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.

FMI: www.metalcrafters.com