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

Episode Date: November 5, 2019

Universal Robots Booth Interview at Fabtech 2019 See them at Booth #B35083 Universal-robots.com

Hi folks, Chris Voss here from thechrisvossshow.com, thechrisvossshow.com. Hey, we're coming here with another great podcast. Oh my gosh, we're going to be covering some really cool stuff here. Be sure to give us a like, subscribe to us on YouTube, hit that bell notification at youtube.com forward slash Chris Voss. Be sure to subscribe to the show. You can subscribe to the other six podcasts we do at thecvpn.com or chrisfonzpodcastnetwork.com. And we certainly appreciate you guys being here today.

We're going to be covering the show Fab Tech 2019. This is going to be a really amazing show that they take and have every year in Chicago, Illinois. It's North America's largest metal forming, fabricating, welding, and finishing event. Now, this is really cool because we're going to be talking about some stuff you're probably like right now going, what? Metal forming? We're going to be talking about robots, technology, all sorts of really cool stuff. And we've got a really cool company to talk to with here. It's Universal Robots.

These guys are based out of Ann Arbor, Michigan. And we're going to be talking to you with Joe Campbell. They're going to be at Fabtech booth B35083. So if you're the show Fabtech when this airs, be sure to check them out, go to their booth, say, hey, Chris Foss sent me down. Joe is the head of marketing for this company. How are you doing, Joe? Welcome. Chris, thanks for having me. I'm having a great day. Awesome sauce. So you guys got some really cool things going on. You're the head of marketing at universal-robots.com. So you guys can look this up. You know, when people say manufacturer, we talked about this on the pre-show, people kind of think, you know, like, well,

US Steel, you know, these old sort of plants, but you guys are in the highly, highly, highly technical, innovative field of robots, even co-robots. We'll get into what that means here in a second, but welcome to the show. Tell us who you are, what brings you to this, and what got you involved with Universal Robots? Well, I've been with Universal for just a little bit over a year. However, I've got about 40 years in the automation industry. I've been selling, marketing, and managing robots and robot projects for just about my entire career. And I will say that Universal is a very, very different place

than the traditional automation companies. As you mentioned, we make a collaborative robot. And for those who have not heard that term, collaborative means with the proper safety protocols, our robots can work literally side-by-side with human operators on an assembly or processing line. I need a few of those to work alongside me in the podcast. I need one to be running the camera and stuff like that. There's people doing all of that right now so they call a collaborative robots cobots which is pretty interesting i learned

something new today there's cobots that are out there that's so that is that is the uh that is the slang term for uh collaborative robots do robots appreciate that slang i mean is that apparently because this particular segment is the fastest growing segment in factory automation. It is really projected to continue that growth for years and years and years to come. So it's an exciting place to be. Awesome sauce, because when Skynet takes over and robots become self-aware, we don't want them angry at us because we were slinging them the whole time. I have not seen the new Terminator movie,

so I can't speak to that. I need to play some Terminator music. So you guys at Universal Robots, what do you guys do? How do you guys do it there? Well, we actually build a family of standard robot products. And we're not very creative in our naming convention.

We call them the UR3, UR5, UR10, and UR16. UR, obviously, for universal robots, 3, 5, 10, and 16 refers to their payload capacity and kilograms. So these are mostly small robots. So they're not the giant ones maybe I'd see at a car manufacturing place that are, you know, putting the cars together. They're kind of, when you say smaller, can you give me an idea on scale? Yeah, these have roughly, you know, a one-meter reach,

one-and-a-half-meter reach, three-foot, four-foot. So they're fairly small. You will find them in automotive plants, but you just won't find them carrying really ultra heavy payloads. So I'd have a better chance of arm wrestling one of these then? Actually, you can't arm wrestle it because if it makes contact with your arm, it shuts itself off. Oh, okay.

Well, that's good. And that's part of the safety protocol. That's good. You know, I need a robot for a lot of stuff. I can use a robot for the boom, you know, brings the mic into me. Then I can have one for, you know, serving me beer or something. That's what I definitely need here at the house is a beer robot. Yeah. I'll let you sell that at home. That's going to be a tough sell. Uh, but no, so you guys help these manufacturers. Now, why is there a need for this? What's going on in our economy?

