Recommissioning a Mothballed Solar Cell Plant in Five Months: Lessons from an Automation Project
Manufacturing Happy Hour
On an episode of Manufacturing Happy Hour, the host sat down with Chris and Cassie of ET Tech Group to walk through one project: bringing a clean energy manufacturing facility, a solar cell plant that had been mothballed for several years, back into production. The team went from a front-end engineering and design (FEED) study to recommissioning in about five months. The conversation centered on one question: what does it take to deliver a brownfield automation project on a schedule that tight without cutting corners? The guests' answer rested less on technology than on early engagement, alignment with the client's priorities, relentless communication, and the discipline to stick with standards.
A Plant Where Automation Was an Afterthought
Cassie described how the project began. The client had operated the facility for a number of years, manufacturing solar cells, then mothballed it. When they decided to restart production, they began construction and demolition for major upgrades before thinking seriously about automation. In Cassie's telling, the client realized partway in that "there's this thing called automation that we think we're going to need," but they hadn't planned for it.
The situation was worse than a planning gap. During demolition, crews had destroyed wiring and other infrastructure that the facility's controls depended on. Chris described what the team later found. Wiring had been cut because someone assumed it was no longer needed, even though it was landed on existing I/O. The remote I/O connections for the chemical distribution system and the gas distribution system had been severed. Ethernet connections and many other electrical components were damaged. Chris didn't recall the specific piping items, but said a number of them were no longer functional and needed attention.
How Often Automation Gets Overlooked
The host asked how common it is for automation to be an afterthought. Chris joked that for automation engineers, "it's always an afterthought," then gave a serious answer. Their view is that automation has an outsized impact, relative to mechanical, electrical, and process work, on how well production staff can actually use a facility or piece of equipment. Some clients have savvy automation staff who can hand over clear requirements. Others don't understand it at all. Chris compared it to how most people don't understand why a given piece of software isn't working or isn't integrated. In Chris's opinion, that is how automation looks to other engineering disciplines and to managers.
Cassie said it is becoming more common for clients to think proactively about automation. Even so, many don't grasp the full range of options available to them. They may know certain tools without realizing everything "in the arsenal." Cassie offered a rule of thumb: in a large capital project, automation is typically around 10% of the total budget, but it is "a really critical 10%" needed to make manufacturing work the way the owner wants.
Chris later added a broader explanation. For much of their career, they didn't understand why automation was so often poorly considered. They came to believe that automation, as the industry practices it, isn't taught much in American schools, although that is starting to change. People therefore lack the vocabulary, and they may simply be more interested in the mechanical or process side. Chris said they couldn't blame people for not knowing what they don't know. Still, a poor facility startup is "extremely stressful, distracting and costly," so automation has to be accounted for either way.
The One Piece of Advice: Start Early
Asked for the single most common pitfall, Cassie said teams wait too long. They assume automation is one of the last things to go into a plant and put off the conversation. Cassie's advice was to start earlier than you think you need to and to engage an automation partner, because time lets a project accomplish much more. Chris agreed that starting early is the main point. They added two more: know what you don't know, and, from the integrator's side, find a partner you can trust who knows what they're doing and is working for you rather than for other interests.
Winning the Work: A Friday Conversation, a Monday Site Visit
The lead came through an ET Tech Group business development contact who was connected with people in the project's region. The client was struggling to get the plant back into production and reached out. Cassie joined an initial one-hour conversation with other business development staff and the end user to lay out the challenge and how the client might reach their goal.
One thing became clear in that first call: schedule was the critical driver. The client had committed production dates and delivery timelines to its own customers and needed to meet them. At the same time, the unknowns were enormous. There were no real drawings, very little knowledge of the installed base, and no clear picture of what construction had destroyed. Based on past experience with situations like this, ET Tech Group recommended starting with a FEED study.
According to Cassie, the deal closed quickly because of a concrete offer. The conversation took place on a Friday, and the team said an engineer, Chris Hunter, who had the right skill set and knew the small amount of existing automation platform on site, could be there the following Monday. Because the client prioritized schedule, Cassie said, it was easy for them to agree to start with a site study.
Chris recalled that around November or December 2023, the project was just something Cassie kept mentioning in leadership meetings while working on the proposal, until Chris got pulled in. From that outsider's vantage point, Chris credited Cassie with translating "automation speak" into how decisions would affect the client's production goals. Chris also credited the client. In hindsight, Chris said, the client team was unusually sharp because they recognized they weren't equipped to make these decisions alone. As Chris put it, the options are overwhelming if you're not in the business, before you even account for best practices like cybersecurity and safety.
