Steven Christopher of Super Systems Inc – The Interview

We are very pleased today to be speaking with Mr. Steven Christopher of controls company Super Systems Inc., of Cincinnati, Ohio. We have always thought of Steven as having a very unique perspective into the heat treatment industry insofar as in his position as an “installation” engineer he gets to see a global perspective as well working with “front line” heat treaters.

Steven I always like to start at the very beginning which is your background-how did it come to pass that you are in your current position? Perhaps I am getting ahead of myself slightly-what is your actual position also?

Ha, you know I often ask myself that same question. I got into heat treat a long time ago and was lucky enough to work at a commercial heat treater dabbling in everything. We were NADCAP certified, yet processed an older farmer’s knife blades who dropped them off in a bucket with a handshake and “see you next week”. We specialized in nitriding, but also had carburizing, plasma ion and vacuum equipment. We were big enough to have all this equipment, but small enough that we didn’t have a team of automation engineers—meaning when something broke or needed upgraded it became my responsibility. I learned a lot very quickly and eventually found my way to SSi where I have been for almost fifteen years now.

Fast forward to today and this answer becomes a bit more complex. I could be catching a flight to Mexico one week to work on a furnace, driving to Phoenix the following wearing a sales shirt, then attending an MTI or Nadcap meeting the very next week. My real focus is developing the machine that is our West Coast operations. I am part of a small team, hyper-focused on captive- and commercial heat treaters west of the Rockies. We have a cradle-to-grave mentality, working closely with our sales rep network up front, then directly with customers and our Cincinnati corporate office through design and engineering phases, ultimately installing and supporting our products. It is really quite rewarding to be involved throughout the entire lifecycle, often quoting a job and years later seeing that vision come to fruition. Ask me again next week and I might have a different answer! It really changes so fast that I just try to keep up.

And what does this involve on a day to day basis? In other words when you get up in the morning what do you have to look forward to on a typical day?

Well usually I wake up in the morning to about fifty emails, you know one of the many perks in living three hours behind the rest of your team. The positive spin on this is that while emails start early, my phone doesn’t start ringing for another couple hours. So typically I focus on emails and planning early on, shifting to support & meetings once my phone starts ringing about 8am. Of course all this assumes I am not driving to LA—meaning I have to be on the road before 5am to avoid traffic!

As to what I look forward to, the answer lies in the unknown. The first thing that popped into my head when you asked this question was that scene in Forest Gump, you know “life is like a box of chocolates”. For me that is what’s so fun about my role in our organization—I never know what I am going to get. Any day could be smooth sailing or rough seas. It’s exciting to be part of an industry that is always in motion, always evolving.

I already alluded to the fact that you talk to many “front line” people during your installs, this includes engineers, metallurgists, managers as well as the individuals who run the furnaces on a day to day basis. This must lead to some very interesting questions, viewpoints and discussions-let me throw one out as an example; does the average heat treater bring up carbon footprints and emissions? Is this a concern amongst the individuals you interact with?

Ah, of course you had to ask the California guy about going green. Haha. No matter your personal opinion on the topic, it is interesting and worth discussing. So a few years ago, silence. Then a couple years ago managers and owners started to become inquisitive. It was sort of a Keeping Up with the Jones’ thing, more curious than serious. So what are others doing? Is Fred down the street doing something yet? I think a lot of people are still in this curiosity phase, but many are moving beyond it into discovery. It is no longer just management, but engineers and quality persons shifting the conversation a more technical direction. What do we need to do to get ahead of this? What can we install today to calculate such things tomorrow? How can we realistically reduce our carbon footprint? A Jim Collins would say, this is a BHAG and can be overwhelming at first. Our team has ideas, but we are navigating this along with everyone else.

At Super Systems we always talk about data, not because it’s the end game but because without it you can’t make informed decisions. Without data you can’t decide if you need to invest in another furnace or understand things like carbon footprint. We don’t attempt to answer these questions for companies, rather we provide data so everyone can make the best decisions for themselves. That is where we are in this conversation, companies want to take a first step but are paralyzed without data to make intelligent decisions.

