Episode 46: Richard Lynch, Timothy Gotsick; MacDermid Enthone Industrial Solutions

[music] Welcome to Online Products Finishing's podcast for coders and finishers. I'm your host, Scott Francis, editor of Products Finishing. Recently, PF attended Serf in 2024, the National Association for Surface Finishing's Industry Trade Show and Technical Conference. The annual event is always a good opportunity to connect with industry experts and learn about the latest trends in surface finishing. In this episode of Online, we speak with two experts from McDermott and Throne Industrial Solutions. Join us as we talk with Richard Lynch, Senior Global Vice President and Timothy Gottzeg, VP of Technology. We'll dig in after a quick word from our sponsor. Whether you're the shop manager, system engineer, or powder coder, once you decide to make GAMEA an integral part of your shop, you'll understand how simple it is to be so productive. GAMEA powder coding systems offer you greater efficiencies while producing high-quality results. We provide the very best in powder delivery, application technology, and connectivity for smarter factory automation. With GAMEA, you get maximum performance and repeatability, whether you're on the shop floor or away from it. For more information, visit completeitwithgAMEA.com. To speak with a representative or schedule a demonstration, call 877-437-6771. That's 877-437-6771. And be sure to mention Products Finishing Magazine. When you want to know that everything is covered, complete it with GAMEA. Welcome to Online, Products Finishing's podcast for coders and finishers. I'm your host, Scott Francis, Editor of Products Finishing, and we're here at Surfing 2024, speaking with experts at Middermity and Throne Industrial Solutions. And today's guest is Senior Global Vice President Richard Lynch. Richard, welcome to Online. Thanks, Scott. I'm pleased to be here. So, what trends and topics are you most excited about at this year's event? Well, you know, I make it a point to come to Surfing every year, no matter where I am in the world. In fact, I flew in last night from Europe just to be here, because it's important. And I think while there's the content portion of being here, seeing the latest technologies, from me, this is where I'm able to get it to see and visit with a nice cross section of our customers, and really make sure that our businesses continues to be aligned to the needs of our customers. And really, what's important to our customers is what's important to us. And so, we have, in our business, we operate with a series of short medium and long-term strategic objectives, and we really align those every year. And that is how we decide how we deploy capital, where we invest, how we invest in resources. And so, we have our plan, and so these types of events provide me a great opportunity to speak directly with our customers, and ensure that we're properly aligned. Thinking about developing applications, some of the newest friends in the industry, EVs are occupying a growing portion of the automotive market. Like to hear kind of your thoughts on sort of how that's headed, what finishers need to be thinking about as the mix of parts that are necessary for driving these trends forward. It means a lot. I mean, it's very, very exciting. I think, you know, in the automotive space, which has a long legacy of being pretty conservative, particularly in the Western OEM side, that model is really in disarray right now. There's lots and lots of change. So, I think in the finishing industry, you know, we're adept and used to aligning to the end market and users' needs. And most of our customers, every single day, are working through with their customers how to find innovative solutions. But this is different, right, because we're solving for really what is an unknown end state. The technology is still evolving. People's designs are evolving. And what we have found is that the OEMs and the tiers in particular have really come to rely on our input. We're actually investing more and more resources in that area. But I think times of change are exciting because it brings opportunity. And I can say, you know, in my 35 years in the business, I have never seen the level of new opportunity generation that's happening right now. I mean, the opportunities that we've developed with our customers and the programs that we are working with, the OEMs and the tiers with now, I mean, is just magnified like 10X. It's incredible. And we've had to continue to invest more resource to support all this innovation. So, I think those that embrace that change, that understand the needs of new ways to look at things and to do things, it's really a critical time or it will pass you by. And I think what we're finding is customers that are more oriented that way, that are more progressive, that are open to talking about new technology, new application, that those are the ones that are benefiting now. And I believe will benefit over the next several years because, you know, the rate of EV adoption is different all over the world. And I think that our position in the Asia-China market, for example, has really, really helped us. I mean, over the last several years, you know, Chinese OEMs have gone from 5% market share to 60% market share. We're right in the middle of that. You know, we have a full team of people that are dedicated to working with Chinese OEMs and tiers. And that knowledge and insight that we've gained over these last several years is really helping to inform how we can support our customers all over the world now and going forward. Let's shift to another really important trend, environmental responsibility. Now