Cassie connected this to one of ET Tech Group's core values, "humble confidence," and said the client team embodied it. They were confident in what they knew and could deliver, and humble about where they needed help.
Where Trust Was Won
Chris briefly took over the host's role to ask Cassie about the moment trust was established. Cassie pointed to that first conversation. The team laid out a clear action plan, promised an engineer on site the next business day, and followed through. Cassie called that "a pivotal trust building moment." Throughout the FEED study, trust grew because the team was open about issues and challenges and also acted as a partner in solving them. They raised problems so everyone could take part in the conversation, then proposed ways through them while asking for the client's input.
Protecting the FEED Study Under Schedule Pressure
The host asked how the team kept a five-month schedule from pressuring them into skipping or shortcutting the FEED study. Cassie said she has heard clients say they don't have time for one. This time, two factors made it work. First, because of the values alignment and the early work together, the client understood the big-picture gaps that had to be resolved before full execution could begin. Second, the team found creative ways to fast-track parts of the schedule so that not everything waited on the study.
The main example came from Nilesh Law. He proposed designing electrical panels that were slightly oversized and included some components the team wouldn't normally specify, so the panels would be guaranteed to work before the design was final. That let panel design and fabrication start before the FEED study and full system design were complete.
Chris explained why this mattered. A separate professional process design firm, hired by the client, was still doing its own design while the automation project was getting underway. Those two efforts didn't naturally fit together. Building the panels a bit bigger meant that, whatever came out of the safety study or decisions such as whether to use redundant pumps, the panels could be installed and would handle any of those scenarios. Cassie said this was possible because the client was clear that schedule came first.
What Deviated: Construction, and a Late Hazardous Monitoring Scope
Asked what didn't go to plan, Chris first joked that there were "absolutely no deviations," then answered: "everything related to construction."
To keep on track, the team sent senior people to the site to be daily "eyes and ears," including running the team's electricians, because conditions changed so quickly. Chris described several sets of what they called scrums. There were check-ins with the process designer and the customer several times a week, plus a routine internal scrum with the automation team. Chris said this was the most efficient way to make sure everyone heard the latest information and worked efficiently each day.
Chris singled out one strategy the team doesn't normally use. Cassie positioned Satya, an engineer on the East Coast, as a requirements manager. Satya's full-time job was to talk with all the design, mechanical, and other parties, confirm ET Tech Group's requirements were being met, catch new information, and distribute it. Chris described her as polite but so tenacious that Chris made her a mug with a pit bull on it. In one example, the team needed a final I/O count from a vendor for a central system. Chris didn't remember the vendor. Some vendors were overseas, so responses could take three days instead of one, and Satya followed up every single day. Chris said they didn't realize how instrumental the role was until the project was closing. Cassie called her "the accountability master." The host suggested "tenacious politeness" as a new core value, and Chris said almost everyone on the team fit that description.
Cassie described a different deviation. The team expected ongoing iteration in the process design, since that is common. What came "out of left field" was a late-stage scope addition. The client had hired a different partner to install a hazardous monitoring system, and that partner didn't grasp the schedule drivers and what they meant for the business. The client asked ET Tech Group to build those panels instead. With the team already fully committed to the timeline, they took a similarly creative approach, designed the panels, and turned them around very quickly.
Culture: Working for the Client, Not the Project
The host asked what lets the company stay flexible. Cassie, who has been with ET Tech Group for 12 years, said the people are helpful, kind, intelligent, hardworking, and flexible, and focused on finding solutions and helping clients reach their goals. Chris, who has been there three years and said they vetted the company heavily before joining, framed it as: "pretty much our whole engineering team is aligned to work for the client, not the project." Projects still have to stay on track, Chris said, but if the project or the approach no longer serves what the client says its best outcome is, the team will adjust, because they want to be a long-term partner. Chris acknowledged that other business models focus on executing a project and moving on, and said those aren't right or wrong. Working for the client can even mean descoping, telling a client they don't need something.
On being proactive and sharing bad news quickly, Cassie again pointed to culture. She said the CEO is good at hearing bad news, and that open communication about mistakes lets people work together on solutions. Chris said proactiveness is one of the key traits they screen for when hiring. In a service business, Chris said, you have to be proactive or it doesn't work. It can be coached and encouraged, but some people just don't take to it.
