Good afternoon. Welcome to PCI's webinar series. This presentation is sponsored by Ultraspan. My name is Royce Covington, Manager of Member Services at PCI, and I'll be your moderator for this session. Before I turn the controls over to your presenter today, I have a few introductory items to note. Earlier today, we sent an email to all registered attendees with a handout of today's presentation. We have updated that handout, and it's available now and can be found in the handout pane near the bottom of the GoToWebinar Toolbox. If you cannot download the handout, please email pcimarketing at marketing at pci.org as shown on your screen. All attendee lines are muted. The GoToWebinar Toolbox has an area for you to raise your hand. If you raise your hand, you will receive a private chat message from me. If you have a question, type it into the questions pane, where I'll be keeping track of them to read during the Q&A period. Today's presentation will be recorded and uploaded to PCI's website within the next week. PCI is a registered provider of AIA CES, but this presentation is non-CEU and does not contain content that is endorsed by AIA. Any questions about the content of this webinar should be directed to PCI. The program content does not constitute approval by PCI, nor does it necessarily reflect the views or positions of PCI or those of their respective officers, directors, members, or employees. Questions related to specific products or publications will be addressed at the end of the presentation. Our presenter for today is Judy Danielchuk, General Manager at Ultraspan. She has been with Ultraspan for over 20 years, many of those years leading initiatives on efficiencies, cost savings, lean manufacturing, Six Sigma, and other activities that drive operational excellence. As part of her role as General Manager, she leads the business performance team in charge of finding solutions that deliver quantifiable results to precast producers. As an advisory board member of the Manufacturers Association and serving on the board of various organizations, she is passionate about other businesses and thrives on their success. I'll now turn the controls over so that we can begin our program. Hello, everyone. Thank you for joining us today. I hope you and your families are doing well during these unprecedented times of COVID-19. It is my pleasure to be presenting today, and I'm really excited to share our findings with you. So, let's get started. First, a brief summary to our company. Ultraspan is right here in North America and is part of the Progress Group with central offices in Europe and several manufacturing plants, service centers, and local presence across the globe. Our experience extends to over 55 years of continued support to more than 500 plants worldwide. Innovative technology and a unique in-house precast facility in Europe have contributed to positioning Progress Group as the leading supplier of technology for the precast concrete industry. In terms of numbers, we're the number one machinery supplier in the industry with over 200 million euro in sales, over 640 employees, and customers across 76 countries. Here is one of our customers, a complete precast plant in Thailand. They make product for 700 apartments per month and is one of the largest plants in the world. This Holocore plant in Belgium is fully automated with low labor consumption, and here's a double wall plant in Germany. In addition, we have over 50 plants here in North America. I won't mention customer names, as many of you are here today, so thank you again for joining us. The objectives of the webinar today are to share methodology, find value leaks, and help to make better decisions. The overall goal of this presentation is to provide the knowledge and know-how to make educated decisions in your own precast operations and to analyze if investing in automation is a smart investment and when and where to direct that investment. My goal is that by the end of this session, you will walk away with the methodology to evaluate opportunities in your operations, and that through the use of methodology, you are prepared to apply this to your business. Before we move ahead, just a reminder that a link to this presentation will be made available to all attendees, and please remember to send in your questions. I have a panel ready for your questions, so I appreciate and encourage you to look for areas during the presentation to provide feedback, comments, or questions, and we look forward to a great Q&A session. The agenda is automation for everyone. Where to start? We'll look at methodology, we'll look at analysis, a summary where we will also look at the benefits, and we'll have the time for questions. Is automation for everyone? Automation has become a popular buzzword. We see it in simple day-to-day tasks like using the self-checkout, experience it in marketing campaigns, and commonly used in the car industry for automated assembly lines. But today it is not limited to just one industry. Automation can also sometimes be looked upon in a negative light, as people may think they will lose their jobs. On the contrary, automation can make the process easier and allow human capital to focus on more complex tasks. There are many articles and talk about automation, however, just because we hear about it often, does that mean automation is the right choice for your business? This is the question. Is automation for everyone? I believe we