Soleras is a leading global manufacturer of sputter equipment used in thin film coatings. The firm is built around three core competencies: equipment manufacturing, the consumable PVD target materials the equipment needs to run, and most recently several advancements in data analytics. Currently, Soleras is constructing a machine learning platform, using closed-loop software control to make their equipment easier for the operator to handle. With a global footprint that encompasses China, Europe and the US, Soleras goes to where its customers are to supply the consumables, spare parts, maintenance, and services they need.
“We are very close to our customers, allowing us to bring them the kind of total competence that we can offer in-house,” explains Ivan Van de Putte, Soleras’s CEO. “We cover all the relevant domains. We have evolved from the equivalent of a restaurant supplier that can sell the chef an oven to one that sells the oven, the ingredients, and the recipes all at once.”
Thanks to the in-depth vertical integration of Soleras’s business model, the company maintains all the competencies its clients need, in-house. The company has attracted and maintains a highly educated and skilled team with a positive, proactive mindset that drives them to meet any challenge the customer can throw at them. Soleras is in the unique position to say “Yes, we can” where others have to drop out.
“This is our exclusive position in the market,” Van de Putte insists. “It means we can take our customers to the next level.”
Soleras’s products and services have been uniquely developed with the aim of driving improved productivity and performance, especially in the use of rotary sputtering for large-area coating applications. The company offers a broad portfolio of rotary and planar sputtering targets that provide excellent support to the physical vapour deposition industry. With a truly integrated approach, Soleras’s components work together, each contributing to peak performance. It is a unique way of working that serves as a strong metaphor for the company itself.
The Train to Digital Transformation
When we speak with Van de Putte, Soleras itself is on a journey to the next level. The company is undergoing an overhaul that will take it into the digital frontier.
“We are on a high-speed train of digital transformation,” Van de Putte tells us. “It is not only about implementing new digital tools within our company, but developing a digital platform that can elevate and empower our customers.”
This is not just about installing new tools and software. It is about rethinking Soleras’s entire approach to work.
“It is a new way of thinking for our employees,” Van de Putte says. “We are bringing in new, highly skilled resources to take the company into new, exciting, and even unfamiliar territory. We have traditionally been a material science engineering company, so adding that digital product offering has been a big challenge for us.”
While persuading a manufacturing company’s more traditionally engineering-orientated staff to adopt a more digital mindset is a big cultural change, it is one that Soleras has wholeheartedly embraced.
“It is a completely different way of work, of thinking even,” Van de Putte tells us. “However, we made that transformation successful. There are still steps we need to take, but we have already shown ourselves to be a strong player in the market.”
Growing Connections
To build up the necessary talent pool and knowledge base to launch this transformation, Soleras’s strategy has been played out across two key pillars. The first of those pillars is the development of key, long-term partnerships with companies that have the knowledge Soleras needs. It does this through three pillars: Long-term partnerships and the hiring of best-in-class people, growing the talent of current employees three training and giving ownership, and sticking to Soleras’s core and long-term strategy with the right investments.
“We have brought in experienced companies that we work together well with, committing to long-term partnerships,” explains Van de Putte.
These partnerships are complemented by the second pillar of Soleras’s strategy, a pipeline of top-quality in-house talent.
“We hired best-in-class people to join our team and our transformation journey,” Van de Putte says. “There is open communication between our long-term partners and our internal team, putting us in a strong position for our digital journey.”
Soleras invested heavily in training and educating not just these new recruits, but the company’s existing employees, often in collaboration with its long-term partner companies.
“These partnerships we have created are very open-ended. Our partners know that we will be here for a long time, which gives us a great deal of flexibility,” Van de Putte says. “That is accompanied by a drive to stick to our core, long-term strategy as part of our digital transformation. We focus on our goal, seven years down the road, and then we keep investing in the right resources and our own team. So far, we are perfectly on track to meet our goals.”
Maintaining a position at the technological cutting edge of any field requires effort and investment, but Van de Putte knows that Soleras can keep ahead in this field thanks to its much-vaunted customer relationships.
“It is always the customer who pushes us to keep up and bring in the latest technologies,” he points out. “Our customers challenge us. They will put a challenge on the table and if we do not have an immediate answer for it, we will bring our competencies together and find one.”
To stay informed, Soleras is not afraid to travel the globe looking for the best technological solutions. The company has made itself an authority in the field, bringing creative solutions to the table that its customers need.
“The flying bird will catch more than the sitting bird,” Van de Putte tells us. “That is why operating on a global scale is essential to us.”
Soleras has put together a brilliant package of technology and digital solutions, and Van de Putte’s next focus is on integrating that with Soleras’s material science portfolio.
“We are hooked up with lead customers in a variety of sectors that will really push us to go to the next level in these applications,” Van de Putte says. “We are a company with passion, in a state of permanent learning, with a clear, customer-orientated focus.”