The Technical Side: PlantPAx Libraries and Functional Specifications
The host asked what made the solution best-in-class despite the pace. Chris said they have worked at good integrators and grown used to high-performing teams, but this project team "set a new bar." Chris came up on Allen-Bradley PLCs but had never used PlantPAx before. Chris noted that DCS and DCS-hybrid vendors often promise their libraries can cut development time by around 40%, and said they rarely saw that happen. On this project, the team stuck with the library standards for all the equipment and finished the code extremely fast. In Chris's view, the product's promise was realized because the engineers had the discipline and commitment to stick with it.
Cassie said client clarity was also key. The client didn't ask for tweaks, because everyone agreed that "fast delivery is the number one priority." Standard libraries were a major asset in that.
Chris added what they called "a boring answer": ET Tech Group's mandatory project life cycle requires writing functional specifications, because that is "your map" of what to build, where "the brain work goes in." The team was strict about documenting what the system needed to do, having the client review and approve it, and then building on the libraries. Chris said people coded their portions in about a week or two.
The host, a former Rockwell employee who had worked to bring PlantPAx to market early in their career, said the tool has come up repeatedly on the show, including with a company building control systems for bourbon distilleries. The host also recalled engineers who wanted to reinvent the wheel "for no apparent reason." Chris agreed and said that was why they emphasized discipline. An engineer wanting to change how graphics look because it's interesting is "not the best outcome for the client."
Scale: 45 People, Plus Electricians
Near the end, Cassie prompted Chris to share how many people worked on the project. Chris said they counted 45 at ET Tech Group, including core team members, to make the five-month schedule happen. On top of that, there were about 35 electricians on site at one point, and the customer's own team was fairly large. Chris described it as "an orchestrated system" of electrical designers, networking specialists, hardware specialists, and others, and said no single person could handle all that expertise, let alone the volume of work. Asked whether humble confidence or polite tenaciousness held that group together, Chris chose polite tenaciousness, calling it "a large volume of cats to keep on the same page."
Closing Advice: The Art of the Possible, and Get Help
Cassie returned to the FEED study. Besides helping teams work through open-ended questions, she said, it shows owners what's possible in their facilities that they hadn't realized. She mentioned a manufacturer she knows of that had been intentional about its automation. When tariffs were recently announced, it was able to shift where certain product lines were manufactured very quickly to minimize the impact. Cassie said many factors made that possible. Her encouragement was to plan for the big picture and the future, ask "art of the possible" questions before a large capital investment, and find partners who can help answer them.
Chris's final advice was that automation is a deep discipline with more requirements than any one person can realistically handle, so leaders should plan around that with internal resources, external resources, or both. According to Chris, these systems have become more reliable and capable, but also more complex in their layers, running from a field instrument all the way, in some cases, to the ERP systems the C-suite uses, along with the hardware they run on. In Chris's view, the expertise required now exceeds what one automation engineer can handle alone.
Fast delivery is the number one priority. Stay focused. Stay the course. Do whatever it takes to do this as quickly as possible.
Pretty much our whole engineering team is aligned to work for the client, not the project.
Rapid execution on an industrial automation project. In this episode, we're going to learn what it takes to go from a FEED study to recommissioning in just five months. We're sitting down with Chris and Cassie of ET Tech Group to hear the backstory of a project that brought a clean energy manufacturing facility back online. Plus, they'll share best practices for knocking out large automation projects on a very tight schedule.
Cassie, Chris, welcome to Manufacturing Happy Hour. It has been a while since we've done, let's say, like a project analysis on the show or a project recap. So, I'm looking forward to today's conversation. And Cassie, I'm going to send this first question to you. You know, in general, ET Tech Group, in the project we're talking about today, was responsible for a brownfield upgrade to a solar facility that had been mothballed. Let's say we're having a drink, a pelro as you're enjoying today. Can you... Yeah. Can you quickly share what this project was all about? Like as if we're having a drink with one another.
Absolutely. Yeah. Looking forward to the dialogue and looking forward to telling you about what was a really exciting project for us. So, the nature of the project was we heard from our client that, hey, they had this facility. It had been in operation for a number of years. They were manufacturing solar cells and they were looking to get that back into production after they mothballed it for a handful of years. They had started construction on the site and they realized, hey, there's this thing called automation that we think we're going to need, but we weren't quite planning on that.
So, they had started construction and demolition to do some major upgrades to the facility. And unfortunately during that demolition, they destroyed some of the wiring, some of the existing infrastructure that was critical for the automation and controls for the facility. And then they started to realize that they needed some help figuring out what they needed to do to get the facility working from an automation perspective. So at that point, we got engaged and started a dialogue with them, and I'm happy to talk about what that early stage looked like, but that's the high level.
