Insight on Business

September 2015

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CLICK to hear C3 Corp. CEO Joe Van De Hey talk about how his company creates innovative machines to help its manufacturing clients improve their own products. Automation to OEM V an De Hey, who has a background in electronic engineering, launched C3 (then called Control Concepts Corporations) in 1994. He had been doing controls integration — converting electronic language on machinery made overseas — for the paper industry. "I had to learn a lot about a lot of different machine manufacturers," Van De Hey says. "is area is very rich for OEMs (original equipment manufacturers), so I got to see all the mechanical design, I got to see how people function. I probably was in 20 different OEM doors and worked personally with them." e economy took a hit aer 9/11 and "it kind of forced us to do other things, so we couldn't just be an automation house," he says. In 2002, C3 added its own mechanical staff so it could build the machinery itself. "Our cheese sort of moved," says Van De Hey, referencing the business book. "We had to be more agile, so we couldn't just be in paper. We started diversifying into some things and focusing on where we wanted to be, and we added mechanical staff, and pretty soon we added our own product line. at really helps us long term. "I don't say I'm really a cheese guy, or I'm really a foam guy," Van De Hey adds. "I'm really good at creating new products, so I have these applications that can help you." at industry diversity has become key to C3's success. Van De Hey prefers to have several projects going at once — something he calls the 10/50 rule. e basic tenet is that it's smarter to invest $50,000 in each of 10 projects rather than $500,000 in one. "You can have too much passion, and you can have tunnel vision, and what happens is you overinvest. If it flops, then you're in trouble," Van De Hey says. "It's important that you have more than one thing so you don't lose sight of everything around you." Laminations Great Northern Corporation enlisted C3 a few years ago to help upgrade its machines and make them more versatile. "He tries to look beyond the current project into what this could become — what are the possibilities for expanding beyond the project you're working on?" says Gary Weber, vice president of manufacturing at Laminations. "e vision is probably what sets him apart." » C3ingenuity.com » To see the CWU2000 compression machine in action, visit: https://c3ingenuity.com/cwu2000/ and click on the image On the web [ c o n t i n u e d ] » The project involved fully automating a laminating line, gluing together a four-layer mattress every 30 seconds. There are only two of these machines in the entire world. "It put us on the map in the foam world." — Mark DesJardin, business development and marketing coordinator of C3 Corp. w w w . i n s i g h t o n b u s i n e s s . c o m S e p t e m b e r 2 0 15 • I NSIGH T | 25

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