ID Bracelets Establish Company's Name in Health-Care Field

When patients check into Providence Holy Cross Medical Center in Mission Hills, the nurses dispense an identification wrist band, a plastic bracelet containing vital information, such as name, patient ID number, medical record number, birth date and physician.

And when kids get their tickets to Legoland in Carlsbad, they also get plastic ID bands--with different colors that let park operators know instantly who's tall enough to be on what ride.

The venues are wildly different, but the ID bands come from the same source: Precision Dynamics Corp., at 44 years old one of the oldest and largest manufacturing firms in the northeast San Fernando Valley. This maker of ID wrist bands has succeeded in a region that other companies have written off, growing slowly but consistently. Today, Precision has $50 million in annual sales and employs 550 people, 350 at the two-story, 135,000-square-foot headquarters here.

How has Precision done it? By picking its spots.

The company hasn't made a splash with headline-grabbing new products like some biomedical high-fliers. But Precision has built a solid business by going after profitable niches where it's achieved leading market positions. It's adapted to market changes as necessary, and is now boosting its bottom line through acquisition. Through it all, it's built a corporate culture based on employee empowerment and profit-sharing, an approach that's paid off with little turnover among the ranks.

"They are low-tech but they are doing very well," said Ahmed Enany, executive director of the Southern California Biomedical Council. "You don't necessarily have to be high-tech to make money."

The fact that Precision is still standing--and succeeding--after a period of massive consolidation in the health-care business is an accomplishment. From 1985 to 1995, times were tough for purveyors of lower technology items hospitals buy in volume.

Precision's customers--large health-care distributors that sell to hospitals--grew ever-larger, giving them increased leverage in negotiations. Many companies of Precision's size sold out.

Today, the shake-out is over, according to David Cassak, editor of In Vivo, a Connecticut-based health-care industry journal. "If you've survived this long, you're going to survive," he said.

Precision is an unlikely success story given its humble beginnings.