Premier Business Partners:

Delta Steel Inc. CTL Scientific Supply Corp.

High customer service levels and the ability to be versatile enable Derby Industries LLC to be successful in its market, Director of Sales and Marketing Bill O’Bryan says. “We really care about the jobs, we care about the customers and we care about service,” he stresses.

The Louisville, Ky.-based company provides contract manufacturing, packaging and distribution services for the appliance, automotive and truck, electronic, food and confections, consumer retail, pet food and products, lawn and garden, and pharmaceutical markets. It has facilities
in Louisville; Cleveland, Tenn., Galesburg, Ill.; and Allentown, Pa.; and provides services such as:

• Global supply chain logistics and inventory management – Derby purchases and imports goods from around the world, and provides scheduling, sourcing and distribution services. It can also package anf distribute time-consuming, hand-picked products and parts for the retail market, and package components into kits.
• Assembly and contract manufacturing, spare parts and warranty repairs – It has tooling and machines for specialized product lines, and produces functional and decorative assemblies and retail packages for a variety of industries.
• Contract packaging and distribution – Derby packages retail products and delivers directly to all major retailers. It also schedules incoming materials and packaging production directly to its customer’s marketing computer system and ships the products directly to retail outlet centers.
• Information systems – The company partners with Microsoft-certified suppliers who provide the company the latest tools, and uses Six Sigma and lean solutions for information systems and business processes. It also has full-time systems analysts.

“We provide all these services and we can tailor services to meet needs,” O’Bryan adds. “We have done that for a long time. We try to make sure that we can provide solutions to meet customers’ needs. We rarely have quality issues, and we are proud of that.”

Efficient, on-time delivery is also a main focus for the company. It has delivery trucks in all its facilities, and most customers are in close proximity to the site. It sometimes uses a third-party source for deliveries. “We far exceed customer expectations,” Plant Manager Todd Engholm says.

Lean Processes
Derby was founded in 1977 to provide metal fabrication services to the appliance industry. In 1982, it began producing sub-assemblies for this industry as well as developing other service capabilities.

All of the company’s plants are ISO certified and incorporate lean processes such as value stream mapping, O’Bryan says. It also recently hired a consultant to evaluate its Allentown plant. As a result, the company was able to eliminate one person from each of its nine packaging line operations.

“Based on the lean initiatives that we put in place, we were able to change the line configuration to make it more efficient,” he says. “The consultants were brought in to train our employees and we will, in turn, take this training and utilize it in all of our facilities. We currently use Six Sigma and lean techniques in all facilities, but this allowed us to update our training.”

Derby strives to help its customers overcome any quality-related issue they encounter. If a part of the customer’s business is cumbersome or awkward, the company can add specialized equipment or technology to smooth out the process.

For example, it recently helped a customer implement a significant appliance redesign. “The customer was looking to be more cost-competitive and the redesign allowed it to produce two models with the same component,” Engholm says. “It was basically a 50 percent gain with zero quality issues.”

Servicing Needs
Derby continuously looks for opportunities to grow. “We are always looking for acquisitions and new directions,” O’Bryan says.   

The company recently added 82,500 square feet to its Cleveland plant, which now has a total of 232,000 square feet. Five years ago, that appliance manufacturing plant was only 500 square feet, but business has grown significantly in recent years.

“We focused down there,” O’Bryan explains. “There is a very large need in appliance manufacturing in that area. To better service their needs, we moved that product down there.”

In the future, the company will focus more on the contract manufacturing and contract packaging industries, O’Bryan says. “Contract packaging is growing daily,” he says. “People manufacturing products aren’t experts at packaging. We want to step in and provide that service for them and allow them to do what they do best. As a company grows in volume, Derby Industries understands that they may get into areas that they are unfamiliar with. We will provide solutions to their problems and allow them to concentrate on their core competencies.”