LINDON — Todd Peterson and Jo Nelson, the marketing team for Wicat Systems Inc., tucked away in a small Lindon business park, don't laugh when they get mail addressed to "Y-Cat" by correspondents who think the Utah County company is some kind of subsidiary of the BYU Cougars athletic program.
That's because their real name — Wicat is an acronym for "Worldwide Institute for Computer Assisted Teaching" — is only slightly more relevant to the company's mission these days than is throwing passes or shooting free throws.
But they're not about to change their monicker, assures Peterson. It has 23 years of name recognition in Utah and around the world, and they aren't about to throw that away.
"We kept the name Wicat even though it's no longer pertinent because it has become well-known and trusted in the aviation industry," said Peterson. "Faros" (Wicat's French parent company) says the Wicat name must appear on all of its aviation products."
The aviation industry? Clearly, Wicat has come a long way from its roots in 1977 when a group of BYU professors formed a nonprofit institution aimed at helping secondary schools pep up their courses with programs based on interactive videodiscs and pre-PC computer technology using the Motorola 6800 processor.
They also saw possibilities for corporate training, and they completed systems for IBM, AT&T and Ford Motor Co. By the early '80s they were providing multiuser education systems for both schools and industry.
During this period, the company developed some computer based training (CBT) programs for the aviation industry, including TWA, Boeing and McDonnell Douglas. Although it was seen as merely a sidelight at the time, by the 1990s, Wicat was moving away from it origins and into developing and building flight training devices and pilot maintenance training devices — commonly known as flight simulators.
But not the full-blown, $20 million aircraft simulators that duplicate the real thing right down to the last toggle switch and (computer-simulated) view out the cockpit windshield. Wicat has carved out a niche in pilot training and maintenance (airline pilots are retested every six months) that allows flyers to show proficiency in a select range of skills and knowledge in Wicat-built simulators that cost millions less than their high-end counterparts.
For example, the company is completing a mock-up of a Canadair Regional Jet (CRJ), an aircraft built by Canada's Bombardier and a popular choice for smaller airlines. The CRJ is to St. George-based Skywest Airlines what the Boeing 737 is to Southwest Airlines, although Skywest has not yet bought one of Wicat's trainers ("We're trying," assures Peterson).
The Wicat simulator is scheduled for installation at Pan Am International Flight Academy in Miami, and Fred Agnew, who took the helm as Wicat president in September (replacing Mark Nelson, who now heads the company's new Internet venture, Wicat.Com) describes it as "the most sophisticated device we (have) ever undertaken."
At a price ranging from $500,000 to $2 million, Wicat can provide a user more than double the number flight trainers for the price of one full-scale simulator and reduce by about 35 percent the amount of time a pilot must spend in the "big ships."
"This is a great time to be a part of Wicat," said Agnew, who came to the company from CAE Electronics' Commercial Simulation and Training Division.
In addition to its flight trainers, Agnew said the company's "traditional core" business of computer-based training and less complex flight trainers continues to progress, pointing to a contract this year to provide Saudi Arabian Airlines with an extensive CBT library.
And Wicat's off-the-shelf products are still selling briskly, particularly in Europe, and the number of airlines using its FMS programs to ease the burden on their expensive simulators is also growing.
Peterson said Wicat is working toward revenue of about $12 million for this year and $20 million by the year 2003.
Wicat has gone through several owners during its 23 years of existence. In 1988, Jostens Learning, a company that specializes in education-related products such as caps and gowns, school rings and education software, bought Wicat, taking it out of its nonprofit status and putting it on a dual track of education and commercial computer training.
But it was the company's military training connection, and its link to aviation, that seemed to hold the most promise, and that track gradually evolved into a major part of the company's business. But Jostens had no interest in aviation and sold that part of the business in 1994 to Frank Pritt, the founder of a Seattle software firm called Attachmate and who also happened to be an aviation buff.
But Pritt didn't own it for long, either. He soon sold Wicat to Faros, a firm based in Toulouse, France, which had been a partner in Wicat's most successful product, the Airbus FMGS Free-play Simulations and Trainers — a product line that is used today at dozens of airlines around the world and represents the best-selling commercial aviation training product line of all time.
Airbus is the airliner manufacturing consortium that is Europe's answer to Boeing in the U.S.
In 1998, Faros and Wicat merged, and Faros, although a smaller company, became Wicat's parent company. But Wicat's headquarters remain in Lindon, supplemented by development offices in Seattle (near Boeing's facilities) and in Toulouse (near Airbus Industries).
Faros is a publicly traded company in France with some 65 employees, including Wicat's 35. Faros also makes driving and marine simulators for cars, trucks and boats that are marketed throughout Europe.
E-mail: max@desnews.com