An Interview with Lauren Dunford: CEO of Safi

Lauren Dunford is the CEO of Safi, a cloud based platform that helps improve the workflow and efficiency of manufacturers. As a Stanford undergraduate who formerly worked in sales and operations at Revolution Foods, Dunford noticed that many of the issues that occur during manufacturing are due to manual tracking; it leads to poor communication and less productivity overall. Pushing for a widely accessible and user-friendly system, Dunford co-founded Safi: a plug and play system that utilizes sensors and cloud computing to increase machine visibility. First launching the platform in East Africa, Dunford has since expanded her system to manufacturers in the United States with aims to provide small and mid-sized factories access to Safi’s simple, intuitive system for peak efficiency. 

After giving a brief introduction of herself, Dunford answered several questions regarding her business and her past experiences working in this field.  

Q: What do you do as the CEO of Safi?

Dunford remarks that as the CEO of Safi, her tasks change everyday. She increases her productivity by setting clear goals and looking ahead. She adds that part of her job is “filling all the cracks”— fine tuning and solving problems in order to ensure that Safi runs smoothly and can effectively serve their customers. Along with attending the smaller tasks of the business, Dunford also oversees all teams to make sure they run cohesively.  

Q: How does your business and the businesses you cater to operate because of the pandemic? Has much changed?

Safi strives to work closely with small and mid-sized manufacturers, such as those that manufacture cardboard boxes or plastic packaging. Despite being in a pandemic, manufactured products still need to be produced; through internal changes and remote working, Dunford’s platform has helped support businesses as they adjust to keep running. For some managers, in-person supervision has been replaced with remote work. Shifts with multiple workers working at the same time are changed to staggered shifts to promote safety, and the platform can help maintain good data with those shifts. Additionally, Safi’s cloud based platform and real-time visibility allows for businesses to have a “shared source of truth”— data that goes through the system can easily be accessed through mobile devices, so the system is not reliant on human communication to deliver information. Safi can therefore objectively point out issues and trends in machinery without requiring much in person intervention. 

The pandemic may have posed initial challenges for manufacturers and for Safi, but Dunford states that customers have found different ways to adapt as well— some are even able to produce at higher volumes than before. Although the company structure initially required connecting with customers in-person, she has learned how to establish strong communication with her customers through a remote environment. Safi continues to adjust and improve in the midst of this pandemic.      

Q: What is it about Safi that makes it different from other similar platforms?

According to Dunford, legacy systems have always been there to provide real-time visibility into how machines are running and overall energy efficiency. However, these systems have always been expensive, creating huge financial risks for mid-sized companies. Not only are the systems costly, but they are also complicated to use. They can be so complicated that, according to Dunford, some companies must send out teams to acquire training on how to use the products, and even then not everyone is able to operate the system except for a select few. Because of this, only the top 1% of companies had the ability to use this kind of tracking technology, while millions of other factories continued to record data manually.  

On the other hand, Safi is a game-changer because it’s a no-brainer— a “plug and play” kind of technology that’s simple to use. Taking advantage of the fact that all machines use electricity in the same way, Safi’s sensors track the electricity flowing to factory machines to provide visibility into machine  activity. Safi also leverages the fact that everyone uses and understands how to manage a smartphone, as all team members are able to work Safi’s system through their mobile devices. It’s an added bonus that Safi makes factories more energy efficient, which translates to positive impacts for the environment. 

Q: How is the process of working with your customers? How have you attracted customers in the past, how did you get them to use your business?

To attract customers at first, Dunford explains that the team had to begin by putting the word out about what the Safi platform was through emails, ads, social media, etc. Safi wanted to find customers that could greatly utilize the service. The team would proceed to discuss motives, priorities, and find out how customers were operating things beforehand. Finally, they would demonstrate the “plug and play” aspect of Safi’s technology, which inserts clips onto systems and plugs data into a cloud that stores it for the entire company to view at any time.

Q: What part does data analytics play in terms of your business?

Safi’s platform performs analytics in the cloud to make data useful to the manufacturers using the system. In the short term, sensors around the power cords track machine activity through electricity use, giving workers a single, shared truth of what is going on. The platform analyzes the percentage achieved according to company plans and tracks data over time to secure efficiency. In the long term, Safi displays the details of what is going on in order for teams to pinpoint what needs to be done. By analyzing real time data automatically, companies can track microstops and put issues to a halt before they ever escalate into greater problems.

 Q: What do you think is the most important part about running a business, especially one centered around manufacturing?

According to Dunford, there are numerous important aspects to running a business. Ultimately, she stresses the significance of attending to customer needs from multiple perspectives. Looking at Safi and the manufacturing field from an international level, she takes note of manufacturing business trends and how they change over time. Waves of change are constantly taking place; Dunford’s goal is to allow the company to “identify and ride those waves of technological change,” especially since technology is becoming increasingly impactful to the current world and to businesses. “It’s a CEO’s job to make good decisions,” Dunford constantly reminds herself. Determining how to help customers get the most value from Safi is a top priority for Dunford as CEO. 

In this interview, we got to learn more about Lauren Dunford who, through building the company Safi, was able to solve a major problem by building an innovative, straightforward technological solution. With Safi, Dunford is helping countless companies achieve higher performance and better teamwork. As the future approaches, she looks forward to using this technology to help improve the efficiency of many more companies around the world.