Star Prototype
Star Rapid employees on the factory floor
Having settled into the role as CEO of Star Rapid, David Hunter spent his morning delivering a pep talk to his new team, getting across the point that, despite the strength of its industry rivals, the biggest competitor the company has is itself. And so, he is wanting to instil a culture of continuous self-improvement within his workforce of 280 – “what we’re doing today is great,” he says, “but let’s do it better tomorrow.”
While his appointment earlier this month is all about the future of the company, we have to go backwards to understand why Star Rapid’s President, Gordon Styles, insisted on bringing Hunter into the fold.
Back story
Hunter arrived in China some 15 years ago armed with just a couple of suitcases. He was there to manage the joint ventures (JV) GSPK, a British electronics company, had established out there. Five years later, the firm pulled out of its JVs, and Hunter was headhunted by Sanmina, an electronics manufacturing service. He was tasked with running its facility in Wuxi, Jiangsu, which was losing money. The facility broke even within his first full quarter and by the time he left was turning over $100m a year. He was headhunted again, and at the sixth time of asking, Multek, a division of Flex (formerly Flextroncis), appointed Hunter as VP of Operations and Quality. It took him from running one facility to running five, and looking after $100m a year to looking after $500m a year. Yet, money was again being lost, but once Hunter had found his feet, he was able to put his finger on why and before too long the company was turning a profit and providing great customer service. Thanks in large part to Multek’s embracing of Industry 4.0.
“That was really all about understanding the gaps, understanding what we had originally done, putting the processes in place, putting the metrics in place, and building a great team,” Hunter told TCT. “[The printed circuit board (PCB) market] is an industry where you don’t make money from customers, you make money from continuously improving your processes.
“It was a very manual process when I joined. We started with low-level automation, so jobs I don’t believe humans should be doing anymore, like standing at a machine for ten hours just loading material into the machine.”
Hunter explained even the simplest PCB will go through a minimum of 48 processes during production, and at Multek there were some going through 184 processes, from receiving the materials to the finished product. He implemented an intelligent manufacturing system which enabled transparency across all five factories. Through real time data, he knew every job in progress on each of the 524 mechanical drill machines within these facilities.
It was this measure of success with that inventive a method that enticed Styles to approach Hunter about joining him at Star – though he initially did so for the COO position. It became apparent to Styles, almost immediately, that the role wasn’t big enough for Hunter and instead asked for his recommendation of a suitable candidate. David Douglas took up the role as COO in December 2017, and keeping in touch, it just so happened that Hunter was ready to leave Multek at the same time Star was looking for a CEO.
“This was a conversation [we had] on a Wednesday, I went to Singapore for a final interview with another company that I had already committed to go to the final interview with, and I told Gordon on the Saturday that I would love to take him up on his offer.”
Gordon Styles in Star Rapid’s factory.
Gordon Styles in Star Rapid’s factory.
Industry 4.0 & lean manufacturing
His task this time around is the same but different. Star Rapid is in a good place in terms of finances and growth. In 2017, the company recorded a 40% increase in turnover, and is this year projecting a further 10-15% growth. And he's now back in charge of one centralised manufacturing facility, which is 7,700 square metres in size. But Styles wants to take the company to the next level. He wants what Hunter implemented at Multek, a true Industry 4.0 set-up. The world isn’t standing still, their customers aren’t standing still, so Star can’t afford to either.
Hunter is deploying a three-level approach to leverage the capabilities of new technology to automate manufacturing workflows. The first step surrounds connected equipment. Star Rapid has injection moulding machines, CNC machines, and 3D printing equipment too, none of which were connected when he walked in.
“I don’t know the efficacy of those machines on a minute by minute or day by day basis,” Hunter says. “We’re going through the process now of connecting the equipment, so we can pull from the equipment itself the performance, what it’s producing, how much it is producing. We will be looking at low-level automation [but] we have to make sure we don’t over-automate because if we over-automate we lose flexibility. Looking at low-level automation eliminates non-value add processes. As we have the equipment connected into our server we will be able to get real-time data from all our machines, and that will help us with managing the business with data.”
Then the company will look at incorporating Augmented Reality (AR) for training, maintenance and standard operating procedures, and Artificial Intelligence (AI) and machine learning for material validation and inspection as it gears towards full automation. Full automation, however, won’t see a reduction in staff. The company has no plans to go too far beyond or below the figure of 280 staff for the time being. While humans will soon no longer be loading material for 10 hours a day, they’ll be retrained and redeployed in other roles.
“We ran an academy [at Multek] so that when people came in as an operator they could be fast tracked into a technician and an engineering role,” Hunter said. “And I think with the standard of education in China having changed, the aspirations having changed, we will have a solid engineering base. Far less operators, far more engineers, far more data scientists. Value add jobs in a value add process.”
And that process is thought to have the potential for Star Rapid to maintain its projected growth for this year, before achieving its target of a minimum of 50% year on year growth from 2019 – 2021. In the meantime, the company wants to not only uphold the accessibility and service offering that has stood it in good stead so far, but also pioneer a lean manufacturing movement in China.
In cooperation with local government officials in Zhonghsan, Hunter and Styles have committed to becoming the showcase company for lean manufacturing and Industry 4.0 to allay concerns around the subject in the region. The widespread implementation of lean manufacturing is a feature of central government’s Made in China 2025 ambitions, but for it to come to fruition, government wants a handful of companies to blaze the trail.
Lean manufacturing is all about waste reduction within production systems without compromising productivity. Implementing the philosophy within Star Rapid will see the team focus on the five principles of 5S: Sort; Set; Shine; Standardise; and Sustain which tidy; organise; clean; establish criteria surrounding schedules and methods; and maintain the gains through employees at every level of the business. They will also take in examples of the elimination of the seven wastes: Overproduction; Waiting; Transporting; Inappropriate Processing; Unnecessary Inventory; Excess Motion; and Defects. It should culminate in a streamlined workflow that is at once more environmentally friendly and more efficient.
This, executing the plan, is all part of the fun for Hunter. It’s part of the education process for his staff, and ultimately, for the company, its part of establishing itself as a leader of a new way of making products and running businesses, and gaining an edge, in one of the most competitive markets in the world.
“We’re working closely with the government to make sure they see how lean is implemented from the ground up, how Industry 4.0 is implemented from the ground up, and the benefits we get from it. We have access to funds and what have you, but it’s really about raising the profile of the organisation, and being seen as a leader through our actions, rather than our words.”
I guess I better let him get on with it then.
