In Rancho Santa Margarita, California, just outside the Greater Los Angeles area, one company is overcoming automation issues through a wide and versatile product line and a customer-centric philosophy. ATS Systems offers all aspects of automation machining, from tools to support parts, as well as the ability to install and service anywhere in the United States.

ATS began from a simple need, like so many companies. In the early nineties, machinist Bill Murphy needed a collet chuck for his small machine shop, and unable to find one that met his delivery needs, he decided to make one. After learning of his success, his peers came to him for requests for similar collet chucks, and realizing the potential value of what he had made, Murphy acted quickly, and the fledgling company of ATS Workholding was soon born.

Starting with a small product offering, the company had big ideas. “We’re going to be the Nordstrom’s of collet chucks,” recalls President Ken Erkenbrack of those early days, referring to the popular U.S. department store. “Not only are we going to have the best product, but we’re also going to have the best service and customer experience.” Despite having a tiny phone-based sales team, ATS quickly gained new followers through its dependable and adaptable products.

The modern version of ATS was formally born in 2006 when the company acquired local machine tool accessory importer SMW systems, known for its power chucks, rotary tables and barfeeds. As Erkenbrack notes, it was for mutual benefit. “Where we were strong, they were a little bit weak, and where we were weak, they were a little bit stronger.”

With a rapidly expanding sales and service presence and product line, the company has enjoyed steady growth ever since, today managing its primary facility in California and an equally important CoolJet manufacturing facility outside Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Always up for a challenge, this dynamic company offers machine tool accessories, engineering and automation solutions that increase manufacturing productivity and throughput. Customers come to ATS to solve a number of challenges: whether they need help meeting their productivity goals; are facing profit-killing downtime; are struggling with throughput; are having trouble finding good workers; are seeking automation solutions; lack a reliable machine tool partner; or are simply finding it difficult to deal with other vendors, ATS’s solutions lead to profitable results for all its customers.

Indeed, because of its roots in machining, ATS has a unique perspective on machining and automation that sets it apart from its peers. “We’re a machine shop, but we also represent product,” Erkenbrack says. “We understand what the customer’s pain points are because we’re a manufacturer ourselves.” The company’s resulting business model is largely customer-dictated; customers list their needs, and ATS determines how best to fill them.

“We’re in shops all the time, and we listen,” he continues, explaining that this receptive philosophy allows clients to lay out their needs. “We’re constantly looking at that and reviewing the industry and what’s out there.” While this could be seen as a reactive rather than proactive business model, the staff prefers this client-driven approach. A pre-set product line may limit the company’s options to customers, so ATS has taken the opposite approach by creating, manufacturing, installing, and servicing highly adaptable machine tool accessories that suit a wide range of customer needs.

Having expanded far from its initial line of collet chucks, ATS now offers a wide and versatile range of adaptable automation solutions. These include bar feeders in multiple configurations that are capable of fitting up to four-inch-diameter bar stock; five-axis CNC automation systems, including tombstones, trunions, and four-axis and five-axis rotary indexing solutions, allowing clients to seamlessly add four-axis and five-axis machining capabilities without having to rely on doing complex cuts by hand; Accu-Rock Rotary Tables, with both four-axis and five-axis, and as the potential addition of rotary or dual helical cuts; and Xcelerate robotic arms, which are fully programmable and turn any small shop into a high-precision, high-volume operation.

The company remains true to its roots, offering a wide array of collet chucks, power chucks, and innovative four-jaw universal chucks capable of clamping round, rectangular, and geometrically irregular parts. Due to its products’ versatility and adaptability, ATS is poised to meet its clients’ specific and evolving needs.

Indeed, while ATS may pride itself on its automation tools, it offers all aspects of machine shop maintenance and servicing. “We don’t just do automation; we have solutions to make any machine more productive regardless of vintage,” Erkenbrack says, highlighting ATS’s high-pressure coolant and filtration systems that keep machines running in top shape, as well as replacement filters, chip and sludge removal systems, mist and smoke collection systems, and metalworking fluid chillers.

As a result, ATS can handle all aspects of a client’s automation model. “We’re able to combine all of our product lines into an automation project,” Erkenbrack says, whereas competitors might be farming out certain aspects to others. “We source all of that from our own products to come out with the solution we provide.” ATS offers a lot of value to its customers and has made machine shop owners a lot of money over time providing solutions that increase their productivity.

The company also offers a nationwide service net, with software identifying ‘pockets’ of intense activity. While ATS’s service technicians obviously cannot be everywhere, they can be strategically positioned to perform installations and repairs as quickly and efficiently as possible. The company has had particular success in employing veterans; with previous mechanical or engineering training, these employees are suited to the arduous task of service calls across wide coverage areas. “It’s a great way to find good-quality technical service people,” Erkenbrack remarks. The company is now working to further strengthen its service network to allow same-day installation and servicing as needed.

ATS’s success is evident through its clients’ testimonials. Erkenbrack relates that, when a client was weighing options for an automation system, ATS could provide forty percent more capacity than its competitors. “We could load our system with more parts than the competition can do now.” The client can now run their automated system round-the-clock, without having to stop and unload finished parts and load in fresh raw material.

Similarly, a Texan business owner was having trouble finding qualified employees. But ATS was helped the owner completely automate his shop. “Now, he doesn’t have any employees anymore; he’s the only one,” he states. Though it was an admittedly heavy monetary investment, the business has continual throughput.

These success stories help bolster the company’s mission of removing the stigma from automation. Erkenbrack says that automated studies revealed how many business owners found the process intimidating, expensive, and unnecessary. More poignant was the fear of highly specialized automation systems. If anything in the business model changed, that system would no longer be useful.

This, he says, has helped ATS develop its model of highly programmable and reprogrammable parts. “They’re not overly customized to where, if the job goes away and they lose the job they were running, [the owner] can easily adapt them to any other job in their facility,” he says. “What we really try to push is getting customers to understand that automation really isn’t as scary as it appears.”

The company’s high-caliber service team has a wealth of real-world experience. “We have a handful of people who have actually installed automation systems throughout the world,” Erkenbrack says, adding that the company’s staff is equally as important as its products. “When I look at our business… you can’t leave out the people,” he says. “We have very skilled and very loyal ATS employees.”

This core staff enabled the company “a chance to step back,” as he puts it, during the worst of COVID-19 and focus on internal development without layoffs. Foreseeing upcoming shortages, the company invested in inventory accordingly and now is largely unaffected by the rising supply chain woes intensifying worldwide. “We invested in inventory and have had very little disruption with our supply chain at all.”

With business returning and the North American workforce continuing to change rapidly, ATS is ready to help machine shops automate partially or completely as their business models require. “We are always looking for potential add-ons and acquisitions,” Erkenbrack says. The company is currently experiencing successful ongoing partnerships with vendors for products such as those offered by Irvine-based KME CNC.

The trick moving forward, he continues, is trying to stay ahead of the ever-changing field of machine tool technology, capability and automation and deciding ATS’s best investment. “What product would help our customers compete, not only nationally but globally?” he asks. Whatever proves to be the answer, ATS Systems will be ready to provide it.

The post Custom-Made for Custom Production<p class="company">ATS Systems</p> appeared first on Manufacturing In Focus.

A wholly-owned subsidiary of American consumer goods multinational Procter & Gamble, iMFLUX’s origins go back to 2013 when P&G incorporated a separate entity to meet the injection molding needs of the company and some strategic partners. Within a few years, iMFLUX became known as a game-changer in the molding industry.

“iMFLUX takes the way conventional injection molding has been done and flips it on its head,” says Chief Technology Officer Gene Altonen. “We do the opposite of what the industry has been taught for the last 30 years of how to process plastics.”

Instead of injecting fast at high pressures and very high shear rates – which is how molding is done conventionally – iMFLUX injects at slow fill rates, and lower pressures. Changing the approach can have multiple benefits including higher quality parts, reduced cost and cycle time, improved process reliability and the ability to incorporate more sustainable materials. The capability to process with iMFLUX technology can be built into new injection molding machine designs or can be fit to virtually any existing press on the market.

Taking on an industry
Before joining P&G in 1990, Altonen was a student at Michigan State University, later to be recruited by the company. In packaging development for about a decade, he began to focus on injection molding, ultimately moving into upstream injection-molding development and vetting technologies developed by external companies.

Spending 20 years specializing in injection molding and evaluating and developing technologies, Altonen is known as not only one of the inventors of the revolutionary iMFLUX technology but also as someone behind most of the company’s 200-plus global patents.

“iMFLUX is an adaptive technology,” he says of the company’s work, explained on its own YouTube channel at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCaTXj9qQTM666PJdhIjJSLQ. “We have the ability to react to what is occurring in a mold in real time. We can compensate for it, and make intelligent decisions on behalf of an operator so they can keep the machine running, even when there might be a lot of instability in the mold itself, or the material, or the machine,” explains Altonen.

“And so that adaptive nature of our technology is also a very fertile ground for patent applications as well. Between those two – the basics of our technology works, and then these adaptive characteristics of our technology – that’s really how we’ve been able to build such a large patent portfolio in only about 10 years.”

