Alongside traditional investors, the RK Mellon foundation’s Social Impact Investment program invested $365,000 in Surface Design Solutions. Not only does our platform make manufacturers more efficient, but it helps accelerate the training of new manufacturing workers. There’s a serious problem in manufacturing: when expert machinists and production technicians retire, their hard-won knowledge of surface finish walks out the door with them. It can take years for newer workers to reach expert performance. This funding supports our platform’s ability to rapidly train manufacturing workers – giving them instant feedback on their work, and constructive suggestions of where to touch up. We were written up in both the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and the Pittsburgh Business Times.