Grand Rapids electronics firm adds nine employees, plans for more

By: Deborah Johnson Wood

Two weeks ago, DornerWorks, Ltd. consolidated its two Grand Rapids offices and moved into an 11,000-square-foot facility at 3445 Lake Eastbrook Blvd. SE that gives them space to grow their operation and workforce. The move comes after establishing six new jobs last year and three more jobs since January—a 30 percent growth in full-time employees.

The company specializes in electronic system architecture, electronic hardware development, and embedded software development for safety-critical markets, for instance, the aerospace, medical, and automotive industries.

"We've hit a nice little niche," says Tim Walker, VP of sales and marketing. "We specialize only in electronics, we don't compete with manufacturers, we add on to them. Everybody in our organization except our business manager is a degreed engineer or degreed in computer science."

While the most recent new hires are straight out of college, Walker says that last year the company hired workers with 20 years' experience.

Last fall, the company joined the West Michigan Medical Device Consortium, a group of 25 medical device manufacturers focused on product innovation, collaboration, and lean manufacturing technologies.

"The majority of the members are manufacturers, and because we do the design, we come in before the manufacturing," Walker says. "We can help them in the early stages to design the electronics and broaden their product offerings."

Source: Tim Walker, DornerWorks, Ltd.

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Deborah Johnson Wood is development news editor for Rapid Growth Media. She can be contacted at [email protected].

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