all agree the answer is no. Automation is not the right choice for every situation. Automation needs to be implemented for the right reason, at the right time, for the right price. Let's look at some of the pressures that are pushing people towards automation. The labour market is changing. In the construction and manufacturing industries, the number of workers over the age of 55 is increasing, while the number of workers under the age of 25 is decreasing. Over 25% of workers are 55 years and older, and this percentage is increasing. Less than 9% of workers are below 25 years, and the percentage is decreasing. Safety regulations are always changing, pushing many companies to look into ways of automating certain processes. In the current pandemic situation that we are in, social distancing is easier to manage when there are less people working in an area. Stability is changing. During the COVID-19 crisis and recessions in general, businesses and industries with automation fare better. Companies that had invested in automation and moving work to the cloud are better off than their counterparts. These companies are more flexible under trying conditions and more resilient to challenges. The market is changing. I would like to share with you a view here of the U.S. employment percentage change to visualize the impact that recessions have on our labour pool and how much that is costing us as an industry. This graph shows the U.S. employment percentage change year over year for the construction, manufacturing, and services sector. The blue line is construction, the red line is manufacturing, and the green is the services. Let's focus on the blue line. As you can see here, the construction is the most affected industry to recessions and fluctuating labour markets. This sector is very susceptible to large swings in employment, whereas the services industry is comparatively less affected. Before the recession, we all ramp up, hire people, and during the recession, there is a need to lay off, and then we have to rehire those people. Sometimes we get them back, and sometimes we lose our people to other industries. This illustrates the tremendous burden of hiring and rehiring in the industry and the costs associated with hiring, such as advertising, recruiting, training costs, disruption, the loss of institutional knowledge, among other costs of hiring and onboarding. This fluctuation can lead business owners to explore automation, as automation can contribute to reduce the up and down swings of the curve and stabilize labour demands. Where to start? We have looked at some of the pressures that push businesses to look at automation, but where do we start? How do we go from the stage of automation awareness to know what, when, and where to implement this technology? Before I introduce you to the methodology that we will be talking about today, a widely recognized model to use is the Eight Wastes of Leedon, sometimes referred to as Tim Woods of Areas of Waste to Consider. These areas are transportation, of unnecessary movements of product, parts, and tools, inventory, maintenance, production, and material not being processed, movement, unnecessary movement of people, waiting, when there are delays between operations, or waiting for parts or people, over-production, when production is more than needed or before it is needed, over-processing, duplicate or redundant work that is not required, yet we still do it, defects, efforts caused by rework, scrap, and incorrect information, and skills under-utilizing people's talents, skills, and knowledge. After looking at lead methods, efficiencies, and financials, a simple three-step methodology was developed, where the three steps are cycle time, labour, and rework. By coincidence, there is a product out there called CLR, a product that most of us are familiar with. This product has the same acronym, CLR, B for cycle time, L for labour, and R for rework. I promise we are not going to be talking about the CLR cleaning product, except to remind us that it can be used to clean up operations as well. Basically this is a very simple acronym that highlights the three main elements to assess when looking for value leaks. Whether operations are located in the U.S., Canada, Europe, Asia, or all around the world, these three elements are some of the biggest areas that contribute to productivity leaks. Let's look at C in the CLR. The C represents cycle time, the total time from the beginning to the end of a process that includes both process time and delay time waiting to take the next action within the process. There are many elements to consider when looking at the cost associated with cycle time. These elements include the availability and use of overtime, ship scheduling, scheduling efficiency, weather delays, material planning, and logistics. It's also important to note that the costs not only include the direct costs of the process, but also indirect or hidden costs. Greater cycle time can mean higher costs associated to these elements, increasing costs to the business. Safety is also an important element to consider in cycle time. Any injuries or safety violations can cause delay in the process, increasing the cycle time. In the 2018 Workplace Safety Index, Liberty Mutual estimated that employers paid more than $1 billion per week for direct workers' compensation costs for disabling non-fatal workplace injuries in 2015. This is coming from our profits, our hard-earned