Delivering innovation
With an extensive background in manufacturing, sourcing, supply chain management, and the innovation space, Mary Wagner was the ideal choice to become Chief Executive Officer of iMFLUX. A veteran Procter & Gamble employee, Wagner previously led Purchases and Product Supply organizations in the U.S. and China, most recently leading the company’s global Packaging Purchases organization.

With a wealth of technical and business education – much of it based on driving innovation, developing external partnerships, and creating ecosystems for P&G – Wagner has worked with numerous injection molding companies and has used those experiences to help create the iMFLUX business model.

“I think a combination of technical, business, and supply chain background is what they were looking for me to leverage with iMFLUX, and take it from a technology start-up to something you scale as a business,” she says.

Coming on board in 2018, Mary Wagner’s role has been to take the company from start-up to scale, to build partnerships, and to look at ways to take fresh innovations and build them out within the injection molding ecosystem and industry.

When new customers come in asking about the technology, Wagner and Altonen say they often use the term “adaptive driving,” metaphorically likening iMFLUX to today’s autonomous vehicles, which use state-of-the-art devices to keep them safely on the road.

Years ago, cruise control to ensure cars were kept to a constant speed was considered revolutionary. Today, technology has advanced to where car wheels vibrate slightly if a driver has left the lane, while sensors automatically trigger the brakes if the vehicle detects something in its path and a likely collision.

Just as this technology is adaptive to help improve driving performance, a similar comparison can be made to iMFLUX and molding.

“We think of an injection molding machine, and how it’s controlled through a very similar lens,” says Altonen, explaining that in an injection molding operation the machine, materials and molding environment vary. With iMFLUX, the machine adjusts itself to compensate for variations in the molding environment.

“The way our processing technology works is that it’s able to sense and detect those changes as they occur, and it’s able to make corrections to the process to compensate for those changes as they occur to make sure you make good parts.”

This means machines run more reliably with fewer operator adjustments, resulting in higher-quality parts, reduced costs, and lower capital – all while advancing sustainability efforts such as using less energy and reducing waste.

Along with saving customers time, money, energy costs, and more, iMFLUX addresses another key issue facing manufacturing today, namely labor shortages.

With thousands of experienced workers retiring every day and insufficient job applicants to take their place, industry in general needs new and innovative ways to address the worker shortfall. Since iMFLUX’s unique technology is easy to run and can improve reliability, it is fast gaining popularity with businesses.

“In a world where sustainability is increasingly more important to the plastics industry, a machine that adapts when you run recycled resins and re-grind is super-attractive,” says Wagner. “Between the challenges associated with productivity, labor, and sustainability, iMFLUX offers a solution that addresses many day-to-day molding challenges.”

The Green Curve™
In recent months, one of the biggest reasons customers are coming to iMFLUX is the push for sustainable solutions. Enter The Green Curve – a better, and different, way to mold.

Excited about the benefits of the Green Curve, the company has recently released a video explaining the process at https://www.imflux.com/the-green-curve-video/. With many advantages, the technology enables companies to be more productive, produce products with better quality, have greater material and design flexibility, and address sustainability solutions through faster cycle times, less scrap, and more consistent quality.

Clients can save on material costs, and this technology allows designers more freedom in creating plastic parts.

Whereas conventional molding processes use a combination of high-pressure/high shear and are static, The Green Curve approaches processing differently.

Value, every which way
A pressure sensor is added to machines, which is used as a primary control signal for the entire process. This causes the machine to regulate pressure to achieve a desired pressure setpoint, which is maintained consistently throughout the entire filling of the mold cavity. As a result, pressure is much lower – sometimes by as much as half – with a slower filling of the mold. Cycle times are shorter by 5 to 25 percent or more because cooling time can often be reduced when the part packs as it fills.

Companies can apply this technology to many applications. “It doesn’t do them any good if it only works on one or two of their lines if they have 100 lines. They need a solution that works on all of their lines,” says Altonen. “iMFLUX does that. It works on any machine type, new or used. It can be applied broadly across your business. Companies want solutions that add value and do not have trade-offs. A lot of the solutions out there have trade-offs.”

Through iMFLUX, molders can utilize a wide spectrum of post-consumer recycled materials – which are highly variable in their viscosity – to make consistent parts. And as less energy is required, the carbon footprint is reduced.

Since iMFLUX runs processes with lower shear and typically lower temperatures, it is gentler on different materials – even compostable, degradable, and marine-degradable materials, all of which are sensitive to shear and heat.

And since the technology is low pressure, it can be used to design parts that are lighter and thinner than ever.

“With conventional processing, you can only go so thin before your pressures become unmanageable and become very high,” says Altonen. “With iMFLUX, because you’re working with lower pressures, you can make those parts thinner, lighter, and keep your molding pressures very manageable.” This includes parts weighing from tenths of a gram (micro-moulding) to 50 pounds.

Working with a broad range of industries including consumer products, automotive, medical, electronics, and logistics, iMFLUX technology works on virtually any machine or mold to produce plastic parts of all sizes. As the company matures, it is seeing growth in the automotive and medical sectors, and those interested in sustainability.

“Many companies are using higher levels of post-consumer recycled materials but run into processing limitations,” says Wagner. “Those types of companies find great value in iMFLUX because it offers them a sustainability solution at scale.”

In the future, iMFLUX wants to see manual steps, such as qualifying a new mold, performed automatically, with the machine itself identifying the optimal processing window for the operator. The theme of this innovation pipeline, says Altonen, is what the company calls its journey to autonomous molding.

“Our most recent innovation in that space is what we call Auto Viscosity Adjust,” he says of the feature, which can compensate for variations and allow molding machines to make good parts with no need for an operator to continuously monitor and tweak.

Changing the way the world molds
Ultimately, iMFLUX is low-pressure, adaptive technology. More than a simpler way to mold, it enables molders to achieve results that are absolutely not possible in today’s non-iMFLUX injection molding world. This new technology’s flexibility and ability to work on any machine, material or mold is attractive to customers looking for unique solutions.

“Most molders have more than one brand of machine on their floor, so technology that works with the multiple machine partners they have is attractive,” says Wagner. “We want to change the way the world molds, and we believe iMFLUX offers a better way to do it. iMFLUX brings value, and we invite people to join with us on this journey to autonomous molding.”

The post Taking the Pressure out of Injection Molding<p class="company">iMFLUX</p> appeared first on Manufacturing In Focus.

President and Chief Executive Officer of ATA, the Ontario, Canada-based business he founded in 2005, Khoraych and his team have faced tight deadlines over the years, but none as urgent as those encountered during the worst pandemic in a century.

During the first few months of COVID, federal and provincial governments across Canada put out the call for manufacturers to make products to aid doctors, nurses and first responders battling the deadly virus. Some went from making hockey masks to protective face shields, while others began manufacturing millions of protective medical masks.

It was truly a time when the nation came together for the greater good of humanity.

Experts in providing turnkey technologies to quantify physical characteristics such as flow, pressure, torque, speed, voltage and current, ATA, from its base in Milton, Ontario, was well-known for its work in the automotive, off-highway, aerospace, and industrial fields, and other sectors where monitoring and manipulating flow is critical.

Once the seriousness of COVID-19 became apparent, ATA was quick to focus its expertise on much-needed, life-saving ventilators.

Ventilators, essential for those who had contracted the virus and were struggling to breathe, were in short supply for the first few months of the pandemic. One company called upon to help was StarFish Medical, Canada’s largest designer, developer and contract manufacturing company.

Once ATA was involved with StarFish – through Next Generation Manufacturing Canada (NGen) which provides project funding, collaboration opportunities and workforce development – the two companies worked together to speed-up testing. This also saw ATA expand its abilities to the manufacture of medical devices.

Out of necessity, ATA transformed part of its facility into a clean room, and, responding to urgent calls, used its knowledge of pneumatics, electromechanical design, product testing and manufacturing to create the pneumatic module for The Winnipeg Ventilator in mid-June 2020. The Government of Canada ordered 7,500 units.

Program Manager at StarFish Medical, Alexander Shvartsberg, said at the time in a media release that “ATA has been instrumental in accelerating the design, procurement, and manufacturing processes of this project. Their expertise in pneumatics and testing, working with StarFish engineers, has enabled us to develop the prototypes we need and meet our internal milestones on time.

“ATA has really stepped up to help us meet our ambitious goal of developing a quality ventilator in a matter of weeks.”

Reflecting on the incredible challenges and timelines facing the business since the pandemic, Khoraych is rightfully proud of ATA’s unified team effort, and how it moves seamlessly in bold new directions as the COVID crisis requires.

“The company was able to rise to the challenge,” says Khoraych of ATA, which soon went from under 20 staff to over 40 to keep up with demand for its oxygen mixing module for ventilators. “As our government had a call to action, we feel honoured we assisted.”

Stepping up immediately into an industry relatively unfamiliar to the company, ATA gained new, comprehensive skills in design cycles and manufacturing, and underwent a valuable masterclass in the differences between the medical industry and the automotive, its original field of experience.

