3D Printing Business: FIT AG Establishes New Subsidiary in Romania

The FIT Group has been in the news a lot lately, what with the recent opening of their new additive manufacturing facility and headquarters in Germany, a United States expansion, and a partnership with Caterpillar. Now FIT is establishing a new subsidiary in Romania, to be called FIT Additive S.R.L. The business is being launched in order to ramp up the corporation’s software development capabilities.

FIT Additive S.R.L., a fully owned subsidiary, will be located in the Romanian town of Brasov and will be managed by Ovidiu Lupu, who has been appointed Branch Manager for the new business.

“Thanks to our new Romanian subsidiary, we will accelerate our software development process by more than 300%. A strategic advantage of being located in the university town of Brasov is, we have access to many highly skilled software engineers,” said Dr. Andreas Ziegler, Head of Research and Development at FIT AG.

Dr. Andreas Ziegler, Ovidiu Lupu, and Carl Fruth.

“As a lesser known international company, our strategy was to choose a prestigious office location in Brasov to attract top talent. This is the beginning of our long-term commitment to Romania,” said Carl Fruth, Founder and CEO of FIT AG. “We are delighted to welcome Ovidiu Lupu to our team, who has proven to be a highly experienced software development manager.”

FIT is working to automate and standardize the additive manufacturing workflow through software. Currently, the company is developing a proprietary software solution for a lot size of one. Because lot sizes can be small in additive manufacturing processes, it can be a challenge to optimize cost unless different parts can be combined in the same lot. FIT’s software solution aims to coordinate additive manufacturing processes globally and in real time, offering the highest level of quality assurance at the lowest cost on an industrial scale anywhere in the world.

Example of a proprietary solution for the digital control of AM production processes: Manufacturing Execution System (MES)

The solution will give users the ability to maximize cost-effectiveness through multiple design and redesign cycles, but implementing such a program on a global scale is going to take a lot of work, hence the new subsidiary. The next step for the company, over the next month, is to hire 10 software development engineers in Brasov and to establish strong collaboration and integration between the Romanian and German teams.

FIT AG has been in business for more than 20 years, but things have really been picking up lately for the company, which saw total revenue of €24 million in 2016 – a 40% increase over the previous year. FIT is currently the leading provider of rapid prototyping services and additive design and manufacturing in Germany. The company employs 250 people at the moment, with most of them at FIT AG’s main headquarters in Lupburg, Germany, but that number should grow quickly with the establishment of the new Romanian subsidiary. Discuss in the FIT AG forum at 3DPB.com.