🚀 Automation And Robots Are Coming 😱

irreverant take on robotics and automation

January 07, 2023

Break out the voltmeters! I'm feeling some extra resistance that need's to be amped up!

Let's get Volted

📣 Topics of the Day ğŸ“£

  • Who's The Freaking Superglue?!

  • The Art Of Automation

  • Be Basic

  • Tech of the Day: Gantt Me Up Homie

Todays Newsletter Brought To You By

elliTek

If you're ever cruising through Knoxville Tennessee stop by and have a glass of sweet tea with the team at elliTek and talk robotics! This small but nimble team is ready to hook you up with the industrial components you need BUT can also develop and implement the robotic solutions for you. 

Who's The Freaking Superglue

I'm hopping up onto my soapbox! Who's the superglue in automation projects? I'll tell you who. Project managers. If you know a project manager, give them a hug. These folks get beat up by their company and by clients all day long. They secretly love the abuse but they won't tell you that. They're too proud to whine and complain. I've recently been involved in a BIG issue with a client and why was it an issue? Bad project management, simple as could be. In all fairness to the individual that was the acting project manager, they have not been set up to be successful to begin with so it's no surprise the project has started to go sideways. 

A good project manager does 4 KEY things extremely well.

  • Keep the project on schedule

  • Stay on budget

  • Read the room

  • Communicate clearly

Being on time, on budget, and communicating clearly are probably givens to most of us but what about the "reading the room" what am I talking about! Yeah, READING THE ROOM. Project managers have to know what's going on with the project and communicate positive, negative, and neutral information to many different types of personalities. For example. Don't tell the customer the project is delayed and you'll get back to them on a new date. You want to really get someone fired up, tell them somethings wrong and not have a solution in mind. In this example you better come ready with an update that's worth communicating. 

Check out this video on the 6th sense of project management!!!

The Art of Automation

I love talking about the "art" of things. The art of sales, the art of customer service, the art of project management. I think this world needs a little more focus on the art of things. The world used to care about the art of hat making, or carriage building, and so on. Builders building a house 1-200 years ago not only "built" a home, they created art. They took pride in their work. So seeing a website with the tag line of The Art of Automation I stopped and checked them out. 

The company is SYSTEMA based out of Germany with about 200 employees operating in several countries.  They are a software focused solutions provider delivering some pretty interesting systems. I'm not here to pitch them though. Instead I want to raise a glass to this team for caring about the ART OF AUTOMATION. 

In the current landscape of material handling, robotics, and industrial automation companies I'd say 70% or more of them are pushing products. Yeah they say they're solution focused or customer centric, but really they're not. They just want to get that first project sold, that first order, then move on to the next client. They deliver a solution that's really just a cobbling of various components, slap their company logo on it and pat themselves on the back. That's not art, that's garbage. We need more companies that focus on the ART of the solutions they're providing. They need to give a damn about how well built and how robust their solutions are. Kind of reminds me of automotive design engineers of the 1980s. Those cars sucked to work on. They didn't care about how easy it was to service the car, that was for the next guy to deal with. 

Guys and gals, be the artist. Learn your craft and do something great and leave behind art for the next generation to admire!

Tech of the Day: Gantt Me Up Homie

Let's keep rolling on this project management stuff. What's the number one tool for a project manager? A beautiful color coordinated Gantt chart.

No really it is. The core of any project, whether internal or external is the timeline. Having that timeline/roadmap helps provide visibility and order to all the actions which need to occur during a project. A Gantt chart starts with all of the tasks required to complete a project, their duration, and their dependencies on other tasks. For example if you're creating one to manage putting in a light fixture at your house. Step 1, buy light, duration is a week cause you need to have it shipped, Step 2, shut off power, duration 15 mins. Step 3 remove old light fixture, etc. You get the point. If you've not used one of these before Excel has a couple of solid simple to use templates that are free. Give them a shot! 

Hey we've got a guy for that! We now have a list of 900+ vendors in our basic list!

Be Basic

Lot's of companies are out there trying to revolutionize automation. Lot's of hype, lot's of grandiose plans and quite frankly nonsense. The robotics and automation space doesn't need useless robots, we need robots and automation that gets jobs done. I came across an interesting company the other day that claims to do just that, get a job done. The job, machine tending and operating. The most basic task in a production facility using machining equipment. And not only that but they claim they are touting a system that can be placed into service in a minute. That seems insane!

The company is Rapid Robotics, and I think they must be either extravagantly brilliant or ridiculously deranged. Either way they've got the right idea. Solve a real problem with a real solution and make it easy for the customer to be the hero.

Have feedback or want to contribute a video, article or tacos?  Maybe I'm interested maybe I'm not sure that I'm looking for it.  If you have something constructive you can catch me on Twitter.  @robotsrcoming or email us at [email protected]

Spread The Word

Click to Share Or copy and paste this link for sharing https://www.automationjunkie.com/#subscribe