Harnessing its learnings from the StarFish Medical collaboration, ATA today incorporates that newfound knowledge into its business.

Although, prior to COVID, the company was primarily making test machines that dealt with flow, the experience has taught ATA how to also help clients today with the design and prototype of parts that need testing, a much broader spectrum, and how to build special equipment for validation.

“It has been great, especially when a company is stuck like StarFish was,” he says. “They were behind schedule and had run out of options when we came in and responded very quickly.”

Since working with StarFish on the ventilator project, ATA has been approached by other companies for its expertise in measuring air levels in fluids, acquired through its experiences in the automotive sector.

Recently, a major European medical device manufacturer contacted the company for help with flow-related measurement problems, “for which we have a unique sensing technology that we are bringing over from automotive,” says Khoraych. Even though ATA has developed new opportunities in the medical field, the company is still active in the automotive industry.

Building a new team to handle the emerging medical side of the business, the company also created a new website around September 2020 called ATA Create (www.atacreate.com). Among its many capabilities are design, manufacturing, prototyping, testing, and design for manufacturing (DFM).

Although the pandemic presented many challenges to ATA, it has also generated opportunities to learn. One was working with major Canadian multinational electronics manufacturer Celestica Inc., who began manufacturing ventilators for StarFish.

Active in LEAN manufacturing production methods aimed at reducing production system times and reducing waste, Celestica invited ATA to inspect their facility and observe their systems and processes in action, learning about software, shift work, documentation and more.

“So when we need to scale up again, we’ll have all that experience of doing it on tight timelines, but we will be able to plan for it in a structured way,” says Khoraych.

The result for ATA has been a greater knowledge and better understanding of how inventory and workstations are handled, along with how different roles can be better executed, including those of operators, quality teams, and shipping and receiving.

Praised for its efforts – including in a letter from Prime Minister Justin Trudeau last November, expressing his gratitude and thanking the company for helping produce ventilators – ATA is grateful for the experiences of the past two years, and welcomes the opportunity to better grow the business.

Internally, President and CEO Khoraych says he is building a leadership team that can respond to future challenges, as ATA did with building ventilators.

He is looking at hiring best-in-class people to complement the existing team and create “horsepower capability” with a focus on design, prototyping and building components that make a difference in flow monitoring and controlling applications. He also speaks of expanding sensor technologies and introducing them to other industries.

Currently hiring, he says ATA is looking to grow by 50 percent.

ATA is also planning investments in facility and facility-related infrastructure/hardware, as customers come back online in a post-COVID world. The company is keeping an eye out for another facility to meet the future needs of the company and its clients.

Despite growth, success, and expansion into the medical device marketplace, Advanced Test and Automation is still true to its mobility and industrial roots, including net-zero enabling technologies. Traditionally putting together test systems, Khoraych says he sees ATA heading into design and prototyping of net-zero enabling components.

While not there yet, the company is already active in lubrication-based components to boost the efficiency of very large hydraulic equipment. With this kind of equipment consuming extravagant amounts of power, ATA can help customers realize efficiency gains of 30 percent, which can be applied to the mobility and industrial markets.

“Because of the ventilator aspect – where we designed, prototyped and tested under one roof – we’re taking that model back to components in the mobility and industrial space, and that’s coming back stronger than just doing the test.”

Proud of the outstanding achievements of his team in one of the most unsettling periods in modern history, Khoraych says he will remember the ventilator project for its sense of purpose.

“It was so easy to hire people – some of the best people out there – because we were doing something to help our country to respond to an imminent threat,” he says. “That purpose, that passion, was very exciting. It was great to have people join, and they saw that vision, that purpose.”

The post Learning, Improving, Expanding – and Saving Lives<p class="company">Advanced Test and Automation</p> appeared first on Manufacturing In Focus.

Manufacturing in Focus first featured Arshon Technology in 2020. We sat back down with founder and CEO Mazi Hosseini, M.A.Sci., P.Eng., to hear the latest on the launch of the company’s exciting new product, iotLINKS.

The Internet of Things, or IoT, is the control or monitoring of an object through the Internet, and Hosseini wants to make this technology—and its incredible potential—easily accessible and affordable to all.

“There is a huge gap between what is available and what is achievable,” he explains. “There are a lot of things available, but not everyone can actually get much out of it, [only] those people that have a lot of money and resources and time.” Hosseini has a passion for promoting the technology because, “that’s the future. Everywhere you look, that’s the future of business. Having that in mind forced me to come up with ideas to take [Arshon’s offerings in] that direction, to make a system that anyone can use.”

The idea for iotLINKS began to form in 2020, when Arshon Technology was investing heavily in its own in-office IoT technology. “I was going through a lot of engineering and development cost,” Hosseini remembers. “Anyone else, if they want to take advantage of Internet of Things, they have to spend that money and lose that time. So I thought, ‘how can I do this once [and replicate it] so that other companies do not spend this much investment to develop the whole system?’”

IoT systems consist of hardware, sensors, and gateways that take information from an object and connect it to the internet. In addition, “there are protocols for securely connecting that information to the Internet, to a cloud server,” Hosseini explains. “And on a cloud server you have a lot of programming, both to manage that data and store it or manipulate it—whatever is necessary for that data.” There also has to be a dashboard designed to display that data to the user. “So this is a multi-hundred thousand dollar project for anyone.” The cost alone puts the technology out of the reach of small businesses.

In addition to the cost, there are the technological requirements, which can be daunting even for companies in the technology business. “We have a team of engineers,” Hosseini points out. “We have manufacturing. We have software developers, cloud developers, app developers. But still, it’s a lot of investment for me. Now imagine a small company wants to take advantage of IoT. For them it’s impossible because they have to put in hundreds of thousands of dollars and then, because they don’t know the technology, they probably will still not really be able to put together this complex system.”

Indeed, many end users have little to no experience in this area of technology. “They don’t know how the cloud works,” Hosseini says. “So I said, ‘okay, the ideal solution would be a plug and play system that anyone, even someone ten years old, can use.’ That’s how I came up with iotLINKS.”

With iotLINKS, the end user simply buys a gateway from Arshon Technology such as Gatewat Alfa and registers the device into the cloud using an email address. After that, the device is ready to use. “You don’t need to do code writing,” Hosseini says. “You don’t need to know anything about the cloud. You don’t need to know pretty much anything on the hardware side… You just log onto the website and turn on and off the device or send and receive data to its ports.”

The application for iotLINKS is “basically limitless,” Hosseini says. For instance, a farmer can turn a pump ON and OFF on specific days to irrigate crops. Or a factory can run certain machines for a predetermined amount of time each day and collect data on production. The solar farm industry is a particularly good example of a customer eager to take full advantage of Arshon’s IoT technology. These businesses must keep their solar panels clean and well maintained. But solar farms are typically in remote locations, so maintenance crews must travel extensively, losing time and money in the process. A crew might “fly to another city then rent a truck and drive another 200 miles to get to a point they would like to inspect,” Hosseini says. “These farms are inaccessible and far from towns.”

IoT could radically change the way the industry operates. “Imagine one of these IoT gateways installed there,” he says. “It measures the performance of the system and transfers this information to the cloud. When they see a problem then they [know] to go. If they don’t see a problem, there is no point in travel.”

Furthermore, IoT can control the cleaning nozzles that spray water on the solar panels to keep them in good operating condition. If one of Arshon’s gateways is hooked up to the system, the end user can operate these cleaning nozzles from hundreds of miles away via an app on a smartphone. And, once the cleaning is complete, the app informs the end user that the panels are in good operating condition; the technician never needs to set foot onsite. “There are thousands of solar farms that could take advantage of this technology,” says Hosseini. Arshon Technology will have a first generation version of this application available by early 2022.

Certainly, Arshon Technology could sell its easy-to-use gateways at a high cost. But Hosseini chooses to keep that initial investment expense low for customers. “I can charge a good amount of money for the technology [but] I really like to minimize my profit to almost nothing because I like to make sure this hardware is available to anyone at the lowest possible cost,” Hosseini says. “My intention is not making money off selling the hardware, so I have two other revenue streams.”

The first revenue stream is through data storage. Users pay Arshon Technology to secure their data on the cloud. “This could be a dollar per month, maybe thirty dollars per month,” Hosseini says. “It depends on what kind of features and services they use for the website and it also depends on how many units they have.”

A second ongoing revenue stream is through dashboard design and maintenance. The dashboard is where end users view their data. Some clients only need a simple overview, available on a standard dashboard, but other end users need a more complex display. Arshon Technology specially designs dashboards with unique needs in mind. For instance, a seller who sells to dealers, directly to customers, and through a website would need a dashboard with multiple viewing options: one that shows data pertaining to their dealer customers, another that shows data pertaining to their direct customers, and another that displays website sales data. “This is a $200,000 dashboard development,” Hosseini says. “They are using our basic hardware and tools and iotLINKS platform, but because they want super complicated access to the data, and that data is dedicated to them, and the way they like to manipulate and see the data is totally different, we have to develop a custom dashboard for them.”

iotLINKS and the company’s first Gateway, which is Gateway Alfa, are expected to be available by the end of 2021—and the current launch is only the beginning. “We are quite excited,” Hosseini says. “I think 2022 will be the start of a great thing for us. I’m getting a lot of good feedback so far from a lot of customers and a lot of potential users.”

