Speaker 0 00:00:07 Hello, everyone. I'd like to welcome you to the robot industry podcast. This is the podcast dedicated to advanced manufacturing capital equipment and the robotics and automation industry. My name is Jim Beretta, and I am your host while
Speaker 1 00:00:21 Work as a project manager and application engineer in several automation companies and has experienced working in automotive, pharmaceutical food processing, lab instrumentation and retail printing industries. So he's had a wide variety of synergistic technologies, which undoubtedly has given him a big variety of product process and automation knowledge. Welcome to the podcast Lyle. And we're happy to have you in our series,
Speaker 2 00:00:47 Jim, and I appreciate you having me.
Speaker 1 00:00:49 Today's podcast is about the steps that you need to develop an automation system. And since it Earhart, you're experts in assembly automation and robotics and tooling and in lean automation. So it's a very good fit. So while let's talk about some of the steps involved in building an automation system, and I often think of the build of an automation system as a bubble that moves through the shop. What's your thoughts on that?
Speaker 2 00:01:15 Yeah, I think that's definitely the case. I mean, have some distinct phases and have a project that occurs from, you know, design and then things start to be released to sheen and fabrication groups for custom details to be machined and manufactured and fabricated, uh, and that that's sometimes can occur in, uh, over a period of time where we're releasing things as they become available from engineering or some, you know, so that bubble becomes a little bit elongated and a little more fluid. And then other times it may be an all at once release and then that bubble is more rounded and, you know, not quite as fluid and elongated, but yes, it definitely moves through as, as a bubble and, you know, indefinite stages through assembly and then onto debugging and testing
Speaker 1 00:02:08 In our pre-call. One of the things that Earhart is really good at is lean automation. But for today's example, we're gonna, uh, use, um, like an example of a multi station automated system. We in the industry called a line and often they're a straight line or a big oval, but we still call it a line. And the word probably came from like the automotive industry, right, where, uh, Henry Ford started the system where it really was a line in the final product, simply rolled off the wine. But I wanted you to maybe give the audience some definitions of some of the key parts of an automation system and maybe explain what some of these items are that they may be unfamiliar with, especially if they've never bought an automation system before.
Speaker 2 00:02:50 Sure. And yeah, so one of the key components that one of the things that is usually at the, of every automation system is a PLC, which is an acronym for programmable logic controller. These are industrial computer systems designed specifically for controlling machines and processes. You know, States of input devices are monitored. Decisions are made in the CPU and based on programmed evaluation of these States, uh, we're going to drive connected output devices. So essentially you have, you know, the main parts of a PLC or the, you know, it has a power source. It has a rack for installing input modules and output modules. So those are the, the main components, uh, PLCs have been around for about 50 years. And so they've developed, you know, as with anything been around that long, we, you know, they today's PLCs are capable of a whole lot of capability that, you know, initially, uh, was not there, you know, and you're able to have digital IO, which is essentially an on our off state and we're just detecting whether it's on or whether it's off.
Speaker 2 00:04:11 And then we also have analog capability where you can detect the, a voltage range or an amperage range and make decisions based on that coupled with PLCs and other key component that is kind of a foundational item for automation is an HMI, which is also an acronym for human machine interface and today's HMI's or programmable control panels is essentially that replaced the many of the push button in pilot light, uh, features of the past. You know, we still see some of those obvious, you know, we don't have e-stop buttons, for example, are still a hard wired button that is not part of an HMI controllable panel. You know, here's, you know, this is the area where an operator will go and the main hub of things where he can initiate, pause, whole monitor the actions going on, uh, within the automation or the equipment that he's he's operating.
Speaker 2 00:05:15 You know, here's where we would see messages display to got about machine faults, process steps, machine status, you know, things of that nature. Another key item or foundational item we talk about are parts feeders. Part feeders are generally, you know, the generally speaking are the devices that transfer parts or sub-assemblies to and automation. So for processing either these could take the form of conveyors, either powered or gravity, gravity fed vibratory feeder bowls are a very common item for feedings, especially smaller component parts screws into a screw driving operation are very, very, very for, uh, for a feeder application. We also have things like de stacker mechanisms, which may take a vertical stack of components and singulate them, uh, for processing and, and feed into an automation process. Another item we often talk about run into our test stations, test stations or something along the line that we might verify specific aspects of the assembly, uh, or the process, common automated test stations, uh, our leak testing, um, vacuum decay, or pressure, pressure, decay, leak, testing, electrical characteristics who might check continuity, voltage, et cetera, things like that. You know, we also may have functional tests where we take an assembly and, uh, connect to it and do some functional tests say on a pump or something of that nature.
