Simon Drexler Interview

I caught Simon doing a presentation at ATX Anaheim show and I tracked him down to talk about collaborative technologies in automation.

Simon recently rejoined ATS in April of 2018 to lead the growth of the SuperTrak brand in the global market.

At Clearpath Robotics he helped establish the OTTO product line of indoor self driving targeting autonomous material handling in the industrial market. In his role he built and oversaw a team leading market strategy, product development, product design, and program execution.

Prior to Clearpath, Simon held multiple progressive roles at ATS Automation, overseeing the execution of multi-faceted automation programs for some of the world’s largest companies with revenues exceeding $30 million / year and project teams exceeding 70 people operating 24/7. Project experience spans multiple industries, including solar, packaging, consumer electronics, and medical devices with installations of over 750 systems in North America, Europe, and Asia.

Simon earned Bachelor of Science degree in Systems Design Engineering, with an option in Management Sciences, from the University of Waterloo as well as an MBA from Wilfrid Laurier University with a specialization in Strategic Management and International Business Operations, earned on a part-time basis.

Enjoy the podcast. Jim

Show Notes:

Hello everyone. And welcome to the robot nation podcast. This is the podcast dedicated to advanced manufacturing capital equipment and the robotics and automation industry. We'll be covering trends and topics important to the factory automation and robotics industry. And we'll interview guests in our series of podcasts. We know that manufacturing is cool. It brings all kinds of jobs into your community. And if you're good, you will have a job for life.

So welcome everyone. My name is Jim Beretta and I'm your moderator. I am also president of customer attraction, industrial marketing based in Cambridge, Ontario. If you liked this podcast, please rate us wherever you find your podcasts, but more importantly, tell your friends about it. Send them an email, tweet us hashtag robot nation podcast. If you'd like to get in touch with us. Our email address is [email protected].

If you have an idea or an interesting company or technology, or you'd like to be a guest on our podcast, please nominate someone and just send an email to that same email address [email protected].

I'd like to take this opportunity to welcome our guest Simon Drexler. Simon Drexler is a graduate from Wilfrid Laurier with his MBA and the university of Waterloo with his P N designation in systems design management sciences. Simon Drexler is the director of the linear motion technologies. The LMT group at ATS automation in Cambridge, Ontario. He's been a business analyst at Communitech technology accelerator and startup for a regional innovation center. Simon has worked with auto ClearPath robotics. One of the early leaders in autonomous robotics with over 12 years experience in industrial automation. Simon has earned himself this spot on plant magazine's top 40 engineering leaders under 40 and was named supply and demand chain executive magazines pro to know with a passion for technology. Simon continues to drive innovation in the world of industrial automation. Along with leading the LMT group, Simon currently sits in the board of advisors for Canadian manufacturers and exporters. And when not in the office, Simon spends time being active in the outdoors with his wife and two children.

We're kind of both alike Simon. We both worked for ATS automation and we both worked for Communitech and we have a lot of robots in our lives. And so I'd like to welcome you to the podcast

Simon: Thank you very much, Jim. I'm happy to be here.

Simon, one of the first questions that I'd like to ask you is a little bit about collaborative automation and what is it and why should we care?

I think collaborative automation is the trend in the industrial world where we're bringing technology and people closer together. And I think why we care is that collaborative automation is really the thing that trending towards solving the number one problem in manufacturing, which is shortage of people. And so with a shortage of people and a challenge, and I think there's a Deloitte study that says, they'll go, there'll be 2.4 million jobs that go unfilled over the next 10 years in North American manufacturers. We need to turn to technology to make our, our people and our talent more effective at the jobs that we need them to do to grow our businesses.

And if we look at it in that light, there are a number of collaborative technologies. The obvious, most popular one is collaborative robots, but a number of ways that we could interact people and technology together on the manufacturing floor with the goal of making them more efficient and driving a better productivity for the manufacturer. So we're getting more productivity because we're putting people and automation working together. Absolutely. And I think we've seen that trend over the last 20 years. It's just one that's now picking up and getting more aggressive because of the labor shortage. You know, if you look at statistics manufacturers in North America are significantly more productive per capita than they were 20 years ago. And that's because of the implementation of technology. It's just the urgency of integrating more technology into the manufacturer has, has gone up because of the labor market and the, and the shortage of supply of people who work inside of manufacturing facilities.