The post Connecting Us to the Future<p class="company">Arshon Technology</p> appeared first on Manufacturing In Focus.

Cassidy, speaking at the Cassidy Manufacturing Technology (CMT) headquarters in Winnipeg, Canada, is adamant about the advantages North American shops can offer. “What’s your total cost? We’re talking shipping, warehousing, currency exchange, quality concerns, engineering changes, and all sorts of other peripheral costs that don’t show up when you’re comparing a unit price to a unit price.”

This is a good message at a time when reshoring is considered the key to economic recovery as we come out of the global pandemic. It also mitigates risk and allows for resilience, responsiveness, and faster time to market.

Cassidy knows the ins and outs of doing good business in North America. His company, Cassidy Manufacturing, is a high-tech CNC machine shop, with an accumulated expertise of value added services that bridges the gap between raw materials and finished parts for the production lines of customers.

CNC, or Computerized Numerical Control, is a lean manufacturing process that uses pre-programmed software to control the movement of production equipment like lathes, drills, and other cutting tools. Cassidy Manufacturing specializes in CNC machining complex parts in substantial volumes, from as few as 100 to as many as 100,000 per contracted order.

Working local
Cassidy is also a proponent of the numerous benefits of working with local instead of offshore suppliers, and his team is committed to demonstrating the reasons for that – delivering on any and all customer asks by working with them through product development to find creative and sustainable manufacturing solutions that fit their needs precisely.

This do-it-all attitude has seen his shop flourish, growing from a single employee in 2007, with two pieces of CNC equipment in a row industrial building, to a 37,000-square-foot operation with nearly 100 employees.

“We do our very best to take on anything our customers need outside of our core competency so that our customers don’t need to ship their parts all over for different steps,” he says.

“We want to deliver exactly what they need to their production floor, whether that’s a special coating, burnishing, grinding, splining, heat treating, assembly, or simply special packaging – everything that they need. We just want to make it easy for them to get their parts or sub assemblies at any stage required to their warehouse, and in whatever batch sizes work best for them to go right into their production lines.”

CMT’s new custom fully-automated powder line can powder coat anything that the company machines. And because the line is on-site, cost-saving and shorter lead times are passed along to the customer.

Calculating the true costs
The challenge in today’s market, Cassidy says, is that too much emphasis is put on the unit cost by some customers and there is much more that needs to be considered. There are numerous unseen costs. “What does a huge delay caused by a missing shipping container really cost in lost sales, production interruption, and subsequent expedition?” Cassidy notes. “What to do with the shipment of 10,000 widgets that don’t meet spec? What’s the real cost when you want to update your product design but you’ve got a warehouse full of stock to use up first and your competitor beats you to market with the latest and greatest? What’s the impact to your cashflow when you need to pre-pay for a year worth of product before it leaves the port?” he says. “Not to mention environmental-impact costs or moral implications of fair work environments,” he says, which are not often considered when people are hunting for the lowest price.

On the green front, for example, his shop’s powder coating process reclaims 98 percent of the powder and uses a biodegradable wash with no effluent stream. His management team prides itself on utilizing technology to the greatest extent possible and is always looking for ways to expand its already significant investments in automation.

Cassidy sweats these details and tracks every nuance of production to make sure his shop stays lean. And he knows how to leverage big data that is driving manufacturing and industries across the board. The company has developed its own custom tailored statistical process control (SPC) software that crunches the real-time data from product and process measurements, improving quality and dramatically reducing output variability and waste.

“We will do calculations on our consumables all the time to see where our ideal feeds and speeds are, where our ideal value is. There is all sorts of data that we extrapolate. It’s been an amazing tool and it’s helped us continue our lean manufacturing efforts.”

SPC is also helping Cassidy Manufacturing match machine operators with work. A matrix classifies machine operator experience on a scale of one to ten and classifies all jobs on a matching scale of complexity to help best allocate human resources.

Employees are encouraged to work on jobs that may be outside their current rating to learn more on the job competencies, but this system also flags any operator who may be working outside of their regular skill range so that supervisors can interact with them, available and ready to deal with queries.

“Really, there’s a whole bunch of data SPC provides that helps us get better and better. It’s not a new concept but we’ve tailored the system to our exact needs for the most efficient use,” Cassidy says.

Becoming the benchmark
The shop’s processes and attention to detail are getting a lot of positive attention, too. “We actually had some of our very large customers come in and interview us. They want to learn more about our system because it works so well for us. We’re really proud that we, as a small to mid-sized company, have large companies coming to us for expertise.”

With industry recognition and a reputation for quality workmanship delivered on time, Cassidy has come a long way from learning the machining trade back in high school. He took an entry-to-tech program and was immediately hooked.

“I could create something and do something meaningful, make things that were lasting, and it was very technically challenging,” he says. The experience sparked his imagination and entrepreneurial fire.

Now he has a process-driven mindset. “There is a whole bunch of cool stuff around production support and programming and streamlining the processes. It’s never-ending and there’s always something to improve on and something else to learn.”

He is quick to point out that success is not a one-person show. It all comes back to the team that makes his life much easier now, after his start-up years of working around the clock himself.

“We’ve managed to assemble this top notch group of people. From our inside sales to our production manager, to our technical manager, to the GM, to our HR manager, to the supervisors, everybody works together extremely well with very minimal input from myself. I’ve always had the attitude that, when we hire you to do a job, I am not going to micromanage you. The secret is to hire people smarter than you and treat them well. These people just work together and it’s awesome. They service our customers the way I would want them serviced.”

Customer service, he says, is one of his top differentiators in a competitive market.

He used to think successful businesses shared in some kind of secret. Now, he has learned, “There is no secret; you simply have to do what you said you were going to do. That’s the secret. If you say you’re going to have 500 parts to them on a specific date and you deliver 500 parts on the specified date and the quality is good and your pricing is fair, that’s really all it takes.”

The post Up For Any Challenge<p class="company">Cassidy Manufacturing</p> appeared first on Manufacturing In Focus.

While CCRM initially focused on a number of areas, it understood that building an industry requires core capabilities in manufacturing around the products being developed, and Canada’s strength in innovation and science had created incredible clinical infrastructure for testing products in clinical trials.

“Before anyone ever was talking about gaps in manufacturing, CCRM made it a focus,” says Dr. Michael May, President and CEO.

So why is manufacturing important to an entity like CCRM that’s charged with helping develop technologies, and create and scale companies? “Manufacturing creates stickiness,” May says. “When manufacturing is done locally and companies are created locally, companies are apt to stay in the local ecosystem if the manufacturing is done there.”

Sticky factor
That vital sticky factor also extends to clinical infrastructure, “great” scientific communities like downtown Toronto, and access to capital.

On the manufacturing front, CCRM has employed a three-pronged strategy, with the first being to develop core technology platforms to fill gaps in manufacturing workflows for these very specialized and complex cell and gene therapies, says May. This involves hardware, bioreactors, equipment for characterizing the product and producing it at scale.

About five years ago, supported by the Canadian government, the company launched a partnership with Cytiva, formerly GE Healthcare, to build a centre of excellence for cell and manufacturing technologies where CCRM could tackle bottlenecks in cell and gene therapy workflow.

That partnership, and helping set up the Centre for Advanced Therapeutic Cell Technologies (CATCT), was one of Philip Vanek’s career highlights. Vanek, now CTO and a partner at Gamma Biosciences, was at GE Healthcare when he met with May in 2014.

“That was the brainchild of an almost chance meeting between Michael and myself, along with the opportunity and the foresight of the Canadian government to ask, what are the ingredients you need to help fulfill the mission of CCRM?” Vanek says.

“I thought if CCRM with their extreme visibility and ability could bring talent into the organization and offer CDMO types of services, and GE bring this ability to invent and commercialize new equipment for manufacturing, it felt like a win-win-win for everybody involved.”

That partnership with Cytiva drew worldwide attention for its size, scope, and vision of not only tackling gaps in technology, but also helping with the scale-up of therapeutics companies.

A lab for learning
“It really was a great place to try new technologies and work with partners to bring their technologies in,” says Vanek. “It was a great laboratory for learning about manufacturing and what it would take to manufacture cell and gene therapies.”

That technology translated to better understanding of processes for different types of cell and gene therapies, and the subsequent establishment of the CCVP (Centre for Cell and Vector Production), where new approaches are tested before they’re moved into manufacturing.

Vital support from FedDev Ontario, the Canadian government, and also Cytiva has played a huge role in the company’s ongoing success and ground-breaking discoveries.

The second prong of CCRM’s strategy was the launch of a clinical GMP-compliant manufacturing facility in 2019 in partnership with the University Health Network (UHN). This sizeable facility boasts 10 clean rooms, with two particularly designed for producing viral vectors used to modify cells.

