Abstract
Catalytic Solutions, Inc (CSI) is a young Californian company that produces catalytic converters, which are used to reduce the toxicity of emissions from a combustion engine, as a motor. CSI possesses a technology that allows producing better and cheaper catalytic converters than competing products. This asset rests on the fact that CSI's converters are using between 50 and 80% less Platinum Group Metals than competitor's converters, which allows a lot of savings (between 40 and 200$, depending on the size of the car). This is a big advantage for CSI, particularly since the prices of these rare metals are increasing (exhibit 3).
Concerning management control system, CSI is still in a preprofit stage of operation, that is why its performance measurement and incentive systems are based on non financial data. For the moment, these systems are working well and according to Michael Redard, Vice President of Finance and Administration, CSI is "a very exciting place" and the 125 employees are working "24 hours a day, seven days a week". But the strategy of the company will certainly evolve in the future, jointly with its development.
Company history
Bill Anderson and Steve Golden founded CSI in 1996. For three years, they developed innovative catalytic converters for automotive sector, whose we described the advantages before. So, in 1999, they registered first patents to prevent the copy of their products and began the production to supply the auto industry after-market. CSI's immediate goal was to supply the automotive sector, which supposed to find Original Equipment (OE) commitments. In the same year, Honda started evaluating CSI's technology.
In 2000, Honda became the first OE adopter. Sales occurred in December 2010 to supply the production of the Honda Stepwagon model. Everyone at Honda appreciated CSI's products a lot: they were indeed impressed by their performance and realized that CSI's technology had a great potential. So they awarded the company with the Gratitude Award for Excellency in Research and Development in 2002.
