Manufacturing is alive and well - in Chatsworth: Haas Automation prospers even as industry dwindles.

Haas Automation is making money in the Southland by manufacturing -- not only that, it is prospering by manufacturing machines that help local job shops make more goods.

This, in a regional economy that has witnessed the evaporation of 200,000 of 900,000 factory jobs in the last three years. And more local factory jobs seem doomed for extinction, if the economists are right.

How does the $40-million-in-sales, Chatsworth-based Haas Automation succeed, when others are failing?

The company sells what economists call "capital equipment," and what metal-benders call "CNC" -- computerized numerically controlled -- machines. The Haas machines, when onboard computers are programmed, will cut, drill, mill and shape metal parts relentlessly.

The machines are best used for runs of between 50 and 10,000 a month, usually parts that are the size of a shoebox or smaller.

"But you can make just one part with our machines -- that's their strength: they are adaptable," said Gene Haas, 40, company founder and president. "And they allow small job shops to adapt."

Once a Haas machine is programmed, the way a part is made can be stored into computer memory. A manufacturer armed with a Haas machine can produce one run of a certain part, switch to another run of differently shaped parts, then go back to the first run, all by punching in a few numbers on a keyboard.

It is by adjusting to the new shape of American industry that Haas Manufacturing is cutting its niche in the marketplace, said Haas.

"We sell to the small job shops, not the major manufacturers, who have become dinosaurs," said Haas.

Large companies, said Haas, are maneuvering to make the best of marketplace realities -- or creating marketplace realities -- by shutting down their own, in-house, machine shops.

In a pattern akin to longstanding practice in the garment industry, large "manufacturers" today and in the future may, in fact, have the bulk of real factory work done by job shops.

Only final assembly, sales, warehousing and distribution are done by the name-brand "manufacturer."

And that's part of the reason Haas Automation sold 500 of its machines last year and expects to sell 800 this year -- Haas Automation machines, said Haas, empower the little job shop.

"With our machines, you can do away with perhaps 10 other, single-function machines, and you can operate with a lot fewer workers," said Haas.

The mom-and-pop shop without employees, or a small company with just a few employees, can buy Haas Automation equipment and start -- with contract in hand -- bending and cutting metal for the big boys, said Haas.

Parts that go into airplanes, or automobile brakes, or washer machines can be made on the Haas machines, said Haas.

Too, Haas Automation is successful because its product line is affordable -- running from $45,000 to $70,000 a machine, said Haas. By industry standards, that is cheap.

"I remember 20 years ago, a typical piece of capital equipment cost $100,000 and up -- in 1970s dollars," said Haas. "And those machines couldn't do all the things our machines do."

Like consumer and office electronic equipment, new manufacturing technology allows people to do more and more for less and less money.

Just as the personal computer is helping the white-collar entrepreneur hang up his own shingle, machines such as Haas Automation makes allow some blue-collar business people to open up their own multi-duty job-shop.

Too, Haas said that government regulations are forcing big guys out of manufacturing -- because smaller guys sometimes skirt the regulations.

"A lot of these small job shops don't pay all the benefits; they might not dispose of their waste properly; they might not follow OSHA (Occupational Safe and Health Administration) regs," said Haas. "If they are inspected, they just move to a new location, under a new name."

Haas Automation is also forging ahead because it pays good wages and attracts good workers, said Haas. The company employs 150 in a 125,000-square-foot factory in Chatsworth.

"Our average wage is $13 to $14 an hour, plus workers get profit-sharing. They get 10 percent of the company's profits -- lately that has meant about an extra (weekly) paycheck every month," said Haas. "We found it is better to hire someone for $16 an hour, who can accomplish a task in 10 hours, than to hire someone for $8 an hour, who takes 40 hours to do the same task."

Still, Haas does not think he pays too much. "Could you live on $13 an hour?" he asks at one point in an interview.

While 90 percent of Haas Automation's sales are domestic, the company recently inked an agreement with Switzerland's Mikron Holding Group, also a machine-tool maker. Mikron will sell Haas Automation machines throughout Europe, India, Southeast Asia and China, under the Mikron brand.

Haas has a lifelong love affair with shaping metal, stemming back to his teenage love affair with automobiles, and also to days when he worked as a mechanic on the United States Auto Club race team, which toured the country in the mid-1970s.

After graduating from Cal State Northridge in 1975, Haas started his own company, finding a niche in the market for "indexing" machines, which are machines which rotate metal so that it can be cut, drilled or lathed.

Haas said there is nothing special about his enterprise. "Actually, if you look around, there are a lot of guys like me out there. Southern California is still one of the largest concentrations of job shops in the world. Many are moving out or going out of business -- industrial rents are going down -- but there are still hundreds and hundreds left. We need these people to turn our economy around."