Episode 33: The Evolution of Automation

In this episode of The Sound of Automation podcast, we talk to Jeff Burnstein, President of the Association for Advancing Automation. We discuss the key takeaways of Automate, the evolution and accessibility of automation tools, and the latest industries adopting automation.

Guest Jeff Burnstein
https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeff-burnstein-25b5138/

Host Bryan Powrozek
https://www.linkedin.com/in/bryanpowrozek/

For more information on Wipfli, please visit our website at:
https://www.wipfli.com/manufacturing. You can also contact us here.

Transcript

Jeff Bernstein:

People first, the automation second. And let's let the people help us decide what it is we can use this automation for, especially once they get a win under their belt with something easy to start with.

Announcer:

Welcome to the Sound of Automation, brought to you by Clayton & McKervey, CPAs for growth-driven businesses.

Bryan Powrozek:

Welcome to the Sound of Automation. I'm Bryan Powrozek with Clayton & McKervey, and in today's episode we'll be talking about some of the trends that we're seeing in the industrial automation market. And joining me for that conversation is the president of the Association for Advancing Automation, Jeff Bernstein. Jeff, how are you?

Jeff Bernstein:

I'm doing great. How are you?

Bryan Powrozek:

I'm doing well. Doing well. Thanks for making some time for us today. I know that you're fresh off the big Automate show, and from what I've heard, record attendance, so congratulations on that.

Jeff Bernstein:

Thank you very much. It was record attendance and we're very proud of that.

Bryan Powrozek:

Oh, very good. So I guess before we get into some of the takeaways that you had from that event, I just figured if you give a little background on yourself and a little bit about what the association is focused on.

Jeff Bernstein:

Sure. Well, I'm the President of the Association for Advancing Automation. We are the largest trade group in we think the world for robotics and automation companies, with nearly 1200 members throughout the world. And our goal is to teach companies how to successfully apply robotics, machine vision, AI, motion control, IOT, all these technologies that are making companies more competitive and stronger global competitors.

Bryan Powrozek:

Excellent. And I know Jeff Bernstein has been involved with A3 for a number of years here, and you guys put on a lot of great events in all the areas that you cover. Automate, which obviously just wrapped up here, a great week long event here in metro Detroit. Lots of great technologies I saw there and even just thought leaders about where the direction this industry is heading. So based on that, what were your top takeaways from Automate? What are the trends that you're seeing in industrial automation?

Jeff Bernstein:

Well, my top takeaway was that so many companies who haven't automated yet are looking at automation to see if it's a solution to their most pressing problems. And oftentimes, that's a lack of labor. So you see industries like retail or restaurants who you wouldn't put at the top of the list of industries that automate in the past, but now are starting to accelerate not just exploration, but adoption of robotics and automation. And I think that is a big change. As you know, you think historically, it was considered that robots were for big automotive companies and other giant companies who could afford the investment. Well, now we're seeing a lot more off-the-shelf solutions that are more affordable, a little more accessible, easier to use. Small and medium-sized companies can quickly, with not a tremendous amount of capital to invest, adopt automation solutions at their company. So with the prices coming down, with ease of use going up, and companies can be up and running quickly now when they want to start their automation journey.

Bryan Powrozek:

Yeah. I think that even being in the professional services arena like I am, we're not seeing robots in the workplace per se, but we're seeing process automation where there's bots that are operating and taking over some of the manual data entry and things like that, that, as you said, the struggle for talent and the demographics that you're seeing, and as boomers retire and there's not enough workforce to replace, I think every business owner's going to be confronted with that and have to seriously consider the options that are out there for automation, obviously in the manufacturing world. But even in our careers, you'll probably get to a point where someday your tax return or your financial statements are automatically being generated by an application with minimal input from a human, so that's pretty exciting stuff though. I look at it and see the possibilities as opposed to the risks.

Jeff Bernstein:

Yeah, because it makes us so much more productive. Just think about the amount of hours that are spent in factories or warehouses on dull, dirty and dangerous jobs that people don't really want to do and shouldn't have to do. So if people can focus on tasks where they add value with their brains, their creativity, that makes your organization much more successful potentially.

Bryan Powrozek:

Yeah, definitely. And you mentioned something there. That's automation is starting to move down that chain. It used to be, oh, this is just for the large auto manufacturers, some of those. And we see this in our client base all the time, dealing with small to mid-size, privately held businesses that, well, that's for somebody else. And as you mentioned, the ease of implementations coming down, the technologies, I'm envisioning it's going to be similar to buying a printer. Now, you used to buy a printer and you'd have to install drivers and do all this. Well, now you buy it, you turn it on, it finds your home network, it connects and you're off and running. So any advice you have for those small to mid-sized businesses who might be a little bit intimidated by automation?

