When Robert Bucher joined Adept Technology Inc. in November 2003 as chairman and chief executive officer, the Livermore, Calif.-based company was going through some difficult times. According to Janine Roth, Adept’s vice president of marketing and corporate development, Bucher set about restructuring the company and dropped 40 percent of its product line, in order to focus on its core, profitable businesses and products.
His actions appear headed for success, as the company recently announced six consecutive quarters of profitability and a roster of 11 new offerings for intelligent, vision-guided robotics. In fact, says Roth, who joined the company in April of this year, “we are looking to go public and to be re-listed on the NASDAQ exchange.” (NASDAQ, the National Association of Securites Dealers Automated Quotation system, is a system for the electronic trading of stocks.) Roth predicts a 15 percent to 20 percent annual growth rate for the company, across markets that include automotive, consumer packaged goods (CPG), disk drive manufacturing and packaging.
In a testimonial, David Bauer, manufacturing engineer at Spangler Candy Co., in Bryan, Ohio, says of the 32 Adept robots Spangler uses to package its candies, “The new Adept Windows-based systems have made an extremely difficult and time-consuming task simple enough for our non-technical staff…saving us time and money…”
New products, partner
At the 2005 Assembly Tech Expo, held in Rosemont, Ill., near Chicago, at the end of September, Adept unveiled the Adept Viper s650 and s850, for high-speed packaging and assembly; the Adept Cobra s350 and Clean Room/ESD s350 with MotionBox 40 servo controller; the Adept Python Linear Modules, for high-speed dispensing, in single and multi-axis configurations with Motion Blox 10 servo controllers; and enhancements to Adept DeskTop and Adept iSight.
According to the company, the new robots have been designed to ensure reduced application development time, improved speed and accuracy, and fast configuration and delivery times, to improve return on investment throughout the production lifecycle.
In other news, Adept announced on Oct. 11 an Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) supply relationship with Denso Wave Inc., headquartered in Kariya, Aichi prefecture, Japan, a group company of Denso Corp. that develops and manufactures industrial components including robots. The partnership will create a set of robotics solutions designed to improve and enhance applications including material handling, packaging and testing. By combining Adept’s SmartControl Software and Denso’s high-speed six-axis robots, Adept will deliver a six-axis robotic system for precision assembly applications in high-growth industries, including consumer electronics and life sciences.