more than ever, we hear a conversation that has changed in its tone. And there's less just touting of sustainable benefits. It's become more of just an expectation from OEMs and tiers. I'd like to hear your thoughts on the evolution of this conversation about sustainability and the responsibility that everyone in the industry has. You know, it's something that's real. And I think, while this is not a new conversation, I mean, I believe that there certainly has been a history of just buzzwords and greenwashing, if you will. But the reality is, I mean, we've invested, and I believe, you know, the very best players in our industry continue to invest in not only sustainable solutions, technology wise, but also helping people understand how to optimize and reduce the footprint of our industry. I mean, for example, you know, we have an 86 page ESG report on our website that's, you know, fully transparent. And we're doing a really good job at some things where we still have a long way to go and others. At least our goals and our objectives and our measurements are all there. And I think that is what I ultimately hope that the industry embraces and will need to embrace is the quantification of your contribution. And now, you know, I think the entire industry is really working hard to quantify their carbon footprint and what that looks like. And when we realize that the plating is a very positive carbon footprint when compared to other technologies and the ability for us to recycle and reuse and recapture in the value chain, you know, is a real advantage that we have to make sure the entire supply chain understands. The industry has a long history of dealing with increasing and improving regulatory environments. And while in the moment, it seems very intense and difficult. Ultimately, this is about continuous improvement and continuing to be a better global citizen. And I think we have a long track record of success. We have a track record here. A lot of this track record that is happening that exists is oriented around the OEMs acceptance of newer technologies that we've all invested in in the customer base and in the supplier base. You know, a trivalent chrome finishes been around for over 30 years well understood by the OEM community. It is good to finally see real traction there. We can make huge progress eliminating the use of hexavalent chrome. I think chemicals like PFAS are relatively new to the scene in terms of like real visibility and concern in the public space. But those things are real. And having technologies that are ready and able to be used in the market space and then having a supply chain that's willing to accept the use of those technologies is where we're at right now. So I think while change is unsettling, the reality is change brings an opportunity for the very best companies and the very best businesses to excel and to do extremely well. And so I think that's I think that's where we're at now. And that's why we're continuing to invest. I mean, I don't think anybody thinks the global economy is on fire right now. It is not. I mean, I think there's the U.S. economy since we're here in the U.S. there's a lot of headlines around just how strong the consumer has been that our economy is leading economy in the world. But we know in the manufacturing sector it has been relatively weak. And so how do you prioritize that? And that's what we've been really committed to continuing to invest in a space despite some weak markets. And fortunately, being able to grow in those times when things are weak allows is specifically being the global business having really strong portions of our business portfolio both geographically diverse. but also in the industries that we support and their health allows us to continue to be strong and to continue to invest in these technologies when things are a little more challenging. You talked a bit about this. I'm wondering if you can offer your own ideas on how to accelerate some of the collaboration and discussions that need to happen. Well, I think every industry is different, right? And how they adopt and evaluate and basically ultimately approve the use of new technologies is different in all of these spaces. So from our perspective, we invest heavily to directly engage with those OEMs and tiers in those communities and in those value chains. But we also invest in organizations like the NESF. I mean, so you'll find so we are here, we are always here. We participate very intensely on the technology side. We also add a lot of regulatory expertise and market expertise at the government advocacy level to try to help, if we can provide any information at all that supports our industry and helps us convey to different supply chains that the NESF supports. And I think the educational programs provided through trade organizations really help us to engage these other supply chains. So for our industry, it is heavily weighted toward automotive. There's a lot of automotive volume and it becomes more fragmented outside of that. But a lot of the technology and the learnings and the data that we generate is useful across to all of that. So we really value our partnerships with the trade associations that we're engaged with. And ultimately, our customer is closest to the customer and closest to those tier companies that often make a lot of the decisions and the evaluations around technologies. So we really try to listen to our customers and support our customers and align our resources and also our technology development around what our customers are telling us they need. And then we triangulate that back directly with the OEMs and the tiers and through the