There’s a low buzz of activity at the East Lansing offices of
Red Cedar Technology, Inc. until Ron Averill emerges down a hallway, his quiet intensity assuring everyone that he’s the boss.
Averill, chief executive officer and president of the company he co-founded, is clearly a hard-charger. He scurries into his office after meeting with staffers and hurriedly checks his schedule on a computer, a Ziploc bag of tortilla chips signaling that a quick lunch is waiting (they’re neatly arranged in the bag—he’s a detail-minded engineer, after all).
For Averill—and for any small business owner—this kind of hectic schedule is a good sign. Business is still humming after 10 years. The high-tech software and consulting company is, in fact, expected to grow “significantly” this year after a flat 2009, Averill says.
“The key to the game is survival,” he says. “If you don’t survive, you can’t win.”
Averill, 44, says Red Cedar Technology hopes to add two or three employees to its 12-person staff this year; it increased by one employee in 2009.
Go North, Young ManBorn in Jonesboro, Ark., but raised in Memphis, Tenn., he briefly lived in Southfield, Mich. as a first grader when his father had a job in Michigan as a commercial real estate manager.
The family spent only a year here before returning to Tennessee. Averill eventually received a doctorate in engineering mechanics from
Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, and worked for
NASA in Virginia before moving north to join the faculty at
Michigan State University (MSU) in 1992.
Averill doesn’t waste a lot of time, energy or motion, whether it’s running the company, teaching a class as a mechanical engineering professor at MSU, or helping coach his son’s
East Lansing High School baseball team.
“I think the biggest reason we haven’t moved is this really is a great area to live and work,” he says. “Despite the economic challenges, it is a great area to have and raise a family.”
HEEDS Up
“There was a time from October 2007 to mid summer (2009) when no company was doing anything,” he says. “Everybody just hunkered down, doing the bare minimum to survive. In the third quarter of 2009 companies were hopeful they had reached bottom, so they started coming to us to work with our engineers.”
Averill attributes some of that growth, in a paradoxical way, to the radical restructuring of the economy, which puts more of a premium on using resources efficiently.
Red Cedar Technology specializes in automated optimization, a way to improve traditional design via software and math processes. It's at the heart of Red Cedar Technology’s watchword product,
HEEDS Professional Software.
HEEDS helps companies come up with a better product design using a mathematically based computer process, rather than having engineers manually spending time tweaking and fixing them.
For example, let’s imagine you want to design a vehicle with strong side-impact standards. Engineers would typically design the material, taking into account factors such as fuel economy standards and expense.
HEEDS takes the existing designs, defines problems and reshapes the product through software—perhaps running dozens of computers at a time to work on a program.
Averill says Red Cedar has four or five competitors worldwide that market optimization technology, though he says HEEDS is more advanced.
“What it does is allow good engineers to design better products more efficiently,” he says.
Going GlobalGiven the economic realities and bare-bones budgets and staffs some firms are facing these days, they’re looking for ways to streamline and upgrade their design processes, Averill says. And HEEDS aims to do that.
Red Cedar has 100-200 clients worldwide, using some variation of HEEDS to design automobile products, military and aerospace vehicles, biomedical and surgical devices, and even a “marine vessel.” Biomedical business is doing particularly well, Averill said.
Because the information is proprietary, he is cagey about clients, but says they include
Zimmer, Inc., a worldwide orthopaedic company, and
Delphi Corp.
Red Cedar has distributors, or resellers, in Troy and in California, in addition to China, India, Japan and Korea.
Clearly, it’s a global field and Averill sees automated optimization as gaining a foothold in engineering
design, in addition to having an impact on scientific research.
Industry LeadersAverill’s expertise is in computational mechanics, using math and computers to improve the structural performance of a product. At MSU, he studies composite materials and structures and crash-worthiness of vehicles, among other areas.
Auto-related business is what Averill and Red Cedar Technology co-founder and fellow MSU colleague Erik Goodman (now Red Cedar’s chief technical officer) were counting on when they formed the firm in 1999.
“Truthfully, it has been more difficult than it might have been in other places," says Averill. "As a result we have had to diversify. Without that, we would not have survived. If we had just focused on the automobile alone, we would have gone under.”
His and his company’s success and innovation have drawn industry accolades. Averill was named one of
Lawrence Technological University’s Leaders & Innovators in 2007.
“We’ve been very successful in that we continue to grow and be recognized as a worldwide leader in optimization technology,” Averill says.
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John Foren is a recovering newspaper editor who is enjoying writing again.
Dave Trumpie is the managing photographer for Capital Gains. He is a freelance photographer and owner of Trumpie Photography.
Photos:
Work on a car at Red Cedar Technology
Ron Averill
HEEDS Professional Software
Nate Chase at Red Cedar's offices
A chair leg project
All Photographs © Dave Trumpie