Altair has today announced that its product development group, Altair ProductDesign, has reached a new milestone having expanded to more than 800 engineering and design staff across the world. This represents a 100% increase in staff numbers during the last 10 years. The growth has been fuelled by a combination of expansion into new territories, diversification into new industry sectors, the acquisition of a number of large engineering programs in the automotive and aerospace markets and the huge success of the company's onsite technical staffing business.
Altair, which is currently celebrating its 30th year in business this year, began life as a product development consultancy in Michigan, US. Although the company is now perhaps best known for its HyperWorks suite of simulation tools, the Altair ProductDesign group remains a significant and growing part of the business.
The group now stands at over 100 engineers in Europe, more than 200 in Asia and almost 500 across the US either operating from Altair's own offices or working onsite at client premises alongside their own engineering and design teams.
"The growth within Altair ProductDesign is a testament to Altair's value as a complete solution provider," said Mike Heskitt, Chief Operating Officer, Altair ProductDesign. "Having a strategic services business as a key division within Altair makes us uniquely placed amongst other simulation companies. We don't just create engineering tools, we use them and push them to their limits every day for the benefit of our clients."
Altair ProductDesign specializes in using simulation to create unique and efficient designs. In particular, optimization and weight reduction are a specialty that has allowed the group to expand to serve a rapidly increasing set of manufacturers tackling ever tighter regulations on emissions and energy usage.
"For more than 20 years, Altair has been a pioneer in the development of design optimization tools that identify redundant material in a product," continued Mike Heskitt. "The Altair ProductDesign group utilizes these tools to find ways of removing material from the component level, all the way up to system level structures. Tougher regulations in the US and beyond along with the ongoing need for companies across all industries to minimize material use, has allowed us to develop our team's skills in this rapidly expanding domain."
