Steelhead Technologies, a software provider serving the heat treating and metal finishing industries, has acquired Visual Shop and Bluestreak, bringing together three providers of manufacturing execution, quality management, and job shop management software for North American heat treaters and metal finishers. The acquisition expands its software offering while retaining the industry expertise developed by each organization.
Visual Shop, developed by Cornerstone Systems, and Bluestreak have both provided software for heat treating and metal finishing job shops for decades. Steelhead said clients of all three companies will have access to a unified platform combining manufacturing execution, quality management, enterprise resource planning, and shop floor management capabilities.
Steelhead plans to continue investing in software capabilities for heat treating operations, including support for furnace calibrations, operator certifications, sample testing, sensor integration, and cybersecurity initiatives related to CMMC compliance. The company said the combined organization will continue drawing on the technical expertise of Visual Shop and Bluestreak teams.
CEO and Co-Founder
Steelhead Technologies
“Heat treating job shops have been under decades of competitive pressure from offshoring, workforce challenges, and volatility in costs,” said Jeff Halonen, CEO and co-founder of Steelhead Technologies. “With demographic changes and AI completely changing the operational landscape, the challenges remain as steep as ever. At the same time, top government officials and contractors are urgently bringing back work by reshoring and scaling production. Job shops must leverage technology to rapidly increase capacity and capability without adding head count to solve every challenge.”
“To stay competitive in the long term, we would need to build a new product on a modern platform. Steelhead has a great product and shares our philosophy of providing outstanding customer service,” said Kevin Pluedeman, president of Cornerstone Systems (Visual Shop). Todd Wenzel, president and founder of Bluestreak adds, “By joining forces with Steelhead, we are bringing the institutional knowledge and specialized features of Bluestreak together with Steelhead’s modern infrastructure.”
The announcement also included comments from Exactatherm, a commercial heat treater in Mississauga, Ontario, which has implemented Steelhead’s software. Vraj Shah, quality manager at Exactatherm, said the company has used the platform to simplify employee training, improve access to Nadcap audit records, reduce lead times to approximately 10 days, and shorten inventory hold times.
As part of the announcement, commercial heat treater ThermTech said it is partnering with Steelhead as it implements the company’s software platform. The system combines manufacturing execution, quality management, ERP, financial, and customer service functions into a single platform. The company also said its engineering team will work with Steelhead to further develop heat treating-specific capabilities.
Press release is available in its original form here.
Stay tuned for more: Heat Treat Today’s Doug Glenn recently sat down with Steelhead Technologies CEO Jeff Halonen for a deeper dive into the acquisition and its implications for the heat treating industry. The full interview will be published soon.