Yeah, we're going to get into how this project came about. My first follow-up question, though, is how often do you get into these projects? Because a large portion of the Manufacturing Happy Hour audience is in the automation industry or is automation savvy, right? I don't know what the exact breakdown is, but we're dealing with manufacturers that believe and understand the power of automation. How often do you get into a scenario where it is an afterthought like this? Or maybe a better question to follow along with that is, how often is it maybe not as front of mind as it should be? Because I think most people are considering it, but most people probably have not put the right weight on it, if that makes sense.
That's a rigged question, Chris.
Automation engineers, it's always an afterthought relative to our...
That's... you know what, Chris, I'm gonna have you lead this one off then in that case.
Oh, well that was a mistake. It's... yeah, I actually... there is some truth to that. We're automation engineers and we can see how big of a... our argument typically is the automation, relative to mechanical, electrical, process, etc., has an outsized impact on how well the production and the users of the facilities or equipment are, how well they're able to use these things. Some clients do have very savvy automation staff who are well equipped to give us requirements for their needs, and some don't understand it at all. It could be comparable to how a lot of us don't understand why a given software is not working or why it's not integrated. It's kind of like that to other engineering disciplines or managers, I think, is my opinion.
Yeah, if I could riff on that, I would say that it's becoming more and more common that we encounter clients who are thinking proactively about automation, but they may not understand still all of the potential that is out there or the many options they have available to them. They might have some exposure to certain tools but not realize everything that's in the arsenal that they could put into play for their facility. So, some clients are more proactive than others. Some are more engaged than others, but I would say it's becoming more common that they're thinking about it, they're planning for it. It still is often an afterthought, though.
And I think Chris's point about an outsized impact from automation is a really good one because, you know, typically in a large capital project, the automation budget is around 10%, you know, just rule of thumb, of the total budget. But in the end, it's a really critical 10% that you need to invest to have the manufacturing work the way you want it to work. So...
That makes a lot of sense. I appreciate you both highlighting the outsized impact of automation and just not realizing the amount of options that are there, or how one decision on this side of the facility impacts that side of the facility. If we were to offer some advice to the manufacturers out there that aren't part of the automation engineer part of this audience, what is one common pitfall you see, or one thing you think people should be keeping in mind a bit more to not get caught late in a project and having missed some critical aspects of the automation scope? What would be the one thing? You know, Cassie, I see you nodding here, so I'm going to send this one to you first and then I'm going to send it over to Chris.
Yeah. The one thing is just early. Always start earlier than you think you need to start. So, if you can engage a partner who is an expert in automation, you will set yourself up for a foundation of success. I think the most common mistake I see is that folks wait because they think, hey, this is one of the last things that has to go into the plant. But there is so much that time can allow you to accomplish on a project that the sooner you start the dialogue, the better the outcomes you're going to have.
Chris, what would you add to that?
I would say the answer was in your question. Basically, if I had to pick one thing, you start early. And the previous question made me think of a tangent. For a lot of my career, I didn't understand why I worked with so many clients and projects where automation wasn't better considered. And just the more experience I've had with interactions with people and looking at our industry, automation as we do it, it's not taught in American schools. It's starting to a little more. But so people don't have the language. Oftentimes they may not have the interest because it feels like IT to them. You know, maybe they like the mechanical or process side. So I can't blame people for not knowing what they don't know. But a poor facility startup is extremely stressful, distracting and costly. So whether someone is interested or not, it has to be accounted for. And then your more direct question to me, what's the number one thing? Start early. I don't know. Know what you don't know. I don't know quite how to answer that. And of course, being on the integrator side, figure out a partner you can trust, who knows what they're doing, who's working for you, and not the other interests.
Both things you shared make a lot of sense in this case, and I'm glad we went on that tangent early in this discussion. You know, we're going to go back to one of the topics we were talking about earlier. Cassie, I'm curious, how did the project come about? What's the backstory here, if you want to fill us in there, and then Chris, I'd love to hear your side of the story as well.
Sure. Yeah. So the backstory: we have a business development resource who was connected with some folks in industry in the region of this project, and they ended up hearing they were having some challenges trying to get this plant back into production, and they reached out to us saying, hey, ET Tech, you have the right kind of capabilities, it seems, you're automation experts, let's talk about it. So we had an initial conversation where I sat down along with a couple other business development folks and the end user, and we talked about the current circumstance and got an understanding of the overarching questions that they were facing, and just really tried to lay out in that initial conversation, in the first one hour, what was the challenge they had ahead of them, and how were they going to tackle it, and how were they going to accomplish their goal. And what came out in that conversation, it was very clear that schedule was a key critical driver for this client. They had clients of their own they had committed to production dates and delivery timelines for, and they needed to meet those commitments. So by listening and understanding what the challenges were, and also helping them get clarity on what needed to be accomplished, we were able to set a path forward.
