Celebrating 80 Years of Innovation

This past year, we looked back on another five successful years and celebrated our 80th anniversary. During our celebration, two recurrent themes appeared. First, seeing things through the eyes of our customers continues to drive our daily work. Second, much of our product lines have advanced and grown based on the ever-changing needs of our customers. We are by nature a curious, innovative and tremendously customer-focused company. Looking back, our most important innovations are almost always customer driven.

On August 12th, over 1,000 employees, retirees, and family members joined the celebration at our Vancouver Campus. We enjoyed food carts, caught up with retired employees, met each other’s families and played a number of different games. The mechanical bull was a favorite. Throughout the day, talk of our newest designs surfaced repeatedly. People could be heard saying, “Wow, it’s amazing how many new designs we have on the floor.” This has been a common theme over the last five to ten years. It did not matter if you are walked by a concrete production machine, pallet handling system, batching system, cuber, bagging system, palletizer, robot or a mold, you could see new designs and innovation everywhere. Employees had a few opportunities to see some of our equipment in action. It was exciting to see our design teams talk about the new features they have incorporated based on the current needs of our customers.

During our significant anniversaries, we enjoy reflecting on our history. We see the same themes when looking back at the evolution of our product designs as they advance to meet the needs of our customers in over 100 countries around the world, in hundreds of different industries. In looking back, it is clear the many different sizes, shapes, colors, materials, densities, weights, configurations, patterns and speeds have kept us busy over the last 80 years.

We are excited to meet the future needs of our customer and to see a bright future for our employees and the company. We will continue to innovate and design the safest and most advanced factory automation and production solutions in the world. Thank You.

Written by Rick Goode, CEO
August 2018