Lake Forest-based Wonderware Corp., one of the oldest makers of business software in Orange County, is on a hiring streak.
Wonderware, part of Britain’s Invensys PLC, has 515 workers locally. It’s hired roughly 200 in the past year alone.
A big boost in sales has spurred the growth, according to Mark Davidson, vice president of marketing.
“Wonderware is anticipating continued double digit growth rates in sales from both existing and new customers,” Davidson said. “This is based on strong market demand for software in the manufacturing and infrastructure operations.”
The company, which develops and licenses factory automation software built around Microsoft Corp.’s operating systems, doesn’t disclose sales.
The Business Journal estimates Wonderware at about $200 million in yearly revenue.
Wonderware falls under Invensys’ product controls group, which did nearly $1 billion in sales for the 12 months ended March.
“We are growing twice as fast as our competitors,” said Rashesh Mody, Wonderware’s vice president of global product management. “We’ve invested significant amounts of money in research and development, improvements and addressing new markets.”
Rivals
Competitors include Milwaukee-based Rockwell Automation Inc., St. Louis-based Emerson Electric Co. and Germany’s Siemens AG.
Software engineers, salespeople and researchers have made up most of the local hiring, Mody said.
Wonderware’s software runs in a third of factories worldwide, according to the company’s Web site.
Its software takes all of the specifications for building a product,say a car, jar of peanut butter or bottle of shampoo,and keeps them in one place so all of the factory’s machines are on the same page.
“It’s primarily to maintain quality and save money,” Mody said. “It’s like a recipe,the software dictates what temperatures are right and all the ingredients in the process.”
The software helps manufacturers avoid mistakes that might lead to costly recalls and allows them to tweak and test ideas on a computer before investing in prototypes.
Wonderware’s customers make everything from food and drinks to cars. Its software also is used by power, water and oil companies to manage their facilities, which never can shut down.
Wonderware’s customers are a laundry list of the world’s biggest manufacturers, including Nestl & #233; SA, Daimler AG and BP PLC, among many others.
Locally, the Irvine, Yorba Linda and Long Beach water districts use the company’s software to manage their wastewater processing plants.
The company has seen big demand for its software in developing countries.
“We have a big edge (because of) our infrastructure-related products,” Mody said.
Roughly half of its sales come from outside the U.S., he said.
The company’s software is being used to run power stations in China and wind-power plants in Norway, Mody said.
Such contracts counterbalance stagnant manufacturing here, he said.
“The thing is, the manufacturing industry doesn’t grow that fast,you can’t build too many factories too quickly,” Mody said. “So when the U.S. is slower, Europe can make up for it.”
Unlike other software makers, which maintain call centers and teams of technicians who install and support customers, Wonderware only develops and licenses software.
It outsources the rest of the work to some 3,000 resellers around the world.
Wonderware got its start in 1987 and went public in 1993. Its founder is Laguna Beach’s Dennis Morin, who left the company in 1995.
The predecessor to Invensys bought Wonderware in 1998 for $375 million. That same year, it also bought Brea’s Simulation Sciences Inc. In 1994, Invensys bought Orange’s Triconex Corp.
Independence
Wonderware was one of the earliest companies to develop what’s called “human-machine interface” software, which allows workers to control machines in a factory via a control room full of computers.
Invensys largely has absorbed Triconex and Simulation Sciences. But it’s left Wonderware, with 700 workers around the world, pretty much intact.
“Wonderware has its own unique culture and we have big brand equity in the market,” Mody said. “As long as we were growing faster than expectations, we never had any issues keeping our name, identity and culture here. Invensys actually wanted us to keep it.”
