What does it mean to manufacture a stronger standard? At Degist, it means to solve challenges and help manufacturers achieve more through our people, our technology, and our belief that anything is possible. This is manufacturing a stronger standard, a podcast by degist. Hey everyone and welcome to another episode of Manufacturing a Stronger Standard podcast from the experts at Degist. I'm your host, Tyler Kern. Thanks so much for joining us for this episode of the podcast. Today, we are diving into the LESTA USA day one solution. What is that? Well, that's why there's a podcast telling you all about it. And joining me today is Derek DeGeese, president of DeGeese Corporation and LesterUSA. Derek, great to have you back on the show. Thanks for joining me, man. You bet, Tyler. Thank you. And also joining us for this episode of the show is Brad Rupert. He is an engineering manager and application specialist at Degiste. Brad, thanks for coming back on the podcast. Welcome back, man. Great to be back, Tyler. Well, guys, you know, I mentioned the the less the day one solution there in the introduction. But we hear less the day one robotics. Tell us a little bit more about that and what it what you mean by day one. Day one, it was something that as we launched LESSA that we wanted to make sure we could offer offer our customers. The self learning robotic technology allows you to program a part in real time and create programs, rapidly. So as that implied, we can make programs as soon as we put it in. Most of the time, our customers, when they come through, they're learning in our test lab and already making programs and understand how to make programs and production parts before that we even put it in. So after we put our systems in, you're producing parts that the first day that we turn it on. And so our day one solution, has evolved over as our applications and our installs have continued to evolve and we're installing all over the country now, is that we've seen, see some unique things out in the field as we go. Some and some, it was an evolution that and a solution that we're bringing to our customer base that we're pretty excited about. So, Brad, can you tell us about how this evolved during your experience from taking our customers from in the test lab where they learn how to make a program out into the field after the install and during their start up, how we came up with our day one solution and why we need it. Yeah. So as we get the self learning technology out into the field, it's it's really the shops and customers that are this is their first experience with with automation. So one thing that is common in the painting industry is your painters are very versatile, very adaptable. As the part is delivered to the booth, it may be different every time. Of course, when you make a recorded program, that now has to change. It has to be presented to the painter the same every time. It is good common practice in industrial painting to have that in place, but a lot of times it's just there hasn't been time invested in it. So now that we've had this project, we've we've presented them with a tool that will reproduce the same movements of their painter, we have to reproduce what is presented to that booth exactly the same. So that's kinda where this day one solution came from. We had a lot of customers in our first few installs that we get the robot in. They'd come see it in in our integration center. They they get the programming done. We get out to the field, and it's not the same because they haven't set their parts up to be presented to that booth the same. So what we've done is offered the ability to take one of their parts and have it set up in our test lab as close to their actual real life situation as possible, and we'll develop picturing the hanging and how to present that to the booth so it's the same every time. So now that we're there on our first day of running, we can actually make that program, and they're running production literally minutes or even less than an hour from when we say we're ready to go. So on on our usually, for a one robot system, that's day five. I mean, we're there on Monday. We're running production Friday morning. And they can run a full day of production. Why we have resources there to help them learn and train. So the more prepared they are, the more we can get out of that production going into the following week. And I think one of the keys is that we're not saying that you have to get stuff from us. What we're saying is that we're gonna help provide a proven solution for you to start on your day one. And so by by doing that, it's their their file, their theirs they can make it themselves, and then they can copy that solution and a proven solution for their other parts. Or if they don't have those capabilities, they can come back and we can continue to help them, give them additional ones for new parts to come in. Some of our shops that we're going into with our customers, they have got all the same capabilities to build, produce anything they need. And other, custom coders, they don't have any. And so, we can help them either way. We just wanna get them off the ground starting. So some of them, we're talking about doing entire part families or different maybe three different style of parts. And from there, they got a good baseline that they can develop. They can make them all themselves, or we can make them and ship them for them. So our goal is that they have these ready to go. And then what we're saving them months of trial and error, testing, and rework. And so, by having those parts there, we're creating time for them to be able to continue to improve their other processes. And we had another, podcast we just finished on on cell phone and robots helping improve your processes. And so that's literally what we're doing is that we're the self learning robot. When you got we have proper racking and you've you're set up, you have an initial process that has now been set that you can then grow from. And so you create time right off the get go for your their team to be able to put towards continually improve their process and continually make that their system better. Yeah. And we wanna make sure that it's a seamless transition from when that robot is installed to your back end production because we're we're not looking at automation because we have spare time and resources. We wanna get the most of out of what we have. So by by having this day one solution available or at least having the discussion before we install, we now are fully producing, you know, day one, and that's that's been our goal. That's been our business model to get out there and and get these solutions into the customer's hands and get the benefits of them as soon as they're installed and up and running. So I'll give you an example of one of our