Manufacturing
The 2016 Washington Manufacturing Awards: Emerging Manufacturer
Large Firms winner: Composite Solutions; Small Firms winner: ID Integration
By Bill Virgin April 28, 2016
This article originally appeared in the May 2016 issue of Seattle magazine.
Emerging Manufacturer Small Firms
ID Integration
Mukilteo idintegration.com
Theres a lot of stuff in the world to keep track of. The latest technology for figuring out whats where is radio-frequency identification (RFID), and its a growing business for ID Integration, which not only offers the equipment but helps businesses and the military put it together into productive systems.
Heres one example: When a part on an aircraft goes bad, RFID tags with stored information can identify which other aircraft have the same component, so only those affected are grounded for repair, instead of the entire fleet. The usefulness of such systems will only increase as the world moves to the internet of things, linking suppliers, vendors, producers and customers.
That scenario is likely to generate more growth for ID Integration, a 10-employee, 20-year-old business whose customer base includes just about every top name in defense and aerospace.
Emerging Manufacturer Large Firms
Composite Solutions
Sumner compositesolutions.com
The aerospace business is as much about composites as it is about aluminum these days, which has helped fuel impressive growth for Composite Solutions. To accommodate that growth, the company relocated last year from a 66,000-square-foot facility to a 108,000-square-foot building with much more production space. It also invested in more equipment, including autoclaves, ovens, paint booths and five-axis CNC machines to eliminate choke points that were constraining capacity.
Owned by Topkey Group of Taiwan, Composite Solutions has been growing its customer portfolio as well, to include Boeing, Bell Helicopter, MD Helicopters, Raisbeck Engineering and the new Honda corporate jet program. Growth also means more employees with the skills to handle composite manufacturing. Composite is already at 85 employees and hopes to add more, so its bolstering training programs.