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One Line, Three Employees With just one plating line and three employees, Benson charted a course for success that included adding services for his aerospace customers, and developing a unique management style and an extremely hard work ethic. Today, Benson is the CEO, president and majority owner of a $100 million company with 350 employees. It recently moved into a new facility in Mesa, Arizona, that was funded by the city and is located at the end of the runway at Phoenix-Mesa Gateway Airport. The new location—featuring all-new plating lines, machining areas and fabrication stations—is ideal, enabling helicopters and airplanes to roll right up to the 23,000-square-foot, on-site hangar so that parts can be removed and remanufactured quickly and efficiently. Formerly a business on its deathbed, Able Engineering is now performing more than 8,000 Federal Aviation Administration-approved repairs for more than 3,600 customers from all over the world. "We plan to triple the business in five years," says Benson, who has been praised by everyone from local and state government officials in Arizona to the U.S. Secretary of Commerce to business guru Jack Welch. "This is the beginning of an exciting new chapter in our company's growth. We're already the most cost-effective MRO and parts provider for our customers; this new fly-in facility positions us as the most convenient, too." Community Support The new 190,000-square-foot facility that Able moved into in April 2013 came about because of an innovative idea by Mesa officials, who saw their community deci- mated when Williams Air Force Base closed in the early 1990s. The city converted the land into the public airport and then established a foreign-trade zone to attract busi- nesses to the 2,000-acre site. Bringing Able and its plating and machining lines to Mesa was an important part of the city's new HEAT program, which stands for healthcare, education, aerospace and tourism/technology. "Able Engineering is a perfect fit for the Gateway area and represents the aerospace pillar in Mesa's HEAT initia- tive for economic development," says Mesa Mayor Scott Smith. "They will bring hundreds of high-tech jobs into an area that is becoming well-known for aerospace research, design and defense." Designing the new plating area inside the facility fell on the shoulders of Yuri Hoverson, Able's project engineering manager. Hoverson sought out CJI Process Systems in Santa Fe Springs, California, and owners Archie and John Cholakian to help start the design process. "We started talking with the CJI team in 2006 about our new facility, but then we had some starts and stops because of the economy," Hoverson says. "Over the last few years, when we finally got the go-ahead, we had the chance to go back and revisit what we spoke about and make some modi- fications, but it seemed we were always on the same page." Numerous Processes CJI and its team—which has become leading specialists in the fabrication of plating and metal finishing equipment— began by examining Able's processes, which were made up of numerous certifications and various lines, including: • Chromium plating per AMS-QQ-C-320, AMS 2406 and BAC 5709 PRODUCTS FINISHING — pfonline.com 15 Able And ReAdy The new location is ideal, enabling helicopters and airplanes to roll right up to the 23,000-square-foot on-site hangar. Carriage mechanisms for the Boeing 747 are mechanically refurbished and plated to specification, at considerable savings to Able customers. 0614_PF_AbleFEATURE.indd 15 5/16/2014 1:35:16 PM