“They represent an important kind of need and gap in the industry,” says May of the facility that employs close to 100 individuals and produces cell product for clinical trials for both academic and industry clients. “That’s important for the development of new therapeutics, but it’s also key to supporting companies being created in our ecosystems that need to take their products from development into clinical trials.”

The third pillar
The third pillar, which CCRM is working on now, involves taking manufacturing to the commercial scale via a partnership with McMaster Innovation Park in Hamilton.

While this is the final stage of support for companies that go through clinical trials and need commercial manufacturing, it’s also a place for companies from around the world to manufacture with a North American market in mind.

“After they’ve been tested in the clinical phase facility, we do plan on establishing them in the commercial facility to create a differentiated CDMO that’s seamlessly connected to the kind of manufacturing ecosystem that CCRM has created, but also to the pipeline of companies and technologies that CCRM has established to create this integrated comprehensive manufacturing strategy from front to back,” says May.

CCRM’s vision for what it’s done to date in terms of company creation is very ecosystem driven, and to that end, this industrial site in Hamilton will help create and extend its manufacturing ecosystem by setting up not just a manufacturing facility, but also supply chain and logistics partners, while training technicians to work in GMP facilities.

To solidify that strategy around training, CCRM has launched a new company with a sister organization in Montreal called CellCAN.

CATTI, the Canadian Advanced Therapy Training Institute, will work with the other non-profit, academic, and for-profit entities to launch its content and offerings in training for manufacturing over the next several years.

“We want to create companies that can be sustainable because of the manufacturing, and supported by the manufacturing capability,” says May. “Also, the companies we’re creating become clients of the manufacturing business that we do here.

“There’s this mutual feedback between creating companies that benefit from the manufacturing, while having the manufacturing building the clientele in the customer pipeline over time for the manufacturing.”

Canada’s capital
Although Canada is a small country in the scheme of things, it has great human capital and the desire to push boundaries, says Claudia Zylberberg, founder and now Executive Chair of Akron Biotech, from Boca Raton, FL. She became a CCRM board member two years ago, working with the board for advancements, understanding needs, giving advice and helping new companies looking to be part of CCRM.

“I think Canada is poised to grow because of the intellectual and human capital,” says Zylberberg. “I think that’s what CCRM is looking for, the expansion of more infrastructure for action for cell and gene therapy and manufacturing, which I think is the piece that’s maybe missing right now.”

Being close to the U.S. also provides an opportunity to grow this space and new modalities of therapies across borders, she adds, along with expanding its global footprint.

CCRM’s success building the foundation as a public-private partnership with academic and Industry partners and investors started with a team and core abilities that included manufacturing. Now, CCRM is making investments in companies and has supported 14 of them over the last several years.

In addition to the investment activity happening in this phase, CCRM has leveraged its manufacturing capabilities into a business that gives it the credibility to grow to the commercial scale in the next phase of manufacturing through partnerships with Cytiva and clients around the world.

Now, with only 10 percent of its funding coming from the government, CCRM as a public-private partnership is self-sustainable as well.

“We’re here to serve the community and build the ecosystem, so we want it to be sustainable to attract capital on the back of our investments and support,” says May. “Sustaining the CCRM model is done by establishing partnerships in different places in the world so we can create hubs that all work together under the kind of leadership banner we’ve created in Canada.”

The microscope turns
The COVID pandemic, adds May, has put a microscope on life sciences and manufacturing, creating an opportunity to leverage the learnings from this pandemic into not just vaccine support, but a broad bio-manufacturing strategy.

“We talked quite a bit at the beginning of COVID about how we’ve offshored almost all of our capacity manufacturing,” says Vanek. “It’s obviously stressed a lot of supply chains globally and showed us where some of the kinks in the armour were.”

In the long run, he adds, it does show the promise of these therapies and probably more importantly, the pace at which we can adopt and bring technologies on board.

May adds that he hasn’t yet seen investment in a strategy from the government. “It’s more investing in buildings and capacity and attracting foreign companies to come and create capacity, but there’s a big difference between capacity and capability.”

Both of these are needed to build ecosystems, and therein lies the real opportunity in bio-manufacturing in Canada, he says: By tying the ecosystem strategy to investments in bio-manufacturing, you can create a robust ecosystem for sustainability.

“We want to tie all this together in a coordinated and collaborative, very Canada-like strategy so we can continue to punch above our weight in manufacturing, like we punch above our weight in lots of other things,” says May.

An issue of talent
While CCRM’s purpose is tackling the big problems in cell and gene therapy, it also has its own issues to handle, including access to talent and capital.

In a rapidly growing industry with high demand for talent, CCRM must integrate the development of talent into its strategy, first attracting it and then retaining it in its ecosystem. “Otherwise all our good folks will be drawn away and we’ll need to attract others to come to Canada,” says May.

Ultimately, CCRM’s reason for doing the work they do is the promise and potential of cell and gene therapy, and without manufacturing in place, those therapy developers and their discoveries won’t get to the patients, he adds.

“They need us and Canada needs us because there’s nothing else like us in Canada. Without the ability to manufacture, the therapies will go offshore, and other jurisdictions will have first access to them.”

What’s just as important as the manufacturing is a stake in the ground to keep the companies they’re building here, May says, and the most important issue in all of this is the people, and keeping people in Canada.

Revolutionizing medicine
“There’s a health benefit that we’re talking about here, but there’s also an economic benefit to the strategy that’s really at the crux of our mission,” he says. “Cell and gene therapies are living therapies and incorporate living tissues which makes them very complex to manufacture.”

The advantage of such therapies, however, is they can provide cures.

For blood cancers like leukemia they can now take T-cells from a patient’s blood, genetically engineer those T-cells outside of the body to particularly target the tumour, and then infuse them back in the patient to destroy the tumour.

“The response rates from those types of therapies are 70 to 90 percent complete cures,” says May. “That’s unprecedented in medical therapy, especially for cancer. These are therapies that will revolutionize medicine, but they also require us to rethink manufacturing in significant ways. That’s why the technology development is an important part of our strategy.”

It’s also why the clinical phase is vital – ultimately leading to the commercial scale where everything comes together to generate impact.

“Why let someone else in the world develop all that knowhow?” asks May. “We should have it embedded in Canada as well as anywhere else.”

Zylberberg agrees. “I’ve been involved in government advising for different grants that were available there, and I’m understanding the Canadian government can see the value of having their own manufacturing and their own commercial scale available for their population and even for the world. It’s a great asset and a great action for the government to act upon.”

With Health Canada having approved numerous advanced therapies, the promise and potential of regenerative therapy is already making a difference.

“The future is here,” says May. “These therapies are being given to patients now and CCRM is an important player in helping those therapy developers.”

The post Promise and Potential: Filling the Gaps in Cell and Gene Therapy<p class="company">CCRM</p> appeared first on Manufacturing In Focus.

With many countries and governments looking to ban single-use plastics and plastic bags in the coming years, PHA plastic is an excellent and sustainable business alternative to oil-based plastic products with their 1000-year breakdown process.

Since Genecis was founded by Luna Yu in 2017, this innovative company has been making rapid progress in an industry that’s already moving quickly to provide consumers with bio-based materials made from renewable resources instead of petroleum hydrocarbons.

A way to stop the waste
“Luna knew she wanted to do something that addressed the issue of food waste, plastic waste and emissions pollution,” says Marcos Igreja, Associate Director of Engineering and Operations. “Before starting Genecis, she worked with a couple of different groups that were trying out other solutions, and eventually she came up with this idea and application with a lot of potential.”

Igreja, who has been with the company the longest after Yu, says Yu put in a lot of work to raise money, attending more than 100 different start-up competitions with small prizes of $1,000 to $2,000, until she earned enough to hire a team of two people: Igreja and the current director of R&D.

“We started working out of University of Toronto, sharing a single bench,” he says. “We were using rice cookers to grow our bacteria. We didn’t have any fancy equipment at all, and we just went at it. We started trying to isolate the bacteria we were interested in, and then things took off pretty quickly afterwards.”

“Took off” meant a larger lab space and team expansion, followed by a 4,000-square-foot facility in Scarborough where the company is now located. It also meant funding: Both Sustainable Development Technology Canada and NGen Canada now fund Genecis and help scale up technology and leverage investment dollars.

“Today we’re at a point where we’ve been able to demonstrate the full process of the technology start to finish,” says Igreja. “We’re working on the pilot scale, we’re able to study each different area of the technology and have enough capacity to work with a number of different clients.”

This vision is what drove Yu to start the business, and what propelled Igreja to join her in her quest to take food waste from the landfill – where it generates methane and greenhouse gas emissions – and transform it into a plastic product that degrades 100 percent in nature.

Always innovating
While bioplastics have been around for a couple of decades, Genecis is one of the first companies to create them from a waste product.

“PHAs isn’t just one product, it’s actually a whole range of different kinds of polymers you can produce from blending different elements,” says Patrick Neill, senior director of engineering. “Companies have started to make smaller amounts of PHA primarily using sugars derived from sugarcane or molasses, but they’re limited in the kind of product they can produce.”

