This article appeared in the September/October 2022 issue of MiMfg Magazine. Read the full issue and find past issues online.

If you’ve ever had to work or live somewhere while walls were being removed, added or repositioned, you know how dirty, dusty and unpleasant that process can be.

For manufacturers, especially in times of change, the need for temporary walls, partitions or barriers is not uncommon on the production floor, in warehousing or in the front office. In addition to being disruptive and possibly causing temporary shutdowns, it can become a significant expense. With conventional drywall construction, repositioning walls is essentially impossible and every 70 linear feet of temporary wall results in one ton of waste in a landfill, which is not good for the environment or your bottom line.

“Compared to drywall, our SwiftWall product can be installed five times as fast. And tear down is 10 times as fast,” says Zach Cesa, Director of Engineering at SwiftWall.

Founded in 2014 in Midland, SwiftWall’s manufacturing operations are still 100 percent in Michigan though their sales have since expanded to all 50 states and to Canada and Mexico. Their distribution has expanded to Nevada and Atlanta and they plan to open more distribution in the northeast and south to serve their growing customer base.

Best Part of My Job

Lighting materials on fire and performing destructive testing as part of our R&D process.

The Best Advice I Ever Got

Listen first, talk second.

Last Book I Read

Small Giants: Companies that Choose to Be Great Instead of Big by Bo Burlingham. An excellent read given to me by our CEO. It profiled companies that prioritized creating incredible company cultures over growth.

Cesa explains that a lot of the materials they use to manufacture their products have a recycled component to them and, since their products are reusable, SwiftWall has prevented thousands of tons of waste from ending up in landfills.

“Meijer was one of our first customers and they now have installed SwiftWall in over 200 stores,” said Cesa.

The Swiftwall products are not only more environmentally friendly but take less time to install and tear down compared to traditional drywall. This allows for more flexibility and less down time for manufacturers when the need arises for a temporary structure.

There’s also an immediate cost benefit each time the product is re-used (it is not long term but realized immediately upon use). According to Cesa, customers typically begin to see a cost savings over drywall if they use SwiftWall more than one time. Since SwiftWall can be reused so many times and stored for future use, the time and cost savings — as well as the reduced environmental impact — can be huge.

Cesa says they’re looking at providing even more flexible solutions and tackling tougher challenges. For instance, the latest offering is SwiftWall Flex, which allows for adjustable heights to fit varying ceiling heights. This makes the product even more sustainable since walls can be reused in areas where the ceiling is lower without the need to cut the panels.

How We’re Innovating

Rapidly and enthusiastically! We’ve adopted the quote “Doing the Difficult Today, and the Impossible Tomorrow” which means our entire company gets excited about innovation challenges.

One Skill Everyone Should Have

How to tie a bow tie.

The SwiftWall system was recently used when tens of thousands of Afghan refugees needed rooms to stay in at Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst in New Jersey. Cesa says the SwiftWall team rallied to supply 24,000 linear feet of wall, enough to build 600 rooms in six huge tents as temporary shelter for the refugees.

The future is not only greener for SwiftWall, it’s also very bright. In 2022, SwiftWall was ranked as the 13th Fastest Growing Manufacturing Company by Inc. 5000 as well as being recognized as one of the Michigan 50 Companies to Watch Award, presented by Michigan Celebrates Small Business.

“We’ve been around for about eight years, but we still have a startup culture, and that makes every day exciting,” Cesa says.

SwiftWall is an MMA Industry Member and has been an MMA member company since December 2021. Visit online: swiftwall.com/.