Find out more about Sani-Matic and Cloud Security
Sani-Matic provides equipment that’s critical to manufacturers in the food & beverage, and bio-pharm industries. It assures that systems are ready from batch-to-batch or are cleared for new product runs—without cross contamination or sanitation issues that impact throughput, cost and final product quality. Learn how the connected data streams from the SanitrendTM System drives customer value and aftermarket revenue for the company and therefore providing true digital transformation in their manufacturing industry.
Find out more about Sani-Matic and Cloud Security
Sani-Matic provides equipment that’s critical to manufacturers in the food & beverage, and bio-pharm industries. It assures that systems are ready from batch-to-batch or are cleared for new product runs—without cross contamination or sanitation issues that impact throughput, cost and final product quality. Learn how the connected data streams from the SanitrendTM System drives customer value and aftermarket revenue for the company and therefore providing true digital transformation in their manufacturing industry.
Welcome to Speaking of Service, the podcast that uncovers practical ways to grow service revenue, control costs, and improve customer satisfaction. If you're looking to innovate, gain a competitive edge, or just learn about the latest service trends, you've come to the right place. In today's episode, Chris Wolf, VP of Strategic Partnership. Joins Peter Barry, product management director at Santa to discuss how the connected data streams from the Santa Trend system provides real value to customers and a new business opportunity for the company. Welcome back to speaking of Service today. My guest, Peter Barry, is representing Santa. This is a company from Wisconsin that got its start in the 19. Welding, grinding, polishing stainless steel equipment for cleaning, uh, across the dairy belt of Wisconsin. Well, today they're going across the cloud with software. You might say they're entering the Milky Way. I know that's a terrible punt, uh, but Peter, get me out of this mess. Tell me a little bit about yourself and the company you're here to represent. Sure. Thanks for having me. So Santa Matt, uh, like you said, started in the 1940s and, um, we do cleaning equipment for the food, beverage, personal care, uh, pharmaceutical companies today. Um, so that's cleaning in place over, we call it a lot of times, c i p or cleaning out a place equipment. Um, so think about your dishwasher at home. That's automating your, your cleaning of dishes after your Thanksgiving meal. Uh, so we take that and scale it up to a food processing or a pharmaceutical processing facility and, uh, automate that, uh, doing away with a lot of the manual, uh, labor cleaning processes that they have to endure. So you make machines that people can bring stuff to, to clean. but I understand you also make equipment that goes to something that needs to be cleaned and does that cleaning in place? What do these machines look like? How big are they? How would I spot one if I was in a factory? Yeah, so they're, they're pretty big pieces of equipment. So the, the dishwasher at home, uh, uh, a piece of equipment like that and the food processing equipment facility, uh, might be 10, 15 feet high, uh, 10 15 feet long, so, , obviously when you're cleaning your dishes at home, it's on a pretty small scale. Uh, you think about all the food processing that's going on, you know, in the United States, across the country, uh, there's a lot of production going out there. So they have some pretty large pieces of equipment that are making a lot of, uh, volume of whether it's food production or pharmaceutical production. So, uh, think of that scaled up in, in a much larger size. Well, I'm thinking about the way I load the dishwasher and the way my kids load the dishwash. Very different. Uh, I imagine that you have recommendations for people on how to essentially load that dishwasher when they're going to clean something. We do, yeah. And we, we try to take away the human error as much as possible. So, um, like the dishwasher at home, uh, it's automated. It's a fully, you know, you press start and, and you come back and things are clean and they can be dry from our. Uh, but we take it a step further as well. So the rack you did at home on your dishwasher, uh, you might fight with your spouse on how to load this or how to load that, or what's the optimal way to, to load your dishes? Uh, we try to take that error out of it so that we look at the process parts that the food processing facility or the pharmaceutical processing facility is actually using. and then we'll use 3D modeling software to custom design those racks. So if you have a specific part that you're washing, it's going in a specific part, uh, that makes it very repeatable and a validatable process. But in order to create that repeatable process for a particular customer, you must have to do quite a bit of customization to accommodate the machines that they're using. We do, yeah. So, you know, no two food processing facilities are the same. Same for pharmaceutical. Uh, so we customize to meet the, the process parts, uh, and the, the room configurations, the layouts, you know, certain, uh, facilities might have constraints on space. Uh, they might be retrofitting a, a plant and adding process production, uh, capacity to it. So we might get a odd-shaped layout or some sort of size constraints. So we're doing a lot of customization, uh, both on the application and the, the actual facility space that's going into. So when one of your customers kits out one of their facilities with these cleaners, how long are those machines in place and did they operate