On the Agenda: Extending LabVIEW with NATS

I had the opportunity to present Extending LabVIEW with NATS, where I discussed how their pub/sub messaging model can extend LabVIEW test systems beyond a single-language, single-executable architecture. The core idea is that monolithic test applications can be bulky and hard to manage, while tools like NATS allow for more modular software design. Check out the code in the LabVIEW Toolkit.

Sessions That Stood Out

There were many presenters and panels that stood out this year. Here are a few that stuck with me. You can also see these sessions as they’re uploaded to GDevCon’s YouTube channel.

• Open-source Wrapping: The Gift That Keeps on Giving (Chris Davis, Amentum): A look at wrapping open-source C libraries for LabVIEW for Redis and Kafka. These are great complementary tools to NATS.
• Shift-Left: Building Secure LabVIEW Systems from Day One (Sarah Zalusky, JKI): A practical look at security in LabVIEW architectures.
• MALpocalypse (Michael Klessens, Intel): A candid account of when measurement abstraction layers stop working at scale with validation constraints.
• Shaping the Future: AI and the Evolution of LabVIEW (Elijah Kerry, NI): An early look at Nigel, NI’s AI coding assistant for LabVIEW. Plus, lots of CI/CD tooling with LabVIEW containers.
• Our Build and Deployment Process: Using CI/CD and SystemLink (Sarah Morales, SRAM): A walkthrough of SRAM’s g-cli-based GitLab pipelines. SRAM’s approach validated the work DMC has done to automate our own pipelines with similar tooling.

Catching Up with Partners

Beyond the sessions, GDevCon is a great chance to connect with DMC’s partners. We participated in hardware and software demos from Pickering, Beckhoff, and NI. Most importantly, our partners give us insight into their project roadmaps. This allows us to be trusted advisors to our clients, knowing what to avoid for obsolescence and where to leverage new tools.

Final Takeaway

GDevCon N.A. is always a great place to learn what the test and measurement community is building, breaking, and fixing in production. The conference also gives us the opportunity to catch up with our hardware partners, and this year’s event did not disappoint!

We cannot wait to see what next year will bring.

The post What We Learned at GDevCon N.A. 2026: AI, CI/CD, and the Future of LabVIEW appeared first on DMC, Inc..

Our challenge was to build a world-class alarm analysis dashboard entirely in Ignition Perspective. This year’s primary round was unique in that we had eight consecutive hours to plan, develop, test, and submit the application.

The Alarm Intelligence Center

Our goal was to build more than a list of alarms. While Ignition’s standard alarm status and journal tables serve many applications well, we wanted our dashboard to help operators understand what the alarm data was telling them.

The result was the Alarm Intelligence Center, an operator-focused dashboard organized around three questions:

• How healthy is the facility?
• Which alarms or sources need attention?
• Is performance improving over time?

The Implementation

We focused on creating a slick, intuitive dashboard that made both real-time alarm data and historical performance easy to understand at a glance.

On the backend, we used named queries and custom scripting to analyze current and historical alarm events. Using EEMUA-informed alarm management metrics, we turned that analysis into information operators could act on, including:

• Alarm rate and time spent in flood.
• Average time to acknowledge.
• Standing and chattering alarms.
• Priority distribution and historical trends.
• A Pareto view identifying the sources responsible for most of the alarm load.

We also built custom alarm status and alarm history tables that fit seamlessly with the dashboard’s visual style. The tables provided simplified filtering and controls for viewing alarm details, acknowledging active alarms, and shelving them.

The result was a polished, standards-driven dashboard that helped operators quickly understand system health, identify problem areas, and decide where to focus their attention.

DMC is proud to share that our submission received the Best Error Handling award.

The experience demonstrated what DMC does best: bring the right people together, quickly turn ideas into action, and deliver a polished solution under a demanding deadline.

Check out the project on Ignition Exchange.

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Three decades later, I can easily say we more than accomplished that goal. People sometimes ask about the secret to our success, or our “special sauce.” My view is that there usually isn’t a secret; success comes from executing the basics consistently. And as far as special sauce goes, everyone knows it’s Thousand Island dressing.

As I did five years ago, I’m going to share a list of valuable lessons, this time with some of the best decisions we’ve made. Some may not fit your circumstances, or even ours today, and sequence matters: cherry-picking one or two ideas may not work the same way it worked for us.

Alright, enough yakety-yak; here are some of the choices that helped us become a great company.