So the recommendation that we made, having been through situations like this where there's a lot of uncertainty, a lot of unknowns... we had no real drawings, very little knowledge of the current install base. We didn't know what had been destroyed in construction, like, you know, the current infrastructure. There was a lot that was unknown. So we recommended, let's do a FEED study, and the FEED study is front-end engineering and design. So that's the first step. And how we closed that deal very quickly was we said we had an engineer who had the right skill set. He was familiar with the little bit of automation that was existing at the site, that platform, and we said today, it was literally a Friday we had this conversation, he could be on site the next Monday. So knowing schedule was a priority, it made it very easy for them to say yes, let's get started, let's do an initial site study and, you know, FEED study to make a plan for these open-ended questions that they had. That's where it kicked off. Yeah.
Chris, before I send this to you, I have to ask, what did you find out had been destroyed? Right. Like that's got to be a fun part of this. The things that you would have expected to be in place that, through everything that had happened at this facility, were just in absolute disarray.
Yeah. So there was a bunch of wiring that had been cut that they thought like, "Oh, we don't need this anymore." It was like landed on I/O that was existing, existing distribution, like for the... there was a chemical distribution system and a gas distribution system, like all the remote I/O connections for that had been cut, Ethernet wiring connections, like many different electrical components. And then from a piping perspective, I forget exactly the things that we found that were no longer functional, but there was a number of items that had... And basically we found, these are not going to work anymore. So they need some attention. Yeah.
Okay. So you found plenty of things that were just in disarray. Chris, any thoughts that you'd like to add from how the project came about, or any other stories that you'd have to share related to this?
Yeah. Around November, December 2023, I was in our leadership meetings and just noticed Cassie was saying like, "Oh, we got to pull the solar project. I got to work on the proposal." So, that's how it looked like to me until I got pulled in. But I think maybe a little color from an outsider perspective: when Cassie was handling the front side of that deal, number one, she's one of the best in business, and then just being able to clearly communicate and translate automation speak to how is it going to impact your goals for the larger production. And then I think in hindsight, I think we had some pretty sharp people across the table that were able to self-diagnose that they were not at all equipped to make these kind of decisions on their own. Like Cassie said, if you're not in the business, the options are completely overwhelming. And that's not even accounting for best practices, right? Like cybersecurity and safety and all that stuff. So, I wasn't in the early meetings, but I met all the people that she was working with initially, and they were all sharper than normal, acknowledging what they didn't know.
Totally agree with this. ET Tech has some defined core values, and one of ours is humble confidence. And I really saw that embodied in the client side on this particular team. Like they were confident in what they knew and they could deliver, and very humble and acknowledging the places where they needed help, and that they were ready and willing to accept help so that we could really form a strong team around their big picture goals to deliver. So I think that's a great point, Chris. I totally agree with that.
Actually, that's a really nice segue into the next part of our conversation. You talked about how one of your core values, humble confidence, was very clearly seen in the client, and finding that alignment early where they would admit the things they didn't know, be willing to listen to you in the areas where it made sense. I think that's a huge thing that a lot of manufacturing leaders, the good leaders, I think, understand, that need for value alignment. But there's some people, maybe they just haven't been in the industry long enough, they're still getting a feel for that, that you can say no to different clients if they're not aligned on those type of values. So, great point. And this next part of the conversation gets into something you mentioned, is that the... Oh, Chris, go ahead.
Can I play your role for a little bit since my name's Chris also?
Go for it.
Cassie, I got a question for you.
Uh-huh.
Actually, sincere. Is there like a moment or a practice or a conversation where you felt like trust was won over?
I think the fact that we, you know, laid out a very clear action plan for them in that first conversation we had about, hey, we have an engineer, Chris Hunter. He's really good. He has the right skill set. He can be on site on the next business day for you. That action really showed we were going to follow through, and then we did, and I think that was a pivotal trust-building moment, and then we continued to deliver throughout. I think the other things that built trust throughout the FEED study were, you know, we were not shy about communicating the issues and the challenges, but we were a partner in solving those problems. We were not only flagging them and elevating them, you know, so that everybody could be part of the conversation. We were being part of the solution. Here's how we can help you get through this, and here's what we think you might want to do, but let us know what you think.
