Speaker 0 00:00:00 At systematics, we help medical manufacturing companies solve their most challenging automation problems by leveraging the latest in technology and a deep resume of experience.
Speaker 1 00:00:14 Hello everyone, and welcome to the robot industry podcast. Our sponsor today for this episode is new scale robotics from Victor New York. I'm pleased and excited to welcome my guest today from systematics automation. His name is Rob Veldez. Hello Jim. Hey, thanks for joining us. Rob Valdez has been selling automation solutions to the manufacturing industry for over 25 years. Rob has spent his career promoting technologies to assist clients with improving operations and reducing operational costs. He has succeeded and assisting both large corporations and small enterprises with the implementation of automation. He is currently the director of sales at systematics, a leading provider of automated manufacturing systems to the automotive and healthcare industries. Rob, listen, I'm very excited to have you on the podcast today, and I did want to make a disclosure that you and I have known each other for a very long time, and we used to work together indeed 15 years. I, uh, I want to disclose that I'm a big fan and, uh, and excited to have you on today. I wanted to talk to you a little bit about kind of from your perspective what's happening in automation and machine building. Are you seeing any short, medium or long-term trends that you can talk to our audience about today?
Speaker 0 00:01:34 Absolutely. Jim we've, uh, you know, with COVID naturally a short-term trend is to help with the war in COVID with medical device manufacturers, where we're playing in, uh, spaces that traditionally might've been off shore, you know, personal protective equipment here. We're, we're seeing a change to bring that back to North America, using automation, also seeing a, a, a big uptick in medical diagnostics where we're, where we've played for a while, but customers have converted systems to, to help detect for COVID. Uh, so we're playing in the manufacturing space, as well as the laboratory processing space, helping labs process, the quantities of testing that is required, um, as well as the vaccine space, uh, too. So we've got all the bases covered. Fortunately, we're positioned as a medical, uh, automation solutions provider. So this, this is, uh, I'll say really, uh, put a lot of impetus behind our organization and kept us very busy the last few months.
Speaker 1 00:02:42 So in this you're doing a lot of material handling, obviously you're probably doing a lot of very different automation systems, but you've also had to probably respond very quickly because these aren't your normal delivery cycles during an emergency like we're having now.
Speaker 0 00:02:57 No, no, absolutely. Um, they're, they're very short delivery cycles. Uh, traditionally, you know, customers have, have created specifications for projects. We've had to short circuit that, you know, with our experience in medical device, we're fortunate to have a good understanding of what the customer's anticipated requirements are, uh, and, and, and worked very quickly to, to get to an engineering phase. Is it those two, the development of a spec over a very long period of time?
Speaker 1 00:03:29 Yeah, I guess because, you know, in traditional times you've got that early, uh, romance and, and you've got the back and forth negotiations and all this stuff, but you've really had to cut that right out and probably have your teams working overtime and, uh, pulling weekends and doing all the rest.
Speaker 0 00:03:45 Absolutely. There's a, you know, there's a huge element of trust. Um, we've built, we've established relationships with the customer base, so we're, you know, in many, many instances you're single source, then, then you're partnered with your customer to get to the finish line as quick as possible.
Speaker 1 00:04:03 And so, but, but at the end that you still have to do your factory acceptance tests and you have to do still due to your online, you like in factory tests as well.
Speaker 0 00:04:11 I would still do the testing. You know, the world has changed a bit where a customer doesn't necessarily come to our facility to see the test. We might do a virtual reality test. So we've seen some changes to our processes as well.
Speaker 1 00:04:25 Rob, what makes building automation for medical device sector different than say automotive or consumer sector?
Speaker 0 00:04:32 Well, it's quite, I mean, we, we catered to automotive as well. Um, the reality is there different requirements, uh, cleanliness, acne, and an obvious one, but, um, you know, we, so we catered to both the, in the automotive, we say we, we test new technologies, uh, in medical, we, we bring proven technologies to the table. Um, you know, I mentioned cleanliness, uh, customers are very concerned about contamination, uh, product tracking and traceability, uh, that, that we've, we've proven that in automotive where, you know, a single pump is, you know, we have all the data on how that was assembled. Healthcare is going to a model where every product has a unique identification code. So proven in automotive, we take it to a healthcare with a, uh, an added level of, of control. You know, we're not only tracking criteria and how a product's made, but a traceability. So high element of security and verification on systems. So, you know, risk, risk of failure is not an option in, in medical, the automotive doesn't like it, but in healthcare, it's not an option.
Speaker 1 00:05:46 And so you must be also, uh, doing a lot of work in machine vision then with a medical device as part of your track and trace.
