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Thursday, Mar 28, 2024

Manufacturing Profiles: Joseph Avila

Joseph Avila Chief Executive Vision Engineering Inc. Palmdale Lighting products manufacturer Vision Engineering Inc. was founded in 1997 by Henry Avila, now the company’s chief product officer. His son, Joseph, is chief executive. The company is housed in a 73,000-square-foot building filled with automated equipment. Eighty percent of Vision’s work is making lights used in commercial refrigerators found in supermarkets and drugstores. Question: Is it tough being a manufacturer in California? Answer: Yes. If you don’t have a competitive edge on your process then, yes, it can be. When we take on any projects in manufacturing, we use our skill set to see if this can be a tool or part that can be manufactured by a metal stamp press. We usually take that route because it is dependent upon the repetition of the machine how fast it can produce those parts. If a machine is operating at fast, optimal conditios we can be competitive. As far as a lot of the labor laws in California, we’ve really seen some jobs being taken overseas so it has been more difficult opening a company. What kind of challenges does your company face? As a manufacturer, our challenges are customer-centric. Our goal this year is to diversify the company to get into different marketplaces and using our talents, we can diversify business within manufacturing metal stamp products for other industries, not only in the commercial refrigeration markets but to hit industrial lighting of warehouses and also interior commercial space for office buildings. What attracts you to those markets? Those products are commonly lighting applications where people can work under. We want to deliver our value of soft, glare-free lighting, creating a comfortable work environment for everyone. How did Vision get into refrigerator lighting? LEDs took to market as a viable light source in 2008 and that year, since we had a metal stamping background, my dad developed a LED reflector, a micro metal stamped reflector that sits on top of the LED, which directs light uniformly to the target area. The concept really took off in the commercial refrigeration market in 2010 when we developed a light fixture that goes inside commercial refrigerators in grocery stores, CVS Pharmacy and Walgreens Co. We partnered with a large OEM (original equipment manufacturer) and started supplying them with products for about seven or eight years now. Business has grown 22 times once that optic technology got into the marketplace. It has done very well for us. Do you use your own lights in your building? All of the building has various versions of our lighting products. We have seen the benefits of using LED technology once we have installed our own products. The comfort level in our factory has been noted by our employees. Is the Antelope Valley a good place for manufacturers? Absolutely. There is a lot of room to grow here. The city (Palmdale) has been very generous and ready to help us at any time for our success. There is a lot of elbow room, you are not dealing with a lot of traffic or logistical issues. As far as the location of Palmdale and Lancaster, it is not far from the L.A. area. So, when it comes to shipping, it is not difficult to export from here. Does the increase in the minimum wage affect your company? Yeah. I think it affects everyone’s business. Ways to combat that is to really focus on product design and development. If we are up against the wall competing globally with lighting products, we have to take every avenue that we can to stay competitive. If that means altering designs to be less complicated and less complex to assemble then those are the avenues we will take. We have seen an increase in payroll since we opened this operation. That is why there is the goal to diversify our product lines. Who are your competitors? General Electric Co., is a large competitive of ours. Lithonia Lighting and Osram Sylvania Inc. We compete head-to-head with some of those product lines. Again, none are using our optic technology. That is one thing that stands apart from them. How would you characterize Vision’s culture? We are a group of passionate people here – passionate engineers and artists. We not only want to produce a wonderful product but create a wonderful experience with all of our customers and have that storyline that these are Vision products and if Vision products are installed in your building or facility, people know where they came from, made in the USA by people who are hardworking and trying to liven up and bring back manufacturing to the states. – Mark R. Madler

Mark Madler
Mark Madler
Mark R. Madler covers aviation & aerospace, manufacturing, technology, automotive & transportation, media & entertainment and the Antelope Valley. He joined the company in February 2006. Madler previously worked as a reporter for the Burbank Leader. Before that, he was a reporter for the City News Bureau of Chicago and several daily newspapers in the suburban Chicago area. He has a bachelor’s of science degree in journalism from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.

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