Excellent question. I like that you were able to mix that one in there. So going back to where we're going with this conversation, lessons the audience can learn from this project. One of the things that's been very highlighted in this conversation so far is that the schedule was very aggressive. Your client had already made commitments on deliveries to their customers. I believe it was an aggressive five-month schedule, and that was the number one priority, if you were to rank everything that was important to the end customer in this case. How did you set expectations with the client to ensure that you still completed the FEED study that you mentioned and didn't cut corners early on? Because I could very much see trying to shortcut that or skip something critical might have been something someone would have considered in a tight timeline like this.
It's a great question because I have definitely faced that before. I've heard clients say like, I don't want to
do a FEED study. We don't have time for that. So I think the key piece of why it was really successful there, there's a couple of those. We touched on one, which was the humble confidence that values alignment, is that the client side team understood the gaps because we had worked with them, the big picture things that needed to be resolved before we could fully move on the project execution phase. So number one, they understood what was missing and what they needed to resolve. And then number two, we had come up with some creative ideas to fast-track certain elements of the schedule so that not everything had to wait for the FEED study to be complete.
So again, we were trying to be the partner right there with them, alongside of them, recommending how to get through this. And Nlesh Law, he came up with this creative idea to, you know, design panels, electrical panels that would be slightly oversized, might have a couple different components that we wouldn't spec in usually but would give us that guarantee that it was going to work in the end before the design was fully complete. So we were able to kind of fast-track and start the panel design and panel fabrication ahead of completion of the FEED study and the full system design.
Yeah, a little color to that is when we're talking about design, we're talking about a professional process designer, another firm that they've hired to do the process design. They were still doing their design as we were trying to get the automation project going. So how are you supposed to handle those two things that aren't compatible? Let's make the panels a little bigger. So depending on the outcome of the safety study, what they decide on redundant pumps or not, or what those details were, we can build these panels and get them installed and they'll handle any of those scenarios.
Absolutely. Because schedule was number one. They had clarity, like, let's be ready. So a very specific example in that case regarding the panel design, being able to maybe overspec is the wrong word, but being able to design it in such a way that you would have that wiggle room later on and you wouldn't have to delay on some of these things based on the heuristics and best practices that exist in the automation world.
Let's talk about the things that don't go according to plan then. With brownfield projects, things rarely go exactly how you think they're going to go. What plans deviated? I'd love to hear a story from each of you, and how was EET Tech Group successful in reeling the project back in, getting it back on track?
There was absolutely no deviations from the goal.
I thought you might... you jumped at that answer pretty quickly. I wasn't sure where you were going to go with that. That's because I'm humbly confident and I do amazing things just like their core values say.
I love it. I love it. Well, Chris, you get to answer this one first in that case then.
Everything related to construction is the answer. And how we kept on track was we leaned on some senior people to go to site to be eyes and ears, daily eyes and ears to what was happening, including running our electrician, because things evolved that quick. And then we had a couple different sets of scrums, I'll call them. So we had a regular, like several times a week, we checked in with the process designer and the customer. We did a pretty routine scrum internally with our automation team because things are moving that fast, and that was the most efficient way to make sure everyone heard the latest up-to-date and were working that day efficiently.
And then another way, one of the key strategies we ended up employing was we had a professional woman named Satya in the East Coast, and Cassie positioned her as, I guess, a requirements manager. So her full-time task was to go talk to all the different design and mechanical parties and stuff and make sure our requirements were being met, make sure there wasn't new information, and then she would distribute that. And she was so polite and good at that, but so tenacious. I ended up making her a mug that had a pitbull on it. She was just relentless chasing down the requirements, because we can say like, "Oh, there's a five-month schedule and we did it. Yay." But what that actually looked like was Satya just
driving the other parties. And that's the value we bring too, right? We're not being annoying. We're trying to make things happen on their behalf. We're not sitting around and waiting. Like, to meet the schedule, we need to have the final IO count from the central. And she would go central. I don't remember which vendor they were, but that was just an example. Some of these people are out of the country. So then you're dealing with off hours, and maybe they don't respond for three days instead of one day, and she would just hound it every single day. I didn't know how instrumental that was going to prove to be at the time, but in reflecting once we were, you know, heading towards closing the project, it was like
she's the accountability master. Yeah,
we had a lot of contributors, but we don't normally have that kind of role. So that was a key technique.
What does it take to get tenacious politeness added to your core values at EET Tech? Because that sounds like one, based on this project, you might need to work in pretty soon.
Actually, that's a brilliant point. I'd say almost everyone on the team was in that camp.
Yeah, I totally agree.
