BIG Kaiser Precision Tooling Inc.
With a history of success based on long-term, global partnerships, BIG Kaiser Precision Tooling Inc. is expanding its tooling capabilities and product line. “We offer a higher-performance, guaranteed product,” says Jack Burley, vice president of sales and engineering. “We feel confident enough to always provide our customers the highest possible performance.” In fact, BIG Kaiser is known among its customers for its top quality, he says.
The company specializes in difficult, expensive, upmarket, complex and high-end processes. Its clients include end-users in the aerospace, medical, energy, general industrial and agricultural sectors, Burley says. It sells on technology, not price, he adds.
BIG Kaiser is an innovative company comfortable with new technology, Burley asserts. Years ago, it was the first to develop a universal boring system based on a modular concept. More recently, it spearheaded an innovative product known as BIG-PLUS, a dual contact spindle system that provides contact between the spindle face and the flange face of tooling, as well as on the taper. “When we bring product to market, we are innovative and not simply following other product already out there,” Burley explains. “We are always looking for new developments the world has not seen and our customer has not seen.”
BIG Kaiser specializes in supporting high-accuracy and high-efficiency environments, resulting in a lineup of superior products backed by a support team that knows how to get the most out of them, the company says, because superior tooling is critical to top-level production performance.
“BIG Kaiser finds the best of the best and delivers it to our customers with a personal commitment to helping them install truly efficient solutions,” the company says. “The result is an all-star lineup of products that deliver true and measurable performance advantages – products that are engineered to exacting standards and then manufactured with materials and craftsmanship that enable superior performance.”
As an engineering-based company, “We provide customers real-time answers and real-time solutions with our products,” Burley says. “We don’t use salesman-speak; we tell what we know and give honest answers. We tell customers what we can do and what we can’t do. If it’s going to cost a lot of money, we are not afraid to say that, and we bring products to market on time and within budget. We’ve been successful at that.”
Global Partners
The company has been in business in the United States since 1990. It began as the U.S. subsidiary of Kaiser Präzisionswerkzeuge AG, of Switzerland, also a developer and manufacturer of precision boring tools and modular boring systems. In 2003, it partnered with BIG Daishowa Seiki Co. Ltd., a tooling manufacturer based in Osaka, Japan. After this, it changed its named to BIG Kaiser, in recognition of the alliance.
Business is “reasonable but not great,” President Chris Kaiser says. “We are ahead of last year but people are still a little hesitant about major investments in machine tools. Although we are still a bit insecure about what is happening, we feel business should be pretty good over the next couple years.”
Burley shares that optimism, noting premium-line products are in hot demand. “More customers are looking to us,” he says. Trends in the industry, such as higher quality standards, benefit BIG Kaiser. “End-users are putting closer tolerances on products for better efficiency,” Burley says. “Robots are taking over what humans used to do so things must fit tighter than before. What used to be an easy, run-of-the-mill process is now more difficult.”
The Future of Manufacturing
BIG Kaiser Precision Tooling recruits new employees via word of mouth and online. It offers paid training and certification opportunities, as well.
The company says it is committed to improving the future of the industry by promoting manufacturing to young people in high schools and via educators. “We baby boomers are starting to retire and there is a gap to fill behind us,” Kaiser says. “Unfortunately, manufacturing is not seen as a sexy career. So, over the past five years, we have been working to improve that image.”
BIG Kaiser hosts open houses at its facility to demonstrate to students, parents and educators the professionalism of its work. “We are trying to dispel the notion that manufacturing plants are dirty places,” he says. “A lot of it deals with top computer technology such as CNC equipment. It has changed quite a lot over the years.”