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Do Captives Make Good Commercial Heat Treaters?¡ªThe 18th China(Guangzhou)Int¡¯l Heat Treatment, Industrial Furnace Exhibition
1/11/2017 heat treatment expo-furnace expo |
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We have covered in detail the story of SONA BLW Precision Forge Inc., in Selma, NC but we will mention the highlights. SONA was an auto parts maker with a large captive heat treat which unexpectedly closed their doors in August of last year with the plant and equipment subsequently purchased by another company who renamed it Selma Precision Technologies. Just last week we announced that the new owners would be reopening the heat treating department to operate as a commercial heat treater which begged the question; do captive heat treaters make good commercial heat treaters?
We will give you two examples that we can think of, the first being Gleason Works in Rochester, NY who build a wide variety of machines for the gear industry including Gleason press quenches. As part of their manufacturing process they have a reasonably large in house heat treating department which also operates as a commercial heat treater. The commercial aspect was started a few years back and is an unqualified success for some interesting reasons. Because Gleason makes press quenching systems both for their own use and for outside customers they have one of the most complete sets of press quench dies in existence putting them in a very unique position. So in spite of the fact that Gleason operates in a high cost region (NY) they have very little competition when it comes to knowledge of the process and equipment and have consistently worked with a few very loyal customers around the country on specialized heat treating from which both Gleason and their customers have profited. Kind of a coincidence that our second example which was a dismal failure was also in NY State, Magna Powertrain of Syracuse, NY. While the plant relocated to Mexico they were at one point in time one of the largest captive heat treats in the US with 13 or 14 large pushers. Whoever decided that running low end product (with low margins) in a high cost auto parts plant, in a high cost region in large pusher furnaces made sense we don¡¯t know but as it turned out the more product they ran the more money they lost and the experiment last just a couple of years as we remember it. So lets look at Selma. Their furnaces consist of 4 batch IQ¡¯s which are the choice of every commercial heat treater because of their flexibility, they are in a low cost area with a non union shop and the US Southeast while it might not have an underabundance of heat treating capacity they certainly don¡¯t have a surplus either. With the right person in charge and a very close eye on costs the company might make a go of it. ¡ªThe
18th China(Guangzhou)Int¡¯l Heat Treatment, Industrial Furnace Exhibition
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