Intelligrated gets ready to grow with expanded headquarters facility

Intelligrated, a designer, manufacturer, and installer of automated material handling solutions, celebrated the grand opening of a new addition to its headquarters on Jan. 9. At 122,000 square feet, the new wing nearly doubles the size of the building. Intelligrated is headquartered in Mason, Ohio, a Cincinnati suburb. The expansion was made possible by an incentive package provided by the city of Mason and the state of Ohio.

The new wing includes offices, customer and staff training rooms, a demonstration and testing facility, and employee-friendly amenities like a restaurant. With the opening, Intelligrated will relocate its implementation teams and other technical staff from a nearby manufacturing plant to Mason to promote closer communication with sales, marketing, and product development. The company expects to hire some 200 new employees in 2013, mostly engineers and technicians.

The expansion caps a heady couple of years for the 11-year-old company. Since buying FKI Logistex (Cole's and President and COO Jim McCarthy's former employer) in 2010, Intelligrated has expanded facilities and added staff in its U.S. regional operations; opened an office in Brazil; become a major provider of automated material handling systems in Canada; purchased Knighted, a provider of warehouse management, warehouse control, and labor management software; and was itself acquired by Permira, a private-equity firm based in Europe. In 2012, the company saw bookings increase by a little over 20 percent, according to Director, Corporate Marketing Jerry Koch. Intelligrated currently employs 2,100 people.

CEO Chris Cole said in an interview that the company is pursuing several significant growth opportunities that justify the expansion. One is improved integration of warehouse automation with warehouse management systems and order management systems—an objective its recent acquisition of Knighted will allow the company to achieve, he said. Others include providing more customers with complete automation solutions encompassing equipment, software, and technical support; new markets for robotics; expanded use of analytical software, such as the company's iWatch sortation system monitoring software; and expansion in international markets, with a strong emphasis on Canada, Mexico, and South America. Some of that growth will be organic, but Intelligrated also expects to make more acquisitions, Cole said.

Intelligrated's product lines include conveyor and sortation systems, palletizers, robotics, order fulfillment systems, machine controls, and software.