Speaker 0 00:00:00 Go west robotics is really at the center of the Venn diagram of, um, robotics and software. Um, if it involves robots and involves software, we work on it. Um, where you are primarily working with autonomous robotics companies and integrators, uh, in both the industrial and logistics or warehouse automation space. Um, and we're kind of the big guns that somebody brings in when they have, uh, some software skillsets they don't have in house, or they're just overwhelmed and they needed a little extra help. So, um, I think what differentiates us the most is probably the fact that, you know, we're grown ups, there's no bait and switch. Uh, when somebody hires our team to work with us, they work with me and Jerry directly as the team leads. And, um, you know, that really what separates us from other similar companies, hello everyone, and welcome
Speaker 1 00:00:44 To the robot industry podcast. My name is Jim Beretta and I'm your host and I'm happy to have Jerry ENS and Alex Erwin on the podcast today. And they're from a company called go west robotics, and I'm going to let them introduce themselves. Alex, why don't you go first and tell the audience a little bit about you.
Speaker 0 00:01:02 Yeah. Thank you, Jim. Uh, Alex Irwin. Um, I'm the CEO of go west robotics, but, um, uh, we're a small company, so I certainly don't take myself very seriously and I feel pretty silly when I say CEO. Uh, at the end of the day, I run our client experience team. So I'm responsible for onboarding our clients and then holding their hands through all of the engagements to make sure that they've got a, a single point of contact, uh, to talk to whenever they have anything they need.
Speaker 1 00:01:27 Thank you, Alex. And, um, Jerry, please introduce yourself.
Speaker 2 00:01:31 Hi. Yeah, thanks Jamie. Uh, I'm Jerry ENS. I am the CTO at, uh, go with robotics and, um, yeah, I'm basically responsible for all things technical, um, the implementation of our projects, um, the, the research that is necessary, um, having the knowledge of full our different robot implementations and how these communicate with each other to software architecture. Um, and, uh, yeah, we work with customers to make sure that the technical needs are, are met and I run the development team to make it all happen.
Speaker 1 00:02:07 So thank you for that. I wanted to ask kind of a big general question. What is your value proposition? And I understand that you have two kinds of customers. You've got both robot builders and robot integrators.
Speaker 0 00:02:21 Yeah, maybe I'll, I'll, I'll take that one, Jerry, but, um, I think at the end of the day, our value proposition is really two things. Uh, really software expertise, you know, we've got, you know, software excellence, robotics excellence, baked into our DNA. That goes all the way back with Jerry. And then the other side of it, the client experience expertise, my background is client services. Um, I've done that for better part of two decades. And so, um, we're pretty good at integrating ourselves to our client's existing teams and not requiring any babysitting or handholding, and we just kinda hit the ground running. And then every two weeks at the end of a sprint, we hand over some beautiful software.
Speaker 1 00:02:58 And how did get started?
Speaker 2 00:03:01 Uh, we, uh, started, um, a few years ago, um, basically out of my, uh, autonomous robotics background, um, first and recognizing that, um, in both industrial robotics and in the autonomous robotics space, um, there is a lot of need to, um, go from, from the initial proof of concept early code to something that scales where it's ready for production and hardening your code, making sure it's, it's bug free, making sure that you have proper version control and processes in place. Um, and, and that you're just in a good position to do apply fixes and release those quickly, um, having a healthy deployment process. Um, those are the things that are sometimes left us as afterthoughts, or these are things that, uh, that innovative companies struggle with, um, at times. And, uh, this is where we really shine. And that's where, uh, I saw the opportunity early on. Since Alex came on a few years ago, we've been really, um, able to make this work, um, because of the client experience and, uh, needing no handholding and making sure that our project management is smooth from beginning to end. Um, and so a company can hire us and be completely confident that we will make sure that everything is buttoned up at the end of the project.
Speaker 1 00:04:31 And Alex, I'll ask you, when do your clients call you when they're getting started when they're getting overwhelmed or, or when they're trying to scale?
