With 2019 in full swing, Bob Hartline, Xymox President/CEO, revealed in an interview that Xymox has quite the year ahead. See for yourself:
What trends are you seeing in the industry/market, and how is Xymox prepared for those trends?
The trend for user interface devices is moving toward CAP Sensing, we’ve been on that path for years now and have gained a lot of experience. As new and existing customers want to transition, we are on the leading edge of the technology.
Do you have any new employee programs?
We are consistently looking at ways to make Xymox a better workplace for our employees. We’ve always believed that healthy business requires healthy employees, that is why we have an on-site chiropractor and wellness program. Over the holidays we had a “Maintain Don’t Gain” challenge, and we are ramping up for a Biggest Loser contest to start this month. Striving to make Xymox a fitter, lighter, and more agile organization.
Along with healthy employees, we strive for greatness in our safety programs – we are approaching 1500 days between lost time incidents! That’s 4 years (and counting)! Safety first!
We are also increasing our charitable approach in the Greater Milwaukee area, with donations to City on a Hill, Milwaukee Rescue Mission, and an employee food drive to collect donations for The Hunger Task Force. In 2018, we implemented a new employee volunteer program; every employee has the ability to take 8 hours off to do charitable work. This gives our employees the opportunity to donate their time to a cause they care about without having to take PTO.
Another exciting thing that Xymox is doing this year is sponsoring 2 high school robotics teams! We are going to try and get a live feed of the competition, especially if both teams we are sponsoring compete against each other!
Does Xymox plan to expand its factory, or purchase any new equipment in 2019?
To stay on the leading edge of technology, we have to be constantly upgrading our equipment here at Xymox. In the past 6 months we added a new drying system for conductive inks. We also added a Cobot (collaborative robot), which means we can work along side of the robot it senses when people are near. It won’t knock you out or knock you over. It has been really interesting learning to incorporate more robots into our factory.
In the coming months we will be adding an automated screen wash line, this will improve the through-put of our screen making department substantially, and it gets rid of a nasty process within our factory. We are looking to upgrade and expand our capacity in laser, so we will be adding a new laser machine. We just completed the installation of new force testing equipment in the lab. We are always looking for ways to automate our process to drive our customers costs down.
Going into 2019, are there changes that you will be implementing to your corporate philosophy?
Our vision of “Enabling the Power of Touch®” has been a good vision for our company because it really says, ‘we can be the supplier for user interface devices for our customers out into the future’.
This year our addition to that is to “Think BIG” – how do we make our vision bigger? How do we provide bigger and better solutions for our customer base? We’re just starting that, so right now, the focus is how do we think bigger? That means, better customer service, better lead times, better pricing; think big when it comes to the areas of our business that help us Enable the Power of Touch®!
Does Xymox have any anniversaries this year?
This will be our 40th year in business – we are in this for the long haul, and we are going to be around! No matter what happens in the industry, Xymox is going to be looking out for new technologies and continuing to make this a strong business for companies to rely on for many years. A lot of competitors have come and gone in the last 40 years but we are here to stay! Having a 40 year anniversary is pretty remarkable in this industry.
From everyone at Xymox, we hope you have a wonderful and prosperous 2019!