Dive into an engaging conversation with Ross Alcazar, COO at Softmatter, as he shares invaluable insights into operations and technology.
Kindly brief us about yourself and your journey as the COO of Softmatter.
For many years, I’ve been working in the mechanical and electronics industry, working with a diverse set of companies from large US multinationals to mid-size. Asia-based component suppliers. During this period, I’ve always had a good level of engineering and problem-solving approach toward my customers’ goals when it comes to components and full-level assembly. I learned that my path to Softmatter working with fabrics was both foreign and familiar. Although a whole new set of processes and materials, in the end not much different in working with hard goods and soft goods which gives a level of familiarity and opportunity to apply many of the same industry practices.
Please share with us your source of inspiration for venturing into innovation and technology.
My ability to use new tools, materials, and techniques to make and recreate what we use, love, and value in daily life serve as my inspiration. In much the same way a painter and artist can re-render works of art with different formats. I find that working and adding textiles to my current library of skill sets gives me a completely expanded viewpoint of how I would re-apply things that seem to be mundane in past projects and re-envision and refresh them to things that would be even more sought after from a form and function perspective.
Kindly brief our audience about Softmatter.
Softmatter is a group of super-talented folks that have transformed the art of creating everyday clothing and softgoods devices into an engineering function. I say this because, in the apparel world, art and design are created with the thought of enhancing the aesthetics, form, and comfort of those that wear them. By infusing tech, it adds another dimension of function to those designs which are bound by engineering, precision, and craftsmanship. Our team integrates tech into softgoods which demonstrates the perfect blend of design language, and tight tolerance levels of engineering control to maintain a premium device experience and give the conformability of traditional softgoods. Lastly, by engaging with us on Sketch to Shelf, we have the full vertical value stream to enable our customers to engage in the discovery process as well as knowing production standards are in place when ready to scale.
What is your opinion on leveraging technological innovation like AI and ML for empowering the fabric world?
There are plenty of opportunities in the normal garment-making process which would benefit from ML and how things could be done in a much more efficient manner. So much of the garment-making process is very manual and time-consuming, and we could easily find ML to help assist in the simpler operational tasks. Much of this manufacturing industry consists of repetitive tasks and can be used with ML algorithms to learn and train other new operators in these simple tasks as well as guide other operators on proper and consistent posture-related activities.
Being a performance-driven individual, how do strategize to further SoftMatter.io’s mission and vision?
I like to approach customers with a solution-based offering, hence manufacturing for design in which we try to cater to customers’ unique designs and requirements and find a way to fabricate or custom develop the manufacturing processes if they don’t exist. I believe customers who really know their product, don’t necessarily know how to make it or have not seen clear paths of fabricating them in traditional factories. We like to take the approach of providing building block elements to their designs to get them to the point where manufacturing execution is straightforward from a planning perspective. And in some cases strategically positioning a manufacturing roadmap that could exist beyond what the customer envisioned.
Having expertise in the field, please brief our audience about the emerging trends of the new generation and how you plan to fulfill the dynamic needs of the textile space.
Textile is all about the experience, in a similar way that the box opening of a next-generation iPhone is about the packaging and presentation. Enhancing the experience and providing ways of enabling textiles to further function, for example, adding thermal capabilities, without sacrificing comfort, look, and feel is the main challenge to user experience in simplifying the product.What would be your valuable words of advice for budding entrepreneurs?
I would certainly say “walking” the process and critical refinement are the 2 most necessary things to understand in your operations. Development for sure is important, but once you transfer and hand over to any manufacturing operations, it’s super important to understand each process and how can be improved for next-generation iterations of your products. It’s important to carry over the learnings for evolutionary products.
How do you envision scaling both–Softmatter and your growth curve in the year 2023?
We are exploring partnerships in the traditional EMS industry much more aggressively this year to find working models in which we can accelerate the learning transfer in both directions. Definitely incubating our own know-how is certainly advantageous to further refine our art, however, collaborating with companies beyond our wheelhouse would allow us to substantially increase our effectivity and scale in production. We are very motivated to get these collaborations in place this year and focus on building long-term, strategic, worldwide relationships with our customers and business partners.
Ross Alcazar
COO at Softmatter
Leading Softmatter in DFM/NPI, problem-solving, customer interaction and negotiation, and external partners (supply chain) – building Softmatter and MAS operational excellence in wearable technology. National speaker with a variety of topics and subjects on electronics and advanced mechanics platforms.