I agree with you wholeheartedly. I think one of the big challenges with manufacturers is attracting people into their facilities. And I believe that young people want to work for companies that invest in automation. Absolutely. Uh, young people, at least in my observation, they, they want to work in the, in the more, uh, maybe perceived white collar jobs. They want to work with technology and it's unfortunate that manufacturing sometimes gets a bad rap. And you think that it's maybe a dollar, a dirty job, whereas manufacturing in North America by him hired has gone to advanced manufacturing. And you're working with world class technology to put products together, but it doesn't necessarily have that perception with the workforce today. We're that we're graduating students and engineers that want to work with high tech and software and software development, which they would be doing at manufacturers, but it's not always perceived that way.

Speaker 2 05:13 Yes. It's kind of funny how we want tech to be part of automation, but we are now I think in this position where things are actually working collaborative technologies actually work. Absolutely. We've seen a major boom in collaborative robots since their introduction in 2008. And again, collaborative robots. Aren't the only example of collaborative technologies, but expected to grow even in the next four or five years at 55% year over year as a market. And it's because they've hit a sweet spot where you can start to have people in technology work together, collaborative robots have done a great job of being accessible to the small, to medium sized manufacturer. That's looking for a way to make their people more efficient and providing a user interface and a customer that can help to solve that problem. So let's talk a little bit about the culture of automation because we're in automation.

Speaker 2 06:04 We think that everybody's automated, but there's a whole lot of manufacturing plants out there in the world that don't have manufacturing automation yet. And so we're, we're talking now about the culture of collaboration. One of the big challenges is about education, right? Yeah. It's, um, it's a difficult cycle to be in when, especially as a small to medium sized enterprise. Um, you know, I'm fortunate I get to tour lots of facilities and work with lots of people and you go into the small to medium sized enterprise and the know that the need technology to work with, but also don't feel or believe that they can attract the right workforce to support the automation. Um, but that's not necessarily true in the landscape of today and the technologies that are available, the user interfaces, the APIs that exist, the, the ability to provide online training or remote support to assist those manufacturers with the integration of technology exists with a number of companies and a number of technologies.

Speaker 2 07:01 But you're absolutely right. The, the education and the information just isn't always where it needs to be. So a little bit for, uh, maybe a manufacturer there that doesn't have automation yet. What sometimes it's, it's about connecting early with an integrator, with a robot manufacturer, with a company like you work for ATS and building some kind of roadmap to kind of figure out where you're going to go. I think you absolutely hit the nail on the head. Um, you know, I, I get to do a lot of speaking and, and meet a lot of people and I often get the question of, you know, how, how should I, how can I start? You know, I wanna, I wanna automate, or I want to work with industry 4.0 or I'm interested in collaborative robots. And I don't know where to begin. And the best piece of advice I can provide is seek out an expert in that area.

Speaker 2 07:46 There are a number of people who have, you know, distinct core competency in the thing that you're trying to do, and you're not alone, you know, just because somebody's selling a service or they, you know, that's the product they sell doesn't mean that, that reaching out to them and moving through the processes and valuable for everyone. Um, so working with a partner and finding the right, you know, ecosystem to solve the goal that you have, that's specific to your business is, is invaluable. Or at the early stage, do not try to do it alone. If you don't have the expertise in house, you can find it. Elon Musk was recently quoted the, one of the facts that he tried to over automate one of his lines to manufacturer his electric cars. And he kind of stepped back from the automation and included more people in automation.

Speaker 2 08:33 And that's kind of where we're getting to. Right. I think so. I think the vision hasn't changed where I think there are a lot of companies that look to look at automation with the near term goal of being lights out. You know, let's take all the people out of the plant and turn the lights off. It's kind of the vision. And there are, there are opportunities to do that today, but they're, they're very specific. You know, the, the human workforce has a dexterity and a flexibility that automation can't always provide. And it doesn't always make sense to provide. And I think in the marketplace today, there's a better understanding of what automation is capable of doing and not capable of doing and how you can merge that automation technology with people to drive that efficiency and, and move forward as a, in the most effective manufacturing solution possible.

