At an age when most people are happily anticipating retirement, Indiana serial-entrepreneur Don Wood started a company that would turn out to be his most successful in a long line of successes. 80/20's growth is enviable and is due in no small part to the organizational skills and energy of its founder. His recipe for success, though, is no closely guarded secret.

In 1989, Indiana native Don Wood founded 80/20 Inc., a company that builds and sells what he calls The Industrial Erector Set. The basic 80/20 frame-component is a T-Slot extrusion that fits together using brackets and screws to make, for example, a simple table frame, a machine guard, a display case, a chair, a shelf, or whatever else a customer can imagine.

Mr Wood started 80/20 when he was in his late fifties. He's now 78 but he's still at the helm every day and he's still as energetic and enthusiastic as ever, whether he's talking about his love of show tunes - he and his wife are members of the local operatic society, or his phalanx of Haas CNC machines: a row of TM-2 Toolroom Mills and VF-2SS vertical machining centres.

"My background, is as a tool maker," he says, "so I have a great interest in machine tools and machine tool applications. We looked around for the type of machines that had the capability and the quality we needed to make our many different shapes and parts. But also, of course, we wanted a company that could provide good back up and service."

80/20 is a 250+ employee business and Andrew Tate is, like everyone else you're likely to meet there, infected with Don Wood's passion for doing things well. Also like his colleagues, he has no official title and although his day-to-day responsibilities are in the marketing department, he's quick to point out that he and everyone else at the company is in the business of customer service.

"It's a unique culture here," he smiles, "and one that comes directly from the top, from Don Wood. He's a driven man and knows the importance of a positive attitude in life. He respects his employees and he expects them to deliver the same respect and positive attitude to the company's customers."

Mr Wood is happy to tell you that he has built his life and most of his business success on the principles laid out in Stephen Covey's world-famous 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. It's safe to say that Stephan Covey's best-selling publication is one of the most renowned business books ever written: It's a signal call-to-action for anyone who wants to thrive in his or her work and personal life and over the years it has sold millions of copies. Don Wood has taken the book to heart.

Everywhere around the 80/20 factory there are posters and banners reminding employees that they and they alone are responsible for their own attitudes. It's a message that hits home, clearly. The over-riding impression one gets from a walking-tour of the company's several sprawling buildings (approx. 165,000sq. ft) is that it's a business built on pride and personal positivism.

The 80/20 construction system consists of different extruded 'profiles' and a range of fittings. Sales in 2008 were more than $48million, and growing, and with every day that passes the market expands as someone, somewhere discovers a new way to make something using 80/20's extraordinarily adaptable product. The company's website claims that its modular solutions are useful in almost every walk of life. The list of applications is already extensive and roughly twice a year 80/20 publishes a brochure showing the best examples submitted by customers in the materials handling sector, medical, furniture, audio visual, publishing, robotics, education, etc. "The number of different applications our customers create is expanding all the time, there's truly a never-ending amount of possibilities with the product." says Tate. "And not only do we create our own parts for inventory with the Haas machinery, but the versatility of these machines allows us to create project specific custom components that, in all reality, we would never have thought to offer without the input and designs from our customers."

80/20 invested in 15 Haas machines over a three-year period. The company's seven TM-2's are mostly used to machine short-run or one-off custom drawn parts held in manually operated vices. Typically, these are parts that need multiple machining on multiple faces, so the vices are set-up to offer as many universal-holding options as possible. "The TM machines are also used to process longer extrusions, which are held in custom fixtures," says Cliff Cornewell, CNC Operator in 80/20's Custom Machining Shop. "Our VF-4-SS machines are used when we need higher quantities of custom parts, and more complicated parts, and bars that require more spindle power to remove more material."

"We've set-up our facility to go from raw materials through to finished, packaged products," adds Andrew Tate. "We do have some customers who buy just raw materials from us and do their own machining. Most of the time, though, we do the machining and ship it out and then the customer can build their application. If they decide they want us to build an assembled product, we can also do that here. So we offer a full service from raw materials to shipping out a finished product."

The company also has 5 EC-400 horizontal machining centres, acquired in late 2008, that it uses to machine large batches of customer drawn and 80/20 standard parts, such as joining plates, inside corner brackets, stanchions, etc. These machines are equipped with hydraulic vices on rotating 'tower' fixtures to allow machining on 3 sides without handling. Swapping towers allows loading/unloading parts while the machine is still running. "Several of the EC machines were retrofitted to accept existing fixtures from older machines, to eliminate changeover cost and production interruption when we invested in Haas," says Andrew Tate.

When customers order bespoke plastic or aluminium panels, 80/20 uses its Haas GR-712, a gantry type machine with a large vacuum table. "We also use this machine for engraving and tapping," says Mr Tate.

Cliff Cornewell has worked in the 80/20 machine shop for almost 5 years and has used the Haas machines since the day they arrived: "The Haas machines have greatly increased our productivity," he says, "not to mention our overall manufacturing capability. We're very pleased with how easy they are to program, as well. They are much more versatile than the machines we had previously," he enthuses. "They're just wonderful to operate and we've found that everybody in each department has discovered different ways to utilize their capabilities. We can program a lot faster, and run parts faster, and the accuracy of the machines is just phenomenal. We can hold a lot tighter tolerances."

According to Andrew Tate, those performance capabilities and the versatility of the product translates directly into new business opportunities. "We're always amazed by the different ways our customers use the 80/20 product," he says, "and the varying market sectors where it's used. Our growth potential is huge: The markets are out there. It's just a matter of conveying the creative opportunities the product offers, and the customer gets to decide how it can be a means to and end!"

With a long and successful business career behind him, Don Wood could have put up his feet in 1989, rather than starting another company. But, as they say, 'old habits die hard'. "I was an entrepreneur right from the start," he recalls. "From when I was a 14-year-old kid selling vacuum cleaners." Now, he's a certified Stephen Covey facilitator and he's always looking for ways to apply the 7-Habits, or help others to apply them. He refers to the evolving 80/20 system as 'a product of inspiration'. The same could also be said of him and the company he has built.

(Matt Bailey -International Press Relations for Haas Automation Inc., MBMC -International Press and Publicity. Tel: +44 (0)1603 283 601. Email: press@mbmc-uk.com)