[00:00:00] Speaker A: It's different here in the US market than it is in places like Asia, for example, where there's a much more natural acceptance and adoption of robotics. Here we need a little bit more handholding, and we're very good at doing that handholding.
[00:00:21] Speaker B: Hello everyone, and welcome to the robot industry podcast. We're glad you're here and thank you for subscribing. I'm excited to announce here that I'm coming out with a second podcast soon. It's called Automation Matters, and this podcast is going to be about the front end of the house in automation. Sales, marketing, branding, communications, and, well, customer attraction. And let me know if you want to get involved. Watch and listen to it soon wherever you pick up your podcasts. So I'm excited about automation matters, but more on that later. I'm here today with Dale Walsh from Roboworks. Dale, welcome to the podcast.
[00:00:53] Speaker A: Jim, thanks for having me. Looking forward to talking about robots today.
[00:00:56] Speaker B: Yeah, I'm looking forward to the discussion as well. Can you tell us or tell the audience a little bit about yourself and how you kind of got into robotics?
[00:01:04] Speaker A: Before coming to roboworks, I was with a large japanese technology company for almost 30 years and helped start the third party support program there. Was one of the founding members and actually created the robotics practice there before coming over here. It was an interesting area for me.
My job was to find new and innovative areas for us to focus on from a support standpoint. And so robotics became one of those key focus areas. That was probably 1012 years ago now. So I've been supporting robots for a long time, a lot of, a lot of big names that everyone would certainly know, but then came over just over about four years ago now to help start roboworks with a little bit different focus. Many companies in the robot support space today focus heavily on reactive maintenance repairs.
So we take a different approach to it, more of a preventative maintenance and customer success approach versus reactive brake fix support. We do that as well. We do brake fix as well, but we really focus on eliminating those brake on demand brake fix calls by focusing on preventative maintenance.
[00:02:21] Speaker B: And this is really a new business, right. When you think of like the robot industry is 40 years old or 50 years old, but fixing robots on a distributed model is really a new, new business.
[00:02:33] Speaker A: It is, yeah, especially. And really the, you know, the thing that changed, you know, industrial robots have been around for a long time and it's very mature, especially in the automotive space and heavy manufacturing. But when you start thinking about collaborative robots and AMRs and robots that are interacting with the public, there's a whole different type of maintenance that needs to be done on those. And really we focus on driving adoption, because it's different here in the us market than it is in places like Asia, for example, where there's a much more natural acceptance and adoption of robotics. Here, we need a little bit more handholding, and we're very good at doing that handholding.
[00:03:19] Speaker B: So I guess I should kind of rewind a little bit. I should really ask you, what does roboworks do?
[00:03:26] Speaker A: Very good. Yeah. So, to do it, in a nutshell, we install, we maintain, we repair, and we operate robots for a variety of robot manufacturers here in the US.
We build our program to cover the entire continental uS.
So it doesn't matter whether it's a major metropolitan area or in the. We have robots in the middle of Montana that we support today.
Doesn't matter if we're in the US and all we do is focus on robots. We don't do anything else. We don't work on other technologies.
We focus on robots and being the best we can be at supporting robots.
[00:04:09] Speaker B: It's kind of fascinating that you are kind of got two levels of problems. So my next question is exactly that is like, what problem are you solving?
[00:04:18] Speaker A: Yeah. So when we first start a conversation with most robotic companies, and our partners are typically either robot manufacturers, sometimes a reseller or an integrator as well. But most of the time, it's with a manufacturer. Oftentimes they're looking for somebody to fix their robot when it breaks. When you start talking about robots breaking, it's a little bit like calling their baby ugly, because a lot of these, you know, a lot of these, especially, you're dealing with entrepreneurs and engineers. They don't want to admit that their robot breaks from time to time. And I will say most robots are pretty reliable now, you put them in the real world in some unusual environment sometimes. And even the best of robots can have some challenges depending on the environment.