dollars, and as an industry, we're losing dollars that can be prevented to some degree. Let's look at the L in CLR. L is for labour. What are some of the costs associated with labour outside of the direct wages cost? The cost of hiring, onboarding, training, turnover, demand for skilled labour, professional development, associated administration costs, injuries and illness, and now the more recent costs of social distancing. According to the 2014 Training Industry Report from Training Magazine, the annual training budget of U.S. small businesses with less than 100 employees totals an average of $308,000 per year. The cost to replace a high-turnover, low-paying job earning less than $30,000 per year is 16% of their annual salary. The cost to replace a mid-range position earning between $30,000 and $50,000 is 20% of their annual salary. I know that for many of us, the cost to replace personnel is actually much higher than 20%. In some cases, the cost to recruit alone is 20%, plus the additional cost to train and onboard, which at the end makes the impact of labour a critical factor in profitability of a business. Looking back to the situation in 2008, the majority of workers that left the industry did not return. As we all know, construction is not the sexiest or most attractive industry out there. There is a war for talent, and turnover is real. RNCLR is for rework, which represents things that need to be redone or worked over and done right. I love the image here, it's a perfect representation of why we want to avoid rework. You can spend the money and time to design, and in this case, install a staircase, but in the end, it doesn't get us anywhere. There are many cost implications to rework, including labour, personnel and labour time requirements, cost of wastage, cost of disposal, customer satisfaction, quality control, impact on schedule, transportation cost, and impact on morale. According to the American Association of Quality, a general rule of thumb is that costs of poor quality in a thriving company will be about 10-15% of operations. Effective quality improvement programs can reduce this substantially, thus making a direct contribution to profits. So now that we've explored the three main elements of CLR, cycle time, labour and rework, which may not have come as a surprise to many of you, what are the next steps to put this into practice? Let's dive into this methodology. There are three steps to the CLR methodology. First, an in-depth analysis in CLR areas starts with a high-level overview of the entire production process. Second, investigate individual processes and determine source of productivity leaks. And third, determine the cost and viability of automation within each process. These are the three main steps, and we'll see next how this is applied to a process. To illustrate step one in the methodology, let's walk through an example of a production process. Note that this can be used for any production process, but for the example, we will use wall panel production for a long bed as shown in the slide. You can apply the methodology to any product you manufacture at your plant. We start with removal because that is a typical activity that is done at the beginning of the day shift, followed by first prep, first casting, second prep, second casting, finishing, and the elements involved in each of these steps. In removal, we have uncovering, demolding, detensioning, loading out, followed by first prep, which involves cleaning, oiling, layout, shattering, inserts, and reinforcement. In first casting, it involves concrete delivery, placing, consolidation, and leveling. In second prep, we have insulation, ties, inserts, and reinforcement. In the second casting, we have concrete delivery, placing, consolidation, and leveling. And in finishing, we have floating, hard traveling, and covering. This, of course, is followed by the curing process. So again, this is to show the application of the tool. Let's see how this happens in real life. Remember this is a case that you can apply to any product, whether it's bridge beams, double Ts, culverts, hollow core, it basically applies to any production process. As part of the overview of the production process, a time study is required. We'll look at that next. In the time study, each process should be reviewed individually. This time study example shows each step in the production process and the cycle time in hours, the labor time in hours, and the rework in units. Let's analyze the data from a high level to determine what should be explored further. Right away, we can see that first prep is an obvious burden for cycle time and rework. This is a great clue to explore further and definitely the first process we need to analyze. Here is the visual representation of the same time study data. Here for each process, we have the components of cycle time, labor, and rework. Again, back to the CLR. When graphed, it is obvious that first prep is the most laborious part of the process. The Pareto Principle, which may be better known to most of us as the 80-20 rule, asserts that 80% of the outcomes result from 20% of causes and a goal is to identify factors with most potential and make them a priority. Another advantage of the Pareto Principle is that it shows us that we're better off reducing the time on one operation than eliminating another one completely. For instance, if we reduce one operation by even 10%, that could bring a bigger bang for our