Grote Industries Product Development Engineer Edward Sitarski, had more than a good idea when he proposed automating manual terminal connector LED production.
What he had was a manufacturing breakthrough.

That breakthrough earned Sitarski, the project lead engineer, the Employee Involvement Association's Individual IDEA of the Year Award for 2007.
For more than 65 years, the Employee Involvement Association has provided educational programs to industries that understand that their employees have the ideas to help make their companies more productive and profitable.
Approximately 250,000 ideas are submitted each year from companies globally. Sitarski's idea bested 90 finalists for the win.
Grote's challenge was to lower the cost on its LED head and tail lamps, dome lights, emergency lighting, and marker lamps, thus allowing Grote to provide customers with more economical LED lighting solutions. This had spurred Grote Industries to rethink its manufacturing workflow. Challenge turned into opportunity when Sitarski proposed robotics for improving manufacturing performance and productivity.
"Not only did the company decrease its cycle time by over a third, but it also realized dramatic savings annually with this new technology," said Sitarski.
The EIA was impressed with numerous features of the robot cells, such as non-contact soldering methods, vision system robot orientation, plug-n-play hardware interchange, advanced process monitoring, product testing and quick-change capabilities.
Those capabilities enabled Grote to manufacture a multitude of different inventory part numbers at these stations, with changeover taking less than five minutes. Using robotics gained the company efficiency, flexibility and improved quality control. With flexibility came the need to find a potting material that met Grote's stringent engineering requirements and the high production rate demands of the automated equipment.
After 15 months of development, Grote found its answer with a specially formulated potting. The material's fast flow and cure rate makes Grote's LED lamps more durable, and in most cases, moisture and corrosion resistant.
With the successful application of robotics, new process technology and specially formulated potting material, Grote has been able to produce it's enhanced, LED lamp assemblies under the SuperNova and LED WhiteLight trademarks.
"A significant tangible benefit to our customer is the improved part aesthetics, numerous product enhancements, and better quality," said Dominic Grote, vice president of sales and marketing for Grote Industries.