Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1124788
JUNE 2019 I SMT007 MAGAZINE 21 Ford: That's true. And the real key here is that the cost of data has to be near zero because we're looking at so much data, if there was a cost, it would be too expensive. You can't have people writing things down or typing them out. Matties: It must be a result of their work. Ford: Yes, it has to be an integral part of their standard operation. With our AR, for exam- ple, you look at the barcode, and it reads. How easy could that be? And you have voice feed- back, telling you what to do, and there's no cost. Matties: A lot of shops say, "We're too small for this," or, "That's not for us." I think this reaches into any level of manufacturing scales. Ford: Scalability is always the issue because mom-and-pop shops are the backbone of the U.S. and Germany as well. And middle-sized companies shy away from stickers that have high prices, saying that it's not for them. We've intentionally created CFX, for example, with no cost. An end manufacturer could pur- chase the standard for a few dollars. Get some- one out of university who knows about soft- ware programming and wants a little bit of experience. We've seen examples where they can make dashboards within a couple of days. They're not getting the full value of CFX, but they're getting enough. They are getting an excellent return on their investment, and that takes them to the next level to say, "Well, I'd like a little bit more. Then, they build step by step. You'd think it would be different on the opposite end of the scale, but it's not. The big- gest companies in the world have so many machines that they cannot even understand what they have. The first step for them is a very small step. "Give me a dashboard that shows me all of the machines that I have in the world. I just want to see if they're work- ing or not. How hard can it be?" Then, they get that and say, "Now, I want to break that down. I want to see the performance, OEE, etc." They start to want more. All of this is approached by value-driven steps for the largest or smallest customers. We've made our software like that because we believe that that's how it should scale. You scale the cost with the value and you'll always make sure that the return on investment is within a few months and no more than a year in any circumstance. Then, there is no reason why people would not want to buy it because, at the end of the year, they're going to be in a positive situation. How can they refuse to use it? They may have some issues about how to change their operations or make best practices, and that's where we help them. They have to be confident that they can do this. At Aegis, we can work with a lot of key influencers within the industry, including some of the largest companies and IPC, and we are 100% dedicated and focused to driving this improvement in the industry. Our larger com- petitors can't say that. They have tiny groups of people who are lost in the big corporation of things that have little opportunity to engage with customers and machine vendors. But we see that as a sweet spot because we know that we are creating genuine value for whoever comes in at any level. And that has been the most rewarding part of being at Aegis for the last two years. We are completely reliable with not just our interest at heart but also the inter- est of the industry. Matties: Congratulations on your two years, and thank you for your time today. Ford: Thank you very much. SMT007