[00:00:00] Speaker A: Having an automation project fail is, is a disaster. We're building their money maker. We're building the thing that's going to make them efficient, make them even capable of building their product at all. That's a huge risk to our customers. In their minds, it has to go well.
[00:00:22] Speaker B: Hello everyone and welcome to the Robot Industry Podcast. We're glad you're here and, and thank you for subscribing. My guest today is Ben Huganboss and he is the president of BOSS Innovations here in London, Ontario. Hey Ben, welcome to the podcast. Thanks for joining us.
[00:00:37] Speaker A: Thanks for having me.
[00:00:38] Speaker B: Ben, how did you get interested in automation? Give our audience a little bit of your background.
[00:00:43] Speaker A: I grew up around it. My dad started the business back in 96. I was a teenager then, so I was doing little odd jobs and stuff for him and seeing he was just getting started, a lot of very simple stuff and small stuff, but I was helping in it back in those days.
[00:00:57] Speaker B: And did you have to sweep the floors, Ben?
[00:00:59] Speaker A: Absolutely.
That was one of the easier jobs I was made to do.
[00:01:03] Speaker B: So yeah, Good for you. Hey, tell our audience a little bit about BOSS Innovations, like what it is that you do and what type of automation you're building.
[00:01:11] Speaker A: Yeah, so, I mean back in those days when he first started, we did all just very light assembly stuff. You know, typical person standing in front of a semi automated machine or a little bit more automated machine doing typical automotive stuff from the 90s. That would have been typical for us back then. Obviously things changed a lot. You know, a lot of that stuff was offshore back in the early 2000s and, and we diversified much more into robotics for assembly initially. And then a little background on boss. My father passed away in 08. I've been running it since then. We had to expand our horizons. We had some opportunities to get into for initially just automotive welding. Now we do welding in all industries, is still some in automotive industries. And we've expanded our assembly business much higher level of full automation in that and we also opened in 2013 and that's grown into a huge part of our business is the laser side of our business, cutting, welding and then marking and other special applications as well. And vision is a big part of our business. That's a. Everybody in automation does vision to some level. Of course you have to, but that's actually become a very important segment to what we do today. So I'm sure we'll talk more about that as we go. But that's basically an overview of what we do. So turnkey automation, custom automation Mostly So we do have some standard stuff.
[00:02:26] Speaker B: What are the changes that some of the changes you've seen in automation and robotics recently?
[00:02:32] Speaker A: There's a lot more, I would say small, smaller batch automation, a lot more opportunities to do things where where before it was always high production was, was the easier stuff to do and where was the main automating was happening. Now there's a lot more flexibility built into the automation and we're capable of doing that because the technology has come a long way and we can get more into the details of that. But yeah, automation today is much more flexible, often tied in with data and different systems that have to drive what we're doing. Often there's higher end vision nowadays that can do much more capability on inspection and guiding of robots and guiding of the automation. So it's more advanced than it used to be. But the tools are awesome and it makes much more possible at a lower cost.
[00:03:20] Speaker B: It's a very exciting time for automation. So you're seeing your customers asking for things maybe that they haven't asked for in previous years, like higher level vision.
[00:03:29] Speaker A: They're asking for it or we're able to offer it upsell and show them what's possible. We're often educating our customers much more now. And it used to be especially in the automotive industry which was mature with automation, the customer knew what they wanted. They would have a very hard spec on what they wanted. And there's still companies that are working that way. But I don't recommend it. I recommend allowing the integrators a little more leeway to produce solutions that are unique and that use our talents and understanding of what's out there. So it's harder for manufacturers in some ways to have all that expertise in house. But the integrators could offer a lot now and that's a big value that we find can offer our, our customers now for the ones that are open to it.
[00:04:15] Speaker B: You know, with post Covid, like when everybody changed all their specs all at once, it was kind of interesting to see. Okay, you're going to switch PLCs because we can't get them right.
[00:04:24] Speaker A: It was kind of a whatever it takes and, and just allow us to, it allowed us to kind of innovate on even business models at those times. And we'll probably talk about some of the ways which we, we found ways to innovate during that time that we're actually still benefiting from today.
