The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – OnRobot Booth Interview at Fabtech 2019

Episode Date: November 11, 2019

OnRobot Booth Interview at Fabtech 2019 OnRobot.com See them at Booth A1400

Hi folks, Chris Voss here from thechrisvossshow.com, The Chris Voss Show! Hey, welcome to the podcast, guys. We certainly appreciate you guys tuning in. Be sure to refer to the show to your friends, neighbors, relatives. Be sure to go to iTunes, Google Play, Spotify, iHeartRadio. Holy crap, there's so many different places to get The Chris Voss Show. We're on Deezer. It just means like every platform now has a podcast, So be sure to check those out. We of course have the eight podcasts you can check out at thecvpn.com or Chris Voss Podcast Network. You can see all the different wide array of podcasts we have there. Today, we're going to be talking about some companies that are going to Fabtech 2019, thefabtechexpo.com. You can check it out. We're going to be there covering

the show. This is going to be November 11th through 14th. And you can check it out we're gonna be there covering the show this is going to be november 11th through 14th and you're gonna be able to see all this really cool technology that's going on and we're seeing a lot of disruption in the in this uh technological manufacturing world a lot of people think of manufacturing and uh you know they think of like u.s steel and dirty sort of business Now everything's really being disrupted in a technical sort of fashion where robots and different things are being brought to the forefront and really changing the way and face of this whole sort of industry. So this is really exciting. We've interviewed a few people from Fabtech so far.

So be sure to check that out. Today we're interviewing OnRobot. You can go to OnRobot.com. OnRobot delivers a full line of plug and produce end-of-arm tooling for collaborative applications. Their innovative grippers, sensors, and tool changers help manufacturers gain the full advantages of collaborative and lightweight industrial robots. This includes ease of use, cost-effectiveness, and safety alongside human workers. And today, I'm joined by the General Manager of the Americas, Christian Holgaard. Christian, how are you doing?

I'm doing well. Thank you, Chris. Welcome to the show. Are you excited for the big show tomorrow? Absolutely. We're all set up. We're ready. We've got the business cards ready. Everything's set up, and we're ready set up we're ready we're uh got the business cards ready you know everything's set up and and and we're ready for the show make sure you got that hand cleaner to you know uh sanitize your hands and don't touch your nose and mouth and all that good stuff uh you can see on robot they're going to be at fabtech uh they're going to be at booth number a 1400 so put that in your show schedule if you're on the Fabtech website there

in your notes so you can check that out. So you guys are going to Fabtech. Give us a little bit of rundown on who OnRobot is and what you guys take and do. Well, the simple answer to that is we're a manufacturer of end-of-arm tools, sensors,

and peripheral equipment around the robot to create a collaborative application. We produce grippers, sensors, tool changers, and a lot more technologies to come here in the last part of this year and next year. So that's the easy answer. You guys have a lot of videos that are really cool on your guys' website.

And from what I understand, you guys have tried to create an all-in-one sort of robot that can be used for all different variations of manufacturing? Yeah, we don't produce the actual robot, but we work with, and what's quite unique is that we work with any robot out there. So we've created what we call the One System Solution, and this is also what we're going to be showcasing as the new release here at Fabtech. The One System Solution kind of gives the user

one user experience no matter what robot he uses. In an application, from an application standpoint, you know, there are a hundred different robots, there are a hundred different types of grippers, there's so many items and parts that the manufacturing companies or the engineering companies, they have to know about and catalog

and, you know, make heads and tails out of all this chaos of parts and items and what goes on what. And we've kind of unified for our system and for the grippers and sensors and the technologies that we produce, we unified that and now can be used on any control, any robot platform. Wow, that's pretty cool. So now you guys have formed a collaboration of different companies, correct? Yes. So OnRobot, as we know it today, came out of a merger between three companies.