Speaker 2 00:06:59 Another foundational building block item that we want to define for you is end of arm tooling sometimes referred to as <inaudible>. And these are the devices or mechanisms that attach to the end of the robot. So the robot wrist, and that actually perform the process, or it gives the robot functionality. This might be a pneumatic or electrically powered gripper, a series of vacuum cups for handling, uh, material removal tools, welding torches. These might all be examples of, uh, end of arm tooling for a robot. We also have quick change tools available to allow for seamless change from one tool to a different tool, to handle a variety of parts or processes that the robot need to perform. There's other parts of NRM tooling, such as collision sensors that also exists, uh, to help protect the equipment and the process. Another item we want to define upfront here is machine vision, machine, vision systems now, or a camera, the lighting, and a vision controller.
Speaker 2 00:08:12 And that package altogether becomes your machine vision system with machine vision images are taken and analyzed by the vision controller, and then they provide feedback to either the PLC or potentially to the robot controller. It's very common now to happen. Machine vision integrated directly into robots, and the robots suppliers are doing a really good job of having those packages immediately available that are integrated in interface to their particular controller. Two demons machine vision systems are commonly used to inspect part quality, uh, part presence, maybe part orientation, things of that. And we also 3d machine vision has taken some, some big strides here in recent years and help to develop a whole new bin picking automation concept, which is essentially a bin full of parts in random fashion, not oriented or located in any way. And we're able to take a 3d picture of that and then coordinate the robot to go and pick up parts from that bin, you know, until it's empty. We also have machine vision, especially in the 2d version, uh, useful and adaptive processes, such as conveyor tracking where parts are running down, let's say belt conveyor, and they're not located or oriented in any way, shape or form, but the robot can track those along the conveyor and picked them up on the fly.
Speaker 2 00:09:48 Guarding is also another item we want to define, and it's a key element to any automation system because we need to make sure we're, you know, we practice safe methods for protecting operators and peripheral personnel from, from the hazards of machine motion or hazards created by the process. You know, we might have, if we're doing a material removal process, chips, welding, we have arc flash and things of that nature that we need to protect machine operators. And, you know, somebody that may be just passing by the cell. So guarding could become a physical barrier, whether it be a wire mesh, tight fencing, solid physical barriers. Uh, in some cases we also have light curtains in areas, sensors that can all be incorporated and integrated and have their own own uses within automation cells for providing that safety and protection for the operator and, uh, peripheral personnel, you know, as automation integrators, we work with these, these items on a, on a daily basis. So we have, you know, the skill and experience that maybe a customer just getting into automation or doesn't really have the same sort of experiences that we have. It also affords us an opportunity. We, our purchasing power may be greater on some of these items, uh, as well in that our volumes are greater than, than say someone who's not been involved in, you know, doing automation and purchasing these types of components.
Speaker 1 00:11:28 Those are good. Some good points. Thanks. Well, you know, I totally agree the, the fact that a big company like Johnson, Johnson, they probably have all the things in their, uh, in their company of like robot programming and industrial designers and sensor programmers and all these other talents, but to be able to put them on the same job at the same time exactly when they need them to be, to be busy is really, really, uh, it's almost impossible.
Speaker 2 00:11:55 Yeah. So I think there are some companies and some of the larger automotive companies as well have, you know, talented engineers and maintenance personnel that could do these types of things. But what we, we have what I have experienced over the years and, and had this communicated directly from those guys is they have other jobs that are full-time jobs. And so often these integration projects or automation projects become a part-time job for them. And, you know, you know how it goes when you're doing something as part-time, you're not, it doesn't get your full attention. You're not as efficient at your regular full-time job. And so your full-time job gets short changed and you don't give the full attention or due to the automation part-time thing that you're doing. So, uh, you know, that's where I think integrators can be useful to customers, uh, especially customers who don't have aren't maybe as big and don't have some of that experience and talent on board that some of the larger companies may have.