Speaker 0 00:04:39 Uh, pretty much all of the above, uh, frankly. Uh, so, um, you know, people haven't worked with this before, we tend to get the call where maybe it's a fire drill, um, and they need help right away, but our clients who've worked with us before fine. They have the best experience when they reach out to us pretty early on. Um, even when it's just the tossing around an idea stage and to have us come in and do a whiteboard session with them and just think about things, um, put us on their proposals when they propose on work as part of their team. Um, you know, we're really, really bought in. We like to see ourselves as part of, you know, the overall stakeholder team beginning to end. And so people have the most success when they engage us early, but they can really engage us at any stage throughout the process.
Speaker 1 00:05:21 And so what trends are you seeing kind of in the industry? I mean, we're busy as an industry and maybe I'll ask both those questions to both of you or both that question to both of you. Sorry,
Speaker 0 00:05:30 I'm going to tee Jerry up and I'll just say three letters, P L C I'll leave it there.
Speaker 2 00:05:37 Yeah. That ends up being what we talk about most, um, especially, um, in, in industrial automation, um, and in warehouse management and logistics, um, there are a lot of PLCs around, um, and they absolutely serve a purpose, um, in, in a number cases. Um, but there is so much software development that has gone on, um, outside of that industry that has really, um, moved technology ahead. And, um, we kind of, uh, are able to take advantage of a lot of those, uh, technologies, Linux-based development, um, modern progress programming languages, um, that are not necessarily, um, it's not so obvious for our customers to know when to apply those or whether that even makes sense, um, because they have always relied on, uh, PLC development. And so we're able to, um, really speed up the development cycle and offer a lot of functionality really quickly in a really maintainable system that is stable, able to integrate with other modern technologies, web technologies, cloud technology, um, backend systems, uh, by, um, integrating a lot of the processes with open source VCs and moving complex code of the development. As I said, PLCs have some really, really beneficial, um, uh, properties that you absolutely need in certain industrial processes. Um, but we, the trend that we see is that software is now getting so complex. Um, and it's so difficult to shoehorn that type of functionality into POC, um, that we can really help people by offloading that on a more capable platform.
Speaker 1 00:07:33 What are your favorite types of projects and, uh, Alex is up for you or is it for Jerry?
Speaker 0 00:07:37 Um, I will, I will, um, do what I normally do, which has given answer. And then Jerry can correct me when I, I say things incorrectly. Um, so,
Speaker 3 00:07:46 Um, I
Speaker 0 00:07:48 Would say that it really involves fit of the customer when we find our ideal spot. So, um, if somebody is at a point and they're running an organization and they're really set on doing things the way they've always done it, done it, and just trying to scale, we're usually not an ideal fit, um, where we tend to have the most luck and are our best projects for us. Um, obviously are the best one. Our clients are happy, but we, so we tend to find the best fit is when we're working with, um, customers who are maybe, um, at a point where they've got enough volume that they've decided to specialize. And, um, without trying to take ourselves too seriously, where we get connected with leaders who are a bit visionary and looking to get off the beaten path a bit, right. Thinking beyond just, Hey, how can I, uh, on the, you know, the industrial automation side of things, thinking beyond, um, how they can just take a process and automate it, but then you're saying, Hey, you know, it's part of a bigger ecosystem.
Speaker 0 00:08:43 How can I make this process? Not just faster or more efficient, but better. Um, so getting to a point where they themselves want to say, Hey, for example, I want to build a brand around my HMI. So every time you pick it up, you of company X and it's got a certain feel, um, and then using that same infrastructure that Jerry mentioned before with the industrial PCs that sit in the middle, you know, once you start having all that data flow back and forth, because you've gotten outside of that closed robot loop, and you've got an eye into what's going on, you can capture all the performance metadata, and then you can start to add a real value at your clients, right? Because you can start to say, Hey, you know, we've been tracking this motor. We find out that, you know, typically this motor is about to fail based on the number of cycles that we've seen come through.