As more and more people care about emissions, a tipping point will be reached and regulations will follow. Some will remain defiant, but eventually the government or large primes will take the first step. They will care simply because their constituents or customers will care—passing along to the average heat treater. Companies are going to be responsible for understanding their carbon foot prints and emissions. I don’t have a crystal ball, but I expect in five years everyone will care either because (1) they truly do or (2) they will be financially motivated to care. This could be punitive in nature, government regulations, fines, etc. Or could be reward-based in the form of tax breaks or a prerequisite to bid certain contracts. Either way this subject isn’t going away anytime soon and we are committed to the challenge; hoping to collaborate with a few facilities who are serious about developing this technology.

What about automating the heat treat process to a larger degree and reducing the role of the furnace operators-is this a common theme and if so what do you have to offer?

This question applies to every industry in the US. Everyone is dealing with the labor shortage and competing over a smaller workforce. I think your question is important but phrased incorrectly. We work in a really complex industry and our workforce has to remain engaged. The goal won’t be reducing the role of operators; rather equipping them with tools to be more effective & efficient. We need operators more than ever, just making better informed decisions, and quickly.

Let me illustrate, last week I visited an aerospace customer with ten vacuum furnaces. They care about AMS2750 and -69, NADCAP…all the usual suspects. So I see this guy walking around sampling argon dew point, scribbling on a paper log–this process takes him like thirty minutes. Now 3.3.1 or whatever section it is requires every three months, but this company knows if they find a dew point exceeding -60°F there it a ton of nonconformance paperwork in their future, so they do this task weekly. Thirty minutes wasted every week! Drop a sensor in line, wire it to a recorder, send a text alert to the poor guy when it approaches that limit. Even better, lock out the furnace from running. This is a situation where we don’t need to reduce the operator’s role, we need to improve their visibility. Now imagine he measures dew point for an endothermic generator, sixty minutes. Add ten other necessary yet manual inspections, eight hours. We have to find a way to increase efficiency and let operators focus on the critical aspects of heat treating.

Automating the process can mean so many things, from automated batch lines to installing a ramp-soak controller. I visit shops where operators use their cell phone timer to alert them to adjust set point on a controller, or adjust gas flows for a boost-diffuse cycle. This is a lot to ask from our operators and quite frankly unnecessary. When I see this I am just counting the extra burden and wasted hours.

I am a furnace guy without a robotics background, but obviously robots will have an increased role in the future of heat treating. In its simplest form, there lies an opportunity in manual activtiies like racking parts. A bit more complex, but still very realistic, could be robots equipped with cameras performing visual inspections. This will require some form of AI and I am excited to see how that shape our future. Certainly SSi is exploring AI’s ability to evaluate process charts to ensure quality–again not to eliminate operators, but helping them focus their time on suspect lots. The first step here is data and lots of it, data becomes the foundation that makes all this possible.

There are tons of examples like these. We always talk about having to walk before you can run. You can’t build a house without a solid foundation, and you sure can’t text Bob about his dew point without the right platform to build upon. We spend a lot of time at SSi helping facilities select hardware flexible and robust enough to meet their future vision.

This question is very closely related to the one above but is a little more specific-flowmeters. Flowmeters have come a long way in the past few years and few companies have been in the forefront as much as SSi. Care to tell us how this technology is changing and benefiting heat treaters?

We are on our second generation technology and very proud of our eFlo product line. We entered the market with a process control mindset. We wanted to ensure that a process requiring fifty cubic feet of gas did just that, time after time. Then we started getting calls about all these old motorized actuators breaking, you know the ones with the external linkage. So we started shipping a bunch of these for carburizing applications—natural gas and process air.

As we had more and more in the field the conversation shifted towards data. Users didn’t want to simply control, they wanted to understand how much they were using. They wanted to compare run to run as a leading indicator that something may have changed in the furnace. So we started to record flow rates and customer data sets grew. After a while a few business savvy users connected the dots, understanding if they knew the cost- and volume of gas used they could calculate their costs per job. So we tasked our software department with an application to calculate this, which they have. I think that is what I like most about SSi, we have three divisions that work together to deliver what the industry needs. And quite often we don’t know what that is until we are told—but trust me we listen and work towards that every day.

