Norscan acquired Elecsys at the end of 2016. Jason Fuith became Norscan’s Business Development Manager, and I became Norscan’s Product Development Manager.
Norscan had a long history of product development, but the owner, Ken Sontag, wanted to expand into new markets. Jason and I had been doing just that, and even with our limited resources, were having some success. Ken wanted us to continue to do this using Norscan’s capabilities and resources.
Most of the client relationships that Elecsys had established turned out to be unable to support an ongoing revenue stream for Norscan. Over a few years, most of Elecsys’s projects faded away.
However, Norscan’s ongoing marketing efforts, through Jason, Jeff Sadler, and others, resulted in some new opportunities, of which I’m very proud.
Hans Wuthrich of Gimli, Manitoba, is the world-wide leader in the creation and maintenance of competitive curling ice. Hans approached us to develop his concept of a complete wireless ice rink monitoring system, the Eye on the Ice. Norscan created the system for Hans, and is still being marketed by his company, Ice Consultants International.
Winmer Technology Innovators, a small company in Alburquerque, New Mexico, is operated by a former Sparton Corporation executive, Don Bartrip. Winmer specializes in the manufacture of replacement cards for the Sparton air pressure monitoring system, still used for monitoring of underground telecom cable health in many urban centres. Norscan undertook to develop drop-in replacements for the 5318 mini monitoring unit and the main processor card for the 53000 mainframe system, with modern components and built-in Ethernet communications. These were implemented and worked. However, industry regulatory approval proved difficult to attain, and the products have in the meantime become obsolete. Still, the development team achieved their goal and I’m proud of that!
In 2010, having achieved as much as I could at Norscan, I left to pursue career advancement back at ERLPhase. I appreciate what we strived to accomplish, and I loved the team. They are a great group – I’d have them take on almost any development project.