trade organizations to make sure that we're on the right path and delivering the value that ultimately serves the industry best. So another trend that I think is really at the forefront right now is automation and artificial intelligence, machine learning. I'd love to hear your thoughts on how you see that really influencing the industry and the changes that are happening now, but even more so where we think it's headed and what it's going to mean for this entire industry. So it's traveling deeper into the black box. So as much as we, as lots of uncertainty in the EV front we talked about and the transition happening in the automotive industry, this there is a lot of uncertainty or not a lot of clarity around exactly how AI directly impacts our business. All we know is it's happening and it will for sure. I mean from our perspective, it's about optimization where it's going to play a role. I think optimization is nothing new. I mean, our industry but also society in general gets better and better at what we're doing. We become more efficient. This is this is one of the keys to increasing productivity and this is yet another tool or an advancement and optimization which ultimately serves manufacturing very, very well. You know, and from our perspective, I mean we we generate so much data and and and operate globally and it's incredibly complex to the amount of chemistry and unique chemicals that we use to serve individual markets all around the world and then to combine all of that data into more deeply understand how we can be more efficient in our supply chains, allows us to continue to remain even more competitive which in turn allows our customers to remain more competitive. So, so you know at the risk of sound of very vanilla, it is really about using more of the data that's available to us and I think it's you know it's well publicized and there's a crazy stat like, you know, less than 1% of all the data that's generated is actually used for anything. So, you think about it if if 5% of the data is used, you know, it is magnitudes more. So, I think so I think ultimately the real benefit is using and finding use for all the data that's currently being generated and has been generated for quite some time and then being able to apply it toward optimization and efficiency. So, where it ends up we'll see but it's going to be an interesting journey and we we know we're on that journey right now for sure. So, we've touched on several trends. I'd like to hear your thoughts on challenges facing the industry right now. What do you think are the biggest challenges and things that we need to address in the coming years? I mean we talked a lot about the rate of change, you know, one thing when you go through these plateaus where there's not a lot of change either regulatory wise or in actual technology being serving the end user markets. Not everybody adapts to change well but the ones that do adapt well are ultimately the winners but I think we're going to continue to have challenges around energy, around recycling, reuse some materials, water, you know, again this is, you know, we've made several investments around wastewater water cure chemistries to help support our customers, you know, also in the treatment of wastewater and the ability to get zero liquid discharge situations which is ultimately where our industry needs to be and we're going to continue to invest in those spaces. So, I think, you know, you have massive change happening in the end markets that our customers are serving and at the same time we have these needs and drivers where we need to become more efficient in the use of electricity, we need to be able to recapture reuse materials and reduce our footprint to continue to operate and we need to transition to new technologies. So, so these are very intensive things that don't allow people to be passive bystanders. You've been listening to Omelon, the official podcast of products finishing. Many thanks to Richard Lynch, senior global vice president with McDermott and Thon industrial solutions for taking time to speak with us at Serfen 2024. We're going to take a quick break for a word from our sponsor and when we return we'll hear from McDermott's VP of Technology, Timothy Gottsick. Stay tuned. Synchronized monitoring and control of your entire automated process is the core of GAME's Magic Control 4.0 data management system with options like line management offering deeper insight into productivity and consumption or energy management allowing you to monitor and save both energy and air consumption or batch management offering tracking of powder used to coat production batches. GAME provides the very best in technology and connectivity for smarter factory automation. To learn more about GAME's Magic Control 4.0 data management system visit completeitwithgamer.com. To speak with a representative or schedule a demonstration call 877-437-6771. That's 877-437-6771. Connect it, control it, track it, synchronize it, complete it with GAME. Welcome to Online Products Finishing's podcast for coders and finishers. I'm Scott Francis, Edgar of Products Finishing. We're here at Surfing 2024 speaking with experts at McDermott and Thon about trends and advancements in surface finishing industry. Today we're speaking with Timothy Gottsick VP of Technology from McDermott and Thon Industrial Solutions. Timothy, welcome to Online. Thank you Scott. Thank you for having me. Timothy, what trends and topics are you paying the most attention to here at Surfing? Well, I'd say the top two that I'm looking for is number one, we're always on the lookout for needs that are being caused by regulatory changes. So