Welcome to Advanced Automation, a podcast by Calvary Robotics, where you'll find industry leaders and experts sharing their thoughts on the world of automation. Welcome everyone, and thank you for listening. I'm Josh Carvelli, your host for this installment of Advanced Automation. Joining us today, we have Jamie Green. Jamie is the director of manufacturing for Calvary Robotics. In this role, Jamie oversees the manufacturing build teams as well as the maintenance department. Jamie has been with Calvary for over a year now and has over twenty three years in manufacturing. In those twenty three years, he has worked in various industries such as automotive, electronics, medical plastics, and aerospace. Jamie has lived his whole life in the Greater Rochester region and is a RIT graduate with a bachelor's in mechanical engineering and a master's degree in business administration. Glad to have you joining us on the podcast, Jamie. Thanks, Josh. Glad to be here. So tell us what brought you to join the Calvary team. Well, I've been a customer of Calvary early on in my career. I've always been impressed with the equipment that Calvary designs and builds as well as a talented team of engineers, project managers, and build technicians. As I've moved out throughout my career to different companies, through the the various industries you mentioned, any opportunity I had to bring Calvary into those businesses, I always jumped on that opportunity based on the quality of the equipment that they build. So when the opportunity came up for me to join the team, I couldn't pass it up. Were had you worked with anybody who was was a part of the team here before or just through you know, were they still here if if that's the case? So one of the project managers that I worked on very early on in my career, back in the the late nineties, My first day here at Calvary, I was greeted by that same project manager, you know, twenty plus years later. Who is that? Mister Weber. Mister Eric Weber. Yes. Yes. I'm hoping to get him we can get him on the podcast soon too. He's wealth of knowledge of Calvary and the industry for sure. Oh, absolutely. And so anybody else that kinda helped bring you on board that you would say? Yeah. So I had an opportunity to work with, with our previous, VP of manufacturing, Steve Hayward, who did a previous episode of of a podcast. I had an opportunity to work with him at a previous employer. Steve and I had a connection, an immediate connection at work as well as outside work. We're both car enthusiasts. We both live in, you know, the east side of Rochester, so we're quite, close geographically. And, so when Steve found out that I was in the market looking for something new, he reached out, and, he's really the reason why why I'm here today. That's great. Yeah. You started at Calvary during the COVID pandemic in July. Correct? And what was that transition like? Yeah. The transition was a bit challenging. Basically, due to all the restrictions that were in place, it's really hard to to get to know people and to make connections when you're, you know, maintaining a six foot distance and you've got a piece of fabric over your face. You know, it's also the first time I've been in a in a manufacturing leadership, type position. Prior to Calvary, I've always been in either engineering or engineering leadership capacities. So this is the first time that I'm actually leading, the manufacturing team. So a little bit of a transition, but so far, I'm really enjoying what I've done, or what I'm doing. Working with Steve. Steve did a great job onboarding. Really good job bringing me up to speed on, you know, the roles and responsibilities of this position. Wonderful. Well, hopefully, he will listen. So let's just say, hi, Steve. We miss you. Hi, Steve. Yeah. He's retired now. So hopefully, he's enjoying that. What would you say in this role then is some of your biggest challenges? The biggest challenge we're facing right now is really about the supply chain. You know, the pandemic's had an effect all across the the world, and it's really impacting our lead time and prices of materials we need to be able to to, to build the equipment for our customers. So we're trying to combat that internally, through the use of some of our standard products and building up an inventory of of our configurable bases to help reduce that lead time and take that variability out of out of our build times so that we can still offer our our customers, price competitive equipment, on time that fits their their schedules. Yeah. That's it's definitely the game has changed, and hopefully, it goes somewhat back to normal, but we're not there yet. Yeah. Absolutely. So we work we're a system integrator, in the automation automation company, but our process, while we have points of it, is not technically automated. What do you have to say to that? The equipment that we build, it really enables our customers to automate their processes. Every one of our machines and situations is unique, and they all require, skilled technicians to assemble, to wire, and to debug the equipment. But while we may not be able