So we pride ourselves of being born global. The three companies was a Danish company called OnRobot and a Hungarian company called Optiforce. And lastly, an American company out of California called Perception Robotics. Oh, wow. These three companies all have their different high-end technologies and products. And we chose to merger these three companies into what we today call OnRobot. Wow. After the merger, we then acquired two additional companies,

the Purple Robotics and Blue Workforce, also both of them coming out of Europe. They've both added technologies and products to our current portfolio and um and their um r&d together with the with the current r&d is now developing new products new technologies for for the release in uh in here late 19 and uh all 2020 nice so you guys put this together you guys a collaboration of all these mind meld of these wonderful brains in the robotics industry. And, you know, like I mentioned in my introduction, a lot of people, you know, they still think of manufacturing and different things as this old sort of hard work, blue collar, labor intensive stuff. And what you guys are showcasing there at Fabtech is the new way of manufacturing that's very highly technical. It's computer-driven, computer-code-driven, and all these different aspects of making it a new clean technology-based society

where you don't have to go down to the coal mine anymore to make coal, basically. Yeah, and well, there's one thing that definitely we're we're starting to see more and more automation right but i think the first revolution of this new style manufacturing was born when the collaborative robot was introduced and basically the difference between just to have everybody in the on the same level here the difference between a more traditional industrial robot and a collaborative robot is, number one, safety. The collaborative robot can work side by side with humans, whereas the traditional industrial will have to be caged in because it's very powerful and doesn't have safety factors, safety features.

The other side of the collaborative robot, and that's even more important now, I think, is the ease of use. The collaborative robots today, they're like picking up an iPad. You don't want to read the manual. You just want to kind of teach the robot what to do, teach it some points, and then use it as you buy it. You don't want to read the manual. So the deployment time for automation in general has been decreased significantly since the born of these collaborative robots. So to kind of set the scene here,

U.S. manufacturing is seeing a huge labor shortage. And to go hand in hand with what you said about people not walking down the coal mine, that's definitely correct. However, you always have to have people in the manufacturing space. And to optimize the automation, being able to work alongside humans, that is revolutionary. And I think the big use case, too, for these things that you guys are building is small to mid-sized companies can get in on this robotics automation game. That's correct. They don't have to have a billion-dollar budget,

and they don't have to bring in, like you say, these giant – I've seen the robots that build the cars, and you don't want to be near those things when they're flipping around they'll rip your head off yeah yeah no but sorry go ahead they'll be like hey scab you're taking my job you human this is my job i'm the robot you're like wait wait i think most people will be surprised to see the split between the total manufacturing capacity of the United States and how much that goes to small and medium-sized enterprises. As far as I remember, it's actually the majority. More than 50% of the total manufacturing comes from small and medium-sized enterprises. And that historically hasn't been addressed with complex automation and robots,

whereas now we can. And of course now I'm doing a lot of... giving a lot of credit to the robot manufacturers here. But so I was talking about the first revolution in the new modern modern automation industry right I think the next step I know the next step is to make the whole application collaborative when you're talking about installing a robot what is a robot good for if it doesn't have a tool if it doesn't have what whatever products that activates or or or gives it the the possibility or the option to solve the task instead of just moving

around you know a robot arm is useless without the tool so if the historically the tool has all also been very complex, very engineering heavy. Every tool had to be engineered from the ground up. You had to involve engineering companies to customize your tool. They had to traditionally use pneumatics, you know, compressed air to make the gripper go on and off

and so on and so forth. Now, our vision and the trend in the market, it's not only our view on it, but we can see this is where it's going. The end users and the engineering companies, they focus more and more on the products on the robot as much as the robot. So, meaning, if you have to spend all those engineering hours that you saved installing the robot as much as the robot. So meaning if you have to spend all those engineering hours

that you saved installing the robot on designing a tool, then kind of the value of the whole application disappears, right? You want the tool, you want the sensors, you want the cameras, all these products in the application, you want them as easy to use and safe as use as the actual collaborative robot. Yeah, safe. Yeah, and that's what we focus on. This is where it's going.

