Congratulations Tim on your retirement from DTS after more than three decades of vision, passion, dedication and hard work! You will be greatly missed. 

Tim, along with Mike Beckage and Steve Pruitt, co-founded DTS in 1990. From humble beginnings working out of an office above a garage, the 3 engineers developed DTS into a global success. Today DTS headquarters is based in Seal Beach, California, and has 7 technical centers around the world.

Tim officially retired in December 2022, but was presented his retirement award at the DTS annual meeting earlier this year so the entire company could be present. Mike Beckage, CTO and Steve Pruitt, Chief Business & Sales Officer, presented the plaque to Tim which says, “Thank you for building a company that has made a real difference in the lives of all of us at DTS and has no doubt saved many lives through product innovation in occupant safety.” 

Mike shared, “Thanks, Tim. I was adding up the years – 38 years together, starting with Cal Poly Pomona. I just want to add, the first 12 years at DTS could have been terrible because it could have gone south but we stuck with it. Perseverance, like I always tell people.” Mike added, “These guys paid supreme attention to detail and it worked. So we are all here today because we were able to hang together and Tim, I really appreciate your work and your friendship.”

 Tim and Mike’s friendship first began in an engineering class at Cal Poly Pomona. Mike recommended Tim for a job at Mobility Systems, as a crash test engineer, and it was there that they also Steve.

 “Testing and crashing cars sounded like a really good thing,” Kippen commented in an interview for the Cal Poly Bronco magazine. “That’s how I fell into it. It’s the most fun thing in the world to set up a really big physics experiment, think about how something is going to wreck and then just do it. We thought the industry was underserved, and that’s how we moved forward,” Tim said.

 The rest, as they say, is history.

 DTS manufactures miniature, rugged DAQ, sensors and portable data logger solutions for a variety of applications including product development, performance validation and safety testing.