Manufacturing

Expansion mode, activated

In 2019, SmartCap cofounder and president and CEO Mike Voss wanted to take his company to a new level and expand to North America. For 12 years, the South African after-market auto parts maker largely catered to Africa and Australia’s market for self-reliant adventure travelers. Its EVO stainless steel canopy for pickup truck beds offered a rugged, customizable design that could be flat packed for shipping and self-assembly, offering an innovative alternative to dated fiberglass molds.

North America was the real prize, however, with about three quarters of the global market for pickup trucks. SmartCap already employed more than 400 people at its South African manufacturing facility producing about 1600 units a month, but Voss knew that they would need a new factory across the Atlantic to meet the significant potential demand there.

The new market had very different economics: skilled manufacturing labor rates in the U.S. are about 10 times higher than in South Africa. SmartCap quickly realized the new U.S. factory would have to be highly automated.

SmartCap selected Fort Worth, Texas as the site for a new 400,000 square-foot factory. But developing an almost entirely robotic manufacturing process from the ground up was a massive undertaking. One critical component: robust, reliable network connectivity. Without a rock-solid and easy-to-manage network, the factory would simply not work, nor would SmartCap’s bold expansion plans.

Building the network backbone of automation

To lead the IT design and implementation at the factory, Voss recruited Andrew White, who had decades of expertise in IT systems at Tier 1 and after-market U.S. automotive manufacturing firms, including two greenfield facilities. “When I came on board,” says White, now SmartCap’s Vice President Operations, “they said, ‘Here’s our plan. Now how do we make this work?’”

Until White joined in 2021, SmartCap and its partners had focused on how to manufacture its truck canopies with as much automation as possible. This required end-to-end process engineering, machinery, and product design updates. IT infrastructure was not considered—and the clock was now ticking. White knew that within months, millions of dollars of high-tech machinery would start arriving, and all of it would need a network and data infrastructure ready to connect.

“In a smart factory, everything has to communicate, so all the servers had to be in place,” says White. The IT environment would include tightly integrated Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), Manufacturing Execution System (MES), and Warehouse Management System (WMS) software. “I was a one-man show. My biggest worry was getting it all done.”

White knew he needed both a network and a partner he could trust. He turned to Cisco Gold Certified Partner Spectrum Business. “We needed a team of network people to help us build the network that manages the automation and the data it runs on,” says White. “Spectrum Business came to the table providing us with the right resources to help us launch this facility in the short amount of time we had.”

For the network, White says Cisco was a natural choice. With 10 years in Tier 1 automotive working with Cisco Internetwork Operating System (IOS) Command-Line Interface, he already had first-hand experience in Cisco capabilities. “I know Cisco,” says White. “They’re the best, by far. And now with Meraki, it’s like, ‘Where was this my whole life? This is easy, I love this.’’’

Making it all connect

Fast forward to 2024. At the SmartCap factory, human forklift drivers unload raw steel sheets at one end of the facility and load finished product for shipping at the other. In between, however, AI-enabled robots automate every fabrication stage: laser cutting, sanding, bending, and laser welding, which is followed by a three-booth paint process of pre-cleaning, priming, top coat, and then into an oven.

In all, 20 robots are hardwired with CAT6 cabling, using a careful layout of four Intermediate Distribution Frame (IDF) servers within 300 feet of the factory’s Main Distribution Frame (MDF) server that controls everything.

In addition, two Automated Ground Vehicles (AGVs) connect via Wi-Fi, moving small-part materials through the warehouse by using strategically positioned reflectors to track their position.

Robust, dynamic Wi-Fi coverage of the factory floor and surrounding offices enable the facility’s 135 employees—most of whom work in the final stage, Assembly—to automatically clock in and out via tablets and use devices inside and around the factory.

SmartCap deployed 35 Cisco Meraki MV93 smart cameras throughout the facility to monitor robot operation, as well as safety and security. The cameras are equipped with AI to automatically track movement, and store data on the devices instead of a network video recorder. “It’s phenomenal being able to manage these cameras from the portal and pan, tilt, and zoom whenever we need to,” says White. “Some of the cameras are strategically placed inside machines. If something happens, it’s easy for us to go back and look at the video to understand why.”

While some employees are always on site in case physical interaction with the robots is necessary, the Meraki Vision portal enables managers to sit at their desk or remotely check in from home to make sure things are running—and if not, they can often connect to the machine to resolve any issues. “Instead of workers running up and down the floor to make sure things are working, I reduce labor just by simply putting cameras inside,” says White.

At the center of this network is a modular platform designed for ease of use and full visibility. Spectrum Business’s Managed Network Edge solution uses the Cisco Meraki platform centrally managed by the Meraki dashboard for Wi-Fi, switching, routing, SD-WAN, and firewall security all assessable via the cloud. Spectrum Business provides managed oversight and support, as well as a Dedicated Fiber Internet circuit that offers redundancy in the event of loss of signal.

The data flowing through this critical infrastructure makes running SmartCap’s smart factory possible. “If a machine stops, emails and texts happen instantly,” says White. “But you can’t do that without connectivity.”

Ready to scale

SmartCap’s learning curve has been steep. The Fort Worth factory produced its first truck cap in April 2023, but hit its stride in 2024, steadily increasing production through the year from 11 units per day to 50 per day, with 75–100 units per day in sight. “We’re still so early that we're measuring productivity gains month over month,” says White. “We’re aiming for 3000 units per month at 100% efficiency.” By the end of 2024, the factory was running four shifts, 20 hours a day, shipping across the United States and Canada.

However, Phase 2 of SmartCap’s vision is still on the horizon. The company currently subleases 40% of its facility and plans to expand its operation to the entire space. With scalability built into its design, the Cisco Meraki network will enable the company to seamlessly increase capacity when its ready. “The steel storage area will get extended and then we start plugging in machines on either side of it,” says White. “Each robot we plug in instantly increases our capacity by a thousand.”

The network infrastructure is the least of SmartCap’s concerns. The Meraki Dashboard provides complete visibility into the status and performance of the entire environment. “The Cisco Meraki platform makes network management so easy,” says White. “The Meraki app is phenomenal. I can see all my switches and devices, and I can update things, even from my phone. I’m loving it.”

White also plans to harness the built-in AI capabilities of the Meraki MV93 cameras, including automated counting and AI-enabled filters like attribute search to locate critical footage faster. “We’ve only scratched the surface,” he notes.

The smart factory’s network infrastructure and fully automated robotic manufacturing is pushing SmartCap to a new level. “The only way to scale is automation,” says White. “So long as we have steel ready, robots will do what robots do best.”

And powering it all will be the Cisco Meraki network infrastructure—doing what it does best.