I've seen the report from IFR the other day, and they are usually quite conservative in their forecast and they forecasted 10 times as many robots installed in the Americas in five years wow yeah and then it's huge and but you also you have to ask yourself how am I even if I if I'm an end user meaning the manufacturing company but also the engineering companies installing the robots how am i going to reach that growth will i uh you know hire 10 times as many engineers or 10 times as many sales people if if i'm an integrator or something like that probably not no one no one's gonna gonna go out and ramp up that way the only way you can deal with growth and access that growth

is to minimize the time from from buying all your parts and deploying the robots in the manufacturing floor and the only way you can do that is to find products that are standardized that solves nine out of ten of your problems easy installable you know plug and produce as you as you said in the in the opening uh talk you need to just plug and play there you go i mean that's that's the way to do it and the simplification of this being you know everyone's familiar with how to work ipads and and tablets and and phones and where you can program these robots very simply uh through you know an ipad extension or whatever you guys use for your thing it's all computerized and it's all pre-programmed and you can just put it together and away you go um that's huge i mean you don't

have to go to college for an engineering degree, which is really important, right? Yeah, it's very important. And I think there's another skepticism, if that's the right word, towards automation and robots. And that is, you know, Martha that's been sitting

and doing a tedious job down at the manufacturing line, she'll be losing her job because they've now put in a robot. When in reality, it's actually quite the opposite. What's happening when we see our customers using the robots, using our products, yeah, she's not going to be doing the tedious repetitive work anymore. She will be reeducated and now operating maybe four or five different robots and having, you know, a new job instead.

The labor, the need of labor is still there. We just need to do it smarter and more effectively if we if we in the west want to be competitive towards you know low labor costs countries we have to look at manufacturing we have to look at automating tasks that are repetitive and for the for the manual labor and then re-educating our our labor to to run this automation instead yeah and that's the beautiful part you don't have to have an engineering degree you can learn very easily and that's where the jobs are going to come from this you know so many people like oh automation is going to take away everyone's jobs uh the beautiful part about it

too is it's going to it's going to teach rosie the riveter Riveter to have a technical job instead of a manual labor job, and she'll be able to work with computers. And from what I'm hearing from our interviews from Fabtech is there's a huge glut of people that know how to deal with these robots and work them, which creates a great job opportunity with a huge um with a huge uh roof to it that that you're never going to hit probably um of people that can learn this business and if you're few and far between you're going to get paid a lot of money to do it and uh it's not that technical like i say you don't have to get an engineering degree i mean this this sounds brilliant for a lot of people and and um in some of our discussions some of the different people that have gone to Fabtech,

they said one of the reasons for the glut of employees in the industry is there's that negative connotation of the dirtiness of the old style of manufacturing. You know, here in Utah where I am right now, we used to have Geneva Steel, which was one of the U.S. steel places. You know, people would go to the smelter and come home covered in filth and dirt. And, you know, there was, you know, it was hot and there was smelting, you know, all that sort of stuff that was going on. As people kind of have that conjure up that image and they're like, I don't want to go in that business. But a lot of these millennials, a lot of these Gen Zers,

they're all really familiar with with coding, computers, laptops. I mean, geez, you can go to work and look at an iPad all day long. It'll be in robotics, but it'll still be technical and cool. And then it's not a labor sort of business. It's a cerebral, intelligent technology business. Yeah, and let's face it, more and more jobs, more and more industries are being computerized in the way that we haven't worked more with computers than we are today. And we keep peaking every year.

Manufacturing will be the same way. Whether we like it or not, well, I think most people do like this change right um it definitely has both safety and health benefits to to to the manufacturing industry that we're um that we're automating uh many of the the manual labor tasks now do you see do you see uh robots help bring back a revolution of a resurgence if you will of of manufacturing in the u.s you think you see robots help bring back a revolution of a resurgence, if you will, of manufacturing in the U.S.? Do you see that making that help make that a comeback, if you will? Well, what I can say is that the industries, the types of technologies, I mean, let me rephrase it. Robots and technology and all the products that are now being used and made for that purpose is being represented in all types of industries we never thought they would be used in. So whether it's agriculture, R&D, I mean, I've seen brain surgery robots with some of our sensors and exoskeletons to help elderly people walk better,

you know, all sorts of products and end results we had no idea we would access. When we were talking, you know, when our start idea was, okay, we're going to make some products so we can help, you know, machine-tending applications with robots or pick-and-place jobs or packaging. These are kind of the normal robotic automation tasks, right? And now seeing the result of the technology we've been promoting and manufacturing used in all sorts of different very, very, very high-tech industries and in-products. I think that's a fantastic trend that we see that more and more technology will be added to all sorts of types of end uses, right?