Jeff Bernstein:

Yeah, I would say the first thing to do is to start smart. And by that I mean find something that is a relatively simple task for the automation to do. It's a problem that you have, a challenge that you have. Maybe it has to do with turnover in certain roles or certain roles that people just don't want to do. And think of it as a tool to help those people and say, "Okay, this is simple enough. Maybe it's a repetitive task over and over again that a robot would be good at." Once you have a successful application, it becomes a lot easier to say, "Oh yeah, we want to do more of these things in our company. What could we do next?" It builds the confidence of the people that the robots and the other automated products that you have are tools to help them do their job better. They don't see it as a threat.

The preparation of the workforce is very important. You have to explain it before you implement it so that everyone knows what you're trying to do here. If the feeling is, "Oh, they're coming to replace my job with these machines," then that's not going to be very successful. The people won't even embrace it and it won't accomplish as much as possible that the automation can accomplish. So you really have to think of this people first, the automation second, and let's let the people help us decide what it is we can use this automation for, especially once they get a win under their belt with something easy to start with.

Bryan Powrozek:

Yeah, I like that point because that's almost change management 101. Start small, get the input from the team, and start getting that positive momentum of some small wins rather than trying to go too big too fast and really turn people off. Because even the best laid plan, it's not going to work out perfectly the first time. But as you can grow that and you get a team invested in it that buys into it, you can build up from there. And there's also resources out there. I know both of us being based in Michigan, we work a lot with the MMTC who does industry 4.0 assessments and can help those small to mid-size business owners identify those little projects and then even help them find the partner to go ahead and do that kind of implementation. At least from my perspective, another good best practice is don't try to go this alone. There's folks out there that can help you and can guide you down this path.

Jeff Bernstein:

Yeah. And sometimes it's a distributor that is assisting you on a smaller type of implementation. Maybe you're able to buy a collaborative robot that works side by side with people who are distributor. Maybe they have a little help for you. Sometimes it's a little more complicated. You need system integrators to do it if you don't have internal engineering resources. And those companies have a lot of expertise in working with companies of all sizes. So yeah, there's a ton of expertise available to get a successful application at your company.

Bryan Powrozek:

Yeah, and I know I've even, my own background on working in the auto industry for years, I know there were new technologies that would come out that the folks in the manufacturing plant would be like, "Wow, that's just the flavor of the month." And we tried that one time and it didn't work and now they're turned off to it forever. So as a business owner, if you're looking at this, and I personally feel that because of the changes going on in our manufacturing base in the US, for the small to midsize business to survive and be competitive, they're going to have to embrace these technologies. They're going to have to find a way to utilize them. So you definitely want to get that first foot forward in the right direction, make sure you're using the right folks because you don't want to get passed by by your competition because you're the only one that's refusing to adopt these technologies.

Jeff Bernstein:

That's a really good point because it's a globally competitive world now, and it wasn't always this way. Certainly when I got started four decades ago, it wasn't companies in China competing with US companies. And then you look at what's happened now, China's the biggest user of robotics in the world, and so they're competing with robots against companies in other countries, and you have to use the best technologies to keep up. Otherwise, it's going to be very tough to be globally competitive.

Bryan Powrozek:

And building off that, something else that recently I caught an article, you were interviewed by CNBC, I think around Automate about a couple industries that people typically wouldn't think were ripe for automation. I thought that was a pretty interesting article, and I guess if you wouldn't mind just sharing with the audience what the couple of industries you highlighted in there were.

Jeff Bernstein:

Well, I think I talked about construction and agriculture and food. So you think about a company like Tyson Foods, for instance, where they make chicken, they're chicken processors and maybe other things too. But you think about what happened during COVID, you couldn't bring people into work because they couldn't be that close together because it was the risk of spreading COVID. People didn't want to do that. So they had to look at their processes and say, well, first of all, a lot of people don't want to work on a chicken line anyway. And second of all, if you can't bring them in, so how can we automate some of these tasks? How do we stay up and running in an era of a pandemic? Well, it's not just the pandemic, it's post-pandemic as well. Because again, it's hard to find people to do some of these jobs. They're not the most glamorous jobs, cutting up chickens all day. So that's an industry that I think there's going to be lots of opportunity in. And there are a number of companies that have emerged with solutions in those industries.

Agriculture, it's another one. So you think about you don't necessarily have the same number of people available to pick some of the crops now because of the more restrictive immigration laws. And again, finding people to do some of this, there's certain things like strawberries that I'm told, if you don't pick the field in a three-day period, you have to plow it under because the strawberries are no good. How does automation help with that? How do you identify in a winery which grapes are ready to pick and how do you know? How do you have the data on it over time? Automation's starting to do that.

