A 55-employee company based in Racine provides most of the automation engineering for major national food corporations like Coca-Cola Refreshments and Yoplait USA Inc.
TriCore Inc. was founded in 1991 to provide factory systems integration and engineering to the food, beverage and life science industries, but it took awhile to get big clients like Coca-Cola, said president and CEO David McCarthy.
The company’s central location in the Midwest helped TriCore to get noticed by national brands, he said. After 10 years of occasional contract work for Coca-Cola, TriCore became a preferred supplier.
Engineers at TriCore focus on increasing capacity, rewriting automation and modernizing automation software at production facilities. They also work to improve quality control with software that records at what point in the production process a problem occurred.
“You have a lot of people doing things at the same time,” McCarthy said. “It’s important to figure out who did what, where, when.”
Since TriCore’s engineering services help companies improve efficiency, the 55-employee company has continued to grow through the recession. TriCore’s revenue grew by 30 percent from 2008 to 2010, he said.
“Even in tough times, we have been growing,” McCarthy said. “We’re continuing to hire, but we’re cautious.”
He expects about $9.5 million in revenue this year. TriCore also recently expanded its 13,000 square foot office space, 6921 Mariner Drive in Racine.
TriCore also has branches in Glendale, Calif. And Mesa, Ariz.