50 Years of Innovation: How Festo Customer Solutions Help Canadian OEMs Do More with Less
This year marks Festo Canada’s 50th anniversary—five decades of helping Canadian manufacturers build smarter, faster, and more efficient automation. Over that time, the demands on OEMs have intensified: tighter timelines, leaner teams, and higher performance expectations. Festo’s Customer Solutions (CS) capability developed hand in hand with the Canadian market to meet those challenges, helping OEMs speed up development and deliver fully integrated subsystems.
Festo Marketing Specialist Michelle Werner met with Santiago Olmedo, P.Eng., Customer Solutions Engineering Manager, to learn more about CS in Canada and Festo’s overall emphasis on custom solutions.
Michelle: Santiago, tell us a little about your background and how you joined Festo.
Santiago: I’ve worked in industrial automation for almost 20 years. I moved to Canada in 1998 from Ecuador, earned my Engineering Technologist Diploma and further my career with a Mechatronics Engineering degree. I worked in multiple industries, from water treatment to injection molding, then got involved with factory automation, designing and building automotive assembly lines before joining Festo in 2017. I wasn’t looking to move, but the opportunity was too good to pass up. I quickly realized Festo is far more than a pneumatics company; Festo is a motion company. You can buy everything needed for a machine from a single source, including complete subsystem solutions. I often think that if I’d known about Customer Solutions earlier, it would have made my life so much easier.
Michelle: For readers who may not know, what exactly does Customer Solutions do?
Santiago: Customer Solutions is a team of Festo engineers that designs and builds everything from simple assemblies and electromechanical modules to complete handling systems and customized subsystems. Our goal is to boost productivity and innovation. We promote an engineering partnership across every stage of a machine’s product development lifecycle. We help OEMs design, prototype, test and deploy advanced automation systems. Every project begins with a consultative review of the customer’s application, where our engineers collaborate closely to understand the target application and then size, select, test, and validate the best approach in terms of performance and budget.
Our work spans nearly every major automation sector, including food and beverage, packaging, life sciences and laboratory automation, semiconductor manufacturing, process automation, automotive, and general factory automation. In all these industries, we apply our experience to deliver tested, turnkey systems that meet each customer’s performance goals. This saves time and money during design, assembly, and support while allowing our customers to focus on their core expertise. In short, we deliver systems that come with a performance guarantee and Festo’s full global support.
Michelle: What makes Customer Solutions such a differentiator in Canada?
Santiago: CS is a specialized department focused on strategic OEMs, those building serial machines or configurable lines. Festo competitors often encourage OEMs to work with industrial distributors for custom solutions, but that can lead to gaps in accountability. Festo takes full ownership of a system’s performance, including support anywhere in the world. That is critical for Canadian OEMs who export globally. CS engineers also stay at the forefront of digitalization and sustainability, integrating new technologies and data-driven tools into every design.
Michelle: How does the solutions ownership approach benefit Canadian customers?
Santiago: First, we save engineers time and effort by selecting and integrating the correct components for their application and budget. Second, we simplify their supply chain. Customers order one part number and receive a fully tested, assembled system that is ready to mount and connect. We even provide just-in-time delivery to align with their production schedules.
Michelle: You mentioned performance guarantees. How does Customer Solutions ensure system performance?
Santiago: When we size and build a subsystem such as a gantry, or a control cabinet, we are not just selling components. We commit that the system will meet the performance levels we have calculated in partnership with the customer. Our guarantee is based on verified engineering data, not estimates. We use advanced tools like Handling Guide Online and internal simulations backed by empirical testing at different speeds, voltages, and loads. That means that when the customer installs a system, they can be confident it will achieve the required cycle times and throughput. Essentially, Festo assumes the performance risk.
Michelle: Can you share a success story that illustrates CS innovation?
Santiago: The VTSA IO-Link project is a great example. It began as a local prototype inspired by customer needs and industry specifications. Our Canadian CS team, working with Festo North America, combined multiple Festo valve manifold families, VTSA and VTUG, to create a new valve terminal with IO-Link communication. IO-Link plays a critical role in meeting industry requirements for digital communication between valve terminals and controllers. The project started as an alpha prototype with a custom printed circuit board (PCB) interface and housing and then moved into production at our Festo Didactic facility in Quebec. By 2022, it had been adopted by Festo Germany as a global catalog product. That project showed how local innovation in Canada can influence Festo’s global product line and opens new opportunities in modern communication protocols such as Festo’s AP- Bus Network.
Michelle: How has CS developed alongside Festo Canada’s growth?
Santiago: CS started here in the 1980s, assembling pneumatic logic cabinets. Since then, it has grown organically into a national engineering capability. When I joined in 2017, CS represented about 12 percent of Festo Canada’s sales. Today, it is around 20 percent, proof that Canadian OEMs see real value in this partnership.
Michelle: How does Festo Customer Solutions operate across North America?
Santiago: CS is a North American collaboration between dedicated teams in Mississauga (Canada), Mason (Ohio), Islandia (New York), Livermore (California), and Tlalnepantla (Mexico City). Each location has its own strengths.
In Mississauga, we focus on prototyping, large gantries, and subsystem kits. Mason, Ohio, is the serial production hub. It holds Festo’s North American inventory and supports large-scale builds. Islandia, New York, specializes in low-batch and modified products. Livermore, California, focuses on advanced control cabinets for major West Coast OEMs. Mexico City provides engineering support to end users and OEMs that build in the local market. Together, we form an integrated network that supports OEMs throughout North America with scalable, high-performance systems.