BAZZ HOUSTON

BAZZ HOUSTON:

Stable and Continuous Growth in the Metal Stamping Industry

MEXICONOW Staff Report

For over 50 years the Bazz Houston Company has been recognized as one of the best Metal Stamping Companies on the West Coast with two manufacturing facilities in Garden Grove, California and Tijuana, Mexico.

Javier Castro is the President and CEO of the Company. He talked to us about the current situation at Bazz Houston: “Like many manufacturers, Bazz Houston experienced challenges over the past decade which threatened our very survival as many of our customers moved operations overseas followed by the financial crisis of 2008. While many companies cut back, scaled down operations and hunkered down, we made the decision to reinvest back into our business to make Bazz Houston a better company. We are now a stronger, leaner manufacturer. This has enabled us to accelerate our strategic growth plans and this is evidenced by our substantial growth over the past few years.”
According to Mr. Castro, acceleration in the Company´s growth plans is attributed to several factors: •The decision to employ a “dual manufacturing” strategy with the opening of a new production facility in Tijuana, Mexico in 2004.

•Focusing on improving all manufacturing processes and capabilities by investing in production equipment modernization.

•Enhanced tooling capabilities with solid model design, new CNC machining, additional EDM equipment, new design/build techniques and in-die sensors.

•Investing in people through effective in-house and offsite training programs.

•Improving the quality system. Investing in new inspection equipment, software, company-wide SPC, achieving Quality ISO 9001 Certification and now AS9100C Certification.

•Increasing marketing expenditures to expand brand awareness and company capabilities.

For the New Year 2014 the company will first and foremost continue to provide their current customers with the best possible value, while maintaining World Class performance. Javier Castro explains: “Several of our key customers have been with Bazz Houston well over 20 years providing us the stability necessary to focus on growing our diverse customer base and penetrate new markets.”

Bazz Houston features a new facility that was completed in November 2013. This new facility is now fully operational. It is located in La Mesa Industrial Park which is conveniently located just 15 minutes from both the San Ysidro and Otay Mesa border crossings in Tijuana.

Javier Castro went on to explain: “With the expansion in Mexico, Bazz Houston has more than doubled the size of its manufacturing plant in Mexico, bringing our companywide manufacturing footprint to over 100,000 square feet. The new plant is already manufacturing a wide range of springs, stampings, wire forms, fourslide, assembly and tooling. We also offer a full range of Maquila services: Warehousing; Kan Ban; Virtual transfers; Vendor Managed Inventory and Electronic Data Interchange.”

Bazz Houston is a problem solver. Whether it’s a new or an existing part, Bazz Houston’s in-house engineering department gets involved at the very beginning of every project to ensure that consideration is given to the manufacturability, tooling complexity and even material selection to provide a quality product at the best possible price.

Bazz Houston also has an excellent tooling department specializing in tooling for high volume production, with lead times as low as 3 – 5 weeks. Bazz Houston also offers innovative solutions for value added assembly with design capabilities for automated assembly lines and work cells.

Bazz Houston is considered to be one of the best Metal Stamping Companies on the West Coast. In this regard Javier Castro had this to say to MexicoNOW: “The primary reason for our success is that we are service orientated. The customer is of utmost importance to us. We fully understand that our success is directly tied to their success. We have been and continue to be an innovative and forward looking company. We perform “Design for Process Capability” which ensures a quality part at the best possible price, among many other factors.”

Bazz Houston is targeting the aerospace industry. “This industry,” according to Mr. Castro, “has strong ties to both Southern California and Tijuana. We are AS9100C registered at both facilities and as you know this is the standard recognized by all of the major OEMs such as Eaton; General Electric; Bombardier; Boeing; Rolls Royce; Pratt & Whitney; Goodrich and many others.” Mr. Castro explained.

“We make,” he went on to say, “a wide variety of custom made springs (compression; extension; torsion; wire and flat springs); stampings (metal; progressive and high speed), in addition to fourslide (wire forms; clips; flat springs and special brackets). All this as well as assembly operations including bending; forming; shearing; riveting; notching; drilling and tapping.”

Javier Castro, President and CEO of Bazz Houston shared this observation: “We see continued growth as we expand our business with existing customers and add strategic new customers. Our goal is to double our size again within the next 5 years.”