Jim Feltner, VP

Feltner himself has been a lifelong heat treater. His family started FPM, an acronym that stands for Feltner, Perrone, and Manseau. Working from the ground up, he understood what it means to be part of a company that puts quality first. From working on the floor to the little things involved in upkeeping to sales and operations, a clear understanding of the business at a granular level helped Feltner carry on the FPM tradition and make it more successful.

Critical Capabilities to Meet All Heat-Treating Needs

From its inception in 1978, FPM has been offering free pickup and delivery services to its clients in the Midwest markets, particularly in the Chicago area, which was a big deal for their customers and, at the time, was one of the first to do so.

Today, FPM’s core strengths include annealing, normalizing, neutral hardening, tempering, age/precipitation hardening, stress relieving, tool-steel hardening, vacuum hardening, vacuum high-pressure gas quenching, austempering, marquenching, carburizing, carbonitriding, gas nitriding, ferritic nitrocarburizing (FNC), brazing, deep freezing, straightening, and blast cleaning. Feltner mentions that FPM was one of the first to offer these solutions for the tool and die market.

FPM also owns the North American license to Nitrotec, a nitriding-oxidation-protection process that provides a highly corrosion and wear-resistant finish. This treatment eliminates the time and handling needed for secondary plating operations and allows for lower-priced carbon steel in place of alloyed steels.

I believe we are really good at putting people in the right positions to be successful in their own right. This is what makes a successful company

Feltner recalls FPM’s association with an up-and-coming company dealing with very high volume and critical applications that required unique heat-treating solutions. Facing several issues, the client approached FPM on the verge of losing a major project that they had planned on building the company around. FPM put together their full team to help this client and solve their issues in no time. “Our partnership is going on close to 10 years now,”states Feltner.

In another instance, one client had some issues with their employees, equipment, and overall costs. They went back and forth between the ideas of investing in heat-treating vs. their core competency, i.e., manufacturing. Ultimately, the client consulted FPM, and the company helped manage the client’s internal heat-treating operation. “Once they saw FPM’s attention to detail in processing and production consistency, the client allowed us to manage all of their internal and external heat-treating needs; this allowed our customer to focus more on their manufacturing capabilities and do what they are best at,” states Feltner.

Helping Clients Reroute around COVID-19 Disruptions

FPM closely monitors the market to figure out the next stages for expanding their business. For example, the growing interest toward EVs has prompted FPM to become more involved in the automotive sector. However, with the COVID-19 pandemic and the presidential election, there was a significant dip in the sector. This, however, did not make FPM falter. The company took the pandemic very seriously and powered through the challenges of being an essential business without compromising on safety. Being an exceptionally team-oriented company, FPM wanted to make sure that everybody was safe.

FPM also started taking precautionary measurements from day one. Their initial reaction to the medical community’s warnings of the pandemic was to implement employee screening upon arrival to the plant including temperature checks, and FPM took steps to improve sanitation on all shifts, train employees on current CDC Guidelines,and increase the number and use of handwashing and hand sanitizing stations in the facility.

In addition, FPM conducted constant training through their safety and environmental personnel on how to be safe and enforced contact tracing. FPM made sure to limit visitors to the facilities and only allowed one truck driver from another facility in the building at any given time. And they contacted every one of their customers that they collect products from and deliver to, ensuring that they coordinated procedures to keep the employees and customer base safe.

"Even before we talk about the heat treating, we want to discuss the best way to make the project and the customer successful"

In the wake and aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, FPM notes that there is too much uncertainty in the field now, hampering production schedules and supply chains. By staying in constant contact with their customers, FPM is making sure that their customer’s needs are met.

Looking to the Future of Heat Treating in the New Normal

Being well connected all over the U.S. and especially in the Midwest, FPM still offers regular truck routes that run in between their plants and to customers. The company’s commitment to quality is second to none with being Nadcap approved in their Elk Grove Village location, the highest level of certification for quality standards in the heat-treating industry. “We pride ourselves on being held to a higher standard not only in day-to-day business but with maintaining our equipment to meet the rigorous requirements of Nadcap accreditation,” says Feltner. As the world confidently looks forward to a better 2021, FPM envisions to up their game. The company is making significant investments in putting new state-of-the-art controls in all their equipment. They have accelerated the process of furnace upgrades and process automation in material handling. Additionally, FPM is in the middle of completing a full consolidation and restructuring project of their Cherry Valley location. The company has made extensive capital investments for new equipment, processing resources, and furnace controls.

Having cultivated a family-oriented culture at the company, every individual at FPM believes that no one person is more important than the other. Each member of the team is continually training to make sure that they can back up one another. “Whatever job needs to be done, anybody in the company is willing and able to step up and do it in order to provide the best service to customers,” says Feltner. “We’re large for our industry, but we feel that we still maintain that small business attitude where you can reach anyoneat any time in our company,” he concludes.