By Joe Boomgaard | MiBiz
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GRAND RAPIDS — When two local companies put their capabilities together, the result was a particularly moving project — car moving, that is.

West Michigan companies Criterion Manufacturing Solutions and viastore systems Inc. collaborated on a 250-car automated underground parking system, dubbed eValet, which was installed at the UCLA Medical Center in Santa Monica, Calif. earlier this month. The project came together after a two-year development process that saw unprecedented cooperation between the two complementary organizations, said Jon Ertle, VP of sales and marketing at Criterion, located in Comstock Park.

Originally, viastore was approached to design and manufacture the automated vehicle storage and retrieval system, and the company in turn tapped custom machinery manufacturer Criterion as a prime contractor for the project. But when executives at the German-owned materials handling company opted not to pursue the project, Criterion stepped up and said it could build it.

“The end user toured a facility where we put in huge machines that move very precisely, accurately and smoothly, and they could see it was not that different from the other equipment we produce,” Ertle told MiBiz.

Criterion builds mostly machine tools and cutting and measuring equipment used by many manufacturers across the country. Its Pegasys system, for example, was developed for Steelcase when the company wanted to automate its gauging process.

“We do focus on equipment with some kind of motion versus simple assembly cell (equipment). We like to do things that require us to have a higher expertise than the other guys. There’s smart motion in everything we do,” Ertle said. Criterion was confident it could build the crane and the controls for the system, but it needed the software for logistical automation from viastore.

“They felt they could build the crane in this case … (but) inventory control is not part of their normal business. So we said why not leverage our strengths together,” said Ken Lewis, director at viastore. He said viastore’s warehouse management system was adapted to link the crane to the various sensors on the satellite, which determines the size and lift points for the car, as well as where it can be parked. “We give the crane a location and their controls would know how to get it to that point.”

Criterion also leased some space in viastore’s facility to build and test the system.

The automated eValet system allows for 50-percent better density than a traditional parking garage. A user is able to park a vehicle in a designated space and use a kiosk to interface with the system. The eValet then determines the available space in the parking structure to fit the parameters required by that size vehicle, then produces a time stamp for when the vehicle arrived. Ertle said the client had a host of parameters for various conditions that needed to be met, including wait times for drivers to park and retrieve their vehicles, number and size of spaces, availability of generator backup, earthquake durability and so on. Two cranes also had to be able to pass each other in an aisle to ensure “complete redundancy.”

“We have to have high throughput for all kinds of conditions. There could be many trying to exit, and we still need to be able to take new ones in,” Ertle said, noting the system can retrieve a parked vehicle in about a minute.

Land in most dense urban areas is expensive, and there are better uses for that land than for building parking garages. The system is comparable in cost to a traditional underground parking ramp, yet it has many other environmental attributes, including 38 percent less haul off of dirt, which translates into hundreds of dump truck loads saved, and the system saves countless hours of vehicles idling waiting for a valet or to get into and around a parking lot, thus saving gasoline.

Jeanne Rathbun, president and CEO of Criterion, said the 2-year development and engineering process is by far one of the most complex undertakings the company has performed in its more than two decades in business.

“There’s a lot of interest in taking technology used by the manufacturing industry for quite some time and bringing it into the consumer realm,” Rathbun told MiBiz. “We are unique for the size of company we are and the size of projects that we can accomplish. There are benefits to our size and the way we operate. Sometimes, larger projects take committees to come to a decision where we can do it quickly.”

She said much of the company’s business is out of West Michigan, where it got its start, and growth for the company is coming from serving new geographical areas and new industries. Quoting activity is up over the last six months to a year, she added.

With eValet, Criterion retained all the intellectual property, and Rathbun and Ertle said they plan to market the system to other users.

“We’re looking at a couple of potential projects right now. We didn’t do all this work for one parking system,” Ertle said.