Ocean News & Technology: Project Recover Relies on ADL Embedded Solutions to Get the Job Done
Growing pains at ADL as it Launches ‘Industry’s Smallest’ Intel-Based Embedded PC
Exclusive interview with JC Ramirez, Director of Engineering, ADL Embedded Solutions
If there’s one problem most companies would be happy to have is the one related to having too many orders to deal with.
This is the situation ADL Embedded Solutions finds itself in, according to JC Ramirez, the company’s director of engineering and product manager.
In an exclusive interview with Robotics and Automation News, Ramirez says the company is experiencing “serious growing pains”, especially in Germany, where there is “too much work” going on.
ADL has generally been highly regarded and known as a “board company”, specializing in supplying technology for military and defense applications. But the company has been going higher, into the upper levels of integration with its products in the past few years.
Good technology in small packages
The company’s latest product launch is the ADLEPC 1500, an Intel-based embedded PC designed for rugged environments.
“We been in existence for 20 years,” says Ramirez. “We started in 1994, in San Diego, California. Now, we have offices in Germany as well.
“In the first half of our life we had a strong focus on rugged embedded single board computers for military and defence applications, and avionics, with some medical diagnostic equipment.
“So we were a board company only until about seven or eight years ago.
“What happened – at least here in the United States – is that gradually over time, and organically, we had customers, especially on the military and defence side of things, slowly but surely push us into higher levels of integration.
“In some cases, these were just hardware subsystems – stacks, if you will.
“We’ve been primarily a stackable 104 form factor, so it’s very common that we would ship subsystems in a stack form. But we have customers that wanted the fully integrated product that included the ruggedised chassis for whatever the application might be.
“We’ve grown that part of the business organically at a pretty good rate. Last year, the percentage of the revenue for the systems business was such that we decided to recognise it as a significant part of our business and actually begin to rebrand ourselves in that direction.
“We used to be a board-only manufacturer. Now we are more of a system solution manufacturer, with a strong foundation in single-board computers.
“We still continue to design develop and manufacture a line of embedded computers. And because of our heritage as being military and defence supplier, they’re pretty sophisticated computers.”
Related posts