1. Making ‘Hiring Smart People’ Our #1 Core Value

DMC’s core values are really more operational than they are aspirational, and if you don’t believe me, take a look at their order because it’s intentional. There’s a reason “Hire Smart People” is number one on our list: because hiring smart people influences safety, customer satisfaction, telling it like it is, etc. Everything cascades from getting the right people on board.

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Then, if you go all the way to the last core value, “Use Resources Wisely,” bookending the list that way was also intentional because people tend to remember what they read first and what they read last: primacy and recency. So even though it’s #9, it’s just as important.

2. One DMC

As DMC grew beyond a single office, we made a deliberate decision not to treat each location as its own profit center. Instead, we adopted a “One DMC” philosophy where all offices succeed or fail together. This may sound simple, but it has had a profound impact on our culture and operations.

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Rather than worrying about which office gets credit for a project or where revenue is booked, our managers focus on assembling the best team for the customer regardless of location. Engineers collaborate freely across offices, knowledge is shared openly, and resources flow to where they are needed most. By avoiding the territorialism that often comes with office-level P&Ls, we’ve been able to provide better service to customers, create more opportunities for employees, and build a stronger, more unified company.

3. Best First Day (BFD)

Everyone thinks they know the meaning of BFD until they join DMC. We realized early on the importance of setting the tone from the first moment someone walks through the door on their first day.

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Having your “BFD” at DMC means everything is set up and ready. It means a Welcome Lunch in your first week and after-work events to connect with your new teammates. BFD was created because we know there’s never a second chance at a first impression.

4. Creating the Career Development and Improvement Program (CDIP)

CDIP is really the brainchild of Kristie Shea and other members of the leadership team. We recognized there isn’t truly one clear path to career advancement; it’s more of a lattice.

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As engineers work on more projects and gain experience, we provide feedback after each project to reinforce their technical skill development. That way, engineers are constantly growing and evolving their technical knowledge and confidence. CDIP also offers opportunities to partner with an experienced engineer and advance their career with guidance from a mentor.

5. Expanding Our Service Offerings

Over the years, we have continually expanded our capabilities, both by adding entirely new service areas and by broadening the offerings within those areas. Test & Measurement was our first major addition beyond our original controls focus, but the larger lesson was that growth opportunities often existed right in front of us.

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As customers trusted us with more complex challenges, we added new technologies, industries, and service offerings that allowed us to solve a wider range of problems for existing clients while reaching new markets. This strategy helped us grow without becoming dependent on any single technology or industry and created a culture of continuous learning and innovation that remains a core part of DMC today.

6. Deciding to Expand Geographically

Back in 2012, when we decided to open our first regional office, the vision was that we could better serve local-ish clients, expand our ability to recruit and retain talent, and give emerging leaders more opportunities to grow.

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Now, having opened up 15+ offices across the country, I can say that this has been the best decision we’ve made to drive our growth. I’d be a bit remiss if I didn’t mention my oft-quoted geographic growth strategy, weasel words and all: “We will have an office in every major metro area in the country…where it makes sense”

7. Making Employee Feedback Count

When we created our annual “How’s It Going?” survey, we wanted to do more than collect feedback and file it away. We decided we also wanted to act on what we learned. Every year, employees provide feedback on everything from leadership and career development to project staffing, benefits, culture, and day-to-day work experience, and the feedback has been more than just eye-opening; it’s been motivating.

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As I said, we don’t just collect the data and file it away. Teams review every response, identify themes, route feedback to the appropriate leaders and committees, and use the results to drive improvements and shape future initiatives. Over the years, the survey has helped us identify problems earlier, prioritize the issues that matter most to employees, and take action where it really makes sense. Listening to our people has been one of the most effective ways we’ve found to keep improving.

8. Focusing on Customer Service

There are a lot of smart engineers in the world, but we quickly realized that technical competence alone wouldn’t differentiate us. We made a deliberate choice to obsess over customer service: responding quickly, communicating clearly, managing expectations, building relationships, and doing what we could to exceed expectations.

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Over time, that focus became part of our culture and one of our strongest competitive advantages. Many of our customers have been with us for years, and many of our new customers come from referrals. That’s not because of marketing. It’s because people like working with companies that genuinely care about their success.

9. Activity Funds

Everyone must be invited. You must take pictures. And it must be legal. These are the only firm rules behind planning Activity Funds. Every office is budgeted each month to do an activity together as a group, and the more creative the activity, the better.

