Consumers wanting products specialized to their individual needs can consult any of the latest batch of catalogs to land in their mailbox. Manufacturers can do the same, by coursing through the pages of a publication like Instrumentation and Automation News. The magazine routinely features hundreds of innocuous-looking devices whose descriptions may still leave a layperson wondering just what they do. The answer is usually a highly specific task or group of tasks that will not only make the buyer more efficient and profitable, but create a vibrant little economy for the device-maker itself.

Inside the Hydro Aluminum Metal Products plant in Kentucky: At left, aluminum "logs" move from the casting area to homogenizing. At right is a view of the holding and melting furnace area. The plant uses just 5 percent of the energy an ordinary smelter would use.

      Or the system-maker. Automation Tooling Systems, based in Cambridge, Ontario, is a leader in the field, having built and installed more than 10,000 systems in plants worldwide for such various industries as semiconductor, automobile, fiber optics and solar energy. The company's 3,000 employees work in a network of 27 plants and customer service facilities spread over North America, Europe and Asia.
      The company's recent growth has taken place across all sectors and all countries, though it's been most pronounced in the U.S. and Mexico. Record earnings, a 40 percent increase in automation systems employment and a nearly 30 percent increase in space allotted for ATS systems have accompanied new forays into the health care and energy markets.
      "This outstanding performance, achieved in a period of economic uncertainty, underscores the benefits of our strong market diversification," said Klaus Woerner, ATS President and Chief Executive Officer, at a presentation in February, adding that increased backlog and additional facilities are only making the company stronger. The strongest sector for the company was in computer electronics, driven by work in the semiconductor and fiber optics industries. While the automotive sector once dominated the firm's business, its share of the work backlog has now been cut in half, as more industries catch on to the wave of advanced manufacturing that the auto business drove into being. That diverse strength has driven facilities into being too.
      "As a result of new orders secured by our plastics division and our confidence in the future," said Woerner in February, "we have commenced a 53,000-sq.-ft. (4,929-sq.-m.) expansion to our plastics facility in Cambridge ... By focusing on reducing customers' production costs, increasing their productivity and product quality and enhancing their ability to rapidly implement complex new product designs, we fully expect ATS to remain a profitable, growing company in the years ahead."
      Some of those profits may come from a sector that's on everybody's mind: energy production. Or more specifically, solar energy, a market ATS competes in through its Photowatt division. While the largest ATS market is its North American sector, its fastest-growing is Asia Pacific, where it recently collaborated on the launch of a solar electricity pilot project in rural Western China. The project is the culmination of efforts by ATS, the Canadian Government's Technology Early Action Measures Program, and Chinese partners Xining New Energy Development Company and China Renewable Energy Industry Association. Total costs of approximately $4.4 million will be almost all funded by the Chinese partners. ATS estimates that the solar home market in China will represent a US$2.1 billion market between now and 2010.
      This kind of project is showing up more and more among advanced manufacturing firms, who recognize their role in establishing community infrastructures as well as they establish proper factory routing. Supply, production and distribution systems are increasingly viewed as quasi-biological entities, all coming back to the very real materials at hand.