Proto Labs, Inc., was recently listed as number 75 on Fortune magazine's "100 Fastest-Growing Companies” list. The list is comprised of public companies judged on revenue growth rate, earnings per share (EPS) growth rate and annualized total return over three years.
This is the first year that Proto Labs is eligible for Fortune’s list since it first became publicly traded in February 2012.
From March 2014 to 2015, Proto Labs earned $222 million in revenue. The three-year data used by Fortune magazine shows an EPS growth rate of 36 percent, an annual revenue growth rate of 28 percent and an annualized total return of 33 percent.
Short-run and single-unit manufacturing have historically been considered bad business, so it comes as a surprise that Proto Labs is not only surviving, but thriving.
Set-up expenses would normally make short-run manufacturing unprofitable, but Proto Labs' modernized methodology somehow works around these pitfalls.
ENGINEERING.com visited the main Proto Labs facility earlier this year to uncover the reasons of its success.
One simple reason was was its strong online presence. Quotes can be requested online by simply uploading a 3D CAD file. This makes Proto Labs’ services conveniently accessible by engineers around the world without any phone calls or worry about time zones. That may seem like an obvious step, but it's one that many other manufacturers have yet to take.
Proto Labs' impressive turnaround time highlights yet another innovation in its business. It's become common practice to automate simple, repetitive tasks, but Proto Labs has also automated more complex ones, like quoting and mold design.Quoting is a task that requires expertise and it's often quite tedious. Using a 3D file uploaded by a customer, Proto Labs generates quotes automatically based on building method and materials. A team of experts then cleans up this automatic quote. For the customer, this can reduce wait times from several days to several hours.
President and CEO Vicki Holt attributes Proto Labs' growth to "increased penetration of the product developer market space, the addition of additive manufacturing 18 months ago and the organic launch of five other manufacturing processes and envelope expansions over the past two years."
To learn more about Fortune magazine’s list, visit fortune.com/100-fastest-growing-companies