Our customers don't necessarily have much in common with one another. They work for small and large businesses, or for different organizations in the government. They might send things into space or make machines that make semiconductors. Each customer has different needs and therefore interacts with CSA in a different way. We succeed by helping our customers to succeed. Occasionally, we act purely as consultants, selling our technical expertise in certain areas. More often, we deliver a hardware product or solution to our customers.

There are at least four ways CSA interacts with customers:

• We solve problems for existing products and systems.
• We develop products and provide technical solutions for newer systems.
• We sell several existing products.
• We collaborate on research into new technologies.

Most often, our customers have special technical issues that have to be addressed, problems that need to be solved. Often the customer needs solutions quickly. CSA's technical staff enjoys these challenges and works to meet them with effective hardware solutions. There is no typical scenario for working with CSA, but one of the more common ones might proceed as follows:

• Mutual interest is established through contact in person, by phone or by email
• A non-disclosure agreement (NDA) is signed as appropriate in the particular situation
• More detailed information about the customer needs is provided in face-to-face meeting or by exchanges of email, faxes, drawing packages, etc.
• CSA and the customer together define a statement of work and CSA proposes to complete certain tasks within a certain time and cost. In general, initital engineering effort is done on a time-and-material basis. This work may include analysis, testing, design, hardware prototyping, or software development.
• With means of meeting customer need identified, CSA develops components, devices or systems to solve a vibration problem or perform some other function. Depending on the situation, CSA will manufacture the items in question or work with the customer to integrate the new technology into a product manufacture.
• CSA continues to supply components to the customer, or the customer incorporates CSA's technology in a product. In the case of custom one-off systems, CSA delivers items and provides any necessary continuing support.

At CSA, we're used to being brought in to provide "band-aid" fixes for products and systems that have already been built and are perhaps in operation. But our experience and capabilities are equally valuable in the early phases of a product development or system definition. Building in vibration, motion or noise control solutions from the start often leads to a better completed product. We work with customers to develop components or subsystems, hardware or software, to support their new products. For our government customers, this means involvement early in the design of systems that may not actually go into operation for several years. CSA is also available as a supplier of semi-custom products that get integrated with larger systems.

In some cases, a customer's needs may be met through purchase one of our existing products. CSA doesn't have a formal catalog of products because most of what we manufacture is done on a semi-custom basis. For example, we offer specialty products in low frequency suspension, SoftRide whole spacecraft isolation systems, actuation, tuned dampers, and hexapod platforms. Most of these products were developed originally on a custom basis and have found more general application and use. CSA offers a wide range of technical solutions for vibration, motion and noise control, so it's still best to contact us to discuss how our existing products can meet your specific needs.

Team with us in government-sponsored research and development efforts. CSA often supports R and D efforts led by other companies by providing our technical expertise. We also regularly seek funding under the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) programs and other research opportunities. In pursuing development of new, relatively high risk technologies, we benefit from commercial and industrial partners who share in some of the risk and in the resulting products and capabilities. We work to align promising technology areas with both specific government requirements and commercial business needs. This is a way for large businesses to leverage their own research and development efforts.