Contemporary Controls History


	About Us • Support • Distribution • Home

ARCNET

Industrial
Ethernet

CAN/CANopen
DeviceNet

In order to stay competitive, Contemporary Controls (CC) allows employees to utilize all their skills and talents. Every department believes in continous learning to serve the company's needs today and to meet future growth.

Our R&D team and graduate students from area universities use their technical knowledge in integrating hardware with software and firmware to design reliable products, resulting in a low Return Merchandise Authorization (RMA) rate. "These students, because they're not from the industry, find better methods of spurring ideas," says R&D Manager Bennet Levine. "Thanks to the combined efforts of our experienced industry veterans and younger engineers, we see imagination breakthroughs."

The company's quality initiative is based upon the ISO 9001:2000 family of certified organizations, with the commitment to always refining the process (including regulatory testing). Employees are taught the best quality procedures and environmental protection, enabling components to be built for systems to satisfy a wide range of requirements.

One of our advantages is our in-house manufacturing expertise. We can build-to-order or build-to-stock and adjust production to meet changing demand on a daily basis. Our company employs automated electronics assembly methods to increase production and improve the response time to customers.

Like other manufacturers, CC is participating in lean initiatives with training for employees and the modernization of equipment. For our company, "lean" means organizing the overall enterprise along with the managing of employees, work cells, product development and production. The intent is to become more efficient, lower employee interaction with the products and automate the process to deliver a better time-to-market.

As well as the range of product solutions, customers who encounter problems have direct access to CC via our technical support team. Even a few seconds of system downtime can mean lost profit or in some cases reputation to our customers. That's why our technical experts work closely with our engineers and R&D team in assisting our customers with solutions relating to product specifications, hardware and software installation, and network troubleshooting. Our technicians are trained to understand any situation and resolve it as soon as possible. They maintain a list of FAQs, tutorials, and glossaries of pertinent terms in our technologies on our four websites: www.ccontrols.com, www.ctrlink.com, www.arccontrol.com, and www.basautomation.com. By utilizing these sites or speaking directly to a support team member, our customers get positive results.

Our courteous and professional senior customer service representative is available to answer our customers' questions about ordering, billing, shipping, pricing, and RMA services.

Industrial Ethernet University (IEU)

Sales Manager Joe Stasiek says our Industrial Ethernet University (IEU) is an effective online learning resource. "With the feedback we receive from our graduates, we know IEU is helping students who need better technical knowledge about networks in order to handle the day-to-day events of their job," he says.

Nearly 3,000 students are enrolled in IEU learning objective, content-rich education on Ethernet. Students take tests to verify comprehension of some or all of the 21 courses, and all material is based on the IEEE Std. 802.3 and relevant Request for Comments (RFCs). The information is vendor-neutral since the purpose of the virtual university is to educate the public for the benefit of the industry. Graduation is not mandatory. Students may choose his or her courses of interest. In addition, they are able to explore more topics through 11 lectures on the site provided by industry experts.

Because of the rapid changes in this technology, individuals will need to learn more than the basic prinicples. CC now provides graduate level courses to better prepare the IEU participant for the working world of Ethernet. To sign up at no cost, students may visit the "campus" at www.ieu.cc.

A Glimpse of History

George Thomas' notion of founding his own company came to life in 1975 when he established Contemporary Control Systems, Inc. (CCSI). CCSI was a system integration and consulting business.

In 1983, the company changed its direction to become a hardware manufacturer by developing a system of distributed STD-BUS microcomputers connected by ARCNET® to facilitate a LAN (Local Area Network)-based newspaper pre-processing system.

As the new ARCNET standard became accepted in the industry, CCSI and several other companies set up the ARCNET Trade Association (ATA) in 1987 to better publicize this technology to the world.

The company moved forward with its introduction of the MOD Hub series of ARCNET active hubs, enabling CCSI to become one of the leaders in this technology.

In the next few years, the company focused its efforts toward attaining new customers and broaden service to existing ones. CCSI commissioned its first website, www.ccontrols.com, and this website has increased international business to more than 45% of total sales.

CCSI expanded its facility in the late 1990s and the name Contemporary Controls (CC) became a registered trademark of CCSI. The company continued to be proactive in emerging technologies with fieldbuses such as Industrial Ethernet, Controller Area Network (CAN), and DeviceNet.

We have a long history with our customers. You could say that "they taught us everything we know." We look upon that as a valuable asset, ready to fulfill their requests to achieve the optimum results.