Speaker 2 09:24 It's funny because when I was a young applications engineer at a T S I M w w we would cost justify automation kind of on the back of labor sometimes, but that's all changed now. And, and we sometimes hear about, Hey, a, robot's going to take your job, but that with an unemployment rate of 3.6% in the U S currently, that's absolutely not going to happen. Yeah. I think that's another thing where you you've hit the nail on the head. Uh, maybe five to 10 years ago. You heard that a lot. I I'm, I'm concerned about automation. It's going to take my job and that's not what we hear anymore. Automation and technology. And this goes back all the way to, you know, the invention of the loom and in England, you know, technology is about making us more efficient and making us better and, and solving a market need.

Speaker 2 10:06 And because there's so much urgency around not being able to fill vacancies in the manufacturing environment, there's a much different approach to technology coming into the manufacturing facility. It really is looked upon as another member of the team. And, you know, to the point earlier on about collaborative, the collaboration between people and technology to achieve a common goal has, has opened up significantly over the last couple of years. One of the things I wanted to ask you about Simon is a little bit about industry 4.0 and internet of things and how that happens along your job and the technologies that you're working on significant trend in automation, because it helps to get a better understanding of what's actually happening on the shop floor. So anytime I speak about industry 4.0, I try to level set on a definition because, you know, there, there are many floating around, uh, but in my mind industry 4.0 is the centralization of operational data.

Speaker 2 11:04 You know, you're taking in all this different information from a variety of different places, and you're trying to create one database that you can analyze and get good information from and the pursuit. And the goal is exactly the same as, you know, trying to find the right people. You're, you're trying to be more efficient. And so industry 4.0 is kind of the next generation of bringing in information to help leaders make informed decisions about how to, how to shift and improve and adapt their business to the goals that they have. And so that's significant and automation because, you know, one automation can be a significant investment in both dollars and time. Um, but it's also a part of the, the, the ROI and understanding when and where you need to automate step one is really understanding what's happening on your floor. Yes. And so when you have all this automation and all the data, then you can actually make decisions that will critically affect the future of when you're going to, what recipes are you using, what you're going to be doing, and possibly share this with other plans.

Speaker 2 12:04 I, in my opinion, that's the main value of industry 4.0, it's it's informed decision making from start to finish. And whether that decisions in the design of something. So you're using a digital twin or a simulation, if it's when to implement more technology or when something's not performing the way it should on the manufacturing floor. So in operations, or, you know, even in supply chain, when you need to bring on a new supplier or, you know, some catastrophe has happened in the weather to delay a shipment and, you know, that might take your plant down. It's, it's having information available to the decision makers when they need it to make key decisions to maintain your operational efficiency. So, one of the exciting things, I think Simon about industry 4.0 and about IOT, is that we're now being able to take some of these scheduled downtimes and predict the maintenance that we need to do on an automation system.

Speaker 2 12:58 So if your automation in a factory of a thousand people is down for an hour, like what's that going to cost versus how much of an investment you can make in software? I think you're absolutely right. The same. We're seeing the same trend because that's maybe one of the more straightforward return on investment calculations that you can do. Most manufacturers know what their cost of downtime is. So to be able to make the investment in the wireless infrastructure or the sensor technology, or the software that you need to implement those industry 4.0 dashboards, that's a fairly straightforward calculation and, and a relatively easy leap from, you know, what we do today to what we could do better tomorrow. Um, so preventative maintenance is a fantastic one. We have lots of capability to be able to do that, to monitor with the way that, you know, a robot inside of a piece of automation is behaving and kind of when things go outside of normal operational bounds that, you know, we should take a look at that one the next time that we have the opportunity to do so.

Speaker 2 13:58 So, you know, the, I think the, the, the goal is that if I know my ABB robot is a, is, is maybe going off a little bit, I could actually have the robot recommend to a CMMS or some kind of maintenance system, or maybe it's an ATS system saying, Hey, listen, servo number four is going, are we there yet? Like, are we getting to that point where, Hey, there's an alert on my phone. Uh, we just ordered a servile rope motor for our new robot. We are absolutely there. And you can see that on ETS equipment, uh, with some of the, the software that we provide, that you can monitor, you know, specific performance criteria with different pieces within the machinery, where you could get a text on your phone to say something is performing outside of its normal characteristics. You're going to have to take a look at this robot or this vision station or this pick and place we're absolutely there today.

