Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Oftentimes they know what outcome they want, but they don't necessarily know how to get there. They knew how to do a machine, they knew what the machine had to do, but they didn't know how to get there electrically and through the program.
[00:00:19] Speaker B: Hello and welcome to the Robot Industry Podcast. My name is Jim Beretta and I'm your host and I am on site today and I love visiting companies on site. So I'm at MPI Solutions Inc. And they're in London, Ontario and they are a industry 4.0 and industrial Internet of things and analytics company. So I have Scott Pyel with me and Kevin Vandermarle. Scott, how did you get into the industry?
[00:00:44] Speaker C: Yeah, that's going back quite a ways. I think that really started off when I was really quite young. I had the opportunity to I guess work in factory at a very young age, helping do some very basic plant floor layouts for example. And it was really my first intro to factories in itself and I just drew attention to or the liking of how machines worked. And since then I think I just continued to grow and evolve in the automation industry.
[00:01:09] Speaker B: It kind of gets in your blood, doesn't it?
[00:01:11] Speaker C: Oh, it absolutely does. I think the, the desire, the nature, the creativity, the, to understand more about how things work.
[00:01:18] Speaker B: Thank you for that.
[00:01:19] Speaker A: And Kevin, my background maybe started a little bit later than Scott's. I guess mine was more directly out of school I went through for mechanical engineering, took automation courses in my final year which led me to co op terms for an automation company in the Waterloo region. I just never turned back from there. I really enjoyed the automation environment, the constant change and the type of work and devices you could use and design with. And I just never turned back from that point.
[00:01:46] Speaker B: So this is like big picture stuff, what's happening in the world of machine control.
[00:01:50] Speaker A: I see a lot more customers wanting to take things on themselves in some respects, maybe the lower level stuff, but there's generally always a higher level element to control that takes a company like MPI to maybe give them a hand. You know, Everybody can do VFDs and straight control and things like that nowadays, but if you're doing anything complicated like robots and servo motion control, high speed measurement, that's where a company like MPI can help out to do those things.
[00:02:19] Speaker B: And Scott, I'm going to ask you the same question about from your perspective, what's happening from a big picture on controls?
[00:02:26] Speaker C: We are seeing some growing trends towards PC control and I think where that really comes into play is integration with Higher level systems. We're seeing obviously information going to the cloud, we're seeing more complex calculations and analysis required.
We're seeing integrations with Amazon Web Services, for example, aws, but also some very customized programming, some unique applications that require, I guess, out of the box thinking and out of the box programming.
[00:02:54] Speaker B: So what's happening with Industry 4.0 and what's some of your perspective on there? Are people coming to you with industry 4.0 or are you coming to them with 4.0?
[00:03:02] Speaker A: It's a little bit of a mix, but primarily it's really introducing customers to what 4.0 can do for them and what it is.
There's many customers that have heard of it, don't really know much about it, but they know that they're not getting the information that they need from the processes within their plant. And so we often fill the gap in between there to kind of bridge, you know, what your machines are doing and the information that might be available and teach them and guide them along the way as to what they can expect from an Industry 4.0 solution and how that can benefit their company.
[00:03:34] Speaker B: So you do a lot of jobs and some of the jobs we actually saw on the shop floor today. So you do work in a electrical, in actually machine, vinyl build. What other jobs do you do here at mpi?
[00:03:47] Speaker C: Yeah, so at mpi, as a systems integrator as well, we do provide, you know, control support for a lot of our customers local to the London area and field service for either existing customers or new ones. People call us frequently with breakdowns on machines and because we are local, we can provide service and support. We've got a great team who is very knowledgeable and skilled and they can help out.
[00:04:10] Speaker B: So we're going to talk about Beckhoff today because you're a Beckhoff shop of sorts, but you're also an Allen Bradley shop and Siemens as well. Is there any other control systems that you specialize in or you can help with your customers?
[00:04:22] Speaker A: Yeah, we've touched quite a few different varieties. Both Scott and I come from an Allen Bradley environment. But over those years, you know, because Allen Bradley is really kind of a bread and butter for North America.
But we do also dabble a bit in the Siemens platform. We have done Omron stuff, Mitsubishi stuff, some Schneider as well. But really across the board, Beckhoff is the platform that we like the most and think that it provides the most as well.
[00:04:50] Speaker C: And I'll add to that too as well, is that with those regular control platforms, we also do a lot of custom programming. It may be VB Python. We do a lot of work in Ignition as well too.
And that just helps build our portfolio of things we can help our customers with.
[00:05:05] Speaker B: So do you, Scott, have like a typical customer or is there such a thing?
