Andrii Nikulin, the founder of SMART-MECHTECH LLC, is bringing a revolution to the engineering industry. He translates groundbreaking ideas into real-world innovations that yield impactful results. A hands-on engineer, Nikulin emphasizes the importance of telemetry, hard metrics, and real return on investment (ROI) in his work. Thoroughly committed to improving production processes on a global scale, his recent appointment to these international juries demonstrates his extraordinary depth of knowledge.
Most recently, in October 2023, Nikulin served as an advocate/judge at the Cases & Faces International Business Award in Chicago. He joins us with an incredible wealth of experience and a unique perspective on manufacturing efficiency. Unlike many of our industry peers, Nikulin makes accountability a priority. Daily, he’s hip-deep in operations cadence and has P&L responsibility for his plants’ hands-on tutelage. His observations emphasize that the most competitive manufacturing plants will not be the noisiest. Instead, they’ll be the ones that drive silently and efficiently.
Transforming Manufacturing at LE&CO
So far at LE&CO, Europe’s largest meat-processing plant, Nikulin has made some truly revolutionary changes that completely reframed the rules of the game. He successfully integrated disparate production nodes into a cohesive and resilient system, taking direct responsibility for its functioning. In addition to improving operations, this transition positively impacted community-wide productivity.
Nikulin’s methods included sweeping audits of Ukraine’s ageing production lines, during which he pinpointed future failures before they even happened. By seeking to prevent problems instead of waiting for them to happen, his leadership has successfully brought these facilities into the 21st century. A biography of his life emphasizes a string of bold, timely decisions. These decisions prioritize reducing downtime, lowering scrap rates, decreasing energy intensity, and increasing revenue.
Under Nikulin’s leadership, the team executed an important transition from the Climatik THR650 R system to the Weber CCS 602-UB model. This change allowed them to implement a fully automated system with great success. This shift dramatically enhanced output capabilities. Today, a single 12-hour shift churns out 5 to 7 tons of product with ease. That’s a drastic increase over the old production of just 2 tons, which needed hundreds of operators.
Innovations in Production Efficiency
Nikulin’s innovations go beyond more efficient equipment. They represent a sea change in maximizing production efficiency. He scrapped the cumbersome pre-chilling process that was blocking output before, freeing up production capacity for a more than tenfold increase in max capacity. That transition has certainly sent impressive productivity gains through the roof. It has increased its throughput from roughly 2 tons per 12-hour shift to now over 5 tons.
His strategies have dramatically lowered the number of kilowatt-hours used per ton made and smoothed out peak demand times in the plant. These changes both improve productivity and increase energy efficiency, showing Nikulin’s focus on sustainable professional manufacturing practices.
His commitment to telemetry, and unwavering attention to hard metrics helps him understand how every single asset is performing, down to the minutiae. Average downtime per asset has more than halved as a direct result. This enhancement has resulted in reduced bay usage and a greater percentage of first-pass repairs. Nikulin’s data-driven approach means that manufacturing processes are in a constant state of optimization, keeping efficiency sky-high.
Future Endeavors in Automation
These days, Andrii Nikulin has shifted his focus to automating logistics repair workshops in the United States. His expertise in engineering and system integration positions him well to tackle the challenges associated with modernizing these critical operational components.
In doing so, Nikulin intends not just to move forward, but to reproduce the successes he’s already seen in Europe. His passion is in automation and efficiency first and foremost. His prescription is to maximize the value of logistics capabilities and improve the productivity of the logistics industry and overall economy.