Speaker 2 14:51 Simon, when I'm looking at buying a piece of capital, a highly automated factory, let's say I'm going to spend $5 million on a machine. What, what I kind of look at the IOT side of it, it's the software, what kind of budgets or money or time or energy should I be thinking about for the information system, because maybe it comes out of a different budget. What I've seen in the market is, is usually that does come out of a different budget. There's a, there's a cap X budget, and then an operational budget. And most often the data piece comes out of the operational day to day budget, some sort of monthly subscription or something like that. Um, so typically it's a, I think a relatively small percentage, you'd probably be in the five to 10% range for kind of the overall cost of implementation and then a much smaller amount going forward.

Speaker 2 15:39 One of the things I really like about having internet of things and industry 4.0 is that I might be able to keep less spare parts around, right. Because all of a sudden now I actually have data to support what my spare parts emergency parts and where parts should be. Do, do you agree with that? I absolutely agree with that. And the other piece of that is with the interconnectivity of the supply chain. Now you could have one central hub for any of your technology standards, or even your supply partners can keep spare parts and monitor your equipment. So they know when, you know, the widget inside of your machine is starting to show signs of wear, and they can preemptively ship you a component for the maintenance that they know you're going to need to do in the next period of time. So there's some really interesting business models that are emerging around preventative maintenance and information around the system to open up and enable different support services for keeping the machinery running and keeping efficiency on the shop floor.

Speaker 2 16:38 It's exciting because you could literally be coming to work and all of a sudden there's a team there to, to do something to a piece of automation. And you really didn't even know this was happening because it'll wear to the team to come in and do this retrofit or do this thing thing it needed to do. Yeah. It's one of the more exciting trends right now, all around support and service of machines is because it sort of takes that decision delay or decision leg away from, you know, the old way of doing it, where something was wrong on the floor, or maybe an email sent maybe a phone call. Somebody gets it in the morning, they need to escalate, you know, somebody gets on, it gets in a car or comes in and whatever with having all of that information automated and that, that instantaneous kind of notification of downtime, you can really shrink the amount of impact on the production floor.

Speaker 2 17:25 So when you're creating with your team, when you're creating new products, because this is the world you live in, right. It's standard automation products that you can sell either internally, or you can sell externally, or you can use with distributors or whatever. Um, so industry 4.0 is all, it's all baked in, right? Like you probably is that your approach. Yeah. All of that is, is baked in, um, knowing that it's an important trend, knowing that that's where automation is moving and that data is, I would say, almost required in today's deployments of major automation solutions. That's all baked in and built in to the feature set and functionality of the products that we build. Um, we also have a manufacturing intelligence platform and aluminate that enables this type of information to be effectively displayed to the people who need it when they need it. Yes.

Jim: I’d love to, I'd love to actually have one of your team members come on a separate podcast to talk about illuminate, because I think it's a very, very exciting technology. And I, I'd almost like to explore it like in depth so that we can give the listeners some kind of purview of what's happening in the industry. I think that that would be a good suggestion and they will do it far better justice than I will. So you could definitely dedicate a session to, to aluminate without I'd like to chat about some of the trends you're seeing in industrial automation. Uh, you know, from my perspective, I think programs are becoming more important time to market's getting thinner. It seems people are, I believe they're spending more money. I think things are getting more complicated. What are some of your thoughts on what's happening in the industrial automation market in general, you even touched on a couple of the market drivers for the trends that we're seeing.

Speaker 2 19:04 So industry 4.0, obviously a big one. We spoken about that, but even outside of that, there's reconfigurability and redeployment, I think is becoming more of a decision criteria in what people are doing and companies are doing when they invest in their manufacturing floor because of market uncertainties and product cycles coming shorter. There's a realization that we need to redeploy the things that we're investing in. And we might not know when we're making the initial investment, what that next thing might look like. So that's changing a lot because of that. We're seeing a major shift in companies wanting to standardize on certain technologies and standardization provides us significant amount of opportunity and efficiencies in a number of areas for companies that are investing on their manufacturing floor support is one of them, but also having everybody know what tools and technologies are available to them when they do that reconfiguration and the redeployment serves for a lot of efficiency inside of the organization as a whole.

