Robotic systems and computer-integrated manufacturing pioneer American Cimflex Inc, which uses a real-time implementation of Unix on its Motorola 68000 family, is going public via a merger with publicly-traded Teknowlege Inc. Shareholders of the Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania company will hold 58% of the merged entity, which will change its name to Cimflex Teknowledge Corp, and holders of the Palo Alto, California based artificial intelligence software pioneer will hold the balance; no further details were given. American Cimflex chairman and chief executive Romesh Wadhwani, and president and chief operating officer Sushil Trikha will carry those posts over to the new company. The chairman and president of Teknowledge will resign but remain as directors and consultants to the new company after the merger, with president Peter Weber becoming vice-chairman. The flagship product at American Cimflex is the Merlin, which can handle 20 lbs at a range of 40 with repeatability of a thousandth of an inch. The Unix-based controllers can handle enables robots to be programmed as single units, as part of a work cell or as part of a complete factory automation system, and Cimflex – originally American Robot – also makes work cell controllers, vision systems, factory workstations and develops related software. Teknowledge, which put itself up for sale in September (CI No 1,007), last year combined its S.1 and M.1 expert system shells to create the much more ambitious Copernicus system for DEC VAX and for Sun Microsystems and Apollo Computer workstations. Teknowledge reported a loss of $1.1m on turnover down 62% at $1.7m for its fiscal first quarter after a loss for the year to June 30 of $9.7m on sales of $14.4m. American Cimflex made a $48,000 profit on $35.4m sales for calendar 1987.
