SynerTech Automation: From Whiteboard to Factory Floor in Months

Carl Holden:0:01
Welcome to What's Made in the USA, the podcast that celebrates the people, companies, and ideas behind American manufacturing. I'm your host, Carl Holden, and on each episode we meet the entrepreneurs, engineers, and skilled professionals who are building real products right here in the United States. Today, I'm pleased to have Bryant Parker of SynerTech Automation headquartered in Ogden, Utah. Let's get started. Welcome, Bryant.

Bryant Parker:0:26
It's good to be here.

Carl Holden:0:28
Thank you so much for coming on today. We'll jump right in. Brian, I'd love for you to give us a top-level overview of what you make or do at Center Tech.

Bryant Parker:0:38
Yeah, so so Center Tech Automation, what we do is we specialize in robotic automation for manufacturing. So we work with manufacturers and producers around the country and we'll go in and a lot of them will be looking at a process whether it needs to be improved, refined. since COVID a lot of people are just saying no one wants to do this job, so can you make a robot do it? But We help manufacturers to produce here in the US. So we were excited about kind of this podcast because that's one of the big things with CenterTech is we want more manufacturing done here in the US than you know, sent out to other countries.

Carl Holden:1:24
To be clear, you are an integration company. do you build robots? Are you mostly implementing other robots? Like what's the part are are you building pieces, et cetera? What would you say you're helping do as far as like the manufacturing side?

Bryant Parker:1:41
Yeah, so we we don't build the robots, but we will put together a full system. So right now we are working on we've got a big project in our in our shop right now where a company in Texas that does the decorative paper for Laminate that you see on like IKEA shelves and other things, they have a you can imagine the number of roles and things that they have in their storage. we are putting together an automated storage and retrieval system for them. And so we're we we're putting a Kawasaki robot on a big long ninety foot rail and they'll be racking on both sides of the rail where all of their rolls of this decorative paper will be hung. And this system will allow them to you know place what what role they want. It'll bring it to the front, it'll cut it to length for them. And so it we build that full system and design the sh the racking, we design the end of arm tooling, we design the full and integrate the whole system so that they have that solution that'll make them more profitable and and more efficient while they're producing. So we we help up

Carl Holden:2:54
So my understanding that's called like systems integrators. Is that what like category you okay.

Bryant Parker:2:58
That is correct.

Yep. Yeah. System integration is is the category that we fall into, yes.

Carl Holden:3:06
Great. Which is very important because people don't realize the amount of processes it takes to manufacture. And not everything that manufacturers do is something that they can pull off in-house. They need professionals like yourselves to help some of the actual like setup process to make the thing, correct?

Bryant Parker:3:26
Yeah, yeah. A lot of the processes, I mean, you know, manufacturers, they're they're focused on their process, what they're building, whether it's big or small, that that's their expertise. Our expertise is to come in and and figure out how to help them do that more efficiently, and and just better in general. And a lot of times that comes with automation so that things can run smoother and more and and just better. So Yeah, we we help them not so much build our own specific product, but help a lot of others so that they can do their products better.

Carl Holden:4:06
And I know I I have a client kind of within this industry. You're also helping them map out containerized solutions, of framing and those kinds of things of where the stuff sits, the strategy of implementing it within an existing system. Are you working with like PLC and other like larger OEMs to implement these kinds of things?

Bryant Parker:4:35
Yeah, yeah. pretty much every system will have a PLC, which is essentially the brain of the system, tells everything what to do and when to do it. so we we use kind of the major brand names on the PLCs and conveyors and robots and things like that. And then yeah, like we said, integrate that together into a full working turnkey system.

Carl Holden:4:56
Now for those of you listening that don't know what PLC stands for, I believe that's programmable logic computers. Controllers. Okay. See, I know the term and I've heard the client say it a bunch of times, but okay, computers. Or controllers. Controllers. which are technically computers in a sense. So I was close. Yeah.

Bryant Parker:5:02
Yes.

Bryant Parker:5:11
Yeah.