Speaker 0 00:09:26 And you might want to think about, you know, doing some preventative maintenance. Now that's a real value add. Um, and being able to do things like run, um, you know, OAE um, on the fly in the cloud from anywhere is fantastic. Um, you know, the days of walking around with a USB stick, um, after somebody works with us, they're hopefully gone. Um, so best the best step for us is when we've got a client who's willing to be a little bit visionary, think outside of the box a bit. And then, you know, we try and help them because there's usually a lot of organizational change that goes along with that, we tend to be building software, that's got skill sets and, and methodologies behind it. You know, maybe aren't familiar, um, to the, the team that's normally using them. So we take it upon ourselves to make sure that we built a process over time where we can do that knowledge transfer.
Speaker 0 00:10:10 So if you've got a team that's not familiar with go get hub or source control, we will put your code into that. And then we will walk you through it. We'll sit down with your RSE teams and Jerry will do the, you know, the PRS on all your code. And you'll see PRS into how we do everything. And you start to get, you know, a much cleaner way of doing things. And, you know, it doesn't take a long time for a leader to figure out that, you know, when you can deploy in a matter of days versus weeks, uh, that there's a real return on your dollar pretty quickly. So your investment,
Speaker 1 00:10:36 Can you give our audience a couple of examples of what you might build for say maybe a startup company, or then maybe a typical robot integrator company?
Speaker 0 00:10:45 Yeah. On the autonomous robotics side, again, Jerry, but in, and tell me where I messed this up, because especially on our autonomous robotics side, where things get really complex, Jerry has to bail me out a lot. Uh, we, we do really good when it comes to doing some of the stuff that maybe isn't as customer facing. And there's a couple reasons for that. Number one, where we're working with cutting edge startups who are doing things, whether it's, you know, self-driving vacuums or self-driving trucks, you know, there's a lot of custom IP that they're building in-house and that really cutting edge software development is really hard to build. And it's not that our team can't build it, but, um, it's better to keep those kinds of things in house. And when you've got your really skilled developers doing stuff like that, and they're hard to find right now, you don't want them doing things like parsing logs for data, um, doing, um, uh, you know, uh, parallelization of simulation.
Speaker 0 00:11:34 And that's where we come in and we give a hand. Um, and then, you know, on the industrial automation side of things, we've been doing a lot of work with machine tooling companies lately, where they've got a CNC machine, um, and they want to put a robot arm on it to make things more efficient and we'll come in and we'll design the HMI and we'll strip out the PLCs for example, and we'll replace it with a single PC and basically own the client experience end to end and get away from some of these HMI's that some integrators are using that look like they came off on a tare 2,600. So those are the kinds of projects we typically do for each of those categories of customers.
Speaker 1 00:12:09 And we talked a little bit about your own lab. What kind of projects do you work with in your, in your laboratory?
Speaker 0 00:12:18 I think Jerry, that's probably a good one. Maybe to talk a little bit about Ava. Yeah.
Speaker 2 00:12:23 Um, so we, uh, we have, uh, a product called Ava, um, that is our OEE and a predictive maintenance solution where we, uh, um, display, um, management interface for, for all of your, uh, metrics, um, from the system. And that can really be anything from the, uh, the data from, uh, an, uh, robot installation, um, with multiple robots and, uh, cycle time, um, the unexpected downtime and that kind of information. Um, two things that are at a little bit of a higher level, um, as in, uh, just general performance of multiple robots, um, including autonomous robot. Um, and so that's, that's something that we are, uh, working on here in the, in all our exercises that we have to, uh, um, yeah, it's, uh, a need that we see that we like to work on. A lot of things we work on a loss is a, um, making sure that we're on the cutting edge of having, um, interfaces to basically, uh, any vendor that is out there. Um, because we like to, um, put our customers in a position where they can reuse their code if they switch from one vendor to another, or they want to integrate multiple vendors, uh, robots from multiple manufacturers or, uh, or PLCs or Schanzer, um, that their code is portable between those. Um, and so it's always a, a good use of our time to make sure that, uh, we know how to interface with, with any new vendor that, uh, that pops up.