What's going on out there in the world that these are something that are in demand? Well, I think there's a number of drivers. First of all, recognized robots have been around for a long, long time. The industry was established back in the late 60s and continues today. The typical drivers have been to improve efficiency and improve quality. And there are certain tasks that you just can't do as a human. The biggest driver today, though, is this really significant shortage of labor in the manufacturing community. I'm fortunate I get to travel around the U.S. and I speak to

to groups wide and far. I talk to a lot of plant managers and CEOs and owners and universally they are struggling to hire people to work in their manufacturing plants and it has really become a significant problem. So today, I think automation is being deployed to kind of solve this labor shortage. Which is really wild. I know that our economy is humming along. I know there's a lot of demand for employees, but it's because manufacturing kind of has a sort of stigma of a lot of sweat and, you know, the sweaty,

burly guys that I used to see going to like Geneva Steel, US Steel back in the day. Well, you see two things, two big drivers. The first is demographic. I'm part of the problem. I'm a baby boomer and my counterparts are retiring at the rate of 10,000 per day. Wow. Right now, 27% of the U.S. manufacturing workforce is 55 years or older. That means in 10 years, we're going to have to find 27% of the manufacturing workforce to replace these skilled workers that are retiring. So that is a really significant challenge. I think the second thing is the younger generations, not to disparage anybody in particular,

but really none of the younger generations are interested in working the dull, dirty, or dangerous manufacturing jobs. Yeah. It's no surprise. Yeah. But it's interesting nowadays. I mean, this is what i'm seeing a lot of the pictures from fabtech and different things the world's really changing

it's not these dirty floor uh you know steel smelting you know we've got iron pouring out of smelting units and you know ash coming everywhere and you come home covered in dirt uh it you know most of the manufacturing i don't know if most is the proper word, but a lot of manufacturing nowadays is highly technical. It is. It is, absolutely. However, if you particularly look at the Fabtech portfolio, you know, metal fabrication is still one of the most challenging manufacturing tasks, whether you're welding or cutting, machining, bending, any of those metal fab processes.

And so it's a great place for automation. Again, our adage is let's go look for the dull, dirty, and dangerous task and automate it. And let's take our skilled operators and move them into more value added tasks, move them up the food chain. Yeah. I need some robots for my bathroom for cleaning my bathroom. Cause that's a good way.

So we gone from pouring beer to cleaning your bathroom. This is really going to be a tough sell. I need some robots, man. But anyway, so you guys have got all these really cool robots. You build them, you deal with the co robots that are easy to program,

fast to deploy and safe to use. They solve your labor issues and manufacturing operations at companies of all size. You guys also do free online training, uh, people in your Academy. Yep. We have an online Academy.

It's a little, little less than two hours. You can work your way through nine modules and it is, it is very, very successful. To date, I believe we've had over 73,000 people trained in the UR academy. And in many cases, that is the only formal training that they're required. So they don't have to go to college for four years and get a technical MIT degree. No, we have, we have, we have great success recruiting intelligent people, right in the manufacturing side who are working hands-on in the process and

turning them into robot programmers and operators. And if you're a millennial Gen Z right now, I'm watching their website. And, I mean, they're working with kind of tablet, iPad-ish sort of looking devices. They're programming it. You guys put them through a whole course to become programmers, integrators. I imagine, is repair some of this work? Could be, absolutely, although this stuff is very, very reliable. But yeah, there's definite repair function there.

I think the other thing that we see is when manufacturing companies start to deploy automation, and particularly collaborative robot automation, the image of the company improves significantly. It now becomes a much more interesting place to work because you're interviewing not for a dull, dirty, or dangerous job. You're interviewing to really work side by side and operate the robots. Yeah. And basically, I mean, it's plug and play product certified compatible. You're looking with software. I mean, if you're someone who can't afford to go to Silicon Valley, and I don't know anybody that can afford that, actually.

