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Twenty years can change a lot.

When Engineering Innovation, Inc. was founded in Lafayette, Indiana, in 2006, the goal wasn’t simply to build another mail automation company. Founders Don Caddy and Adam Fleming had spent much of their careers in the mailing industry, and they wanted to put that experience to work close to home. Just as importantly, they wanted to build the kind of company where people wanted to work.

It started small. Really small. Two engineers and an office measuring roughly 12 by 20 feet.

Then came an opportunity.

Changes to USPS pricing were making flats more expensive to mail, while creating greater incentives for presorting. Eii began working on a practical, lower-cost way for mailers to take advantage of those discounts. The result was EZ-Flats, introduced at the 2007 National Postal Forum. It put Eii on the map, and within a few years, the system could be found in presort operations across the country.

A lot has happened since then.

Today, Eii has more than 80 team members and over 50,000 square feet of office, production, and warehouse space. Our work has expanded well beyond the flats processing that got us started. Mail remains part of who we are, while parcel processing and warehouse automation have become established parts of the business.

Twenty years later, we’ve learned quite a bit about building technology, growing a company, and navigating industries that refuse to sit still. A few lessons have stuck with us.

It’s All About the People

If there’s one lesson worth putting first, it’s this one.

Eii was founded with the idea that the kind of company you build matters. Twenty years later, many of the people who helped build it are still here. Several of our employees have been with Eii for 15 years or more. Some have been here from the beginning.

That kind of history is hard to manufacture.

The same principle extends beyond our walls. Customers have trusted us with problems that affect their businesses and the people who work there every day. Partners have helped us enter new applications and bring ideas to life. Relationships built over years have lasted far beyond a single installation.

Products are obviously important to an engineering company. But after 20 years, the people who build them and the people we build them for matter even more.

Solve the Problem in Front of You

EZ-Flats is probably the clearest example of a philosophy that has followed Eii throughout its history.

At the time, mail automation was trending toward equipment that was faster and increasingly expensive. Eii went in another direction. EZ-Flats combined automation with people performing the tasks they could handle effectively, creating a lower-cost approach to flats processing.

It wasn’t about automating as much as possible. It was about solving the actual problem.

That idea still influences how we think about automation today. Sometimes the answer is a sophisticated automated system. In another operation, a much simpler solution may make more sense.

Start with the headache. Engineer from there.

Pay Attention When an Industry Starts Changing

Eii didn’t stay a flats company for long.

By 2010, letter volumes had been declining while e-commerce was helping drive rapid parcel growth. Eii saw an opportunity not only for its own business, but for mailers looking to diversify theirs. The company became a USPS Business Alliances Partner and began developing solutions for parcel processing.

The Champ followed, along with platforms such as EZ WorkDesk and EZ-Parcels. Chameleon and LightSort would later expand those capabilities further.

That move has become an important part of Eii’s story. Parcel wasn’t just a departure from what we knew. It was a chance to take years of automation experience and apply it to a changing logistics landscape.

Sometimes growth starts with noticing that the problem is changing before deciding how your business should change with it.

Experience Can Take You Somewhere Unexpected

There are plenty of differences between a flat and a parcel. There are also some surprisingly familiar problems.

Items still need to be identified and moved through an operation. They need to reach the correct destination. Operators need useful information at the right moment. Bottlenecks still cause headaches.

That overlap gave us somewhere to start as Eii expanded.

Over time, technologies and expertise that began in mail found applications in parcel processing and, eventually, warehouse environments. Today, Eii works across all three.

Twenty years has taught us that expertise doesn’t have to stay in the box where it started.

Growth Doesn’t Mean Leaving Your Roots Behind

Expanding into parcels didn’t mean becoming any less invested in mail.

In fact, some of Eii’s recent work has involved bringing newer technology back to equipment and processes rooted in the mailing industry. Software has become more connected. Existing equipment can gain new capabilities. Processes that once depended heavily on individual machines can benefit from greater visibility.

That’s one of the advantages of growing outward instead of simply moving on.

Our experience in mail helped us grow into parcel and warehouse automation. What we’ve learned since then can come back and make our mail solutions better, too.

Simple Ideas Can Have Long Lives

Innovation doesn’t have to mean adding more complexity.

That lesson goes all the way back to EZ-Flats. Eii’s approach challenged the idea that the next generation of automation always needed to be faster, larger, or more automated than what came before it.

We’ve seen the same principle hold up in other applications.

Sometimes a light telling an operator where something belongs is exactly what the process needs. Sometimes existing equipment needs better software rather than replacement. A modular system may make more sense than designing for every possible future scenario on day one.

Twenty years of engineering has given us a healthy appreciation for solutions that simply do their job well.

Keep What Works. Be Willing to Change the Rest.

A company should look different after 20 years.

The Eii of 2026 occupies a lot more than a 12-by-20-foot office. Our team has grown from two people to more than 80. We’ve gone from developing our first flats solution to working across mail, parcel, and warehouse automation.

The technology has changed right along with us.

But growth doesn’t require reinventing everything. Part of staying in business is learning which things need to evolve and which are worth carrying forward.

For us, solving real problems is one of the keepers.

Experience Should Make You Ask Better Questions

Twenty years in automation gives you a lot of reference points.

You recognize problems you’ve encountered before. You have a better idea of what might work, and you’ve probably learned a few approaches that aren’t worth repeating.

Experience can also become a trap if it convinces you that you’ve already seen every version of a problem.

The industries we work in have made sure that doesn’t happen. New requirements emerge. Customer operations evolve. Technology gives us different ways to approach familiar challenges.

The value of experience isn’t having every answer ready. It’s knowing enough to ask better questions.

Relationships Last Longer Than Projects

Twenty years changes your perspective on what it means to finish a project.

Installation day matters, but the equipment keeps running after everyone goes home. Years later, that same customer may have different volumes or a new process to support. Their original equipment may need an update instead of a replacement.

Being around long enough to have those conversations changes how you think about customer support.

The goal isn’t just to sell something that solves today’s problem. It’s to be the kind of company someone still wants to call when the next problem shows up.

You Can’t Predict 20 Years. You Can Build for Them.

When Eii opened its doors in September 2006, there was no way to map out exactly what the company would look like in 2026.

We couldn’t have predicted every shift in mail or the growth of e-commerce. We didn’t know which technologies would become part of our product portfolio years later.

Yet here we are.

That’s probably one of the biggest lessons of the last two decades. The future rarely unfolds exactly as expected, so building a business that can adapt along the way matters.

We couldn’t have mapped out the last 20 years in 2006, and we don’t expect to map out the next 20 today. That’s part of what makes this milestone so exciting.

There’s still plenty left to build, learn, and solve. And we’re looking forward to it.