda’s sales are down, but that those are related to supply chain issues.

“Over the last year we’ve tried to make a more flexible workforce, so its much more attractive for people to work here. Its not that old rigid schedule where you can’t get off work,” said Rable. He explained that he’d like to both create more jobs, and retain current ones as CAPT moves towards the future.

“There is a transition that is going to happen, and we’ve got to be right there with it,” said Rable then continued. “As part of that transition, we want to remain a good employer in the area for the long term. Thats why we have to keep up with the transition.”

Automaton is helping make their work environment safer as well.

“You have a skilled workforce to fix our robots when they go down. We need associates to do quality cheeks, and to make sure equipment is running properly, or to know when to contact maintenance,” said Rable. He said that years ago robots hadn’t yet arrived,and that moving heavy parts would have to be done by hand.

“It was a strenuous job. We try to make it ergonomically friendly. The things we focus on with automation, is safety,” said Rable. He said that associates can focus more on making sure quality parts are being produced, and not being a parts mover.

For the future, Rable noted that CAPT has space ready and available.

“We’ve got spaces open and ready for new business, because we knew we’d need it,” said Rable.

“We’ve been working on it culturally to make it a better workplace. We’re trying to make it a workplace where associates del like they’re part of something bigger. They want to feel their job is valued, they want to be able to express their opinion,” said Rable.