Speaker 1 00:13:01 And one of the big challenges while two is, is time to market so critical for these companies. So they can, if they don't need it for two years, maybe they can do it drip by drip, but it's so much easier to get an integrator involved. They have a, they have a start date and a stop date and a delivery date. And, uh, it just, it's all a lot more organized. Hey, let's talk about how you get started with a customer around automation. Uh, to me often it happens when a customer like they land a contract or a bid for a program to produce a part, say like an automotive, small motor pump. Is that usually what happens?
Speaker 2 00:13:37 Yeah, I think that's a lot of times that is the case. A customer is either bidding on some new work, a new part that they're going to bring in for production, or they're expanding a, an existing production line to add a new model year or something of that nature. Uh, or you have customers who just, uh, are becoming less cost competitive in, in their particular market. And they need to figure out a way to be more cost competitive. We also have considerations where you have safety and ergo concerns. The parts are large, uh, they're difficult, or they're heavy, or they're awkward to handle. You know, other things may be that a customer has developed some part quality issues. So there, they need to figure out a way to solve some of their quality issues through automation. You know, we talked, you know, you mentioned before a little bit about manufacturing costs and, uh, there's always, uh, you know, we need to have this mindset of improvement because there's always somebody else out there trying to, trying to get better.
Speaker 2 00:14:58 So for us, the earlier in the process, we can get involved with the customer the better I think for everybody. So if we can get involved when that customer is quoting to bring a new product into their, into their facility, if we can collaborate with them at that point, I think we can mutually understand the process and the expectations and come up with a solution that, you know, tailor an automation solution, that's going to best meet their needs and which allows them to become as competitive as possible and winning that Newark. Um, and then I think just things just flow a little bit better on through that the earlier in the process that we're able to be involved with customer in collaboration.
Speaker 3 00:15:48 Yeah. I totally agree with you. I think it, uh, earlier is always works better because automation is built over time and you can't, you have to do things in a certain order, right? You can't paint and plate at the same time. Right.
Speaker 2 00:16:01 Right. I mean, I think sometimes I look at it as general contractor integrator as a general contractor say on your house. I mean the general contractor may offer you some more cost-effective ways to do some things or some different options if you get them involved in it earlier in the process, say when you're designing the home, as opposed to when you're already done, and you've already got your mind set on what you, what you're going to be, what you want it to be. Then I think he kinda, you know, he gets stuck in some things that way that maybe could have been a little better or a little more cost-effective for it.
Speaker 3 00:16:38 Let's talk then about the customer specification document. Uh, how does that happen? And, and what happens if a customer doesn't have one?
Speaker 2 00:16:45 Yeah. So of course, many large customers is especially automotive, the medical device folks. They're typically always going to have a pretty detailed specification and many, potentially many chapters or volumes to that, you know, may have specific specifications for electrical and controls and another kind of subset of specifications that relate to mechanical design and tooling design and things of that nature. You may have another specification that is specific for their CAD requirements and how their drawings need to be neat to look. So, yeah, there's certainly those customers that have the detailed specifications and they usually have a detailed statement of work of what the processes look like to metrics require the acceptance requirements, you know, possibly even a preliminary concept that they would like to be quoted. Most typically customers are, are open to accepting alternate proposals, even if they do have a preliminary concept. You know, obviously unless it's something they've done before and they know this is what works and they know what they want.
Speaker 2 00:18:01 And then, you know, if they prescribe it that way, then you know, that's the way we would typically go. But given those customers who aren't big and don't have those sort of things at their disposal, we have a standard checklist. We normally go through to ask the sort of questions that will allow us to kind of generate a specification document that can then be utilized between us and the customer to generate our proposal. And then in our, in effect, our proposal then becomes somewhat of a defacto specification as well. And that that's what, as we proceed through the project after purchase order, then you know, that's what we would perform to. And that's what would become the expectations of the, uh, of the project.