to automate the assembly of our our processes, we are able to automate some of the support processes that allow us to be more efficient. So what I just talked about as far as, you know, our standard products, by having a platform of standard chassis, for example, it allows us to be, quicker to market or quicker for our customer, because we take the the design time out of the the frame and base aspect of it, and we have a configurable base that we can start from. So that helps, shorten the design cycle upfront. Absolutely. Yeah. Pre engineered solutions as you're talking to standard products that so there is almost automation to a degree in that sense, I guess you could say. Yeah. Yeah. It's just not automation in the in the typical sense. There's you know, we don't have a robot building our robots. Maybe someday. Maybe someday. So we spoke with Steve Hayward earlier, and he was when he retired from the company a short time ago, he was the GM of CGS Precision Technologies, and he was a mentor to you. Tell us some of the things that he taught you. So so like I said before, Steve's really one of the main reasons why I joined the team when I did. I had the opportunity to work with Steve at a previous company. And, again, when I was when I the opportunity came up, I couldn't pass up the opportunity to, you know, learn from Steve, in the the operations leadership role. So Steve is really during his onboarding, he really taught me the importance of schedule and resource management and how Calvary's unique management processes operate. He's also helped drive the importance of listening. You know, as a leader in any industry or any company, listening to your employees is critical so that you can provide them with the tools necessary for them to succeed because this position is all about, you know, my team being successful, which allows our customers to be successful as well. So Calvary Robotics deals in many different industries. How is that beneficial to our end users, our customers? Well, it it gives us the opportunity to look across the several different industries that we that we do participate in, and leverage some of the technologies and, you know, part handling or part motion or vision applications. Regardless of what the end, end market is, those techniques and those tools are applicable across a wide range of of industries. And some of the industry specific standards that we have to deal with can help improve some of our standards, across the board, by being exposed to those for certain customers. And going back to Steve mentoring you for a moment, I wanted you to talk about some of the unique challenges and the positive aspects of, you know, generation to generation and passing the torch, if you will, and mentoring in general. Yeah. So so as we, you know, through attrition, we're bringing on some younger folks, less experienced, that learn differently than than some of the the previous generations did. Some of our our our longer term employees, you know, they grew up with slide rules and doing drafting by hand. When it comes to looking at a complicated assembly print, they can look at a two d hand drawing and gather all the information they need to complete their build. Whereas the some of the younger more kids that brought that came up with more technology, they rely on that technology to, you know, use a three d solid model where they can turn layers off and they can do fly throughs of the equipment. So trying to bridge that gap, between the the old slide rule technology and solid model technology to to get to the core of, you know, the importance of best practices and, you know, the proper technique techniques to build the equipment. It's just a little bit of a challenge, but it's you know, I look at it as mentoring both ways. The the younger generation is mentoring, the more seasoned folks on some of this technology updates, while the more seasoned folks are mentoring the the youth, we'll say, on, you know, all of our best practices and and Calvary designed standards. Right. The only thing the only way you can get some of that is by experience. So it's Absolutely. Where do you see the future, the future Jamie, with Calvary? Well, I'd like to continue learning the industry and continue growing professionally. Calvary offers several opportunities to to take my career in various different directions. You know, I could pursue potentially pursue positions in in engineering or engineering leadership or continue down the path of operations. I really enjoy what I'm doing right now, and and the people that I work with are are fantastic. The one thing about Calvary is, it's rapidly changing technology. Every day is a new challenge. There's no two days that are alike, and it's something I enjoy doing right now. I would agree with that completely. Yeah. So we talked about the pandemic and you starting during COVID. We actually saw some increase in our workload. What would you say some of the key takeaways or lessons learned from all of that? Yeah. So so we absolutely did see some some uptick in the business based on that. And, you know, one of the key take takeaways