But most of the time, they're looking for somebody to fix it when it breaks, or that's what's in their mind. So one of the things that we work hard to do is to really help change that mindset. It's a lot like Henry Ford said 100 years ago. If I'd asked people what they wanted, they would have said a faster horse. So a lot of people don't realize what they actually need is not really to fix the robots, but it's to keep one. It's to keep the robots from breaking in the first place, and that comes from preventative maintenance. But it's also making sure that the end customer, the guy who's actually writing the check for the robots, gets the value that they were expecting out of their investment in robot. And for a lot of robot oems, that means making sure that generally entry level employees who are using the robots use it effectively, use it properly, are well trained on how to use the robot.
Let's just say you make a floor cleaning robot. Well, you're dependent on janitors properly using that robot. If you make a food delivery robot, you're dependent on waiters and waitresses to properly use that robot. If you make a back of house food automation, you're dependent on quick service cooks to use this robot correctly. There's a lot of learning curve that has to happen there. They go into high turnover environments, so there's a lot of turnover. So there's a constant need for retraining of those folks who are using the robot. So we look at it as not only supporting the robot itself, but also the humans who are interacting with the robots. Both need management. You wouldn't expect to buy a car and never have to change the oil in it. And that's true of robots, too. They need to have preventative maintenance. But we also need to make sure that people actually do use the robots and that the robots are doing what they expect. Even if a robot's working perfectly mechanically, if it's not doing what the end users expect it to do, it's going to stop being used and get pushed in the corner.
[00:07:28] Speaker B: You know, it's fascinating. Again, I'm using that word because you have so many different people that you're responding to and interacting with. And the whole training part, like when I thought, I just thought of uptime, right. Almost automatically. But there's so much more. So you have to have a very talented person on the ground, right, that, that knows kind of what to do.
[00:07:49] Speaker A: Absolutely. When we're hiring people, we're hiring people who are customer focused. Right. Customer success. Customer focused. We can train them. Certainly. They need to have technical aptitude. And so we look for customer service skills and we look for technical aptitude. We can train them how to do the other stuff. The electromechanical side, we can train them to do. You can't train somebody to be customer focused. You either have it or you don't. So, yeah, our folks are heavily customer service focused with technical skills and technical aptitude. Not always easy to find.
[00:08:27] Speaker B: No, I imagine so. And you, like you say you're, you're dealing with like maybe a franchisee one day and maybe somebody in a hotel the next day. So it is really. You've got lots of skill sets that you have to muster.
[00:08:39] Speaker A: Absolutely. They have to be pretty diverse. It does help that all we do is robots. As I mentioned earlier, we're not doing copiers or printers or ATM's or other technology. We've focus heavily on robots.
Most of our robots are amrs. We do some fixed robots as well, but most of them are amrs. And as you might assume, there's a lot of similarities in many ways. So that helps our folks that they're focused on to just supporting robots.
[00:09:09] Speaker B: Are you busy? Is it a busy industry for you?
[00:09:13] Speaker A: It is with the growth of amrs and we're seeing more and more of those, especially in public places.
We're busy in that regard. We're also seeing more in the commercial drone space that we support as well, especially with drone box technology for forward deployed drones.
And we're now starting to see humanoid robots taking more of the forefront as well. So yeah, we are busy. We have no shortage of robots to support.
[00:09:48] Speaker B: And you mentioned a few of the facilities here in like casinos and hotels and distribution centers and such. Do you see a trend there at all or is there some other areas that I didn't mention?
[00:10:00] Speaker A: Yeah, I would say the fastest growing area that we're seeing right now is really in, in food service, both front of house and back of house as well. So we support robots that do the delivery of the food from the kitchen to the, to the customers. We also work with robots that are being used for automation and back of house for things like making pizzas and other technologies. So yeah, the food service space has been growing rapidly. Obviously, the warehouse distribution center space is pretty mature, but any place where you're seeing challenges with hiring staff, I think you're going to see more and more robots. So certainly the hospitality space has been another one that's been growing for us. The healthcare space, any place where they're having hiring difficulties, I think you're going to see the adoption of robotics and with that, the need for support for those robots.
