About Us

History

Formation of the Rochester Area Consulting Engineers was begun during the 2400 person layoff from IBM Rochester in 1993, and it resulted in the registration of the group's name in 1994. This was a time of transition for a large number of people in Rochester, Minnesota. Many families had to uproot and leave the area, while others started new companies such as PEMSTAR (now part of Benchmark Electronics) or formed new branches of existing companies such as Western Digital and Texas Instruments.

The Rochester area was and remains a very favorable place to start new technology-based companies because of the large base of professional people here at the Mayo Clinic and the Rochester IBM plant. These two businesses dominated the local business climate for most of the last 50 years, with the Mayo Clinic being dominant much further back in time.

Many of the current members of RACE worked for one or more of these companies. The success of these new or expanded companies through much of the Internet boom times of the 1990s kept group members very busy. However, as the Internet bubble began to deflate in 2000-2001, work at these new or expanded companies began to dry up, and RACE work load started to increase as customers sought to get more results for their investment in outsourcing. 2003 was a formative year as RACE went through a total rejuvenation to be able to appeal to the renewed interest in product development which inevitably follows after the economy bottoms out. We expect to see a similar resurgence now as conventional businesses are having to shed in-house workers (due to the bursting of the housing bubble) but still need to develop new products to remain competitive.

Member Skills

We have consistently sought to recruit experienced technical people, people who have demonstrated their abilities for creativity, technical competence, independence, perseverance and hard work. Group membership continues to slowly change with time, but the core group of capabilities continues. Please see the summary file for some details on the capabilities of the group members. The members' creativity has resulted in 60+ current patents and a significant number of patents pending. Each of the group members works as an independent consultant, not as an employee, so their participation is encouraged by having interesting, challenging work for them to perform. The more challenging the work, the better.

Mission Statement

"Challenge us with your design needs and we will deliver creative solutions to you at low cost and on a rapid schedule"

Partnership Scenarios

Our organizational structure is very flexible and we are able to work with you in a variety of ways. A partial listing of the available scenarios follows:

Contract with the group for full or partial product development and/or prototyping.
Contract for component design and/or prototyping
Contract to provide short term specialty consulting
License RACE-developed products or technology
Joint development of RACE intellectual property
Contract separate from RACE with a RACE member for a single person project.
If one of these don't work for you, suggest an alternative. We want to work with you to meet your needs.

Introductory Presentation

Please see this for a brief presentation of a preferred way for a customer and RACE to begin a relationship.