[00:05:09] Speaker C: Yeah, I'd say we definitely don't have a typical customer.
The range of customers in the industries is very quite broad.
We do find our skills, though, are best matched with customers who like to do maybe some degree of mechanical design on a machine build. And maybe we provide the controls and the integration for. But also from an equipment standpoint, we do excel in test machines or that maybe have high speed, high accuracy, maybe a data collection portion for them for trending.
[00:05:37] Speaker B: Kevin, there's a lot of engineering that goes into the control systems that you build.
[00:05:42] Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely there is. And engineering in all aspects of the project as well. So as a systems integrator, we can often be involved in any portion of the project that the customer may require. You know, we can do turnkey projects right from concept and right to final commissioning and training.
And along there we can do electrical design. We do electrical build, test and commissioning, and even some mechanical design and build as well. But some customers may only want electrical design, or some customers only want panel build, or they only want programming. And we can help with our engineering resources.
[00:06:16] Speaker B: So one of the things that I saw on the tour today, we saw a machine that your customer dropped ship to you, and you're doing the the programming and the final wiring and the testing.
I know we can't talk about the technology except that it's food and bev.
And is that a kind of a typical job for you?
[00:06:35] Speaker A: In this case, we're working with an end customer who is also designing their own machine. And this is a little bit unique in that aspect. But like Scott had mentioned earlier, it's not uncommon for us to work with a machine builder and add our electrics and our design elements to that along with the programming as well.
[00:06:55] Speaker B: And how do they know what they need from you?
[00:06:57] Speaker A: Oftentimes they know what outcome they want, but they don't necessarily know how to get there. And that's where we come in and play a big part. That particular example that you had expressed there earlier, they knew how to do a machine. They knew what the machine had to do, but they didn't know how to get there electrically and through the program.
[00:07:14] Speaker B: So do they need a specification document or do you create the specification for them?
[00:07:19] Speaker A: In that particular case, they came to us with specific criteria on how the machine had to operate in the sense of cycle, cycle times, accuracy, coordination, and all those types of elements.
[00:07:31] Speaker B: So you're fans of PC controls, and what are some of the motivations behind your appreciation for PC control?
[00:07:39] Speaker C: I think the biggest one for us is really the ability to be extremely flexible in our design solution, whether it be electrical or programming.
And the other big one is that it really allows us to do everything, anything we feel like it opens up the world. PLC control can be a little bit limiting. And I think with just the growing trend towards the need for more information, the need for higher speeds, more complex calculations, maybe even just more data, PC control allows us to really open up the world to what we can do.
[00:08:11] Speaker B: And, Kevin, you're part of the Beckhoff Integration group they call BIG in the industry, right?
[00:08:18] Speaker A: Yeah, that's right. So as a part of the big, we work very closely with the Beckhoff team and helping to, I guess, maybe even test some beta versions of things or get some early adoption of some items, see what's coming up in the near future and give some feedback to them as well to help them and to help us work with Beckhoff.
[00:08:41] Speaker B: And we were mentioning a little bit that sometimes if you do machines out west, you buy machines you buy from the sales reps out west, or if you're going to do stuff out east, you buy from out east. And you were mentioning about the capabilities of the Beckhoff sales reps. Like they really are a knowledgeable salespeople for their company.
[00:09:02] Speaker A: Yes, absolutely.
We like. The one main thing we like about Beckhoff is they don't have a distributor in between. So we deal directly with Beckhoff, both technically and the sales team, so we can get answers really fast. We know we're getting the answers right from the. From the manufacturer and be able to work through problems much quicker.
[00:09:20] Speaker B: So the machine I saw on the floor, I think I can say this. I looked under the machine. It's a precision indexing dial. But I looked and what did I see? I saw a big Beckhoff servo drive instead of a precision indexer. So you're able to put a lot of these different modules and control panels and IO right from one vendor?
[00:09:40] Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. Like Scott had alluded to earlier, with the Beck Gov platform, we can really do anything. Like he said, when I look at other platforms and customers come to us and say, hey, can we do this? I really got to sometimes investigate and see whether I can, I can say with near 100% confidence, even on unique elements where customers come to us and they're open to Using Beckhoff, I can say, yes, we can do that. Maybe we don't know how to do it yet, but I'm confident that we can do it.
[00:10:10] Speaker B: Do you have some kind of machines that you've built or some problems that you've solved for customers that you can tell me about?