I've got friends living in cars there. And, I mean, there's Berkeley professors living in cars that work for Berkeley College. That's just crazy to me. And it's just insane. And it doesn't seem to be getting any better up there uh but this is certainly a way i mean you know it kind of strikes me that we have all these people that are supposed to be living uh in middle america you know you're about michigan and different places a lot of people left behind from the car industry uh man you wish that somehow

there's a way we could get these jobs out to them or we could move them to where these jobs are. Because, you know, what you're telling me is they can very easily learn this sort of business. And what's the pay like for this sort of industry? It's like any other manufacturing profession, right? It's very well paid. I think that's really been one of the key points the key points for the success of the midwest is the manufacturing community and if i didn't if i didn't have my business i would go into a technical field i need i i tried computer programming and i i just can't do code i'm just not a coder and so

uh but this sort of field seems like it would be not only highly specialized but something that doesn't you know wouldn't have you know, wouldn't have, you know, everybody and their dog in it competing with you for it. So that would give you a leg up, especially on the future advancements of technology automation. I mean, there's just going to be more of this stuff going on, especially with, you know, cars becoming more automated. You know, a lot of people think we're going to be out of jobs, but my friends like Robert Scoble, who are tech prophets and gods in the tech business, they're still humans that are going to have to program this stuff, work on it, repair it, design it, all that sort of stuff and the apical nature of it. Chris, I can tell you, you're absolutely spot on.

The issue today is certainly not robots taking jobs. Robots are absolutely saving jobs. I'll give you a couple of data points and one anecdotal point. Right now, there's over one half million open, unfilled manufacturing jobs in America. That's not my statistic. That's the Bureau of Labor and Statistics. Wow. statistics wow right hiring is listed by manufacturing companies executive level on a survey done by the national association of manufacturing hiring is the number one challenge they all report wow so it is a big deal and it's projected to get bigger and that just means they're going to be paying a lot of money to get you to hire i mean i've been through those series with the businesses that we've owned

where you can't hire the people because it gets so competitive and you have to start jacking the price. Recently, Bank of America says they're going to start paying people $20 an hour starting out in 2020. I mean, this is what's happening with these things. This seems like a really highly technical market. And one of the problems we've had is the loss of manufacturing jobs or the perceived loss of manufacturing jobs in the old world.

And now we've become this service-based industry where, hey, you want a job? You can go get a job for $10 an hour, $15 an hour at Subway making sandwiches. This seems like a job that would really be great for a hold on the future, something where you can design because you worked in this field for 40 years. So you've probably seen, you know, it go through all of its iterations, right? Yeah. I think the big, the big change that we're seeing today is, you know, the previously the requirement to deploy automation is you had to be an engineer, preferably a robotics engineer. You had to be a programmer.

But what Universal has done is really changed the whole paradigm of how you apply automation. We've completely simplified the application of the product and the programming of the product. We've simplified the engineering required to interface peripherals like grippers and even vision systems. And because of that, we're stripping out all this cost and complexity of the project so we can deploy automation very, very quickly with a very, very good ROI.

And that's catching the attention of manufacturers big and small. Again, look at where they are. They're pinched with a labor crisis. They can't find enough people to work in their factories. And if we can come in and show them a cost-effective way to quickly deploy automation with low risk and go. In fact, I just came up with the idea. I should have a side podcast co-host because I've been having problems always getting a co-host. I should get a robot co-host. Then they'll all show up.

They don't talk so good. That's kind of the problem. What I'll do is I'll just learn ventriloquism or I can edit and post. There you go. That'll work. I'll just learn ventriloquism, or I can edit and post. There you go. That'll work. I'll just learn ventriloquism. How's it going, eh? Then we could do robot jokes. That'll be funny.

So moving on, let's talk about what you guys are doing there at Fabtech. Fabtech is going to be a huge show. I guess you guys are going to have a booth there talking to people and sharing it. What are some of the things you're premiering at the show and covering and and what are some of the reasons why people should definitely drop by your guys booth well so let's let's go take a half a step back first so the number one application in the robotics industry is material handling specifically loading and unloading machines and that is it's a great example because it's one of those dull jobs that nobody wants to do i mean really do you want to stand in front of a machine tool all day and put parts in and take parts out put parts in and take parts out it's not very

exciting yeah so we're going to be well every place we go where there's any kind of manufacturing we always show some type of machine tending machine loading application. At this show, we're going to have a couple of really interesting things though, because now we're doing collaborative arc welding. Oh, wow. And historically,

I mean, robots have been doing arc welding for a long time, but they've been the traditional, you know, traditional automation, hard safety caging, can't work next to people. And in this case, we're actually showing collaborative arc welding robots, very easy to program, quick to deploy. And they'll be in our booth and throughout the show.