[00:04:38] Speaker B: So Ben, our podcast today is going to be about reducing risk in automation systems. And I feel that this is important conversation because reducing risk for both an integrator and for the end customer is critical. And I was interested in your comments on that.
[00:04:52] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, we've formed our mission around risk, really. I mean, our mission is to execute with excellence with technologies of the future. Just shortening it a little bit there. But we're keying in on two things that our customers are very, very concerned about. And first is having an automation project fail is a disaster. We're building their moneymaker, we're building the thing that's going to make them efficient, make them even capable of building their product at all. That's a huge risk to our customers. In their minds, it has to go well. They're demanding. It absolutely has to go well. For it to go sideways is a disaster for their business. And the second thing that they're worried about is that they do not the risk of not having the technology to a level that they're competition does and becoming irrelevant, uncompetitive to the industry. So those are the risks that our customers are dealing with. We've designed our business and designed the way we do things as an integrator to actually to address those risks in the minds of our customers and build trust and to actually execute the way they need us to and to try to do it with the best technology for them. So that's our customer side risk. Our side, you know, our risk is a whole different animal. We have different types of risks. There's, there's customer risks, the type of customer we're dealing with. Are they open? Are they going to be somebody that we can work with? Do we trust them even as human beings, do we trust that they're invested in the relationship? There's the technical risk that, that everybody understands. Is it a solution that we have full understanding of or are we doing a bit, Is it something that we have some understanding of? But it's, but it's challenging and there's, and there's, there's going to be risks along the way. Or is it a science project and this is all something new and we classify it that way. Really? Like is it, is it low risk? Is it, you know, it's something we're competent in but it's not easy and there are challenges along the way? Or is this a science project?
[00:06:44] Speaker B: And so what are the, some of the ways that you abate or reduce these risks? Are there like engineering projects or is there identification of these risks early on in the projects I imagine is critical?
[00:06:56] Speaker A: Yeah, 100%. So like if there's a, if there's a. We do assess the customer like their readiness for certain types of projects and that sort of thing. And if we will only go so far with a customer that of a certain type that is maybe not as open more on the technical side is where I think people can gain a lot of understanding of what we do. If it is a science project, that's gotta be a proof of concept. You're not gonna go into a full fledged, you know, let's call it just for all intents and purposes a million dollar project with something that you, you really don't know how it's gonna turn out. Like that's, that's a, that's a terrible way to approach it. But I'm sure we've all gotten ourselves as integrators into that situation at some point where we, we were so excited about the overall project and what we thought was possible that we maybe bit off a little more than we can chew on that. So these are hard lessons learned. We will encourage the customer to go to a proof of concept level on that. That'll be typically paid. There may be exceptions in certain very strategic applications where we're developing something that we think has a broader market appeal and that'll be an internal development that. And that happens, of course, if we think it's something that we can mark and we want to keep it a little more internal. Yeah. And then on ones where there's risk, where it's, I'll say we know it's possible, we know that it can happen. We know what we need. That's where you have a very specific and intentional meeting. And what are the risks that we're dealing with here? Also what are the opportunities? People miss this in risk assessment. Like what you have to list your risks and your opportunities because if you do and you put a value to your risks and your opportunities, what do we think the chances are that this is going to be a problem? And if it is a problem, how much is that going to cost? And usually we just put a value to it. It's like, oh, it's a 30% likelihood of that. If it happens, it's probably going to cost us another $50,000. What's 30% of 50, you know, so don't make me do the math. But anyway, I can get there, I think. But either way, the, the, that's how we would assess a vat. Put a value to that risk. The key is for my team, have as few risks as you can deal with them commercially. If you can if you can, if you can put them in, hey, if the customer can provide us with more of these parts earlier, that reduces that risk. If our, if we have something that we can do differently on the key deliverables that we're, we're promising to the customer, if there's, if there's some wiggle room there, we might do it there. We don't want to enter projects with a whole bunch of risks because all of them have to be managed, all of them have to be dealt with. So if we can, if we can deal with them commercially, we will, if we can deal with them by having the conversation with a customer earlier, we'll do that. We want to get rid of as many risks and exceptions on projects as we can and agree with the customer with what they can do and agree on outcomes a little bit to reduce those risks. But if we have risks, we actually deal with them early in the project. So that's kind of the next level. So we're entering a project with risks and opportunities. We want to deal with them right away as best we can at the concept stage, if we can. Getting through the concept stage is a key part of our business. It's a hard milestone very early in our project. We do not want to do a full engineering on a project that doesn't have an agreed concept. With a lot of those risks dealt with, that's signed off and agreed to with the customer, there's a temptation to just, you know, based on quick timelines and stuff is just go, we know what they want, we know what this is going to look like. Go full on the design. You get the design review and the customer isn't yet bought in. Or maybe some of those risks haven't been dealt with yet that are going to bite you later. That's a dangerous game to play. So absolutely we have a hard concept stage that gets signed off by actually all management and the customer, where we actually have the team reassess the costs, reassess the risks, have a very good Cadillac engineered development of our concepts and then from there we kind of reassess and take stock of where we're at. And if we're happy with that, we move forward. There's some things yet to deal with. We deal with them right then. So I get some visibility on that even on our projects. That's one of my spots that I touch. Every project is just, are we good on the concept, guys? I call it finishing the quote. In a way, it's the quote we wish we could always do with all that engineering time into it.