And the beautiful part is these robots, they can work for long periods of time. The money that you save as a business and healthcare costs and the taxes that you have to pay and different things like that over time, et cetera, et cetera. These robots, they can work 24-7. I mean, they can rock and roll. They never get tired.

They don't need breaks. I'm not saying, you know, everyone should get employed. Robot should take over the world because there's probably a robot that's going to start podcasting soon. But in fact, we were joking about having a robot co-host during the show. We were like, maybe we should get somebody's robot

to be the co-host during Fab show. We were like, maybe we should get somebody's robot to be the co-host during Fabtech. That's a good idea. I nixed the idea because I don't want any robots getting any ideas. No, I'm just kidding. I think that what's cool about this is another thing that's cool about it is that it doesn't matter what size company you are.

The robot or the automation part will have different impacts. If we're talking about macro, the big, huge corporations and car manufacturers, it's all about being competitive towards other countries with lower labor costs and being able to be with your car or whatever product you're producing, be competitive in the world market. But then we also can zoom down on this small machine shop, mom-and-pop shop somewhere in the middle of the bible belt and um and they have two machines producing um small parts for uh for a big machine somewhere in another company right so they install the robot and instead of them working one shift where they can produce eight hours a day now they have a robot so they they've been tripling their productivity by being able to

work 24 hours a day yeah no breaks no lunches that's the thing and and uh it it has a massive impact no matter what scale you're gonna look at it yeah the only problem is is what if these robots become self-aware like terminator and they form their own union then you got a whole new probably you got a robot union yeah we gotta rise against the robot union when it goes full skynet um so anyway yeah it's gonna be it's gonna be really cool i think it's gonna help manufacturing in the u.s i think it's gonna i don't know if it'll you know put us in league of competing with china because china just has these huge bases of people. But definitely, I mean, even China is moving to automation robots.

I know Foxconn, which produces a lot of the phones, including the iPhone, is moving towards automation as well. Automation is going to be good. And I like the fact that it's very easy to retool current workers that are doing manual labor in a blue collar field can suddenly become, you know, a white collar where they're running technical jobs and using and learning new skills that are cerebral. So that's just awesome. And for a lot of these people that, you know, they don't have to go to college for, you college for eight years to become an engineer and all that kind of stuff that you have to do to become an engineer. We definitely bring the technology down to a more reasonable user level. And you see that with all technology, right? The first computer we've seen, you had be in a scientist to operate that thing right

and today you pick up any phone any computer everybody can use it automation is going exactly the same way so on your guys website you guys have uh different variations of different grippers um you've got uh vacuum grippers uh forced torque sensors on six-axis wheels, quick changers, dual quick changers. Are these attached to just any robot sort of thing? Yeah, so the idea, again, behind our whole portfolio of products, whether it's the six-axis forced torque sensor, the vacuum gripper or the servo-based gripper is that we want the user to get the product, take it out of the box, and out of the box, it should be plug and play.

You should plug it on the robot, install it in 15 minutes, and then from there, it should be able to solve 9 out of 10 of his problems within the specifications of the gripper. Right? So the idea to give you an idea kind of set setting the scene again here traditionally a gripper would be made on pneumatic power right you have a compressor and the compressor makes makes the gripper go on and off gripping that specific part that the gripper is designed for. So we've designed an electric gripper instead with a motor. And we don't use compressed air, so there's a cost saving in that aspect.

You don't have any compressor you need to pay power of or tube leaks where you have to maintain the system all that it's simply running off the robot's power wow so in regards to functionality whether you are gripping part a or part b let's see one day you're you're want to gripping a one inch product and the the other day you need to grip a two inch product well traditionally with the pneumatic type gripper you would have to change the physical appearance of the gripper because the fingers wouldn't match anymore the uh the the actual gripper is meant to grip at one one inch not a two inch whereas the electric gripper that we produce that's simply a software setting saying, hey, now instead of gripping that one inch, you grip the two inch. And this is a huge thing, again, for small and medium-sized enterprises.