things like PFAS, Chrome 6 regulations, things like that. We want to know what affects people are feeling in the field on those and how we can connect our work with theirs. The other one is around sustainability, which is sort of related. But understanding again, what form do people need sustainability to take in order to be effective for their business, we've used sustainability both in sort of the classic sense of like environmental footprint and regulatory compliance. But also in the sense of business sustainability, we obviously need our customers to be profitable. And so we want to know exactly what pressures they're feeling and how we can help them adapt to whatever regulations or trends are coming in the marketplace. So switching gears, EVs and new energy vehicles are occupying an increasing share of the overall automotive market. I wonder if you could speak to some of the emerging technologies that are playing a role in enabling us to produce those at higher rates and more effectively. Yeah, this is a big topic and it's a personal interest to me. I am a BEV owner. I have a Chevy Bolt, which I'm very happy with, by the way. And so we are looking very, very deeply into exactly how this is going to affect the surface finishing world and what we can do with technology to make that work better. There are a couple of areas that are of prime concern. One that we're seeing a lot of interest in is in thermal management of the batteries themselves and particularly the inverter. So when you change the DC electricity that comes out of the batteries into AC that runs the traction motors, it's not 100% efficient and you do create some heat. Being able to move that quickly away from the inverter chips. helps them run more efficiently and more stably in last longer, and that involves a, you know, pretty typical heat flow kind of thing where you're attaching the chip to a heat sink, and then that heat sink is cooled off and by a, you know, a typical glycol sort of liquid coolant. So being able to plate all the different layers depending upon whether somebody wants to use an aluminum-based heat sink or a copper-based heat sink, being able to add any corrosion layers there that are also compatible with the need to do an attach all the way up to the chip is very, very important, and so we, together with our colleagues in McDermott Alpha solutions, are able to provide all of the layers, the EN, the sulfamate nickel, the, you know, tin or silver layers that are needed to allow that attach to the chip, and then our colleagues in McDermott Alpha provide centered silver attached materials as well as sodders that are that final connection to the base of the chip. So that's one particular application we're spending a lot of time on our global product line director for EN, Helmut Horst themka gave a presentation in Europe recently on our work in that area, and it's one where we'll continue to invest a lot because there's a lot going on there. We're also seeing interest in, you know, bus bars, whether, you know, bus bars span the range from, you know, small things that are usually described as current collectors, or you're collecting individual cells currents into a module in the battery pack all the way up to, you know, sort of utility scale electrification initiatives. And so all of those have different requirements and particularly within the battery pack. One of the things we're seeing is a desire for automated assembly of those batteries because many of the battery packs are essentially, you know, thousands of individual cells that are ganged together to create the full battery pack. So being able to do the attachment of those to the current collector automated off my laser welding or something like that is very important to production efficiency. And so the finish on that current collector needs to be optimized to work well with the laser welding process. So this is a new area for us. I mean, it was, you know, it was not something that people were thinking about a lot in the past. So we are working with companies and universities that are doing this welding process to understand how we can optimize that finish for a low energy, fast and efficient welding process for the production of battery packs. So those are, those are just a couple. There are a few others that I think will be interesting to look at, but they're a little further out. Things like light weighting is a huge impact and we of course have aluminum is being heavily used in an attempt to increase range. So we have a lot of aluminum finishing projects that are underway and we have a full line of products to, you know, do aluminum finishing, whether it's simple adhesion promoters, somebody can do a powder coating or a painting of it or anodized solutions and other things that we can do to help promote the area. So yeah, it's a big area. I think it's going to be a big, big, a fact on the automotive industry as a whole and that's a very important one to us. So we're eagerly trying to learn as much as possible and that's exciting in some ways because there's a lot of new entrants. In the United States, you don't see it quite as much, although there are a number of new entrants and certainly Tesla is prominent among them and is a world leader, but in some other markets, you know, particularly in China, the sheer number of companies that are making electric vehicles and hybrid vehicles now is exploding. And so learning how to deal with the world in which there's not 20 OEMs, there's 100 is a big challenge for us, but it's an exciting time in an area of technology to be working. Thinking about the kinds of materials that are going to be used for EVs