[00:11:06] Speaker B: Ben, do you sometimes get other people involved, like I'm thinking robot companies like say Kuka or Stobly or something like that?
[00:11:14] Speaker A: We do, we do at times, especially when we're dealing with integration that's a little more complicated. You know, I can think of times where we've used, you know, different types of synchronous motion with external devices and that sort of thing. We want to make sure that, that the system, everybody agrees the system's capable of that sort of thing. You know, obviously you can lean on your vendors. They're more than willing, often to a certain level, at least of proof of concepts. I think it's very important to engage with your suppliers. Get on the phone. You know, that's, that's a conversation we have around here a lot. Have you talked to them? No, no, I just looked at their stuff online. Pick up the phone, guys. It's, it's one of the things you have to push the introverts on the team to do a little bit is to, to get out there and engage your suppliers. That's a great way to reduce risk. That's one I didn't mention that I should have is really engage that. Get and download some of that risk onto your suppliers who know their products best than better than we do. We're integrators. We're not experts in all the devices that we use. We're experts at bringing a solution to our customers. You have to engage on the experts for the different pieces. So very important.
[00:12:15] Speaker B: I had thought about feeding companies like. So, you know.
[00:12:18] Speaker A: Yeah, for sure.
[00:12:19] Speaker B: Full feeders or flex feeders or whatever. When I, when I, when I thought up that question.
[00:12:24] Speaker A: Oh yeah, that's a, that's a absolute one. That is, that's a bit of an art that you have to engage your suppliers on for that for sure.
[00:12:32] Speaker B: So one of the things I did want to talk to you and we kind of talked about this in the warm up is about remote support. So, you know, part of this whole risk assessment too is like you kind of mentioned it earlier, is sometimes there are new customers to automation. Right. So training is kind of one of those things that you have to do and you have to kind of keep up on. So what are your thoughts on training?
[00:12:53] Speaker A: Yeah, training is, is something that's tricky, especially in the custom automation business. You're building. You can't. It's very difficult to build a whole training program around a machine that you're just doing one of. Exactly. You can reuse principles. So yes, you mentioned remote support. That's a key thing is how are you going to support it? I mean we have our proximity smart support system. One of the systems we created out of COVID that we. That we talked about a little bit earlier. One of the technologies we had to be close to our customers when we couldn't be close to our customers. And that proved to be something that we could use outside of it is how do we be there with them and know that. Have them know that we're with them without spending all the travel all the time in their plant doing maybe nothing, just watching a machine. That. That's a key thing. So how can you do that? How can you stay with your customer without being with your customers? Is a. Is a. And adding to the cost of the project. But we really encourage a very complete machine. At boss, we have a principle called done at boss. It's. It's about being as done as possible on our. We're pretty persistent about it with our customers. They get a little annoyed at times but they understand. They get it. They. They're annoyed because it's hard for them to spend the time on our floor. It's hard for them to get the necessary number of parts depending on what it is especially.