I think the future for flow meters relates to your previous question about carbon footprint. Gas consumption, specifically natural gas, is of course a huge component, electrical being another. We are starting to monitor these and can then offer a very precise estimate towards calculating carbon footprint.

Steven you see everybody, auto parts suppliers, aerospace companies, commercial shops, captive operations you name the heat treating and you have probably seen it. Are all of these different industries asking for pretty much the same thing when it comes to controlling their heat treating processes?

Gord, you’ve apparently never been to a NADCAP meeting. There is a room full of people from the same industry and they can’t agree on the same thing. If they can’t agree then there is zero chance that automotive and commercial or some other unrelated industry will ask for the same thing! Hell, I can’t even get a company with four locations to agree on the same controls. Joking aside, there is a lot of commonality but everyone has their own view of how controls should work. At 60,000 feet everything looks the same, but when you really listen to customers, getting closer to the surface the nuances present themselves. Imagine a Venn Diagram with circles representing the different industries, there is some overlap between the aerospace and automotive and energy circles. But in reality there aren’t five circles representative of each industry, rather there are like 10,000 circles representing each facility!

You would think that we could design a single system that satisfied all these groups, but trust me that we are thirty years into that experiment and proving it impossible. But that’s the fun part. Every time we visit a customer we get a chance to listen to what is important to them, what they consider “cool”, what do they struggle with day in and day out. That is where we thrive, listening to a unique perspective and finding a home for them in the SSi Ecosystem.

I sometimes feel overwhelmed when I see the vast variety of products which SSi has to offer the industry-what is hot these days out of everything you have to offer? Nitriding control systems? Portable gas analyzers? Gas burner monitoring systems?

Three answers here, two are what you’re looking for but the other is a bit abstract. We talked earlier about the labor crunch and everyone is forced to focus on what they do best, perhaps outsourcing the rest. So there is your abstract answer, service. Service is our most important product and always will be. If you need something, we answer the phone. If you have a problem, perhaps totally unrelated to our systems, we have the technical resources to assist. That really is a core value within SSi and just part of our culture; help people, treat everyone with respect and appreciate the urgency in situations.

But shifting back to a more traditional answer, our two largest areas of growth are flow meters and vacuum furnace retrofits. Flow meters are obvious for all the reasons previously discussed. Vacuum furnaces did not just happen overnight. Scott’s [Johnstone, SSi VP of Engineering] group has something like 200 years of combined experience. They’ve invested a lot of time into our vacuum solution and the industry response has been very positive. Let me illustrate, we call Scott’s division the systems group. They specialize in furnace retrofits, sometimes new panels and often just updating controllers and instrumentation. Historically this group is evenly balanced between vacuum, endothermic and nitriding retrofits. In 2023 vacuum furnaces represented 75% of that group’s portfolio. Why? Vacuum is interesting because there are so many quality suppliers. A lot of facilities add equipment over time—meaning they have a lot of different control platforms. Every new hire has to learn ten different systems. This explains why we’ve experienced this growth in the vacuum market. We have a common platform that works on any furnace and meets the latest industry specifications. And what does that mean really? Now these new hires are trained once and can immediately run all the equipment.

In the previous question I asked what products were attracting a lot of attention these days and one I asked about was nitriding control systems. SSi invested heavily in this technology a number of years ago. You now have a mature, proven product offering for this area-do you feel that what you have now is considered as an industry leader?

Chuck [Thomas, SSi Metallurgist] and I were part of that investment years ago coming from a nitriding background. Now SSi would have no doubt achieved success in this market even without our addition, but it sure has been fun joining a team with where we shared the same vision. Nitriding has experienced solid growth over the last decade, partly from new markets requiring more precise metallurgical properties and partly a general manufacturing shift towards near finished parts. Over this span we have listened to customers and invested appropriately. To answer you clearly, we have a great product and there are three reasons why.

First, we invested in a nitriding furnace years ago. We have a full time metallurgist helping customers develop cycles and when he is not busy with that he is conducting studies helping improve our technology. He literally hours every week trying to break what we have—and when he succeeds we fix it. We became proactive, we didn’t wait for problems to arise in the field, rather we actively went looking for them. This really pushed our solution forward a great deal.