Speaker 0 00:05:54 Absolutely. Um, you know, customers are going beyond just tell me if I've got a good product. They actually want to use the data to track and trace the root cause of the problem. Um, have the historical data, if there is a field issue that they can go back and, and see the data and what, what the failure was.
Speaker 1 00:06:16 And so overall in some of the kind of trending, uh, you're are, you're seeing more and more, if you kind of could exclude COVID, are you seeing more clients trying to get to market quicker? Uh, what are some of the things that they're thinking about?
Speaker 0 00:06:30 Well, I think, I think COVID is going to change a lot how, how our customers evaluate automation, you know, the, the typical return on investment calculation, where, you know, so many people reduce the head count, um, what's the floor space costs. I think that formula is going to change in the medium term. So I also think that the, uh, so the total cost of ownership of automation, that, that evaluation is going to be easier to justify than it was prior to COVID, um, you know, manual processing, some cases, customers, some of our customers are shut right down because they, they just can't put people that close together. And these are, these are very established manufacturing industries that, uh, you know, are vital to the economy, but they, they literally have to shut down production because their, their workforce can't work elbow to elbow.
Speaker 1 00:07:25 And so what's happening for them. Are they putting in collaborative technologies? Are they, or are they just simply automating them?
Speaker 0 00:07:32 I think, you know, I go back to the, you brought up a good word, simply automating. Um, you know, I look back at a lot of the solutions we provide to our customers over the five years that have been, or six years have been at systematics. Honestly, there's very few that I can think of that an operator has been within six feet of another operator. Typically we are automating where the input is, is manual and the output is manual on those before typically far apart from each other. So, you know, the automation solution itself is, is highly structured to, um, I'll say the COVID compliant right out of the box. So I can see that being written into specs going forward, but not necessarily, uh, you know, they're already compliant.
Speaker 1 00:08:24 And I kind of assumed that because you do so much work in PPE and, um, medical diagnostics and such that were a lot of the manufacturers are thinking, Hey, why am I doing this? Why am I making this off shore somewhere? Uh, maybe that's unsafe or that's unreliable. And I assuming that this kind of reassuring initiative is, is just something that's going to be part of the new way of us doing business. We're going to, we need to manufacture more. That means we need more automation in North America.
Speaker 0 00:08:53 Yeah. You know, I, I, there's a, there's a company that went from 10 people to 300 people in the span of three months in our neighborhood making PPE. And, uh, I went over to visit them. They were looking for North American based automation. They had purchased 13 lines of Asian automation. And, uh, it just wasn't, it just wasn't reliable enough for them to let's say bank their orders. So they wanted to have North American built engineered and built automation solutions to, to, uh, compete with that. And they're going to pay a premium, but the, the reliability factor was tremendous for it.
Speaker 1 00:09:35 And it's, it's all kind of a boat, uh, uptime today, right. Is that, that's a thing it's, it's, you know, I think we're going to see a future where we're, we have very little planned downtime with IOT and with, uh, machine communications and such, but right now it's really concentrating on our uptime.
Speaker 0 00:09:52 Yeah. Uptime. Absolutely. We, uh, you know, Oh, we uptime, these are all measurables that, uh, customers are always pushing us to get closer to a hundred, uh, all the time.
Speaker 1 00:10:05 And so what I wanted to talk to you a little bit about AI and deep learning, because you kind of touch on those things. Uh, but in traditional manufacturing, uh, for your just your general manufacturers, are they interested in it that are they interested to find out more or they absolutely want to do it?
Speaker 0 00:10:22 You know, I went to, I went to a, uh, the Hanover automation fair in 2018, and that fair literally had just the messaging was all about the AI, the saw Amazon warehouse, solar services solutions there, you saw Siemens with a venue that could hold 300 people. And they had speakers from Microsoft. They had the whole data world covered. And, um, you know, there was a lot of talk about AI. You're starting to see implementation. We had expected it to take traction much quicker. We truly do not see specifications that ask for it as a salesperson. You don't want to, you know, you want to sell a competitive solution and you make your customers aware of possibilities. The problem is there's no benchmark data to say, what's the benefit. If you're already running machines at 95%, Oh, ye what do I get by spending an extra 10% of the machine costs? What's that measurable? And honestly, there's not data to prove it out. There are applications. Uh, I've seen, I've heard in the field where they're extremely complex, um, solutions that have hiccups, and they don't know where these hiccups come from. An AI is the perfect tool to analyze and, and get that OAE, which was, and bring it back to a reasonable lever level. So that that's where it is happening. Again, the data to support what the return on investment is for that investment is still sparse.
