In the consulting time allowed by my appointment at the university, from 1999-2010, I was Vice President for Technology, Red Cedar Technology (formerly Applied Computational Design Associates, Inc. or "ACDAssociates"). In 2010, I reduced my role to member of the Board of Directors, Secretary of the Corporation, and Chair of the Technical Advisory Board. Since the sale of Red Cedar Technology to CD Adapco in 2013, I have no formal role with the company, but remain only in an advisory role. In 2016, CD Adapco (and Red Cedar Technology) were acquired by Siemens GMBH. Red Cedar has been fluorishing in its new larger corporate environment. However, the Red Cedar Technology identity has been lost, with the team being absorbed under the general banner of Siemens PLM.
We founded this company to do industrial consulting, exploiting methods developed in the GARAGe and the Computational Structural Mechanics Laboratory at MSU. Red Cedar introduced its HEEDS software for automated design/optimal search to the market in 2003, after several years of internal development and consulting use. It is now in use by many companies globally on a variety of design problems, selling millions of dollars worth of software licenses each year.. I was the original architect of the SHERPA and MO-SHERPA algorithms for black-box optimization, and together with current VP for Product Development Ranny Sidhu, who continues the development, implemented these original (trade secret) algorithms.
