Industrial Automation Blog

By Jim Biehl, CPA, MST

Have you ever wondered how some companies last for generations while others fade into obsolescence?  In Clayton & McKervey’s history of working with closely held businesses, several shared traits among companies reaching the 50-year mark and beyond have proven to be a success time and again.

Observing established companies functioning as finely tuned machines, while welcoming change, it’s clear that these principles foster the longevity of industry leaders.

1. Proactive vs. reactive: Longstanding businesses are forward-thinking and employ some form of strategic planning that allows the team to “aim for the same tree on the horizon.” Decision making is aligned, and a shared mission is embraced and clearly communicated. An overarching consistency to these companies is that they are nimble enough to adapt to change and they embrace innovation.
2. Customer obsessed: They have intimate knowledge of what their customers need and want, ...

When was the last time you really thought about your business model?

What? You haven’t? Or it’s been so long ago you think you might have been sporting an epic 70s stache or rocking a groovy pair of bell bottoms?

With Q4 comfortably settling in – strategizing and budgeting season – there has never been a better time to grab a beverage, go dark and really take some time to dig into what makes your business tick and how you are going to position it for success in 2020.

Let’s get started.

1. Gather your leadership team: It’s time for The Talk

Set aside some time to get your leadership team together to unflinchinly go through a set of questions about your customers and company.

Some examples of questions about your customers:

• How well do you understand your customers’ needs?
• Can you formulate the key unmet needs of your customers?
• What is the monetary implication of not meeting these needs?
• What would resolve those unmet needs?
• Are ...

Historically a software development/IT concept, agile project management methodology is creeping into other areas of the enterprise – from marketing to human relations and, yes, even manufacturing. But what about system integration? Is there a place for it?

According to Tom Sulda, director and lead trainer for Latsa, the answer is a resounding yes … maybe.

What Is Waterfall Methodology?

A waterfall approach attempts to gather all the project requirements from the customer, then define a solution, estimate the cost and profit percentage of that solution, and then proposes both a solution and a cost.

Sounds logical and simple enough. But as Sulda points out, there are some downsides.

For starters, clients are all over the map in terms of being technically savvy – and that means they don’t always know what they don’t know.

Therefore, there are some “clients who are very easy because they can be very clear about what they want and why they want ...

IIot. Industry 4.0. The digital transformation. These days, you hear a lot of talk about this as an emerging trend. But how many organizations are actually walking the talk?

Rising to the Challenge

Meet Marc Taccolini, a former system integrator turned entrepreneur, who is not only walking the talk, he is also developing solutions such as FactoryStudio, a platform that he says addresses “the new challenges for the 4.0 industry.”

As founder and CTO of Tatsoft, Taccolini’s journey from an integration engineer to innovator have given him a unique perspective on life, industrial automation and the future of system integration.

On Life, Industrial Automation and the Future of System Integration

During the CSIA 2019 Executive Conference, Taccolini recorded an episode of Talking Industrial Automation. Here’s a few key takeaways from that interview.

• On approaching a new project: “When we approach projects, it should not really be a new custom design. It ...

Today’s headlines are full of gloomy examples of robots and automation replacing humans. Take this recent story in USA Today about how one Sin City resort chain is installing automated beverage systems and displacing service workers. Or this video of Ford’s eerily human-like, two-legged delivery robot coming to your door any minute now.

Will robots take our jobs?

With so much doomsday messaging, it’s easy to feel like the world is just one motherboard away from Stanley Kubrick’s HAL 9000 and humankind is going to be left to scrounge for scrap metal and huddle under discarded space capsules.

Not so fast, says Jeff Burnstein, president of the Association of Advancing Automation, the umbrella organization for the Robotic Industries Association, Advancing Vision and Imaging, and Motion Control and Motor Association. While he acknowledges that the application of robotics is surging, he believes it will result in a net increase in jobs.

“Robots are going to ...

With more and more channels competing for marketing dollars – and higher ups demanding data-driven decisions – marketers are challenged with evaluating their marketing mix.

In fact, 41% of modern marketers have turned to marketing attribution modeling to evaluate ROI, according to research.

What the Heck?

In the most basic terms, attribution modeling attempts to assign a value or credit to the channel(s) that connected the customer to the channel. Sounds easy enough, amiright?

All you have to do is figure out the first or last touchpoint (called single source attribution) and boom, that’s where you attribute the sale.

Let’s break that down.