[00:10:57] Speaker B: Is there some trends you're seeing too, Dale, like where you might have one robot, or are people buying more and more robots, or is it all growing everywhere?
[00:11:07] Speaker A: It really depends on the environment.
In the restaurant space, we have customers that have one robot in a restaurant. On the kind of the far end of that, we have customers in the distribution center, warehouse space that may have 400 robots under. Under one roof. So it's pretty broad. We do see a lot of, let's get one kind of test it, see how that goes, and then expand from there. So we are seeing a lot of growth in existing partners in their customer base, where they're expanding their robots fleets. We've seen that quite a bit, really, in the casino space, even where they start with one or two robots in a few locations and then are expanding into others as well.
[00:11:56] Speaker B: I imagine you're a bit on the front end of the robot OEM, too. Right? Because you're right there on site with the people and that you can report back. So I imagine there's a lot of interesting data that comes back from pair reps all over us and Canada.
[00:12:10] Speaker A: Absolutely. The feedback that we provide to the oems is really critical, as they either iterate their existing products or design new products. So we have a constant feedback loop to them.
We have a portal where they can see everything that's happened with the robot. So we do photos before and after. We have a report that gets written up about what was done, what was seen.
We're constantly talking to the end customer, not just the manager of a location, but the actual guys and gals that are actually working beside the robot on a daily basis. We're having conversations with them when we're on site doing our preventative maintenance, just to say things, to ask questions like, how do you like the robot? Or what do you like about the robot? And we'll usually hear something like, yeah, the robot's great, but it works well, except. And then we try to solve for that before that becomes a problem. And of course, like I said, that's always being fed back to the OEM, because it may be just a training issue, but it may also be a technology issue. There may be legitimate technology issues that need to be resolved as well.
[00:13:29] Speaker B: Well, you kind of mentioned before about the robots in the corner, and we've all seen this, right. And it really happens because the robot, OEM, and your customer, whoever that is, they want those robots being used.
[00:13:40] Speaker A: Absolutely. And that's especially true in enterprise customers, where the decisions made at a corporate level, where we're going to place these robots out, and one day they show up at a restaurant or other location, and the end users weren't involved in the decision making. It's just all of a sudden, here's this robot, they get trained on it and so forth. But over time, things evolve. Just staying with the restaurant theme for a second. They take all the tables out to scrub the floors, clean the carpets. And the tables don't always go back in exactly the same spot they were before when the robots were mapped to all those different drop off pickup locations. So now the robot's not going to table twelve anymore. Next thing, they put a bunch of tables together for a big group, and now it doesn't go to table three like it's supposed to. You know, now they. So they only got two tables, and next thing you know, workers being what they are, humans being what they are, they're going to just do whatever it takes to get the job done. If, you know, you're not going to let somebody's food get cold while you fiddle with the robot, you're just going to go deliver the food yourself. So next thing you know, the robot's now sitting in the corner not getting utilized because it just. It's kind of snowballs over time. And we have literally seen that. We've, we took over a fleet. This happened to be in a high end movie theater, but we went into the lobby for the first time to service this robot, do a PM on it. And the robot sitting in the lobby, literally with a sign on it that says on strike in the lobby of the movie theater. Yeah. Not what the noem wants. But the OEM had no idea that nobody had ever picked up the phone. So, you know, the staff in the movie theater, this is a big chain movie theater, right? They don't feel empowered. Empowered to pick up the phone and call the manufacturer of a robot and say, hey, there's a problem with the robot. They just stop using it over time. And in this case, they did it in a very public way. And it turned out it was a simple firmware update, was all that needed to be done to the robot, probably could have been even resolved remotely.
