Corporate History

Advent Design Corporation has been helping U.S. based manufacturer’s be more competitive in a global economy since 1984. Advent Design is an engineering and manufactuirng services company focused on providing manufacturing solutions to companies in the Mid-Atlantic Region and across the country.

Founded in 1984 by two Graduates of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and working through the 90’s and well into the 21st century Advent Design has evolved into a full service solutions provider for 21st century manufacturers.

After outgrowing professional office space in the late 1980’s Advent Design leased 2,500 sq.ft. of space in an old Textile Mill at the terminus of the Delaware Canal which flowed from Bristol to Easton, PA. Over the last 130 years this manufacturing site has been home to fully integrated textile firms, defense contractors, a bottling plant, and tea blending operations. Built in 1876, the Grundy Brothers and Mr. Campion opened the mill for the manufacture of woolen goods and worsted yarns. During the 1930’s and 1940’s World War II airplanes were manufactured in the facility by Kaiser Works. Many of the skylights were still blacked out from World War II before Advent Design renovated additional space in 1997. Following the departure of Kaiser Works the site has been used as a bottling plant and a production site for Tetley Tea.

Today, where flying fortresses were designed half a century ago to help win a war Advent Design plans and builds manufacturing facilities and systems for 21st century companies to compete and win in a global marketplace.

Since its inception Advent Design has grown and matured as an effective team of engineers and designers helping numerous companies reduce costs and improve operations and service through a variety of products and services. Advent Design’s in-house resources consist of industrial, mechanical, software, electrical, electronic, and manufacturing engineers and technicians. Advent Design has expanded from our humble beginnings with a handful of people in a rented house in Malden, Massachusetts in 1984, transitioneing from the Boston area to Philadelphia with 2,500 sq.ft. of industrial space in an old Mill in 1987 and grown to over 150,000 sq.ft. and nearly 100 employees in that same Mill today.

Advent Design has also expanded the services we offer to support our customers in a variety of ways. Starting with Enginering Services, now Planning and Productivity work to better layout and evaluate manufacturing operations has led to Advent Design becoming a leader in Lean Manufacturing and Lean Automation. The robotics and automation background of the principals and the expertise in manufacturing operations led to the expansion into custom automation equipment and systems (which led to the need for the more flexible Mill space over the professional office environment). Product Design and Development has been a staple of the company since the first years of the company’s existence. The Product Design and Development service has expanded dramatically over the past several years as Advent Design completed several large programs and incorporated our years of experience in helping our customers’ get products to market into an ISO 9001 certified product development methodology. Today, every service offered by Advent Design has been certified under our ISO 9001 program. Information Systems has been an outgrowth of our Manufacturing Automation and Planning and Productivity groups. Advent Design’s control engineers will typically design in Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition Systems as part of a large custom automation project. Most customers have Business Enterprise systems that are financially driven and not operationally driven. Advent Design’s Information Systems group helps our customers bridge this gap and develop systems that connect operational data and reporting with financial data and reporting. The Planning and Productivity group assists in the seamless integration of systems into the information systems infrastructure of the customer.

As Advent continues to expand into the 21st century we are rededicating our efforts to helping our customers successfully compete in a global manufacturing environment. In the late 1990’s Advent Design started a Contract Manufacturing operation specifically to assist existing customers and better leverage our knowledge of their equipment, products, processes, and management teams. This service has expanded significantly since then and is an excellent test bed for new manufacturing techniques and equipment. Advent Design has set up a number of "mini-plants" which lend themselves well to our facility and help our engineers and technicians obtain production feedback about differing technologies and methods that we will later recommend to our customers. Advent Design has also begun to expand our product offerings in certain markets and has purchased a couple of small product oriented companies over the past several years. Most recently Advent Design purchased TESCO (The Eastern Specialty Company), a Philadelphia Company, started in 1904, to provide precision instruments to the electric utility industry. Advent’s manufacturing and operational expertise continued to be leveraged and showcased in this and other acquisitions and contract manufacturing projects. This real-life experience for everyone at Advent Design has given us yet another competitive advantage over our competition and positioned us well for continued growth in the years to come.