Plant Shutdown Gives Wing to Spacecraft Parts Firm

To hear him tell it, Stanford Mu is not a gambler.

But in 1992, amid one of the worst slumps in the aerospace industry, the then-64-year-old Mu made what may have been the bet of his life.

At an age when most people are winding down their careers, Mu launched a new business, investing $400,000--his retirement savings--in his own aerospace parts company.

Mu’s timing couldn’t have been more questionable. Throughout Southern California, aerospace layoffs and retrenchments had become commonplace. Mu’s employer, Fairchild Controls, had decided to close its Manhattan Beach plant and move work to Maryland to lower costs.

“The market out there was collapsing,” Mu said. “But one of my visions was that Fairchild made a mistake. They left a lot of good people here, and our product demands good people.”

His bet appears to have paid off. Today, Stanford Mu Corp. in Harbor City brings in more than $4 million in annual sales and has grown from three employees to 37--most of them workers set adrift by Fairchild’s relocation.

“I just had a lot of faith,” Mu said. “Nobody thought that we would be around after a year, but here we are.”

Indeed, many would find it unthinkable to stake their fiscal future on an obscure and seemingly unremarkable bit of machinery called a pressure regulator.

But these regulators, which carefully control the flow of propellants and gases, lie at the heart of nearly all space-bound vehicles--from communications satellites to launchers to the Mars orbiter and lander systems.

In the space industry, regulators are considered the third-most critical component aboard a spacecraft. Their cost reflects that importance: a single regulator can cost from $15,000 to $80,000.

Mu’s tiny company competes in a segment of the industry that is dominated by much larger firms, such as Carleton Technologies, Valcor Engineering, Moog and Europe’s Aerospatiale.

Still, Mu’s firm has won contracts and kudos from customers ranging from Lockheed Martin to Boeing to Daimler-Benz Aerospace. This year, the NASA gave Mu one of its top subcontractor awards based on a nomination from Lockheed Martin’s astronautics unit.

For Mu, an engineer with more than 40 years in the aerospace industry, the award and the company’s success represent a vindication of his judgment.

“It’s been a challenge, and everybody worked very hard, but we look like we’re getting ready to take off at this point,” he said. “I like to do challenging things, and I think I would be bored stiff if I were to retire.”

The company’s outlook wasn’t at all clear early on. The firm started by pushing for contracts with the government as a certified small and disadvantaged business, a designation meant to help diversify the roster of federal contractors.

It took nearly a year to get the first bit of work: a military contract to repair and overhaul about 650 air turbine drives on C-130 Hercules cargo planes.

“It was very tough,” Mu said. “We had almost used up the $400,000 by then.”

But Mu’s company quickly found a place for itself in the regulator business, and it now has supplier contracts for satellites and high-profile planetary exploration programs, including the international Cassini mission to study Saturn, its moon Titan and other faraway planets.

In fact, quick and solid work by Mu’s company saved Lockheed Martin from severe schedule delays on the propulsion modules for both the Mars Global Surveyor and the Cassini project, according to Ralph Eberhardt, director of Lockheed Martin’s propulsion center in Denver.

Eberhardt, who knew Mu when he was at Fairchild, called on him when a Lockheed Martin supplier was having problems building the regulator for the Cassini spacecraft.

The other subcontractor had worked on the project for more than a year, but deadlines were being missed and Lockheed still had no working regulator, Eberhardt said.

Mu’s company stepped in and delivered the parts under tight deadline--and they are now on their way to Saturn aboard the Cassini.

“We were in a tight bind, and they performed,” Eberhardt said. “Every time I visited them, I was impressed by the commitment of the people--you could see it.”

From the beginning, Mu stressed the importance of a skilled and happy work force. He nurtured a strong sense of teamwork, and he gives credit to the hard work of the entire company.

That family feeling kept the company together during the lean months, when Mu’s small cadre of managers forfeited salaries to preserve cash.

Today, Mu’s gratitude is obvious as he walks through the plant with visitors, introducing nearly everyone and explaining the intricacies of each employee’s work.

The machining equipment on the shop floor is old but solid, much of it left over from the Fairchild plant. Work isn’t completed by computer-controlled machines; instead, employees use their hands and experience to guide the equipment and form the crucial precision finishes.

But Mu is investing for the future, hoping to further fuel his business in the booming commercial satellite market.

He hopes to book $10 million in sales in 2000, and the company’s expansion is meant to handle the additional business.

Mu said the company’s progress has prompted a few buyout offers but that so far they have been turned down.