buck than to completely eliminate another operation. This looks to apply here as well. The benefit here is that only a few or even one area can be addressed, and by focusing on these high-value leaks, it will greatly improve production results. So after identifying first prep as an area of focus, let's explore this deeper. These are the subtasks of first prep. First prep is broken down into the individual tasks here on the left, as shown in the cycle time in hours, labor in hours, and rework associated to these tasks. In the same way we analyzed the whole process, let's now analyze the data to determine where the productivity leak is. Here we see that layout looks to be the biggest value leak within the first prep task. Here's a visual representation of the first prep task. Within over 7.5 hours for one task, it is obvious that layout contributes a huge share of the labor component. This is a large clue that layout may be the most valuable part of the process to automate. It is interesting to note that within such a long production process, it is possible for us to pinpoint one specific task that is contributing to the biggest productivity leak. So let's look further into layout. What are some characteristics involved in the layout process, and can they be associated back to the CLR? The answer is yes. Characteristics of layout are high skill level is required, it is prone to human error, has a high risk for rework, high labor requirement, can be a bottleneck in production, and has a high quality control requirement. The characteristics shown can all be quantified and further qualitative analysis can also be done to determine additional characteristics. So now that we've gone through the CLR methodology, how can we further break down this information to make the educated decision? Just because layout was identified as the biggest labor burden, does that automatically justify investment into automation? The answer now is still no. It's time to quantify. So in this example, we have five laborers who spend one and a half hours per day on layout, which equals seven and a half hours per day on one wall panel bed. At 250 days per year, at a rate of $25 an hour, the total is $46,875 per year per bed on layout for labor. At two beds per day in this case, the annual direct labor cost per year for layout is $93,750. Let's look at the cost of layout for pre-pore quality control. Two quality control engineers at half an hour a day equals one hour per day. At 250 days a year, at a rate of $35 an hour, it is $8,750 per year per bed. At two beds per day, the annual cost for pre-pore quality control is $17,500. By the way, this rate per hour is only applicable to this example. We know that this changes company to company, region to region, so for this purpose, please don't focus on the numbers, just the methodology for now. So we saw the cost of labor and the cost of pre-pore QC. Let's look at rework. In this example, the rework amount was six panels per year. So the calculation shows six panels per year scrapped at $6,000 per panel equals $36,000 in annual rework and wastage costs. Again, this is the specific case for this producer, but as you look at your operations, the cost will change and could range from $5,000 to where we've seen producers where the cost of one element was over $60,000, in which case reducing rework can make or break a situation. To sum up the total annual cost of layout, we see annual labour cost of $93,750, an annual pre-pork quality control cost of $17,500, an annual waste rework cost of $36,000, for total annual layout cost of $147,250 per year. Now that the cost is determined, let's look at a viability calculator to determine payback and return on investment. This viability calculation determines payback period using the hard cost we just calculated contrasted with the cost to automate. The calculation is the cost to automate divided by the manual cost times the automation efficiency percentage. With the cost to automate, in this example, $200,000 figure is used, divided by the manual cost of $147,250 by the automation efficiency percentage of 75%, the result is a 1.81 year payback. Next we'll look at the viability calculation for the return on investment. This calculation uses the calculated results contrasted with the cost to automate. So we're looking at the savings times the period of time divided by the cost to automate. With the savings of $110,437.50 for a 10-year period divided by the cost to automate in this example of $200,000, the result is 552% or 5 times, 5.5 times, which is an annualized return of 18.63%. When preparing the viability calculations of payback and ROI using the CLR methodology, only the hard direct costs are used. However, there remains an indirect cost that we can also eliminate or reduce like training, recruitment, retention, skilled labor opportunity cost, the cost of morale, safety, scheduling, and now the case of social distancing. For example, a layout position requires more training. It can be hard to recruit for, can be a reason for high turnover, linking these indirect costs to layout. Though some of these items are harder to quantify, these hidden costs can also be considered when calculating payback and ROI. So what's next? Finally in the analysis, it is important to have a viability decision checklist like the one shown here to see if the decision to automate makes sense for the business. Does it make financial sense? How does it look versus