Nice, man. So I think that part is very, very exciting. Yeah, I used to, when I went to high school, I actually took welding because I grew up in the age where they said, you've got to learn leather shop, wood shop, and metal because that's your future. Sorry. Still waiting for that all to kick in. But one of the classes that I ended up taking because I was just slumming through high school was welding. And welding was kind of fun but man i tell you if you're ever well i used to have these these uh adidas shoes that had kind of like a mesh top to

them that doesn't work so well does it yeah when one of those hot embers fell into that shoe man there was like a dance you'd end up doing like oh geez or well this is this is uh this is one of the areas that's really difficult right now there's an estimated shortage of skilled welders somewhere in the 75,000 to 85,000 range. Wow. That's a lot of welders that are needed. It's because they get tired of having their toes burned. Well, the toes burn and then, frankly, put your head under a helmet all day. It's difficult work.

It really is difficult work. It really is difficult. I've had the eye burn too because you're wandering around the shop and you didn't put your thing on. You looked over and saw some welding stuff. You're like, that'll be fine. Then that night you're like, your eyes are melting. Yeah, so I think welding's been a great place for automation for a long time. And I think what we're going to show at Fabtech is taking it to a whole different level. Yeah, and I think it's cool that this is really becoming a technical thing.

You guys should just, I think what they should do is take manufacturing, just rename it something else. Like, I don't know, something that's Gen Z or see, I think if, I think if you took most of these robots and attach like an iPhone to them,

you know, so that they'd be like watching the screen, maybe, maybe integrated robotic manufacturing with Instagram somehow? I don't know. I'm just kidding. Well, listen, you're not far off the mark. One of the products that's built around the universal robot at the show is actually programmed

and controlled from an iPhone. There you go. There you go. And we think our interface is extremely easy to understand. We basically say if you can handle an iPhone, you can handle a robot. But this company took it one step further, and they literally do all their programming through a phone. That is awesome, man.

That is awesome. The future. This is going to be a cool show to see because we've always talked about this, this turning of the age, the turning of the page, where we're going from the society where, uh, you know, largely we used to be a manufacturing society. I mean, that was what we were really about. And I remember in the eighties going through that change where people, you know, were like,

wait, we don't get a job for life anymore with the gold watch at the end. Uh, things are becoming more, more, uh, uh, what's the right word more um transient transient um and uh you know uh and and you know we a lot of my uh friends who are tech uh innovators tech news people and stuff we always talked about how we're gonna have to go through this economic segment we're kind of seeing that right now in our politics and everything else and and how people are you know uh have issues with jobs and they're going from a transition where they used to work in the old manufacturing stuff and they're not skilled labor for some of this new stuff and so it's really great that you guys have this where this transition can be much more easy to learn and adapt to where you don't have to go get an engineering degree or yeah it's uh or learn to code i think the other thing i think the other thing for people

to remember is uh you know as a society we've gone through these transitions forever yeah and they're not black and white transitions there's a couple politicians who are you know speaking about the you know the the robots taking all the jobs and we're going to have millions of people out of work next week. It's not going to happen that way. And so the challenge, I think, is for our leadership and our government to help make sure that we don't leave people behind. I remember, and the other thing too is that as businesses become more efficient and more cost efficient, they don't necessarily always go, hey, we need to lay off more people. They just become bigger businesses that hire more people.

I remember our mortgage company back in the day, this is back when telemarketing was much larger, and legitimate telemarketing was put that way because everyone gets robo dials now. Don't hang up for that. That's not my thing. But, uh, back in the day we had telemarketing that would generate leads for our mortgage company. Uh, and of course we, you know, we were having trouble just scaling it and making it cost efficient, profitable. Uh're a very small company at the time. And then we got a robo dialer, a big giant cedar dialer. And of course it complied with all the rules of the FTC, but they do not call us. But as we built that out and we spent all the money for that, it automated the systems, made us much more profitable. And we exploded as a company and hiring more people and so uh you know like you say there's that discussion of like well they're going to take

our jobs they're actually not they're going to as companies become more uh efficient they're going to get bigger hire more people because they're going to still receive these robots and yada yada yada that there it becomes scalable as it becomes more profitable well and i think what we see is uh you know, again, I've been in the automation business for a long, long time. You know, we've traditionally sold to larger companies because larger companies had the wherewithal to have a big engineering department, maybe a couple of robotic specialists, et cetera.

