Over the past decade, one strategic shift after another has transformed our approach to custom automation. Bringing electrical and controls engineering in-house—rather than relying on contractors—was the first major turning point, giving us the ability to write our own PLC programs and adapt quickly to the unknowns that come with building first-off machines. The next evolution was strengthening our project management capabilities to ensure every job stays aligned with scope, schedule, and customer expectations.
Today, we’re expanding that momentum into sales, applications engineering, and field service support, all with a single goal in mind: delivering faster, more reliable value to the customers who trust us with their vision.
10 years ago, we brought in electrical engineers and programming. We used to have contractors that we used to work with, and we decided to bring in control engineers and write the PLC program. That was really a game-changer. With custom automation, there's a lot of changes.
It's a first-off machine, so there's a lot of unknowns at the beginning, so to contract that outside of the business was really difficult. So, we made the conscious effort to bring in controls engineers. So we do all our programming. That was my first change.
And then the second change was to bring in project management. The project management is going to help us stay on target and scope. So, that's going to be good and timeline obviously. So, when a customer trusts us with the opportunity, puts a down payment, they have a timeline, they're hoping to get their return on investment fairly quickly.
So, this will keep us on task as well as on budget. And that's been the biggest game changer. And right now, we're working on the sales and field service support to continue to grow the business so we can have um better support for our customers.