Using a broad range of food waste as a feedstock gives Genecis the building blocks to control the flexibility of the plastic through the process, which can’t be done easily using feedstock solely from sugarcane, sugar beet, or some other single type of carbon source, says Neill.

“That’s the beauty and most innovative aspect of the technology,” he says. “We have food waste from a variety of carbon sources that enables us to derive a bunch of different carbon inputs to our bacteria so we can choose the plastic we produce.”

Just as humans store energy as fat, plants store energy as glycogen, and it’s this kind of bacteria that stores that energy as PHA.

“We create this reactor where bacteria are encouraged to rapidly divide,” says Neill. “Once we’ve got these little skinny cells which are very hungry, we transfer them to another reactor where they’re fed with a lot of food and they consume it very quickly and it gets stored as PHA. We can then harvest those cells and extract the PHA and purify it.”

A view of the future
Does this process offer hope for a future where PHA plastic replaces oil-based products in an eco-friendly and environmentally responsible manner?

“We definitely view it as the future,” says Neill. “I don’t think we’ll displace 100 percent of oil-based plastics, but definitely the avenue is there to displace initially all of the premium food packaging and consumer type, one-time-use products.”

While there are “many billions of dollars” worth of plastic to tackle in those markets, Neill thinks Genecis can make major inroads into disrupting plastics that pollute the environment. Initially, Genecis won’t be able to compete head-to-head on prices of oil-based plastics, but if you put a price on carbon, that changes the story.

“The good thing about PHA is it has properties that can compete with petroleum plastic,” says Igreja. “Even though the cost isn’t there yet, it’s one of the few bio-based plastics that have a lot of very similar properties to typical petroleum-based plastics. It can be used for a lot of similar applications.”

The weakness of some existing bioplastics is they don’t do a good job matching the performance of oil-based plastics, plus they don’t compost or break down easily, says Neill, which probably explains why the public has a negative opinion of bioplastics, based on initial experience.

“PHAs really offer the potential to meet those end-user product needs while also being completely biodegradable in the environment without having any special composting processes,” he says. “They can just go in the backyard compost and break down in a matter of months.”

The early success of Genecis is due, in part, to its ability to produce product quickly, coupled with the tremendous success they’ve had lately engaging with and understanding the needs of end customers, says Neill.

The company now has joint agreements in place with several “big name” businesses, enabling Genecis to truly understand the marketplace and the processes and technology required to meet those needs.

Genecis has also been working closely with existing plants that process food waste, adds Neill. “We’ve got a lot of good connections and relationships with securing the feedstock for the process, which is somewhat critical. Without the feedstock you don’t have a product.”

Introducing negative-cost feedstock
In just four years the company has generated much customer interest, mostly due to people recognizing the potential of producing PHA from negative-cost feedstock.

“This PHA industry is going to explode,” says Igreja. “We’ve really been able to get a very strong foothold in terms of our potential clients and development agreements.”

While the company can’t fully disclose particular products or specific companies, they are initially going after high-value products where the price per kilogram of bioplastics is going to be substantial: an expected occurrence.

“When you first do a commercial plant, you know your costs are going to be higher,” says Neill, adding that Tesla is a good model. “Tesla got into electric cars by making a very premium high-end value product. As they ran their manufacturing processes they were able to lower that cost as they developed their batteries.

“We view our business model much the same way. We have to target a very high-value market – albeit a small niche market – where we can create good revenue early on.”

And clients are very interested.

“Big name companies are desperate for PHAs,” says Neill. “A lot of them have developed internal mandates to get to net zero carbon emissions within a decade or so, and really need to work with companies like ours to find a way of closing the loop on their waste and end products.”

That ability to take one company’s waste and convert it into a product they then sell is circular-economy thinking that truly opens the path to production and potential clients.

“Imagine working with a large company on a packaging application, and they’re also a food waste user,” explains Igreja. “We’re able to take the food waste that comes out of their industry and turn it into something they can use in their own supply chain to make plastic products to package their food. That’s really how we think of everything as working circularly: the same company’s waste becomes part of their supply chain for their plastic products.”

Vast potential
Along with the food industry, Genecis is also delving into the pharmaceutical industry, and potentially medical applications, hinting at the wide range and vast potential PHA has as a plastic in completely different areas.

Now that it has secured substantial commercial interest, Genecis is looking to scale up its technology quickly, along with ramping up production capabilities.

“That’s a key focus for us over the years ahead, scaling technology to satisfy purchase orders we have from customers,” says Neill. “We already have millions of dollars’ worth of purchase orders from customers, but we don’t have the manufacturing capacity.”

That race to ramp up can also create its own set of challenges, however.

“We’re making good progress, but it’s not the kind of technology where you can just do a 100-times scale-up,” says Neill. “You have to do it in steps. You need to do 10 times capacity, or 20 times capacity see how it goes first. You can’t just go from zero to 100.”

Genecis anticipates producing product by the middle to the end of next year, followed by operating at a pre-commercial scale, and then a couple of years thereafter being at full commercial scale. It’s a huge step up from rice cookers.

“The ability to work like that is something that’s made us very competitive so far,” says Neill, adding that the technology of working with cost-negative feedstock, the bacteria they’ve developed, and control of the fermentation side of the process set Genecis apart.

Another differentiator is the amount of traction with end customers, getting purchase orders signed and joint order agreements with major Fortune 100 and 500 companies, he adds.

Both Neill and Igreja agree, however, that the company’s ability to move quickly has given it a major advantage in what is sure to be a hugely competitive market.

“Genecis has only been around for five years now, but we’ve been able to even the playing field with a lot of people who have been in the field for a while, and that’s the result of us building a team of very talented people,” says Igreja. “Our team is extremely diverse. We’ve got people from all over the world with all sorts of different backgrounds bringing in extremely good expertise. We’re all very passionate about what we do.”

The post From Trash to Treasure – Changing Plastic to Change the World<p class="company">Genecis Bioindustries</p> appeared first on Manufacturing In Focus.

Founded in 2001, the IDP Group consists of a collection of companies based in Chesterville, Ontario. While the firm continues to offer warehousing, logistics, furniture configuration, and asset management services, prefabricated construction is now central to the company’s mission.

“There is a long list of services that we provide, but our focus for the past while has been to grow the steel, prefabricated building business. That is currently the main source of revenue,” explains Asl.

The company operates from a sixty-five-acre property featuring twenty buildings with warehousing and storage space and a shipping bay. Some facilities at the property are now primarily devoted to steel, prefabricated construction work, aimed at a very specific clientele.

“Right now, our primary focus is government and remote and Indigenous communities. You could use our multi-storey product line in Toronto, but that is not where the need is the greatest, and we are focusing on where people need infrastructure solutions the most,” he says.

The company is putting the final touches on its first steel, prefabricated project—a 6,000-square-foot laboratory and classroom space for the Royal Canadian Navy (RCN). This facility features full reinforced steel core, negative and positive pressure HVAC systems complete with HEPA filtration throughout the entire building, a complex system of solar and wind energy as well as backup generators, pre-built reusable concrete foundation with adjustment capabilities, and epoxy-treated concrete ceilings and floors to enhance resiliency. The facility will be used by the navy for training purposes.

Another exciting potential project involves a steel fire monitoring station for use in Northern Ontario. If brush is cleared around the facility, the steel structure should be able to provide up to two hours of fire resistance while the exterior fire suppression system with remote triggered pumps can soak the outside of the building and surroundings to help minimize damage while the fire passes, states Asl. In a flash-fire of short duration, occupants of the station would remain completely safe with the internal fire safety chamber and clean agent fire suppression system.

In addition to these assignments, he speaks excitedly about the possibility of helping Indigenous communities. Residential buildings on First Nations in Canada are often poorly constructed and are unsafe or unhealthy to live in. Replacing these structures would require a mammoth effort involving thousands of new residences. Asl says IDP Group’s prefabricated buildings could be part of any solution to address the Indigenous housing crisis. In addition to residences, the company could construct steel, prefabricated healthcare facilities for Indigenous communities, and is currently working with Indigenous communities to build small healthcare/hospital units, he adds.

Regardless of the end-user, IDP Group does not offer standardized products but takes a custom design approach. “We don’t have a certain product on the shelf that you buy. You come to us and say, ‘This is our problem.’ We spend some time with the customer, without any cost to them, then we start designing a solution to meet their need,” Asl explains. “Our slogan is ‘Re-think the box,’ re-think what has been possible until now.”

While there are several other companies in the prefabricated construction space, IDP Group stands out for numerous reasons. For one thing, the company aims to construct steel, prefabricated buildings that can be assembled on-site with minimum hassle. It does this by making a handful of big, easy-to-put-together structural elements rather than a vast number of tiny components that need to be assembled on-site in a time-consuming process. To give an example of the scale involved, some structures it handles are up to forty feet long.