Speaker 1 00:18:59 Thanks oil. Hey, uh, can you explain the difference between budgetary and firm when it comes to a quotation document?
Speaker 2 00:19:07 Sure. You know, there are different levels of quotes depending on the stage of the process that the customer might be in budgetary quotes or less detailed and provide are intended to provide a general ballpark price to customer who may be in the planning stages of the capital buy process. They need to get a number that they can take to management and to reference in capital funding approvals or internal analysis of, of whether to move forward with the project from quotes are generally provided when a customer has a, has funding available, have a go project and they need to get those say three quotes for purchasing so that they can identify and select the best possible solution and costs. And here's where we want to be more accurate where we might've had a plus or minus 15 or 20% variation on the budgetary quote, we need to be nailed down and we need to get, go out and get from pricing for say more costly components.
Speaker 2 00:20:24 Like we need to know what we're going to have to pay for a robot where you need to know what we're going to have to pay for a vibratory feeder. For example, we need to get some quotes from our suppliers, say for a custom conveyor, some of those bigger ticket items we need to, we need to have those nailed down and not just kind of guess at those numbers. We also may some, some more conceptual work, you know, put some designs together as say for a concept layout, or we may do some conceptual design for end of arm tooling or, uh, some other things just to make sure that in that from proposal stage, we've got things nailed down quite a bit more because the expectation on the customer side is that they're going to buy it for that price. Whereas in the budgetary stage, we may know that, Hey, there's some, some movement on that number, up or down a little bit.
Speaker 2 00:21:25 Another one that we didn't get is kind of in the budgetary range, uh, or budgetary realm, I should say that we often get into is, and it's more when, uh, a salesman that might just give a number of, kind of, I say, off the cuff, but an educated guess on a number that's a bigger chunkier number, even that a budgetary number, but we call it a, a rough order of magnitude where a, customer's just wanting to say, Hey, look, we're just kinda talking about automation. I just need to know, Hey, is this, is this $250,000? Or is it $500,000 or is it a million dollars? So, so those are kind of the three areas, three levels of quotes that we kind of look at in our business.
Speaker 3 00:22:15 Do you ever do this when you're in a factory, you walk by a piece of automation, maybe you'll look it over a couple of times and say, Hey, this is a $750,000 piece of automation.
Speaker 2 00:22:24 Oh, absolutely. You know, and I think that's a lot of times what, you know, when we talk about these rough order of magnitude things is because we want to know in our mind kind of what we're, what numbers, you know, what the value of what we're proposing looks like, because we have to, we also have to consider what, how the customer is going to pay for this what's their return on investment. So we have that idea in mind as we're quoting so that we don't quote something that's, that's, uh, overkilled knowing that their budget is say for, uh, you know, $250,000 machine that we don't put in, uh, you know, some use technology or, you know, add additional features that may be great features, but they're not 100% necessary, which drive drive the cost out of their budget.
Speaker 3 00:23:18 I was the only guy who went running around and taking a look at these numbers. No, absolutely not. I'm glad I got a company. Hey, let's talk about prototype automation and kind of customer risk reduction because this works for both sides, right?
Speaker 2 00:23:34 Yeah, absolutely. I mean, there's, there's things and there's processes that, you know, it helps, it helps us to verify solutions for risky or unknown parts of the process as early as possible in the schedule. You know, this helps us to minimize the amount of rework we might run into later and allows for a more robust and efficient overall solution. When we are able to know and understand some of these riskier, unknown processes early on and machine vision is a great example of, of a technology that lends itself really well to prototyping. And that's mainly because you can relatively easily do bench top testing with machine vision. You know, I've, as a matter of fact, we have machine vision, uh, vision cameras and lighting setups and everything. And typically on, on any vision project that we're doing, we want to do feasibility studies, even as early as the quotation stage to understand, can we see these features, uh, of this part that the customer is requesting?