Speaker 1 00:14:06 And so this goes to your, uh, Jerry to your software libraries, right. That you are doing things for so many different people that you've developed this very unique skill and code set,
Speaker 2 00:14:17 Right? Yeah. Um, and because we, uh, our, um, our preferred implementation usually is a Linux system on an industrial PC. Um, we have, uh, a large list of libraries that we can use out of the box for our customers to interface with, uh, BLTs and robots for almost any vendor. Um, and it makes it really powerful, um, because these same libraries also exist for anything on the back end. So if you want to with Salesforce or with the AWS cloud or Azure or something like that, that is all, um, really simple to do from a Linux platform. But because we have also the libraries to communicate, um, with ABB and FANUC robots, or be in our PLC or Allen-Bradley, um, we can integrate those things really quickly, um, without having to reinvent the wheel for every customer.
Speaker 0 00:15:18 And when you talk about things that maybe differentiate us, you know, the conversation that Jerry just described, her that the details that Jerry just described probably come up in every single one of my sales conversations and the first things that after it is who owns the IP. And that's something that we also do a little bit differently is, you know, not only do you get to bring our knowledge and expertise to the table, but we're not trying to, you know, dig into you for perpetual licensing theory or anything. When you work with us, we'll write code for you, we'll make it written in a way that is readable and supportable by your team. So we can extricate ourselves from the process when we're no longer needed. Uh, but we also give perpetual license to, um, all of our libraries that we've shared with you. So you own them. We're not gonna hit you with a monthly bill. And then anything that we build for you custom ends up being yours. And then you got your own reusable library, and we're not just sharing binaries with you. You got code that you can maintain and build over time. So you're getting a reusable process built for yourself in the process. So, yeah,
Speaker 1 00:16:14 Alex, how does a founder or an integrator get started with go west robotics? Um,
Speaker 0 00:16:20 You know, in an ideal world, they come to our website, they, um, they, they shoot me an email. Um, and, uh, you know, I would say, you know, most of our phone calls don't end up going anywhere from a sales perspective, but that's fine. Cause we learned so much from those phone calls and we have so many great phone calls that hopefully, um, the people who were thinking about using go west robotics, even if they think they're not a fit, they don't hesitate to call us because those ended up being some of our best phone calls, even if sales don't come out of it. So, um, we end up finding a lot of people on LinkedIn and we'll initiate a connection if we think they're a fit for us. Um, but people also reach out to us on LinkedIn. They find us on our website, um, and, uh, you know, occasionally people pick up the phone and call us, but that obviously doesn't happen very much in the 21st century.
Speaker 1 00:17:06 And how do you find talent as well with it always it's right now, it's a big challenge. Uh, uh, in the, uh, robotics and automation industry. We have
Speaker 0 00:17:14 Three main sources. It's Jerry's network, Jerry's network and Jerry's network. And that's the reality, right? So I don't, I don't know if we mentioned this already. I don't think we did, but Jerry's DNA and therefore the go west DNA goes all the way back to rethink or Heartland robotics, where I think Jerry, you were employee number 13. And so, um, Jerry's been in the space for a long time and he's got, um, a big group of people that were able to pull in. Um, and you know, we've got a group of, I hate to say contractors because people think, oh, you're just a contracting firm, not right. We have our core set of employees, but we also have contractors who maybe work almost exclusively with us, but they like the freedom of knowing they can pack up and leave whenever they want. So, um, if you need somebody to do a custom algorithm and you know, who's got a master's degree from MIT, we can bring that guy in and he can come in and he can work for a couple of weeks. And then he goes, hang out, hangs out in his boat for a while. Um, and we've got a long network of Jerry's contacts that look like that, but we also obviously have our own young talent, right. Um, people that we've developed internally that understand the way that we do things from the go west side of things. And those are people that I brought in from my prior professional experience and that, uh, Jerry and the team before me has developed over time. Yeah.
