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PRECISION SWISS PRODUCTS INC.
MICRO FEATURES ON MACRO COMPONENTS.
Today’s Precision Swiss Products, Inc. barely resembles their 1974 beginnings. Sure, they continue to deliver precise Swiss parts, but
that’s only the tip of the manufacturing iceberg. Swiss screw machines have their large portion of real estate in Precision Swiss Products (PSP) 20,000 sq.ft. Milpitas, Ca. headquarters, but they share the spotlight with 5 axis milling, multi spindle live tooling lathes, Wire EDM and more automation than a robot can shake a stick at.
Richard Chad Lane acquired Precision Swiss Products (PSP) in 1985 from the original owner. He ran the company well into the 2000’s and hired current owner and CFO Norbert Kozar in 2005 as a manufacturing advisor. “I was hired on as a consultant to basically prep the shop for sale,” tells Norbert. “Richard had some heath issues, the shop was on a downward trajectory, and he wanted out. My goal was to bring it out of the dive to make it more appealing to new owners. I got the company turned around and by 2007 we had a couple interested parties lined up. He came to me and said he’d decided on a buyer. It was me. So now I owned a machine shop.”
PSP at that time was still basically a mom-and-pop shop running only Swiss parts. All in they had a dozen machines total, including a couple of basic lathes and mills to support the Swiss turning. Even though they
had a few local OEM customers most of the work was overflow from the area’s larger machine shops. That focus changed when Norbert took the helm. “We needed to leverage more work from the OEM clients,” explains Norbert. “To do this we needed to make changes. What I did right away was get us ISO certified. Beginning in 2007 we were ISO9001 and ISO1345 certified and targeting more medical and aerospace OEMs.” Sales doubled from 2004 to 2007. PSP has continued their upward trend even through a recession and a pandemic. “Buying the company in 2007 wasn’t ideal,” continues Norbert. “2008 taught me a few things that are the reason we are still here today. We were caught being dependent on aerospace and medical, a mistake we won’t make again. I bought the company with 14 employees and a dozen machines, but with diversification, automation, and having the best people running the best machines we’ve never stopped growing. I have 106 talented employees, 4 robots, a building full of machining centers, and we are on the cusp of opening a second facility on the east coast.”
DIVERSIFICATION
For many manufacturers diversification is having both aerospace and medical customers, but for PSP that wasn’t enough economic security. “A few years ago, I decided to
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CNC WEST June/July 2021