What Happens When an Automation Guy Star...
For years, Adam Sides has talked about automation.
Now he gets to prove it.
At LOUPE Americas in Chicago, Wayne Beckett meets Adam just weeks before the launch of his new Atlanta-based labels and packaging company, Bright Line.
After 12 years with Bennett Graphics, Adam decided it was time to do something he had thought about for years: build his own business.
And when somebody with Adam's background starts from a completely blank sheet of paper, the approach is perhaps predictably different.
Rather than buying an MIS and then adapting the business around it, Adam has spent much of the past year building his own.
Using AI-assisted development, he has created an interconnected ecosystem covering MIS, CRM, lead generation, estimating, customer communication, and production workflow.
The objective is ambitious.
Adam wants jobs to move through the administrative side of the company, through quoting and preflight, with as little human intervention as possible.
Ideally, the first time somebody really needs to touch a job is when it reaches production.
That doesn't mean ignoring security either. Before putting the system into use, Adam brought in an external company to test and validate the environment.
On the production side, Bright Line is starting digitally, with two HP Indigo presses, a GM 350 finishing system, JetFX embellishment, and additional rewinding equipment.
Equipment installation is planned for October, with the business based in Atlanta.
But perhaps the most interesting thing about Bright Line isn't the equipment.
It is the opportunity to build an automation-first printing company without decades of legacy processes determining how things have always been done.
Adam can ask a different question:
If we were starting a label company today, knowing everything we know about automation, AI, workflow, digital production, and customer expectations — how would we build it?
LOUPE also gives him the opportunity to explore technologies and markets he doesn't yet know well, including pouch production, while talking with suppliers, peers, and people throughout the industry who can help shape what comes next.
There may be robots eventually.
But not yet.
In this INKISH film, Wayne talks with Adam Sides about leaving a secure career, starting Bright Line, building his own MIS, using AI in software development, automating administration, investing in digital production, and what it feels like when years of talking about automation suddenly become very real.
Now comes the interesting part.
Practice what you preach.