But you got to know about the problem to be able to fix it. And that's why we do regular visits on site to lay eyes on the robot, retrain the staff, do the preventative maintenance, find out any minor issues, resolve those before they become big issues.
[00:16:03] Speaker B: I was going to ask you, Dale, what is an SLA? But I also wanted to ask you, how do you work with clients? I guess it's more like you have this conversation with clients and then you work out some kind of agreement, right?
[00:16:14] Speaker A: Absolutely. Yeah. And we, you know, we help our partners, which are, let's just say the oems meet their SLA's with the end customer. You know, most of the end customers who are going to adopt some type of robotic technology are going to want some type of service level agreement. You know, what is going to be the uptime for those? If I'm going to invest in this technology, what's going to be my uptime?
And we believe that the best way to maintain that uptime is by doing preventative maintenance on a regular basis. In most cases, we're doing quarterly preventative maintenance on most of the robots we service. We have some where we do monthly preventative maintenance. We have some that we do maybe twice a year. I think we even have one we do once a year. But most of them fall into that quarterly preventative maintenance. And so we feel like that's the best way to maintain that service level agreement by keeping those robots fine tuned and working properly. Sure, something is going to break at some point as well.
Sometimes that's a mechanical failure. Sometimes it's abuse or other things that happen to robots, especially the ones in public environments. But we think that preventative maintenance is really the key to maintaining that uptime and keeping the end customer, our partner's customer, happy.
[00:17:31] Speaker B: We had talked on the warm up about, and I think you mentioned it earlier, it's about robots working with their human partners. Right. It's a big thing. It's a big culture challenge, I should imagine.
[00:17:43] Speaker A: Absolutely. I mean, you know, there's already today this fear that robots are going to take my job. Right. And that's part of the education that we do, is we, as we train people, we're not only training them on how to, how to use the robot, but also the value to them of the robot. And again, just sticking with that restaurant theme you think about in that type of environment where the robots are now being used to help move food from the kitchen to the end customers. So now, as someone who's a waiter or waitress, I'm able to spend more time with my customers actually helping them versus running food back and forth from the kitchen or to the tables. So you. And, of course, they don't have to split the tips with the robot either.
So, you know, there's that environment. And now as we move from amrs to humanoid robots, I think that that fear is going to even be increased. Right. So there's going to be a lot of education that needs to happen to make those end customers or those end users feel comfortable working around robots. And the reality is it's, you know, people are self conscious sometimes around robots. They just, it takes time to warm up to it and, you know, adopt your robot coworkers.
But most people end up doing pretty well, with it over time.
[00:19:10] Speaker B: So training becomes kind of a very complicated thing for you because you've got lots of different robots that your robot, OEM, manufactured units that you're training your people about, you're training them on, giving them education, culture. It really is a very complicated communication, isn't it?
[00:19:27] Speaker A: Absolutely. And that's what we consider customer success, is making sure that the robot works correctly, electromechanically is kind of table stakes today.
That's just a given. The robot has to mechanically work. Right. We go beyond that in making sure that those in customers that it's actually doing what they need it to do or expect it to do, and that they truly get the value that they're looking for out of that investment, the customer success.
[00:19:57] Speaker B: So do you kind of have a customer success meeting with every contract, or how does that work?
[00:20:02] Speaker A: We do every visit to the location, whether that's quarterly, monthly, whatever the cadence is. We're not only, like I said earlier, not meeting, just meeting with the managers, which is important, but we're also talking to those end customers that kind of give you the real scoop as to what's happening with the robot. Right. And that's where we find out. We actively dig into that. Our techs are trained to dig into those questions, to ask those kind of second tier questions as well, find out what is really happening with the robot, how are they really utilizing it. One of the advantages that we have over some of our competitors is a lot of our competitors already have technicians, and they're looking to backfill their time by doing something like robots. Right. Because we focus exclusively on the robots, we're able to spend more time at the site with the customer. Not only do we do the electromechanical stuff, we do any retraining that needs to be done. We ask those questions and try to dig into that. We also just sit back and watch and see how the robots are being used.