[00:10:16] Speaker C: Yeah, one comes to mind. We had a unique application where a customer presented us with a sensor that we needed to get into Control World. That was Bluetooth, which is quite unique. Obviously that's very much at your desk laptop type of scenario. And we really had no workaround. It had to be the Bluetooth sensor. So we were able to use basically deployment of custom software programming and a Bluetooth receiver and receive that data and send it over into basically the control space and make use of that data. In this case it was pressure data, for example. But it was super important that they got that information. So any other platform out there, I know we wouldn't be able to solve that. But with the Beckhoff solution, it was easily done.
[00:11:01] Speaker B: So it makes it so much simpler.
[00:11:03] Speaker C: It definitely makes it so much simpler. I think you have to be a little bit more creative in understanding, I guess, the full capabilities of more PC based world as opposed to working kind of what we did maybe 20 years ago.
[00:11:13] Speaker B: One of the things that we talked about on the tour, and we all love Alan Bradley, of course, but one of the big challenges is that Alan Bradley charges a lot for their software, like a licensing fee. And how does that work with Beckhoff?
[00:11:30] Speaker C: Yeah, so with Beckhoff their model's a little bit more unique. They allow basically development for engineers.
They can download software for free, they can do runtime deployments for a seven day trial period to do initial testing. And the only real costs of deployment come into place when they're actually sold to the customer, provided to the customer. So at that time you would buy licensing for the use of the software. It may include Motion, for example, if you have multiaxis machine. And what that gives you though is, you know, you're paying the licenses for the use of the function blocks that make our lives a lot easier to deploy the programming. So there is inherent time savings by using those, those tools that are available. And those costs are basically built into the costs as they're sold to the customer. But they're fair and equitable costs. They if you have to upgrade or change them, it's not usually a massive cost impact. So it really just shifts the cost of deployment to the end as opposed to in the beginning, which is great from engineering standpoint. Because now you can do all your kind of research and development at no cost.
[00:12:36] Speaker B: And mpi, you're into a lot of different industries, right? You're into food and beverage, you're into plastics. What other industries do you operate in? And you go across Canada, even across North America, Correct?
[00:12:48] Speaker A: Yeah, we're food and beverage is probably our biggest one and more so in the last two or three years or so. I guess I'd say a bit of oil and gas.
We're not too much in the automotive with the Beckhoff platform. That usually brings us to more unique customers with the test beds and things like that.
And yes, we do get moved around all across Canada and the U.S. we've been almost both sides of Canada, almost in both corners, down in the southern part of the US as well.
[00:13:15] Speaker B: Oh, that's great. And you must get involved in some complex motion control. Right. Because that's where Beckhoff also tends to do very well.
[00:13:23] Speaker A: Yeah. So Beckhoff with their high speed Ethercat communications, along with their servo motion control, we can get a lot of multi access coordination, very high speeds. That has come into play for a lot of projects. And the project that we talked about earlier with the indexing table and whatnot.
[00:13:39] Speaker B: Kevin, I wanted to talk a little bit about kind of support because we talked a little bit about Beckhoff, Ethercat and all other kinds of platforms, programming knowledge using high speed networks. But one of the challenges I always thought was, well, your maintenance staff have to be able to fix it, but you're actually finding something else, right? You're finding that a lot of times you're in there supporting or as part of the engineering team to help debug machines.
[00:14:04] Speaker A: We play a lot of pretty big control support part for a lot of our customers.
Not a lot of customers have their own controls team or have many people which are deeply knowledgeable about some of the controls and the programming. Maintenance staff can do what they can do as far as troubleshooting devices and perhaps monitoring things that are going on. But where we fit in is where we can help take that the next step, troubleshoot the root cause of issues. And it's not always a device. It could be, you know, portions of programming that had never been tested before or they're running a new recipe and it doesn't fit the paradigm of the machine. So that's where we come in and we kind of bolster up the services that a maintenance team could provide.
[00:14:48] Speaker B: Oh, that's great. And it's kind of interesting to hear because that's one of the reasons that people may tend to stick to an old controls platform because they've never done anything new.
With companies like Beckhoff.
[00:14:58] Speaker A: Yeah, that's for sure. Traditionally companies and maintenance teams like LadderLogic, it's relatively easy, it's well known, it's been around for a long time and most places still use a lot of that. As we get the younger generation coming in, they don't know what ladder logic is. They're used to, you know, coming from computer science backgrounds, especially when you get to these companies that are doing the test beds, you know, they know high speed systems and they know what their equipment's supposed to do, but they don't know what ladder logic does. And so, and then when they, they come into these environments that only has ladder logic and it can't do what they want to do, then that's where there's a gap there.
[00:15:37] Speaker B: And they're more. I kind of would make the general assumption that they're more comfortable with computers.
