CES Machines sees signs of bounce-back

Jamie Schmidt crosses her fingers that this winter's uptick in business at CES Machine Products in Reno was more than a blip caused by customers who are restocking their parts inventories.

The company thrived for most its 30-year history, growing from a tiny rented garage in a scruffy industrial neighborhood of Sparks into a shiny 57,000-square-foot facility in South Meadows filled with 45 milling, turning, swiss and screw machines, many of them computer-controlled.

But Schmidt, the marketing director of CES Machine Products and the daughter of founder Charles Schmidt, acknowledges the last couple of years have been tough for CES and other machine shops.

Employment, which peaked at about 100 before the recession, fell to approximately 45 with the economic downturn.

But Schmidt and her brother, Jarrod, the company's general manager, started to see signs of a turnaround early this year.

"Since the economy is so volatile, manufacturers are no longer holding any inventory, so they want products on an as-needed basis, fast and furiously," she says.

At the same time that it's fielding orders from longstanding customers, CES Machine Products is looking deepen its presence among aerospace and medical-equipment manufacturers that need highly sophisticated manufacturing of precision parts.

The push into increasingly sophisticated markets, Jamie Schmidt says, has been a key element in the company's growth since it was founded in 1980.

Then, Charles Schmidt worked a couple of screw machines to create very basic parts while his wife, Ann, handled administrative chores.

That simple machine work, however, migrated to China and other low-cost environments. CES grew more sophisticated.

"We've been reinventing ourselves over the years, staying abreast of the latest technologies and constantly improving processes," Jamie Schmidt says. It earned ISO 9001 and AS 9100 quality certifications to meet the requirements of manufacturing clients.

"It's tough to get your foot in the door," Schmidt says. "There are a lot of machine shops out there."

Using marketing tools that range from trade-show exhibits to a Facebook page, the company emphasizes its quality and on-time delivery as do most of its competitors and distinguishes itself by its level of communication with customers, she says.

"We have a really good rapport with our customers," Schmidt says.

Those customers range from large and small manufacturers in northern Nevada that like to be close to their suppliers to major companies such as aerospace contractor Goodrich Corp. and L3 Communications.

As its developed new markets, CES Machine Products also has weathered the storm of the recession by taking contracts far smaller than those it landed during the boom years earlier this decade.

At times, Schmidt says, the company has handled production runs as short as three or four complex pieces, as well as the long runs that constitute its bread and butter.

The push into new markets also may lead the company to look for new facilities outside of the Reno area. It's possible, Schmidt says, that increasing numbers of aerospace contracts during the past five years might spur creation of a second facility in the Pacific Northwest.