Speaker 2 20:08 Um, and then the last one that's fairly major it maybe piggybacks on the back of collaborative robots is just technology is becoming more accessible where the, the user interfaces of industrial automation and, you know, industrial automation is a broad term, but the, the interfaces of robotics, of vision, of pick and places of PLCs, they're following in the trend of smartphones to be more accessible, to more people. And that's opening up new applications and new opportunities for automation, it's kind of like the app suffocate, I call it the application of automation, right? Where, you know, you expect some of the same things that you get on your cell phone or your iPhone or your smartphone, uh, that, you know, it should, we shouldn't really need training. Like we shouldn't really read the manuals. I mean, we still make the manuals, but we don't really have to read them.

Speaker 2 20:59 So I think it's, I think you're right. I think some of those exciting times, and I think that's what naturally happens is the industrial world starts to follow the commercial world because we have these expectations of, of how things work in our personal lives. And there's really no reason why it shouldn't be the same in our, in the workplace. And so that those trends usually lag each other, but because our expectations change our demands on our suppliers and our partners change, and you see innovation and things kind of drive to follow what's happening in the consumer world. You've touched on a point there that I didn't want to talk to you a little bit about, uh, innovation is something that the industry has kind of, I think kind of slowly innovated, right? Like we look at robots and what industrial robots specifically, the changes that have happened over the last like 40 or 50 years.

Speaker 2 21:45 And just now we're seeing the collaborative robot companies. And of course there were the first big ones which was rethink and universal robots. Um, and now we have like a hundred other robots chasing behind them. And, but what's really exciting about this, I think is that a lot of these companies are putting more money and more time and more effort into innovation. And do you see that as well? Absolutely. And I think it comes back to the major market trends because opportunity really breeds innovation. And because, you know, the fundamental challenge right now in manufacturing is not having enough people to sustain what we want to do. There's a significant opportunity to automate, but maybe not with traditional automation or automation as, as it's been done, you know, five to 10 years ago. So that's created an opportunity to create new automation, products, do different things in the automation world to serve this very real, this very urgent and emerging need in the marketplace.

Speaker 2 22:43 And I think it's one of these things that, the company you work for. I'm sure you're investing heavily in automate in innovation. And, but I also feel everyone else is. And I think that this is, these are these things that will push the entire industry forward. I absolutely agree with you. The whole automation pie is growing. You know, if you look at the market, the whole pie is getting bigger because the market need is changing. And, you know, it's fantastic to be able to work for the world's largest custom automation provider in ATS. We have significant significant experience in literally automating the most challenging automation applications in the world. And to be able to draw on that experience while driving innovation forward is just a fantastic opportunity for both myself and for partners that we work with. It's like a big sandbox, right?

Speaker 2 23:30 It is. I, you know, anytime I, I talked to people who I went to school with or friends it's, it's an engineer's paradise to work for an automation company. You take world-class technologies and you put them together to solve some unique problem day in and day out. And if the technology doesn't exist, then you need to go innovate it and build it. Absolutely. Well, listen, Simon, I want to thank you very much for joining us on the podcast today. Can you let people out there know how to get ahold of you?

Yeah, absolutely. So these easiest ways, probably my LinkedIn, you know, Simon Drexler, I'm out of Cambridge, Ontario, working for ATS automation. And so the second way would be my email. So S Drexler, ATS, automation.com. Drexler's Dre X, L E R. Well, thank you. So, I mean, that was great.

My name is Jim Beretta and I'm the moderator at the robot industry podcast. So if you like this podcast, please rate us wherever you find your podcasts, but more importantly, tell your friends about it, send them an email, tweet us with a hashtag

I'd like to thank and acknowledge our sponsor today. That is A3 the association for advancing automation. It's the umbrella association for the RIA, the robotics industry association, the AI, the automated imaging association. MCMA the motor control manufacturers association and a three Mexico. These four associations combined represent almost 1300 automation manufacturers, component suppliers, systems integrators, and users, research groups, and consulting firms from throughout the world that are driving automation.