Bryant Parker:5:17
These days they are. They used to be but yeah, these days it's essentially a computer that that runs a whole system. Yeah. It's you could swap it out and you wouldn't be wrong.

Carl Holden:5:28
Brian, what is your role at Center Tech and what led you to this journey with this company?

Bryant Parker:5:33
Yeah, so I am the founder of CenterTech Automation. Currently I'm the also the president of the company. I have been doing industrial automation for the past fifteen or so years. And I was working for another system integrator at the time, and they asked me to start CenterTech on the side as a distribution company so that they could. get better margins on their products and everything and and be more profitable. And so that was SynerTech that I started on the side of this company that I was working for. Unfortunately, about three or four months after I got it started and and running, they ended up going out of business. And and so at the time, my fourth child was about to be born and he has spina bifida.

And so he needed surgery right when he was born. And so because of that, the only way for me to keep insurance and have it by the time he was born and everything was to because there's some shared ownership between the previous company and CenterTech, I could transfer that insurance to Center Tech and just keep rolling with it. And so it it was kind of the best option to keep insurance and keep things rolling. So we said, All right, we're gonna make Center Tech go. And so

Carl Holden:6:32
Mm.

Bryant Parker:6:59
we jumped into it so that we, you know, when my son was born, he could have surgery and do everything, and it all worked out good. but we started out Center Tech as kind of a distribution company selling the components from the major manufacturers. once we got into COVID, our customers were talking to us and they were going, Okay, guess we need to do this project, we need these components, but Because of COVID, no one's in the office. So if you guys are willing to integrate and do a full turnkey system, then we'll buy all your components. And so as a as a young company, we, you know, we just, okay, yeah, we we can do that. And started to do integration about 2020. And after that, it just exploded. Once people knew that we could integrate and do full turnkey systems, they didn't want to talk about components anymore. They just want to talk about, okay, just do this system for me.

And today that's you know, ninety-five, ninety six percent of what we do is the turnkey systems and our distribution is essentially spare parts at this point. But that's kinda how we got started and got enrolling. we've got about fourteen employees at this point and yeah, what what did I miss? What else are you wanted to know?

Carl Holden:8:19
That well, I was you actually got to the next question. I was gonna ask how many people you have within your company, kind of follow up with that. Obviously within the United States and making things here, one of our biggest logistical issues is finding enough humans to get the work done. what are the strategies you implement at Center Tech to help keep your team engaged in the missions that you have?

Bryant Parker:8:47
well we search for motivated people who really like what they're doing. And as long as we keep busy that you know, they they stay pretty engaged. They like what they're doing. They like the idea that we're helping people. And you know they love to go out and when the system's done and install it, they love to see the mission complete and see the customer start to use it and everything.

What one of the coolest things that me and my staff lo just love is, you know, typically when a new customer comes to us and we start talking to them about a project, ninety nine percent of the time we take it and we draw it on a whiteboard and we we draw it up, we say, Okay, this is how it's gonna work, there's a couple of renditions, you know, figure it out, but when we do our proposal, a lot of times it's you know, starts out on a whiteboard, goes into CAD and is a two D layout.

But then six to nine months later, that just drawing on a whiteboard is now sitting on our floor and operating like we were wanting it to. And so that's that's kind of the cool part that a lot of our employees really like is just the creativity and the ability to create these novel systems to solve these our customers' problems.

Carl Holden:10:06
Great. Can you tell us a again, you mentioned customers. Can you tell us a little bit about who you sell to, who you're focusing on helping, and what a typical transaction or business engagement looks like with a company?

Bryant Parker:10:20
Yeah, so right now a large portion of our sales and a lot of large portion of our customers are in the food and agriculture industry. so we've we work with fruit producers, we do a lot in the egg industry, we work with different companies that are producing you know animal protein products. So Whether that's pork, bacon, turkey, the the chicken, you know, we we do a lot of that stuff with picking and placing product into trays, palletizing, depalletizing, packaging, things like that. So a lot of our business has been in that area there. Like I said, we we do other stuff, like the automated storage retrieval systems, as well as we work on kind of the medical side and a few other areas with assembly and kiting systems for kind of those medical kits and stuff like that that that some places need to put together. So that's that's a lot of the areas that we work in.