Single Source Attribution and that aDORable Whatchamacallit

In the first-touch attribution model, all credit gets assigned to the source that captured the initial engagement. For example, a first touch might be white paper download or lead from third-party site, such as a buyer’s guide.

In the last-touch ...

83% of CSIA members forecast a rosy economic outlook, according the April 2019 EZ Stats. And for many SIs, the rising economic tide translates to considerable growth and a new set of challenges: scaling up.

As it turns out, it’s a tricky channel to navigate, with the shorelines of success littered with the shipwrecks of failures. Therefore, it’s essential to create a scalable management model, according to Matthew Swyers, founder, The Trademark Company, in “4 Essential Steps to Managing Growth,” in Inc.

“As your business grows you must develop scalable management and quality control systems,” says Swyers. “As your business grows and duties become more segmented among new employees, a management structure must be put in place to ensure accountability against established benchmarks as well as to make sure quality control of your goods and services remains constant.”

Mike Howard, vice president, system integration at George T. Hall ...

It’s no secret that engineers are more skeptical than most when it comes to marketing, even among the younger generations. Case in point: Zack Scriven, co-founder of Zack Scriven Media. While he was the owner of an SI company early in his career, he felt the same way.

“I was anti-marketing, anti-sales,” Scriven recalls. “And to be honest, I do not think it served me well…since then, I’ve had to truly embrace and come to love marketing.”

So much so, he left his career as an SI to launch his own company and become a marketing evangelist, specializing in video and social marketing. What he’s learned along the way is that the recipe to successful marketing is one-part authenticity + one-part transparency.

“If you can connect on a human level, a person-to-person level, your audience will learn to trust you, and you can use that as the foundation of your marketing and branding,” Scriven explains.

And video is the perfect ...

Over the past couple of months, I’ve attended quite a few industry events (I’m looking at you, CSIA Executive Conference!). And while the venues, hosts and people were all over the map, there was one universal topic that kept leaping out: sourcing qualified talent.

This “global war on talent,” says Joe LaRussa, director of industrial engineering for the North American Seat Business at Brose, a global automotive mechatronic solutions provider, has plagued the manufacturing industry for years, including bleeding into North America. As a team leader of manufacturing and industrial engineers responsible for manufacturing process design, Joe says he finds it particularly hard to source controls engineers and people with tooling experience.

“These are two key areas where capacity is really limited,” he says. “On top of this, there is the capability issue. I find many just don’t have enough experience or simply not enough transferable ...

Artwork by Caroline Whalen

System integration often happens in the later stages of a project and typically represents a relatively small part of the overall spend. If it’s not done right, it can torpedo the entire venture. You might want to ask yourself a few questions:

• Does your manufacturing operation rely on automation for success? 
• Do you need your systems integrator to be your go-to supplier to perform your automation and configuration activities? 
• Do you feel like your automation system is a black box, and you just hope it works when it is time to run your operation? 
• Do you lose sleep at night worrying that someone will cyber-hack into your automation system and create havoc? 
• Do you hope your systems integrator is there for you day in and day out for the long-haul? 
• Does procurement commoditize system integration? 

If you answered yes to any of these questions, you are not alone. Your next question is most likely: Where to ...

Highly effective and repeatable methods for tuning PID controllers manually do indeed exist.

Tuning PID control loops involves the collection and analysis of test data as well as the modeling of the associated process dynamics.

The bump test is a critical step in any PID controller tuning method.

At one time or another we’ve all heard the old adage: Garbage in, Garbage out. While it’s an old saying, it’s a good one and it’s highly relevant to PID controller tuning and process optimization.

After all these years the Proportional-Integral-Derivative (PID) controller remains the workhorse for process manufacturers. Still, after more than 50 years of use in industry many practitioners continue to view the tuning of PID controllers as a “black art”.

Finding yourself with more questions than answers about your automation project? Make or buy? Robots? Conveyors? Tooling? How much will this cost? Do we have the expertise in house to even try to tackle an automation project?

By following these principles of flexible assembly line design, manufacturers can pursue lean manufacturing in their current operation while also building capabilities to maintain or add lean improvements in the future.

As you make your move to mobile human-machine interfaces, ThinManager is a good way to ease the integration and operation of your thin client.

Nearly every manufacturing facility, no matter the industry, has the equipment that’s been there for decades, and the one old-timer who knows how to fix it. Prepare now before he retires and that knowledge walks out the door.

A range of technologies have changed the industrial landscape. Companies that can successfully manage those technologies will also change the way they manage their supply chain.