Industry: New Power in Automation

• Share

From baking bread to making steel, the most promising area of automation is computer control of factory production lines. Last week two major space-age firms got together to form the newest and biggest company in a rapidly growing field. The Martin Marietta Corp. and Thompson Ramo Wooldridge Inc. set up a separate company called the Bunker-Ramo Corp. to design and install computerized assembly lines for the industrial market.

The partnership is a natural. Ever since he joined his Martin Co. with American-Marietta three years ago, Chairman George Maverick Bunker, 56, has been selling off his least profitable operations and building a nest egg that now amounts to $150 million. On the other hand, Thompson Ramo Wooldridge has the biggest industrial process-control operation in the U.S., supplies devices to such firms as U.S. Steel (to control oxygen furnaces) and Riverside Cement (to regulate cement blending). But TRW did not have capital enough to develop the business and make it profitable. With Martin putting up the cash and owning 90% of the new corporation, Bunker will be chairman and chief executive officer of the company; Dr. Simon Ramo, vice chairman of TRW, will be president and take charge of technological development. To start with, Bunker-Ramo inherits $50 million in orders—mostly military—from its two parents. The goal, within a decade, is a billion-dollar corporation doing business with industry around the world.