Leading in Automation

In this special episode of Enabling Automation, host Simon Drexler is joined by ATS Corporation CEO Andrew Hider live from the ATS Leadership Conference. Andrew shares his thoughts on staying current with automation trends, areas of change, balancing entrepreneurial spirit an structure, and leadership influence and impact.

What we discuss:

• How do you stay current with automation trends?
• Areas of change
• The balance of entrepreneurial spirit and structure
• Leadership influences and driving impact

Host: Simon Drexler, ATS Corporation (ATS Products Group)

Simon has been in the automation industry for approximately 15 years in a variety of roles, ranging from application engineering to business leadership, as well as serving several different industries and phases of the automation lifecycle.

Guest: Andrew Hider, ATS Corporation 

Hider is the Chief Executive Officer of ATS Corporation. He is an experienced executive with a track record of success founded on his ability to drive business growth and operational performance in complex business environments and across multiple industries including transportation, advanced technology, instrumentation and industrial products.

——Full Transcript of Enabling Automation: S3, Special Episode——

SD: Welcome to the Enabling Automation podcast. I’m your host, Simon Drexler. I’ve been a part of the automation industry for more than 17 years now, with varying roles at both large and small companies.

SD: Welcome to a special episode of the Enabling Automation Podcast, where we’re recording live from the ATS Leadership Conference in Washington, DC. The purpose of our podcast is to bring experts from across the ATS Corporation to discuss topics in support of those listening that are trying to scale their operations with technology and automation. In this episode, we will discuss leading and automation, and who better to have that conversation with than our CEO, Andrew Hider? Andrew, can you give an introduction to the listener base?

AH: So, good morning and thank you for having me, Simon. Look, when we talk about leading in in innovation and leading in automation, it really is about our collective focus on how we bring value to our customers and ultimately, how we impact the markets we serve. And so we’re going to get into a lot of discussion around our ever evolving focus on technology, on solutions, really driving that capability and what it means to our customer base.

SD: And you touched on a really important part of automation in general. The industry moves so quickly because of the nature of the technology involved in trying to solve new problems. Andrew, how do you stay current with the automation trends that impact ATS?

AH: Yeah, so, Simon, look, I’m a pretty simple guy and I start with the customer and I will often reference something called the voice of customer, where if you really sit and listen, they’ll tell you where their issues are. So when we think about automation, we talk about how we’re going to be building products and how we’re going to solve and help our customers solve their challenges. Customers don’t just want a product anymore. They want a product. They want high quality. They want low risk. But they also want to know are they maximizing their process? Are they really driving impact? When we think about the customers we have, many of them are launching new solutions and these solutions are changing the game and their industries. Whether it’s fighting cancer, whether it’s a product that is that is helping with obesity, or even an area around nuclear or the EV shift, but they rely more and more on ATS and others like us to really drive that impact, to get them to market faster and not only get to market, but then to stay at that level. And, you know, I think about a customer that we had right off of COVID, and she was talking me a bit about her product and their solution set, where it helped resolve a pain that a patient had in a much faster pace. So she was talking about how their product was slowed down because there have been supply chain challenges. And she looked at us not only for our solution, but then how we serve, support and have digital capability after. And so they’re looking to us not just for data anymore. They’re looking for us to really help them align around getting their product to market and continuing to get their product to market. It really does stretch out our capability, also stretches our ability to drive that level of insight, drive that level of action with our customer base. You started to touch on something that’s really near to my heart, which is that that customer journey and trying to stretch and offer more value. And so with a company that’s technologically focused, like ATS, we solve really complicated problems for our customers and have done so historically.

SD: Are you seeing some areas of real change where customers are coming to ask for something more, or something they haven’t asked for before?

AH: You know, if you think about and I’m going to step back and do a bit of a macro trend right now and the challenges our customers are faced with. So you have you have issues like labor shortage. You have issues like they’re trying to do a supply chain de-risk, they’re onshoring, they’re building capability where they’ve got customer base. And by the way, when they go through that journey they’re realizing the labor market isn’t exactly what it needs to be. And they’re having massive turnovers. And if you don’t remember, one of our customers was talking about it very passionately at one of our leadership conferences where they had 25% turnover. When they would train somebody, they would then have to train somebody new. And so when we think about the way we can evolve and impact, it really is aligned around that alignment to technology. But understanding the bigger dynamics that our customers are faced with and really driving solutions that help them overcome those, those challenges. And, you know, we have we have capability around digital, whether it’s, you know, predictive maintenance, on demand training, on demand support. But we’re also shifting in to the ability to utilize vision, our software platform, as well as our systems to truly enable AI. And you know, I think through one of the examples that I have, and it was really insightful and I was walking on our or walking in our technology group in Cambridge, Ontario and Hang, you know, I was walking through an engineer and Hang came to me and she said, “Andrew, I want to show you something. I want to show you something that we’re driving real impact on.” And it really stuck with me because she showed me how she was utilizing vision to identify when they had issues with a defect, and why it was really impactful was what would happen in the past was that you would and it was an auto injector that supports the GLP-1 space is you would get to the end and then you’d find out you have an issue. Well, Hang brought it way up front and she was able to identify very early on utilizing pattern recognition to understand that there’s a defect. And because we have a SuperTrak platform that’s independent motion, they could bring the second one in to replace it to not miss a beat on their output. And so what she was so passionate about, she said “One, we saved the customer money because they don’t continue to add value to a non-value product. Number two, we can help them achieve greater output.” And that’s how we use technology. And so it’s that that identifying a customer base, utilizing our vision, our technology, our software, and our systems to maximize that impact. And it’s that’s just one of the examples. But when I think about AI and I think about our enablement, we’re really on the cusp. I don’t know where it’s going to evolve to. I don’t know where, you know, we’re going to take it or where the technology is going to take us. But I know one thing. We’re going to be able to utilize it to drive impact, and it is going to be an impact area, but it’s about how do we harness that? How do we how do we really hone that and drive that for value for our customers? So I go back to that constant discussion around VOC, because if you listen, they’ll really tell you where their pain points are. Then we can build it into our process and we can drive for results.