But we're pretty fanatical about it. We talk about it before the project's awarded. It's. It's one of our ways that we tell them we're reducing risk by doing it this way. We're getting you a better product by doing it this way. And we get them on our floor actually involved in those final little tweaks and things. As well as them being part of that. They also are getting trained on the machine and understanding of the principles of how it works. They're on our floor involved, hands on. That's important to us. Get them engaged with our team. We have very good people. We hire very much on values and people that you want to be around and that sort of thing. And there's a reason for that. They're going to be dealing with our customers and having those relationships between the technical leads on a project and those technical people on the project. Invaluable connections that we make from the start of a project. Having them have those connections on our floor in person and then when they are off on their own knowing that they have that remote support option. Part of our proximity smart support is the data side of it, which is a whole nother topic. Those. All those things come together to have a customer who's very understanding of the machine. How it works, is capable of many things and then has the data and support when they are in the field to know what's going on and be able to help us to help them in the field too. So we've had great success of adoption with that. So.
[00:15:29] Speaker B: So this was born out of COVID right?
[00:15:30] Speaker A: Or did you. Okay, well, Covid and difficult projects, you know that. Really? Yeah. Which happened to be at the same time. So. Yeah.
[00:15:40] Speaker B: And so how does it work? It's an application software developed by Boss Innovations. And it gets on. On pretty much every machine, basically every.
[00:15:49] Speaker A: Machine in, in one form or another. We have our, our preferred method of this. We have to at times adapt to some of the certain customers in some ways. But yeah, basically we use it.
That's right, yeah. And you're, you're not only remote, supporting to be there and see the machine in its current state, you can look at the data and know what was happening over the past amount of time. Oh, you had a fault in the middle of the night last night. Let's see the state of the machine at that.
Okay. And often our guys, if it's, if it's somebody, you know, one of the people that knows exactly knows the machine, we call it same day, next day, expert support, because we can. I don't care if the person is an expert on that machine. As integrators, we know that there's only so many experts you can have on a given system because the person who is really an expert is the person who actually built it or programmed it or whatever it is. You don't know where they are. They could be, you know, working somewhere else right now that you can call them in. Let's say they're working on a project in Mexico or something like that. They can call into a customer in Quebec and be there on the same day, next day. So our customers get a lot of assurance out of that that we have a plan, that we have a method, that we have a process for all of these things is something that we've been able to build trust and is a differentiator for us.
[00:17:18] Speaker B: Ben, let's switch the conversation over to vision because you've recently announced some exciting changes in your company about vision. Could you tell the audience a little bit about that?
[00:17:29] Speaker A: Yeah.
Vision, as we talked about, is something that's advanced and is advancing so quickly. We have for years had a very specific vision group within our company, but they're a smaller group. They're a little bit of a niche group.
They can kind of get lost in the Overall value that we offer to customers, not an understanding and competency. Well, how capable are you in this area? And then we wanted to put a focus on that group. So we created them as an internal group and put a lot of focus on there, put leadership in there, put training in there. These guys are A3 certified vision professionals, the couple that we have that are leaders within that group. And we decided that it was a good opportunity for us and for the industry for them to be their own business. So we have a subsidiary now that's been around since August 1st, but we're really starting to talk about a little bit more publicly is True Light Machine Vision integration. And they are obviously Boss's machine vision, who we use for that for anything complicated or they can offer directly to industry. And they are, they're selling their services directly to industry now. It's a good value for Boss as a company. It allows them to really focus on that, learn be industry leading in this capability and then BOSS can bring that in to the automation that we provide to our customers. It really brings our competency level up. Also helps build our differentiator with our customers and show them that we're serious about vision. We so serious that we have unleashed them to do wonderful things. So.
[00:19:06] Speaker B: And they're in a separate building, right?
[00:19:08] Speaker A: They are, yeah. When we were transitioning to our new building we had really outgrown our old building. We, we had at least some space in the Western Innovation park, partner with Western University there. So we have a 3,500 square foot office and lab for that Vision group that they work out of. They've got some cool stuff going on in their lab. We're really excited about some of the stuff those guys are coming up with and some of the stuff they're being asked to do by customers is really advancing us as a group. So very happy about it.
[00:19:36] Speaker B: It's great to push those boundaries and vision and I think that's a big difference with robot integration companies and machine builders and such when they go that extra mile with vision. Right. So I think it's going to be an exciting time for you. Speaking of moving, you've. You're probably just 20 miles from where you were, are you not?
