Connecting Customer Engineers + Requirements w/ WiLL Application/Product Engineers

Introduction & Design Flexibility

Adam: Going to talk about custom
sports and high-output applications, and the importance of connecting the
customer's engineering team with our engineering team — really some of the
different things that set Wisconsin Lighting Lab apart from some of our larger
competitors. Jake identified a couple applications and orders recently where we
kind of took a more nuanced approach to the application — dialed in some custom
brackets, mechanical parts, custom accessories on the fixture, custom
controllers, and just things that really make the lives of our contractors and
their engineers easier. Things that we can solve at the factory versus having
to solve in the field. When you look at one of the main differentiators of
Wisconsin Lighting Lab in that category, Jake, what does that look like from an
application perspective?

Jake: The biggest thing that we have
as an advantage is design flexibility, and really looking at an application as
an entire application rather than just providing a lighting solution. I know
there are other manufacturers that have the ability to do that, but sometimes —
especially when we're working on projects where we're just trying to cross
another competitor and put in our products that is an equal — there can be some
things that are lost in translation about the overall application. Just
connecting dots on the actual project itself, rather than just connecting dots
on the product, is really important. That's something that our applications
team is doing better now, and it's helping us win a lot of projects where we
normally would probably not get a second look or even a first look at.

Starting Over With Customer Requirements

Adam: So it's in essence kind of
starting over with the requirements, even if there's a 100-page sheet that was
pieced together over the last five years. It's always a combination of our
competitors and the customer's engineers, where they arrive at these requirements.
It's not like the engineer in charge of the project wrote all of those
requirements — a lot of them come from engineering teams at very large
companies. So we see it sometimes a little bit later in the game. One approach
would be, okay, go through all hundred pages line by line and decide if we have
an equal or not. I think what you're saying is what we've done is, okay, let's
take a step back — what is the actual customer's requirement here? What's most
important to them? And let's kind of start over a little bit. Is that what
you're saying?

Jake: Yeah. The customer — they don't
necessarily care what products there. They don't care about anything, they just
care about reliability and having the right amount of light in the facility.
Which sometimes they don't even really care about that — the reliability is
probably the biggest, most important thing. With some of these projects, like
you said, peeling back the onion a little bit, and after we get — so a lot of
these capital projects, you have three bids. You have three manufacturers
bidding on a project, generally. There's obviously more than that, there are
GCs involved and ECs involved, but generally there are like three overall bids
that are included, and they basically select whichever bid is most attractive
based on budget, based on a lot of variables. One of the biggest variables that
keeps happening is, if we're connected directly to the engineer who's working
on the bids, who's putting all the bids together for the end user, if we have
communication with that engineer, we can have a second look at the bids. We can
dial down our design. We can figure out exactly what the engineer wants and
what the end user ultimately wants. It just gives us a lot more ability to
close these types of projects.

Closing the Loop: Design, Install, Manufacture

Adam: You look at the fundamentals of
any application — somebody has to design the customer's application, somebody
has to install the products, and somebody has to make the product. So it's
closing the loop on all the stuff. Independent of the channel, the market —
there are like 15 different ways that factories go to market in the lighting
industry. There are direct channels, there are indirect channels. What we've
always told our sales team, and even our sales partners, is independent of how
this job goes to market, get us in touch with the engineering team, get us in
touch with the contractor, and it just gets rid of a lot of the telephone game.
I think that a lot of factories don't necessarily — especially small- and
medium-sized factories like us — don't necessarily invest in the team and the
support infrastructure to be able to do that. Even if in theory it is best to
do that, it's like, well, you have to have a small army of people that are
ready to support.

