Delta Men Are From Mars

A group of software engineers at M&M Mars Co. in Greenville, Miss., founded Delta Systems Inc. in 1990. Will Salley, Delta president and CEO, got his technical training while working on airplane computers in the Marine Corps and later for Hughes Aircraft Co.’s Space Communications Group.

After joining Mars, Salley met former Navy fire control technicians Chuck Bruce and Rick Calvin, who eventually developed Delta’s proprietary software.

The partners’ big break came in 1991 when Delta landed the initial software programming job for Beckaert Corp.’s Rogers facility. The firm relocated to Northwest Arkansas with eight employees and added Nestle Foods and Glad Manufacturing to its client base.

In 1994, Salley was introduced to Gerald S. Hurlow and Fatehali T. Dharssi, the principals at Canada’s prestigious HSD Partners Inc. investment banking company, through a friend at Nestle. “Those two got what we were trying to do,” Salley said.

Hurlow replaced Dharssi as Delta’s chairman at the end of December.

Salley helped take the company public on Dec. 31, 1999, in Canada because of Delta’s size and HSD’s reputation there. Most of the last four years, however, have been spent perfecting Delta’s technique for having PCs physically control packaging machines — an advantage over competitors, who rely on additional custom controls.