Prototype Manufacturer Aims For Higher Ground
Imagine securing contracts for airplanes like Boeing's 787
Dreamliner as the commercial aircraft industry is seeing one of its
biggest booms in decades. And this comes just three years after
aircraft makers, like Bombardier, began knocking at your door.
Well-known in the auto industry as a company specializing in
producing concept cars and futuristic prototypes for some of the
world's largest automotive manufacturers -- most notably for
Chrysler, Ford, and Toyota -- Gaffoglio Family Metalcrafters, of
Fountain Valley, CA, is now traveling on the runway marked
"aerospace," reported the Los Angels Times.
So how does a small auto-body shop that opened for business in
1979 make that leap?
"What we do has a lot of great applications in aerospace," said
George Gaffoglio, chief executive and son of the founder and family
patriarch, John Gaffoglio.
Tell us about it! Metalcrafters now provides component and
subsystem production utilizing processes that include machining;
metal forming and fabrication using hydraulic stamping presses,
bladder stamping press, stretch forming; advanced composites
laminating and autoclave processing; glass forming; SLS rapid
prototype development; laser cutting and profiling; welding, and
more.
Aircraft makers began calling the company about three years ago,
as they were one of the few that still had the machines and the
skills to make highly specialized parts.
Among the first to call? Canadian aircraft maker Bombardier,
which needed Metalcrafters' expertise making curved windshields for
its Learjet and Global Express business planes. That led to a
contract from PPG Industries to make the windshield for Boeing's
787 passenger jet, the Gaffoglios' biggest contract to date.
"We don't have to invest in capital. It's already here," George
Gaffoglio said, noting that the company is utilizing only about 60
percent of its manufacturing capacity.
About 6,000 California companies supply parts and services to
Boeing.
"Lots of people are short on capacity but demand is very strong,"
said Richard Aboulafia, aerospace analyst for Teal Group. "We
haven't seen anything like this in 25 years."
John Gaffoglio retired last year, but the company continues to
be run by family members, including his two sons, George Gaffoglio,
chief executive, and Ruben Gaffoglio, company president. An
additional half dozen family members work in various
departments.
Mike Alexander, family outsider, also works for Metalcrafters.
He formerly oversaw the production line for McDonnell Douglas
Corp's MD-11 jumbo jet.
It was about a decade ago that the company made their initial
move into aerospace, George Gaffoglio said. The company's work
bending and shaping metals drew the attention of Lockheed Martin's
Skunk Works, the secretive lab in Palmdale, CA, where some of the
nation's most advanced military aircraft are designed.
The family won't say what they were asked to make, said
Gaffoglio, "but it involved 'very complex forms.'"
At about the same time -- in a prescient move -- the company
began purchasing machinery and tools being sold by aerospace
suppliers going out of business because defense spending had dried
up.
Those machines -- once used to shape sophisticated jet
parts -- could also be used to make lighter and stronger cars. The
company spent about $12 million buying equipment, much of it at a
fraction of its original cost.