BC Instruments

Source: Exec Digital Canada

Date :11/08/2007 10:38:29

BC Instruments has the capacity to mill the hardest materials in existence to intensely tight tolerances, making it unique in its industry

Written and produced by James Buchanan & Michael Townsend

There are a number of ways to be competitive in business. Probably the most obvious is on price and service.

However, for BC Instruments, holding a high level of expertise at producing niche machined and milled products for a variety of demanding industries is enough for them to hang their hat on.

“People are our strength; super precision machining is our expertise,” says Harshad Patel, director/section manager for the company.

BC Instruments is a supplier of precision machined components and assemblies for the aerospace, defense, medical, nuclear energy, nuclear medicine, injection molding, and electronic industries. The company currently has four manufacturing facilities – five in Canada and another based in India – and expected sales of more than $25 million in 2007.

Though the company has come to be a recognized leader within its industry, BC Instruments comes from rather humble beginnings, says Patel.

Founded in 1971, the company’s first location was in a garage attached to the house of founder Bruno Conzelmann. “Meetings were held around a dining room table we had set up,” says Patel.

The company managed to grow, and by 1980 had moved a couple of miles down the road from its somewhat Spartan surroundings, to a modern facility located in an industrial park in Schomberg, Ontario. Since then, Patel says the company has expanded the original building three more times.

“We have grown as our customers grew,” he adds.

In 1988, the company built another manufacturing plant adjacent to its Schomberg facility, which included a plating shop as well as expanded on its CNC machine driven operations.

Then in 1995, the company purchased another adjacent building, which enabled the company to further expand the volume of its work. This building was again expanded in 2000.

In all, these facilities enabled the company to work on machined parts that demand adherence to extremely tight tolerances (up to +/- .0001 of an inch) for very demanding companies, such as those that design and build nuclear power plants. According to Patel, the company distinguished itself not only for being able to work with such tolerances, but also as being able to work with extremely difficult to machine materials.

Most recently, BC Instruments opened its EMM (Engineered Materials Machining) section, which further expanded the company’s capabilities to include what Patel calls hard milling. This is exceptionally specialized work on extremely hard materials that requires technologically advanced machinery and skilled operators.

“This is very unique machining because it produces components from challenging to work with materials,” says Patel. “Hard [Rc54 and harder] milling is very difficult to do.”

One of the machines used in the EMM section, is an Ultra Sonic DMS35 developed by Sauer & Company based in Stipshausen, Germany.

According to the company’s website, the DMS35 uses, and then converts, a high frequency electrical signal into an oscillating motion through electrically polarized motors that are amplified by a booster. This process causes the diamond coated cutting tool to expand and contract at 20 kHz or 20,000 cycles per second while also rotating as fast as 600 rpm (the machine will go up to 60,000 rpm using a high speed spindle).

What all of that means is that the company can produce complex components and assemblies out of very hard raw materials to nearly exact tolerances.

As the company has grown, says Patel, it found it necessary to break the company up into four separate profit centers, each with its own section manager. These managers have responsibilities similar to those of a company president, in that they are responsible for hiring production staff, bringing new business in to their respective sections, expanding their section, and running the day-to-day operations. Each in turn reports to the company president.

The reason for this distributed structure, says Patel, is that smaller sections of a large company are easier to oversee and manage than trying to run the show from one centralized, top-down leadership position.

One of the sections is EMM, as described above.

The next is Patel’s, which is called Special Projects and is responsible for all of the company’s work to supply components and assemblies for the nuclear power and nuclear medicine industries. This section also produces specialized parts for aerospace companies.

According to Patel, the company has worked within the nuclear power industry almost since its founding, producing parts such as thermowells, feeder coupling cap screws, hubs and flanges, among others.

BC also designed some of the CANDU reactors components (fittings), such as Nuclear Class 1 Thermowells and Buttweld adaptors, and also has pressure vessel approvals from the Technical Standard and Safety Authority (TSSA).

Primarily, these components and assemblies are used in CANDU (Canada Deuterium Uranium) reactors, which, according to the CANDU Owners Group Inc., use approximately 15 percent less uranium than a pressurized water reactor for each megawatt of electricity produced.

BC Instruments has supplied products to companies such as Atomic Energy of Canada Limited, Ontario Power Generation, and Bruce Power. The company has also provided products for projects in countries such as Argentina, Romania, China and South Korea.

The company’s third section, says Patel, is known simply as Section 30.

This group focuses on producing large diameter parts for the aerospace, medical, and injection molding industries.