Speaker 1 00:12:08 And I guess that kind of, that that whole AI, uh, becomes kind of a, like a tool in the toolbox. And if you need that tool, grab that tool. But also, I think we have to understand as manufacturers, we should maybe have an AI budget or an industry 4.0 budget, because if I'm buying a $3 million piece of machinery, I, I need to put some people and some money and some recurring costs into making sure that they, the AI stays current.
Speaker 0 00:12:34 Thank you. You have to start thinking beyond, you know, uh, the dream state, will you let engineers go and they will. They will dream up the ideal idealistic solution, not the realistic solution. You need a budget to be able to work around. And we put a system out the door about two years ago, we quoted the customer, uh, AI, I'll call it icing on the cake, on the wall solution. And we let the, the engineer specify what they wanted. Well, naturally they went on a tangent where, what we need to know the humidity in the room. We need to know, you know, everything about that machine. We were taking every sensor on that machine and feeding it into the AI engine at the request of engineering. At the end of it, we showed them, well, this is what it would cost. And they said, well, we can't justify that.
Speaker 0 00:13:28 And I honestly believe, I mean, you need to have, you need to have a budget at the table. You also need to have an understanding of what data is important on the machine. These machines we produced today are covered in sensors and data that can feed to an AI engine, but it all becomes noise. It's much like, you know, the 1980s, Oh, let's do report generation and companies were jetting reports and reports and reports will, nobody was reading the reports and in the AI world, I think you've got to be very cognizant that you don't need every piece of data. You need to determine what's important to your process, measure that, evaluate that, and then feed that into an AI engine to get some effective results.
Speaker 1 00:14:14 Yeah. It all comes down to like just plain old business case. And like you say, if you, if you could get to 98 or 99 O E with, uh, AI, everyone would be doing for sure. Yeah. And I think that is our future down the road, just like industry 4.0, you can't not buy it because all of the sensors are smart and they're all talking to each other. So we have access to the data. That's for sure.
Speaker 0 00:14:37 Yeah. We actually, we actually have, um, you know, manufacturing companies in our neighborhood like Lana Mara is a very well-known automotive manufacturer in Gwelf that is, you know, cracking new ground with, uh, innovation center that is working on lights out manufacturing. The truth is the only way you'll get there is, is with AI so that, you know, the end goal lights out manufacturing, how do you get there? You've got to determine all those steps and to, and AI will be a key to get there.
Speaker 1 00:15:09 And what other things are you seeing today in, in general machine building and automation system are using a lot more robotics than you have in the past. Are you using what the same?
Speaker 0 00:15:18 No. I'd say we're using more robots significantly more. Um, robot pricing has come down dramatically since you and I first met 15 years ago. We didn't see a lot of robots on the floor. And when you went to a trade show, people were floored by seeing robots. They just would. I mean, that was the moving object that everybody was fascinated by today. You go to a trade show, pre COVID and people just, you know, are walking by booth after booth with robots and robots that their size of pencils. So, you know, robot pricing, robot solutions, they cover the bandwidth and, uh, they, they get to the finish line faster than trying to engineer your own pick and place.
Speaker 1 00:16:00 And are you seeing any changes in say things like part feeding?
Speaker 0 00:16:04 Uh, yeah. There's, there's, um, you know, pick my vision. There's, uh, some, some different mechanical technologies that, uh, are out there that are quite innovative. You know, you really, depending what you're trying to, to feed, there's likely a solution out there, but there are, there are solutions that, you know, aren't more effective than a, than a human. And that's the challenge. How do you on these difficult applications, how do you come up with a cost-effective solution? That's, that's more effective than a human.
Speaker 1 00:16:36 Yeah, absolutely. And I think that it's been some, some use cases today where, you know, humans are pretty handy. Like we're pretty good at doing a lot of things. And what we want to make sure is that, you know, things like pick and placing that people are not very good at and robots are especially good at that. We put the right technology and for the right reasons, Rob us. So you've now been operating for eight months with, uh, with COVID. How was the, COVID had an effect on your business and the staff at systematics?
Speaker 0 00:17:04 Well, it's definitely effected how we do business, uh, myself. Uh, I seldom go into the office where I went routinely into the office previously, so that that's a big change personally, something to get used to I'm on the front end of the business, which I play in that that has changed tremendously. The travel is, is dropped dramatically. Uh, virtual meetings are the norm prior to COVID virtual meetings were not the norm. I mean, conference calls where I had Skype on my desktop and never used it. So the front end of the business is, is changed. And I think it's changed permanently. I don't think we'll go back to a model where I traveled to see every customer, the engineering phase. So we to, we get a purchase order and goes through engineering. The engineering phase has changed where, you know, we're, we're letting people work from home at the end, it's very productive.
