Southeast Iowa manufacturing companies look to automation as the way of the future

As technology further develops and moves forward, manufacturing companies across southeast Iowa are continuing to look at ways to further use automation to increase their efficiency and quality of products.

Lomont Molding LLC, a plastic injection molding company based in Mt. Pleasant, plans to move ahead with automation as much as it can with existing technology, according to director of corporate communications, Carl Frank. While the automation is currently focused on the plant floor, eventually it also will move to ancillary processes such as packaging and shipping.

Frank said automation gives companies a competitive edge, especially for companies that have large product volume demands and run 24 hours through the workweek.

'You need to move in that direction because of the advantage it gives you in efficiencies and costs,” he said, 'it allows you to be more aggressive and that corresponds to competitive pricing and quality control.”

Like companies looking to stay on top of the most current technology, Lomont has begun adopting Industry 4.0 Manufacturing, which uses real-time data collected from machines to make adjustments to manufacturing and drive business.

Frank explained there has been some push back on the changes to the manufacturing industry because of fears of potential displacement of workers, but said the company will never be 'completely lights out,” or completely void of people.

'You always have to have technicians and so forth,” Frank said.

He added the company also chooses not to see automation and technological advancement as replacing people, but an opportunity to enhance their workers.

'There are people who argue unemployment will go up based on displacement. We don't feel that way. Automation is certainly going to change the complexion of the way jobs are done but the people who work for us are going to be retrained and reassigned and so forth,” he explained.

Frank said with Industry 4.0, workers are 'better able to realize they have a career” and gives them the 'opportunity to expand their ability to do their jobs.”

'What 4.0 brings to our company, we're seeing it now. People are saying, ‘hey I'm learning new skills. I'm learning I can do more than I thought I could do.' They're more satisfied with what they're doing. It changes the culture of the company and that's what we're all about,” Frank added.

For Agri-Industrial Plastics Company in Fairfield, automation is similarly linked to workforce. President Lori Schaefer-Weaton said automation is a way for the company to expand and grow with the amount of workers available in their area.

'We are in Fairfield, Iowa and we have just over 200 employees today. We're probably never going to get much bigger than that on a people standpoint but we want to continue to grow and take in new jobs. I'd rather hire 10 people to program robots and use automation to handle mundane, repeatable tasks,” she said.

Schaefer-Weaton echoed Frank's sentiments about automation and the capacities it allows the company to raise the skillets of workers.

'We'll never replace the people side of it. With more automation will be more maintenance and more people who know how to program those machines. We're going to be using the people we have and training them,” she added.

For Agri-Industrial Plastics, much of their automation is in robotics, a transition that has occurred over the last ten to fifteen years. Geoff Ward, Agri-Industrial's director of engineering, said the company is looking for more and more uses of the robots, including assembly of components. Currently, many of the machines are most commonly used for drilling, routing and other similar tasks.

For a company that does custom molding, it's difficult to completely automate, Ward explained.

'We're changing jobs on a daily basis so it's difficult to fully automate, which is why it's important for us to hire good talent that can program the robots,” Ward said, 'It's a great tool and very important, but it's not a fix all for everything. We still need good people and more skilled people to program and maintain the machines.”

Schaefer-Weaton added the next generation of workers who have a greater familiarity with robotics and programming than any group before them, manufacturing could be an exciting career opportunity.

'Robotics programming is second nature to this generation. It's a great fit in terms of opportunity. In our automation group, we've hired six people out of Indian Hills in the last three years. Their talent and how they problem-solve is amazing, so it's a huge opportunity for people who want to do something with technology,” she said.

While automation has made its mark on most companies, for certain departments within manufacturing plants, it may never be a factor in their processes. Maintenance supervisors for Iowa Fertilizer Company Ralph Bennett and Nathan Fraise said their departments cannot be automated and workers will always be needed.

'Somebody's still got to work on that stuff. My craft, the people I supervise, there's no automation. You need a person out there in the field. Automation is not really a factor. For example, if you have a ruptured pipe out in the field, you can't have a robot out there to cut it up and weld it in for you, you're going to need a body out there and a head on the shoulders that can handle it,” Bennett said.

Specialty trade skills will still be needed to maintain and fix the automation, Fraise added, but fears that automation will take over jobs has remained a persistent myth Fraise and Bennett have battled against to get the necessary workforce.

'Kids just don't know enough about it. They're not taught in school about manufacturing careers or the trades but we need them. We'll always need people, even with automation,” Fraise said.