Manufacturing Success 

Joliet - For decades, U.S. companies have exported more jobs overseas than finished goods. One company, however, is doing the opposite. Automated Design Corporation (ADC) in Romeoville, Illinois manufactures their products with American-made parts and ships them to foreign countries - including China.  “Seventy percent of our equipment leaves this country,” said Lisa Bitsky, vice president of Automated Design Corporation. Now, thanks to an SBA-backed loan, ADC will soon be selling even more product overseas.

ADC recently acquired an SBA Export Express loan from Borrego Springs Bank that they will use to fund a new product designed to test composite baseball bats.

These loans are meant to encourage small business owners to sell American products and services overseas. There are two broad groups eligible for this loan: borrowers who have been in operation for at least 12 months and are currently exporting goods and services or intend to begin exporting with the proceeds of the loan, and borrowers who have been in operation for 24 months or longer and are currently exporting or intend to export with the loan.

“ADC is a perfect fit for this loan,” said Brad Easter, business analyst for the Illinois Small Business Development Center (SBDC) at Joliet Junior College. “They have been in business for more than 20 years and the majority of their customers are overseas.”

In November 2011, Bitsky called Easter asking for some help with financing. “They needed capital to help finance the product development and marketing of their testing machine for composite baseball bats,” said Easter. “After talking to Lisa, I realized that ADC was a good candidate for the Export Express loan.”

ADC manufactures custom automation equipment, industrial controls, and sports testing systems. Their markets include automotive, food, and sports manufacturing where they work on equipment designed to test everything from golf balls to baseball bats. In many cases, equipment standards are very high. The United States Golf Association (USGA) for example, has extremely tight tolerances for golf clubs and balls and ADC produces testing machines designed to measure golf ball co-efficiencies of restitution and durability testing.

The system uses ADC’s iBeam Sensor and VelociGraph sensing system that can transfer data to an Excel spreadsheet. ADC technicians can also do remote troubleshooting with this system.

About four years ago, ADC got into the baseball industry.  With the recent controversy over the safety of composite baseball bats, there is a need for manufacturers to produce safer bats that are less likely to compress and produce a bounce back that can turn a baseball into a potentially deadly projectile. Wood bats do not compress as much because they are not hollow.

Export Express funding is helping ADC develop a testing machine for composite bats that will measure potential bounce back and help manufacturers develop safer bats for schools and little league teams. They are currently working with the University of Washington to develop the standards and methods of measuring the compression co-efficiencies and will be marketing this machine overseas.

“We’re trying to make the world a smaller place with customers,” said Thomas Bitsky. That philosophy may be working because ADC equipment is in demand in numerous foreign markets. They are also helping manufacturers produce quality equipment that is safe and reliable – not a bad approach to world trade.