“The main difference with our building systems is the readiness when it arrives on-site. We can erect a 1,000-square-foot fully-functioning building in two days,” states Asl. “Everything is finished when it ships. It’s like connecting Lego pieces together; add two more days and we can use our seismic-rated, pre-built concrete foundation system and you go from grass field to a 1000 square foot building in a week or less.”

This easy-to-assemble principle does not just apply to the exterior of the structure but also includes the electrical, mechanical, and heating systems.

“If a building module that is forty feet long parks beside another building module that is forty feet long, you can connect these two modules on the electrical work in sixty seconds. There’s no way to make a mistake, based on how they’re designed to fit each other. There’s no other way to fit them together—this one module will only marry with the other one,” he says.

IDP Group had to do a bit of a manufacturing rethink prior to its move to steel-based prefabrication construction work. The firm wanted to manufacture the steel structural elements of its prefabricated buildings in-house using production-line techniques. The company examined methods used in vehicle manufacturing to see if there were any processes it could adopt. Robotics and automation are central to vehicle production, so it decided to follow suit.

“When it comes to handling steel—cutting it, building it, moving it, painting it, prepping it, assembling parts, automation and robotics has done a fantastic job in the car industry for the last twenty years,” notes Asl.

IDP Group acquired equipment from ABB Robotics, a renowned robot manufacturer. There was a technical learning curve, as the company implemented robotic solutions into its prefabricated workflows. Things were eventually sorted out and the company currently uses an ABB robotic system for plasma cutting and plans to introduce more automation and robotics.

If all goes to plan, within “two or three years from now, we will have a production line that produces infrastructure and not just components that you have to assemble later on,” Asl says.

The company also decided it would master any new prefabrication construction services and applications so such work could be performed in-house. Having such capabilities gives the group confidence and flexibility. While it can take on any prefabrication production tasks, the company subcontracts out electrical work and other duties to speed up the construction process. “At the speed we are innovating and growing, we need to have in-house capability to do almost everything, especially when going down the path of ‘never done before.’ Every day is R&D; while building new components for our buildings, we also need to consider how to build the ‘production line’ that will use some sort of automation to produce that part, hence we need to continuously have a very strong in-house capability.”

IDP Group offers buildings that can be easily moved or firmly connected to the ground. To this end, it developed a prefabricated concrete foundation system that enables its buildings to be firmly anchored in place, and this system can be shipped to isolated regions.

“If you are going to a remote community, there’s no concrete plant. We’re not a prefabrication building company that says, ‘Well, you need a foundation, then we’ll erect [the building].” You give us a grass field; we give you a building,” states Asl with pride.

Similarly, the company can design prefabricated structures with rooftop solar panels and a wind turbine. While the structure would also have a generator for backup energy the basic idea is to create buildings that can fully function off the power grid. “We ship it with its own energy [supply] so it’s essentially self-sufficient.”

All prefabricated construction work is done to national building codes and vetted by third-party inspectors he adds. So far, IDP Group has built 8,000 square feet of steel, prefabricated structures.

The firm has not abandoned its older service offerings, however, as evidenced by its response to the outbreak of COVID last year. When COVID hit, IDP Group laid off roughly fifteen to twenty employees and “started doing a lot of warehousing and storage—which are not very labour heavy,” he recounts.

Laid-off workers have been since hired back, along with new staff. The firm currently has forty-five employees, a figure that can expand to fifty-five if part-timers are included in the mix.

The company “will still carry on with all the other businesses. This is a new thing we’re doing. We want to keep our other sources of revenue,” states Asl.

Indeed, IDP Group has a reputation for providing excellent warehousing and storage services, complete with a customized, software-based warehouse management system to track inventory. The warehouse also has Wi-Fi connections to smart devices, computers, and monitors.

Customers of IDP Group’s warehousing and storage services and interior retrofit work, past and present, include Bank of Canada, Royal Canadian Mint, TD Canada Trust, the House of Commons, Queen’s University, Health Canada, the RCMP, and other federal government departments and companies. It also provides customized logistics and delivery, third-party distribution support, cross-docking, and material handling.

As it continues to expand its prefabrication work, the company faces huge challenges in the form of supply chain woes and a shortage of skilled labour.

“Supply chain is a huge problem across the board, which is a bit surprising. The supply chain was better at the height of COVID than today. Prices keep going up. We’re taking advantage of our warehousing [space] and trying to buy product in bulk that allows us to go ahead with production,” states Asl.

There has been a profound shortage of skilled labour across North America for the past few years, as older workers in the sector hit retirement age and not enough younger people are replacing them. Making matters slightly more complicated for IDP Group is the company’s unique manufacturing approach, which centers on turning construction into production.

For all that, Asl is extremely excited about IDP Group’s transition into steel-based prefabricated buildings. “We want to expand—not just hire more people. We also want to push toward automation,” he states. “We are looking to expand our production ten-fold in five years and build automated production lines that build buildings. That’s our focus, that’s our mission.”

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Lorik Tool & Automation delivers and services some of the most comprehensive tooling, manufacturing, and robotics solutions in the industry. Its expert staff are experienced and will assist clients across the globe at any time.

The company cultivates close relationships with customers and suppliers alike and is currently servicing leading automotive, pharmaceutical, packaging, and material handling outfits due to its quality, innovative machinery. Lorik Tool & Automation is proud of the fact that it creates custom, one-off equipment, specifically tailored to its clients needs.

The team specializes in both the innovative design and manufacturing aspects of its custom machinery. Clients are provided with everything they need from the beginning of every project to the end. The team provides full project management, mechanical design, electrical design, robotics and controls programming, sourcing of components, and all aspects of the machining, fabrication, assembly, testing, approval, and installation processes. Its experienced engineering staff of mechanical designers and controls programmers, licensed tradesman, and apprentices and co-op students are fundamental to Lorik’s success.

Lorik is one of Brantford, Ontario’s largest employers of technical trade apprentices. These include millwrights, machinists, tool and die makers, and industrial electricians. Many apprentices work here at any given time, earning the licenses that will allow them to ply their trades professionally.

The company goes out of its way to welcome fresh talent, especially talented people in search of challenges that demand creative problem-solving, solid technical and engineering skills, and lateral thinking. These are just a few traits that support the development of its ground-breaking machinery and robotics built for some of the world’s best-known manufacturers.

Lorik Tool was founded by Doug Lowe and Ben Schrik on April 1, 1988, creating its name by combining their last names. The company started very modestly, making small fixtures and dies. As it grew, it added small automation projects to its capabilities, and the company never looked back from there. The current owner, Werner Bohner, recalls the switch into automation being a natural progression into fulfilling expanding customer requests, with the spirit of innovation for which the company is known today.

The company, which started in a small industrial unit, has moved and expanded several times since the beginning in order to better service its customers’ needs, each time increasing its footprint and capacity for more automation projects. Even in current times, the company is expanding and growing its team of eighty professionals. Thanks to its ethos and family values, some staff members have worked here for over thirty years, starting around the same time as the owner. Sometimes, several generations of the same family join the company.

Werner started working at Lorik as its third employee in June of 1988 as a junior tool and die maker. He worked his way up to a lead hand, shop foreman and then general manager in 1999, finally purchasing the company in 2007. His innovative, forward-thinking approach combined with over 40 years of experience in the industry has helped shape the company into what it is today. This would not be possible, however, without the rest of the team at Lorik.

In 2008, Werner’s son Daniel started at Lorik, completing his co-operative education terms as part of his degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Waterloo. After graduation, Daniel worked fulltime in the controls department, performing the electrical design of the machines as well as all aspects of controls programming: PLCs, HMIs, robotics, vision, et cetera. Over the following years, Daniel transitioned into the manager of the controls department, then to a sales position, and finally taking up the reins of his current position as Vice President three years ago.

Today, this father and son team has established a succession plan that provides continuity for employees, clients, and suppliers. “There is a future to this place, and we want people to know that,” say Werner and Daniel.

Everyone on this diverse team can explore and develop their professional skills, supported by the innovative work that is performed at Lorik every day. Due to the volume of custom machine building the company does, every day is interesting, different, and demands new solutions, creating a perfect environment for the adventurous spirit.

COVID-19 proved to be no match for the capacities of Lorik, as it continued to supply its portfolio of longstanding clients. “We don’t have many customers, but we have long-term ones,” says Werner. During this time, the company saw a significant increase in the demand for machines that make personal hygiene products and consumer goods. It also sold more robotic cells to clients in automotive industries and others than ever before.

The team has had their fair share of frustrations with supply chains, as did companies the world over. However, they have come up with several alternative redesigns, turning a time of crisis into an opportunity to delve into deeper layers of sophistication on a number of projects. This ability to extend and build on the team’s capabilities is a major contributing factor to Lorik’s fundamentally different take on the industry.

Instead of specializing in one particular aspect of what clients need from a tool and automation manufacturer, the company has attentively cultivated all the skills and services needed to be established as a one-stop shop. Naturally, the willingness to go far on projects has helped establish meaningful relationships with clients who know that they are safe in the hands of Lorik Tool & Automation. Lorik Tool & Automation values its word, honouring its commitments every step of the way. “When we say something, that’s what we mean,” says Werner, underlining the importance of being willing and able to adapt to clients’ needs as robotics sales continue soaring.