I love it. Well, if this comes out of Manufacturing Happy Hour, please let me know. I would love a podcast story like that. But
Where's Matt? We just got core value six, Matt.
Yep.
Love it. Love it. Well, Cassie, I still want to hear your side of the story as well. What was something that deviated and how did you get that back on track?
Yeah, the things that didn't go to plan. I think one thing that comes to mind is, I mean, so Chris had mentioned the continuous iteration in process design, which I think was a little more expected. We're used to kind of experiencing that on projects, but one major late-stage change on this project was the end user, the client, was working with a different partner to put in a hazardous monitoring system, and they were having significant challenges working with that partner, and that partner really didn't understand the schedule drivers and what that meant for the business. And they turned to us and said, like, we need help. Can you build these panels for this partner instead? And we jumped in. We took a similar approach, got creative, and then designed for those panels. We turned them around super quickly. But that was one that was like unexpected, out of left field. Our team's already, like, nose to the grindstone, very focused on the timeline, and we had to figure out how to add some scope late in the game. Gosh, we already covered the infrastructure that was destroyed. There was a bunch of things that weren't expected. Yeah.
Well, I've got a couple questions on this side of things. What is it about the culture or the attitude, the vibe, whatever we call it these days, at EET Tech Group that allows you to be flexible, for lack of a better word? Cassie, maybe you can start us off.
Sure. Yeah. I think this is why I've stayed with the company for 12 years. The human beings at the company are incredibly helpful, kind, intelligent, and hardworking, and they're also flexible. So all those things, really centering on being helpful and how do we find solutions for our clients, and being excited about getting them to achieve their goal, just creates this culture where people want to figure out how they can lend a hand. And that's, like, super core to me, really part of my values. So that's my two cents.
Helpful, kind, intelligent, hardworking, flexible. Chris, is there another characteristic you would add?
I'll just tell it in different words, or my personal version of it. She's been here 12 years. I've been here three, but I heavily vetted the company before I joined it, and it's proven to be the right fit. And so what that means to me is what she said is correct. But pretty much our whole engineering team is aligned to work for the client, not the project. Yes, we have to keep our projects on track, but if somewhere along the line the project or how we're doing it isn't aligned for what we think or they tell us their best outcome is, we will adjust, right? We want to be their long-term partner. We don't want to just execute the project and move on. And there are business models like that, right? And they're not right or wrong, but for how I'm wired, this is a good company. Really focusing on the long-term value add of our project to a client and where they may build from there. And sometimes, you know, that might even mean descoping stuff, like, hey, we don't think you need this thing, but it's the right decision for you.
So aligned with the client, not the project. I think that's a great way to phrase that. In addition to being responsive and flexible, what allows you to be proactive? That's the other question I wanted to ask along the same train of thought. Like, many companies would shy away from sharing bad news right away. What is it that allows you to share updates and take action quickly?
Gosh, I think again it comes to the values of the people that we have on the team. That's part of the culture. It's part of how we operate. It's what we like to see. It's how we handle things internally. You know, our CEO is very good at accepting bad news, like hearing bad news. I think there are places where people might work and they don't want to tell their boss something that went wrong. But I feel very fortunate to be at a place where there's open communication about the mistakes so that you can work together to find the solutions.
I agree. I would agree with that. In fact, it's one of the key things I screen for when I'm hiring people. In the kind of business we're in, where we're serving people, you have to be proactive or it just doesn't work. And I would agree it's kind of a personality thing. It can be coached and encouraged, but some people just don't take that way.
Well, as we get to the end of our conversation, the final area I wanted to get into was, you know, again, we're doing this as if we're having drinks, Pellegrinos, whatever it may be, right? So we don't want to get too far into the weeds, but from an automation and software standpoint, what made this a best-in-class solution that also, you know, one that you were able to implement in a relatively short time frame? How do you do that even though this was such a fast-paced project? Chris, maybe you kick us off, and then Cassie, you can kind of put the bow around this.
I've had the privilege of working at pretty good integrators most of the time, and so I've had a period in my career where I got used to really high-performing teams. And with that said, this specific project team set a new bar for me. And so the people get some credit, but it's also... I came up on Allen-Bradley PLCs, but I'd never used PlantPAx. And you know, a lot of the DCS or DCS hybrids make these promises: if you use our library, you can cut your development time by 40%. And a lot of the time, I just never saw that come to fruition. And in this case, our team stuck with the library standards to implement all the equipment, and they got the code done extremely fast because of that. So it was like the promise of the product actually got yielded when you throw the discipline and commitment of our engineers on to stick with it.
