Applications Research Inc

Information may not be reliable

The above painting is by Mr. Mario Fernandez, whose experience also includes many industrial design efforts, both with us and with others. For example, Mario is the original creator of Toro's present (and very well known) logo and color scheme that has served the company so well over the years. Samples of some his design work can be found within this website. Further examples of his paintings can be found at MarioFernandez.com.

Industrial Systems Engineering
This is an industrial systems engineering office working in applied research and all phases of product development. This office designs consumer and business products, plus production and assembly equipment to accomplish the same. This includes technical investigations and forensic engineering expert services for private and government entities. We also promote our own proprietary software for analyzing equipment reliability according to the Weibull distribution and other related reliability distributions. It is named Weibull-Ease.

Experience includes electrical and mechanical engineering of equipment, biomedical engineering, medium to high volume production, ergonomics (human factors), materials selection, plastic and aluminum components, mechanical power transmission, computer simulation and related algorithms. Experience areas include home appliance, food processing, medical, outdoor equipment, assembly, automation, and carpel tunnel prevention equipment, UL and CSA investigation, standards compliance (CPSC, OSHA, CSA, UL, TUV/GS, NSF marine, etc), consultation for liability prevention, test fixtures.
Past efforts have included projects with Thermo-King, Kirby, Stratasys, Black & Decker, Toro, Andersen Windows, Honeywell, 3M, Allen Bradley, Gould, Seimens, Kohler, Malco, Turck, INTEK Weatherseal Products, IBM, Chrysler, General Motors, Brown Tank, the United States Department of Health and Human Services, United States Bureau of Mines, and many others.
This is a member office of the American Council of Engineering Companies and the Consulting Engineers Council of Minnesota.

PRODUCT DESIGN Applied research, mechanical engineering, and product design efforts have involved well over 200 individual product models of various shapes, sizes and functions. We are able to provide drawings in a variety of formats including Pro-E, STL, Autocad, DXF, or most any standard format. We are able to provide "like downtown" prototypes of appliances, consumer or business equipment, or most any category appropriate for your budget.
MANUFACTURING OR PROCESS Hardware production organization and troubleshooting, equipment justification, return of investment analysis, testing and packaging. Process equipment has ranged from envelope machines, special production machinery, PC board assembly analysis, to production software, computer simulation.
TECHNICAL INVESTIGATION Our past work has involved product reviews and investigation of electrical and mechanical engineering issues concerning hardware systems for corporations, Insurance carriers, law offices, and government. Efforts have ranged from small consumer product reviews, to large railway equipment, to massive earthquake simulation systems.
MEDICAL or FOOD This section was added recently. It is a compilation of past biomedical engineering and mechanical engineering projects from the above three groups that are related directly, or indirectly, to medical or food industries. This has involved a full range of engineering simulations of potential products.
WEIBULL-EASE is our proprietary MS Windows based, software for integration of market research and field data with laboratory tests based upon the Weibull estimates of warranty failure cost estimates, and future reliability. Its main emphasis is based upon the Weibull distribution's incredible flexibility and usefulness. In addition to the standard statistical analyses routines of the more well known software, it uses a unique, but simple and understandable, routine for comparing field use with laboratory test data based upon the Weibull distribution..