12 minute read
Billion-dollar investment in line automation will pay off in a few years
When you travel to the Vysočina Region through Žďár nad Sázavou, you drive past a billboard featuring a superhero. It belongs to ICE Industrial Services, which is based in Žďár and has a long industrial tradition in the region. The company culture is inspired by start-ups, and the firm attracts a huge number of jobseekers. “During the pandemic, we had more than two thousand applicants,” says ICE founder and Executive Director, Tomáš Vránek.
The Žďár-based company specializes in automation and robotization and has branches in nine other Czech cities. When it was acquired by Strojmetal, it became a part of MTX Group. “We founded ICE with a financial investor, which we outgrew relatively quickly. Strojmetal has helped us develop and allowed us to start bigger projects. When it joined Petr Otava’s group, it was an incentive to keep growing. Now, we are working on how to connect ICE with the whole group and use our expertise in automation and robotization,” Vránek says.
Strojmetal was first your client for automation. How far did you come?
Strojmetal’s operation is built on automation. We robotized several production lines there. It was a lengthy process, in which robots were gradually deployed in existing lines. New investments are already fully robotized. We can now confidently say that Strojmetal has one of the most modern forges in the world. Its main product are aluminum chassis parts for luxury car manufacturers. Strojmetal is one of the biggest manufacturers of these parts in the world. Its input materials are aluminum bars that are automatically cut, heated, rolled, and transported to a press for further processing. This allows it to form into the desired shape of the chassis arm. Strojmetal has expanded its production with automated milling and also offers chassis assembly.
How long does such a transition take and how much does it cost?
The core of Strojmetal is based on new lines. Automating a large line takes about a year to a year and a half. It starts with a feasibility study, then you design an automation strategy, create a technical concept and continue with development, construction, production of individual parts, assembly, programming, and starting. One such line can cost around one-half to one billion Czech crowns. We expect to have a return on this investment within a few years.
DataICE Improves factory management
According to Tomáš Vránek, factories rely heavily on data. That is why the firm developed its own software, DataICE, which both collects data and evaluates it. This allows companies to decide if they will or will not automate. “We can extract information from old and new machines (PLCs), IT systems and databases, and display it directly on the line, in the cloud or on smartphones. We can detect trends and so on,” Tomáš Vránek says. His company, ICE Industrial Service, employs 70 programmers, so it is the largest team of automation programmers in the Czech Republic. “We also have a team of database specialists because a large part of the production lines is connected to corporate networks. Data is at the beginning of all management, so it will really be like the next oil,” Vránek adds. As for data storage and processing, Vránek says most customers still do it locally and that many people have doubts about the security of cloud data storage. “Personally, I think Google’s data centers are much more secure than the best-secured local server rooms. It’s the same story as whether your money is safer in the bank or under your mattress. In any case, we always try to respect the wishes of our customers,” Vránek describes. Recently, his company had been trying to get into industrial cyber security. Vránek believes cyberattacks will become increasingly common. “I like to compare it to health. People often don’t care about their health until they get sick. Threats are underestimated, and when a cyberattack comes, enormous resources are invested in remedying the problem. At MTX Group, however, digital threats are taken very seriously, and ongoing steps are being taken towards greater security,” Vránek concludes.
Are you working on similar projects for other MTX Group subsidiaries?
We haven‘t done projects as big as Strojmetal for other MTX Group subsidiaries. But we do work with the group. For instance, we have collaborated with AL INVEST Břidličná and Měď Povrly, and we are discussing other projects as well. Several of the Group’s factories are undergoing reconstruction, and we are trying to help them modernize and streamline production. I see this as a long-term process. It won’t be anything quick.
You are attempting to introduce cooperative robots in production. Is it already time to deploy them?
Cooperative robots can work in the presence of a human being. Normally, robots must be strictly separated from people to maintain work safety. The robots’ cooperative counterparts are still at the initial stages of development and are not reaching the performance level of classic robots. For example, Strojmetal Is involved in heavy equipment operations with hot parts. There is no room for cooperative robots here. But we designed these machines for other customers. For instance, Valeo uses it for folding air conditioners.
What are the current limitations of these robots?
They are more expensive, slower and do not have such a load-bearing capacity. When working with a cooperative robot, you need to consider the object it carries. We have designed a machine that handles sheet metal. When the robot holds the sheet, it’s like a razor. It is difficult to get security certification for these installations. Cooperative robots are the future and are constantly evolving, but this field is still in its infancy.
Is this an obstacle to establishing fully autonomous factories?
You only see fully autonomous factories where there is a lot of money. Daimler has an E-Class Mercedes-Benz line that is heavily automatized. The same goes for other car manufacturers, too. Making a fully independent factory is possible. We like to say everything can be automated. It’s just a matter of cost. Fully automated factories must produce a lot. The disadvantage of automation is that it can only produce a limited number of products without the line being rebuilt. When a Strojmetal line is making a chassis part and you want to switch it to make engine blocks, it takes half a day to reset all the parts, arms, and software. We could design robots that would reset other robots, but doing would be significantly more expensive than with human labor.