customers. They took they took pictures. We showed them, you know, how we done it on our system. They then said that they're gonna go back and they're gonna make their own. They're going to they got a guy they know down the street that does welding, and they're gonna make their own and be ready when we got there. So I said, sure. We took pictures. They they then, said that they're gonna get stuff ready. They got back. They got busy. They didn't have it ready. We're done and ready to run. And we put some hooks up, and we ran a couple parts, and that's all they had ready to go. And so then they had to do the rest manual. They didn't have anything else set up that was they knew nothing they had up was repeatable, and they kept working through a couple a couple months' worth of of getting stuff made at night, and they're welding up some stuff out in the back. And now they're starting to get going, and they're but this took a couple months. Kind of on the opposite of that, we had another customer, a custom job shop coder, doing almost identical type of work in another part of the country who proactively worked with our team. And, Brad, maybe tell them kinda what happened, with them when they're when you were working with them. We actually had the conversation. We we set up we actually did an in house runoff with our system using their parts, their racks, their equipment. So all of their leads, all of the people that were gonna interact with the robot cell had were here. They learned how to program it, and we literally on their fifth day, we were running production, and it ran production all weekend and into the next, you know, onto the next week. So it was as soon as we turn that thing back on, they were able to see the advantages of the self learning. You know, now that now that trigger time has gone from fifty percent up up to closer to that ninety percent because every rack that's there, it it's getting coated, and there is no mind stoppage. You're moving forward. You're right back into the production that the investment was put in to get, and you're there right away. It's not a very short learning curve at that point. The key difference there, Brad, would you agree, was that they they got unified and got all new racking before we started. They started they knew that their racking was bent up. It had been there a long time and got all new racking before they started. Yep. We showed up. Everything was was set up. They were already documenting how things were being hung. You know, this is all stuff that can be done before our install is to get this stuff in place, get the process there. Again, it's it's improving your process, which in the end gives you a better product just by everything's the same. It's presented the same. Your mill coverages are actually gonna be more uniform. It's it's a great task and even, you know, not even taking the Lester robot and the the self learning out of it. It's a process improvement that everyone can do. And past that, once that happens, when you get that momentum going, we're seeing that there's multiple things after that can continually drive improvement and process that once you have some success and your the teams are getting success, they move to the next thing, and they add another thing. So every time they improve the process, they seem to be able to creating more time, more production, or more quality. Kinda one of all those things continues to happen. And then there's new capabilities that open up, doors that continue to open as they continue to gain momentum and the comfort, running, in their new automated system. Yeah. Your your production numbers, you know, if you don't have the little hiccups and the the need to adapt, everything's the same, everything's simple. It's just everything gets where you have the time to look at the next thing. We've we've got one customer in particular that they literally hit ninety nine percent gun time. Something that as an engineer, I would say is never theoretically possible, but we see the numbers. I mean, their cycle times to their eight hour shift are one to one. They're getting every second of every day, and that's because they've been able to look at incoming process and the downstream process. The employees themselves are empowered to look at how they can manage their breaks and keep that system running, which in the end gives them more time in a less stressful environment because their their meeting production numbers and, you know, upper management is is happy, and they don't have to be there on the episode here and tie a bow on the end of it, Brad, if you could just maybe summarize the benefits and maybe summarize our conversation here today just in conclusion, just to to give our listeners something that they can easily walk away with. Brad, let me kick it back over to you just to to summarize things from today's conversation. Well, the the day one solution is is our way to of providing our customers that that blueprint success to make this self learning technology a a home run or a a very quick ROI. It gives you the ability to present the part in a way that you can repeat, which also just feeds on the success. At that point, once the the system is no longer a fear, it's it's something that happens every day, it's very simple to run, Your operators will now have time to look into improving the rest of your process. Just, again, returning on that benefit of of adding the self learning technology and optimizing your process. Which then offers you the ability to be able to save time, give your people a chance to have an an immediate success that gains momentum, which then saves you gets you right into production and gets you rolling, save months of fixture trial and error testing and rework, and you're starting off kicking butt right on day one. There you go. I think it was Mark Twain that said the secret to getting ahead is getting started and taking that first step. And knowing exactly how to get started right off the bat is an important thing to do. And so you guys, you guys have made that possible through this solution, and, I've loved getting to learn a little bit more about it today. So Derek DeGeese, Brad Rupert. Guys, thank you so much for joining me once again here on Manufacturing a Stronger Standard. Thank you, Tyler. Thanks, Tyler. And everyone, thank you for tuning in to another episode of the podcast. We appreciate it very much. Of course, if you're not already subscribed to the podcast, first of all, why? Second of all, go subscribe on Apple Podcasts or Spotify to stay up to date with the latest and insights just like this from the experts at De Geist in Lustre USA. And stay tuned because we'll be back soon with more episodes of the show. But until then, for my guests today, Derek and Brad, I've been your host today, Tyler. Thank you so much for listening.