Speaker 2 00:24:50 You know, whether it be from a quality standpoint or just a lot of times, the vision is used for verifying parts of an assembly have been assembled and assembled correctly. You know, other things, are you seeing a lot more of like 2d, 2d, barcode matrices printed, or stamped, or laser etched onto parts for part traceability. And, you know, we want to see that with, uh, you know, vision upgrades. It's very, it's relatively simple to do that upfront and determine, Hey, I, yep. I could see that code. I can see it. Well, there's, you know, it's not a marginal application, things of that nature. And then, you know, this just takes one aspect of it and solidifies it to the point where we can focus our energy time and energy on other things, uh, throughout the process.
Speaker 1 00:25:50 Um, can you talk a little bit about, uh, we're, we're talking about things like PLCs and part feeders, and these are third party, uh, or long lead items.
Speaker 2 00:26:01 I, yeah, I guess first a long lead is kind of, uh, can be somewhat nebulous terminology. It's difficult to put a hard and fast number on this for every project it's, it might be somewhat different for every project. And, uh, so the project manager needs to evaluate their project schedule and determine what, what long lead might mean for this particular project. You know, I think typically when we look at that, uh, we'd like to me as a project manager, anyway, I would say from the time I complete engineering to the time I want to start this automation, you know, there's a gap where I'm purchasing equipment and, uh, you know, starting assembly. So the thing I'd like to drive that is what the time it takes me to manufacture and machine custom details. And typically in most projects I've been involved with, at least you want to look at that, that window of being like six to eight weeks.
Speaker 2 00:27:08 So that I think if you were, were to try and pick a number, I would say anything longer than six to eight weeks, we're going to say is there's a long lead item on a typical project. You know, so some of the things that might've been long lead items in the past, like robot suppliers are doing a much better job of over the years if identifying high volume models and having models built up in certain configurations in their pipeline and, you know, keeping those inventory levels and manufacturing levels high. So where, you know, I don't think robots are, are one of those things that anymore, at least for the more common and widely used models have very reasonable lead times, vibratory feeders might be a prime example of something that is a longer lead time. And, you know, this is really due to that's typically, unless you're doing something that's like a screw, a standard screw.
Speaker 2 00:28:11 You know, when we're looking at vibratory feeders of other components, you know, you have an engineering time and you have a development time that's required to complete and verify the operation of, uh, of a feeder bowl. And many times though will take thousands of parts cycles through a feeder to get that process. Right. And it's a process of, you know, a lot of rework involved just by the nature of it, uh, to, to get a vibratory feeder working correctly. So I think the long lead time items typically come in when there's an engineering component to it, I think any more things even that are coming from internationally, I don't think we're seeing the long lead times that we, that we did maybe in years past. Um, so I think it's more typically something that has a, an engineering or a custom component to it that, that creates the long lead time issues. That's good.
Speaker 1 00:29:08 No, thank you. Well, so one of the questions I have is kind of who chooses what, like a conveyor system or a sensor, or even a PLC.
Speaker 2 00:29:19 Well, especially on things like sensors and PLC components, uh, many customers have distinct preferences on that, on those sorts of things. And robots fall into that category as well. And that's mainly because they have engineers or maintenance personnel that have distinct, uh, experiences and knowledge base, uh, and they may have those components already in their facility in many automation cells already. Uh, so which case a lot of companies will keep, uh, an inventory of spare parts on, on hand. So in that case, the customer will, will drive the selection of PLCs and sensors, uh, that, you know, they're comfortable with or familiar with. And they have a preference for that may be true for something like a conveyor system, but not as much I wouldn't say. And in that case, and for, for other things where a customer doesn't have a preference, we, as an integrator are going to look for the things where we have a knowledge base, and we have experiences that we've, we've built our preferences based on past successes and failures and in the support level that we get in, which is another factor also for customers, you know, they want to buy sensors that they get good support from their local distributor.
Speaker 2 00:30:44 You know, if they have an issue or they need to purchase components and things of that nature, they want to, you know, that local support is, is very important to them as it is to us. We rely on, uh, on our local support system as well, when we're doing designing and building systems, uh, for things that problems and issues that come up and, and are, and also, you know, for our cost space as well.
Speaker 3 00:31:14 Uh, one of the questions I was asking, you talked about project management and you're the applications engineer, of course. And when you land a project, when somebody decides to send you a purchase order, what's the handoff between the apps and, uh, the, and the PM. Yeah.