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We’ve had teams go to Broadway plays, hold 40-person LEGO builds, cake tastings, and craft cocktail lessons—if you can think of a group activity, one of our offices has probably done it as an Activity Fund event.

And as I like to tell each new hire on day one, with “Have Fun” being one of our core values and monthly activities, we more or less manipulate you into becoming friends with your coworkers.

10. Creating a Culture of Transparency

I’ve never liked being told “because” when asking a reasonable question, because I’ve always believed that when people don’t have information, they fill in the blanks themselves, often with assumptions that are worse than reality. That’s why we make a concerted effort to put transparency at the heart of our company culture.

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We work hard to share information openly, explain the reasoning behind decisions, and maintain an open-door policy throughout the company. I regularly tell candidates and new employees that I’ll answer almost any question they want to ask—with the exception of confidential HR or compensation information.

Over the years, this approach has helped build trust, reduce rumors, and create a workplace where people feel respected and informed. Transparency doesn’t mean everyone always agrees with every decision. It means people understand why decisions are made and feel comfortable asking questions.

11. Structured Employee Recognition

People do great work every day, but in a growing company it’s easy for those contributions to go unnoticed. Rather than hoping recognition would happen organically, we built systems to encourage it.

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From the DMC Team Award and PAFOAITFOE (our Periodic Award for Outstanding Achievement in the Field of Excellence, a nod to The Simpsons) to the Webby Award and Community Award, employees have numerous opportunities to nominate and recognize their peers.

What started as a way to celebrate accomplishments evolved into something bigger. These programs help reinforce our values, strengthen relationships, and remind people that success at DMC is rarely the result of one person’s effort. Culture is shaped by what gets recognized, and we’ve found that creating structured ways to celebrate great work helps make DMC a better place to work.

12. Establishing LIFT (Leadership Improvement Forged Together)

LIFT, or its full name, Leadership Improvement Forged Together, is a leadership development program that was yet another great initiative led by Kristie Shea. Anyone interested can sign up for LIFT, and they join a cohort of others learning leadership skills.

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We not only want our engineers to have a high degree of technical skills, but we also want them to be skilled at managing teams, clients, and project dynamics. LIFT teaches you how to communicate clearly, quickly resolve challenges, and be better partners and advocates for our clients.

13. Growing Our Office Space in Chicago

If you put a plant in too small a pot, it won’t grow. After about seven years in our office on Kingsbury, we knew it was time to move on. Our next office location needed to be larger in scale to support where we were going as a company.

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The size of the Kingsbury office was putting both a mental and physical constraint on our growth. We moved into our current offices on Elston in 2011, and the amount of physical space we gained changed things significantly for us.

14. Creating Work Environments People Love

This notion of creating office spaces that people love actually started when we moved to our current headquarters on Elston. We wrote down a wish list of all of the things that we would love to have in our new office, and we hit most of them.

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A ping-pong table, a big lunchroom, some outdoor space, a gym, bike racks, kitchens stocked with snacks and drinks. Certain constraints, like budget, never really go away, but we made a concerted effort to prioritize building spaces that people want to be in as we’ve expanded across our offices. Plus, snacks and caffeine = more productivity.

15. Embracing a Hybrid Work Environment

Like many companies at the time, pre-COVID we used to be in-office five days a week. But in working from home throughout the pandemic, we realized, hey, this works; people can be productive at home.

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So, the decision to embrace hybrid work was an easy one. That said, we haven’t gone fully remote, and that was a conscientious decision, too. In-person connection is still very important to us.

16. Expanding Benefits That Support Well-Being

The story behind our benefits really is no mystery. What’s the right thing to do for people working marathon hours? Our benefits make it possible for hardworking people to do a hard job.

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Project recuperation time, sabbaticals, a flexible sick time policy. It has helped tremendously with our retention, engagement, and managing burnout in a job that can be really, really hard. That decision was a no-brainer for me, and our engineers certainly appreciate it.

17. Establishing Yearly Office Events (YOEs)

YOEs actually grew out of an Activity Fund “misuse,” when we held our first DMSki event in 2010. At the time, I was metaphorically biting my tongue. A ski event wasn’t exactly what I had envisioned when we first implemented the Activity Fund.

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I was thinking bowling, going to the movies, happy hour, but the ski event turned out to be one of the best uses of DMC resources I could ever imagine. As we grew our geographical footprint, Yearly Office Events became a way for different cities with DMC offices to come together and connect despite the distance.