usually 24 7 or what's the cycle time? Yeah, it depends. Um, some plants are running it 24 7, you know, just, just, uh, daily, uh, day in and out, three shifts. Um, some food processing plants might be running, uh, two shifts of production and then they go into a cleaning shift, so eight hours a day, seven days a week. Um, so it really varies, but they are, uh, using it quite a bit. Um, you know, mul usually multiple hours per day, multiple days per. As far as longevity, um, we like to think we have some of the better, long lasting equipment in the industry, but, um, you know, you put something in you can expect 10, 15, 20 years later. Uh, as long as you, uh, keep it up to date with maintenance and things like that, that it should be working still. Imagine it's very expensive to build one of these pieces of equipment and deploy it in a factory. How do your customers calculate the return on that investment? Yeah, that's a great question. So we, uh, we obviously speak to that return on investment with our capital equipment. We understand it's an investment. Uh, we have tools. Our sales team has tools to help calculate that investment. Uh, we can also come on site ahead of time and, and watch their manual cleaning processes and they might be using a certain labor headcount. Uh, we look how much water and chemical they're using, how much, uh, electricity they're using. And then we paint a picture or a scenario of what would it be like with our equipment. So usually we're, we're saving a lot of labor head count, uh, a lot of water and chemical, uh, as well as time too. So time is one of the biggest, um, you know, return on investments if a, uh, clean or if a, um, food pa uh, processing facility is cleaning in eight hours. If our equipment can cut that in half and four hours, usually it means that they can produce their., uh, four more hours, right? So they, they deem not only on the reduction of the clean costs, but the increase in production costs. And that can be pretty substantial these days. And it sounds like there's an e s G sustainability as, uh, aspect to this by using fewer chemicals better for the environment. Yep. Yeah. So, uh, more often than not, we're always saving a lot of water. Um, that's a lot of water coming in, which is obviously a cost, but also water going out. Um, so depending on what states you're in, you know, the, the cost of the water treatment, uh, oftentimes can be even more than the water coming in. So, uh, water, uh, you chemical, as you mentioned, uh, as well as electricity, steam heating, things like that as well. It must be a massive amount of data that you could be, uh, pulling off of the machines that you're using, the environments that they they're in. What kind of data are your clients interested in coming from your, from? Sure. Yeah. So there's, um, the big thing is that the, these cleaning systems that we produce, um, there are a lot of regulatory agencies looking at everything from the food plant to the pharmaceutical plant, making sure that the, the food we eat and the pharmaceuticals we use are safe. Um, so with that, there's a lot of, uh, data on the cleaning that needs to be recorded. So things like the time that they clean, the chemical concentrations they use, uh, the temperatures, all of that has to be recorded to make sure that it is appropriate for the cleaning that's going on. Um, so people have done that and do that in various ways. Manual paper, uh, records, things like. Um, but we've developed some software tools, uh, to help automate that process so that it is all automatically captured. So we've been doing a lot of, uh, automation of the cleaning labor processes over the last couple decades, and now we're starting to help with the automation of the data recording of that critical cleaning parameters that they have. So I guess you're moving from a, a sense of, trust me, confidence, this is clean to now being able to prove for compliance purposes, this is clean. How, how broad an array of cleanliness standards are there in the food versus the biopharma area? Sure. Yeah, that's a good question. So, uh, we have a saying around here. We, we like to say that clean enough is not clean. So whether you're in food processing or pharmaceutical, you know, if you look at that processed taint or that part, and there, you know, it's, you say clean enough, that's, that's not the right answer. Um, so, but whether you're in food production or pharmaceutical production, uh, kind of the minimum requirement is obviously a visual clean. Mm-hmm., uh, if you're seeing your process, whether it's pharmaceutical product or, or you know, burnt on, uh, brownies residue, uh, on that, that piece of tank, uh, that's not clean. Right? So visually clean is kind of the first step. Uh, on the food side, we, we did a lot and there's a lot of, uh, regulations around allergens. So allergen testing, uh, dairy nuts, allergens, all those kind of things. Uh, food companies will do allergen swabs after they clean to validate that not only it's visually cleaned, but the allergen residues have gone away. Um, and then as you start to get into the pharmaceutical side, you get into some more biological contamination testing, uh, some more lab-based testing. And, um, you know, that at that point you can really, you know, it, uh, really prove that it has been cleaned. It's mind blowing to think about the levels of compliance and reporting that's available now with the data that was previously must have been captured manually. I mean, how did, how did you go from making a physical device to try to becoming a software company? Yeah. So, um, you know, like any, any, uh, product development, it's, uh, customer requests. So, you know, we, we provided the system itself. Uh, people