Carl Holden:11:29
Great. Now as far as the company and the offerings that you have, from what you've discussed, what are your plans for as far as growth, other than just getting customers, are there parts of the manufacturing industry that you're not offering or you're working towards? What are your goals for the coming years?

Bryant Parker:11:47
So we we're always of the mindset that any engineering that we can reuse is valuable. so when we design systems, we always look at them and say, Okay, how can we do this in a modular way that can benefit multiple customers so that we can execute and we can find the next customer and get it installed even faster with them. And so a lot of the systems are gonna be in a way that They're they're set up modularly. Again, that's why we use the robots instead of some other gantry and other technologies, because they're so flexible that you can take nearly the same design for one customer and throw it into another plant, and with some reprogram pre reprogramming of robots, you can get their system done too. And so we like we really focus on flexibility, things like that. one area that we are going that we are entering and we're doing more in is warehouse and distribution. So with that, I mean you've got distribution centers opening up all over the country. And so we are connected with different autom you know, mobile robot companies and things like that to where we're we're starting to do and look at more and more logistics and material handling in the in the warehousing and distribution areas a is a new area that we're We're starting to move into

Carl Holden:13:12
Now when you mention robots, most of what you're doing right now is the kind of robot arm that picks things up and moves things. Are you saying though that with the distribution and stuff that might start looking like the C three PO walk around has arms that can actually kind of do stuff humans do?

Bryant Parker:13:33
w you're talking about yeah, the different humanoid robots. I we we've got some we got some time before I think those are useful. humanoid I mean we're we're humanoid you know mimicking our functionality in in my opinion is not the most efficient way to automate processes. I think the robots that are out there with the six axes that can maneuver and pick and place things.

I I think what you're gonna see in the distribution as well as other areas is those robots are gonna become mobile. So you'll have a mobile cart and you'll have a number of robots on top of that mobile cart that will be able to handle and do whatever they need to in that specific spot and then go to the next area. in my opinion that's a a more robust design. But y you know, the humanoid robots are are just growing and there's a lot of hype around it. So it'll be interesting to see what they do over the next five to ten years. but I think there's a lot of ways to skin that with different designs.

Carl Holden:14:43
Well, this is me throwing out a prediction. I do think that as humanoid robotics becomes maybe something more on the commercial side, there will have to be people that maintain and take care of those things. And I think That is a potential for companies like yourself who already kind of understand the servos and gears have said things that there's gonna be this whole maintenance industry of hey, my robot like broke its leg. Who's gonna fix that? I don't wanna ship it off all the way back to China where I got it from. Hopefully somebody's building them here. I do think that there's a commercial home industry for that, but I was playing Devil's Advocate.

Bryant Parker:15:18
Right.

Carl Holden:15:25
And that I kind of knew you were going to say, humans and our four, you know, two limbs, the four limb, two limbs that can pick things up, isn't really like the best situation for manufacturing. we'd be better at manufacturing if we had huge long arms that could reach over the top, but that's not what we're built to do. But that's why these robots that you work on are so capable. is that robotics does not mean C three PO, it means doing the stuff you need to get done to move things and manufacture.

Bryant Parker:16:01
Yeah, no, that i yeah, I I don't doubt it. I mean it'll it'll be interesting the interesting point will be when Tesla or Unitree or whoever it is that you know, Nura, there's a lot of people that are chasing it. they're gonna have to figure out manufacturing to where they hit a point where it's affordable for you know, households. to have one. but at the same time robust enough that you don't have plastic gears and joints that are just constantly breaking. And so that yeah, it'll be interesting to kind of see how that plays out. I I think that the humanoid robot has a bigger potential, like you were saying, in the in the commercial you know home space potentially in the coming years than the than in manufacturing, but who knows I mean if if you've got a robot that can pick up four hundred pounds and walk it across the room, I could I could I have applications that I could use that in, but we'll just have to see kinda how they develop and all of that.