A lot of times, let's say the movie theater, for example, our guys will go back in the evening, sit in the corner, and just watch to see how the robots are being used. And from the. We can learn a lot by just sitting back and watching sometimes.
[00:21:27] Speaker B: No, that's a great point. So how do you deal with spare parts? Not every robot needs a spare part inventory, but do you have centralized inventories and such?
[00:21:38] Speaker A: It varies depending on the partner that we're working with. Some already have an existing parts infrastructure, and so we'll certainly work with whatever they have. Some we inventory the parts for, some that need common replacement so we have certain consumables that need to be done on a regular basis. Sometimes our technicians carry those with them. Sometimes the location will have those in stock for us to utilize as well. So it really varies. That's one of the unique things about us. We're very custom, our solutions are very customized, we're very bespoke. No two customers look exactly the same. So we're not going to say, you know, you've got to fit into this mold. We have some starting points that we work from, but it's very bespoke and very customized to what the customer partner and their customer actually needs.
[00:22:31] Speaker B: I'm kind of imagining that you're supporting these AMrs and these delivery robots with bare wheels and power supplies and that kind of thing. Are there any kind of very common things that you're looking at when you're supporting delivery robots, for example?
[00:22:45] Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. For amRs, it's around the drivetrain heavily.
And it's not that it's necessarily a motors burning out per se. It's that stuff gets wrapped around the wheels, stuff gets wrapped around casters, stuff gets wrapped around axles, and over time that puts a bigger draw on the motor and sometimes will burn, burn a motor out. So that's again, the value of preventative maintenance is that we find those things before they become a problem, before it burns that motor out, removing whatever it is. A lot of times you're operating with carpet. So picking up carpet fibers, if they're in a restaurant, they're going to pick up some food and other things that gets in them. In the warehouse distribution center space, sometimes we see environments that are heavy. We have one customer that the robots are used to move apparel.
So lots of cotton dust. And that dust gets into everything. It covers the sensors it covers. So it's a constant preventative maintenance of keeping sensors clean because of so much cotton dust. So those type of environment are heavily driven by the environment that the robot's in.
[00:24:04] Speaker B: So do you have some other case stories that you can mention to our audience today?
[00:24:09] Speaker A: We just published a case study in the warehouse distribution center space around supporting amrs and picking stations. So that's one. We have another one coming out in the near future around supporting robots in the service industry. In our business, we don't mention names a lot because we are an agnostic service provider. So we support multiple robot companies, sometimes in the same space, sometimes competitors with each other. So we oftentimes don't mention names unless a customer specifically gives us permission to. But we can talk about the applications and what we're doing. And that's what we've done with some recent case studies.
[00:25:01] Speaker B: And what are some of those? Maybe the customer best practices? Like, I'm kind of listening to you going, oh, my God, somebody's got to clean these wheels more often, or somebody's got to clean these sensors. So are there some best practices that you're kind of like trying to do? You look for champions, for example?
[00:25:18] Speaker A: We do.
It's great if we have somebody on site that is robot champion or robot evangelist, I guess you could say.
So many of the environments is high turnover, and you may train a champion, but, you know, six months later, they've gone to another facility somewhere.
And sometimes robot oems expect end customers to do the preventative maintenance themselves. And sometimes it's minor. The reality is it just doesn't happen in most cases. I mean, you'll have exceptions, certainly. You'll have those, those go getters who, who will follow the rulebook. Exactly. And do all the preventative maintenance. They're supposed to do things, you know, minor things like cleaning sensors. But the reality is most times it just doesn't happen. And so we're the eyes and ears for that OEM. We go in, see what's happening with the robot and take care of those issues for them.
[00:26:18] Speaker B: Dale, I had here my notes to ask you a little bit about franchisees, because I assume franchisees are kind of either both, like, they're very interested in keeping this robot up and down. But you probably call on a lot of franchisees, do you?