18. Building Strong Performance Metrics and KPIs

Our performance and KPI metrics are really built into a unique feedback system we created to keep everyone on the same page and focused on what’s important. Building strong individual performance metrics has given us a very fast, weekly feedback loop of how we’re doing as a company and how individuals are doing, too.

19. Creating Dynamic, Real-Time Dashboards

Early on, we made an explicit decision to create dynamic, real-time dashboards that would make it possible for us to keep a close eye on things like company performance, KPIs, sales performance, and so forth. It also allows anyone, at any time, to take the metaphorical “pulse” of the company and understand what’s happening.

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The company health dashboard, for example, gives us a better sense of overall business performance. Like each of our performance dashboards, it’s readily available to everyone in the company, and that transparency has helped us make informed decisions over the years as conditions change.

20. Growing from the Ground Up with College Recruiting

Hiring the smartest people starts in seemingly the most obvious place: college campuses. We’ve put a considerable amount of thought into our college recruiting strategy, hiring the next generation of engineers. Setting up our best people at campus career fairs every fall gives a direct line to some of the brightest engineering students in the country.

21. Choosing to Grow Organically

This is a decision that is regularly up for review, but having built a unique culture and very high hiring standards has led us to grow without acquisitions. Though buying other firms might accelerate our growth and entry into new markets, we’ve so far resisted the path that many firms our size follow, and I think it has paid off longer term for us.

22. Opening Our Manufacturing Center

For the longest time, we believed that focusing on our engineering services was best for our customers and for our business—thinking that manufacturers were better at the production side of things than we could be and that partnering with those firms would be most efficient.

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While we still do partner with other fabrication companies, opening DMC’s Manufacturing Center has made us more responsive and agile for a lot of our projects, strengthening our relationships with both our customers and our vendors.

23. Having a Content-Driven Web Strategy

Stating the obvious, the web has been transformative in how people find information and research companies. An entire industry has been created around search engine optimization and search engine marketing.

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While we certainly follow best practice techniques for our website, what we have found most effective is having our engineers share their expertise in blogs, case studies, and other content. Of course, our goal is to drive new business. If it also helps people in the technical community solve problems on their own, we’re more than ok with that as well.

24. Getting CSIA Certified

One of DMC’s most important decisions was pursuing certification through the Control System Integrators Association (CSIA). CSIA is the leading professional organization for control system integrators and has developed a comprehensive set of best practices covering everything from project management and engineering quality to financial management, cybersecurity, and customer service.

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Looking back, CSIA certification did far more than earn us a credential. It forced us to formalize and continually improve the management practices, quality systems, and project processes that enabled DMC to scale from a small engineering firm into a much larger organization without losing consistency or customer focus. As I’ve said before, I believe the certification process helped lay the foundation for much of our future growth.

25. Offsite Leadership Meetings

Our offsite management meetings started as a small group gathering in a Chicago hotel conference room, but we found they were so valuable, we eventually evolved them into multi-day retreats and, later, leadership summits involving nearly 50 leaders from across the company.

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Over the years, we’ve met in hotels, rental houses, the Chicago Guest House, my lake house in Holland, and most recently just across the street from our Chicago office. The location itself isn’t the important part. What matters is creating even a small amount of physical separation from day-to-day work.

Getting people out of their normal environment changes their mindset, encourages more creative thinking, and allows us to focus on long-term improvements that often get pushed aside by daily responsibilities. Just as importantly, these meetings build relationships across offices, service areas, and leadership teams. Many of the initiatives, process improvements, and strategic decisions that helped shape modern DMC trace their roots back to conversations that began at an offsite.

26. Budgeting by Not Budgeting

Conventional wisdom says that every department should have an annual budget. I’ve never been a big fan of that approach. Too often, budgets create incentives to spend money simply because it’s available. As the end of the year approaches, people start looking for ways to use up their remaining budget so they don’t lose it the following year. That behavior may be rational within the system, but it’s not good for the business.

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Instead, we’ve generally preferred to evaluate expenditures individually and ask whether they’re likely to create value. If they are, we should spend the money regardless of whether it was planned months earlier. If they’re not, we shouldn’t spend it just because a budget says we can. Looking back, avoiding the “use it or lose it” trap has helped us make more thoughtful decisions and keep resources focused on things that genuinely improve DMC.