other priorities? Does it make sense long-term and does it align with the business growth strategy? Are there other business goals that this would help meet like improving safety or by adding more consistency to your product and increasing quality? So let's summarize the methodology and analysis and then look at the benefits. We know changes are coming. Our industry needs to prepare to deal with these changes. We have to seriously look at the labor pool and implement solutions that contribute to reducing cycle time and rework. Does it mean you should blindly look to automate? Nope. And does it mean your specific operation is ready to automate? No. Use the CLR methodology. Look at your cycle time, your labor, your rework. The simple acronym that's easy to remember that highlights the three main elements to assess when looking for value leaks. Follow the proven methodology of CLR to determine the costs and weigh them against the value of automation. And what about the why? What is the point of this presentation? What are the benefits and why should you go through all the effort to analyze your production for automation? Well because if implemented correctly, automation can bring a huge amount of benefit to your business and use technology to stop shrinking margins and deal with labor shortages. In the realm of labor, automation can reduce labor dependence. It can improve the safety for workers, increase worker retention, and better talent utilization. It can shift human capital away from repetitive tasks for which machines can do better and deploy the skilled workforce for activities where they really add value for the business. Another benefit of automation is efficiency. Increase capacity by reducing the cycle time, and there's always the associated cost with that. Reduce errors in rework, reduce cycle time, improve quality, and reduce errors in production. And all of these examples have associated costs. Quite simply, we can do more with less. Business sustainability is another benefit. Automation can make your business model more sustainable and more stable. Increase predictability in labor demand, reduce the risk of delays, standardize the production. All benefits. And where do these benefits lead? To one thing, profitability. Automation can quite simply reduce cost, improve margins, and grow profit. So in summary, again, why automate? Look at the pressures and benefits. And the associated cost factors. Use the CLR methodology to optimize the three elements of cycle time, labor, and rework critical for operations. Then analyze the process and identify productivity leaks. Determine the full cost and value of automating these processes. And review the decision checklist and see if it fits within your criteria. I have a challenge to you. Go out there, use this methodology, and explore at least one production process in your business. Apply the calculations and identify the potential impact that automation can make for your business. I hope we've been able to make your decision-making process easier today. And I wish you success in the application of this tool. Of course, we are available if there are any questions as you implement these in your operations. I want to sincerely thank you all for your time today. That is it for the presentation portion, and we'll move on to your questions. I do have a panel of people, experts here waiting for your questions and have seen your questions. And Jason Fitzwilliam, our Precast Solutions Manager, also has joined us for the Q&A session. Hello, everyone. Hopefully you can hear me. Yes, we can. I've got some questions already that I will just dive right into. The very first question is, what's the easiest part of the precast production process that can be fully automated without major investment? Okay, that's a great question. So, the answer is, this is actually more complicated than you would think. Major investment can be defined in lots of ways. And that's why we typically look at return on investment in order to make a better, more relevant comparison. So, moreover, because every producer is different, it's hard to compare across the industry. In general, we see machines that require less precision, for example, cleaning, oiling and pulling machines usually are the simplest to automate. And that's because of the low level of technology. So, more than that, these processes are typically very labor intensive and are, you know, not very safe from a safety perspective. So, jobs that contribute to high amounts of rework typically require more engineering and time to design, but can help cut out costly human error is what we find typically. Hopefully that answers the question. Okay. Next question is, other than CLR, are there other factors we should consider? Oh, yes, absolutely. So, what we find is that it's good to look at this through the 80-20 principle. And this is exactly what we did in looking at general production systems. So, what we find is that 80% of the benefits come from looking at the parts of the process that we spoke about. The other 20% would be things like material costs and design engineering costs and stuff like that, which obviously could represent significant sources of leakages, for example, in any business. So, those are things that you can definitely look at in your business as well. But we find that generally, the best thing to do is to look at, you know, everything through the eyes of the CLR principle. Okay. Thank you for the