The final section is titled SDT (Small Diameter Turning), which produces smaller diameter parts, primarily for injection molding, says Patel. The biggest customer for these products, he adds, is Husky Injection Molding Systems Ltd.

Asked about what makes his company unique, Patel says, “Our work is specialized to a very precise edge. Very few companies can make these precision parts.”

What keeps the company on the forefront of an industry predicated on precision, adds Patel, is the company’s diligence in keeping up with the state-of-the-art equipment as it emerges each year. He says the company still uses a few manual machines (lathes in particular) for parts that require a manual touch, but the company mostly relies on highly precise CNC (Computer Numerically Controlled) machinery.

The result is that the company can hard mill and hard turn (this refers to the company’s main body of work, as opposed to the specialized hard milling done by the EMM section) just about any material, such as titanium, stainless steel, composite materials and engineered materials harder than Rc54. “Not many companies have this capability,” he says.

Having the latest machinery alone, though, is not enough. Patel says that the technical expertise and experience held by BC’s employees is very deep and another distinguishing feature of the company.

“Anyone can get the machines, but they require a technical expertise to use the machines to their full capabilities,” he says.

Attracting new employees to the company is done partly through partnerships with area community colleges, where the company often goes to the school to talk with students about the industry in general, and the work BCI does in particular.

The company also offers an apprenticeship program, where it will cover the cost of the technical education (usually a one year program, says Patel) and then provide up to three years of practical experience in order for the individual to become a certified machinist.

Patel adds that turnover at the company is not really an issue. The company offers a unique profit sharing plan, wellness and health programs, good benefits, and the plants are comfortable to work in (in particular, he notes, they are air-conditioned).

“We provide a very good work environment,” he says.

The company also offers what Patel described as soft skills programs, which are intended to help employees improve their interpersonal development.

“People skills are very important to us,” he says.

When it comes to bringing new business through the door, Patel says the company is in the enviable position of having customers and jobs come to them rather than the other way around.

For example, says Patel, he and others in the company are listed in a number of prominent reference materials for the nuclear and other industries that are published online and in hard copy.

“The industry is small, so everybody knows everybody else,” he adds.

Patel also says that due to the specialized nature of the company’s work, customers with special needs that match the company’s capabilities seek them out because they are generally aware of BC’s reputation.

Basically, if a company needs some detailed hard milling or turning done for harder than Rc54 materials, BCI is one of a few companies that can do that. Further, Patel adds that the company is well known for providing a high level of quality, delivery, and service.

He goes on to say that price is something of a secondary consideration, though an area where BC is competitive, because clients have to have the work done accurately and precisely so they look for a company with the capabilities first and the pricing second.

The diverse range of industries the company serves is also a strategic decision.

“If one of the industries is slow, another will usually be busy. This way we have steady work for our employees from our customers,” says Patel.

The cutting tools used by the company are generally supplied by Duramill, he says. Duramill not only supplies the machines and tools, but offers consulting services on how to get the best performance from the equipment in certain situations. Duramill also handles inventory for BC to make sure the supplies needed to run the machines are in stock as needed.

Sourcing materials can present a modest challenge to the company, as some of them cannot be found in North America, For example, Patel says the company has purchased nuclear grade tubing from Spain.

When sourcing is an issue, section managers will work with the company’s purchasing department to develop the specs for the materials, and then vendors are sought and selected, he adds.

Being in an industry that is explicitly dedicated to meeting very high tolerances, BC Instruments takes continuous improve-ment of its manufacturing process very seriously. According to Patel, the company employs lean manufacturing practices throughout the company and is certified AS9100/ISO and N285.0 code for pressure retaining systems and components in nuclear power plants.

Internal inspection capabilities and equipment includes several CNC coor-dinate measuring machine, Mitutoyo CMM, surface finishing measuring, hardness testing and conductivity testing as well as industry standard capabilities for threads, bores, angles and other features.

“Continuous improvement is part of our company’s culture and can be found in our mission statement,” says Patel.

In fact, the company’s home page states, “Our strategy at BC Instruments is to utilize the process of continuous improvements through learning in our daily activities to create positive changes within all levels of our organization.”

When asked about the future growth of the company, Patel says he is confident that the company’s diverse marketplace will continue to expand allowing BC Instruments to grow as its customers expand.

“A nuclear renaissance is coming, so we foresee there will be more and more demand for our nuclear products,” he says.

BC Instruments will also take an active role in helping its customers grow their businesses. The company offers input and consulting services to its customers, and will also handle prototyping in order to help them expand.

To meet the expected increase in demand for the company’s work, Patel says the company is in the planning stage for another plant expansion.