[00:26:31] Speaker A: We do. We work, especially in the restaurant space.
A lot of the robots that we support are part of a franchise. And so for us, it's really transparent to whether it's a franchise or company owned store.
But yes, those franchisees are typically, because they're independent investors, they are looking for that return of investment on their robot investment. So, yes, they're generally interested in having very high uptime and making sure that the robots are getting fully utilized.
[00:27:09] Speaker B: Dale, this has been a great conversation, and I want to thank you for joining me today. Is there anything that we've forgotten to talk about?
[00:27:17] Speaker A: No, I don't think so. I think, I guess my message is, if you're a robot OEM and you have robots out in the field, we should probably be talking about how to make that successful and how to help you scale up all across the country.
[00:27:33] Speaker B: This is kind of funny because I'm an independent marketer and I've done work with robot Oems, and of course, the first question is, hey, we just had a great sale. Oh, where did you sell a robot into? Well, South America. And you're like, uh oh, who's going to fix it? And so I guess this is exactly when people call you, right?
[00:27:52] Speaker A: Exactly, yeah. I mean, most people, like I said earlier, they don't want to. As they're building a robot, they're focused on the robot and the software making it work. They oftentimes don't think about that after sales support.
Sometimes it's an afterthought. Unfortunately, sometimes it's not budgeted for.
But we try to educate people early. We try to talk to them early in their cycles. We get to them as they're a startup and try to educate them that it's more than just building a great robot. You can build the best robot in the world, but if the end customer doesn't use it, you're not going to be successful.
And that's what we try to focus on helping them with that customer success program.
[00:28:39] Speaker B: Thank you for that, Dale, I just, I want to ask you a little bit too. What hobbies do you like? And I know that you and I both have rvs of sorts.
[00:28:47] Speaker A: We do, yeah. So I'm a digital nomad, so we are full time rvers. We travel the country and chasing that 70 degree temperature, and there's about over a million of us out here on the road in the full time rv space. So it's a different lifestyle, but we thoroughly enjoy it along with that from a hobby. I'm a photographer. I do wildlife and nature photography, which works well with the rv space. Right now we're sitting in Estes Park, Colorado, just outside Rocky Mountain National park. And this afternoon I'll be inside the park photographing elk, hopefully.
[00:29:29] Speaker B: I would love to see some of your pictures. I'm an amateur photographer sorts as well. So if some of the people are listening here want to find out more, how can they get in touch with you or find out more about roboworks?
[00:29:42] Speaker A: Sure, you can always look us up our website, roboworks IO. My LinkedIn, Dale Walsh. I'm pretty easy to find on LinkedIn. If you want to see some of the things like the podcast we're doing today, or other interviews or information about it, and of course you can always email me. It's daleroboorks IO.
[00:30:08] Speaker B: Thanks again for coming on to the robot industry podcast, Dale.
[00:30:11] Speaker A: Thanks for having me, Jim. It's been a pleasure.
[00:30:13] Speaker B: Our sponsor for this episode is Earhart Automation Systems. Earhart builds and commissions turnkey automation 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 earhartshondras ballots EH Rhar, DT our co sponsor is Anchor Danley. They are the leading manufacturing distributor of robot and automation bases high quality die sets, components blanchard ground steel plates and metal fabrication used in the production of tools, dies, molds, mining, construction and general automation industry. And I'd like to acknowledge a three the association for advancing automation. They're the leading automation trade association for robotics, vision and imaging, motion control and motors, and the industrial artificial intelligence technologies. You can visit automate.org to learn more. And if you'd like to get in touch with me at the robot industry podcast, you can find me Jim Beretta on LinkedIn. Today's podcast was produced by customer attraction Industrial Marketing, and I'd like to thank my team, Chris Gray for music, Jeffrey Bremner for audio, my business partner Janet and our sponsors, Earhart Automation Systems and Anker Danley.
