Business View Magazine | January 2020

55 BUSINESS VIEW MAGAZINE JANUARY 2020 can be considered more of a flexible chain or a belt conveyor style to move heavier objects, like boxes or bottle handling. But to add value for our customers, we are trying to bring more robotic handling into the picture for various processes. For example, we handle products for assembly that will bring electronic circuit cards into a housing, or will provide mechanisms around testing the product, and trying to be a full-service provider of automation in automated assembly systems. We have a broad customer base ranging from bearing manufacturing through custom automotive systems.” Lee Crawford notes, “A lot of companies in our space may stick to just one vertical like pharmaceuticals, but we are actually in multiple markets as previously mentioned. There’s not much that we won’t take on unless itʼs raw foods or something in that space. Any other part of the automation process – we are well versed in.” Craig adds, “Our two biggest customers are pharmaceutical customers that put drugs in containers and fabrication of medical devices. The other substantial customer base are customers that make components with circuit boards in them. Basically, all the way from the companies that actually take the chips and put them on the boards, to companies that take boards and put them in housings to make products.” “If you bracketed by end-user, electronics is probably the biggest single segment of our business, I would say seconded by medical assembly devices; third would be Pharma,” summarizes Earley. Simplimatic manufacturers 100 percent of their products in Virginia, in two facilities: one in Forest, Virginia, very close to Lynchburg, the other in a smaller town called Rustburg, south of Lynchburg. Robotics and custom automation is in the Forest facility, and the standard products are in the Rustburg facility. Total employee headcount right now is around 120. S IMPL IMAT I C AUTOMAT ION