APROE was started in 2006 by Mose O’Griffin who was following his life-long passion for designing and building things. The first version of the company was called Aluminum Precision Engineering and was intended to capitalize on Mose’s early research and work with aluminum welding and machining for the marine and high-performance industries. This was found to be too narrow of a scope and the business was re-branded Advanced Prototype Engineering in 2010 to fully capitalize on the wide variety of materials and systems Mose was accustomed to working with.
With this change and a growing demand for it’s services, the company’s first employees were hired. APROE was asked to assist in helping a few San Francisco based companies get their R&D facilities online. This was initially seen as a “blip” or just a few one-time opportunities but became a dedicated business offering once the work stream was realized to be steady. APROE worked hand in hand with instructors from San Francisco’s Tech Shop to help Autodesk’s Pier 9 create training documentation for staff. The relationships and opportunities gained during these early years set the foundation for APROE’s R&D Facility Services division.
Jennifer O’Griffin joined the management team in 2016 and works as one of the company’s owners to further APROE’s diverse offerings. She brought a solid skillset in Industrial Design, Human Factors, and Ergonomics to strengthen the company as a whole.
The prototyping division grew steadily by continuing to provide design / build services with local entrepreneurs and Tech Clients. With each successful project completed, funds were put towards growing the design and fabrication capabilities. In 2021, the Prototyping division was rebranded Product and Manufacturing Services to better capture what the division had become.
The company currently runs a waterjet parts service and maintains its own R&D machine shop. This allows us to quickly iterate on design concepts using internal and local manufacturing resources. Once designs are refined and finalized, we rely on our extensive local network of suppliers to feed our contract manufacturing projects. Walking the line between design and fabrication has, and will continue to be a constantly evolving process with APROE.
To date, our R&D Facility Services division has worked on more than 20 projects with corporate clients in various parts of the United States and have educated hundreds of engineers and employees.
For an interesting article on APROE please see Company Week’s Article on us: