Jeff Bohanan : Protomet Precision Manufacturing

On Feb 22 my class mates and I visited Jeff Bohanan at Protomet Precision Manufacturing. Protomet is a world class machine shop where lots of fancy and complex parts are manufactured for a variety of products. Jeff started his career at Y-12 nuclear weapons facility in Oak Ridge. After going through a 2 year rotation program at Y-12, Jeff decided he wanted to go out on his own and build a world class manufacturing company. He and a friend started a two man engineering consulting company. In the beginning the two did a lot of work back for Y-12, the employer they had left to start their company. This helped them stay afloat while they pursued other contracts. An opportunity came up to bid on a Mercedes contract to machine a part for their SUV's seat belt assembly. Only problem was that Jeff didn't have a machine shop. Mercedes needed 1 million parts over 5 years at a target price of $4. Jeff and his partner came up with a cost effective way to manufacture the parts and bid on the contract without disclosing that they didn't have the facilities to machine the parts. They got chosen for the contract and immediately bought and installed a machine to produce the parts. While their machine was being installed they contract manufactured with a few other shops to make prototypes. A week or so after Jeff had ordered his machine for building the parts, Mercedes called and said they had a new cheaper way of making the part and wouldn't need Jeff's help any longer. He was devastated, they had spent everything they had to buy the machine to make the parts. He negotiated with Mercedes to make some of the first parts while they were getting their new process up and running. It turned out that their new process didn't work quite like they thought and Jeff ended up making all 1 million of the parts over a 5 year period. Protomet Precision Manufacturing grew out of that experience. Today Protomet's two biggest industries are homeland security and wakeboard boat parts. They manufacture surveillance camera housings that can read license plates and automatically check them in a database in a fraction of a second. Protomet is also a major manufacturer of what Jeff calls "bling parts" for wakeboard boats. These are typically the polished aluminum logo plates and tower components that may house speakers or wakeboard racks. Jeff's real competitive advantage is his ability to design and help customers redesign things in a way that they can be manufactured cost effectively. He is a big proponent of setting goals and spoke highly of Brian Tracy and his leadership development philosophies. Jeff's final words of advice were the following: "You may think that technology will be your biggest difficulty in entrepreneurship, but people will most certainly be your biggest difficulty". He spoke a lot about how to hire good people and reward them for what they do. He said "The main thing is to have integrity in the process, be very honest and shoot strait with people"