[00:15:42] Speaker A: Absolutely, yeah. And again, that's what lends well with the Beckhoff platform is even the development environment is more in tune with what a computer science student or someone who's gone through school for computer science is familiar with. They see the visual studio shell or the environment of that which twincat from Beckhoff is embedded inside of and they're more familiar with that. And you show them, you know, Siemens, Allen Bradley or Omron or any other ladder logic environment and they're just like a deer in the headlights.
[00:16:13] Speaker B: One of the big challenges we have in the automation industry is attracting employees. And how does that work?
[00:16:17] Speaker A: At mpi we do advertise out there, but usually for us it's more a word of mouth in finding the people that we need in our industry because we're integrators, not all applications and jobs and projects are the same. So you need out of box thinkers.
We're often not seeing people come to us, but we're going and looking for the people with the particular types of skill sets that we need.
[00:16:42] Speaker C: And equally I'll add to that too is that we look for people that are really quite diverse. We don't typically build too many silos here in the sense of people just doing only programming or only just wiring. We like them to be capable in really all aspects, understand a degree of electrical design, but also understand programming, obviously, understand commissioning and be comfortable around equipment equally, just for site visits, if you have to go do field service, you need to be capable of troubleshooting a machine at all levels.
We also know that people like flexibility and we offer that none of our projects are really quite the same. Everything we do is fairly custom and it allows people to come to work and not just follow a template. They want to be creative at work. And this is a good chance to do that.
[00:17:26] Speaker B: I think that goes to what we said in the beginning. Right. This industry kind of gets in your blood. And I think you're right. It's attracting people who don't want to do the same thing every day. Right. And we talked about that machine on the floor because I couldn't see an electrical cabinet as we approached the machine. And you guys put in a whole bunch of electrical cabinets inside the framing of the machine.
[00:17:46] Speaker C: Yeah, it takes a little bit of that was out of the box thinking there to help try and make it all integrate well together to meet the requirements, what the customer wanted. And that's fair. And I think that's what makes it, I think, sometimes challenging, but also exciting for our employees.
[00:18:01] Speaker B: You know, now that we've had this conversation about IoT, what are some of the things that you believe would be the future of IoT or some of the opportunities for IoT that maybe our listeners are thinking about out there?
[00:18:12] Speaker C: Yeah. Some of the things we've talked about in the past or just want to understand is do customers show interest in, you know, understanding what it costs to actually operate a machine, what is the true air consumption, what is the true energy consumption, and understanding what those true impacts are on the production process.
[00:18:28] Speaker B: Scott, you've got a bunch of partners that you work with, who are some of them and what do they do for you or with you?
[00:18:34] Speaker C: Yep. So outside of, I guess the Beckhoff space, we also are ignition certified, which means basically our employees have gone through the training and passed the courses and we have done a number of ignition system type deployments and also the most recent one too is pils. They have come to us, asked us to be part of their safety channel partner group and that really just provides us additional technical support, but also just preferred pricing on pills, safety devices.
It works really well. From a field standpoint, field integration standpoint, it could be light, curtains, gates, switches, whatever be the case. So that came to us fairly recently. We're excited about that as well too.
[00:19:18] Speaker B: And you write some code for clients as well, Right. Into other these third party systems. Is that part of your kind of ongoing business?
[00:19:27] Speaker A: Well, as a part of systems integration and like we talked about before, we can be involved in any portions of the project. Sometimes the customer just wants programming support, so we'll often do that. As well and you know, to customers even across Canada remotely. So they may only need some corrections to programming or they want to add new functions and features and we can often fill that gap on multiple platforms.
[00:19:52] Speaker B: Thanks for that Kevin and Scott. How do our listeners get in touch with you?
[00:19:55] Speaker A: You can reach us in a number of ways. We have a website at MPISolutions CA.
We're also located on the south end of London, Adelaide and Bradley area. If you drive by, you can't help but see us from the road there.
[00:20:11] Speaker B: Thanks very much Kevin and Scott and thanks for giving me the tour this morning in the croissants. And I would like to thank 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's hard to spell. It's Ehrhardt and I'd like to acknowledge A three the association for Advancing Automation. They are the leading trade association for robotics, vision and imaging, motion control and motors, and the artificial industrial intelligence technologies. Visit automate.org to learn more. And if you'd like to get in touch with us at the Robot Industry podcast, you can find me Jim Beretta on LinkedIn. Today's podcast was produced by Customer Traction Industrial Marketing and I'd like to thank my team, Chris Gray for music, Jeffrey Bremner for audio production, my business partner Janet, and our sponsor, Earhart Automation Systems.