ICE represents a new generation of Czech industrial companies with high added value. How does Czech industry in general compare to that of Germany and other developed European countries?
The Czech Republic is doing well and is comparable with neighboring countries. We maintain a reasonable level of engineering production. You can see a difference between large car manufacturers, whose operations are almost fully autonomous, and smaller subcontractors. Personally, I see social responsibility as a big topic. Because of the pandemic, everyone is saving money. But there should be other motivation for automation than purely return on investments. There are jobs that people shouldn’t do, which should be done instead by machines. Even if a person would do it cheaper. It’s mainly about the protection of health and safety.
People probably often tell you that machines take jobs from people. What is your general answer to that? That without automation you will only be a cheap assembly plant?
This is my favorite topic. All our customers complain that they have a shortage of people and need to recruit from distant locations abroad. The fact that instead of buying a robot for several hundred thousand Czech crowns, someone prefers to bring several people from the other side of the world, is detrimental both to their factory and our country. It only serves short-term profit. Fighting automation is like fighting industrialization three hundred years ago. At the beginning of the twentieth century, a large percentage of people worked in agriculture. They would have never thought that one day, it would be just two percent and that there would be completely new professions, such as programmers. Development creates new jobs.
Tomáš Vránek
Photo: Barbora Mráčková
To do more skilled work and leave some jobs to machines, you need education. What do you think about this from the position of an employer?
Education in the Czech Republic is not good, and we lack support for technical education. Everyone is talking about it, but nothing ever happens. That is why private companies had to take matter into their own hands. We ourselves helped to establish the Na Radosti Elementary School, which teaches on the basis of projects and not rote learning. We try to get involved in elementary education. A number of companies work with universities because they see an easy way of recruiting graduates. We think it is necessary to inspire people to use technology and start with it earlier. We also collaborate with secondary schools and try to bring them closer to reality. And, we have our own educational program called Industrial Academy, where we teach robot programming. Schools should teach critical thinking more. We can teach technology to anyone, but problem-solving, self-presentation, rhetoric, the ability to ask for help and so on are very important, too. We sometimes have to learn this at the age of forty.
In the Czech Republic, schools don‘t teach soft skills. Is this the result of having very capable technical brains that are bad at sales and marketing? In the United States, it’s often the other way around – the products may not be as good, but they are selling well.
During my stay in the USA, I saw a six-year-old girl asking the waiter what he would recommend to her, all by herself. This is an example of excellent soft skills. Americans have the courage to try great things and innovations. The technical quality of Tesla cars is far from the technical quality of European cars, but with confidence, courage and marketing, this company managed to become a world leader in its industry. I could argue that Tesla is not a top-class car, but it has had results, it sets trends, and Elon Musk will maybe get to Mars thanks to the car. Meanwhile, we will finish building a high-speed railway between Prague and Kladno in 2032.
How do you approach innovation?
Together with MTX Group, we are working on innovating on the level of elementary research and development. We want to have the courage to try something that may not even work out. In Europe, we are inspired by automated warehouses and have become the exclusive supplier of automated warehouse solutions for the Austrian company TGW. We are developing a few machines for Amazon distribution centers. Thanks to our solutions, our clients such as Amazon and Decathlon are able to sort 40,000 items per hour. That is the future. If companies want to deliver goods within three hours of ordering, it will not be possible without automation. E-commerce and warehouse management are a fantastic opportunity for us to grow from traditional manufacturing industry to other areas.
Companies working in IT and advanced industry have always had problems with finding people. How is ICE doing?
Over the past ten years, we have become a renowned employer. Thanks to our corporate culture based on freedom and modern principles, we have no trouble finding new people. During the pandemic, we had two thousand applicants. But finding the best is always a problem. Instead of complaining, however, we prefer to systematically work on recruitment.
What does freedom at work look like in an automation company? In IT, this is a fairly common thing. Programmers can work from anywhere, but you need to be physically in contact with production and machines.
In our case, freedom means that people can choose their style of work, to the extent that they don’t endanger the work of others or their project. It’s more challenging than IT, because our programmers have to be present during the assembly and start the robots. It’s not purely about physical freedom, but about the ability to choose a style or time of work. This comes with great responsibility. Everyone in our team knows their position in the project and what they need to do to make it run well.
So, you’re inspired by Netflix, for example? Its cofounder, Reed Hastings, describes the company’s corporate culture nicely in his book No Rules Rules.
Yes, Hastings and Netflix are our biggest inspiration. Among other things, we try to give feedback immediately.
How do you prevent people from abusing this approach?
It is all about who you recruit. We try to explain this during recruiting. ICE is not a job for everyone. If someone abused our work culture, they wouldn‘t last long in our company. The performance team would fire them. If you play football and you don’t run much, you‘ll get away with it for a while, but soon your teammates will start saying that you should run with them.