27. Building Our Own Systems

There are many advantages to hiring the smartest people. One of those advantages happens to be that if you need a tool or system capable of doing something very specific, you just need to build it.

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We’ve built systems that support everything from sales and recruiting to employee well-being and client responsiveness. We don’t build our own tools because we enjoy reinventing the wheel. We build them when doing so allows us to create something better suited to our business and the way we work.

This approach reflects a core belief at DMC: the people closest to a problem are often the best equipped to solve it. Rather than changing our processes to fit a piece of software, we’ve often chosen to create systems that fit our needs exactly. The result is tools that are simpler, more effective, and aligned with the way our employees and clients actually work.

28. All-Day Company Meetings (ADCMs)

One example of a decision that made a lot of sense at one point, but became less effective as we grew, was our All-Day Company Meetings (ADCMs). When DMC was a much smaller company, ADCMs were a dedicated day each year when everyone stepped away from project work to learn, share knowledge, and spend time together as a team. The specific activities varied by office, but the goal was always the same: strengthen connections and reinforce our culture outside of the day-to-day work environment.

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Over time, however, DMC grew to roughly 300 employees spread across multiple cities. As we expanded, it became harder for a single annual event to create the same level of connection and impact it once had. A program can be successful and valuable yet no longer be the right fit for the company. Knowing when to stop doing something is just as important as knowing when to start.

29. Employee-Led Recruiting

The people who know DMC best are the people who work here every day. That’s why we decided to treat recruiting as everyone’s responsibility, not just HR’s. Our employees are the ones who can speak honestly about the projects, the culture, and what it takes to be successful.

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Employee-led recruiting reflects a lot of what we value as a company. It demonstrates ownership and reinforces teamwork because every great hire strengthens the entire organization. It also helps us maintain the culture that has made DMC successful by ensuring we bring in talented people who will contribute to and improve what we’ve built together.

The strongest companies aren’t built by a few people making hiring decisions in isolation. They’re built when employees take an active role in attracting and selecting colleagues they’d be excited to work alongside every day. That’s one of the reasons employee-led recruiting continues to be such an important part of who we are.

30. Building Connections One Meal at a Time

We’ve always brought people together at the table—not the boardroom table, the lunchroom table. When we were a much smaller team, we would all go to lunch together, 12 or 15 people at a time, and then we’d run back to the office like we were teenagers.

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That connection over meals was the important thing and so, as we’ve grown, we’ve morphed that tradition into ordering lunch three days a week in office so we can all come together regularly and share a meal.

Taken individually, each milestone in this list tells a small part of our story. Together, they reveal how we prioritized our people, embraced growth, and served our clients over 30 years. While we can’t predict exactly what the next 30 years will bring, we know the same mindset that fueled these milestones, curiosity, continuous improvement, and a commitment to doing the right thing, will undoubtedly help us reach the next 30 milestones.

The post The 30 Best Business Decisions We’ve Made Over the Years appeared first on DMC, Inc..

Connecting at the Conference

This year at the event, the DMC team will participate in technical sessions, breakout groups, and forums throughout the two days. As a long-time NI partner, these conversations offer an opportunity to exchange innovative ideas, explore emerging best practices, and stay up to date on NI’s technology roadmap.

Every year, NI Connect offers attendees an opportunity to connect on innovations in testing and automation. This year, attendees will participate in discussions covering CompactRIO applications, timing and synchronization best practices for PXI test systems, and new approaches to using AI to support LabVIEW development, among other topics spanning the two‑day event.

In previous years, DMC has demonstrated production-ready solutions built on NI technology, including a compact, configurable HIL automated test system and a Battery Production Tester (BPT). These demos highlight the various ways we use NI platforms in our tech solutions to build scalable, flexible test frameworks for manufacturing and validation projects.

Our team has also been actively involved in Leadership and Partner Forums, and with seven DMC engineers attending this year, we look forward to continuing those conversations and contributing to breakout groups and forums throughout the conference.

DMC’S NI Partnership

Since 1997, DMC has partnered with National Instruments to deliver instrumentation, measurement, and automated systems, with our team successfully integrating NI tools and products across a variety of projects and industries.

This partnership reflects our continued commitment to technical excellence and software development, and we are proud to be recognized as an NI Center of Excellence, a distinction earned through rigorous evaluation of our software engineering practices, community engagement, and technical leadership.

In addition to the Center of Excellence designation, our collaboration with NI spans multiple specialty areas, including NI Migrations & Upgrades and our NI Vision Specialty partnership, recognizing our ability to design and integrate system-level vision solutions.