Speaker 2 00:31:30 Yeah. So, yeah, this is obviously a key event, uh, for successful project launch. There's been a lot of, uh, during the course of, uh, the quotation process, uh, in many times there's a lot of iterations that occur. You know, it's not often that we quote something one time and the customer buys that there's many times where we have two, three or more revisions to a quote along the way before we, you know, get that collaboration correctly. And the customer's happy and satisfied that the fit, the layout configuration and the, and things of that nature are all all correct. So, you know, during that time, there may be many communications emails, phone calls, visits to the customer, things of that nature that occur. We want to make sure that we get all of that, those preliminary concepts, the communications, why we moved from one concept to, to another concept and, you know, make sure that the project team has that final revision. And that's what they're focused on, but they also understand some of the hurdles and some of the things that were pushback points from the customer. And so that, that thorough and complete handoff just helps us to alleviate confusion, unnecessary conflicts, uh, as we move into the project operation phase.
Speaker 1 00:33:08 So I'm a customer and I've just bought this, uh, automation system from you. I've sent you a purchase order, and now it comes to design, uh, and design approvals. How can you tell the audience what that kind of looks like?
Speaker 2 00:33:22 Yeah. So, you know, the other thing once, once that application hand off to project management has occurred, one of the first thing the project team wants to do is just get that meeting with the customer and have a sound of a kickoff meeting with, with that customer to make sure we all understand things the same way. And there's, you know, there may be new team members on the customer side that are being brought on board, and we want to get, you know, the team members synced up and their counterparts within our organization, say for instance, the, the person on the customer end that may be responsible for the controls piece of the automation, there may be a different person and we want to speak to for safety and ergo issues and, and things of that nature. So we want to make sure we get that involvement in that engagement from the customer early on.
Speaker 2 00:34:18 And we've found over the years that the advent of the web based conference calling has allowed us to keep the customer in the loop much more efficiently throughout the stages of the design process. In the way we do that is have a, say a weekly conference call where we're able to share our screen and share the process of the particular stations, station design that may be coming together. And we can then typically run into questions of, should I go this direction or go that direction or select this component versus that component or this particular design, there's maybe a couple of different ways we could design a particular piece of tooling and we have these web based designs and you share it on the screen. Then things become more clear to the customer and we're able to resolve some of these things in real time. And then when we get to that approval stage, then it's more just a affirmation of what we've been seeing weekend and week out in these weekly conference calls.
Speaker 2 00:35:27 You know, and I think this, this sort of involvement also allows the customer to get more people involved on their end, say for instance, the safety safety folks, or the operators or the maintenance personnel, whereas, you know, in times past, you know, it'd be a lot of times you didn't have this designer, you went and traveled to the customer or the travel customer traveled to your facility to do a design review. And oftentimes that didn't facilitate getting the maximum number of people involved too, just because of the travel logistics and things, things of that nature. So I think this allows a more complete involvement and engagement from both sides of it. And then when we get to that approval stage, what we, what we mean by approval is, Hey, we, we're all agreeing that these stations are meeting the expectations of the process and of what has been sold. So the customer is getting what they believe they purchased, and they believe that it's will function to, to do the, you know, what they expected to do. And at that stage, once we have those design approvals, then we would go on and finish our detailed design for the custom details and things of that nature, and actually create those, those drawings so that then we can get fabrication and machining completed.
Speaker 3 00:36:52 I, I totally agree with you. I think that, you know, by having these, uh, virtual technologies, people like health and safety and, uh, maintenance and such have that opportunity to chime in where they normally wouldn't be allowed out of the factory long enough to travel for a couple of days. Um, let's talk about the fabrication, the integration and the build.
Speaker 2 00:37:15 Okay. You know, there's certainly a lot, many of the items that require a certain sequence in fabrication and machining. I mean, you have different processes that may be required. Uh, you know, we may need to fabricate a steel tubular frame for our machine base. And part of that is we need to get a Blanchard ground steel plate. So, you know, those sorts of things, things like that could be occurring in parallel to we're fabricating the machine base frame, welding it together while the steel base plate for the tabletop is being made separately. And then the two get married together. At some point another prime example would be a tilling DLT detail that needs to be hardened for production operation. So many times let's say it's maybe a press operation. We might take a detail like that, machine it in a soft state and possibly assemble it to the machine, to the press and test it out, make sure that it fits and it functions as we expect it to.
