Prototypes, Pilots, and Polymers: Cooper Standard’s Chris Couch

**Sam Ransbotham** (0:02)
Things like brake fluid and chemical manufacturing may not seem like GWIZ artificial intelligence, but we all may be benefiting from AI already and just not know it. Today we're talking with Chris Couch, Senior Vice President and Chief Technology Officer of Cooper Standard, about how we're all benefiting indirectly from artificial intelligence every day.
Welcome to Me, Myself, and AI, a podcast on artificial intelligence in business. Each episode, we introduce you to someone innovating with AI. I'm Sam Ransbotham, Professor of Information Systems at Boston College. I'm also the guest editor for the AI and Business Strategy Big Idea Program at MIT Sloan Management Review.

**Shervin Khodabandeh** (0:44)
And I'm Shervin Khodabandeh, Senior Partner with BCG, and I co-lead BCG's AI practice in North America. And together, MIT SMR and BCG have been researching AI for five years, interviewing hundreds of practitioners and surveying thousands of companies on what it takes to build and to deploy and scale AI capabilities across the organization and really transform the way organizations operate.

**Sam Ransbotham** (1:14)
Today we're talking with Chris Couch. So Chris is the SVP and the Chief Technology Officer for Cooper Standard.
Chris, thanks for taking the time to talk with us. Welcome.

**Chris Couch** (1:22)
You bet. Thank you very much.

**Sam Ransbotham** (1:23)
Why don't we start by learning a little bit about your role at Cooper Standard? What do you do now?

**Chris Couch** (1:28)
I am the CTO of Cooper Standard. We're a Tier 1 global automotive supplier. I'm also the founder and CEO of an AI startup called Liveline Technologies that has come out of some work that we did as R&D within Cooper Standard. We provide components in the spaces of vehicle sealing and enclosures, as well as fluid handling, whether it's brake or fluid or coolant. All the fluid systems in the vehicle. We also invest in material science technologies that we believe can have an impact beyond automotive. Many of our products may be not visible to the average consumer. In fact, some of our products, hopefully nobody has to worry about them when we're moving fuel around your vehicle, but they're critically important to the driving experience and having a safe and reliable vehicle. For example, we developed a brand new category of polymer that we have called Fortrex.
Fortrex provides a much better seal around the doors and windows in your vehicle. Why is that important? It's important, especially as we move into an electrified vehicle world. As engine and transmission noises decrease because there's no more gasoline engine, other sources of noises become more prevalent. The largest one of those is the noise coming in due to wind around your doors and windows.
By providing an enhanced sealing package for those, we believe we've got the right products to service an electrifying world.

**Sam Ransbotham** (2:59)
How is artificial intelligence involved in that development of the polymer?

**Chris Couch** (3:03)
We spend a lot of time and money coming up with advanced polymer formulations. A lot of it historically has been trial and error. That's what industrial chemists often do.
We used AI to develop a system that advises our chemists on the next set of recipes to try as they iterate towards a final solution. We found dramatic reductions in many cases with that approach, and dramatic means reducing those R&D loops 70 or 80 percent.

**Sam Ransbotham** (3:36)
Got it. But before we talk more about Cooper Standard's success with AI, can you tell us a little bit about your own background and career path?

**Chris Couch** (3:43)
Well, I think the best way to describe myself is a lifelong manufacturing addict, first of all. As a kid, I took apart everything in the house.
Probably got hit with wall current more than once. It explains a lot about me today, I suppose.
I was the kid that built their first car out of a kit. I was a hardcore mechanical engineer with a focus on manufacturing controls in school. My side projects include things like building autonomous drones that fly high altitude. So I'm just a manufacturing nerd. That has really served me well in my career. I spent the first third of my working life in a Japanese company. I worked for Toyota and went and joined them in Japan, spent a dozen years with them designing and building and ultimately being involved in plant operations.
I spent the next third of my career running a P&L for an automotive supplier on the business side, mostly based out of Asia. So I have a business bent as well, which may color a lot of what I say today. And then the last third or so of my career has been in CTO gigs. I'm in my second one here. I'm again an automotive supplier, but we get our fingers into all kinds of interesting tech domains just given what's happening in the world today, whether it's material science or AI. So here I am and didn't really expect that to be doing my second job here, if you would ask me two years ago, but it's certainly been a lot of fun and we're excited about delivering some impact with these technologies.