Orlando Teixeira, president and founder of Expedite Precision Works, Inc., a silicon valley machining job shop, has achieved success by virtually eliminating the word “no” from his customer dialogue.

“Of course we say ‘no’ to jobs we know we can’t do,” he says, “but we look long and hard at a given project before we do. In most cases we figure out a way to solve the customer’s problem, and then, if necessary we buy the equipment needed to do it. Over the years, the result for us is that we have become extremely diversified in the services we offer, and that has helped us through some hard times. With enough diversity, when one market is down another one is up. It gives us stability.”

Teixeira says new customers are surprised by the variety of his company’s equipment and services.

“We really are very diversified,” he says. “We offer manual, vertical and horizontal milling, CNC and manual turning, screw machine services, wire EDM, surface grinding, metal welding, plastic welding and fabrication, pad printing, some assembly and CNC plastic routing. What we find is that customers really like having a one-stop shop where they can bring their work. We can reduce their handling costs, and we give them a high-quality single source of responsibility for their projects.”

Finding ways to avoid having all their eggs in one basket is the stated, frequently formalized goal of many shops, Teixeira says, but not at his company.

“In our case, we didn’t even think about diversity,” he says. “You might say it happened almost by accident. All we ever do is think about how to give our customers what they want and diversity is the result.”

The Power of ‘Yes’

Teixeira started Expedite Precision Works part time in 1995 with a manual mill and a lathe in a 400 sq ft garage.

“We thought hard about our company name when we started,” he says. “We wanted something that said what we do. We picked Expedite to indicate quick turnaround, we picked Precision, well, because that’s very important here in silicon valley. Everyone was using engineering as part of their name, so we picked Works just to be different. The main thing was that in the beginning, when we had opportunities to do any kind of work, we always said, ‘Yes, we can do it.’ The result has been a fairly steady growth with no real downturns, even in the 2000 recession.”

Diversity aside, Expedite Precision Works’ story is similar in many ways to thousands of other jobs shops.

“When we started out, I kept my day job and machined parts at night,” he says. “My wife, Fatima, has been beside me all the way. She had her own small business back then, but she found time to pick up and deliver work to our customers, do the billing and bookkeeping. Finally, she closed her business and came to work full time. Today she is our chief financial officer. She has been a tremendous help to the business over the years.”

Customer Driven Diversity

Teixeira says he buys equipment only in response to customer demand.

“I only buy equipment to handle specific projects that are in house,” he explains. “If we think we’re going to get a job that needs new equipment to do it, we buy it. Over the years that has put us into a lot of different equipment that some shops have as their sole specialty. For some shops wire EDM is the whole service or screw machines. At Expedite those are departments in a comprehensive set of services.”

Teixeira began his “accidental” diversification early on when one of his customers asked if he would do some plastic fabrication for them.

“We were doing some machining for a company that had a lot of need for plastic fabrication, which required thermal welding and bonding, that kind of thing,” he says. “Then they asked us if we could do it for them. We said ‘Yes!’ and that put us into plastic fabrication. That pattern has repeated itself over and over again. Customers have needs, we say ‘Yes” and fill them. That got us into wire EDM, swiss screw machining, routing, you name it. Today we have a very stable business with a good roster of customers in both the aerospace and medical industries, and we’re still growing. Because of our diversity, we’re very optimistic about the future.”

Managing Diversity

Teixeira has learned well how to manage such a diverse array of equipment and disciplines.

“For one thing we installed a really good shop management software package called the E2 Shop System,” he says. “That takes care of quoting, order processing, materials management, scheduling, cost analysis, job tracking, shipping and complete accounting. With that software we have all the visibility we need to handle the business. It’s an important part of our system here.”

Perhaps the most important factor in handling such a diverse set of disciplines is the people.

“We have made sure to hire people with cross discipline training,” Teixeira says. “We never know what kind of work is coming in the door next, so we want to be sure we have someone here who is experienced in whatever we do. With quick turnaround as our goal, we can’t afford long learning curves. We’ve been lucky in that respect.”

Teixeira points to his manufacturing manager, Scott Singleton as a case in point.
“We recently bought a new 10-pallet Matsuura HPlus-405 horzontal machining center from Selway Machine Tool,” he says, “which requires a totally different way of thinking about machining. But Scott is very strong in horizontals, and we hired a top-notch machinist to help get the machine up and going. The result was a painless transition into using the machine.”

Going Horizontal

Until acquisition of the Matsuura horizontal, Teixeira operated stand-along mills exclusively.

“That was because of the equipment costs,” he says candidly. “We have been toying with the idea of buying a horizontal for years, but now, finally, we’re able to justify the purchase. We have a lot of work in house, and we needed to increase efficiency significantly.”

“The Matsuura does that,” adds Singleton. “With the horizontal, once you have a setup, the setup times goes virtually to zero. A lot of our jobs are repeat, short-run projects, so we want them always set up. The Matsuura is pretty fast, but our savings is not so much in spindle time as it is in set up.”

“We’ve been very impressed with the quality and speed of the HPlus,” Teixeira says, “It adds another dimension to our services. We probably will be moving more and more into horizontals and away from verticals, but for now this system will handle a lot of our work. Based on our experience so far, we know we have a number of jobs on verticals that will be much more efficient on the horizontal.”

“We did almost a year of research before we actually decided on the Matsuura,” Singleton says. “We talked to a lot of companies, and, frankly, most of the machines we looked at were great.”

“In the end it was the availability of local service that was one of the deciding factors,” Teixeira adds. “Selway has served this valley since before I started in business. Selway’s sales engineer, Pat Hayes, was very patient with us, never pressed us. When we had questions, he was there with the answers. Their service is excellent.”

“Also, the HPlus we bought has a 120-tool capacity with the ability to upgrade to 240 tools if we need to,” Singleton says. “The machine delivers great positioning accuracy, and it has a really user-friendly control system. We’re very pleased with it so far.”
“Our current plans for the company don’t include any push for major growth,” Teixeira says. “Right now we’re working on improving efficiency, profits and speeding turnaround. The Matsuura fits that goal perfectly.”

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