FSIP proudly celebrates 50 years!

Flight Systems Industrial Products celebrates a major milestone this year, marking 50 years of quality remanufacturing, distribution and manufacturing of controls and parts for battery powered vehicles.

Flight Systems Inc. was founded in November of 1968 by Bob Shaffner and Bob York and was heavily involved in the aerospace industry, designing and manufacturing solid state controls for aircraft and runway strobe lights. They earned a reputation as a highly qualified supplier while their products were used on various space crafts and launch vehicles including Apollo 8, 9, 11, 15 and 16 along with Skylab I and II.

FSIP’s focus has evolved over the decades to serve a niche in the electric vehicle market which includes material handling equipment, golf cars, cleaning equipment, electric boats, go-karts and ground support equipment.

In 1999, the company was renamed Flight Systems Industrial Products to better reflect the markets they were serving yet maintain their original heritage. At that time FSIP had 21 employees with annual revenue of $1.5M. In 2003 the business was relocated to a larger building, and has since completed two building expansions to support business growth. Today they have over 100 employees and $20M in annual revenue.

“When given the reins of the business in 1999 my primary goal was to build relationships with the OEM’s and manufacturers. Since that time we have established remanufacturing programs with Hyster, Yale and Clark and provide remanufacturing services for Raymond, Crown, CAT, JLG, Komatsu, Unicarriers and others. We also became the exclusive North America remanufacturing facility for Curtis Instruments, In-Motion, Sevcon, Navitas and SPE” says Barry Bowman, president of FSIP.

As an ISO 9001:2015 supplier, they offer over 9,000 remanufactured, 2,000 manufactured and 1,000 distributed part numbers. FSIP’s remanufactured products provides the customer with a significant cost savings over new and extends the life of the equipment that uses electronic parts that may be at risk of becoming obsolete. Bowman points out that “remanufacturing a product is different than having it repaired. Performing just a repair generally means fixing a component that has failed and may not address other components that may have been affected by the failed component, thereby limiting its reliability.” The FSIP process replaces failed and stressed components, while upgrading the product to the current OEM revisions, when applicable. With many remanufactured products on the shelf ready to ship the same day and the option to send product in with a fast turn-around time, FSIP provides many alternatives to meet customer needs.

FSIP also provides their industry with small run manufactured parts to prevent more products from going obsolete. In 2010, FSIP acquired certain assets of General Electric’s motion control business, now manufacturing their controls and parts for electric vehicles. FSIP also provides engineering and application design work to numerous industries, assisting vehicle manufacturers during a new design or the upgrade process of their existing product line.

From controllers, to motors, to battery chargers FSIP offers a variety of products to keep almost any battery powered vehicle moving. In 2016, FSIP focused attention to the battery maintenance needs of the market and became the exclusive North America distributor for the Xtender, which is an all-in-one machine to analyze, desulfate, restore and maintain batteries.

In August of 2017, to continue their growth and presence in the market, FSIP opened a facility in Addison Illinois. “This new facility expands our footprint into a heavily populated lift truck and golf car market. Our goal with this facility is to have those items, in most demand, on the shelf ready to go which will reduce our customer’s costs and shipping lead times from the PA facility” says Bowman.

FSIP will also be launching an e-commerce site in the very near future. “This is something that is way past due for us. It will provide our customers the convenience of real time pricing, availability and 24/7 access to their accounts” says Pam Jones, sales & marketing director.”This anniversary is a big deal to us here at FSIP. I credit two sources for our success’ the employees of FSIP and those that chose to use our services all these years. As a thank you to our customers we plan on promoting several specials throughout the year as a token of our sincere appreciation. The employees will also get to enjoy the experience with multiple events planned.” says Bowman.