The post Join DMC at NI Connect 2026 in Fort Worth appeared first on DMC, Inc..

Kanoa is a next-generation Manufacturing Execution System built on Ignition that helps manufacturers improve production visibility, support better decision-making, and advance digital transformation on the plant floor. Through this partnership, DMC can offer clients an additional, flexible MES option that complements our existing Ignition-based and custom manufacturing solutions.

We’re excited to collaborate with the Kanoa team and see this as a strong fit for many of the manufacturers we work with.

The post DMC Joins Partnership with Kanoa appeared first on DMC, Inc..

The SHIELD multiple-award IDIQ is a 10-year, $151B-ceiling contract vehicle designed to accelerate the research, development, testing, and integration of innovative technologies for U.S. missile defense, supporting efforts like the Golden Dome initiative. As part of this enterprise-wide framework, SHIELD enables rapid task-order awards to qualified companies delivering advanced solutions across engineering, analysis, prototyping, and test & evaluation domains.

“It is a great honor for our company to be listed as an approved vendor for the SHIELD program, and it highlights DMC’s track record of providing best-in-class aerospace and defense solutions,” stated Jesse Batche, Vice President at DMC. “We look forward to contributing to future work with the MDA.”

In the list released last month, DMC is included amongst approximately 2,100 companies qualified for future awards from the MDA.

The post DMC Selected as Approved Vendor for the U.S. Missile Defense Agency’s SHIELD Project appeared first on DMC, Inc..

Team Growth 

Our San Diego team has grown to 12 talented engineers with deep expertise in manufacturing automation and test and measurement automation. Each team member brings unique skills and perspectives that elevate our work and ensure we’re ready to tackle complex engineering challenges across industries. 

We’re also thrilled to announce that two additional engineers will be joining us in early 2026. This expansion reflects our commitment to investing in a strong, collaborative team and strengthens our ability to deliver exceptional solutions and support for our clients. 

Expanding Client Base 

With this growing team, we’ve seen a significant increase in client partnerships throughout the Southwest region, including California, Arizona, and Nevada. From automation projects to custom solutions, our team is proud to help businesses achieve their goals with cutting-edge technology and expertise. 

Whether we’re supporting clients in biotech, electric vehicles, energy, battery, or other industries, our team is dedicated to helping businesses achieve measurable results. We’re grateful for the trust our clients place in us and look forward to building on these relationships. 

New Service Offerings 

In addition to our core automation services, we’re excited to introduce DMC test and measurement services to the San Diego office. Our team also supports embedded development, application development, and digital workplace solutions projects. This expansion allows us to provide a broader range of solutions, ensuring we meet diverse client needs with precision and innovation. 

Building Partnerships 

Collaboration remains central to our mission. Over the past year, we have continued to strengthen relationships with industry partners, enabling us to deliver integrated solutions and stay ahead of emerging technologies. We work closely with automation partners including Siemens, Rockwell, Beckhoff, Inductive Automation, and more. For test and measurement projects, our partners include NI, Pickering, and UEI. 

These partnerships help us deliver fully integrated solutions and ensure our clients benefit from the latest tools, platforms, and industry best practices. As the technological landscape evolves, we remain committed to continuous learning and strategic collaboration—allowing us to stay ahead of emerging trends and deliver exceptional value to our customers.

Looking Ahead 

With our growing team, expanding services, and increasing project work, we are now exploring larger office spaces in the San Diego area. This step reflects our long-term commitment to the region and our confidence in the opportunities ahead. We’re excited for what the future holds and grateful to our clients, partners, and team members who make our success possible. 

The post DMC San Diego: Growing Strong in the Southwest appeared first on DMC, Inc..

The day began with a guided tour of DMC’s Chicago headquarters, where students visited each service area to hear directly from team members about their work, tools, clients, and favorite projects. The group also toured DMC’s fabrication studio to observe how custom control panels are designed and assembled, gaining insight into the hands-on manufacturing processes that support DMC’s automation solutions.

To give students meaningful technical exposure, DMC’s two largest service areas, Automation & Manufacturing Intelligence (Automation) and Test & Measurement Automation (T&M), each led an immersive lab experience modeled after real client projects. These activities showcased the distinct tools and workflows used by DMC engineers across disciplines. In the Automation lab, students worked with Siemens’ TIA Portal to program a PLC in Ladder Logic, designing and commissioning a two-way stoplight control system. The exercise reflected the complete project lifecycle followed by DMC automation engineers, from system design and code development to hardware integration and testing. Several externs described this activity as a highlight of the day, sharing that “I thought the activity was very engaging and fun, and I learned a lot about how PLCs work, ladder logic, and the process of problem-solving as a team.”

