Trew Automation – Q&A with Trew CEO, Alfred Rebello and JobsOhio Senior Director, Karthik Avadhanula

Can you tell us about your leadership role at Trew Automation and briefly about your background?

I started in this industry at The Buschman Company in 1990 right out of the University of Cincinnati CEAS. I left to join a new material handling start-up in 2001, which itself became a successful industry player.  I benefited from having the opportunity of working at these companies in almost all areas of the business (project management, product development, and manufacturing, to name a few), and eventually became an operations executive. With this background, I joined Trew, which has been on an exciting growth trajectory since its founding. Now in the role of CEO, I continue to look for ways to fuel our growth and realize our goal of becoming the most trusted company in the industry.

Recently you announced growth of Trew Automation in Cincinnati region – can you give us what necessitated this growth and what does this mean for the future of the company?

I inherited a great team and because of their customer focus and hard work, business intake has grown. This has created financial success which, along with the addition of some growth capital and assistance from Jobs Ohio and REDI, has allowed implementation of a strategy that includes investment in new products and vertical integration in advanced manufacturing. This has helped create hundreds of engineering and manufacturing jobs, with hundreds more in our future, all of which are necessary to continue the next steps of our journey.

What factors made you choose Ohio and Cincinnati for this growth?

Southern Ohio and specifically Cincinnati is a great place for a business like ours. Ohio is a business-friendly state with powerful growth engines like JobsOhio and REDI Cincinnati has a proud history of being an industrial powerhouse with a labor force known for its strong work and family ethic.  When you combine this deep-rooted history, a centrally located and affordable Midwestern city with great transportation networks, and the skilled talent coming out of the esteemed engineering programs of our great universities, you have a recipe for success.  

Can you tell us about some broad trends affecting the material handling industry and how Trew Automation is positioned for these trends, compared to your competitors?

The broad trends in the material handling industry focus on delivering customer convenience with order fulfilment and home delivery, the last mile piece of which is very expensive. Trew is positioned well to provide innovative solutions that integrate hardware and software in creative ways to help our clients deliver goods to their customers at the lowest unit cost and provide flexibility that allows them to adapt to changes in their business.

Can you tell us about your R&D center and the kind of research that you are doing? What do successful outcomes mean for consumers and customers?

Our R&D center is used to develop and test hardware and software products and to provide a place where we can demonstrate existing and new capabilities to our customers. Our customers make large capital purchases, and the center helps us demonstrate and build confidence that we can provide them with the reliable solutions they need. The center also provides our talented engineers with a place to get hands on with the products they innovate and solutions they implement to meet our customers’ challenges.

Your customers are big box retail stores that are investing in large, e-commerce centers. Can you talk a little bit about consumer sentiment that is driving their investments?

Our customers sort and deliver products to their customers, either through stores or directly to their homes. This costs money that our customers must reduce to compete and win. If you can do it faster and cheaper, it provides them with advantages. Reliability is the other piece of it. If your solution has high up time, it results in reduced costs and lets them serve their customers faster and more reliably. These are among the benefits that our products and solutions provide.

That's great. Throughout this discussion, you've talked about the importance of your engineers learning and growing. You yourself are an engineer. Can you explain your career trajectory and, how did you get into material handling industry? And, what would you advise? Anybody who's looking to join this industry.

Sure. I've always had a fascination with machines and mechanical things, and I love to tinker and make improvements to them. That’s what drew me to engineering and the University of Cincinnati. The university has a great co-op/internship program that placed me with the Bushman Company. As most people would tell you, once you're part of this industry, it's really hard to escape because there's always a challenge that needs a solution. It's a very engaging industry to work in.

As for success factors, working hard and taking initiative on things that need doing without being asked are the two key success factors. I would also add, being open to learning, having intellectual curiosity, is advice that I would give to young people joining our industry. It certainly served me well.

Absolutely. That is great advice. Any other, comments about the industry that you that you may be able to help today?

Our industry is in transition. There's always something new and innovative going on, whether it’s the use of robotics, software innovations, machine learning and artificial intelligence. All of these are improvement areas as we build and grow our business and look to incorporate into the solutions that we provide our customers. It takes a lot of development to get there, and we're well positioned.

That's awesome. Thanks to companies like yours, we are able to order things sitting at our homes and even get it the same day!

Yes, that was unimaginable 20 years ago. Thanks to JobsOhio and REDI for helping make some of this possible so companies like ours can to do the things that we do.