The Company Behind the Catalog

Seastrom Manufacturing is one of the nation's leading manufacturers of standard and custom electronic and assembly hardware serving industries worldwide since 1928. Founded in Glendale, California and operated in a neighbor's garage until 1948, the company then grew to occupy a 7,000 square foot facility.

Glendale served as home for Seastrom until 1994 when the company had to make an important decision: should we stay in Glendale, now occupying over 50,000 square feet and no more buildings in the area to move into, or should we move to a new location and continue to grow? All factors were considered and in 1994 Seastrom relocated to Twin Falls, Idaho after being in Glendale for 66 years.

Bob Seastrom, President of Seastrom Manufacturing, knew that by making this move it would allow for continued growth and the ability to technically advance their manufacturing process, improving production speeds and reducing lead times.

Seastrom Manufacturing is now located in a 100,000 square foot state-of-the-art facility on 10 acres. With the ability to add an additional 150,000 square feet, plans are already being considered to expand other processes such as heat treating and plating.

Seastrom's totally automated and computerized manufacturing facility is centered around an HP3000 mainframe computer running MAN-MAN manufacturing software. Connection of the offices and their manufacturing departments required over 50,000 feet of computer cable. By networking the entire facility, Seastrom was able to streamline production areas and stay competitive without sacrificing quality.

Beginning as a job shop for the aerospace industry, Seastrom understands the importance of producing quality custom and standard parts.

They have earned the distinction as an approved supplier for most major aerospace and commercial manufacturers. This comes as a result of successfully providing quality products and unmatched service industry-wide for decades.

Seastrom offers an extensive range of value-added services not commonly offered by other manufacturers. With over 26,000 customers, they receive over 3,000 phone calls a week via toll-free 800 number. Faxed orders are accommodated by a bank of dedicated inbound fax machines.

Customers receive immediate price and delivery on over 45,000 stock standard catalog parts. A wide range of custom parts can also be quoted the same day. Orders for stock standard parts are shipped the same day, as most standard products are pre-bagged.

Seastrom emphasizes systems integration, quality engineering, high-speed production, facility-wide networking and strict project control to promote product quality, project safety and conformance to technical standards. Producing over 20 million custom and standard parts every month and utilizing over 25 different materials, Seastrom specializes in extensive die and material changes to meet the wide variety of customer orders. Seastrom's reputation for quality workmanship assures each customer that their product needs will be met.

Utilizing fully staffed engineering, die design and tooling departments, Seastrom uses the latest CAD/CAM computer system which is networked to their Wire EDM and CNC machining centers. This allows them to produce and maintain high quality tooling in-house.

The quality of materials used to manufacture Seastrom parts is vital to maintaining superior quality products. They use a wide variety of metallic and non-metallic materials to manufacture both standard and custom parts.

Seastrom maintains a large raw material inventory greatly reducing lead times for finished products. A carefully designed inventory control system requires that each material is thoroughly inspected by the Quality Department to assure its certification accuracy. Material is then tagged to identify its type, place of origin and location in inventory.

From this point on our Quality Department plays an integral role in and around the production floor. Quality maintains complete lot traceability, offers material and product testing, process certification and first article qualification and inspection. Every job that runs through Seastrom's plant is shipped only after complete final product inspection has been performed.

Producing over 20 million parts during any given month, Seastrom specializes in offering the widest selection of washers available anywhere from stock. Sizes range from .05 to 3 inches O.D. in any .005 increment.

Seastrom's 66A catalog of standard electronic and assembly hardware consists of over 560 pages of products available as standard items. We are able to stand behind this huge offering of products because of our vast inventory of tooling, which allows us to immediately manufacture catalog products. Any tool coming from or going to the production floor is checked by our tooling department to assure that it is in good working order. Seastrom's rejection rate averages one percent, giving us a 99% defect-free product delivered to our customers.

As our customers' product requirements expand and change, so does Seastrom's product line. Seastrom Manufacturing continually strives to provide our customers with an ever increasing variety of quality products. The company's latest acquisition was the Hiram Jones Company which was added to the Seastrom Hardware Group. The acquisition included Hiram Jones' complete catalog line of electronic terminals including: standard miniature and sub-miniature teflon insulated test jacks, assembled stand-offs and press type terminals.

With the addition of Hiram Jones, Seastrom was able to add a complete screw machine department to increase our manufacturing capabilities as well as adding over 9 million standard parts to our stock inventory.

Over 200 million pieces of Seastrom's standard parts are kept in inventory, most of which are pre-bagged so customer orders can be processed and shipped the same day. If the stock standard order is less than five pounds, it is automatically shipped via UPS, unless the customer requests a different form of shipment.