Speaker 2 00:38:29 And at that point we would take it off and send it to heat treat to harden it. Uh, so in that way, if we did have to make some tweaks to it, uh, to send it back to machining, for example, we wouldn't, we'd be doing it in a soft state as opposed to a hardened state. And of course you need to allow time for painting. We would typically want to paint any items that need to be painted prior to assembly and debug so that things don't need to be taken back apart after the assembly and debug process to go through painting.
Speaker 4 00:39:02 And so then the next step is really about the runoff and the factory acceptance testing. So what does, what does that look like and how long does it take?
Speaker 2 00:39:11 I don't think there's necessarily a hard and fast number for that. I think it's going to run off and accepting substance testing provides, provides a demonstration of the operational characteristics of the automation equipment. It allows the customer an opportunity to ensure that what they purchased is what they're getting, that it functions the way they expected to. So obviously for more complex assembly line, multiple stations that may take longer to perform that runoff than say a single station piece of automation that doesn't have as many components and things to verify. The other thing is what level of expectation is there from the customer for runoff, you know, many of the big customers, the automotives and the medical type folks have very detailed and very extensive runoff and acceptance testing specifications. Uh, they may come in and have a checklist of things where they're just going around and doing visual checks for the better part of a day.
Speaker 2 00:40:18 Before you even begin to run, run the equipment. Certainly there's things in any runoff. We want to verify certain operational characteristics, which typically includes safety features, manual and automatic functional control, fault capture fault recovery cycle, time process capability. And, you know, we typically start a run off with the demonstration of these safety features and progress on through a fully automatic simulation of, of production. The reason we want to start with the safety aspects is many times customers will bring their own operators to run the system. And we want to ensure from our standpoint, as well as the customers, that everybody's comfortable, that whoever's going to operate the system for this demonstration is going to be able to do it in a safe way. Oftentimes there's, there's also something we can refer to as a dry cycle, which is essentially operating the parts and going through their functional motion, but not without parts present.
Speaker 2 00:41:22 We're not actually producing a part off of the automation. The machines are just in the automation, it's just going through the motions that would be with without parts. And in many, especially this is a special, especially a requirement in automotive, as you may have as many as 20 hours of, of dry cycle required as part of your runoff, how many times we're able to do that without the customer present, and maybe provide a video that, or just a log report of what occurred during that, during that dry cycle. But to answer your question of how long had a round-off takes, you know, it could be anywhere from a few hours to maybe even as long as a week, depending on the complexity and level of acceptance testing required.
Speaker 3 00:42:09 Thanks, Ellen. I'm pretty sure that there's no two runoffs that are exactly the same. And it's, it's almost like asking how long a piece of string is. Um, what are the things that, so we're getting now, the bubble is moving through the shop here. So what about operator training
Speaker 2 00:42:29 General and company organizations is probably one of those things that's been put on the back burner due to budget, budget cuts and things of that nature. But I think it's a key component for operational efficiency and effectiveness. I think it, it makes the operators better prepared to react and recover from machine faults and quality issues. One of the things is more of a soft feature of it is it gives the operator a better understanding of why the machine does certain things in certain ways. And it gives it, which in turn, I think gives them ideas for improvements because in the end, they're the ones that may have been running it, doing this production process that we're now automating. They may have been doing it for for years. So they understand about the parts. They understand the process probably as well as anyone. And, you know, oftentimes they're, they are willing and able to provide some, some very good input to the process to make things the best they can be. And I think it also another key component is giving the operator a greater sense of, uh, being a part of the team and the automation team in your own enhances their ownership of the automation, which can be very key to the success or failure of automation projects.
Speaker 3 00:43:58 Those are all good points. Um, so we're getting closer to the end of the bubble. What about commissioning? And so that's the, the whole idea of breaking down the line, putting on a truck and, and setting it back up wherever it's going to live.
