Dart Machinery Expanding; New 82,000 Sq. Ft. Facility Purchased

Dart-Rendering

Dart’s new facility, which will be located in Warren, Michigan.

“I’ve been in our existing building since 1985, and our manufacturing facility has been open in its current location since 1988. We never envisioned back then what we’d be doing today,” says Dart Machinery‘s President, Richard Maskin.

“This building” is Dart’s final machining/office/design facility/warehouse/shipping location, currently located in Troy, MI, and the major manufacturing facility is located in Melvindale, 27 miles away. The current arrangement has worked – and well – over Dart’s long and illustrious history within the racing industry, but Maskin feels that in order for the company to continue to grow at the amazingly-rapid pace it’s currently experiencing, a move to consolidate operations under one roof is the right direction.

So when the company recently announced the purchase of an 82,000 square foot facility located in Warren, Michigan, a conversation with the longtime engineer was in order.

dartshop

Digging deeper into the details, Maskin says that combining the facilities under one roof will allow them improve their development and machining processes even further.

“Phase One is to move all of the current machining operations into the new building, the manufacturing side of it,” he says.

“We’ve got 26 machining centers in Melvindale currently, and what we’re going to do is put two brand new machines in the new building. One, to test the building’s infrastructure and make sure it works, and two, we’ll have two extra machines at the end of the move that we didn’t have at the beginning. Doing it this way won’t disrupt any of our current production, and then we’ll start moving two machines at a time until the process is complete. At no time, there will be less capacity than when we start the process,” Maskin explains.

Moving the types of large CNC machinery that Dart uses in their operation is not a small undertaking; it can take one to two full working weeks to move a pair of machines to a new location and get them operational again, and Maskin estimates that the complete process could take a year or until the company is united under one roof. The plan is to move the machining operations, but keep the office facilities intact until the new facility is ready to handle that portion of the company.

“Look at the efficiencies even if you didn’t grow the business at all. We move 50 blocks a day and 100 heads a day. When there’s something going on in the manufacturing facility and they need an engine builder to look at it, it could be a day before we can get someone up there. With the new building, it’ll take five minutes,” says Maskin.

dscf6140

“The line-honing, valve jobs, seat installation, CNC porting and coatings are done in Troy. The basic manufacturing is in Melvindale, but you need the two together to be more efficient. Anything that’s done with the hot-rod side of finishing the parts is done 27 miles away. It costs us more money to make something than it should.”

These are just some of the many advantages to the company’s consolidation; all operations housed in one building removes some of the redundancies that are present in the company’s present configuration.

The current facilities have the company operating in approximately 50,000 square feet of usable space; moving to the new single building adds 32,000 square feet of additional space that can be optimized to the company’s needs. The new facility will be air-conditioned, has numerous cranes already on-site, and a virtually-new fire-suppression system installed by the previous tenant.

“This is jobs and revenue and hiring the local people,” says Maskin. “This all started with a telephone, a two-car garage and a dream in 1981. With our 35th anniversary quickly approaching in 2016, it’s set to be another tremendous year for us,” says Maskin.

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Jason Reiss

Jason draws on over 15 years of experience in the automotive publishing industry, and collaborates with many of the industry's movers and shakers to create compelling technical articles and high-quality race coverage.
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