were, like you said, either manually paper, you know, someone walking up with a paper chart and recording a temperature gauge way back in the day, uh, to, to paper records, to starting to do some electronic type data records. Um, and as we got into development, we did some local softwares, so our software installing local computers, We've since transitioned into cloud-based technologies with, uh, with Thingworks as part of ptc. And, um, there's been a lot of improvements as we transitioned into the cloud. Uh, not only just general product development improvements that we've added features, uh, but with the cloud connection, a lot of the insights that we gain is because we as an, as a manufacturer, can. Uh, look at their data. Uh, from a service side, we, you know, we know what's going on. We can help answer questions better. And, um, you know, just simple things like email notifications and text notifications that, uh, seem very, you know, day-to-day in our, uh, personal lives are kind of brand new to a lot of the food processing and pharmaceutical processing. So, uh, bringing those features to our customers has been, uh, a, a large, you know, joy to us, but also a, a big improvement to our customers as well., I'm picturing going from kind of a said, Hey, would you guys be able to help me get data on this machine? Somebody tinkering, trying to figure out how to answer that client's requirement, and then turning this into a business. Tell me a little bit about that arc and how you created this division. Yeah, so, um, you know, it it, it started, uh, like we said, just kind of from a, a customer request. Uh, for, for more of this, we saw the need for the cloud. Looked at, looked at different options for us, and, um, spent a lot of time developing it. Uh, just, you know, from what we knew, we kind of had the background of, of obviously we're cleaning experts, but the cloud technology, um, you know, the security side, all that was new. Uh, so partnering with a company like ptc, uh, developing it off of the, the tools that they provided, uh, it was really helped to expedite that process for us. And, you know, we brought our, we brought and continued to bring our cleaning expert knowledge. So kind of figuring out what data to grab. We already had a good, a good idea of that. Um, but then, you know, integrating that into the cloud software side was, was the newness to it. So a lot of work was put on that side of it. Uh, you mentioned in their security, just briefly, I'd imagine you're connecting to really critical machines. Are your clients very concerned about the security that your software might provide or perhaps risks that it would entail?. Yep. Yeah, there's always, uh, always really a, a discussion with the IT group. Uh, usually we, we get the ear of the process guide and they really, you know, like with ST on the product and, and want, want it and wanna implement it. Uh, and then the IT group comes in and we kind of have a discussion on security, um, you know, just how it's connected, what our, what our, um, infrastructure is, how we connect, who we partner with. Um, so after we have the discussions, you know, we bring in PTC as needed for, uh, the cloud security side, uh, detailed discussions, things like that. But, uh, usually, you know, it's, uh, uh, for us, a lot of this right now at least, is a one way data transfer. So we're, we're grabbing, there's, like you said, there's so much data with our systems, we're grabbing that and burning it and really exposing that to, um, our customer's view and, and our. Um, we're not necessarily doing down, you know, controls of the equipment, so that helps a lot in making sure our customers are, are, you know, happy and satisfied that hey, we, yes, there's always a risk with, uh, internet and, and uh, cloud connection, but it's mitigated a lot with just a one-way data flow. now we've spoken about your software. We've talked about you providing information to your customers so they can run their equipment more effectively, get back time for their operations, uh, really, uh, be able to prove the level of cleanliness of their equipment for compliance purposes. But let me shift the, the focus a little bit. Are you able to gather data from the machines that you've provided in the field and use any of that information to improve the way you service your client's premise-based equipment? Yeah, absolutely. Um, so the, the core product, the, the core need for our customers is that cleaning, uh, compliance data. Um, but both them and us benefit from the, all the other data that we gather from it. So, um, kind of two groups of that to answer that question. One on an individual customer side, um, if our service team comes out for, whether it's a unplanned call or a planned, you know, preventive maintenance call, uh, being able to go online and see all. you know, whether it's alarms or issues or how that system's been running before we come on site and service it, uh, really helps us just, you know, know what to expect when we come on site better. Versus without this product, it's you're kind of walking into a, uh, you know, just a new environment of who knows what's going on. Um, so on an individual customer basis, I'd say yes, for sure. Uh, stepping back at kind of a higher level on the product development side, our, our product management and applications teams. Um, just seeing what our, what our customers are doing with our systems, how they use it, uh, what kind of alarms are coming up, what temperatures they're running at on an average for clean cycles, things like that. That's really invaluable data for us to help translate into the next product development activity, whether it. New product or a adjustment to existing products and