In 2007 we stayed about the same size, 50-55 people. Here is the latest company photo:
We grew in a couple of important areas and had small declines in others to end up with about the same revenue as last year. Our business is really made of three complementary businesses: Computer Aided Engineering, Product Development and Manufacturing Technologies. To summarize in each:
CAE:
The bulk of our revenue in this area comes from selling software from ANSYS, INC. and 3D printers from Stratasys. I think we can brag a bit and say that we finally have figured out how to do sales. We struggled with this for years because, being engineers, we had to learn something that is foreign to us and hire people that we would not normally hire. This year we met our ANSYS sales goals for the third year in a row, and made our Stratasys goal for the second year. The big news for Stratasys is that we can sell in New Mexico in 2008! We hope to grow that territory to match oru ANSYS territory of AZ, NM, NV, UT, and CO. We also added a new product for 2008: MathCAD. We shall see how that goes.
Besides sales we do technical support, training and service work doing computer simulation of mechanical systems. The service work area had fits and starts. We are still fighting gobalization and offshore competitors in this area. We did OK, but to do great we need more larger, long term jobs. But training did great and we see a lot of strength in this area for 2008.
Product Development:
There has been a huge amount of transition in this area. We used to do mostly work for Hydrogen Fuel Cells in this area. But the success of hybrid cars, and the promise of hybrid plug-ins has pretty much devastated the hydrogen fuel cell car market. Most of our customers are cutting back or canceling their programs. So we saw a bit of contraction in this area.
But, the good news is that our new Medical Devices group is booming. Unfortunately we can't talk about the devices we are working on, but we are getting close to helping our customers get to clinical trials on several non-invasive surgical devices. One major milestone in this area for 2007 is that we implemented our FDA certification processes, a requirement to provide engineering and production to medical device developers. I can't help but wish that Fodie (My grandfather Morie Blumenfeld) was still around to see this part of the company. I can't help but think we are carrying on his inventive legacy.
We also finished a major project in our third product development area: Semiconductor Equipment. These are the machines that make computer chips and similar things. We help people design new test machines in this area. That project should come back in 2008 for an even bigger device and hopefully two machine for other people.
For 2008 we will continue to focus on growing Medical, and shift our fuel cell activities towards supporting alternative energy companies, especially solar energy firms. We are already seeing some demand in this area and expect it to boom over the next five years.
Manufacturing Technologies
This area has seen some major changes in 2007. What we do here is provide companies with prototyping and manufacturing services. Most of it is called Rapid Prototyping because we use machines to make plastic parts directly from a computer model (visit wikipedia for an explanation of what this is: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rapid_prototyping) but we are seeing growth in more traditional manufacturing like injection molding and off shore manufacturing.
We purchased a new Stereolithography machine early in the year and it has been busy ever since. With two of those, and one Selective Laser Sintering machine, we can handle almost any job. Again, we face major competition from overseas, but combat that with superior customer service and quality... and it seems to keep us from loosing all of our customers to Asia.
The biggest news in this area is we are about ready to start production on our first commercial product. It is a machine the cleans parts made by a 3D printer. A very niche industry, maybe 1000 units a year. But for us it is just the right size to finance and learn the process of production manufacturing and service. Fun stuff.
We also finally bought an NC Mill and Lathe. These are machines that cut metal and plastic parts using computer programs. In the past, we had to send all of that work out. It won't be cheaper to do it in-house, but it should be faster.
In 2008 we hope to do a second product and grow our injection molding services and get our in-house machining up and running.
Anyhow, that is PADT for 2007!
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