LEESBURG, Va. - Leaders of Curtiss-Wright Controls Inc., the Gastonia, N.C.-based provider of sensors and motion control, is strengthening their company’s presence in the embedded computer market by consolidating several well-known brand names.
Curtiss-Wright Controls is consolidating its recent acquisitions of Vista Controls, Dy 4, Primagraphics, Peritek, and Systran into the company’s new Embedded Computing group. No office closures are planned.
These brand names will cease to exist as independent activities and instead are combining into the product groups of subsystems, processing, DSP, real-time video and graphics, and data communications, says Tom Quinly, the newly named president of the Curtiss-Wright Controls Embedded Computing Group, based in Leesburg, Va.
Although the names of the companies acquired are gone, the expertise that these segments bring to Curtiss-Wright Controls will continue, Quinly says. “There will never be a total amalgamation. We like the model of having these technology-focused teams,” he says. “We will have the product groups as the centers of excellence driving their products to markets.”
Quinly, who says his group’s biggest competitors are the first- and second-tier defense contractors who typically are Curtiss-Wright’s customers, says the most notable benefit of the consolidation is a “one-stop shop” for data processing, graphics, and communications.
“Customers are excited about the one-stop shop,” he says. “They can turn over a bigger chunk of their work to one value-added supplier. The more value added you get from a supplier provides a much-reduced risk for our customers. They turn the burden over to us, and get quicker time to market.” For Curtiss-Wright sales, Quinly says the acquisitions give the company “a ton more reach.”
On the face of it, industry observers have noted the apparent capability overlap between several of Curtiss-Wright’s recent acquisitions, but Quinly says there is less overlap than meets the eye.
“If you look under the covers, there is not as much overlap as you might think,” he says. “We will continue to do those point solutions, but now you can take advantage of the IP that the guys have in their cabinet. We have lots of graphics capability, but each group has a different market segment - high-end rugged, lower-end benign environments, and the solution.”
One of the chief aims of Curtiss-Wright in acquiring Vista, Dy 4, Primagraphics, Peritek, and Systran is the design engineering expertise that each of those companies offered. “For us it is all about the engineering talent,” Quinly says. “We get a huge benefit from research and development; we can take that team and have a broader technologically advanced portfolio.”
