With over 100 years of experience, Dane Manufacturing leverages cutting-edge technology to meet the demands of its major US manufacturing partners
For over a century, Dane Manufacturing has offered expert metal fabrication and contract manufacturing services to a national customer base of major US manufacturers. Having recently entered a period of hyper-growth under the watchful eye of Chief Executive Officer, Troy Berg, the company now boasts extended capabilities and a cutting-edge facility network. As Troy himself details: “The company has always been a privately owned operation, and it’s stayed true to being a family business, even though it’s changed hands over the years. We’re the third family to own the business. Before us, it was the founders, who began a tradition of quality manufacturing leading to what Dane Manufacturing would become. The second owners were focused on growth, they expanded the operation and established a company with 12 employees. When we took over as the third private owner, we inherited a small operation with about $1.2 million in annual sales turnover. Our first mission in taking over Dane Manufacturing was to put it into hyper-growth mode. We grew from 12 to 200 employees, and with the additional workforce we elevated the company’s capabilities, output, and performance.
Strategic investments
“We’re a medium volume to large volume precision sheet metal fabricator and contract manufacturer. Our customer base is primarily made up of larger businesses with more demanding production schedules. We work with local manufacturers to provide materials for a wide variety of goods that are distributed nationwide. You can find our work in everything from stove units and construction equipment to commercial buildings. We pride ourselves on serving a wide range of industries and customer requirements.
“Since taking over, we’ve also established a significant track record within the data center industry. Alongside end customers such as AWS, Meta, Microsoft, Azure, and Oracle, we manufacture components for data centers across the US. You’ll also find Dane products within their data protection processes — we make components for cloud computing security systems. To produce these more refined elements, we’ve adapted our machinery and manufacturing processes to
precision tolerances. As a result, our customers have become accustomed to high productivity during their assembly operations. We produce to medium and high-volume rates — our minimum is around 1000 a month, and we’ll go up to 5000 units per month, depending on the customer.”
Strategic investments have been part of the secret to success for Dane Manufacturing. The company has recently undergone a series of rapid expansions and evolutions, as Troy discusses: “Since the company has scaled from a smaller operation into a much larger one, we’ve had to make some strategic investments. These investments have helped our operation manage the additional capacity and demand. They’re split between three key categories: equipment, land, and real estate. We had the original factory for 103 years, and to really grow the business, we had to grow our operational footprint. So, we decided to buy all the land around the factory to continue expanding, while retaining the heart of our operation. In total, we’ve expanded that original building seven times.
Impressive expansion
“We still outgrew that factory, and so it was time to move our operations to a new location. We started doing work on our new manufacturing campus a little while ago, and today we sit in a new 510,000-square-foot facility on 50 acres. As a part of the new facility, we added a state-of-the-art powder coat paint line and created additional space for product assembly and storage including a shipping and fulfilment warehouse where products are packaged, skidded, warehoused and distributed.
Growth trajectory
“In total, we’ve spent around $20 million investing in the new factory and infrastructure investments. In addition, we invested another $18 million in our smart factory’s equipment and automation capabilities. With the latest advances in manufacturing technology available to us in-house, we’ve been able to run higher volumes for larger, more demanding customers, and we’ve also been able to reduce all our lead times.
“In the last three years, we’ve accelerated growth as a result of our push for an innovative, state-of-the-art smart factory. Automation has been a huge asset in keeping the business growing. Our loading and unloading processes are now fully automated, and our storage unit is managed by a computerized retrieval system. Automation also allows different parts of the production process to speak to one another, meaning that materials are automatically moved from laser cutting and punching, downstream into automated bending and onto the next steps of the operation. The production parts will go through production, many times not being touched by a human until it’s finished and packaged.”
Having grown Dane Manufacturing from a small-size operation into an industry competitor on a national scale, Troy and his team now look toward the future. “In our industry, you’re never really done, there are always growing customer needs that we want to meet or exceed. We’re a growing company, and we want to keep it that way. We’ll continue our growth trajectory by anticipating our customers’ needs and leveraging technology to maximize our capabilities.
“Our customers are looking for highly professional management, ongoing investment, and minimal risk. Our goal is to stay at the very cutting edge of our industry, to attract a customer base of national and multinational businesses who demand quality parts, delivered on-time, every time,” he concludes.