Speaker 2 00:18:31 And I I'd like to follow up on that a little bit. Um, it's, uh, I have my own long career in software development, um, and a lot of it also outside of robotics and, um, you know, over the years you always meet people that you think are just, you know, excellent. Um, and, and you build a good relationship with people. And so this is where it comes from, like maintaining those relationships and, um, creating a good working environment from our perspective, um, allows us to use people, um, to employ people and work with people, um, that really enjoy working on our projects. And because we have our processes documented and we always have, uh, good conversations internally. Um, we can really source people from almost any field, um, and, and make sure that there's a good application. And so where you brought up Jim, that there's a, there's a difficulty finding people in manufacturing, robotics, and industrial automation.
Speaker 2 00:19:38 I think one of the, the reasons that that is the case is because people are not necessarily looking at the right resources. And if you are, for example, um, you know, you locked yourself in to be, uh, with a certain vendor and you use their platforms exclusively to, um, develop your systems. Then you will need to hire people that have some level of expertise already on that platform. And then all of a sudden your pool becomes really small. Um, but because of how we organize our development and we know people from, uh, all of the different projects that we have worked on in the past, um, we have a much larger pool of people that we can depend on. Um, then I think, uh, most companies have themselves. Um, and that's where that goes at the, all these, most of the people that we work with have a lot of experience. And so this, this whole thing, especially companies that want to scale quickly, or that are already in the middle of, um, setting up their production line, uh, they will need a contractor to, to hit the ground running, as you say, um, versus hiring a new employee that now needs six months to get up to speed. And I think that's where we really shine because he always has people, um, that have done this before. Um, or we work with people that can quickly explain, um, what a customer needs.
Speaker 1 00:21:06 So Jerry, what are some of the tools that you use in developing code? Um, so
Speaker 2 00:21:11 They're our main platform, uh, that we like to use is, is generally Linux. Um, and because it's Linux and it's an open source environment, you can use almost any open source tool to developing. Um, there's so many editors available, um, that we can leave that up to the developer, um, in terms of languages. Um, it also opens up widely. Um, so we, uh, use a lot of fight on, um, we use some note JS, um, but you C and C plus plus, uh, were needed. Um, and the other really big tool that we depend on heavily, um, that is definitely in industrial automation under utilized is, uh, source control and use get, um, our, our, the online service we use most for that is get hub, but not exclusively, um, also Bitbuckets or AWS code and, um, get this is amazing in version control and making sure that you can build multiple features at the same time without stepping on, uh, things, uh, having multiple developers working on the same code instead, it's a very important tool for us. Um, yeah, I think those are, uh, those are our, probably our main tool, but I think because we are, um, generally using open source, we have the availability of, of many more tools than, um, companies that are exclusively working with a single vendor.
Speaker 1 00:22:48 And Alex, if I was to ask you that same question on the customer experience side, you mentioned that you use slack a lot to communicate both internally and externally.
Speaker 0 00:22:58 Yeah. We love slack. Um, it's the whole asynchronous communication model. You know, our team is spread all over the United States at one thing, right? So, and not just the continental, we've got people all the way from Hawaii to Florida. So we're at a lot of different time zones. Um, and it's really helpful when our clients are comfortable using slack because they can put a, uh, uh, an answer or a question rather on, on slack and the first person that sees it, gives them an answer. And so that's, if it's, you know, two o'clock in the morning, our time, um, our, uh, guy key Allie might be seeing it in Hawaii, or if it's first thing in the morning, east coast time, uh, w one of our dashes might be seeing it and they'll get a quick response, but it also creates a really easily viewable history.