answer. The next question is, with the current uncertainty in the markets, how should potential returns be determined? So, it's kind of a difficult time now with everything that's going on, but I would tend to follow the same process of investigating all the possible costs and benefits and integrating the sensitivity analysis. So, I can't stress enough that the best investment, even if you don't end up investing in automation, is to go through this process of looking at your process regarding CLR. So, you know, even if you don't decide to automate, this can create a knock-on effect where you identify areas of your production process which are potential targets for improvement. All righty. Next question is, in calculating the viability calculation payback period, how is the automation efficiency percentage calculated? So, Judy, do you have an answer for that one? I think that's in the slides. Judy, you're muted. Sorry, my apologies. I was muted. I'm sorry, can you repeat the question? In calculating the viability calculation payback period, how is the automation efficiency percentage calculated? So, I can handle that one. It's Adam here. So, typically, what that would be would be another investigation into what percentage of those costs associated with that process could be eliminated with automation. So, that was a little more in detail as to the exact solution that we would need to present here, but that's something that our team does or, right, your team does. Because, again, of those costs, it's very difficult to remove, say, 100%, but usually you'll get into a higher percentage of 75, 85, that kind of area to determine your savings. Does that make sense? Thank you. No problem. We have a follow-up question. Are there other areas where automation efficiency is calculated? We have a follow-up question. Are there other areas, support shops, that are better suited for automation, such as steel or carpentry shops? The answer there is absolutely. Every part of the process that feeds into the ultimate supply chain and the process itself would be targets for analysis in this process. So, we have, in the past, helped producers look at other peripheral processes, such as the wood shop and the steel bending processes and things like that, which definitely can be either bottlenecks or sources of waste in the process. Does that answer the question? Yes, it does. Thank you very much. Next question would be, would investing in automation involve an indirect cost of hiring qualified technicians or certifying existing staff to manage and service these complex machines? Hello? I can jump in and answer that one. I think this depends on the type of equipment. The answer is maybe. Certainly, in Ultraspan's case, we do design a huge variety of solutions. We do design a variety of systems. We do design a variety of systems. We do design a variety of systems. We do design a variety of systems. The answer is maybe. Certainly, in Ultraspan's case, we do design a huge variety of solutions that are intended to reduce the need for labour and are simple to use. So, we have solutions that have a training period for about one hour, and specifically in the European market, solutions exist that do need skilled labour and retraining. So, I guess the benefit here is that instead of hiring and rehiring five guys at the $30,000 a year range, you typically hire and can keep one guy at $60,000, for example, due to the nature of the job. So, higher skilled and you get less turnover. In terms of maintenance and service costs, most vendors should give you an idea of this. You can build those costs into your ROI calculations and make an informed decision there. Okay. The second part of that question is, what are the steps involved in the automation process? Well, the steps involved in automation would be to define the scope of automation. You want the planning, the design, and the development. You'll have to test in the execution of the automation and the plan for future maintenance. Okay. A related question is, since people are going to be operating the automation equipment, how do you manage the adoption of automation when it could represent that people could lose their jobs? Okay. I'll answer that one. This one, I have some input from the team here. So, that's a very good point. We need people engaged at all levels, especially shop personnel, and they must own these initiatives. So, there are some recommendations for that. The first one would be to make sure that you have a plan. You want to make sure that you have a plan for the automation. And they must own these initiatives. So, there are some recommendations for that. We would involve them in the analysis phase of the methodology so that they understand the processes and can contribute to find the value leaks. And also let them know that it's not management against workers. Like, it's all of us together to win more projects, to make our lives easier, increase our chances of winning jobs. It's a competitive market. We need them to understand that and understand that the leaders are adopting the new technologies for the success of the company. At the same time, these people may be worried. So, you want to assure them that they won't lose their jobs and because effectively, you do need them. So, automation is about replacing those repetitive tasks and complex operations with technology and putting those skilled employees to areas where we really need that human talent. Excellent. For