Robot Shift

Experience is important.  Experience ensures the right technology is applied in the right way.  But how do you measure experience and what experience is important?  No one says “This is completely new to us, but please give us a chance to learn on your dime.”  On the flipside, you also want an integrator that isn’t afraid of some healthy stretching.   Too many times I’ve seen integrators who are afraid to step outside of their comfort zone and continue to implement antiquated technologies that sacrifice the final system’s performance, and maintainability.

Experience falls into two categories:

1.  Technology

2.  Application  

Technology Experience:

The integrator may not have solved your exact problem before, but you want to see examples (and references) of how they’ve applied their core technologies in new and innovative ways.  You want to see solutions that were innovative and cutting edge, while still being maintainable by an electrician or millwright at 2:00 AM (no science fair projects).  They may not have solved your exact application before, but if they’ve stretched to solve other problems of similar complexity, then it shows a track record of success.  You can gauge your application’s relative difficulty to what they’ve done.  Talk to their references to make sure it is real.

Application Experience:

Technology only gets you so far.  The integrator needs to have application experience in your industry to put together a complete solution.  Integration is about applying technology to solve a business problem.  If an integrator doesn’t understand your business and its key drivers, how can they apply the technology correctly?  If you’re looking to automate raw food handling, don’t use an integrator that specializes in robotic welding and expect it to be designed to the AMI Meat Safety Standards.  I’m surprised how often this happens.  Ask the integrator to show you completed projects within your industry.  Ask them about key drivers for your industry (product quality, sanitary design, washdown, heat transfer/high temperature, validation, documentation, etc.).  If they don’t know this stuff for your industry, that’s a big red flag.

Finally, I’ll bring it back to my #10 sign an integrator is the real deal.  Ask them where they don’t fit.  What technologies, applications and industries are outside their wheelhouse?  Anyone who claims to do everything, is really a generalist that is great at nothing.

I’m starting to lag behind since my last Top 10 Signs Post.  Things have been busy, but I promise to get the next one up shortly!

I wanted to take a moment to comment on some of the feedback I’ve gotten thus far.  It’s been interesting putting these criteria up here.  It’s sparked lots of great conversations, debates and emails.

I’ve had a couple of comments these criteria are good, but only really apply to high-dollar or technically challenging projects.  For commodity applications, or small low-dollar projects they don’t necessarily apply.  I prefer to think of these as tools to select an integrator use when you (end-user) can’t afford to be wrong.

If you can afford to be wrong on your project (i.e. late project delivery, not meet the desired OEE, incur some extra costs, excessive downtime to install/integrate, etc.) then you should go with the lowest cost provider.  Why wouldn’t you?  There are lots of projects that aren’t mission critical to production where a hiccup doesn’t sink the ship.  For those projects, these criteria don’t apply.

Project size isn’t a good gauge either.  One of our engineers that was embedded at Toyota once said to me “This work [small continuous improvement projects] is some of the simplest, no-glory work, but at the same time the most stressful.  We can make a small change to the line over the weekend and if everything goes well, no one knows about it Monday morning.  It’s business as usual.  If it doesn’t go well, everyone knows”.  They can’t afford to be wrong.

More to come…