Funds to Aid Aerospace Suppliers Sought : Industry: Organizers seek $12.9 million in federal money to help create a manufacturing technology center at El Camino.

Hoping to help small aerospace suppliers that are reeling from defense cuts and foreign competition, California is competing for $12.9 million in federal money that would be used to create a manufacturing technology center at El Camino Community College.

The 40-employee center would expose firms to new technology and production techniques to help make them more competitive with foreign companies and to wean them from defense contracts.

Ranging from instrument makers to sheet-metal shops, California’s estimated 6,000 small aerospace suppliers could dwindle to as few as 2,000 if such steps aren’t taken, the project’s proponents say. That would be bad news for the Los Angeles area, home to more than 60% of those firms.

“There’s a crying need,” said Susan Cotler, dean of El Camino College’s industry and technology division. “Without some intervention in the aerospace sector, we’re going to have a disaster on our hands.”

The federal money is being sought by the California Community College system, which already gives some technical assistance to aerospace suppliers but wants to provide more. The federal application, filed this month, has been endorsed by Gov. Pete Wilson and the state Legislature.

The $12.9 million in federal money would be combined with $20 million in state and local funds to set up the El Camino center and seven smaller satellite centers at community college facilities in Anaheim, Costa Mesa, Glendale, San Diego, Cupertino, Rocklin and Fresno.

At El Camino, the center would include a demonstration hall, a machine tool shop, a computer lab and administrative offices, and it would employ experts in such areas as engineering, computers and marketing. To make room for it, two floors in an existing campus building would be renovated at a cost of $600,000.

After the first six years of operation, the center would draw most of its funding from companies using it and from private foundations, organizers say. In return for their fees, aerospace suppliers would introduce them to technology such as automated production and show them how to use it.

They could also obtain assistance in such areas as quality control, new materials and targeting of new markets--a key challenge for suppliers that find their business shrinking due to defense cuts.

“This would help them make changes as their markets change,” said Joan Carvell, an economic development official with the community college system. “It’s like people when they’re laid off. They don’t know what skills they have that might be useful in other fields.”

Aerospace suppliers say they could use the help. Gene Fosket, president of Plasma Technology Inc., a Torrance company that makes spray coatings, says that even though most of his firm’s work is for commercial jet engine makers, the economic climate “has been tough for us.” The proposed technology center, he says, could help Plasma drum up more business.

“We plan to get our services into as many industries as we can,” Fosket said. “This might help us get into areas we’re not even aware of.”

Key to the effort, though, is whether the project wins one of two federal grants being offered this year for new manufacturing technology centers.

Awarded since 1988 by the National Institute of Standards and Technology, a division of the U.S. Department of Commerce, such grants have prompted the creation of five centers so far--in Columbia, S.C.; Troy, N.Y.; Cleveland, Ohio; Ann Arbor, Mich., and Topeka, Kan.

California’s community college system sought one of the grants last year but was turned down. Its proposal did not target a narrow enough group of small-business recipients, and it spread the funding too thinly among numerous community college sites, state and federal sources said.

But this year’s application, drafted after meetings with federal officials, concentrates on aerospace suppliers and would provide the El Camino center with nearly 70% of the $33 million in funding over the first six years.

“Basically, (federal officials) said California’s a big state and we can’t be everything to everybody,” Carvell recalls. “So we narrowed it to the aerospace supply industry and picked El Camino College because El Camino is in the heart of that industry.”

Federal officials decline to say who else is seeking manufacturing center grants this year or even how many applications have been filed. But community college officials say California’s main competition will be from Arizona and New Mexico, which filed a joint application, and from Texas.

Philip Nanzetta, the director of NIST’s manufacturing technology center program, says his agency will pick four or five finalists in June and select the grant recipients in July.

He declined to comment on the strengths and weaknesses of California’s application, but he said its focus on the ailing aerospace industry could be a selling point.

“At the national level, there’s a tremendous amount of interest in finding out how to convert defense production into civilian production,” he said. “But no one has really figured out how to do that yet.”