I mean, the typical manufacturing, small and medium-sized enterprise, sorry, is like a high mix and low volume production, right? They have a lot of different parts. They want to be agile in the market. If something changes, they want to be able to change their product to meet the market demands. And if you're running with the traditional automation, you would need to call an engineering company every time you would need to make the slightest of changes in that application. You have to go retool your whole thing. That's the thing, right? So retool it, reprogram it, all these things. Now we've done it so easy that the guy that used to sit and do the packaging himself,

now he can reprogram and reset the robot application with the tool, retool it, whatever, or change the software setting so that it now fits the new product. Awesome, Sauce. So these different devices can do pick-and- place application, machine tending, packaging and palletizing, assembly work, quality testing and inspection, surface finishing,

et cetera. I saw on your website, you have all these videos and they're doing like a million different things. This is crazy. All the stuff they can take and do. Yeah. It's, it's,

it's basically whatever you can think of in regard to application. We, we can, we can supply as some sort of product to assist that application. Awesome. And more and more, as I touched base on it a little earlier, we've seen creativity in regard to using the products like crazy. I mean, applications and products we never thought about using using our products they they they're using it now so it's fantastic i need to get me a robot that picks the dishwasher dishes out of the sink and puts them in the dishwasher that's right oh you i mean the the the most popular one both at

at trade shows but also at company parties is of course the beer pouring robot oh and we've tried it numerous numerous times sorry uh where the the robot is programmed to to to serve a draft beer you know it's fantastic that's what i want the bartender robot now we just need to take it the next step and get the vacuum cleaning uh robot and the dishwashing you know we've got we've got the vacuum cleaning robots here we get we review those those get sent to the show we've got a number of different makers that send them um and uh and our whole house is filled with them there's one that's there's ones and then uh but yeah a bartender robot where i could be just like make me a mai tai make me a screwdriver make me along on ast uh that would a screwdriver, make me a nice tea.

That would be awesome. They're already working out there, Chris. I think it's somewhere in Asia. I already saw the video of this robot basically mounted on a wall, and you press the button for the drink you wanted, and it would mix it up for you. I mean, that's impressive. Here's what would probably happen, though, if I asked a robot bartender for a screwdriver. I'm like, hey, can you make me a screwdriver?

And they'd hand me this. They'll give you this. No, no. I understand that's your technical brother in the field of robotics, but I want something with orange juice and vodka in it. Well, I guess there's also something good about having real people at certain jobs still. It worked out really well. I didn't know that having that screwdriver by my desk was going to end up as a prop for the show. Serendipity, there it is. So you guys are going to have your booth at the show.

What's going to be going on in the booth? What do you want people to see there? It's at booth A1400 for those of you who might be booth the show what's going to be on going on the booth what do you want people to see there it's a booth a 1400 for those of you who are who might be doing the show midway uh a 1400 and of course you can see the fab tech well what are what are some uh cool you guys are going to do in the show that make people want to come by i mean of course we have the the the giveaways and we have the all the promotional stuff that you're welcome to come and pick up we got caps and polo shirts and pens and all that but if you're more interested in in looking at the the products and the functionality we do have two robots on our booth with all our with our new one

system solution mounted on it and basically you can walk into the booth and you can click on and click off any tool on the robot and then try to try to either program them or or get a demonstration on how to program it anyway yeah this this might be a new career for me man if i ever need a new career i'm going to go into this because I don't, it sounds like it's going to pay well. There's going to be huge demand for me and everything else. I mean, if you're one of those Gen Zers who's concerned about how much you're going to pay for college and stuff and, and you want to work in a technical field, this sounds like a great sort of business to be in because you'd be in high demand. It doesn't require a huge amount of schooling to go into. You know, I never graduated from high school.

I started my first company when I was 18, so I just kind of skipped the whole learning stuff, clearly. If anybody's ever watched my, if anybody's ever read any time I try and spell something, they're like, you went to public school, didn't you? But no, you know, whatever. Public school is still good. But it's true.