a fully automated system plant, what is the typical labour percentage? Hopefully, you guys can hear me this time. This is a difficult question to answer. I mean, every production system is different. So, it really depends on what type of product you're talking about, what level of automation, those types of factors would be things that we would need to look at. So, I think in that case, we'd have to take a specific approach to looking at that process to assign a percentage. But it's usually many orders of magnitude lower than a typical manual process. So, I would invite the asker to reach out to us so that we can maybe look more in depth into what they're looking at. Okay. Next question. Is there a way to estimate an optimal level of automation for a precast plant? So, you can estimate some level of analysis into your current operations and you can look at how everything is functioning. But it's critical to evaluate all costs and components involved in the process, not only labour, but also the final product quality, safety, training and equipment depreciation. All those factors will come into play. So, with all those values, you can estimate a critical level that might help you to embrace or delay automation. So, the answer is yes, but it definitely depends on many factors. Got it. Related question is, my production is so variable, I do not think there's any feasible way of estimating my production. My production is so variable, I do not think there's any feasible way of automating certain aspects of it. Should I explore what technology options exist before I invest so much time into this process? So, like I said before, I think even if you don't end up automating in the end, the real benefit here is doing this analysis to find different efficiencies within the process. And there may be ways that you can improve your business without automation, in fact. However, the value to start before you even think about investing is the process itself. So, while it's always a good idea to have an idea of what technology or automation options exist in the industry, I wouldn't let that deter you from the process, obviously, because there's value in the process itself. Okay. Next question is, what are you seeing as the biggest areas for improvement with automation? So, I guess we've done this for quite a few years now and we've seen quite a few different operations and we find that typically automation is best for operations that have a large impact on CLR. So, in precast, it's primarily the preparation stage. So, you know, everything that happens before you put any concrete into the forms. So, usually that's things like cleaning, layout, setup, reinforcement, things like that. So, that's where we normally see customers finding the highest returns on investment. All right. Thank you very much. Got one more question in. It seems like you do a lot of work in Europe. Do you see more automation in Europe? And if so, why do you think the U.S. hasn't adopted the same level of automation as quickly? That's a great question. And, you know, when I first started my journey in this industry, I asked the same question. In general, we do see higher levels of automation in Europe, and it's simply because they've been at it for a lot longer than we have. I would say about 10 to 15 years. There are a couple of reasons for this. And the main reason that keeps coming back is that labor is typically a bit more expensive in Europe, and Europeans like to save, you know, especially on the labor component of their production. So, it's more of a higher motivation to automate in Europe. Safety is also a bigger consideration in Europe in terms of, you know, safety regulations and things like that. And, obviously, automation can help to protect the workers and keep them out of, you know, risky situations. So, those are some of the factors that we see in terms of the driving of automation. Precasters are highly automated compared to North America. Another big reason is the U.S. hasn't necessarily adopted automation in precasting because they've just sort of been reluctant and hesitant to make the shift. I think it's probably because they're not used to it. automation in precasting because they've just sort of been reluctant and hesitant to make the shift. I think it's probably because they haven't had a framework like the CLR to use as a basis. And now that we have that, hopefully, we'll see a lot more precasters turning to automation. We have seen that, you know, there are a lot of companies out there willing to start the journey. So, we see that as a very encouraging sign in the market. All right. Got another question in. In the example in the presentation, the focus was on layout. I can definitely see some values in automating some of our layout processes. However, much of our expense is related to handling. Are there ways of automating handling processes? I suppose it depends on what you define as handling because there's a lot of different parts of the overall handling process. So, the answer is yes. There are various ways to automate handling from stripping down to yarding and indexing of products. So, the answer is yes, and it depends on exactly what you're looking for. So, I would invite the participant to reach out to us to learn more about what's possible.

webinar

CLR methodology

value leaks

precast concrete production

automation analysis

costs and benefits

time study

productivity leaks

automation benefits