ABOUT
The AST Story: Excellence in Innovation
AST opened in 1965 as an American company dedicated to delivering quality machine and automation design for manufacturing. AST’s expertise in automatic processing equipment would soon gain a global reputation as customers sought our services to develop innovative first-generation technologies, many of which would become industry standards. Driven by a customer-focused philosophy, AST has been at the forefront of intuitive, advanced solutions for manufacturing applications for over 60 years. Since 2004, AST has revolutionized the life sciences industry with groundbreaking, flexible solutions that anticipate the processing and regulatory demands of the next generation of aseptic pharmaceutical products.
Today, AST is a leading provider of American-made drug product manufacturing technology for the Biotechnology and Pharmaceutical industries.
1965-1979 - A Spark of American Ingenuity That Would Grow
AST opens as Automated Systems of Tacoma, offering custom and prototype machine services informed by precision engineering, American ingenuity, and a customer-first commitment. Throughout the late ’60s and ’70s, AST excelled at problem-solving on behalf of customers, which led to innovative first-generation technologies in the timber and paper processing industries.
1980-2004 - Setting the Standard in Manufacturing and Production Automation
AST solutions gained a widespread reputation for quality and craftsmanship, and expanded their emphasis to custom and turnkey production equipment that solved specific customer challenges. AST machinery would find locations all over the globe, serving customers like Boeing, Cardinal Health, and Weyerhaeuser, and include carbon fiber, hygiene, timber, and paper manufacturing solutions.
A History of Innovation
2004-2025 – Pioneering innovation in the Life Sciences industry
AST has served the pharmaceutical industry since 2004, and exclusively since 2015. Since then, AST’s driving purpose has been to enable more life-changing and life-saving therapies to reach more patients in need. Now with over 20 years of delivering innovative aseptic processing solutions, AST is an established leader in life science manufacturing.
2010 – Imagination becomes reality: The release of the ASEPTiCell®
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2016 – Prototype of the tabletop GENiSYS
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2016 – The Tabletop GENiSYS® is released
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2017 – AST’s advanced automation arrives at the laboratory with the introduction of the GENiSYS Lab series
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Later in 2017, the second Generation GENiSYS would be converted to a cart, a legacy configuration still in use today as the GENiSYS C
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2018 – AST provides an advanced tool for targeted, high-value liquid pharmaceuticals in the GENiSYS R
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2023 – Enhancing AST’s cart-based offering the VSM-C
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2019 – 2024 Generational improvement and modular advancements
2025 & Beyond – A Comprehensive Turnkey Portfolio
Scalable Solutions for Drug Product Manufacturing
