Advance Your Company Through Automation

Estimated reading time: 14 minutes

Sutariya: Alex is a lot smarter guy than I am, and he has a different end game. From my standpoint, I want to collect data, but it’s going to be more on the rudimentary level. Alex is looking at, “What’s the thickness difference of a piece of substrate every inch as I go from end to end at a very high level.” I’m still down in the nitty gritty where I just want to run my shop more efficiently. So, we’re going to look at some data. What’s my throughput? What’s my chemistry usage per panel? We’ll be tracking that because that adds to the ROI.

I’m treating these suppliers as partners. We’re taking a risk with them, and they’re probably taking a risk to launch with us in many cases. Thus, the more data that I can give them in terms of pure ROI, the easier the sell is. If they can get their equipment up into 30% ROI, they should be flat out busy for a long time if people are smart.

Goldman: Well, that’s all good information to hear.

Sutariya: Luckily, I went to business school. I wish I had gone to engineering school, but I guess it comes into play every once in a while.

Goldman: Is there anything else you would like to add? How many positions have you not had to refill since you started focusing on automation?

Sutariya: We just started, so we’re still evaluating the loaders and unloaders. We had a full-sized set brought in, and we’ve signed off on that. We also ordered another full-sized set, but along the way, we worked with them to design a half-size version because a lot of time, we just don’t have space. We may give up some of the capabilities, but it must be able to fit. That’s shipping right now. We’ll be evaluating that, and then it looks like we will have to place a bulk order—probably 40 units to outfit every process. But if I could reduce labor by one person out of every seven to 10 people, I’m in great shape.

Goldman: Perhaps another way to look at it is how much more production time do you think you can gain by not having “people gaps?”

Sutariya: Another way you could look at it is operating optimization. Like any other shop, many times, you get five panels to a process, run them, wait a half hour, another 20 come, and you run them. With automation, I can batch process because I can wait until I have a critical mass (e.g., 100, 200, or 500 panels)—something that will be worth my time to turn the machine on. Then, you stack them on a loader and unloader, kick it on, let it run, and let everything go into standby.

You’re talking about things like water consumption because the newer machines will have automatic solenoids that turn the water off. They will have smart heaters that can go into a standby mode, so you’re saving electricity and chemical consumption. Often, our old habits were to leave the line up and running because we keep coming back every 15–20 minutes with a few panels to run.

Goldman: You might need it for a hot job or something.

Sutariya: Exactly. Because I have all these smart people working for me, I don’t want people thinking anymore; let the machines do the walking. As I said, if I can get even a 10% labor reduction through automation, I guarantee I’ll match that with a productivity increase by whoever’s left, thinking “Maybe I don’t have a guaranteed job.” Not to sound rude or anything, but that’s just the way it is. And for the last three or four years, I honestly feel like a lot of my people have taken advantage of me because they know there’s a labor shortage. So, this helps bring the controls back where they should be.

Goldman: Interesting. Thank you very much. I appreciate it.

Sutariya: Thank you.

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