Secondly is customer engagement. Although my wife may disagree, we do a great job listening at SSi. We visit customers and attend all of these industry activities, from NADCAP to committee meetings. Showing up is only half the battle, we improved our system by listening. We take notes and that in turn drives our research and development. I can say with confidence that listening for ten years has led to a really incredible system.

Lastly, it always comes back to service. I always joke that it is easy to heat up a furnace, but really difficult to answer the phone. I will just say that we answer the phone, always.

You have been involved in projects around the globe including Africa of all places. Do heat treating requirements and requests vary much geographically?

Ahh, a love for travel, something that you and I share. You know I am not super involved in our international activities, but I have had the opportunity to work in Asia, Africa, Europe and throughout North America. This question may be better suited for Damian [Bratcher, SSi International Director] or one of our international offices [UK, China, Mexico, India], but let me try. Let’s stick with the aerospace industry here, the reality is the major primes are European or US based—and all the specifications are approved by committee, hearing from suppliers across the globe. So the answer is culture and practices change geographically, but the underlying requirements do not.

Always love this question-what to date had been the most fun, memorable and interesting project you have been involved with? Certainly I understand that these might be mutually exclusive with fun and memorable perhaps not going together.

Certainly any international job would meet your criteria here. I mean this January I was driving down a South African highway when an elephant and rhinoceros emerged from the bush, memorable right? Vietnam, super interesting adapting our products to a different workforce. But this is the easiest question you have asked all day with one clear winner.

I know that you know Carlos and Salvador from our Mexico office. Did you know that office has grown to 21 people? Quite impressive. In 2022 they set a goal developing internal talent, building a project group capable of retrofitting any type of equipment. Now prior to this we did this type of project in Mexico, only we would have assigned a US-based engineer to manage. But now we were committed to reducing that dependence—really allowing our Mexico office to function similar to our European division. So early 2022 Damian asked me to help make that happen.

I started flying down to our Queretaro office regularly. We would meet and review furnace operation, the next trip NFPA safeties, and eventually working into our engineering standards. In these meetings they would ask really great questions, then confer as a group and you could tell they really got it. After a few visits it became quite clear they really knew their stuff, and honestly what I was presenting was just confirming what they already knew. I mean collectively this group already had decades of experience. And that is when it clicked for me. I realized they had all the necessary skills and knowledge prior to that first meeting, what I offered wasn’t to be learned—I just gave them the confidence to face the next opportunity head on.

And we had a lot of those opportunities over the last couple years. We’ve retrofitted a vacuum nitrider and quite a few batch IQ furnaces. Early on I was heavily involved, designing the system and writing much of the PLC logic. With each new project my role was reduced a bit less and less. Then finally, actually just last month, they completed their first complete retrofit on an IQ furnace. They designed and installed a brand new panel—including our Matrix process controller, PLC, VFDs for the agitators, flow meters—I mean this project turned a manual operation into a lights out furnace.

So if you are curious what checks all those boxes, what has been fun, memorable and interesting. This is without a doubt the winner. It has been a great experience working with a group of talented, ambitious engineers. But ironically, I have learned so much more from them than they have from me. This group has taught me so much about teamwork and organization. They set a very high bar for how to be deliberate and continuously improve one’s craft. I am very excited to see what the future brings for SSi in Mexico.

My last question-what do you most enjoy about your job?

Grounded people, cool places, interesting projects…I mean it’s impossible to pick just one. Last week I literally touched a part that will find its way to outer space later this year, cool right? My background was the pharmaceuticals industry where I spent 95% of my time in meetings—talking not doing. What I enjoy most about heat treat is the balance. This goes back to your first question about what my day consists of. Well sometimes I am traveling, sometimes I am in meetings, sometimes I have a wrench in my hands, sometimes I am programming from my laptop, and when I am lucky I am enjoying a glass of wine with many of the nicest people I have ever met. And keep in mind the backdrop to all of this happens to be some of the coolest factories in the world, pushing the limits of technology. Never a dull day on the front lines.

Thank you Steven I appreciate the time. Gord Montgomery