What we're doing now is we're bringing this very incremental, easy-to-de deploy automation into small and medium enterprises. And it is really making a change. These are places that prior to this era have never been automated because it just didn't make economic sense. Yeah. I mean, it didn't, you know, the ability for a small company to move into this field is like, we don't have that kind of money, man. I'll tell you, the very first customer I met when I joined Universal Robots was a man who owned a small contract machine shop outside of Dallas. He had 16 employees, and he was struggling to hire and to keep people. He was struggling to grow his business.

The only way he could get his business to grow is he personally had to put in way too many hours. And he was looking for a solution because he knew what he was doing was not sustainable. Long story short, he found Universal. He bought one of our robots. Within a month, he had it figured out. Again, he's not a robot programmer. He's a machinist. He goes straight into your trading

program. Yep. He went online. He figured out how to get it to work. He got it installed. The payback was just totally impressive. He was doing jobs in less turnaround time than he ever had. So flash forward, here's this little bitty machine shop, right? 16 people.

He's now 22 people. He's got nine robots. He's making more profit than he ever has. He's taking larger orders than he could before because he can process them. More sales people. So it's just that incremental success story that is getting replayed over and over and over again. again and to me if I was you know someone you know there's those I mean I have some Gen Z or friends relatives that the kids don't want to go to college they don't want to learn you know they don't want to go do the whole

four-year degree and get five million dollars in debt I mean to me this seems like a great way you know beside coding to take in not everyone could code I can't I can't deal coding. I suck at math. But this is a great way to get a future, a foothold in a future business that's just going to scale and grow. This is the future as far as we can see it right now. It is. And again, we've, we've made the, the programming interface and the application tools for the basic applications. We can do more complex things, but for the basic applications, I guarantee you I could teach you how to be a robot programmer.

I want to be a robot. I'm going to get a robot co-host. We're going to do it. We're going to do it. I can see it coming. As opposed to for the show. What if it puts me out of a job, though? What if the co-host takes over and becomes more popular than me?

No, I'm just kidding. You got to be. You got to have the creativity. No, you know what I'll do? I'll just unplug the robot. I'll be like, yeah, kick that cord. Yeah, all right. Oh, the robot's down.

Yeah, robot's sick. Yeah. There you go. Anyway, no, this is going to be awesome. You guys can check this out. You can go to universal-robots.com. You can see them at Fabtech. If you check out the show there in Chicago,

they're going to be at booth number B35083. Joe, it's been wonderful to have you. Anything more we should know about what you guys are doing there at the Fabtech show? I think the last message I'd like to leave your audience with is if you're going to come to the show, we really want you to come by the booth, not just to look at the shiny bright lights and everything, but I want you to come by the booth and I want you to be able to pick up a Teach pendant and see how easy it is to apply a collaborative robot automation from universal. It really is an eye opener. It's that easy. Wow.

You're making me think I'm thinking maybe I should quit. Come to Chicago. I'll just get a co-host. Yeah. We'll be covering it in Chicago. This is going to be awesome. So everyone be sure to check it out. And if you're not at the show, you can go to universal-robots.com and you can of course contact all the folks over there you can see some of their wonderful use cases they have they have some really cool cases here from uh bajaja auto uh continental you probably heard of them the big uh i think they do a lot more but they know they they do tires. Task4Tips, Trellberg, they've got a whole bunch of case stories and studies you can take and get into

and all the different applications they use. I'm really excited about this. This is a really burgeoning field, and a lot of my tech journalists, we talk about this, this kind of curve that we have to go through. But wow, this is definitely a quick ramp up from the u-curve because uh it doesn't have the same sort of learning curve that you would have to you know be an engineer and that's why this segment is the fastest growing segment in factory automation really wow yep there you go the future is here people come on see it come on and see it definitely come see it

all right guys well we certainly appreciate you guys tuning in. Be sure to give us a like, subscribe to us on YouTube. Also, follow us on Spotify, on iHeartRadio, on iTunes, Google Play. Tell your friends, neighbors, relatives, everybody to subscribe to the show. We certainly appreciate you guys tuning in. Be sure to also, if you can, give the show a nice referral.

Go on to iTunes and tell us what you think of the show and all that good stuff. Appreciate you tuning in. Go see these folks at Fabtech. We'll see more coverage of the show as it goes on. And we'll see you guys next time.