Grace Engineered Products  Expands IIoT Offering with Civionics Acquisition

Grace Engineered Products, Davenport, IA, has acquired Civionics, the developer of the Percēv IIoT predictive sensing technology.

In 2005, Civionics CTO Andy Zimmerman and CSO Jerry Lynch, both Ph.D.s, conceived the precursor to the company's Percēv technology. For over a decade they have deployed sensors onto civil infrastructure to identify and quantify the health of monitored bridges, buildings, ships and wind turbines. In 2016, Gerry Roston, CEO of Civionics, brought the company’s first industrial system into an automotive stamping plant.

With the acquisition, Zimmerman will be transitioning to Grace and will serve as Chief Technology Officer. He holds advanced degrees in both Civil Engineering and Computer Science and has experience developing artificial intelligence-based hardware, software, and cloud-based solutions.

“Innovation is accelerating in industrial manufacturing, and without pervasive predictive sensing the dreams and goals around Industry 4.0 will largely be unrealized,” said Drew Allen, Director of Global Business Development at Grace, in the press release. “With Civionics, Grace found an industrially hardened solution and a team of premier thought leaders in this field. It is our plan to build on the company’s success by investing in their core architecture. As with our other solutions, the endgame is simple -- prevent problems before they begin.”