Adam: Even some of the projects I've
worked on — they come to us thinking that, okay, we're crossing a 50,000-lumen
fixture, give us your closest equal, it's as simple as that. You look at it and
it's like, well, who designed that bracket structure? What's this custom
finishing requirement? You realize that 99% of the work and the challenge is
actually in the mechanical parts — the poles, the brackets — not necessarily in
the lights. Not that the lights are unimportant, but it's really being able to
shift focus on what solves the most pain points for the most people — the
contractor. We have done a lot of jobs recently where we will design the custom
bracket structures that hold indoor fixtures from the ceiling. We have a
fabrication facility that can do custom brackets. We have plenty of folks that
know SolidWorks, plenty of people that can connect with the engineers and help
iron out those requirements.

Jake: It's not even — sorry to cut you
off — but it's not even like to help them figure it out, it's to tell them a
better solution. A lot of times these engineers — not all but most engineers
that are working on these types of projects — they don't necessarily know as
much about lighting as we do. We literally do it every single day, we live and
breathe it. So it's a little bit different from our perspective than it is from
their perspective, because they're looking at the entire project as a whole,
generally from an electrical standpoint. One thing that we have a big advantage
over a lot of other manufacturers is, again, we have the fabrication
background. We're able to suggest things to pick up major efficiencies in maybe
labor for the GC, or maybe just manufacturing efficiencies for us. But these
suggestions aren't things that can be found just by simply crossing products.
Again, it's looking at the whole application and just trying to figure out,
hey, if we put six fixtures on this cross arm rather than individually mount
all of these for this uplighting project, the labor is going to drop by 25% for
the EC estimate. That's a significant drop, and that those types of things help
us close those types of projects. In our opinion, it's not thinking outside of
the box, but to the outside engineers, that is thinking outside of the box.
Some of them are more receptive to that than others, but if we spin it the
proper way, we can get people on board much easier.

Mechanical Background & Retrofits

Adam: Trent, part of your engineering
skill set is heavy mechanical and fabrication background, and writing what Jake
had mentioned. It seems as though, based on all of the infrastructure that has
to be retrofitted — you have 50 years of infrastructure that exists that has to
be retrofitted, and you also have buildings that are becoming more complex, and
standards that are becoming more strict. So not only are the buildings becoming
more complex, but there are more standards to meet. From your view, with a heavy
mechanical background, how do you — what are some of the things that you see in
points of value, and some of the challenges for the customer's engineers, and
some of the opportunities for our team as the infrastructure gets retrofitted
and we can support people with these complicated building projects?

Trent: Some of the major wins that we
can give to a customer is making the install of our light fixtures as simple as
possible. We have pre-aimed mounts that may not necessarily be able to be
utilized in their current setup if they're doing a retrofit. Maybe they have
tenon tops and they use slip fitters. We can create a mount that is pre-aimed
that they would actually just slip over the top of that. Or it's possible we
can design a cross arm where they can mount multiple fixtures on, and they bolt
the cross arm on, and they bolt the pre-aimed fixture to the cross arm. It just
makes the install — like Jake was talking — go that much faster. The end
lighting is much better because it's exactly where we've designed it to be.

Adam: Just making sure that we check
all those boxes when we're talking to customers — like, how are you mounting
it? — helping them with that. Also on the electrical side of things, having
power distribution hubs so that wiring is easy and that all goes quickly for
them on the install. On the electrical and electronics side, we have various
control options too — we have a mesh control option which we use, we have DMX
options, we have wired, we have wireless. We try and commission those things at
the factory — we ID all the nodes, we program all the different scenes. There's
still support and commissioning that's needed, but it's to not over-solve
things. We still want contractors, and we still want our local partners, to
have a hand in solving challenges in the front end and the inevitable
challenges after the project's installed. Like what Jake was saying before — we
take a holistic view. A high-output lighting application — you have the
application design, you have the mechanical, the fixture design, the bracket
design. You have the power system — we have applications where we put remote
power cabinets in panel rooms at the base of the pole. But not every customer
wants that. There are other competitors in our industry that force customers to
do that every single time when they maybe don't want to. There are other
competitors that never do it. So it's trying to have options without having too
many options. At a minimum, we understand the different requirements, and we
are kind of a one-stop shop for the lighting, the application, the pole,
bracket structures, the remote power, the control systems. Those nuances are
important, but they're only helpful if you can also support them. That's the
other side — the application engineering support on every project.

