Profile of a Thriving North American Heat Treater-“Darby Metal Treating”

Last week we had a news item entitled; “Michigan, USA Heat Treater Reports Excellent Sales”, at that point in time we promised to provide our readers with more details about the firm;
 
“In 2012, Tom Darby, owner of aerospace components manufacturing company TMD Machining (TMD), was exasperated with the levels of customer service that he was receiving from his heat treating sub-suppliers. So, he decided to do something about it and, together with his daughter Adrien and industry veterans Mark Fortuna & Frank Metelka, started Darby Metal Treating (DMT).
 
The initial goal for DMT was to perform the heat treating operations for TMD’s products, but it didn’t take long for word-of-mouth to spread that there was a new heat treating operation in business and other local customers began to send their parts to be heat treated by DMT. Pleased with the levels of service that they received from this new operation, word spread further, and a new commercial heat treating shop was born.”
 
The week of August 11th “Gord Montgomery” of “The Monty Heat Treat News” visited the firm to find out why in the face of “mediocre” business conditions for most heat treaters the company was growing at such a fast pace. What we found was a medium sized commercial heat treater with many accreditations such as NADCAP in a relatively new 60,000 square foot facility offering a variety of heat treatment processes; vacuum hardening, carburizing in batch IQ furnaces, gas nitriding, brazing-all were well represented.
 

Ms. Adrien Darby

Our hosts for the tour were Ms. Adrien Darby, Director of Quality, Mr. Max Darby, Lead Operator, Mr. Dave Bates, Sales Manager and Mr. Ron Childs, Process Manager-each of whom has years of experience in the commercial heat treating industry.
 
Based upon our visit and discussions with the entire team at “Darby” we were left with the impression that the success of the company is based upon a number of factors including a fairly young, energetic team, a very experienced sales professional in the form of Dave Bates, and many years of practical heat treat experience from Ron Childs, process manager. And possibly most importantly a willingness and ability to invest in new equipment.
 
Over the past two years the company has added a brand new endothermic generator, batch IQ furnaces with working dimensions of 36″ X 48″ X 36″, a gas nitriding system, new cleaning systems and soon to come a brand new cryogenic system-combined this represents a very substantial investment in terms of dollars (and dare we hint at it? Rumor has it that the company will soon be adding one of the larger vacuum furnaces in all of Michigan-we will keep you posted on whether this rumor turns out to be correct). 
 

Adrien Darby, Dave Bates, Max Darby

Possibly these substantial investments are the main factor in the firm’s success but most likely without an aggressive sales effort by the entire team the investments would not have generated the sales levels that the company has achieved.
 
We look forward to providing future updates on the company.
 
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Gord Montgomery, Max Darby, Adrien Darby, Dave Bates, Ron Childs