Some Skills in Short Supply as Firms Shift Their Focus

In the scramble to minimize their dependence on military work, Orange County’s defense contractors are rapidly shifting technology and people into the commercial arena. Anaheim’s Interstate Electronics Corp., for example, is using its expertise in missile tracking systems to produce equipment that can be used by airports to keep tabs on approaching passenger and cargo planes, which are a lot easier to track than speeding, twisting missiles, says product development chief Brad Anderson.

And the shift isn’t limited to big companies. In fact, experts say, it’s usually easier for small manufacturers to change focus than for giants such as McDonnell Douglas Corp. or Hughes Electronics. Small manufacturers, after all, usually don’t have hundreds of people and millions of dollars in specialized machinery dedicated to churning out highly specialized parts for Army cannons or Navy submarine torpedoes.

But small outfits still have problems, says Norton Graham, owner of Wesval Inc., a small machine shop in Anaheim. Graham would like to add two people to his payroll--a 20% increase. But he says he’s having difficulty finding machine operators with the skills he needs. “We need someone to do general machining and someone to run a numerically controlled lathe,” he says.

The decimation of Southern California’s aerospace industry over the last decade means that a lot of highly skilled manufacturing workers have left the area in hopes of finding jobs in economically rebounding regions.

“And a lot of those who stayed after they got laid off by some major plant went into other lines of work in order to make a living, and they are established now and don’t want to come back to machining,” Graham says.

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John O’Dell covers major Orange County corporations and economic issues for The Times. He can be reached at (714) 966-5831 and at john.odell@latimes.com.