And I think the key to that also was the clarity from the end user. They weren't like, oh, can you tweak this? Can you change that? Because they understood and we all were aligned. Fast delivery is the number one priority. Stay focused. Stay the course. Do whatever it takes to do this as quickly as possible. And using the standard libraries was a huge asset in that.
I know it's a boring answer, but our mandatory project life cycle involves writing functional specifications for solutions, because that's really your map of what are we supposed to build, right? It is your design. It's where the brain work goes in. So we were very strict about writing down what the system needed to do in functional specifications, reviewing it at the client, they approve, and then using the libraries on top of that. I mean, our people coded it in like a week or two.
Yeah. I mean, I've got a personal connection to this answer a bit because I was a longtime Rockwell guy. I worked down in Houston, Texas at the start of my career. I think most of our audience is familiar with this, but for anyone out there that's not, PlantPAx, like you said, is Rockwell's process control system, DCS control system. So I cut my teeth at the start of my career trying to get that into the market. But funny enough, this is not the first time it has come up on the show as a tool. I mean, we've talked to companies that are, you know, doing control systems for bourbon distilleries, for example. Like, this is the second time that's come up, probably not even the second time, third, fourth, I can't keep track of it, but it comes up as a specific tool that gets mentioned on this show time and time again. And I also got to see things from the opposite angle when I was a Rockwell guy working in the Bay Area, where people tended to want to reinvent the wheel sometimes for no apparent reason. Once you get too many engineers in the same room, you start thinking there's a better way to get around some of these best practices.
That's why I mentioned our team's discipline, because I've been through those cycles too where it's like, I, on my project, I want to change how the graphics look because it's interesting. It's like, that's not the best outcome for the client.
Yeah, we got five months here. Time's ticking. So, no, great examples. One thing I wanted to ask as we wrap this conversation, I know I had some specific questions around the project, but is there anything you wish I would have asked? Any tidbits, any stories that you want to share with the audience before we wrap up this conversation?
Man, I think the couple things I'll say is just, we touched on kind of the benefits of a FEED study, allowing you to navigate these open-ended questions. It also helps you understand what's possible and what you might be able to accomplish in your manufacturing facility that you didn't realize was possible. I'm aware of at least one manufacturer who was very intentional in how they implemented their automation, and basically, when some of the tariffs were announced recently, they were able to shift where they were manufacturing certain product lines to minimize that impact very rapidly. And there's a bunch of different things that come into play to make that possible. So just planning for the big picture, planning for the future, considering some of those art-of-the-possible type questions would be something I would really encourage people to look at, and as they think about a large capital investment or an upcoming project, questions you should ask, and try and find some partners who can help you answer those things.
All right, Art of the Possible. Chris, what would be your final signoff piece of advice?
Oh, piece of advice. This is to who?
The manufacturing leaders listening to the podcast, the audience.
Oh man, there's a lot of different types of automation systems. But I think my final piece of advice is this is a deep, deep discipline that requires more requirements than any one person can realistically wrestle. So plan around that. Whether it's an internal resource, an external resource, some of both, get some help. These systems have gotten more reliable, more capable, but they've also gotten more complex in terms of layers, you know,
Going from an instrument in the field all the way to, in some cases, connections to the ERP the C-suite's using, right?
Yeah. Yeah. They, and the hardware they run on, like the expertise has exceeded what an automation engineer can handle on their own. And by the way, Chris, you said what question should you ask me? How many people worked on the project, Chris? We counted 45.
Holy smokes. All right.
Team core members, but 45 to make this five-month thing happen.
And is that 45 within your team alone or within like the multi-partner customer team as well? ET tech
I think we had about 35 electricians on site at one point. So that would be additive to that number, and then the customer team was pretty large as well. But yeah, we had folks with specific roles for site. God, we had, so it was an orchestrated system. Electrical designers, networking people, hardware people, you know, there's not one person that can handle all that expertise, let alone the volume of work we had to do.
Can I ask then if it was humble confidence or tenacious politeness or something different that allowed you to effectively coordinate all of those 45-plus individuals that were working on this?
Humble confidence or polite tenaciousness. I'll lean towards polite tenaciousness, because that's a large volume of cats to keep on the same page. And I'm a cat, by the way.
Fair point. Fair point. Well, hey, Chris, Cassie, I really appreciate you taking us through this, giving specific examples to your project, as well as applying that to some holistic advice that everyone out here listening, whether they're on a team of 45 or a hundred or five, can apply to their businesses. Thank you so much for jumping on Manufacturing Happy Hour.
Thank you.
Thank you for the opportunity. Cheers.
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