Speaker 0 00:17:59 Um, it can't be entirely. So we do need collaboration and to bring teams together is, is valuable. But, uh, the home, the, the engineering going to the office every day, uh, that's likely to change. So customer design reviews have always been a remote process. Uh, customers tune in and we do bring up designs on the screen and customers review them, look at them, give us their input. And, uh, we go back to, to refining our often. So that, that hasn't changed on the build side. Um, you know, we, we practice COVID safe policies, procedures, so that, uh, you know, we still need people on the floor to put the machines together, um, where, where you start to see, I'll say a significant change is the fat, you know, uh, customers, customers are not necessarily wanting to visit us, uh, in this environment and make, uh, a trip to stay in a hotel.
Speaker 0 00:18:56 And what have you. So we have done virtual Fatz where literally we just take a demo along the line. We show them the data. Um, again, there's a lot of trust in that. Um, but we do virtual FETs on the service side. We're starting to see more remote, um, access, uh, medical devices always been a bit resistant to allowing you to tap into their, their machines remotely, to, to look at performance and fix a problem. But I think that's going to change. I mean, there are security solutions that are out there that, uh, make it safe to do so you have to convince the it departments, but, um, with COVID, it's, it's a necessity, not a, uh, a luxury.
Speaker 1 00:19:43 I think that's going to stay the same, right. Where we, we can, if we can run off a machine virtually and save all this time and travel, why wouldn't we do that?
Speaker 0 00:19:51 Did Jim honestly, um, you take that travel budget where you're, you're, you're sending 10 people to run off a very large system you're Cupid by some AI with that.
Speaker 1 00:20:03 Absolutely. Uh, and so, but you're very busy right at systematics right now.
Speaker 0 00:20:07 Yeah. I w extremely busy, um, honestly, it's busier than I've ever seen it.
Speaker 1 00:20:13 And so that's, you know, that's good news obviously, and you're creating some cool tools and cool projects and, and, uh, uh, machines for, to support our fight against COVID, which is, uh, uh, very exciting. And I think that there's something really nice about creating automation that will help humanity. Do you kind of get that, like, is there a feeling it says on the floor about that?
Speaker 0 00:20:33 Absolutely. I mean, you know, at the end of the day, um, COVID is going to make our industry stronger. Um, you know, w it's it's forced the acceleration of technology there, you look at it on a personal level, you look at it on a business level. Um, you know, it's forced us to adapt and it's made us more productive in many ways. Um, it's a huge cost to, to get there, but at the end of the day, it's accelerated the, the requirement for tech or automated technology.
Speaker 2 00:21:01 And I think, and I think we're going to see a lot more machines and a lot more, uh, manufacturing in North America. So these are some things that I think are, are, are going to be good for our economy and good for humanity.
Speaker 0 00:21:12 Absolutely. Rob, thanks
Speaker 2 00:21:14 For taking time to chat with our audience today. Uh, how can people get ahold of you?
Speaker 0 00:21:19 Uh, cell phones, easiest (519) 635-2783. If you prefer email and just go to our website, systematics dash Inc com
Speaker 2 00:21:32 And systematics is spelled with an X, S Y S T E M a T I X automation. Uh, I'd like to thank new scale robotics for their sponsorships new scale designs and builds a Q span, automated small part measurement system that automates digital caliper measurements, data logging, and part handling Q span, pick measures records and places. The Q span system is the new standard for QC solutions for high mix, small batch manufacturing, and works with universal robots line of collaborative robots. So it's easy and safe to deploy in your QC lab. I'd like to thank and acknowledge our partner. Eight three, the association for advancing automation, eight three is the umbrella association for the RIA, the AIA MCMA and 83 Mexico. These four associations combined represent almost 1300 automation manufacturers, component suppliers, systems integrators, and users, research groups, and consulting firms throughout the world that are driving automation forward.
Speaker 2 00:22:36 And as a reminder, <inaudible> is changing its brand a little bit. It's going to be known now as just a three. I'd also like to thank painted robot painted robot builds and integrates digital solutions. They're a web development firm that offers SEO and digital social marketing, and can set up and connect CRM and other ERP tools to unify marketing sales and operations. And you can find
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[email protected]. Or you can find me Jim Beretta on LinkedIn. We'll see you next time. Thanks for listening and 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 support, my partner, Janet, and our sponsors eight three painted robot and new scale robotics.
