Interviewee
Scott Crawley , President & CEO at VAIA Technologies, the leading provider of automated inspection solutions for companies. His 25+ year international career includes general management roles in FMC’s subsea oilfield controls business and executive positions at Compaq/HP and Dell.
Transcript
Scott Crawley: I'm president of VAIA Technologies and we design and build automated process and product inspection systems. We, our core competency is really machine vision, but we do a lot of automation, a lot of robotics, a lot of analytics with the data as well. And actually the acronym via stands for vision B for vision, A for automation, I for integration, and a for analytics. So what we typically do is we work with the customer, we scope their requirements, and then we can do basically soup to nuts, full turnkey developments for them. We do all our own internal mechanical and electrical engineering, obviously the vision system design, the user interface design, then we build the systems, test them, deploy them, and then we can also service and support them after they're delivered.
Elisa Muñoz: Wow, definitely. Interesting. And talking about the news of the company, I know that you guys just released the Ross-1, a robotic knife sharpening system, right? So maybe we can talk a little bit about it.
Scott Crawley: Yeah, for sure. And you know, this is a great example of something that we do that would be, we would call process automation. And the way, maybe a way to think about that is we're taking really lousy jobs and making them go away. So our customer, Dexter Russell, they're the biggest industrial knife manufacturer in the US, they came to us and asked us whether we thought it was possible to build a system to re sharpen knives and automatically use a robot. And they had a number of requirements they wanted, they wanted it to be fast, they wanted the system to be able to do everything from a two and a half inch knife to a 14 inch knife. Obviously a lot of varying widths of knives as well. And they wanted these knives, these knife blades to come off extremely fast. Sorry, extremely sharp. I guess when someone is in an abattoir and they're cutting up a carcass, they know straight away when that knife is no longer sharp. And they set it aside for re-sharpening for the process. We worked with the customer to, you know, obviously scope exactly what they needed and the end result was the ROS one system where we're very proud of the system. We've already shipped a number of these systems and there's quite a few more on the way and, actually, last week at the I P P E show in Atlanta, we were down there with our customer and we had one of the Ross ones on site there. And that show is primarily a show for folks who are in the poultry beef and pork processing industry. So it was, it was the right target audience for us.
Elisa Muñoz: And I have to tell you, I saw the video on the website and it looks big, right? The machine.
Scott Crawley: It's, let's see, it's probably, it's six foot, maybe six, six or seven feet square on footprint, and that's probably about six or seven feet high as well. So it takes up a little bit of space, but the system's doing a lot in that space. So the system itself, this particular system has 2 64 knife carousels. So an operator can be loading one carousel while the robot is taking knives from the other carousel, and the robot picks up a knife and then basically passes the knife between two 3D scanners. And so we take a precise image of both sides of that knife at the same time, and then we process that image data and the robot then uses that, but now it knows what sort of knife it has and it knows what it needs to do with it. And the robot then takes that blade and passes, passes it twice against a, a grinding belt, and then passes it twice against a, a polishing or a honing wheel and then puts it back in the carousel. The whole process for an average knife takes about 26 seconds. So it's, it's, it's very, very fast.
So it has a huge impact on cost, it has a huge impact on design, efficiency as well. So that's something, you know? We made a big call, a big investment, and it's really paid off for us.
Elisa Muñoz: This is super fast. Well, I mean, thank you so much for sharing. And I'm pretty sure that everything has to do with the client's feedback, right? I mean, hearing them and hearing their necessities, how has the process been there?
Scott Crawley: It's, it's the, the most critical thing I think is at the outset of a pro project. We spend a lot of time with the customer and what their requirements are. And honestly, sometimes they have requirements where we say, oh, sorry, we, there's no way we can do that. And so part, it's partly a, a negotiation to arrive at a scope that's gonna give them the ROI they need, but, but at the same time not cause us to take on something that's impossible or, or maybe has a, probability of failing that's too high. So what we wanna do at the outset of a project is, is make sure that when we give the customer a proposal, we're pretty darn sure that we're gonna be able to deliver it. But really that's in some ways the start of the collaboration because a lot of these projects where you're doing something that maybe hasn't been done before by anyone, as you go along, you find you reach, you know, places along the project where you encounter things you maybe weren't expecting or you didn't contemplate. And it doesn't mean that you can't address those things, but sometimes you gotta sit down with the customer again and say, Hmm, okay then we weren't ex we weren't expecting this. Here's how, what we think we could do with it, and here are the pros and here are the cons. And inevitably I think, you know, customers will, will always say, Hey, I want to choose my partner as well. Well, we choose our customers pretty well too. And you know, we want people who are very collaborative, they are as much the owner of the solution as we are. And it's a very engaging process from start to finish. And even beyond, you know, the, the knife sharpening system is a great example where sharpening thousands of knife knives a week, but there are still little things that can be tweaked to make it even better, make it easier for the operators to use, easier to maintain or, you know, replace consumable parts, et cetera.
So look, we always hope when we engage with a partner, we're gonna be working with them for years and years and years. And again, I think that particular system is a great example of that.
Elisa Muñoz: Thank you so much for sharing the process and I'm curious to ask like, how big is your engineering team?