In the T&M lab, students were introduced to test automation and data acquisition tools that support DMC’s verification and validation projects. Using a NI cDAQ and LabVIEW with NI MAX, participants investigated a simulated stoplight malfunction, analyzed the system’s behavior, and identified the software as the source of the issue. Guided by DMC engineers, they implemented and verified code updates to restore proper function, gaining hands-on insight into DMC’s problem-solving process and collaborative engineering approach. One participant commented, “I liked the detective work and figuring out which lights corresponded to which outputs. The logic aspect was really fun—it felt like a puzzle to determine which output should connect to which light when we clicked the red or green light.”

Following the lab sessions, externs had the opportunity to connect with some of the women engineers at DMC over lunch for an open discussion about professional growth and experiences as women in STEM. These conversations provided valuable insight into the diverse career paths within engineering and fostered meaningful mentorship connections.

The afternoon continued with project highlights from DMC’s various service areas, including Automation & Manufacturing Intelligence, Application Development, Embedded Systems, and Test & Measurement Automation, showcasing the breadth of technical expertise across the company. One extern shared that they “loved seeing how DMC works on everything from large automatic overhead track systems to internal projects to test and measurement systems for the Artemis boosters,” adding that “each project was presented in a very engaging way.”

The event wrapped up with a Q&A session with DMC’s CEO, Frank Riordan, who shared his perspective on leadership, company culture, and the evolving engineering industry. Students were encouraged to ask questions about his career journey and the challenges and rewards of leading a growing engineering firm. One student shared, “I loved being able to meet Frank and hear his experience starting DMC and what direction he sees for the company in the future. I liked how open the Q&A session was, rather than a lecture.”

The externship was an engaging and rewarding experience for both the visiting students and DMC engineers. We were thrilled to share our work and culture with the next generation of engineers and look forward to hosting similar events in the future to continue connecting with emerging STEM talent.

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The competition will take place over a day and a half, Monday and Tuesday of Automation Fair week, with the winning team announced on Wednesday at 2:30 PM on the Discovery Theater stage.

DMC’s team of experts will be competing against six other teams for honor and glory in a coding challenge that incorporates FactoryTalk Optix, FactoryTalk DataMosaix, FactoryTalk Analytics LogixAI, Studio 5000 Logix Designer, FactoryTalk Historian Site Edition, and Plex.

Good luck to all the teams competing!

Exploring the Expo? Visit us in Booth #752

Stop by our booth to connect with our team, explore our latest automation solutions, and see our custom-built “Drop Bot” in action.

Test your skills against Drop Bot in a life-sized game of Connect Four or challenge your colleagues to a game.

Will we see you at the show? Let us know!

Connect with Us

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The DMC Tampa Team 

We view Tampa as a great hub to expand in the Southeastern region of the United States. Working with partners in the area, we see potential for growth in several markets in Florida and the surrounding states. 

I will be relocating to the Tampa office and will be joined by a strong team of experienced engineers. Our diverse engineering skill set will ensure that this team is fully capable of delivering DMC’s range of service offerings locally. We will have engineers with many years of experience with Manufacturing Automation & Intelligence and Test & Measurement Automation as well as knowledgeable in Embedded Development & Programming and  Digital Workplace Solutions. 

We look forward to continuing to grow relationships throughout the region, including in the Entertainment, Aerospace & Defense, Medical & Pharmaceutical, and Food & Beverage spaces.  

New Opportunities 

We are excited to expand into a different and unique market. Aside from professional opportunities, we look forward to enjoying Florida’s second-largest metro area. We’ll explore the region’s white sand beaches, state parks, and the Gasparilla Pirate Festival while enjoying the sunny weather, zero state income tax, professional sports teams, and fresh seafood. 

Opening an office in Tampa is part of DMC’s long-range strategic plan for expansion. Our increased workload and client base across the U.S. have resulted in this vision becoming a reality, and it is with great pride that we make this announcement. 

Tampa will join 14 other DMC locations across the country in serving our clients. Founded in Chicago in 1996, DMC celebrated its 29th anniversary this year. 

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