Kevin Surace: Remanufacturing will play a huge role alongside autonomous transport, artificial intelligence, robotics, and other game changers in a new era of sustainability.

By Niels V Christiansen, US Editor

In the face of the threats from global warming and unsustainable use of resources, Kevin Surace, entrepreneur, innovator, visionary, and keynote speaker at the RIC-RIT World Remanufacturing Conference on October 9-10, believes that we can still save the planet and ourselves from global warming by reimagining everything and inspiring game changing disruptive innovation.

“Remanufacturing can be disruptive innovation in and of itself,” he said. The definition of disruptive innovation is that you not only disrupt the industry you’re in, but you can also disrupt other adjacent industries at the same time. It’s a really powerful and amazing idea.”

THINKER AND DOER

Surace is recognized as one of the thinkers and doers behind the change that’s going to come. He may not have the name recognition of Apple’s Steve Jobs, Microsoft’s Bill Gates or Tesla’s Elon Musk, but his impact is wide ranging across many industries.

Surace helped pioneer both the smartphone and the digital voice assistant. He is a leader in developing and applying artificial intelligence, AI, and is currently the Chief Technology Officer of Apvance.ai, using AI in revolutionary automated testing of computer programs.

He has 84 patents to his credit, spreads his ideas globally as a speaker at TED talks, academic, business, industry, and science conferences, and in front of lawmakers. He is one of the most famous and influential graduates of Rochester Institute of Technology, (RIT) where he now serves on the Board of Trustees.

EMPIRE STATE BUILDING

Perhaps his highest accolades were bestowed on him after a decade long foray into the construction industry and remanufacturing. As CEO of Serious Materials, Surace led the development of alternative environmentally friendly building materials in an attempt to disrupt the most environmentally challenged industry in the world, construction.

In the highest profile Serious Materials project, Surace and his team set up a remanufacturing operation on the fifth floor of New York’s Empire State Building and remanufactured the building’s 6,556 windows into environmentally friendly replacements. Window energy efficiency increased by 400%. The project paid for itself in four years in energy cost savings.

Surace was named entrepreneur of the year in 2009 by Inc Magazine and recognized as one of 15 innovators of the decade by the CNBC financial news TV channel, among many other honors.

The Golisano Institute for Sustainability at RIT, of which Surace was a leading proponent, incorporated the innovation from Serious Materials into its structure when it was built in 2012, and Surace was inducted into the RIT Innovation Hall of Fame.

A renaissance man with a separate career in the music industry near his home in Sunnyvale, California, Surace’s extraordinary journey into future technologies and sustainability solutions led him to Appvance.ai seven years ago.

THE FORCE OF DISRUPTION

“We try to use disruptive innovation in Silicon Valley in the way we work,” he told Reman World. “Immediately, most people are going to be thinking that anything disruptive is not going to be possible.

“If you were going to heal metal in an airplane, a car or engine, people are going to say, ‘wow, that’s impossible. Somebody would have started doing it years ago’. But we can totally disrupt multiple industries if we can figure out how to heal cracks in metal for a certain cost, and the amount of energy we use will be substantially lower than the energy used rebuilding the whole thing from scratch.

“So now we have things like additive manufacturing that can make us think about how to fill cracks in metal that we wouldn’t have thought of before.
“We’ve got other ways to add molecules whether to metals or plastics. So, where most people would have said, ‘oh we just make the thing over again for 82,000 dollars’, now we can fix it for 100 dollars or 1000 dollars.

“So, it seems disruptive, it seems impossible, but as long as you’re not breaking the laws of physics, don’t count it out.”

DISRUPT AND REPLACE

The telephone displacing the telegraph and mass-produced cars from Henry Ford’s assembly line displacing the horse and buggy are classic examples of disruptive innovation from long before the term was coined.

More recent examples:

• Digital photography, revolutionizing the way we create images and largely wiping out film photography
  • The computer
  • Data Analytics
  • The Google search engine
  • The internet, disrupting newspapers and many other products
  • Social media, perhaps disrupting society as a whole.

DON’T STOP THINKING ABOUT DISRUPTION

Surace says he never stops thinking about all the places we can be disruptive in every part of our lives. He believes that remanufacturing is a big part of this conversation.

Inside the remanufacturing industry itself, the disruptive power of AI and
robotics may be the answer to some of remanufacturing’s greatest challenges, starting with taking over functions currently hampered by workforce shortages. More generally, there will be new demands for remanufacturing as industries are disrupted.

DRIVERLESS FUTURE

Remanufacturing is likely to be part of the business model in the advent of driverless vehicles – a whole new way of disruption, according to Surace. The car business, where people own or lease their own cars, will transition to an on-demand transport business, resulting in high utilization rates, 80-90 percent fewer vehicles – all electric – on the road, and dramatically lowered cost per driven mile or kilometer.

Some auto companies will disappear, and with little down time, each vehicle will be driving more than 100,000 miles per year and more than a million miles in its lifetime.

“So, all of a sudden,” Surace said, “there will be new opportunities to remanufacture parts that need to last a million miles.”

IT’S THE ECONOMICS, STUPID!

After decades of leading the charge, Surace says he has learned not to rely on government action or idealism to drive progress.

