When I look back on a year like 2024, I think “Well, that was … something”. It is always difficult to identify an overall trend. What seems consequential in the moment may end up having rather little impact, and what actually ends up having a huge impact may barely even register when it first happens. Regardless of what you think about 2024, I think we can all agree that it was a longer year than most – considering it was a leap-year.
Since its founding, DISTek has been providing services to equipment makers of heavy industrial machines like Ag, construction, and commercial vehicles. Unfortunately, most of those industries were having a rough year last year, and we felt it with several project cutbacks and cancellations. I am sure we will see a rebound soon and get back to enabling more advanced technology capabilities for our clients’ products, but looking back on 2024, it was a challenging year.
One area that stood out during the year was in autonomous and electrified machines. We started multiple new projects in these areas and continued several others as our clients continue to push these technologies forward. Some of these products that DISTek worked with were even highlighted at such industry shows as CES, the World Ag Expo, and the FIRA USA robotics conference. Even though DISTek operates in the background, and our confidentiality obligations keep us from highlighting a lot of our contributions, we love to see the work we produce making its way into the world.
And did DISTek have our AI moment? AI was certainly discussed a lot in popular media, and it seems like everyone has a hot take. We tried to take a measured approach in 2024 by rolling out an internal AI usage policy to provide guard rails to employees, while at the same time allowing for some experimentation with rapidly changing technology. As always, we keep our clients’ wishes in mind. In one case, we proposed – and the client agreed – to use AI-generated unit testing for a project we were developing. We certainly see the potential in these kinds of tools, and also recognize many of the limitations. And in case you are wondering: no, I did not use any gen-AI for the creation of this blog post (though after reading it, you may wish that I had).
On a different note, one of our biggest announcements came toward the end of the year when DISTek shuffled around some legal entities to bring aboard a sibling company in Red Foundry. This is the first acquisition by DISTek’s new parent company (Carthage Holdings, Inc.) and adds some additional technology services to our overall portfolio. It will be exciting to see how we can better serve our clients as we support a broader set of technologies and apply lessons from other industries.
As has been the case for many years, DISTek remains a proud 100% employee-owned company. Evidence of that was shown at the ESOP Association’s annual Midwest Regional Chapter Conference in September where we had three presenters talk about our DISTek U training program. It is difficult to convey how much the ESOP community tries to support fellow member companies until you actually experience it. We have learned so much from other companies over the years that we were thrilled to have an opportunity to give back a little of what we have learned.
That certainly does not cover all 366 days of 2024, but it hits some of the key points. I could have talked about my personal highlights like sending my first kid to college or going to the Olympics or meeting Snoop Dogg, but those are stories for another day. Look me up at a future industry event or reach out if you want to talk tech!