Scott Crawley: Yeah, we're, you know, just say mid, mid twenties under 30 people across our whole team. The majority of our team are engineers or software developers or vision specialists. Even our, you know, field service technicians are highly technical and that allows us to be, you know, very flexible to adjust where we're applying our resources depending on the workload that we may have at, you know, any particular time. But we certainly have, you know, highly skilled folks, you know, from, from end to end as far as the process goes. And, we do pretty much everything in-house. We, there's very little that we would outsource, we outsource the manufacturer of parts or welding and or things like that
But all of the engineering, all of the design work is done in-house. I will mention one thing that we did, we made a very large investment in 3D printing order, invested in a large footprint 3D printer. We worked with the company out of Houston for robots. And that has been a godsend for, and we use it not just for prototyping, which a lot of people will just use 3D printing for prototyping, we use it for manufacturing as well. And it allowed us to scale and iterate very quickly. You know, hey, this part isn't working well, what if we tweak that, all right, let's the, the engineers design it up in SolidWorks, print it overnight, all right, now let's try that. And it helps shrink the engineering cycle and it can dramatically reduce the manufacturing time required for some of these parts. You have a couple of examples of parts that would've needed 128 processes if you were doing a traditional machine shop, you know, the presses, bridge ports, lathes, et cetera. And we reduce that 128 steps down to 16, I think. So it, it, has a huge impact on cost, it has a huge impact on design, you know, efficiency as well. So that's something, you know, we made a big call, a big investment, and it's really paid off for us.
Elisa Muñoz: And talking about maybe the pandemic, did you guys have any, I don't know, like purchasing challenges?
Scott Crawley: Yes, I think everybody did, obviously. And you know, that's another example of a situation where you really have to work with your customers. So traditional components that we might buy off the shelf like a Gigi camera or you know, other components that maybe they were, weren't manufactured in the US suddenly the lead times went from three weeks to eight months. We've had some components for some customers where the lead times went out over a year and, you know, you've really just gotta work with the customer. One of the good things, again about our engineering team is we can qualify other sources of supply if we need to and we try to approach our work.
So as far as possible, we're using industry standard components. So when I talk about something like a gig e camera, there are lots of people that make Gigi cameras and provided we qualify it and say to the customer, this is going to work just fine, and by the way, we can get this one in two weeks versus that one in six months. Our customers usually trust our judgment and, and of course we're standing behind it after we deliver the system anyway. So, but yeah, a huge challenge. Huge challenge.
Elisa Muñoz: I bet, and especially because I have interviewed a lot of different founders and CEOs in the industry and all of them have told me the same, especially the CEOs. And I think that, it's really interesting because they are either super involved in the operations and engineering team or they are not, and they're most likely on the business part. So how is that process for you? How is your day-to-day life?
Scott Crawley: Well, you know, this, this is the most fun I've ever had working and I've been around for quite a while. I, you know, spent a lot of my career in big corporate America and so this was a big change for me. And I'm, I'm an engineer, so in some respects this, this role and I've been at this for eight years now, enabled me to get back to my roots, I'll call them. And you know, we're a small team, so you can't have, we can't afford to have passengers on the team, even if that's me, right? So we're all heavily involved in, you know, all aspects of the business. Certainly I'm running the business side of it, but I'm, I'm writing proposals, I'm working with customers on requirements where having engineering reviews and I would say, you know, there's a lot of player coaches on our team, including myself. So we, what we try to do is cross train our folks so they can do seven or eight different things if we need them to do that. And I think that also keeps it interesting for the, for the, for the people on the team. So we want our engineers to, to know how you should go about writing a proposal or costing a job or pricing a job or how to review a contract and understand, you know, if a customer sends something in, what things are acceptable to, to us and what, what things aren't as far as what you, you know, how we're willing to engage. And again, I think that cross training has a lot of benefits for, for our business, obviously. But, and, and we do it of course we do it on the engineering side as well.
So if folks could do some vision design or work in solid works or do some field service work or do some electrical pan, you know, electrical panel assembly or system assembly system test, it makes it very interesting for the people on the team. And it's enormously helpful for us as a business because our business is lumpy. You know, we have these, you'd love your business to come in, oh, this piece today, this piece tomorrow. But that's not what happens. So, you know, you may, it's, it's sometimes feast of famine, but all of a sudden you'll get three big projects and you'll find, whoa, I am, four of my projects are all at mechanical design stage and I really need four people to be able to be working in SolidWorks designing things. And so that's what we strive to do, to, you know, maintain the flexibility of our team so we can still execute and not be constrained by, by bottlenecks wherever they might be.
Elisa Muñoz: Do you have any advice for future entrepreneurs or engineers or CEOs in the automation industry?
Scott Crawley: You know, I went, I went from big corporate America to suddenly running my own business and it was so many changes in so many different ways, so many different things I had to think about. And nearly all of it was great. And certainly I could, you know, bring to the table my 30 years of experience doing other things. And I remember someone saying to me very early, they said, Hey Scott, you're a, you're a ceo. You only have three jobs. Don't run outta money, don't run outta money and don't run outta money. And I'll tell you very early on, that's, that's what I spent my time trying to make sure it didn't happen and it, and it didn't. And you know, we're well beyond that now, eight years down the track. But it's, look, I think, you know, having your, what you don't wanna be doing as an entrepreneur is looking over your shoulder every week or every month, wondering if you're gonna be able to make payroll. So making some very good funding decisions, structuring your business appropriately, having the right backing if you need it, they, having that in place will, will, you know, free your mind to think about what you really wanna be doing, which is thinking about great things that are out there, what you're gonna deliver for your customers, how you're gonna take your market share and, and, and do better than your competitors. So that's the advice that's, that's one piece of advice I would give.
Elisa Muñoz: That’s a great piece of advice Scott, thank you so much for being here today.
Scott Crawley: Thank you very much and thank you again for giving me the opportunity to chat on the podcast.
