Hi Tom,
I've got a friend with an engineering consulting company that does work in the power plant industry. He's got a few semi-retired engineers (who retired from his clients), and it works out great, just as you suggest. One guy only does mornings, another only a couple days a week, they only work on interesting projects, but they've got tremendous knowledge, and they all are eager to teach young people.
With the web for data and McMaster-Carr for overnight delivery of any materials you need, Florida would be fine to site a company. Just plan on work slowing down during the summer.
Heck, teach your retired staff to use the internet and people could carry on wherever they are for the summer.
But down to specific cases, I can't see it happening here. Harry hasn't accepted any advice yet from very knowledgeable people. The decision to send the WHE work to OSU was most certainly out of his hands. One SEC report said they had a commitment from an investor for up to $500K for the WHE division if they put proper product development processes in place. That's when the announced hiring that retired quality control engineer from California.
WHE-GEN is set up from the inbred group at Cyclone. If there was ever an opportunity to fix mistakes, this would have been it. The fact that their "technical team" consists entirely of a contractor's employees proves there's no interest in making a real company with a real product.
AI
