Loading the Future with Success Airplane Loading Robots CEO: Kyle Cullen President of Engineering: Micheal Lindsey VP of Engineering: Robert Stranghoener VP of Engineering: Becky Owen1 Executive Summary AutoLoad will produce an autonomous robot that loads packages into airplanes. This robot is intended to be used by an overnight delivery company. AutoLoad’s robot will be easily configured on the fly by a wireless controller. The robot will replace manual labor used to load the packages. The lack of personnel is not the greatest savings. The most significant savings will be the airplanes’ decreased turnaround time. A robot will be able to load all the packages for a single robot faster than a human, thus allowing the airplanes to be fully utilized. Also when humans perform a task then there is an inherent error and the error will be less when a robot performs the task. At the moment there is not a company that is making robots that are used to load airplanes with packages. So the only competition is a manual process. With the lack of equal competition then AutoLoad will only have to convince companies that its product is far superior to the manual process because of the decreased turnaround time and the low error rate. AutoLoad is an engineering systems company with intellectual property as its main product. Most of the fabrication of the robots themselves is going to be produced by a third party (Caterpillar). This allows AutoLoad’s main responsibilities to be sales and development. The full-scale prototype has been purchased by FedEx and will take three years to design and construct. The next three years will be used to produce duplicate copies of the robot and to design the second version. Since each robot generation takes three years to design and create then AutoLoad’s books are drawn on a three year timetable. AutoLoad will operate at a loss for the first four years and will break even during the fifth year or the second year of selling actual product. Figure 1.0.a shows the growth rate of the company and the projected profits until 2015. This figure shows AutoLoad’s large growth potential with in the airplane loading market. Growth and Profit-$15,000,000.00-$10,000,000.00-$5,000,000.00$0.00$5,000,000.00$10,000,000.00$15,000,000.00$20,000,000.00$25,000,000.00$30,000,000.00$35,000,000.002007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015Employee's SalariesProfit Figure 1.0.a: Growth Rate and Projected Profits2 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 flexibility to easily go public and is not double taxed by the government [1]. Also an S corporation has a higher reputation 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 is 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 8000 sq 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 cost of constructing a large scale robot is so great, 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 robot’s functions, and research would be conducted on its reliability and functionality. Furthermore, during this time period AutoLoad would be working on the next generation of airplane loading robots. The
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