The Thompson family sells their house in Chicago to start a deep draw metal company in Holland, MI. The company is new and undercapitalized, but its people are filled with hope and determination. At the end of the year, founder Pat Thompson sits down with the company accountant and discovers Trans-Matic had turned a small first-year profit: $699.

The DOD waits by the front door as Pat Thompson arrives to work one morning, sending Trans-Matic on one of the most unexpected and significant projects of the last 50 years. Through the Honeywell project, the team at Trans-Matic has the chance to support the boys over in Vietnam: an opportunity they never forget.

As the first company in the area and the metalforming industry with a profit-sharing program, Trans-Matic communicates a new kind of care and support for company employees and moves their headquarters to the current 48th Street location in Holland, MI.

The Precision Metalforming Association (PMA) is the full-service trade association representing the multibillion dollar metalforming industry of North America. Pat Thompson steps up as PMA Chair to help lead the association at an exciting time–just a couple of years prior to the association’s first Automotive Parts Suppliers Conference in Detroit, MI.

Holland facility nearly doubles to 238,000 square feet with fresh capacity for transfer and progressive presses as well as value add and value engineering solutions. This growth was spurred by the global manufacturing trend of outsourcing production to suppliers for highly skilled, capital-intensive work.