just make improvements, uh, for the customers in the future. It's interesting. One of my previous guests was talking about the cost of unused features where engineers will get together and debate, well, we need this particular feature and this machine. But now the ability to track which features are used has really helped them, you know, decide where to take their foot off the gas on features based on utility to the customer. Are you guys in that debate? Yeah, we're starting to see, see that type of stuff. So, um, we, I think, you know, as, as the manufacturer of the equipment, you're very familiar with your products and you kind of have this, you know, vision for how it's used. Uh, and then it gets out in the field and it gets used a completely different way. So, , yeah, I think that's, uh, it's definitely gonna be enlightening and as we go forward with more, uh, data sets, we'll, we'll get even more, uh, information to adjust how we, um, you know, both, both, uh, both physically build the equipment, like you said at the beginning of the, of the podcast here. You know, we do, we still do a lot of grinding and polishing and welding. Yeah. Um, so we're still building the physical equipment, uh, but then., we do the automation of the equipment and the, the software side of it now. So it's, it's uh, adjusting not only the physical equipment but the programming side of it as well. You must have to be training a whole new generation of users to use your equipment or training a generation of folks who've been cleaning with your equipment for a long time to use it in different ways. What's the future have to, to bear for you and how you'll help enable those?. Yeah. So I, I think, um, you know, a lot of the new labor market that's coming in, that a lot of these companies are, are hiring. Um, are probably wanting and expecting this type of, you know, this type of software and features. So, you know, hey, I'm, I'm starting at this food processing facility and I'm working with this clean and place system and, you know, who knows what this is? Um, I'm as a new, you know, operator, I'm, I'm probably these days more comfortable with logging on the computer and grabbing something versus figuring out this, you know, paper record that, and I'm not sure what happens, uh, or what happens with it. So, um, I, I think there's, you know, we have. Advantage that there's a lot of people out there that, that know the digital side. So, um, it's, it's really, I think, catching up to that audience and, and starting then to create additional tools. You know, there's, because now our systems are connected and a lot of the data's there, uh, there's opportunities with augmented reality, uh, tying in things like that. Uh, for service videos, service videos and things like that. As.. Well, I'm sure a lot of our listeners Livework, so have a lot of ideas of how you could use augmented reality to, uh, improve the use of your equipment as well as to improve the service of it. I have an very important question to you. Can you help improve the quality? I'm getting the loading of my dishwasher at home. Well, uh, I probably can't help with that. That's, that's That's something you'll have to figure out on your own. Well, it's, it's been fascinating company, you know, that makes, you know, real grassroots types of equipment is now moving into the cyber world and, and the cloud. Uh, do you have any parting comments? Um, yeah, we're, we're excited, uh, to continue this journey. Um, it's definitely been a, a, an interesting, uh, transition for our company. So, you know, going from a manufacturing company into a si into now, you know, software on top of that manufacturing, um, there's a lot of different things to think about. A lot of exciting things to think about. It opens up a. A really, uh, a big, uh, service opportunity as well. So we talked a lot about the products. We talked, we touched on kinda the service opportunity. Um, but I, you know, I, I call, I, I kind of call the product our, our virtual boots on the ground. Mm-hmm.. So our service team, obviously we, we can only get so many people flying across the country and, uh, they're a busy group with, uh, being book. but having, you know, this tool that is at my fingertips that I can go check on systems remotely, um, I think that opens up a whole, whole branch of new opportunities for, for the company. And then, uh, you know, improvements for our customers as well. And I'm sure there are listeners who are interested in, in pursuing a path very similar to yours. Uh, is there any big lesson that you learned that you would avoid in the future if you had to do, if you had to do over again? or is there some piece of advice that you'd give somebody getting started, something you did right, that you'd rarely recommend? Yeah. Um, so as far as doing right, um, I think that we had a really, a good opportunity because we have, we, we knew that need, that customer need of data, uh, compliance, and we knew that our cleaning site systems provide that data and that they need. Um, so I think for, for companies looking to do something similar, a recommendation would be to find, find that customer need or that pain point. And, um, and try to, you know, if you're looking at digital transformation solutions, try to find something that fits that versus starting on the digital side and, you know, trying to do after something without thinking about the customer need first. Um, so that's something I think we, we got right. And fortunately was kind of, you know, put in our lap of, of data compliance. as far as things not to do or, or, you know, lessons learned. Um, I just don't under underestimate the, the culture. Uh, changes that will need to go on within your company. Um, so