Speaker 0 00:23:41 So, um, anybody who's been out for awhile and needs to get up to speed, uh, they can just hop into slack if you're having a meeting with a client a few minutes, and you want to make sure that you've got all of their questions answered, there's a historical record, um, you know, on a specific channel. And, uh, you can basically, um, do really good asynchronous knowledge sharing, and that lets us do a better job of taking care of our clients. Um, we certainly use email. We certainly use, um, a lot of video chat lately. Um, our team think our team has done a pretty good job of adapting to the, uh, th the COVID world, but, um, slack is, um, um, far and away our best, um, most favored, uh, type of client communication.
Speaker 1 00:24:21 Alex, what is what you mentioned? You've got, uh, employees all over the U S how big is your company?
Speaker 0 00:24:28 So, yeah, we're, we're dispersed, we're not dense. Um, our, our team, our core team is about a dozen people. Um, and, uh, I know Jerry in particular, doesn't like this term, but I think of us as a boutique, uh, company. Um, and the reason, none of us really love the term boutique is it sounds expensive, but we're in Boise, Idaho. So we are not expensive. That's part of how we were able to, um, stay in business. We're small because we're choosy and we're picky. Um, there's not a bait and switch process. So I've come from other companies where, you know, you have the partner go out and they sell the work. And then, you know, first year associates come in and they do the work. We don't do that, like go west robotics. Um, you know, Jerry is the, it lead on every single engagement.
Speaker 0 00:25:13 And I run the client experience team. You're talking to us throughout the week. Um, Jerry does the final PR on every bit of code that we do. Um, but we also feel like, as Jerry mentioned before, we've got that network of people that we feel really loyal to. And so part of our loyalty is, Hey, we're not going to staff you on an engagement just because it makes money. Um, if anybody's listening and they want to write us a check, Jerry and I will not turn down checks, but we feel a real obligation to make sure that we keep our, um, uh, engagements interesting so that our people want to be here, want to be doing this work and feel enthusiastic and take pride in what they're bringing to our customers every day.
Speaker 1 00:25:50 Thanks for coming onto the podcast, Alex, Jerry, how do people get ahold of you then
Speaker 0 00:25:55 Go west robotics? That com is the, uh, probably the fastest and easiest way, but you can certainly fi find me. Um, Alex Irwin. I R w I N on LinkedIn, um, hit me up. I'd love to talk.
Speaker 2 00:26:09 Same for me. Uh, you can easily find me on, uh, on LinkedIn as well. Um, I will be on there as, uh, Gerard G R a R D E N S. And, um, yeah, connect him. We'll have a conversation. Um, as Alex mentioned before, we always enjoy, uh, conversations with, um, especially companies that have a new idea that are excited about their vision that they have. And so we'd love to talk.
Speaker 1 00:26:42 Thank you, both our sponsor for this episode is Earhart automation systems, Earhart builds and commissions turnkey solutions for their worldwide clients. With over 80 years of precision manufacturing, they understand the complex world of robotics, automated manufacturing, and project management, delivering world-class custom automation on time and on budget contact. One of their sales engineers to see what Earhart can build for you. And Earhart is spelled E H R H a R D T. I'd also like to thank acknowledge our partner, a three, the association for advancing automation. It's the leading automation trade association in the world for robotics, vision imaging, motion control, and motors and industrial artificial intelligence technology visit automate.org to learn more. I'd also like to thank painted robot. They build and integrates digital solutions. They're a web development firm that offers SEO and social marketing and can set up and connect CRM and other ERP tools to unify marketing sales and operations. And you can find
[email protected]. And if you'd like to get in touch with us at the robot industry podcast, you can find me Jim Beretta on LinkedIn. We'll see you next time. Thanks for listening. Be safe out there. Today's podcast was produced by customer attraction, industrial marketing, and I'd like to thank my nephew, Chris gray for the music, Chris Colvin for audio production, my partner, Janet, and our partners, a three painted robot and our sponsor Earhart automation systems. <inaudible>.