and those requirements for finishers, can you speak a little bit to what kind of things that finishers need to be thinking about as they think about the kind of things that they're going to be finishing? It's a good question and I can amplify a little bit on what I said before about some of the applications we're doing. So we're dealing with a lot of electrical engineers now for the first time. It used to be you were dealing primarily with mechanical engineers and we're dealing with a lot of electrical engineers. So we need to understand both the physical properties as well as the electrical properties and all the other things. So for instance, in a bus bar, which is simply just a chunk of metal that carries current, there's actually a lot of decisions that have to be made there, many of which are governed by electrical engineers. So aluminum and copper, the most common choices, copper's got a little bit of an advantage in terms of conductivity, but it's denser and heavier and more expensive. Aluminum is cheap, reasonably good at conductivity, has some sort of native anti corrosion capability because of the aluminum oxide that forms. But understanding, once you go beyond that, when you need to add anti corrosion finishes to it or in particular when you need to decide the joint. So I mentioned before some of the connections of the batteries are done with welding, but a lot of the connections at the ends of bus bars are mechanical. And so there, we're able to take our expertise with understanding, you know, the fastener finish itself as well as the properties of the metal that we can plate on the bar to figure out what's the best way to get the best contact depending upon what the fastening method is going to be. And how, but now we're doing, in addition to all the corrosion measurements, we're doing measurements of electrical resistivity across those connections, which is frankly new for us. But again, it's exciting to be able to take the skills that we have and apply them in this new area. So as we think about some of the solutions that we've already used, things like plating on plastics that traditionally may be been used in the decorative realm, are you seeing any places where some of the tools that we already have at our disposal may be shifting in the way that they're being used, becoming more of a functional type of solution. Yes, yes, we definitely are seeing this. So for instance, one of the areas you're looking at and it's again related to light waiting, the incredible emphasis on reducing the mass of the car is the idea of even though aluminum is relatively lightweight and it's what's commonly used for the housings for motors and inverters and that sort of thing, there are companies that are looking at using all-americ substrates for their, you know, their lightweight capability. And in many cases, the only drawback to that is that you now have a vehicle which is hugely dependent upon our electronic components. So electro-magnetic interference and shielding of all those components is important. So if you want to switch your inverter over from an aluminum case to a polymeric case, you need to do something about that shielding. So we're doing some tests with polymer manufacturers and OEMs to look at plating on top of that to restore the shielding performance while giving them the option of using a different substrate. We also are seeing decorative finishes like silver and things like that because of the extremely high conductivity that's now being used in high performance applications. So yeah, we are seeing boundaries that used to exist between these technologies, they used to fit in these nice narrow niches. They're now moving across and so we have applications where it crosses previous product line boundaries, frankly, which is interesting because sometimes the demands on the mar different now than it was when it was a purely decorative finish. So what about some of the processes themselves? We hear so much about automation, AI and machine learning. What kind of things are you seeing that are indicators of how those trends are going to play into some of this as well? Yeah, well, I mean automation is obviously generally a benefit to production in terms of consistency and the labor cost and that sort of thing. So I think that will continue to be a force. AI is the big new kid on the block in terms of technology and I think it's going to change a lot of things, but we're very early in the story right now. We are definitely working with AI tools to understand what we can use them for and so this spans the full range from how can it impact research, which is what I'm primarily concerned with, but probably the first place it's being applied it really aggressively is in the supply chain because you've got a lot of supply chain complexity where we're manufacturing in 20 different places around the globe and supplying companies all around. It's imperative that we be able to do that consistently, no matter where anybody is choosing to use the material and to manage what is a fairly large manufacturing and inventory footprint. So AI is very good for those sorts of things that are very complex, not difficult in the sense that the rules are generally the same. It's like put inventory where you need it, don't keep it where you don't, but figuring out the complexity on that scale can be very difficult. AI I think is going to be a really helpful tool for that and it's going to allow people to focus on value added activities, interacting with customers, we're very big into technical service and things like that. I would much rather have our people focus on those activities interacting directly with