Easy Idling
Poised for the largest expansion in its 39-year history, Enfield manufacturer Control Module Inc. has returned to its roots in an effort to build its future.
Those roots live in the person of Jim Bianco, the tenacious, 72-year-old inventor who founded the company in 1969 and ran it for 30 years. All along, he has remained owner of the business, which makes electronics for transportation, inventory control and workforce management, but he just returned as president last year.
Bianco’s comeback bookended a period of turnover in the executive office, driven largely by health problems among leaders of Control Module. Now, after a year back in the office, Bianco is moving the company to larger quarters in town — to a building Control Module planned to occupy two decades ago.
And Bianco is banking much of the company’s future on a device designed to cut down idling time for big-rig trucks at truck stops.
Bianco left in 1999. A string of presidents followed, starting with his son, Jimmy, who was president for about two years.
Colin Sanders led the company from 2001 to 2003, only to be felled by a debilitating stroke. He was replaced by Jana Moak, who was diagnosed two years later with cancer. She stepped down in 2006 and died last year.
The company had shrunk from a high of about 100 employees when Bianco left to about 65, which is its current level.
When Bianco returned early last year, he reorganized the management structure. He brought in a former IBM executive, Bob Byrnes, to run operations along with longtime manager John Fahy.
That has enabled Bianco to go back to what he does best: come up with new products.
“I’m not very good at being president, to be honest. I’m more interested in creating new things, coming up with new ideas,” said Bianco, a frenetic and prolific inventor who carries a Louis Vuitton briefcase and blares classical music in his office while his dog, Chanel, occupies space beneath his desk.
Bianco sees his main role as visionary-in-chief, a position that has generated a number of breakthroughs and highly profitable devices for Control Module. He patented the first bar code reader for inventory control in the early 1970s, and designed a credit card-reading device used by the Mexican welfare system to distribute tortillas to 5 million people a day.
Now he believes he has the vision that will define much of Control Module’s future: CabAire, a new division of the company that will focus on building a brand of products for truck stops and long-haul truck drivers.
The devices, which mount inside the window of a parked big rig, provide heat or cold air, as well as cable TV and Internet access to truckers who are waiting out their federally mandated 10-hour breaks.
CabAire built the first generation of the devices last year for Tinaco Plaza, a truck stop in North Stonington. Tinaco ordered the devices in part to comply with local zoning demands aimed at reducing emissions and noise pollution, as well as to monitor which trucks are idling their engines too long — an offense that can result in a $5,000 fine in Connecticut.
The major focus for CabAire will be to bring the devices to truck stops nationwide. Bianco said he expects to be in at least 100 more truck stops by the end of next year.
It is a unique opportunity, one the company is well-positioned to exploit, Byrnes said. Big rig drivers must take more frequent breaks under rules that have tightened in recent years. Those requirements dovetail with other local and state regulations, such as anti-idling penalties.
And, of course, diesel fuel has skyrocketed in cost. Taken together, these factors create a growing need for technology that allows truckers to remain in their vehicles and have access to heat, air conditioning and electricity without having to run their engines.
Adding to the opportunity is the collapse of a larger competitor, Knoxville, Tenn.-based IdleAire Technologies, which was the biggest manufacturer of the niche products. Last month, IdleAire filed for bankruptcy and announced plans to sell its assets.
“There’s definitely room for some new players to fill the void in the truck stop anti-idling business,” Byrnes said.
In addition to the growth of CabAire, Bianco expects additional revenue from Control Module’s brand of fleet management products, which are geared toward rental car companies such as Hertz and other entities with large numbers of cars and trucks. Lot attendants also use the technology — which includes bar code readers and windshield-mounted radio-frequency identification (RFID) devices — to keep track of when cars are cleaned, fueled and ready to be delivered to a customer.
Speeding up those processes can save companies hundreds of thousands of dollars. It also means cars are less likely to be stolen off a lot.
He also expects steady growth from Control Module’s more traditional businesses: electronic products used for inventory control and workforce management.
The growth of the newer businesses — some of it real, but much of it yet to be realized — has led Control Module to begin relocating its headquarters to a 44,000-square-foot building in Enfield Industrial Park, one that housed Emhart Glass Manufacturing for seven years. Bianco built the building on Phoenix Avenue in 1989 to serve as headquarters for Control Module, but he never moved the company there.
Bianco said he already has orders in place to significantly expand both CabAire and the fleet management divisions of Control Module, and soon expects to start adding employees. Within two years, Bianco said, Control Module could easily balloon to more than 200 employees, making it one of the largest manufacturers in town and ranking it among the fastest-growing manufacturers in the state.
“I have no doubt that we will get there, and get there quickly,” Bianco said.
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Published: June 19, 2008, Copyright © 2008, The Hartford Courant
Original: http://www.courant.com/business/hc-ctinc0619.artjun19,0,2613413.story
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