On the Line Ep. 2: Factory Floor to Founding Laminar

How a Founder Who Grew Up on Factory Floors Reinvented Clean-in-Place Optimization

Welcome to On the Line with Laminar, our series where we go inside the world of process manufacturing to hear what's really driving change on the production floor. Catch Episode 1 on Peak Sauce here.  

In this episode, Sanjay Rajan, Head of Go-to-Market at Laminar, sits down with Annie, Co-founder and CEO of Laminar, to dig into the origin story behind the company — from growing up on factory floors to being told that self-optimizing Clean-in-Place was impossible, to becoming the most widely deployed clean-in-place and product changeover optimization solution in the world.

Catch the video or check out the transcript below!

A Manufacturing Family and the Conviction to Reinvent an Industry

Sanjay: Today I'm joined by Annie, our founder, CEO, and what we all acknowledge as Laminar's energy source. I want to talk to you about your origin story. Where did you get the confidence to start this? Walk us through that initial phase.

Annie: David and I are siblings — he's my older brother, our co-founder and CTO, and one of the world's top experts in process manufacturing. I come from a generational manufacturing background. We grew up on the shop floor. Our first jobs were as janitors at the QA lab. Manufacturing really runs in our blood.

We were deeply passionate about the space and saw firsthand what it takes to run and operate large process manufacturing factories — but also so much opportunity that was ripe for disruption.

Fast forward to COVID, which really brought to light a lot of challenges facing our global supply chain and manufacturing sector. We were compelled to build technologies to reinvent this industry and make it more future-proof, sustainable, efficient, productive, and resilient.

First Principles and Finding the Problem Worth Solving

Sanjay: I'm sure you were full of ideas early on. How was that an iterative process? What was the "aha moment" that made you focus on one thing and start building?

Annie: David and I spent an incredible amount of time talking to countless people — from process engineers on the shop floor to senior executives in supply chain and operations at some of the largest manufacturing enterprises in the world. We were asking exactly what you'd expect: what keeps you up at night? What are your biggest line items? What are your biggest headaches?

We were really focused on uncovering unobvious problems that have been plaguing the sector for multiple decades — then grounding ourselves in first principles and foundational chemistry, chemical engineering, process science, and our background in AI and technology.

We kept uncovering unobvious problems and creating novel solutions — over and over and over again. It was all over the place at first. We had a solution that was incredibly versatile and flexible, and we were doing many use cases across many different sectors.

Ultimately, we came to what is now one of our core use cases — one we pioneered — and are now the number one technical solution in the world for clean-in-place optimization.

From Static Recipes to Dynamic Clean-in-Place — And Why Incumbents Said It Was Impossible

Annie: We were really focused on rethinking how you go from traditional time-based, recipe-based automation in process manufacturing to a smarter, dynamic, data-driven operation — one that enables more efficiency, reduced waste, improved sustainability, improved quality, and improved resiliency.

In traditional CIP, you run the same recipe every single time, no matter what's actually going on in your pipes, no matter the status of your equipment. Maybe you need to clean more. Maybe you need to clean less. But you're always running the same way.

We pioneered the concept of dynamic precision CIP — cleaning until you're actually done cleaning, until you've reached good product quality. Cleaning until clean, not until the timer runs out.

What's interesting is that when we first started down this path, some of the biggest players in the clean-in-place space told us that dynamic CIP was impossible.

Sanjay: I bet it was their chemical supplier putting that idea in their heads — but that's just my suspicion.

Annie: David and I and our team, being deeply grounded in first principles and foundational science, thought: we don't actually see why this wouldn't work. So we quietly put our heads down, brought it to life, and proved it in full industrial-grade environments — over and over and over again.

Fast forward five years, and those same incumbents have come to us at trade shows and said, "it seems like your solution is better than ours." Kind of a full circle moment.

Why CIP and Changeovers Are the Highest-Impact Use Case Across All of Process Manufacturing

Sanjay: Where is the hero use case for CIP and changeovers? Who really needs to be paying attention to this?

Annie: CIP is a really interesting use case because it's incredibly ubiquitous across almost the entire process manufacturing industry. Anywhere you have batch production, anywhere you're making multiple variants of products on the same line, anywhere quality is critical — you need to run CIP. You need to run changeovers.

Time and time again, we hear from customers and across the industry: CIP and changeovers are one of the biggest users of water, chemicals, and energy — and one of the biggest causes of downtime and OEE loss.

Any time you're cleaning or running a changeover is time you're not producing product. And when you're starting and stopping production, that's also when most quality incidents and challenges occur. It's also one of the biggest causes of product waste and material loss.

If you're a sauce manufacturer, a beverage producer, a brewer, a flavors and fragrances company — you feel this acutely. One of our customers told me recently: 10 years ago, they were making 5 SKUs in the United States. On those same manufacturing lines today, they're making 3,000.

Sanjay: That's exactly what we've seen — that explosion of SKUs on the same aging, legacy assets.

The Results: Time, Water, Chemicals, and Quality Across Industries

Annie: For sauce and flavors and fragrances manufacturers, the time savings on CIP and changeover directly translate to increased production output and more flexibility to run more batches, more SKUs on the same resources and lines.

For beverage manufacturers, we're saving water, time, energy, and chemicals. For breweries, the chemical savings are especially compelling. And we're seeing this apply to pharmaceuticals, engine oil manufacturers, and beyond.

The path into CIP was actually fascinating — some of the early companies that came to us were interested in rail car washing. A starch and sweeteners company needed to unload product, clean the rail car, turn it over, and load new product. By shortening that wash time, the car turns over faster, improving productivity. And we were automatically monitoring the quality of that wash water — diverting high-sugar wastewater to ethanol production, and sending practically clean water to wastewater treatment.

The foundational principle of cleaning a rail car is actually very similar to cleaning a tank or a filler or a circuit. Being grounded in first principles meant we could see the common thread — and that became the foothold for how we originally entered the CIP space.

Similar principles also apply to concrete trucks — turning them over faster to get to job sites more quickly.

Who Should Be Thinking About Self-Optimizing Clean-in-Place Right Now

Annie: If you're a sauce manufacturer, a food and beverage manufacturer, a beverage or RTD producer, infant formula, protein shakes, vitamins — if you're a brewer — what Laminar is doing specifically in clean-in-place optimization and changeover optimization is saving time, water, and chemicals while improving quality.

You're running more changeovers than ever. You need the same aging, legacy assets to produce new recipes and new products while remaining agile and efficient — without killing your OEE and productivity, and without risking your quality.

We are the most widely deployed dynamic CIP and changeover solution in the world. And this is just the beginning.

What's Next?

That wraps up Episode 2 of On The Line with Laminar.

To see how Laminar's real-time inline sensors and AI-driven CIP and changeover optimization work in practice, explore our customer stories or talk to the team.

Catch up on episodes you missed here:  

• On the Line, Episode 1: Peak Sauce and CIP Bottlenecks

‍