Automotive News Canada - May 2021 - 12

* M AY 2 0 2 1

He performs in the cold to make sure the cars do
By JIL McINTOSH

OSHAWA CORRESPONDENT

CONNOR SUTTON

BRAVING THE COLD
TO GET EVERYTHING RIGHT

MOST VEHICLE ENGINEERS
work comfortably in a warm
lab. At General Motors'
cold-weather testing facility in
Kapuskasing, Ont., 850 kilometres north of Toronto, Connor
Sutton is more likely to be
earning his pay in negative
double-digit temperatures.
Sutton, 27, heads up a team
for durability engineering as
the centre's cold-weather-exposure test lead. The engineers
test vehicles at
various
stages of
development in
extreme
conditions.
" A lot
of testing
has already been done on the
individual components, and
now we're looking at the vehicle as a whole. What we tend
to find are issues that stayed
under the radar in early testing. "
Having grown up in
Kirkland Lake, 300 kilometres
east of Kapuskasing, Sutton
is used to the cold. " My big
passion was dirt biking. I
would blow up my engine and
rebuild it. Midway through

Connor Sutton's team at GM's
cold-weather testing facility in
Kapuskasing, Ont., evaluates
up to 70 vehicles each winter.
PHOTO: GM CANADA

high school, I thought I would
go into mechanical engineering. "
During his studies at
Western University in
London, Ont., he did a co-op
session with GM in Oshawa,
Ont. Once he finished school,
his former GM manager contacted him in 2015 to join the
company. His position included trips to the Kapuskasing

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facility, and two years ago, he
stayed for his current role.
As many as 70 vehicles
arrive for evaluation each
winter, when the facility runs
24/7.
" You need to squeeze every
ounce of testing out of the winter seasons. We don't want to
miss any potential issues, and
some of our coldest temperatures are overnight. "
The centre closes for maintenance in summer and Sutton
trains on the new technologies
he'll be testing the next season.
When a problem is found,
Sutton's team connects globally with the engineers responsible for that component.
" We help them get to why
it's happening, or solutions
that could fix it. It's fulfilling
when you find an issue, and
you're glad the guys found it
and it never reached our dealers. "

SANDRA NEWTON
A NOSE FOR NUMBERS
ACROSS SIX STORES

TO BOOST PRODUCTIVITY,
many dealership groups centralize some of their functions. At Kot Auto Group in
Kelowna, B.C., Sandra Newton
handles the numbers in her
role as director of accounting.
" I manage the accounting
departments for our six dealerships. I compile data for all
our stores and organize our
financial statements and payroll review. We have a control-

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Sandra Newton's role
managing the accounting
departments of Kot Auto
Group also extends to
overseeing the rebuilding
of two stores.
PHOTO: KOT AUTO GROUP

ler at every store. They report
to me, and I step in if they
need anything. "
The company is rebuilding
two stores, and Newton, 30, is
overseeing much of that, too.
" It's not just the accounting
side. I'm taking documents to
the city, writing up forms and
organizing how everything
moves over. We have an architect who's helping with most
things, but I've been doing a
lot of research and figuring it
out as I go along. "
Newton says she has
always been good with numbers and earned a bachelor of
arts in management. She also
managed a restaurant while in
university. After graduating,
she became a receptionist at
Kelowna Hyundai, owned by
Kot Auto Group.
" After three months, I
pushed to get into accounting at that store, and [worked
in that department] for about
nine months. "
She moved to Vancouver
and got her CPA and when visiting family in Kelowna, she
dropped by the dealership.
" I asked [Kot Auto Group
President John Kot] to contact me if anything comes up,
and a couple of months later, I
got a call and was offered this
position. "
Her biggest challenge is
managing the documentation
generated by six stores. " So
much of selling a vehicle is
paper and the industry doesn't
seem to be moving away from
it. You write it out and then
have to put it in the computer.
" But I'm very organized
and have high attention to
detail. I like solving problems and finishing tasks.
Accounting is my passion, I
like to help people, and I've
fallen naturally into leadership roles. "

which supplies software-asa-service, account executive
Luke Richard works with clients, including major automakers and Tier 1 suppliers.
" Acerta started in 2017,
and I joined in 2018. We're a
Canadian company with sales
teams in Europe and Japan. "
The company, 110 kilometres
west of Toronto, uses machine
learning and artificial intelligence to improve in-vehicle and fleet operations, and
upgrade auto manufacturing
and identify quality issues,
including using existing data
to predict and prevent future
problems.
Richard, 31, earned an engineering degree at McMaster
University in Hamilton, Ont.
" My dad was director of the
camera department at IMAX,
and that's probably why I was
attracted to a technical field. "
One of his first jobs was at
Canadian engineering company Multimatic in Toronto,
where " I did everything from
bench-testing dampers to sitting shotgun for [testing] tires
on a Ferrari 458. "
He then joined Ontario
parts supplier Stackpole
International, creating production tests for its oil-pump
assembly line, and then moved
to Acerta.
" I wanted to work for a
startup, because you wear
a lot of hats, learn quickly
and you're part of developing
something that's innovative. I
wanted exposure to the sales
side and the customer interaction. "
Much of his time is spent
researching what potential
automotive clients are developing and then reaching out to
the right people.
" When I started at Acerta,
I had no sales experience. I
knew how the product worked
and to make it appealing to
our customers but I had to
build out the back end of a
salesperson to pitch the ideas,
and that was the biggest learning curve.
" I still do complex problem-solving, working with the
data and software teams and
I also get to sell something I
truly believe is the next frontier of the auto industry. "
- ANC

LUKE RICHARD

TODAY'S PRODUCTS
AVERT TOMORROW'S ISSUES

AS VEHICLES GROW
increasingly smarter, the software to build and run them
needs to be as well. At Acerta,
in Kitchener-Waterloo, Ont.,

Luke Richard wanted to
get in on the ground floor
at Acerta using artificial
intelligence as a tool for auto
development and production.
P H O T O : A C E R TA

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Automotive News Canada - May 2021

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Automotive News Canada - May 2021