Once one job would complete, the next person happened to call and query about another project.” They’re one of my favorites!’ We filled up with work so fast. And I said, ‘Sure! I know about this new shop called BMF Metal Fabrication. And they asked whether I knew about any fabrication shops in the area.

“People knew I left, but they asked for advice on designs and other fabrication issues. “The phone calls really came to me,” Chadwick said. It did rain, actually and metaphorically. Leaving their previous work lives was a leap into uncertainty. The business partners couldn’t make calls to potential customers until they had left their previous employer. The ominous storm clouds and rain were harbingers of sorts. Now we have a clear span building, with no columns in our way.” With every building I’ve been in over the years, we always had columns get in the way of a great shop floor layout. But it lowers our cost per month, and we build equity in the business faster. “We found that buying would be much less costly than renting or leasing. “We wanted to buy our own building to be able to add on to it,” Chadwick said. The new roof aside, the two purchased the building for good reason. “Water started dripping out of every skylight,” he said.

Moments later the dripping commenced, and water hit Chadwick’s head. “Well, at least the roof is dry,” Chadwick said.īMF Metal Fabrication launched in this building in Winfield, Mo., in April 2017. So they closed the 14- by 14-foot drive-in bay door, large enough to take most roadworthy trucks. Chadwick looked beyond the yard (big enough for significant expansion down the road) and saw dark clouds on the horizon. Let It RainĬhadwick recalls the first day he and his business partner visited their newly purchased 4,500-square-foot building in Winfield, Mo., west of St. BMF Metal Fabrication was open for business.

They presented this business plan to bankers and, in April of this year, hit the ground running. The philosophy aims to shorten the order-to-cash cycle by focusing not on machine utilization but on job velocity-how long it takes for a job to make its way through the entire business. Louis implementing some key tenets of quick-response manufacturing, or QRM, an improvement strategy designed for high-product-mix operations. Chadwick and Dreisewerd spent years at a shop in St. Quick, predictable delivery: That in a nutshell sums up their business plan. “It seems that some larger shops have a tough time managing lead time and making lead time predictable,” Chadwick said. Specifically, they saw an opportunity in one key area: quick response. This time the two put real costs and prices behind their analyses, including the cost of machines, buildings, and lease rates, as well as how much sales they needed to be able to support those costs. We saw the economics of it, and we saw how it could make sense.” So Bill hit me with the idea again, and I was ready to consider it. “But last year I realized I had been in the same place for 24 years, and I was ready for a change. Every so many years, we would crunch the numbers, and every time we would struggle to make sense of it. “Bill was the spark behind it all,” Chadwick said. Dreisewerd is the hands-on, in-the-trenches technical guru. Chadwick is business- and sales-savvy, quick to strike up a conversation, and good at crunching the numbers. And off and on they had talked about launching a custom fabricator of their own.īoth knew they would make good business partners. The two have worked together in and around St. Mark Chadwick is a career metal fabricator, and so is Bill Dreisewerd. Shortly after this shot was taken, the company hired its eighth employee. BMF Metal Fabrication’s seven-person team, as of August 2017, from left: Company founders Mark Chadwick is on the far left and Bill Dreisewerd is third from the left.

Custom metal fabrication