Formation Systems Inc

Industry:

Software, Software Development & Design

Description

Formation Systems has developed a software, the Optiva platform, used for product lifecycle management, for marketing people, engineers and management of a process company to use in the development of new products. Until this time, the different stages of a manufacturing process may have all used different systems. Formation's platform allows them all to use the same system and speed the process, thus cutting down on time to market for new products. The company's customers are in the food and chemical industries.

Formation will use the ,16 million to expand its marketing and sales and grow globally. Currently, half the company's business comes from Europe, Shields said. With 85 employees, Formation plans to grow to about 110 people by the end of 2002, he said. Customers include the Coca-Cola Co. of Atlanta, Gillette Co. of Boston and GE Plastics of Pittsfield.

The convergence of faster and cheaper processing power and the Internet in the last 18 months created the environment for a company like Formation to find a new market niche, said Kevin O'Marah, service director for AMR Research Inc. of Boston.

'(Large companies) are all very curious about this and they've been buying elements of it for years, but they haven't had the ability to tie it together,' said O'Marah. Indeed, many of those companies have even been hurt by the lack of such a platform and trying to develop similar technology internally, said Michael Krupka, managing director of Bain Capital.

'That's one of the great indicators. When there's pain, they'll pay,' he said.

One obstacle is finding the individual in such companies to sell the software. 'There's very different people who have a stake, but there's no one who owns it from end to end. The engineering guys are buying one thing. The marketing guys are buying another thing,' said O'Marah.

Products & Services

product development software

News Archive

Publication No. EP2103442 Published on Sep. 23, Assigned to Clearsnap Holding for Continuous Ink Images Formation Systems, Methods (American Inventor) US Fed News Service, Including US State News; 9/24/2009 VIENNA, Austria, Sep. 24 -- Mark G. Patterson, the U.S., has developed systems and methods for forming continuous ink images. The patent has been assigned to Clearsnap Holding Inc., Washington. According to an abstract posted by the European Patent Office, "A wheel assembly for applying ink to a ...more

Research on applied psycholinguistics discussed by scientists at University of Dundee. Psychology & Psychiatry Journal; 7/25/2009 ...colleagues, University of Dundee. The researchers concluded: "These findings are interpreted in relation to the word formation systems of English and French, and the educational context in each country." Ducan and colleagues published the results... ...more