According to Timothy Shivers, his position with Jabil is like growing a personal project from the ground up.

Jabil Inc. is a global manufacturing solutions provider, working with brands across 15 industries. At their Asheville and Hendersonville facilities, Jabil manufactures molded products and sub-assemblies for pharmaceutical delivery devices.

Shivers has worked for Jabil for seven years and has held his current position as the lead technician in an automation department for two years. “I’m a conduit between engineering, the technical staff, production, quality, and the assembly line,” Shivers said. “It’s my job to maximize assembly line efficiency and effectiveness by coordinating with all these groups.”

Continuously monitoring and maintaining the assembly lines’ performance requires multiple things to take place, according to Shivers. 

“I feel that my position as lead technician has more facets than in recent years,” Shivers said. “In the earlier part of my career, I dealt strictly with the maintenance aspect of the assembly lines. Now my role varies between instructor, instruction writer, maintenance scheduler, and manager of resources such as the availability of parts and vendor or machine builder support.”

The tasks of this position can vary from day to day, according to Shivers. “One day I could be completely immersed in maintenance and continuous improvements, the next day I could be writing or revising work instructions, and the next day I could be talking to machine builders or vendors,” he said.

For his department, Shivers said that he and his team try to ensure that there is more automation and efficiency each time an assembly line is set up for the same product. He said that each adjustment is made due to thinking outside the box despite the short time between builds and equipment installation. “How can product amount, operational efficiency, overall yield, and overall quality be increased without greatly changing the process of current assembly lines?” were questions that Shivers said guided this process to create a faster and more efficient assembly line.

“The newest technological innovation used specifically on the assembly line that will be in operation at the Hendersonville location is 3D imaging, working in tandem with robotic handling,” Shivers said. “The feedback from the 3D sensor controls proper positioning of a six-axis robot to control and maintain a proper handling process.” He said it’s the most interesting thing that he’s seen while working this job.

Shivers said that he sees growth in automation both in the company and in the manufacturing industry as a whole. “I feel that most industries seek the answers to increased production, improved operational efficiency, along with improvements in yield and quality,” he said. “If a combination of these questions are answered, improvements in design can have effects in both lasting performance and minimal continual improvements.”

As far as challenges, Shivers said that diagnosing and correcting issues on an assembly line keeps he and his team on their toes, and that they have to think ahead and plan for potential issues. He said that when he learns something new, he sees his goals become successes. “At my age, I like the ability to keep learning new processes and technologies,” Shivers said.

“It can be gratifying, it can be frustrating, and it can even be tiring. It’s life — life is filled with these feelings, and life is good,” Shivers said. He also said that he hopes to spend the rest of his career at Jabil. He asked, “When a person puts time and effort into a project and they see it grow from the ground up, how could a person not see the project all the way through?”

Timothy Shivers is a Lead Technician at Jabil Inc. Learn more about Jabil at Jabil.com.