we're, we're developing this product, but, you know, our, our sales team needs to know and understand it. Our service team needs to, needs to be able to speak to it. Um, and, and frankly, you know, everyone in the company should know and understand about, you know, what, what's going on with it. So there is a broad, uh, cultural transformation that needs to occur with these type of products in addition to the actual, uh, development of the product. So, Peter, let me ask you a question. Uh, at some point in time when you made your first machine smart and connected, you must have had a choice of whether to build a platform from scratch or whether to use a tool like Thingworks. What made you decide to go the Thingworks route rather than building something from scratch? Yeah, I, uh, great question. So I think the development of a, from scratch, uh, Uh, would've been probably a much longer development period for us. The Thingworks platform gave us a nice tool base to, to start from. Um, so the development of it, but it's, it also is the backend support of it too. Um, so, you know, Santa is a manufacturing facility. We don't have, uh, a ISO data security center sitting, you know, sentinel back behind the manufacturing area. Uh, so really having PTC and the, uh, security teams and the support teams. behind the scenes really lets us focus on, you know, the, the customer, uh, viewpoint, the user interface and, and the product as a whole. And kind of the, the rest of it is, uh, is taken care of. So it really helped, helped the process and kind of lay a bit from foundation or groundwork for the product. Does this also improve the total cost of ownership that your customers enjoy from the machines they've purchased from you? Yeah, I think it allows us to, uh, offer the product at a better price point overall. Uh, because we don't have to have those, uh, those ISO data security centers and all that, uh, backend side. So we were able to partner with ptc, um, and not only, you know, offer it at a lower cost, but also, uh, as customers are asking for things like single signon, uh, and different features like that, we don't have to develop those solutions from scratch. we can re rely on the PTC team to help, uh, offer those products who are also constantly working on upgrades and, and new features for, for us to then offer to our customers. And I've gotta imagine that by improving the availability of your customer's equipment, either through cleaning faster or reducing downtime in other ways, that's also gotta be improving their top. Yeah, absolutely. So the, um, the product, you know, I've, I've mentioned several times the data, uh, around the cleaning system is kind of what the customers are, are wanting and needing and, and initially are attracted to. Uh, but operational efficiencies we've built, uh, things like OE tools, uh, I mentioned the, the email and text notifications. So, um, quality to quality team is typically looking at this clean cycle data before this system is released back to production to make more food process or, or pharmaceutical process. Um, so just by improving some of the efficiencies there, uh, and reducing that time overall from clean or dirty to their clean process, um, they can really, uh, gain a lot of efficiencies as part of using the software. Have you run into many of your customers who have tried to develop this capability and house themselves to be able to put monitors on their, the machines they may have purchased from you, or to develop their own, uh, big data, o e e systems instead of using yours? Um, Yeah, so some customers do have, um, uh, software, uh, databases and they're collecting a lot of process data them themselves. Um, that is, uh, oftentimes a nice solution. It's a, you know, single solution for a lot of their process data. Um, the, the. The missed opportunity that a lot of those processes have is our customers doing it for process systems, clean systems, and they, they might not know or be experts at the individual processes. Um, so the benefit of our product is, it, it, you know, covers all of the. The data you'd ever want. And, and, uh, OE calculations I mentioned and things like that, uh, are oftentimes really efficiency gains where our customers are maybe not developing those bells and whistles that we offer. And does your customer, or you, do you need a lot of IT staff in order to deploy and support the solution? Um, no, uh, not, not a huge amount. And, and again, that's back to, uh, using PTC as our, as our backbone, as our found. Um, so we're taking care of, you know, our product, our environment, um, the data of our customers and that, but a lot of the backend structure of it, support, um, you know, updates, things like that is hap is, is occurred, um, occurs offline with us, and, and PTC takes care of that. Well, fantastic. I'm glad we're serving you well and I can rest easy now when I go take that, uh, drink of milk and know that it's been. Properly cared for in its production , it's safe to drink. Yep, absolutely. So, Peter, thanks so much. It's been really fascinating to hear the, the history of your company and how you're braving the new world with such success. I wanna thank everyone for joining us. Speaking of service. Have a great day. Thanks for listening to the Speaking of Service podcast, brought to you by ptc. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe wherever you get your podcast. And leave a rating or review, and be sure to check out other episodes to hear new perspectives on improving life for aftermarket professionals, service teams, and the customers they support. If you have a topic of interest or want to provide feedback, email us at speaking of service ptc.com or visit us at ptc.com/speaking of service.