Monday Morning Briefing
Cloyes Gear and Products recently announced that it achieved ISO 9001:2015 certification for its manufacturing plant in Paris, Arkansas. We mention the company because they have a reasonably large captive heat treating department; “Based in Fort Smith, Arkansas, Cloyes is a leader and a global designer, developer, manufacturer and distributor of timing drive systems and components for original equipment manufacturers and the automotive aftermarket. ISO 9001 is the international standard that specifies requirements for a quality management system (QMS). Organizations use the standard to demonstrate the ability to consistently provide products and services that meet customer and regulatory requirements. It is the most popular standard in the ISO 9000 series and the only standard in the series to which organizations can certify.” Last year furnace builder SECO/WARWICK closed their manufacturing operation in Meadville, PA. We see that the remaining equipment will be auctioned off this week. Rather sad to see the end of the road for this facility which we visited a number of times over the years. We mentioned a little while back how powdered metal parts supplier Chicago Powdered Metal in Schiller Park, IL, USA had closed their doors. The equipment, including a number of rather tired mesh belt sintering furnaces will be on the auction block January 23/2020. We can’t imagine their will be much demand for the furnaces.
We have rated commercial heat treater Hauck Heat Treatment #2 in Europe in terms of annual sales https://themonty.com/largest-
Since we are talking about Poland and SECO/WARWICK we might as well mention another installation the company is working on. Commercial heat treater HART-TECH in Poland is in the process as we speak of installing a new system. What you see in this photo is a brand new SECO vacuum furnace capable of vacuum hardening and vacuum carburizing. As you can see installation is almost complete and the furnace should be in production in the near future.
People News. We start off in Enfield, CT, USA where we hear that Bob Lyman recently became CEO of commercial heat treater Eastern Metal Treating, Inc. Eastern is a family owned business specialising in austempering and Bob up until the end of 2019 was General Manager. Anne Miner has been involved with marketing in the heat treat industry for many years and most recently was working with Diablo Furnaces in Rockford, IL until it closed down at the end of 2019. It would appear that Anne is now Client Services Manager Rebuild & Retrofits for Ingersoll Machine Tools again in Rockford. Ben Jones recently became Quality Operations Manager at Hauck Heat Treatment Ltd., in Luton, UK. As we mentioned further up Hauck is one of the largest commercials in Europe.
There is a news report which can be easily found saying that there was an issue at RTI Surgical in Marquette, Michigan over the weekend which resulted in the plant closing. The stories we have seen have been brief but all basically say that Saturday morning Nitric acid was spilled and that it came from a Heat Treat furnace. No idea what type of furnace it was but needless to say if we hear anything more we will let you know. We will wrap up this Monday Morning Briefing with a photo which dates back a number of years, 12 we believe. In this picture we see Terry Profugi of Hi TecMetal Group Inc., in Cleveland along with John Hubbard of Bodycote fame.