is we have to find opportunities where the opportunities exist. So the pandemic, as we all know, had dramatic effects on economies all around the world. But we are strategically aligned with customers in diverse industries. So as one industry was negatively impacted, another became overloaded with work based on their customers' requirements. So changing directions, reacting quickly has allowed Calvary to deliver automated solutions in record time, you know, to help our customers deliver products that were actually used to fight the pandemic. In one of your previous podcasts, one of our senior build leads was on, Chris Bassaro, and he was talking about a project that was done for for a medical customer that literally was done in rapid record breaking time from concept to delivery of the equipment. Yeah. It was. And I was even thinking back to something we talked about earlier I hadn't thought about is some companies were also pivoted. They might be medical or they might have been automotive and then pivoted to having do some almost medical like, you know, output. And so us dealing with many industries, if nothing else, they can say, oh, we've worked with them on in this sector. We know they can handle that. Now we're gonna do something in this time of need for the for every for the world, really. Yeah. So I think I still, to get back to the original question, I think one of the key takeaways is to remain diversified. You know? And as we're coming out of the pandemic, being diversified is equally as important, so that the business that we're gonna go forward with is not all pandemic related business. Having worked in manufacturing throughout your career, what are some of the biggest changes that you've seen? Just the level of automation and the automated solutions that are available, as well as a increased focus around safety when it comes to equipment in general. I can remember back I I won't say the date, but I can remember back when I first started my career where the first robot that I was part of integrating, was a large, I think it was a Fanuc m six or an m sixteen. I forget which one. And this the entire safety circuit was at was triangulated light curtains, and an operator was standing right next to it, right just outside the danger zone, where today that wouldn't be allowed without, you know, barrier guarding and perimeter sensors and everything else. Also, the level of the ability and the level of complexity of some of the vision applications and vision software that are out there. I remember programming my first vision, application literally with a a game console joystick. Really? What was the game console joystick? What I'm pretty sure it was a a PlayStation one joyce a rebranded PlayStation one joystick. You would you would plug it in and and, you know, a a star, square, circle. I I mean, it was literally a a joystick. So on the weekends, can we find, Jamie Greene playing some, you know, Call of Duty or something like that? No. Not anymore. No. No. So I didn't creep back into your real life, that's what I'm doing. No. So from, you know, transitioning from a game controller to today, where do you see manufacturing going in the next five to ten years? In order to stay competitive, I see a continued focus on, lean methodologies, focusing on the use of automation in areas traditionally staffed by people. And as we move away from traditional brick and mortar type businesses to more online, I can see automation opportunities for order fulfillment or potentially material handling. And you also spoke earlier about your personal interest in cars that you and Steve Hayward share. What got you passionate about cars? Growing up, my dad was always working on, usually working on a red Ford pickup that he had to drive to work the next day. My dad was a member of the UAW. He worked for new process gear over in Syracuse back in in the eighties when it was part of, the Chrysler Corporation. So he was always working on something that, that got myself and my two brothers interested in vehicles as well. At one point, the three of us were restoring old sixties Mustangs all at the same time, you know, and and dad was right there with us to to help not only teach how they work, but how to fix them. Wonderful. So do you have a dream car? Like, if you could have any car, what would it be? Absolutely. A sixty three Corvette split window. Can you tell me why that car? It's the most desirable Corvette because it's one of the the least produced. It was a one year only vehicle. They made significant changes in sixty four. And that sixty three is just it's a a timeless classic. Nice. Does it have to be a certain color for you? Well, all Corvettes are red. So that answers that question. I should have known better, shouldn't I? Alright, Jamie. I think that wraps it up for today. I just wanna say thanks again for being on the podcast. Oh, thanks for having me, Josh. Yeah. And thank you to all the listeners. If you wanna listen to other episodes of the podcast, we have more on our website at calvary robotics dot com. We also have Calvary TV you can check out and have a great day.
