Entries for the 'General Topics' Category

Rick Rietz, Director of Consulting Services What do you like best about working at DMC? The people I work with are definitely the smartest group I have ever worked with. Everyone at DMC picks things up quickly and working with them is a real pleasure. I also appreciate the variety of work and challenges that I encounter every day working with our clients. It makes every day interesting. I k... [Read the rest of this blog...]

I started at DMC two months ago and it has been a very busy two months. Since joining DMC I’ve been focused on one large project, but the project is divided up into many distinct sections and I have been involved in nearly every one the sections. I have been creating user interfaces, the control logic, hardware addressing, and what seems like a million other things. I enjoy being busy and DMC has ... [Read the rest of this blog...]

 I was recently working on a multi-axis Yaskawa-based motion control project and ran into an issue using an in-software position latch. In this case, we were running a servo at fairly high speed and trying to record the encoder position when a sensor was triggered. But it turned out that the PLC scan rate, servo speed, and gearing ratios involved were resulting in unacceptable accuracy issues... [Read the rest of this blog...]

With the imminent arrival of DMC’s second FedEx Day the brainstorming began. Amid ideas to improve our internal network and everyday tasks, the idea to one day take over the world started gaining support. Everyone knows that the first step towards world domination is the creation of your very own robot army. With that in mind, DMC decided it was time to build its own office aut... [Read the rest of this blog...]

Imagine being able to create real-life, three-dimensional objects just as easily as we print documents from Microsoft Word. Need a new case for your phone? Don’t buy one, just print it. Do you want a keychain customized with your company’s logo? Just print it. Pretty cool, huh? It was this cool factor that drew Boris, Ryan, and me to the idea of making a 3D printer. During... [Read the rest of this blog...]

After the success of DMC's first FedEx Day earlier this year, we were excited to hold our second edition a few weeks ago. A FedEx Day is reserved for everyone to devote an entire day working on a company improvement project that personally inspires them. It's called a FedEx Day because the person or team must deliver something the next day, although there is some upfront prep t... [Read the rest of this blog...]

Most of our blogs are about things we've already done or projects we've already completed.  A fairly recent Freakonomics podcast talked about "The Folly of Prediction," and, being a pretty strong believer in Freakonomics wisdom, I'm not one to make bold predictions. With that said, there are some exciting things that will be happening with a fair degree of certainty over the next severa... [Read the rest of this blog...]

What is it? Many developers may be familiar with the concept of a logging platform. Essentially, a logging platform is a modular system that is designed to be plugged into a project and allow the system to keep a time-stamped record of events with minimal effect on execution time or system resources. Think of it as a journal of a program’s execution. One of the most commonly used logging pla... [Read the rest of this blog...]

I attended a wedding a few months back where the bride and groom had rented a photo booth. With a combination of props and wine, there were many great photo strips being printed and passed around and it quickly turned into quite the contest. Naturally, I won. It seemed like a great idea – the guests were really enjoying themselves and the bride and groom kept a copy of each strip to put into a pho... [Read the rest of this blog...]

Those who visit DMC may notice our ever-changing "Quote Board." This is where we document the most infamous utterances of the moment.

On October 20th we hosted an open house at DMC's new office for our first ever Oktoberfest.  Since I've heard that a picture can be worth 0b1111101000 words, I figured I'd save most of my prose and let the pictures below do the talking. Also, there's a really exciting video at the bottom if you want to just skip to that.   *Click an image to enlarge   Anjali at the welcome tab... [Read the rest of this blog...]

 As many of you may know, we used last week’s Oktoberfest party as an unofficial house warming party for our new office space. In addition to having a great turnout despite uncooperative weather, the Kinect Demo team from FedEx Day 2010 put in some extra hours to get our new display case setup to welcome guests. If you haven’t seen the display case, an early video is available here,... [Read the rest of this blog...]

Anjali Bharadwa, Senior Consultant What do you like best about working at DMC? The atmosphere. Everyone at DMC strives for excellence, not only in delivering our services, but also in going out of the way to run things well as a company.  It’s a unique feature of our company that makes DMC very refreshing. What has been your favorite project at DMC thus far? I’ve really enjoyed work... [Read the rest of this blog...]

Last month’s Geek Challenge asked where in line was the optimum place to stand such that your birthday matches the birthday of anyone in front of you, but that nobody in front of you has made the same match with someone in front of them.   The problem is an optimization based on two competing priorities:  The farther back you stand, the greater the chance of making a match for yours... [Read the rest of this blog...]

A few times each year DMC holds an all-day company meeting. It's a chance for all of our team members to discuss our goals and have some fun together. Past meetings have taken us anywhere from Chicago's waterfront, to an improv session, to the Melrose Park Grand Prix. For our most recent all-day company we chartered a bus and took the entire to the treetop canopies of Wisconsin. On the trip... [Read the rest of this blog...]

Recruiting season is underway at DMC, and we are looking forward to meeting the bright students at some of the nation's top universities! DMC is looking for smart, creative people who enjoy working with other smart, creative people to join our growing team. We are proud of our high level of client interaction and customer service, so excellent verbal and written communication skill... [Read the rest of this blog...]

Ashely Enderlin, Systems Engineer Since you attended grad school at Stanford, how does living in Chicago compare with California? Palo Alto is not a typical college town, and although it has fantastic produce and cheap electronics, I love the Midwest. Ever since I watched The Blues Brothers as a kid, I’ve wanted to live in Chicago because of the wonderful music scene. There are so many festivals... [Read the rest of this blog...]

A small movie theater has two movie screens.  One theater is showing a hit action movie, and has sold out for the evening.  The other screen is showing a comedy flop and has plenty of available seats.  A crowd has gathered outside the box office disappointed they can’t get tickets to the action movie.  Before they scatter, the theater manager quickly announces a contest to enti... [Read the rest of this blog...]

DMC is proud to announce the launch of its new consulting services website: DMCconsultants.com  The goal of the new site is to better serve clients in professional services industries such as legal, property management & development, management consulting, and financial services, as well as non-profits and government agencies.  The service offerings highlighted ... [Read the rest of this blog...]

Our new deck isn't the only way we're expanding our ceiling here at DMC.  We're very proud to build on our technical dominance with new LabVIEW certifications! Congratulations to our newest LabVIEW Certified Architects, Jesse Batsche and Danny Budzinski! They join Leon Grossman, Jody Koplo, and me on DMC's team of experts.  The coveted LabVIEW Architect status is the highest possib... [Read the rest of this blog...]