customers than trying to sort out where do I ship this material and that kind of thing, which I think AI is going to be very important for making some of those repetitive relatively simple decisions that do have a lot of different data inputs that are often not well structured. And if we can turn those over to AI, I think that's going to allow us to interact more directly with customers and what I think will be better for us and them. So with all of this evolution in processes and the way that things are working and manufacturing, what about looking Looking at some of like other sectors, I'm thinking specifically of lessons maybe between aerospace and automotive, particularly as we're seeing a lot of new technologies, air taxis, UAM type of work, what kind of lessons do you think are being learned right now that are going to play in the way that both aerospace and automobiles are both being approached in the future? It is interesting. Aerospace has always been a fascinating area for us because the reliability and the safety requirements there are so high. So it's often sort of like an incubator for a lot of these technologies that because of those high demands they can support more investigation and more costly processes and that gives us an opportunity to reach a scale where we can start to bring that cost down. So I think aerospace will continue to serve that function of how do we continue to bring that safety and dependability but also bring the cost down to where it's accessible in areas like automobiles that don't have quite the same demands. So that's an area that I expect we will continue to focus on. And again, you mentioned air taxis. I saw a presentation recently about a company here in Georgia that is actually building a factory to it's called Archer Aviation that's going to build air taxis that are going to be basically to get you to the airport, right? So it's going to have a 150 mile range or something like that to take three or four people to the airport. And when you look at how those are built it's remarkably similar to an EV car in terms of the architecture. It is just batteries and a motor. But obviously when you're a few thousand feet in the air the consequences of a failure are much higher. So I think again it's going to serve that same function even with electrical vehicles where all right you're going to have initially it's going to be done through a brute force approach with redundancy of all the systems. And then as people get more comfortable with them you'll see us going down to high reliability functions that allow those to be simplified. And again that will trickle down into EVs. It's kind of like when you got on a plane to go over the ocean it used to always have four engines on it right. Now we go over the Atlantic all the time on planes that have two engines and nobody worries about it because they're that much more reliable and powerful. And I think the same thing is going to happen in that area. So it's again it's an interesting area to participate in because I do think that even though you know the number of air taxis in the next few years is not going to be enormous. It is going to teach us some very interesting lessons that are going to apply in other forms of transportation. So last question what do you see as the biggest challenges in the finishing industry today and what advice maybe you have or observations do you have in insights for where we're sort of headed and what we should keep in mind as we move forward. Well I mean I think the surface finishing industry has a bright future but I think there's some things that we need to concentrate on. Number one is I think the you know we need to be able to adapt faster in order to keep up with the technology demands that are being made on the industry. I think the other area is sustainability. You know there is increasing regulatory pressure and I think you know it's it's sort of an ethical responsibility for us as people in the industry to demonstrate the ability to operate these businesses safely and avoid leaving behind residues that harm the communities that we serve. So we're continuing to invest a lot in things like lower temperature processes, lower temperature cleaning processes that are used throughout industry to reduce the energy footprint and therefore the carbon footprint that we have while simultaneously keeping in mind you know business sustainability. If I give you a process that's more sustainable but more expensive that's going to be very difficult to implement. So we recognize we have responsibility to provide options that are both sustainable and environmental as well as in a business context. So that's you know that's what we're going to try and bring the industry and I think I do appreciate the fact that the industry is is willing to look at those solutions and work with us and I think that's that's going to be the important thing. A lot of the problems we're facing now are things that it's going to take more than isolated actors and supply chain to fix them. So I think we're going to see you know a need we're working with our vendors we're working with our customers and I think you're going to see that more collaboration up and down the supply chain to solve the very big problems that all of us need to in order to keep everything vital and moving along. You've been listening to On the Line, the official podcast of products finishing. Many thanks to our guest for this episode Richard Lynch and Timothy Gottsick of McDermott and Throne Industrial Solutions. For more episodes of On the Line you can listen wherever you get your podcasts or visit pfonline.com/podcast. Thanks for listening.