History

One of our co-founders, Prof. Zhou Ji, had founded the Computer Aided Design Center (CAD Center), part of HUST's Mechanical Engineering Dept.  Another co-founder, Dr. Shawn Buckley, a former professor of Mechanical Engineering at MIT, had founded Cochlea, a company that sold automated inspection machines globally.

When these two met in 1993, they set up a plan to develop state-of-the-art 3D inspection equipment using CAD solid models.  The software and hardware would be developed by the CAD Center and the affiliated Numerical Control (NC) Institute.  Marketing and technical direction would be done in the U.S.  By 1995, a group of post-docs and doctoral students at the CAD Center and NC Institute had begun development in earnest.  Dr. Chen Jihong led the group that developed a way to measure 3D surface points on parts using a laser light triangulation and a single axis scanning mechanism.

Meanwhile in the U.S., Dr. Buckley put together a management team to market the products in the West.  Buckley found investors to back the formation of CAItech as a California corporation.  Investors include venture capital (Verdigris Capital) and private investors from Silicon Valley and Europe.

In 1999, the university divested the manufacturing portion of the NC Institute to form a new Chinese corporation, Wuhan Huazhong CNC Co., Ltd. or HCNC.  The company sells NC control components and NC machine tools into the Chinese market.  It has become the market share leader of Chinese NC manufacturing equipment, manufacturing more than a third of the NC controllers used by Chinese industry.

Dr. Chen Jihong, the leader of CAItech's early development program, was appointed president of the 260-man HCNC.  Late in 1999, CAItech formed a joint venture with HCNC as a source of low-cost, high performance NC motion control components for our inspection machines.  Dr. Zhou Huicheng directs CAItech's ten-man group that has completed over 35 man-years of software and hardware development.

Meanwhile, co-founder Zhou Ji moved up in the ranks at HUST.  First he was appointed Head of Mechanical Engineering, HUST's largest department, then Dean of Engineering and then Vice President of the University.  In 1998, Dr. Zhou was named President of HUST.  His focus as President was to move HUST from a strong Chinese university to one with an international reputation.  In 1999, HUST received the CASA/SME 1999 University Lead Award from the Society of Manufacturing Engineers (Detroit, MI) based on its achievements in Computer Integrated Manufacturing.

The next year, Dr. Zhou was appointed Vice Governor of Hubei Province, a region the size of Kansas with a population of over 60 million.  He held the Vice Governor appointment jointly while being HUST's president.  In 2001 Zhou was named Mayor of Wuhan, Hubei's capital and largest city.  Two years later in 2003 he was appointed Minister of Education in President Hu Jintao's cabinet.  Minister Zhou is responsible for over 120 million Chinese students from kindergarten children through post doctorates.  Despite these responsibilities, Dr. Zhou plays an active role in CAItech strategies.

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