In construction, I was shown an application recently of a company that had developed a robotics solution. They were talking about the framing of these high-rise buildings and it takes two years to frame the building with certain parts and they could cut that down to a year with a robotics solution. Those are the kinds of things you say, "Wow, that would really be a game changer." So I feel like all those industries, plus many, many others, are certainly filled with opportunities for robotics and automation.

Bryan Powrozek:

Yeah, it's interesting you mentioning agriculture. I was speaking to a company out in California that specializes in this area, and just some of the ideas that he was sharing of things they're looking at and they're considering. I think everybody's got this image in their head of you drive by the farm and there's this huge sprinkler system that's spraying water across the whole field. And he's like, "Well, now we can go in, I can go check the moisture of the soil, apply water directly to that plant and move on to the next one and have this machine running 24 hours a day in the day and the night." And now you're more efficiently using your resources. Rather than having to apply a pesticide across an entire field, you're applying it just to specific plants or specific parts of a plant. And so now it's really forcing, in that case, the farmer, but you're talking about the construction company, the food processor, to really think in a completely different way than they're used to thinking because now they can target specific applications.

Jeff Bernstein:

Yeah, and you think about what that means for the environment that they are spraying less pesticides. There's just so many things like that in farming, in construction, and again, food processing, life sciences. You talk about healthcare broadly is going to be so important to us, especially with the aging population. It's one I think about a lot. What can we do to assist us with elder care, but also what can we do to discover drugs to cure some of the most difficult diseases that we face? These technologies are making progress in all these areas, so that'll be an exciting field as well.

Bryan Powrozek:

Yeah. On the food processing, I think you referenced an example in there of packing. Let's say it was chicken, you were packing chicken tenders onto a tray or whatever. And I thought about that after I was at the store and you know, pick up the two different packs and one's got a pound and the other one's got a pound and a half because you've got a person doing their best to fit that in. But now these robots, and they've gotten so good in the applications of being able to find and pick the right part and you can say, "Okay, these are the four pieces I'm going to pick and put in here, and I'm going to get close to the same weight every time," which then has the knock on effect of, okay, you can maybe shrink the packaging some because you don't have to accommodate a wide range of what's going in and you're getting more standardization. So it's pretty exciting to me with my engineering background to think about some of those possibilities and the advancements that can come from it.

Jeff Bernstein:

Yeah, and I was talking to some people who are in the shipping business about that same issue. So you have these standard sized boxes that you fill with different amounts that you order something from Amazon, you get this huge box. There's little thing in there. What if the automation could cut the boxes while they were filling it so that you had a box that was sized appropriately for what was being sent to you?

Bryan Powrozek:

Yeah.

Jeff Bernstein:

So automation is helping with that too.

Bryan Powrozek:

Oh, that's exciting. Very cool. Well Jeff, I appreciate the time and you sharing your thoughts. I think it's highly unlikely, but just in the event that somebody that listens to the podcast hasn't heard of A3 before, what's the best way for someone to get involved and find out more about the association?

Jeff Bernstein:

We've got a great website, automate.org, and it's got tons of information for anyone who's looking for either getting started with automating or expanding their use of automation, or just figuring out what events to go to learn more or people to contact or companies in their area who can help them. So I would encourage people to go to automate.org and reach out to me directly if they want. I'd be happy to help.

Bryan Powrozek:

Excellent. And shameless little plug here. I've been to the business forum in Orlando a number of times, and for anyone in this space who hasn't been there, it's a fantastic networking opportunity and just a chance to learn more about what's going on in the worlds of robotics, motion control, vision, as well as artificial intelligence.

Jeff Bernstein:

Yeah, thank you for saying that. That's a members-only event and it's one of the greatest values of membership is to be able to go and be with 700 or so industry leaders from around the world in these industries that are talking about, robotics, artificial intelligence, machine vision, motion control, and there's no exhibits. It's just an opportunity to hear great presentations and make those connections that can help you on your automation journey.

Bryan Powrozek:

Yep. No, I've always found it's a great way to kick the year off, so looking forward to seeing you down in Orlando again this year. And Jeff, thanks for the time and have a great rest of your day.

Jeff Bernstein:

Thank you. You too.

Announcer:

Thank you for tuning in. Don't forget to like us, subscribe, and share on social. To Learn more about Clayton & McKervey, visit us at claytonmckervey.com. That's C-L-A-Y-T-O-N-M-C-K-E-R-V-E-Y.com. We thrive on finding the solutions for you.