Bayless Buys High-Tech Equipment, Gains New Edge

Bayless Engineering & Manufacturing Inc., a company that offers services such as precision machining and sheet metal assembly, has invested $2 million in equipment to help the Valencia-based company increase business by 25 percent this year. Owner Earl Bayless said the company’s new 4,000-watt, fiber-optic laser and press brakes give the company an edge in a highly competitive market, where turnaround times are tight and machine setup is costly. The purchase represented the largest single business investment in the firm’s 34-year history, he said. The laser is capable of cutting sheet metal at lightning fast speed and blue prints can be programmed directly into the machine, said Rod Smith, vice president of Bayless. “You are making a part, literally, within an hour,” Smith said. Bayless founded the company in 1978 and has grown it into a three-building campus in a Valencia industrial park. There also is a separate powder coating division, Powder Coating Plus, which applies durable and protective cosmetic finishes to metal parts. During the recession, many machining shops went out of business. Bayless managed to survive, although when the sheet metal market hit bottom in 2009, it was forced to cut 50 employees or nearly one-third of its staff, and it migrated to a 32-hour work week. The company has since rebounded and employs 188 people. Automating the cutting operations will result in eliminating half the deburring department and reassigning those employees to other duties in the shop. With the addition of the new equipment, Bayless anticipates the firm will continue to grow. He said the company is expected to do 25 percent more business this year as the existing customer base becomes busier and it discovers new clients in the green technology market. Haas Automation Inc., one of the Western world’s largest manufacturers of machining equipment, has been a customer for more than a decade. “(Earl) is from the old school when it comes to customer service,” said Dennis Johnston, manager of sheet metal procurement at Haas. “They go out of their way to understand what the customer requires.” Other customers are Valencia-based B&B Manufacturing, a supplier of parts and components for aerospace, military, automotive, and semi-conductor clients, Advanced Bionics, a global leader in developing cochlear implant systems, and drum maker Remo Inc. Bayless also has made coverings for electric vehicle charging stations and exteriors shells for computer equipment controlling wind turbines. Bayless doesn’t back off from making decisions that will give the company a competitive advantage, said Mark Heidenreich, Southwest sales manager of Cincinnati Inc. The Harrison, Ohio-based company manufactures the $900,000 fiber-optics laser cutter. Currently, Cincinnati Inc. has 10 of the laser cutters in operation nationwide. The machine at Bayless is the first installed for a manufacturer in the Southwest U.S., Heidenreich said. “It shows what he is all about,” Heidenreich said. The laser cutter can be pre-programmed to run on around the clock without an operator, which cuts operating costs by two-thirds compared to the CO2 laser cutter that was replaced, Smith said. The speed of 1,200 inches to 1,500 inches a minute on standard gauge sheet metal is unmatched in the industry, and the output is eight times what the CO2 cutter could produce per shift, Smith said. “They are surpassing speeds even they thought they could do,” Smith said. Cincinnati Inc. also supplied the two new computer-controlled press brakes that angle and bends the sheet metal before the final assembly. Snap-on tooling reduces setup time, resulting in lower cost and the ability to get 30 to 40 jobs out of the machines per shift. John Anderson, director of industry consulting with California Manufacturing Technology Consulting, said that organization is seeing more investment and a general optimism by forward-looking manufacturing companies such as Bayless. Companies are looking to boost their competitiveness and find advantages to being the supplier of choice, Anderson said. “Everybody had pulled back, and there are some companies that have cash they are sitting on (to invest),” he said.