If you do have a technical interest and you want to go and start working instead of reading books for the rest of your life, it's a good way of coming into the manufacturing industry and start working with robots. I mean, who wouldn't like to work with robots? That's pretty cool in my mind. Then you can post those pictures on your Instagram, Gen Zers, and people will be like, whoa, he's a cool Instagrammer and a robot dude. I'm probably not really allowed to tell this story, but when I was a lot younger, I worked for a robot manufacturing

company and uh i always i traveled around with my robot and it was always in the back of my car because that was my job and uh one day i was uh you know as you are in your early 20s you're going to a party somewhere and i set up the robot and i won a beer pong tournament with the robot really yeah hey there you go the robot hit the the the cups every time you know you're gonna have fraternities dialing your guys's number off your website now hey man how do we get a hold of these because the grippers are designed to work like fingers so absolutely uh you can get that perfect toss on that uh thing there oh yes and if my previous employer uh listens in then please forgive me you know that's i mean that's a that's a great recruiting tool you guys could go to college just to be like hey man look what you can do with the yeah you want to play with the robots play some beer pong yeah i actually if i

were you i would have made that a a job i just want to tour with robots? Play some beer pong. Yeah. I actually, if I were you, I would have made that a job. I just want to tour around the country and, you know, win beer pong tournaments. Everyone bet, hey, who can win, who can beat the robot, basically. If you can make a living out of it, why not? It's kind of like when IBM, you know, they roll out that Watson. They try and get people to beat it on Jeopardy. Yeah, yeah. And chess. So there you go. So it to beat it on Jeopardy and chess.

So there you go. So it sounds like it's going to be really cool. You guys can go by the booth. It's A1400 at the Fabtech show. It's going to be in Chicago, Illinois. I just got an email from Fabtech. It looks like next year they might be in Vegas. Yeah, I think it's changing every second year or something i can't remember yeah

yeah so i'll look forward to that because i love vegas i love shows in vegas there's just so much the great thing about and chicago is a great place too i mean you guys have wonderful hotels and beautiful city extraordinary city uh of chicago and don't forget the pizza oh yeah that deep style yeah yeah anytime i go to chicago man chicago i get the pizza. Oh, yeah. That deep style. Yeah, yeah. Anytime I go to Chicago, man, Chicago, I get the pizza, and it's good. And then I have to spend the next five months

working it off. So it's going to be cool. You guys can go see them. The show will be opening tomorrow, November 11th through the 14th. Give these guys a run by so you can see all the cool stuff they're doing,

pair up with questions and pick up your free swag, whatever they got there at the unit. Anything more we need to know about what you guys are doing there at OnRobot? I think we got it covered quite well. I'll be at the show

from Wednesday and Thursday. My dear colleagues will be there from opening. So drop in, come by for a chat. I mean, whether it's going to be discussing what we talked about today or just seeing a product demo we're here we're there to help you guys so uh yeah see you there sounds good you can go to on robot.com to check out all the stuff they're doing there they got some really cool videos so you can see all the stuff that's on there they even got it

looks like you guys got some career available jobs opening. So if you're looking for different work, you can check those guys out. And they have a huge company, a ton of people that are working with them. So this should be pretty freaking awesome. And I like how you guys design a product that can be used with any robot. So that makes it so that all they got to do is

slap the end on and away you go. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Well, uh, Christian, thanks for being on the show. We certainly appreciate our audience for being here. Uh,

be sure to refer the show to your friends, neighbors, relatives, go to the CBPN, check on all the different, uh, podcasts that we have there. There's eight now.

Holy crap. Oh, we've got some shows are going to be coming up, coming up, covering up. We're covering up our shows. We're hiding them. We don't want the police to see them.

We'll be covering a whole mess of new things. And, of course, we've got the MGA conference that's coming up in December. And we've got CES show, the CES show that's going to be coming up as well. So be sure to check all those wonderful things out as we roll them out. Thanks for everyone tuning in for my audience. And we'll see you next time.