Carl Holden:17:15
It's it's very interesting and a lot of the stuff in robotics now people just don't see the kinds of stuff that you're doing now. There is a lot of technology that has laid the groundwork for those kinds of technologies.

Bryant Parker:17:29
Yeah.

Carl Holden:17:29
Moving forward, the last couple of years have been crazy. So you mentioned COVID and then the last, you know, election and things and tariffs and all of that that's been kind of affecting the manufacturing industry, good and and bad. what are some major hindrances that currently affect the Center Tech and what do you do to kind of move forward?

Bryant Parker:17:53
yeah, it's one of the biggest things, like you said, with tariffs and other things. even on COVID two, it used to be before COVID that you know you you got your price list from your suppliers and that's the price. And you it's just kind of an industry standard that hey, every January you get a new price list and it's good for a year and and everything and and now and it it affects us, but I'm sure it affects a lot of places. But That's no longer the case. You you know, your manufacturers, your suppliers that you're getting stuff from, they'll give you a price list and in 30 days they may all of a sudden up your price or they may shift things. And so you're your pricing and your estimating and and making sure that you're profitable as you go through and buy things throughout your cycle of producing products or systems or whatever. that that has become something very difficult to predict, you know, saying, hey, my price is gonna be this much in a year from now is not nearly as easy as it was, you know, six, seven, eight years ago before COVID and everything. So that that's a big one that we run into is just trying to be profitable on projects and make sure that we're not underbidding or or things like that because we we just don't know when steel is going to go up or aluminum is going to go up or So and so's gonna raise their price on a robot or a PLC or things like that. That's been the tricky part for us.

Carl Holden:19:26
I'm guessing the opportunity though is possibly similar to ours, running a marketing agency and there's issues of people needing more leads, et cetera, when times get a little tougher. I'm betting there's also this opportunity within SynerTech of, well, we need to get more efficient, we need to save you know money and make our line more efficient. And those are conversations you can have with the client of, well, where can we help you automate something that hasn't been automated?

Correct.

Bryant Parker:19:58
Yeah, absolutely. There's there's always somewhere that you can be more efficient at where we go in and we work with customers and we do automation audits at their plants. And we go through and look at anywhere where there's a bottleneck, anywhere where you're spending too much time, you're spending too much money, you know, just what are your pain points? And then at those points we look for s repeatable processes or thing, you know, even though maybe they have ten different products that they make, you do this on all ten, let's automate that and make you more efficient, save you money, save you on labor because yeah, right now again, people are a lot of people are paying a lot of extra money because they're they're paying agencies, temp agencies to keep someone staffed in that position because no one wants to do it anymore.

And so they'll pay 25, 30, sometimes up to 50% extra for labor because that agency is going to guarantee them that someone's going to be there. But now that position is maybe not profitable anymore because they've got to pay so much to keep someone there. So a lot of areas like that we can help companies save money and be more profitable.

Carl Holden:21:19
Great.

What we're gonna do now is move on to a couple personal questions just to get to know you more and their United States themes. Brian, what's a favorite place that you have in the US that you like to visit?

Bryant Parker:21:37
man. I I mean I might be biased. I love southern Utah, going down to Zions, going down to all the national parks there. I I love doing that. My wife, she likes the cold more than I do. And so, you know, going up to Glacier, up you know, up in Montana and and you know, round there and and then we we love going to the beaches and stuff. So all of those places are great places to go to.

Carl Holden:22:05
I I've been to Utah a couple times myself, very nice, way less bugs in Alabama, so you can't go outside without at least swallowing one every summer on accident. so definitely I am jealous of the lack of bugs that they have out west, but we also have as much water as we need, and so there's a trade off. We have bugs because we have water. And I bet.