SD: That’s a great example, Andrew. And talking about these new offerings and driving additional value, a really key focus on VOC. There’s a lot of entrepreneurial spirit in that. Starting up a new business, starting up a new initiative could be intrapreneurship, and that’s commonly used as a tool to ignite growth, either inside of large companies or small. In ATS, how do you balance the entrepreneurial freedoms with structure of a large organization?

AH: Yeah, and I love the word ignite because it’s really about setting  that tone that, fire. And, and you know, again, back to my, my earlier example of being simple. It’s our ABM in action. And when you look at the ABM, if you really break it down, it’s three letters, but it’s more the DNA, the culture of ATS around measure what matters most. And hammer it and hammer it again. And we do that with technology. We do that with understanding pain points. We do that with how we want to continue to improve. And so when I think through, you know, how do we as leaders enable our employee base to drive impact? It’s through that tool. It’s through giving them the empowerment, giving them the capability and also autonomy to really drive that impact. So we wrestle at ATS, we wrestle a bit around, you know, corporate and decentralized. And I’m a believer in the decentralized model because it puts the power in the business unit. It puts the power in the people, puts the ability to drive change for your customers. Because a customer in, in pharma is going to be different than radio pharma, it’s going to be different than medical devices. But we truly drive that ability at the lowest level in our organization to make change, positive change. And when you’re off to identify quickly and get back on track, you know, and we’ll often talk about fail, fail fast and pivot. And you know, we want, we encourage and we don’t talk about it enough. But we encourage our innovation leaders or innovation teams to make a mistake, to take a risk, to try and dare to do the impossible. Because what’s the worst case scenario? You go back and do it the old way. So I just encourage our team and folks in this room and, and on the, on the podcast, how do you be brave? How do you be bold? And how do you encourage that level of engagement at every level within your organization? Because that’s when you truly maximize your impact. I think that’s great advice for those listening, both live here and on the podcast is the worst case scenario when you try something new is it doesn’t work and then you go back to doing what you did before. And so you lose a little bit of time, but you learn something along the way. You learn something as part of your journey.

SD: Exactly. Andrew, we’re very fortunate to be here at the leadership conference. We’ve heard a number of leadership stories and leadership journeys. Is there someone from your past that you’ve experienced that’s really illustrated a great example of leadership in automation?

AH: You know, so, so, so many examples I have throughout my career. But I’ll draw on one and the gentleman’s name is Mo Mattocks. And it was a time when I was brought in to drive impact. So I was brought in to help a business figure out on time delivery. And they were delivering a product 50% on time. And so that means 50% of times your customers were really pissed at you. And they brought me in to help them achieve greater success. And I came in and I had the data. I was able to use that for insight. And I drove and I kept hammering that we need to get better, we need to get better. And I had the passion around the empowerment to drive change for customers because, right, we were losing customers. So we had to make sure we kept them and kept growing with them. And I let my drive for data, drive for solution outpace my ability to bring the team along. And I learned a really valuable lesson from Mo and he was walking with me between buildings one time, and he said, “Andrew, you know what? You’re going to drive impact and we will get better. We’re going to get to the 95% on times over. We will do it. And you have a lot of the data, a lot of the insight, but you’re going to lose a lot of people on the way. And until you figure out how to bring the team along in the journey, you won’t you won’t create sustainment. You won’t. When you leave, what’s the impact on it?” And it really made me step back and you basically said, nobody’s going to want to work with you on this. So real direct feedback, real direct coaching. And I say that because we might have the best solution, we might have the best technology, we might have the best capability. But if we can’t clearly articulate it to our customers, or if we can’t bring our employees along in that journey, in our in our teams, along in that journey, then we really don’t drive the impact we expect. And so as we’re going through and we’re trying to figure out our path and there’s always challenges ahead, the journey never ends. And I love the journey. We have to empower. We have to embrace. We have to bring the team along with us because that’s how you drive the greatest level of impact, and that’s how you drive the greatest level of empowerment. So that’s stuck with me to this day.

SD: I think it’s a great example because when you’re driving change and you’re really, truly building something, the hard part sustaining that so you can build the next step. And so that’s a very apt example of how you apply technology and how you scale an organization. So thank you very much.

SD: Andrew, in general, thank you very much for agreeing to join our podcast today. We’ve created this special episode not only for those listening, but for those here in attendance. And I hope you were able to take some insights away from Andrew’s discussion and obvious passion for the industry. So thank you very much for joining us.

AH: Well, appreciate you having me. Thank you Simon.

SD: And as always, for those listening, if you enjoyed the podcast, we will continue to post new content monthly and we hope that we’re providing value and creating our purpose of sharing insights from across the ATS Corporation to help you along with your own journey. Thank you so much.