From Immigration to Innovation: Vijay Kamineni Manufactures a More Resilient Economy for Kentucky

It was the early 2000s, and the United States was teetering on the verge of a recession. The dot com bubble had inflated new digitally grounded -- if poorly understood -- businesses so extraordinarily that the market would swell to the point of bursting. When the whole thing would come crashing down on itself, the effects of this recession would ripple out across the globe.

And on the other side of the world in Pilani, Vijay Kamineni had just finished his degree in mechanical engineering. Unsure of how to use his degree in the job market immediately, he moved from India to Malaysia, a country “just coming up on its multimedia super corridor and their IT innovation,” he recalled. From his position there, he was offered an opportunity to move to the United States to work.

Originally contracted by Logan Aluminum to work in their IT department temporarily, Vijay Kamineni has steadily advanced the ranks, earning titles like Development Team Leader and Business Transformation Leader. He now heads the company as a Chief Innovation and Technology Leader. And as he’s ascended to lead the company forward in its digital future, his focus has remained the same: to seek out and identify ways that new technologies can improve processes for both the worker and the work.

Coming to Kentucky

Vijay Kamineni always preferred cities. Even though he grew up in a small transport and agricultural town and then attended college at Birla Institute of Technology and Sciences, Pilani in India, Kamineni grew to appreciate the convenience and amenities that cities could offer. After finishing school and moving to Malaysia, he grew comfortable with his new urban surroundings.

While he was in his mid-30s, he received a new job opportunity that would bring him to the United States. A few days before he left, he was waiting for a project to be completed in Rhode Island. Since he had more recently only lived in big cities, he decided to do more research into the site of his new job: Russellville, Kentucky. When he learned that the nearest Starbucks at that time was 35 miles away, Vijay began to reconsider his decision to come to Kentucky. Through the urging of his boss, he decided to go ahead with his decision and check out the town in Western Kentucky.

His assumptions fell flat almost immediately. “The people here are so hospitable. I used to hear about places where everybody knew everybody,” Kamineni said. “When I came here, it was the first time I experienced it. It’s really how loving and welcoming people are -- how smart and hardworking people are.” 

After spending the first three weeks of his stay in Russellville in the local Econolodge, he noticed a pattern. Each night when he would return from his day at Logan, a plate of warm food would be waiting for him outside of his door. “That’s the kind of people here -- people with big hearts,” he said. This unexpected warmth convinced Kamineni to make Western Kentucky his home.

New Identities Through the Future of Work

“Logan back in ‘85 chose Russellville because of the work culture.”

Kamineni, as a leader in manufacturing, is aware of the impact that technology, automation and artificial intelligence will have on his industry. “Looking forward from where we are,” he told us, “the rate of change in technology and the innovations coming into day-to-day workforces, the speed of change is changing, and with that, the skills required to perform the same job are changing constantly.”

This rapid transition is necessary and can present tangible benefits, according to Kamineni. “As more and more technology comes and assists us with the work we’re doing every day,” he pointed out, “we constantly focus on the man-machine rebalancing. Machines do some things a lot better than humans, but they can never do the work we’re doing. And keeping that vision, upskilling our workforce to hand off the work the machines do better, be skilled to take up the work that only humans can do.”

In the last 35 years, as Logan has exponentially increased its output while introducing new technologies to increase their manufacturing efficiency, they haven’t laid off a single employee. “There’s enough work for every one of us.” Kamineni realizes, though, that this won’t be the case for all industries. He sees this less of a threat that robotic automation poses and more of an opportunity for humans to reskill and upskill and ultimately “do work that only humans can do.” Kamineni points to the development of artificial intelligence and how it can be helpful for machines predicting circumstances. These predictions can fall flat when unpredictable, real-world events occur.

Kamineni understands also that these benefits can only arise out of the balance between human and automated labor. “We create processes,” he told us, “where robots and humans can work together in the same workspace. It’s not a zero-sum game. It’s exponentially increasing work opportunities as robots augment our capabilities. We can do more.”

In addition to the added efficiency that comes from humans and automated programs working together, workers are able to do their jobs more safely. “For a manufacturing company like Logan that involves humans using heavy equipment and tools, automation offers safety benefits,” Kamineni told us.

Courtesy Logan Aluminum

“Rather than tying your identity to a particular work you do, but [instead] tying in general work achievements.”

For Kamineni, this striving for incorporating new digital technologies was necessary for Logan’s growth. In a recent interview, he explained how he “knew we had to go digital to keep up. So we started our digital transformation journey 20 months ago from the understanding that we couldn’t rip and replace our existing systems.”

This renewed concentration resulted in a collaboration with Hitachi Vantara to refine Logan’s manufacturing processes. In a Bloomberg press release, he elaborated that “As a progressive manufacturer, our focus was to accelerate transformative change, eliminate data silos and build a foundation for digital innovation that would accelerate our journey toward Manufacturing 4.0.”

Through this overarching collaboration that integrated a new data integration system to enable precise data analysis, Kamineni and Logan Aluminum were recognized by the “Manufacturing Leadership Council with a Manufacturing Leadership Award.”

Kentucky Shows Its Resilience

It’s no secret that new digital technologies, automation and AI will fundamentally change the world’s way of doing work in the near future. Kamineni also understands that this transition, however rapid, will have consequences on workers in Kentucky. 

“What happens when that work is no longer needed to be done?” Kamineni asked. “If that work goes away? It’s not surprising that we may feel that identity is being stolen. That’s because of the mindset that we put our identity into our work. The ownership culture in Kentucky makes it so much harder.”

Still, he remains optimistic that Kentucky’s workers will continue to adapt. “There are many mountains to be moved in technology and the future of work we’re getting,” he said. “That mindset, that drive, to mine things out of the earth will work in a lot of other ways, like mining data using advanced technology.”

Kamineni has begun partnering with organizations both in Kentucky and around the United States to ensure the Bluegrass State adapts to this new technologically centered work culture. Along with Rusty Justice, Kamineni serves on MIT’s Regional Entrepreneurship Acceleration Program for Team Kentucky to create and maintain “a culture that inspires, supports, and sustains entrepreneurship through utilizing Kentucky’s diverse resources.”

From his work in promoting new processes that enable Kentucky to continue advancing, Kamineni believes that the state is uniquely poised to become a digital labor leader. “With the technology that we have today and what we’ve seen with remote work,” he said, “that only highlights how easily we can work from anywhere in the world. The boundaries are becoming thinner.”

“We are a maker state,” Kamineni stated. “We know how to make things very well. If you can make things well and effectively, nobody can steal it from us.”