Optimation Blog

You may be a startup firm with some promising IP and a dream, a researcher with a lab scale manufacturing line, or a manufacturer with an established product and a great market who needs additional manufacturing capacity. In each case you need a new manufacturing machine or a new production line, and you need a firm skilled and capable of designing and fabricating the unique and custom manufacturing equipment and systems to meet your requirements. There are a lot of different products and even more ways to manufacture them. Your product may be a food product, a pharmaceutical or a chemical. It might be a discrete product requiring machining or assembly or an item manufactured at high speed on a roll-to-roll process and then converted to its usable form. Independent of what it is you need and how it is manufactured, how do you find a qualified company to design and build it for you? In many cases you will start a search on Google or ThomasNet, testing several key words try to find a few qualified suppliers that you can talk to. After you do that, how do you vet them, check capabilities, and make the best selection for what you need to have engineered, designed, fabricated, and commissioned?

Optimation Technology has 4 new trades apprentices. Cierra Collins from Rochester, Matthew Wise from Ontario, Jake Ingalls from Cuba, and Morgan Spurr from Rochester started the beginning of their new careers on January 25^th, 2021. Out of more than 50 applicants, these 4 rose to the top of our desired list, and we are ecstatic to have them be a part of the team.

At Optimation we design and fabricate manufacturing equipment. We have about a hundred creative and inquisitive engineers and another hundred hard-working and talented tradesmen. Collaborating as a team, they can design and build almost anything. Our passion at Optimation is to grow the manufacturing base in the United States. We have a very diverse client base and the ideas and concepts they want to bring to realization are just as diverse. Imagine being part of a team who provided design support for the world’s largest 3D printer, fabricated vaccine delivery machines, built a test system for a new transatlantic cable, or helped with the creation of systems to reduce or eliminate food waste. Coming to work every morning at Optimation is exciting and each day holds new challenges not yet confronted. Projects are large and small and include pharmaceutical, food and chemical process as well as high speed assembly machines for automotive, military and commercial applications. During the past month Optimation has received several hundred contracts from over 50 different clients. The variety is vast. Recently Optimation was selected by the Rochester Technology Manufacturing Association as a finalist for the Manufacturing Innovation Award, Large Company Division. It is hard to pick preferred clients or most unique projects, but I’ve picked a few of our favorites to tell you about in this blog. I’ll add more blogs in the weeks to come to share other favorites. Optimation engineers create the designs. Skilled journeymen craft workers bring these designs to life in Optimation’s 100,000 square foot fabrication facility.

We  announced a new Chief Operating Officer this week. Wendy Smith, with over thirty years’ experience in plant operations and design and engineering services management, is excited to take on the challenge.

The celebration of National Engineers Week started in 1951 by the National Society of Professional Engineers and is always during the week in February which includes George Washington’s birthday, February 22^nd. President Washington is considered the nation’s first engineer, notably for his survey work. It is observed by more than 70 engineering, education, and cultural societies, and more than 50 corporations and government agencies. Primarily, the goal of this week promote recognition among parents, teachers, and students of the importance of a technical education and a high level of math, science, and technology literacy. The intent is to motivate youth to pursue engineering careers in order to provide a diverse and vigorous engineering workforce. 

Photo Credit: Netflix

A few months ago, I wrote a blog about a really neat project that we were doing at Eastman Business Park, the old Kodak Park Campus in Rochester, NY. Netflix was going to film a series that would rival American Ninja Warrior only with high performance cars and expert drivers on challenging obstacle courses. It is dubbed “American Ninja Warrior meets the Fast and the Furious.”

There are both direct and subtle ways to “manage” your suppliers.  Some companies have elaborate supplier programs with score cards, audits, cost reduction goals, targets, etc.  It is great if you have the infrastructure to support this type of program, but not everyone can.

Unemployment is down, manufacturing is up, and the demand for skilled trades hasn’t been this high for a long time.  There is a gap between demand and the available skilled workforce.  This is true in many trades.  One example is electricians.  According to numbers from the National Electrical Contractors Association, 7,000 electricians join the field each year, while at the same time 10,000 retire. 

Before we go any further into the new year, let’s take a look at what brought us here, starting with thinking about the mix of work that Optimation performed last year. And then let’s look at some of the other things going on in our world (not political).

At Optimation, our corporate mission is to provide unique and creative solutions to the manufacturing segment. That’s a broad statement that means we build custom engineered systems for anyone that produces hard goods and needs some form of automated equipment with which to manufacture those goods.