A Recent Uplighting Job

Adam: Other thoughts?

Trent: Just thinking of a recent job
we had on an uplighting install — the customer had shown us a design utilizing
threaded rod going down below the fixture, and then they had a very heavy steel
channel underneath the fixture, and they bolted our standard harp to it. It was
just really heavy, over-complicated. We were able to supply a custom side plate
that the threaded rod bolted directly to. It was much more cost effective and
easier for them to install. That's something we designed in a matter of hours,
and we had prototypes quickly, and we had production parts within a couple of
weeks.

Adam: Yeah. And that's where — again,
it's, okay, we're a lighting business, but so much of that lighting business is
the mechanical part side, because that's where the rubber meets the road. It's
like a car — you can have the highest-horsepower car in the world, but if your
tires aren't very good, it doesn't matter. You have the brightest light in the
world, but if it doesn't bolt into the application properly, it doesn't matter.

The Application Funnel

Adam: Jake, as far as the application
funnel, it goes from customer engineer to our application engineering team, and
then to our product engineering team. How do you look at different checkpoints
in the process without slowing the process down? That's also like a bit of an
art form, because we're always asked to react very, very quickly. And then if
the final construction drawings or the final application differs from the
initial design, in some cases, that can create challenges on the back end. We
are in some cases getting drawings that are several years old, and we never get
the updated ones. How do you balance that engineer-to-engineer-to-engineer
funnel and keep things moving without looking over the important details?

Jake: The most important thing is just
to identify when something seems a little off on a project. Maybe, like you
said, the drawings provided were really old. But for some reason — you could
just Google the name of the project and there are 50 articles about it, and
they're recent articles.

Adam: Some nice renderings.

Jake: Right. And it's like, okay,
well, if this local news place can get these renderings —

Adam: We should be able to get to the
engineer. That's a great point. Get some better drawings on this.

Jake: And generally the engineer —
this is where we're trying to connect dots and get closer to the specifying
engineers on the front end — because usually we're somewhat removed, and
usually we're working through channels, or directly with maybe an end user or a
contractor who has been given these drawings by an engineer. They're basically
tasked with just trying to determine what the engineer has on this drawing and
how to get materials to achieve what the drawing shows. So that's one thing
where we can backtrace. We go back to our channels, whoever we're talking with,
whatever we're working with, and we say, hey, this is our solution for what
your question is. This is our one-to-one option — if you guys want this, this
will answer that part of the question first. And then, as a side note, we list
what we think can change, or what we think can be better, or what we require to
close — what we think would be required to close the project in a proper way,
rather than just crossing things one-to-one. I'm going to still give you our
one-to-one option just because that's what you asked for, unless it's like a
completely out-in-left-field type of project. But we're going to also list
other things that we think we need to do to close it. Generally what we think
we need to do is, we need to get some type of contact directly with the
engineer and ask them questions. Ask them, is there an updated drawing? Ask
them what the actual lighting requirements are, rather than just crossing the
fixtures they had already selected. Maybe ask them why they selected the
original fixtures — just things like that kind of helps us close the loop
altogether. That's one thing that we really want to do a better job of, is
connecting application engineering to outside engineering. Application
engineering kind of connects to Trent's team, the internal production
engineering team, in finding these solutions. I think that's the channel where
we have the best look.

Adam: Sorry.

Jake: Yeah.

Adam: That makes sense. It's just
knowing that everybody plays a role, and not competing against other people's
positions in the project. It could be well worth somebody's time to spend a
morning getting a contact at an engineering firm to get us the right communication
channel on a project. There's really a divide-and-conquer approach to a lot of
these jobs, and it really comes down to the right people getting in touch with
the right people.