[00:19:55] Speaker A: Not even. It's.
Yeah, it's about five minute drive, maybe a little bit more than that. Where? Yeah, we were in Dorchester which is just outside of London. We're just now in South East London, just off the highway. You can see us from the highway.
[00:20:07] Speaker B: And you're in it in an Innovation Park. Right. So I Think that's kind of an interesting thing.
[00:20:12] Speaker A: Yeah, it's, it's kind of a. The city that did a very good job of developing this area brought in a lot of different manufacturers of different types and different types of business like ours as well. It's an exciting part of London. It's very accessible to travel.
[00:20:26] Speaker B: Ben, did we forget to talk about anything today?
[00:20:29] Speaker A: Oh, I don't know.
I'm sure I could talk all day about automation. You know, I think the big thing about all of those things, I talked about the risk, the risk side of things, the commissioning side of things, the concept stuff. All of this is developed clear process for our company. We have a very simple, simple process that is how we do things. No automation project is the same for us, or very few at least. What can we make a process out of? We make it out of how we do things, not the what we do. It's very key as you're building an automation business to understand what matters most. And for me, even as a leader, what spot in that process do I touch so that I can empower the team to do good? You have to empower the individuals within the company right down to the person who's, whose only job is maybe wiring something or programming something. They need to understand where they're at in the process and what's expected of them and then they can be empowered to really innovate. I would say that just as automation companies, as we think about managing risk and managing projects, having a process, having those spots that you touch as a leader within that process, that you can take your eyes off the rest of it because you know you have other leaders within the organization that are taking care of those things. I think that's been a big learning for me and a big, a big, a big point of our success in recent years.
[00:21:53] Speaker B: So good for you, Ben. And I wanted to ask you kind of a personal question. When you're not automating and innovating and building like systems and visions, what do you like to do? Do you have any hobbies?
[00:22:05] Speaker A: Yeah, well, yes, but it's typically wrapped around my family. I have, I have five young boys between the ages of five and 15, so I have a very busy house. So speaking of processes, my wife has taught me about processes, so she's taught me a lot on that side. She has very good systems of running, she runs the home, she's a stay at home mom, which is almost a necessity when you have that many kids.
But yeah, we do a lot together. That's a lot of Fun for me. We actually all of them in one way or another involved in, in jiu jitsu and stuff. So somehow I got wrapped into that. So I do that now. I've been doing that for a number of years. So that's a lot of fun for me. It's hard on the body, but it keeps me in shape. So I, I like it. And then yeah, we, we, we have a lot of fun doing outdoor stuff. We have a bit of a hobby farm and stuff like that. So we do chickens and stuff like that and gardening and, and do some fishing and things like that. But those are our hobbies. We, we have fun together.
[00:23:05] Speaker B: Ben, how do people get ahold of you or a hold of your company and they want to talk about more?
[00:23:10] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean our website's a great resource. You can get anywhere through there. We're active on LinkedIn. You can find me on LinkedIn.
And yeah, our website is a great place to start. It's got connections to TrueLight. You can look at the Proximity Smart Support system. I'll say the Proximity Smart Support system is fairly new and emerging and so we've got it incubating under TrueLight as part of that group. But, but they're kind of their own thing. There's on that as well. But yeah, you can, you can link to everything through there. We have a great, Well, I think it's a great website. It can get you anywhere and there's contact forms and all that sort of thing. But hit me up on LinkedIn if you want. I, I do monitor that, so apologies if I miss you, but I probably won't.
[00:23:52] Speaker B: So thanks Ben. And people get in touch with me if they can't find you. But. So Ben Hugenboss. And Hugenboss is H U I G E N B O S and company name is Boss Innovations and it's B O S. And thanks again for coming on the podcast.
[00:24:08] Speaker A: Yeah, it's great to be here. Thanks a lot.
[00:24:10] Speaker B: 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 their
[email protected] and Earhart's hard to spell. It's E H R H A R D T And I'd like to thank and acknowledge A3 the Association for Advancing Automation. They're 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. 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 the music, Jeffrey Bremner for audio production, my business partner Janet, and our sponsor, Earhart Automation Systems.
