2 Company Description 2.1 Summary AutoLoad, INC. will be a small company made up of three smaller divisions. The first division, the management team, will be given the task of growing the company into new markets and interfacing with the customers. The second division, the engineering department, will create and test the robot. The third division will interface with the company’s business partners. These partners will include manufacturing companies that will create all the parts necessary to build and maintain the robot. The starting partners will be Caterpillar and FedEx. Since most of the manufacturing of the robot will be done by Caterpillar, the company will be small and centralized. 2.2 Company Ownership AutoLoad is a privately owned by four initial individuals, Kyle Cullen, Micheal Lindsey, Robert Stranghoener, and Rebecca Owen. Each owner owns 25% of the company. The company is an S corporation because an S corporation gives the company the flexibilyt to easily go public and is not double taxed by the government [1]. Also an S corporation is regarded higher than an LLC. Each of the board members has a specifically design role in the company. Kyle Cullen is the CEO and sales manager. Micheal Lindsey is the President of Engineering. Robert Stranghoener is the Vice President of Engineering in charge of communications with Caterpillar. Rebecca Owen is the Vice President of Engineering and in charge of the software group which programs the robots’ movements. 2.3 Company Location AutoLoad will be located in Memphis, Tennessee mainly because of its close ties to FedEx. They have a large distribution hub in Memphis that ships packages all over the world. Caterpillar has manufacturing plants in Decatur, Alabama and Jacksonville, Florida. Memphis is a centralized location near these Caterpillar manufacturing sites, has an international airport, and an industrialized city with several different types of commerce in the area. 2.4 Company Facilities Since the manufacturing of the robot and the onsite testing will be done at other locations outside of AutoLoad’s main facility, AutoLoad’s main facility can be a pre-existing 8000sq foot building. This building will include test laboratories, shop facilities for creation of small test equipment, president’s office, three vice presidents’ offices, employee offices, demonstration area, conference room, break room, restrooms, and waiting / delivery area. 2.5 Company Strategy AutoLoad will rely on its reputation to compete in the narrow market of airplane freight loading. Customer service will be held paramount to keep its reputation strong and increase repeat business. AutoLoad will also continuously improve the technology of its robots to keep up with the companies’ customers’ growing needs and wants. Since the const of constructing a large scale robot is so grate, AutoLoad will get its funding from two places. The first strategy will be to get venture capital from several venture capital firms so that a single venture capital firm will not have to hold the burden of the entire project. Also, a single venture capitalist might not be able to fund the entire project. The second approach is to have FedEx support the project financially. After the first year of having an operational prototype FedEx would be given the option to obtain a monopoly on AutoLoad’s robots. This would allow FedEx to be the only company that loads its airplanes in a totally autonomous fashion. During the three year monopoly minor changes would be made to the robots functions and research would be conducted on its reliability and functionality. During the three year monopoly AutoLoad would be working on the next generation of airplane loading robot. The second generation robot will be released sometime during the third year. After the three year monopoly expires the company would offer FedEx another three year monopoly, but they would have to make a considerable purchase and contribution to AutoLoad in order to receive the monopoly. The third generation of the robot will be finished sometime in the last year of the second monopoly or the seventh year. After the first or second monopoly is finished the airplane loading robot would be marketed on the open market. Once AutoLoad’s third generation robot has been on the open market and the company has seven years worth of physical evidence of a successful product then at least 43% of the market of the big four package carriers (FedEx, UPS, United States Postal Service, and DHL) should be obtainable. After ten years when the airplane loading market has been dominated by AutoLoad’s products then the company strategy will undergo a renovation and the target market will be change into the warehouse management. AutoLoad will create a new robot that will work with RFID technology to fully manage a warehouse. The new robot will take the product directly off the assembly line and place it in the warehouse and then load it onto the outgoing transportation vessel. The robot will be made to order for each individual customer. That means that AutoLoad could build a robot for Walmart that takes a product off a truck and places it in a warehouse and then places that product on another truck a few days later without human intervention. This type of robot could be used for any company that has a need of managing boxed inventory in a warehouse. Such customers could include L.L. Bean, Walmart, K-mart, Weber, Sony, and Serta.AutoLoad has decided to have Caterpillar create and assemble the mechanical portion of the robots per detailed specifications. Caterpillar is already established in the market of making large construction machinery and would be a great partner to help create these large scale robots. AutoLoad will purchase the robotic shell from Caterpillar and Caterpillar will be able to say it has entered into a new market and increase it prestige in the heavy machinery market. 2.6 Start-Up Costs The cost to produce a complicated robot that is the size of an earth mover is extraordinary. AutoLoad will have a total of 20 employees to accommodate the complexity
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