Alaska Airlines Center Case Study

Adam: Trent, one example of this from
a few years back was the Alaska Airlines project. What was the solution we
ended up providing there? I think that touches — we didn't do controls on that
job, although I think the fixtures were controls-ready and they never ended up
purchasing them. But that touched on the lighting, the mechanical, the
retrofit, controls-ready. Just go through that solution.

Trent: At the Alaska Airlines Center,
the first challenge, I guess, was remote-mounting the drivers. They had catwalk
structures up above the arena floor, and they wanted the drivers easily
accessible in the event of a failure — which there never has been.

Adam: About four or five years — no
issues yet, and we don't anticipate any.

Trent: We also wanted to provide
remote drivers, but also quick-connect electrical, so that they didn't have to
run wiring, and it goes straight from the driver to the light fixture. They
also had — I believe we had to do slip-fitter mounts on that project, so that
was something unique that we did. They also wanted all-black fixtures to match
the black railings on the catwalk. We did all-anodized black on the fixture
side of the project. And the remote driver cabinets we provided were also
textured powder-coated black. Like you mentioned, they had a location for them
to hook up controls if they ever wanted to, but they just never ended up
needing that, and they still can.

DALI & Building Management Systems

Adam: On the custom side, on the
control side, we've been seeing DALI coming up more for some of the interior
sports applications. We've got one job, I think going in Michigan right now,
where we have to provide a DALI controller to communicate with their — is it a
building management system?

Trent: Yeah.

Adam: Okay. So Jake, what do you see
within sports from a control standpoint — the off-the-shelf, I should say the
integrated control systems for the particular fixture manufacturer, versus
things like DMX and DALI where the fixture has to communicate with an on-site
control system? Where do you see some of the customization requests coming in
to the applications team?

Jake: The controls is kind of
separated into two main things — you have proprietary controls, like what we
would provide from the factory, and then you have just like the on-site
controls. The split is generally — most interior jobs have on-site controls,
especially when it's a higher-end facility, and those are usually going to be
DMX or DALI.

Adam: Yeah, those are usually DMX or
DALI.

Jake: I don't think those — I think
those are literally the only two that I've seen.

Adam: Are those usually wired or
wireless?

Jake: It's usually wired.

Adam: Wired, yeah. And then with our
proprietary outside — with our proprietary controls, we're primarily looking at
projects that are outside, exterior projects where it's just like a local ball
field or something like that, where they just want to have local control. Now
there are always some cases where you have parks-and-rec departments where they
want to be able to access controls off-site, which we can do technically with
our wireless system. But that would be the only time where things need to be
kind of integrated with other lighting projects around a city, for example.

Jake: The interior stuff is relatively
easy, because generally they have controls engineers on site that deal with a
lot of that stuff. We talk directly with the controls engineers — they tell us
exactly what they want, whether they want terminal blocks. Like in this
example, they just basically wanted DALI-compatible drivers and fixtures, and
they just wanted a place where they can easily wire into.

Adam: What functions were they looking
for ultimately for the fixtures? Was it emergency, and dimming, and zone
control?

Jake: Those are the main three.
On/off, I guess too, you can kind of throw in with dimming. But for sure were
emergency, and just on/off, are the main two that they wanted. On this specific
job, there isn't any RGB or anything like that that they would deal with. And
RGB was probably a little bit separate from DALI, as far as I know — RGB has to
be done on like a DMX style of a system, typically.

Adam: Yeah.

Jake: If they wanted RGB, the solution
would maybe be a combination of DALI-compatible stuff as well as the DMX system
specifically for the RGB fixtures, something like that.

Adam: How would you do that, Trent? I
don't think we've talked about — I don't know if it's —

Trent: You could do across DALI and
DMX. All the white would be controlled by DALI, and then the RGB you'd have to
have dedicated RGB stuff in that example.

Adam: In that example, you'd have to
dim the white independently of RGB before engaging the DMX controls — otherwise
the white's going to wash out all the RGB?

Trent: For sure.

