Published on:
21 March 2019
Author:
Expert:
Ad Vermeer holds 45 patents, has more than two decades of experience in the high-tech industry—and just as much persuasive power. After holding positions at Assembleon, ASML, and Philips CFT, he made a deliberate move into the startup world in 2009. There, he worked as a systems architect for four technology-driven companies. Two of them have since been successfully sold: Solaytec (atomic layer deposition) to Tempress and Liteq (back-end lithography) to Kulicke & Soffa.
Today, Vermeer works at Cerescon, a startup specializing in automated asparagus harvesting, and consults for Additive Industries in the field of metal 3D printing systems. The conversation focuses on system architecture, breakthrough technologies—and why well-designed workshops are often more effective than traditional leadership.
Big leaps instead of small steps
Vermeer is regarded as a passionate innovator—and as someone who not only develops new technologies but also successfully brings them to market. He considers cautious, purely incremental steps to be risky.
“When you have a true breakthrough technology in your hands, you can’t play it safe,” he says. “The leap can’t be big enough.”
This mindset has been a recurring theme throughout his career. According to Vermeer, system architecture becomes much more critical, especially in the startup environment.
“You don’t have any room to maneuver. You can’t just throw in another five million euros. Every investment must be justified—with a story that convinces existing and new investors.”
Learning as a Strategic Tool
A couple of time a year, Vermeer teaches the five-day System Architecture (Sysarch) course. He can hardly spare any more time for teaching—but he doesn’t want to give it up.
He makes targeted use of this training experience in his daily work at Cerescon. Whenever teams threaten to get stuck, he organizes workshops. This is not only effective from a professional standpoint, but also crucial for motivation and long-term retention of talent.
“We can’t pay the salaries of the big high-tech corporations. So young engineers need to feel that they’re developing professionally—and that they’re significantly more valuable after a year.”
Storytelling as a System Test
During one of these workshops, the topic of storytelling came up—a thought exercise from the Sysarch training. In this exercise, teams consciously put themselves in the customer’s shoes and tell the story of the product as it is used in real life.
“We imagined our machine leaving the factory, being transported to the customer, and operating smoothly there,” Vermeer recalls.
“Suddenly, everyone got nervous. It was immediately clear to us: As things stood, it wasn’t going to work that way.”
The storytelling sparked an intense discussion—and led to a surprising realization: The real bottleneck wasn’t with the engineers, but in the use of the test setups. While all the machines were being modified at the same time, no equipment was available for integration testing for weeks on end.
'You have to organize throughput at the bottleneck as efficiently as possible'
Identify bottlenecks—and resolve them effectively
The subsequent analysis showed that the real bottleneck was software testing time.
“You have to organize throughput at the bottleneck as efficiently as possible,” says Vermeer. “Eliyahu Goldratt described this decades ago in his Theory of Constraints.”
As a result, Cerescon introduced so-called “machine sponsors”—following ASML’s example. Each is responsible for an entire test machine, coordinates test requests from various projects, and schedules the limited machine time as efficiently as possible.
“In my experience as a leader, there’s hardly anything that has a greater impact than workshops like these,” says Vermeer.
'Some people believe you stumble upon a good idea by chance. That’s not how it works.'
What Makes a True Invention
For Vermeer, inventing is not a mystical process, but rather structured, methodical work.
“Some people believe you stumble upon a good idea by chance. That’s not how it works,” he says. “I can invent on command.”
A key moment for him was discovering the TRIZ method developed by Russian inventor Genrich Altshuller.
“When I read about it, I thought: That’s exactly how I do it, too.”
Creativity requires talent, he says, but above all, it requires self-confidence.
“I’m arrogant enough to say: I can invent anything you could possibly want. And after 35 years of experience, I’m starting to believe it myself.”
Structuring Wishful Thinking with CAFCR
It is even more difficult to actually change the market with a new technology than it is to invent it.
“That’s wishful thinking. Formulating such a wish precisely is extremely challenging.”
Here, Vermeer relies on the CAFCR method, which examines system architecture from five perspectives: Customer, Application, Functional, Conceptual, and Realization. The goal is to clearly identify the actual customer benefits.
At Cerescon, it was relatively simple: Vermeer’s brother has been an asparagus farmer for 25 years.
“He knew exactly what the value drivers were. He put it simply: ‘You should be able to see the asparagus underground.’ That made it clear: Underground detection is the breakthrough.”
In training sessions, Vermeer has participants identify these value drivers on their own. In addition to yield, quality, and costs, a fourth factor emerged that came as a surprise: the growing labor shortage.
“If there’s no one left to harvest the crops, everything else is irrelevant,” says Vermeer.
The training 'Systems Architect(ing)' is held four times a year in Eindhoven.
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