Speaker 2 00:44:11 Yeah. Typically are the automation projects we're involved with. They have some form of, uh, installation and startup assistance, sitters included in our proposals. And certainly the more the equipment is operated. The more chance you have to discover issues or specific runtime scenarios, and many times you cannot fully simulate the full production process on our floor, which means there's areas of this that are only going to be seen for the first time, once it's set up and actually producing parts on the customer floor, other things that may occur as, you know, batch runs of parts. You know, if we were, if we run off and do debug and acceptance testing on a certain batch of parts, and then, you know, you get a new batch of parts in, you may discover issues related to part variation. So were not evident previously on your smaller sample size. Um, yeah, for that reason, we typically provide support throughout that installation and startup process, you know, and that's where we may get to the time to optimize cycle times, for instance, and, and confirm that data collection is, is occurring properly. You know, a lot of the things of that nature can only occur fully. Once things are installed on the customer floor and producing parts.
Speaker 3 00:45:41 I agree with you. That's one of the big challenges in automated manufacturing is making sure that your parts are, are consistent and they're in, they're in spec and you're not changing part manufacturers like after you get an automation system so much, these are very important. So the last thing then, and we were going to talk about this kind of in detail. So instruction manuals, what happens with that? I know it's very important to some companies, less important to others.
Speaker 2 00:46:08 Yeah. You know, certainly structured manuals are still exists and there are a key part of a key part of this solution, much like, you know, even your car, for instance, you know, you want to be able to look up in the manual, how to operate certain features. And, you know, we want to provide something that allows our, uh, for our customers, the opportunity to support their equipment, be that first line of defense and be able to resolve things and get things back up and running quickly and efficiently because they, you know, the automation equipment is not paying them back unless it's operating at full capacity. And, and as much as possible used to be when we would provide manuals, that would be, you know, we need say hard copy sets. So the manuals and the drawings and the programs, and any more today, it's, you know, everybody just wants the electronic version of things and, you know, they can print out copies, uh, as they see fit.
Speaker 2 00:47:11 You know, another thing you see now too, is some of the HMI's devices actually have PCs built into them and you will see, uh, customers having their drawings available to an operator or maintenance personnel can actually pull the drawing up at the machine. So you don't have to go find, uh, this drawing in the archives and, you know, then search through it. They, they have those updated drawings and the updated manual right there at the HMI. And they can pull these things up and read what they need to read or follow the instructions. They need to follow or troubleshoot something on a drawing right there at the machine. No, that makes a lot of sense, you know, nothing worse than being a maintenance person on an automation system and having to search around for the sensor bracket drawing or whatever that is that you're trying to replace.
Speaker 2 00:48:11 Hey, this has been really interesting while I'd like to thank you for taking time out of your day to chat with our audience. Um, while some of our listeners might have some other questions or might need to understand more about buying an automation system. How can people get in touch with you? You can reach me via email at L Weaver. That's L w E a V E
[email protected]. And my phone number is (937) 703-5246. And of course, feel free. You can find me on LinkedIn as well, feel free to reach out and connect. And we happy to talk to you anytime
Speaker 5 00:48:58 I would like to thank and acknowledge our partner. <inaudible> the association for advancing automation. <inaudible> three is the umbrella association for the R I a a I a M CMA and 83 Mexico. These four associations combined represent almost 1300 automation manufacturers, component suppliers, systems integrators, and users, research groups, and consulting firms throughout the world that are driving automation forward. I'd also like to thank and recognize our partner painted robot painted robot builds and integrates digital solutions. They're a web development firm that offers SEO and digital social marketing and can set up and connect CRM and other ERP tools to unify marketing sales and operations as web and digital is changing. Painted robot is helping advanced manufacturers stay modern and competitive in the space. You can find painted
[email protected]. If you'd like to get in touch with us at the robot industry podcast, our email address is the robot industry
[email protected]. Or you can find me Jim Beretta on LinkedIn. If you have an idea, an interesting company or technology, or would like to be a guest or nominate someone to be guest, please send me an email. We'll see you next time. And thanks for listening. Be safe out there. Today's podcast was produced by customer traction, and I'd like to thank my nephew, Chris gray for the music, Chris Coleman for the audio production, my partner, Janet, and our sponsors <inaudible> and painted robot.