“Everything shouldn’t be driven by economics,” he said.” But I am no longer as stupid as I might have once been, to think that people are going to do anything that isn’t economically viable. Companies don’t. People don’t. That’s why we have to figure out from the start how we make doing something more profitable than not doing it. Remanufacturing a product and getting someone to pay you almost the same money the second time when you didn’t have to make it from scratch, that’s fantastic.

Rochester Conference Preview, Reman World October 2019 issue

WHEAT RIDGE, CO – “If it is our goal to safeguard an environmentally stable future, then it is imperative that we take a close look at remanufacturing equipment with the intent of returning it into service, keeping it in the system rather than throwing it away,” said Michael Thurston, Ph.D., Technical Director, Golisano Institute for Sustainability, Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) and technical leader for the Remanufacturing & Reuse arm of the REMADE Institute, in his keynote speech, Remanufacturing Development in the USA, at the Professional Electrical Apparatus Reconditioning League’s (PEARL), 21st Annual Conference and Exhibition, held in Greenville, SC, April 13-15.

Thurston noted in his presentation that The REMADE Institute is a national coalition of leading universities, companies, trade associations and national labs, focused on reducing the material and energy footprint of U.S. manufacturing. Thurston cited REMADE’s recently released Technology Roadmap, which includes a focus on best practices in remanufacturing equipment of all types including electrical apparatus. The key to REMADE’s Technology Roadmap is that through the development and integration of advanced remanufacturing technologies, there are multiple opportunities for reuse and end-of-life products and components and materials, improving material and energy efficiency as well as cost effectiveness.

“For PEARL, the REMADE Technology Roadmap is significant,” said PEARL president Howard Herndon. “It closely aligns with PEARL’s mission of the past 20 years and to be supported by research developed by such an esteemed and scholarly institute affirms our organization’s ongoing work.

While it is technologically complicated to recondition equipment that is to be reintroduced into the infrastructure, it is companies such as members of PEARL that are leading the way to ensure electrical equipment brought back into service is safe and reliable. Herndon emphasized the importance of three key elements in the REMADE Technology Roadmap that Thurston identified in his presentation to ensure that reconditioning processes are clearly defined and accurate: Training and workforce development focused on cleaning, repair and condition assessment is an essential step in the remanufacturing/reconditioning process; Cost effective cleaning of electronics is integral to the safe operation of reconditioned equipment; Assessment of operational and energy efficiency of remanufacturing processes will lead to the installation of reliable equipment.

“One of the benefits of being a PEARL member is finding additional resources that can lead to best practices when reconditioning electrical equipment,” said Herndon. “Providing information about and using the REMADE Institute’s Technology Roadmap is in keeping with our mission to help our members focus on what’s most important: reintroducing reconditioned electrical equipment into our infrastructure that is safe and reliable.”

For more information on PEARL and the reconditioning industry, visit pearl1.org.

WHEAT RIDGE, COLORADO (March 17, 2017) – Two significant code revisions recommended by the Professional Electrical Apparatus Reconditioning League (PEARL) were adopted for inclusion into the latest version of the National Electrical Code®, 2017 Edition (NEC®). These revisions represent the first time since its inception in 1897 that the NEC® makes reference to product condition, specifically allowing for reconditioned, remanufactured, and refurbished electrical product.

“The revisions underscore that reconditioned electrical equipment is considered valuable, safe and reliable for use in the field,” said David Rosenfield, past president of PEARL. “When the National Electrical Manufacturers Association (NEMA) opened their doors to PEARL to discuss their position and acknowledgment of the demand and need for reconditioned electrical equipment, we felt supported and empowered to proceed with our proposed revisions. PEARL’s change proposals were intended to present reconditioned equipment as a substantial part of the sourced market and to identify that there are certain essential requirements with products falling into the reconditioned class.”

The NEC® 2017 Edition, which was published in August of 2016, includes PEARL’s proposed changes to NEC® rules 110.3 and 110.21. PEARL’s contribution to NEC 110.3 – Examination, Identification, and Use of Equipment – ensures that reconditioned equipment is acknowledged and considered for use in installations. PEARL’s revision to NEC 110.21 – Equipment Markings-Reconditioned Equipment – requires reconditioned equipment to be marked with the name, trademark, or other descriptive marking that identifies the organization responsible for reconditioning the electrical equipment. The date of reconditioning is also required to be marked on the equipment.

According to Howard Herndon, incoming president of PEARL, and NEC® code revision champion, the impact of these changes to the electrical equipment industry is extensive.

“As a standards developer and educator, PEARL is fully committed to the betterment of the industry,” said Herndon. “Our organization’s Certified Technician program is focused on teaching professionals that it is imperative to use proper procedures during an installation. It is equally important that the equipment being used meets the highest standards. Since the NEC® is the authoritative voice in the industry, including reconditioned equipment in the NEC®helps to alleviate misconceptions about reconditioned equipment and its capabilities.”

With PEARL celebrating its 20th anniversary as an organization this year, the adoption of these code revisions in the NEC® is a noteworthy milestone and has U.S. infrastructure implications as well.

“As equipment ages in the U.S., it can be challenging to acquire replacement parts from manufacturers, especially if the equipment has been in place for so long that the replacement parts are no longer made,” said Rosenfield. “Acknowledgment of reconditioned electrical equipment in the NEC® is a ‘seal of approval’ providing a level of assurance that reconditioned equipment is a valuable and reliable component of the electrical system, and its usage is indispensable for maintaining and strengthening our country’s infrastructure.”