Bryant Parker:22:29
Yeah. Yeah, some years we might trade you bugs for water. That would that would

Carl Holden:22:34
I've been hearing especially with the fire seasons that y'all have had the last couple of years, it's been very intense to see what happened out in like California. It's it's tough.

Bryant Parker:22:41
Yep. Yeah, yeah. So we'd take some bugs some years so that we could have some extra water. I think that's a trade we would do. Yeah, there you go. Pipeline.

Carl Holden:22:49
we'll we'll send you some if you need any. what is a favorite childhood or younger adult mem younger adult memory of the United States that you hold dear?

Bryant Parker:23:05
well, you know, I the thing that comes to mind first is probably just the celebration of the fourth of July. You know, every year going there, seeing the fireworks, just being around the community and everyone celebrating our country. probably just the the celebration of the fourth of July is probably a big one that I I have fond memories of growing up as well as I just I love doing every year as an adult too.

Carl Holden:23:32
Yeah, funny enough, you're the first to mention that, in this podcast and that's kind of a a default one. And we just went out to a a campground in the middle of nowhere and just a bunch of people in campers bl you know, shooting stuff up in the air. That's America, right? You know?

Bryant Parker:23:48
That's America, yeah.

Carl Holden:23:51
That's awesome. To the younger and future generations of US professionals, especially for the fact that you have started your own business, but also just those who will be gainfully employed with other companies, if all of them could hear you at once, what is something you would like to impart?

Bryant Parker:24:10
A as far as the new generation of founders or engineers or th like that.

Carl Holden:24:16
Just everyone coming up into this new future that we have, the idea that hopefully, you know, we're making things here in the US, but also just advice you might have for somebody coming into the workforce.

Bryant Parker:24:30
Yeah. what I would say is that I I think what I would say is learn from other people's mistakes as much as you can, because that costs you a lot less than learning from your own mistakes. And so go work for a big company, learn what they do good, learn what you you don't like, go work for a small company, learn what you like about a small company, what they do that you do and don't like. And then, you know, once you have that experience of of kind of okay, this is how people do it. These are some best practices. Then go and do your own thing, you know, if that's what you want to do. but yeah, a lot of lot of a lot of people they they get out of college and they want to jump right into a starting their own business or doing something, especially on the technical side. And I always recommend to people who are looking at that, you know, go you it doesn't have to be for very long, but just go work for a couple of places and that do similar to what you want to do. and learn from them. They're gonna teach you a lot of good stuff that you do and you don't want to do. And that that education that you get is going to be very valuable when you start your own company. There's a number of things that I've been able to avoid and implement because I have experienced that I did work for some other company before I started my own. And so I I guess that's what I would say is yeah learn from other people's mistakes.

As much as you can to avoid doing yourself because it's gonna save you a whole lot of time and money.

Carl Holden:26:09
I love that because it's the exact opposite of all of those bro marketers and guys who are like, fake it till you make your baby. Like, you're gonna make a lot of mistakes that way. So being able to learn from other people within the context of the workforce, not just college, because college is really just a baseline. I love that advice because it is very much contrary to the popular and very likely untrue opinion that they get pitched on social media.

Bryant Parker:26:17
Yeah.

Bryant Parker:26:22
Right.

Bryant Parker:26:38
Yeah. Yeah. The other thing I'd say, whether you're going into the workforce or starting your own company too, is find a good mentor. You know, somebody who's done something similar to what you've done and is two or three steps ahead of you. you know, I I when I started this company I had a friend of mine, he was an old customer of mine who kind of mentored me through a lot of what we were doing and he saved me from doing a lot of things that would have really hurt the business and and everything and so yeah, learn from other people's mistakes and find a good mentor. Like I said, whether that's in the company that you're working for, going into, or starting your own thing, it it will it'll save you a lot of time and money and discomfort.

Carl Holden:27:27
Thank you, Brian, for coming on today and sharing with us about CenterTech automation and how you're helping other companies th make things in the USA. Thank you for coming.

Bryant Parker:27:37
Yeah, no, it's been great to be here. Thank you.