FUTURE OF MANUFACTURING
FEATURE
Factory of the future
PLANT spoke with Richard Kunst, President and CEO, and Mariela Castaño, Senior Vice-President and COO, at Kunst Solutions, about the factory of the future, focusing on various trends, technologies and automation. BY MARIO CYWINSKI As manufacturers continue to recover in the face of COVID-19, they are exploring new ways to innovate and bounce back, changing the future of Canadian manufacturing forever. Manufacturers are still investing in and adopting advanced technologies to optimize processes, improve operations, and create new products for the marketplace. In this Q&A, Kunst and Castaño give us an insight on what the future of 14 Plant / September/October 2021
manufacturing might look like. Kunst has over 45 years of senior leadership experience in manufacturing, operations, retail, and supply chain. He was previously the President of the Canadian Region for the Association for Manufacturing Excellence, and is a regular contributor to PLANT magazine. Castaño is an industrial engineer by trade. She has over 35 years of experience in operations, manufacturing, and continuous improvement. She is
a Six Sigma Black Belt with a passion for “working with less” and a sharp eye for waste reduction.
Q
PLANT: Do you believe that the factory of the future is already here?
Kunst: The answer is yes, and no. The factory of the future is like trying to chase the horizon; you think you’re getting close, and all of a sudden, it shifts. We have grandiose visions that the factory of the future is a gleaming, huge enterprise filled to the brim with automation. However, seeing a bit of divergence, especially through COVID-19, as the technology of communication exponentially improved, not only in the quality, but in acceptance by society. We’re seeing a lot of craft businesses that are being competitive. If you look at beer brewing industry, before it was dominated by the large breweries, today, PLANT.CA
