Novi, MI - Industrial 3D printing provider EOS of North America has integrated laser additive manufacturing companies Advanced Laser Materials (ALM; Temple, TX) and Integra (Round Rock, TX) to strengthen service and application offerings in response to the continued growth and evolution of their North American customer base.
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This decision expands total service capacity in North America for EOS systems and positions service assets closer to customers to provide the service responsiveness needed for industrial manufacturing. Furthermore, the integration offers development support locally in North America, enabling the company to partner with customers to create customized system, material, and process solutions and quickly bring new manufacturing applications to market.
"Business is growing at a fantastic rate in part because our technology is allowing our customers to shift from prototyping into end-use manufacturing," says Donald Vanelli, newly appointed president and COO of EOS of North America. "There are laser-sintered components in flight in aircraft as well as FDA-approved implants in the human body, for example. This speaks to why we are broadening our organization in response to the evolving manufacturing needs of our customers in areas such as standardizing and tightly controlling production, assuring material, process, and product quality, and ramping up throughput cost-effectively. Overall, the reorganization promotes the unification of products and prices, simplifying sales and service for our current and future customer base."
While the three organizations have worked together for more than a decade, the reorganization now also consolidates a central management team, drawing on experience from all areas while maintaining their multiple operational locations to offer expertise in existing specialties.
The reorganization was in part orchestrated by Bruce Thornton, former chairman of ALM and newly appointed chairman of EOS of North America. Thornton, with over 30 years of experience executing strategic growth development for various organizations, will oversee the integration and overall strategy.
EOS is celebrating its 25th anniversary and opened North America operations in 2001. Integra was founded in 2002 and ALM in 2004. EOS provides laser sintering systems, materials, and application consulting for industrial applications, Integra offers highly seasoned field service engineers to the additive manufacturing industry, and ALM develops and offers a wide range of commodity and engineered materials for additive manufacturing.
Overall, the alignment creates a single company with years of laser-sintering knowledge from different perspectives. "We've worked with each other practically from our inception, and we understand how to unite our talents and experience to offer customers a one-stop shop of everything they need for industrial 3D-printed applications," says Andrew Snow, promoted to senior VP of EOS of North America.
Their new field service initiative, now spearheaded by Integra's Lance Shanklin, VP of applications and development, and Mike Conner, VP of service, will speed response time, increase uptime, and provide the highest levels of expertise to customers.