RGB, Amber & Custom Color Boards

Adam: Well, cool. So the last thing on
the RGB topic — I guess we'll maybe — amber, and PC amber, and all of that.
There's more and more of that that we're seeing requests for in the high-output
space. It's not just pick your color temperature, it's now, what color
temperature do you want, RGB, do you want a mix of white and RGB? We're also
doing amber, we're doing PC amber. We're designing a system right now — it's
probably one of the largest amber light towers in the world — for a military
application. That's a high-output product, so that's pretty cool. From a board,
a color temp, and a color standpoint, Trent, what are some of the different
product options we offer for sports and infrastructure applications?

Trent: For sports applications, we
have our RGB board, which would mostly be used indoor. We do have a couple of
outdoor options. And then obviously the white in various color temperatures,
from like 2200K up to 6500K, we can accomplish in white. Amber, we can also do
true amber and then phosphor-converted amber. And we also do custom
single-color options. We actually dual-purpose our amber board, but we populate
them with only blue LEDs, or only green LEDs, or red LEDs, if they want to do
accent lighting on a building or a bridge, and they don't have any need to
change color. It'll give them the most lumen output versus having the RGB board
being used.

Adam: I was talking to Tyler a little
bit yesterday, and he mentioned that right now we have hundreds of fixtures on
the production schedule that are either controls or RGB. So when you look at
those, they are becoming more popular. One of the cool things with our GFX
control system is that it can control both RGB and white, or a combination of
the two. So especially for outdoor applications — parks-and-rec departments,
smaller colleges, high school fields — customers where, in other solutions,
they might be cost-prohibitive to actually get all of those different
combinations. We see it's only about a few percent adder on a project to go
from poles, brackets, fixtures, plus remote power, to integrating some of these
different control options. So it's a really good solution for customers, and it
really allows them to get the most out of their investment. They're already
spending $200,000 on a sports complex — spending an extra 5% to get color
changing, to get controls, can really be a nice way to enhance the community.

Jake: And that's another — it just all
comes back to — that's another reason why talking to the engineers of these
projects is really important, because oftentimes they don't necessarily know
exactly what the cost of things are, and they're just specifying what products
they think is necessary. They might over-specify, they might under-specify. If
we can close those loops, get directly to those guys, really talk them through
our products — because most of the products we're talking about are relatively
new in the last couple of years, so there are many engineering firms that don't
have experience with our products. Just educating them on what the capabilities
are and what the flexibilities are is really important right now.

Modular Platform Design

Adam: Yeah. We're here to support —
pick up the phone, call your local sales agency that we sell through, or call
us direct, and we can support you and route you through the proper buying
channel. Maybe the thing to end on would be: how, even when we customize
things, we are not starting from scratch with the solution. We try and not
reinvent the wheel for mission-critical components like our driver
architecture, the thermal management. A lot of these things are proven. Trent,
talk about — if we swap in an RGB board, use RGB instead of white — it's not
like that fixture's being completely redesigned. It's a proven platform. It's a
flexible platform.

Trent: For sure. We take a very
modular approach to our fixture design. So when we're designing RGB boards, we
want it to bolt up to the same hole pattern as our white LEDs. We have the same
heat sinks, use the same chassis — we're just changing the electrical components.
So even the optics are all the same — while they react differently to different
light sources, it's still the same products. We just make sure that we use them
appropriately so we get the right color mixing happening, and everything is literally
swap-in, swap-out. That's what makes it so cost effective for the customer —
they don't have to buy an RGB-specific fixture, it's got RGB integrated into
it. We can just take the white module out, put the RGB in, and add three
drivers.

Adam: It's almost like a gaming PC
versus an Apple laptop — like a gaming PC, you can swap in different memory
cards and use different components, and it's expandable. Because we live in the
project business — custom applications world — we embrace that, where other
factories that are trying to make widgets, and here's a price, go sell them —
that's just not our model. Well cool, thanks a lot guys, that was a great
discussion. Thanks for all you do at WiLL.

Trent: Yeah, thank you.