Technology has been developing at phenomenal speed over the past half-decade. As a result, the team must keep abreast of the latest developments. “Our people have to constantly retrain and be up to speed, as well as do research on new technologies,” says Daniel. All-encompassing, ongoing training means massive gains for clients, as machines that work better and faster earn more, in both cost savings and profits.

The company takes growth seriously, because sustainability is of the utmost importance. With its best-ever growth stimulated by increasing market demands for custom automation, the company’s financial health and growing staff count help create the conditions to cultivate a rosy future. Lorik Tool & Automation is excited for what the future holds.

The post Setting Automation Benchmarks<p class="company">Lorik Tool & Automation Inc.</p> appeared first on Manufacturing In Focus.

A global leader in the manufacture of customized modular utility solutions, modular central plants and pumping systems, and the company behind the acclaimed CritiChill® modular indirect evaporative cooling system, Systecon’s services include installation, preventative maintenance, energy management solutions, monitoring of controls, upgrade and retrofit and more. Serving customers in diverse markets such as food and beverage, hospital and medical, retail, gaming, K-12 and higher education, industrial and others, the company remains very hands-on.

Biogas and CritiChill: powering the future
Environmentally friendly and renewable, biogas is quickly gaining popularity as an alternative to natural gas as a source of fuel. Although natural gas produces less carbon dioxide than burning oil or coal, it is still a fossil fuel, and the supply will eventually be exhausted. Recognizing this, the world is looking to biogas – produced from organic matter such as plant material and manure – as a substitution for fueling vehicles, and as a replacement for natural gas as a source of energy.

Playing a significant role in the future is Systecon’s patented CritiChill system, developed by the company in-house. Brought to the market about a decade ago, CritiChill is dramatically more efficient (up to 30 percent greater) compared to ordinary air-cooled chiller plants operating at full loads, and uses only 20 percent of the water required by regular cooling towers.

Although biogas is a fairly recent development for Systecon, the company has been involved in a push for de-carbonization for some time, and CritiChill has long been a part of that equation.

“CritiChill is an electric-based product, so what is the source of the electricity?” asks Systecon’s Sales and Marketing Manager Alex Juncker. “We are working with clients, so they evaluate that.” In some cases, clients want to use the CritiChill system, but their existing power generation is carbon-intensive, such as coming from coal-powered plants. Based on the flexibility of the product, Systecon advocates using water for the heat rejection cycle to reduce the amount of energy consumed, so the impact from that power plant is reduced. “So if we can improve the efficiency of the plant or of the CritiChill unit by utilizing water for evaporation, we can get better efficiencies,” states Juncker.

Systecon is seeing tremendous activity in Canada right now with customers using renewable power and reducing the amount of water they use to cool.

“CritiChill is really able to mesh between those two situations, because it’s not a product necessarily tied to water usage cooling due to its hybrid nature,” says Juncker. “I think that’s a great option for most of our customers when they are looking at electrification; you can use a CritiChill chill unit to do simultaneous cooling and/or heating, but with that, we can also evaluate reducing or limiting water usage, or reducing power consumption by improving the efficiency through water usage. So it is agile from a product standpoint to meet those de-carbonization goals.”

Systecon sees itself being more and more involved with biogas and meeting the low- or no-carbon goals of its customers in the future. With unique abilities to design and plan for these goals and factory-test to see efficiencies of products before they are shipped, the company is well-equipped for a world using fewer fossil fuels and more clean, non-polluting renewables.

The value of virtual reality
Prior to the pandemic, customers came in for tours, where they could see and touch systems for themselves. The pandemic changed that for a time, with the need for physical distancing and safety. Although the company was deemed essential and continued to operate, in-person visits were few and far between.

This compelled Systecon to come up with a unique way of reaching out to clients and giving them a real-world experience delivered through virtual reality (VR).

“The VR came out of the inability to have people travel,” says Juncker. Starting development in the summer of 2020, Systecon unveiled the first prototyping a few months before rolling out the technology to its sales force.

Since customers were unable to physically come to the company’s facility because of COVID, Systecon brought a virtual reality offering to its clients through Oculus VR headsets. Oculus is one of the biggest manufacturers of these headsets. Translating the wearer’s movements into VR, the headsets immerse the user in the experience.

To prepare customers for their virtual visit, Systecon couriers them an Oculus headset, or delivers one through Regional Sales Manager Patrick Gaspar if he’s in their area. Once they don one of these hand control-equipped headsets, clients see a 3D version of the company’s pump package, with experts from Systecon standing by hundreds or even thousands of miles away available to answer questions.

While customers usually plan a VR walkthrough of 15 to 30 minutes, most end up staying at least an hour because of the strong interactive experience, and the valuable opportunity to feed questions about the product to experts.

“You get out of the virtual environment pretty quickly,” says Juncker. “Your brain adapts, and you’re then having a human conversation through the technology, even though he may not be in the same room, state, or even country, which is pretty great.”

Taking the lead on the VR project, Gaspar says customers really enjoy the experience. Systecon can point to how solutions are designed and developed in order to control risk. Real-time conversations in the environment speed up the design and learning process for owners, engineers, and construction managers.

Another pandemic approach included virtual training webinars to keep the business on track.

One-stop shop
Celebrating 50 years in business, Systecon has plenty of industry experience and longevity on its side. A one-stop shop means the experts at Systecon take care of all services and project parameters, from initial design to development, plant design and component selection, factory testing, shipment, start-up, commissioning, and any other related services.

Customers have peace of mind when they work with the professionals at Systecon because systems are tested in-house and backed by a complete, single-source warranty.

“From the customers I’ve spoken to there are multiple advantages,” says Gaspar, “including the availability of full-time, highly skilled and technical trades, engineering, greater speed to market, and risk management.”

With proven processes, Systecon handles requests from initial concept through design, manufacturing and delivery, start-up and turnover. By handling these aspects, Systecon can control costs, the scope of materials, and how equipment is going to perform.

“In addition to performance, safety is a key success factor for many customers,” says Gaspar. “Our safety rating is 0.47, and the industry average is 1.0. If you are above 1.0, you run into insurance and financial impacts for how the job is executed,” he says. “With Systecon’s safety rating, off-site construction is a major benefit when being selected to perform work and control risk.”

Beating the seasons
Another benefit to customers is Systecon’s large facility in West Chester, Ohio. Since it is indoors, weather is never an issue creating systems, and adverse jobsite conditions are eliminated. “Building in the wintertime doesn’t affect us at all; in fact, it’s an advantage,” says Gaspar.

For clients, the facility is also an ideal place to host owners, engineers and contractors (with COVID protocols in place) to come and check over the finished product before it’s delivered, adding additional value.

While performing in all three facets of project management – quality, cost and schedule – Systecon provides a well-rounded solution that is customized for each client accordingly. The result: certainty and confidence from the start, where a client can essentially pre-purchase a large and critical undertaking of work involving multiple trades and different disciplines – all up front.

“And we will hold to that,” says Gaspar, “because it’s a manufactured process. Everything is approved before we buy materials, before we build it and test it, so we eliminate any opportunities for change orders of stick-built construction in the field at the jobsite. Since we are in the factory, we avoid all those issues.”

Ahead of the pack
As the company behind standard pump packages along with customized modular pumping systems like VariPrime® and the ultra-advanced CritiChill® system, Systecon is a business rich in pump system experience. From a design-engineering and construction point of view, the business simply cannot be beat.

“We take pride in quality, and we are smarter than the average bear,” says Gaspar, “and I say that humbly though, because we have a wide range and a very deep bench of resources.”

Many of the company’s employees have been with Systecon between 20 and 40 years. Maintaining that wealth of knowledge and experience on all fronts allows the company to focus on providing products that are high-end, made from the right materials, and that meet all codes or regulations on any jobsite around the world, especially in North America.

“That engineering and experience factor, and having good tenure on our staff, allows us to fully understand what the owner is asking, what problems we are solving, and what the requirements are from an engineering point of view – as well as code, regulation and compliance.”

Acquired by ENGIE in 2019, Systecon’s planned expansion in February 2020 coincided with the arrival of COVID. However, the timing worked out for them, as it allowed for additional space on the production floor, enabling the company to implement social distancing, which it wouldn’t have been able to do otherwise.

“It was fortunate that event occurred at the time it did, with the opening of that expansion,” says Juncker. “It added another 25,000 square feet of production along with lifting capabilities of 70 tons in the production bay.” The company facility now comprises about 146,500 square feet.

In the coming years, Systecon will continue to focus on de-carbonization goals and energy-efficiency improvements. With its unique ability to design, plan and test the efficiency of products before they ship, Systecon continues to provide value to the marketplace.

“For us, it’s not necessarily always the end product; it’s how we work together, and how we can assist the owners and engineers to properly plan for a successful project that will allow for speed,” says Juncker.

“Being involved early is key, and proper planning from inception is very important.”

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