Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1124788
54 SMT007 MAGAZINE I JUNE 2019 startups in this situation have metrics that if you don't meet a certain metric, there's a kill switch. Have you passed that point? Barbini: We're still growing to get to that point. There's a lot of optimism, and everything is moving forward in a very positive way. Matties: You can't be in a startup company without optimism, right? Barbini: Absolutely. Matties: Where are you manufacturing? Barbini: Right now, we're manufacturing in South Korea. This is a South Korean company, and I'm the general manager for operations in the U.S., Canada, and Mexico. Matties: What sort of funding do you have behind this? Barbini: We are an independent, startup company, per se. We have funding from investors, but we're also part of a larger company that's $0.5 billion of revenue a year. We have a number of different sister companies that fall under the parent com - pany. CrucialTec is our parent and has a proven track record; they've also been around for more than 10 years. They understand the commitment that's required for capital equipment. They were doing modules and other types of businesses, so this is their first capital equipment venture; it's a different one, and they've hired a lot of the right people to make it work out. Matties: It's reasonable, and a company that purchases your process would expect a pretty quick ROI. Barbini: The cost of ownership as well as the electricity and footprint. There are a lot of ben- efits to this technique. Matties: Because when you take this tech- nique, you're displacing a manual process. I don't know what a typical cycle time would be for that. Barbini: They take people and train them to do it as fast as possible. Nonetheless, once the process is developed, UPH is going to be higher doing it automated. Matties: The first step is probably to eliminate the manual process. Barbini: Most people look for quality when examining our machines, but the UPH is going to be critical. Matties: What about Industry 4.0? How does your machine plug into that? Barbini: We're developing all of the protocols for that kind of information because we're passing it downstream and upstream to make sure everyone knows what the machine is doing and how it's doing it. In terms of what we're able to do to help customers, we can talk to the factory system and load up the pro- cess for each individual application. Then, if they need to do the traceability, it's available to them as well. Matties: Right, because factory automation is a big deal, so they need to be able to take their data, put it in, and have your machine auto- adjust to whatever is coming in. And you're capable of doing that? Barbini: We are. We're also able to do closed- loop controls, so if something misfires or a pro- cess is deviating in temperature, we have con- trols on that as well. Matties: In terms of loading the machine, is this an automated process? There's a lot of optimism, and everything is moving forward in a very positive way.