S1E46 The ABCs of Industrial Automation | Mauricio Romero

Mauricio is a senior manager of metrology (no longer a principal engineer as mentioned in the recording) at Johnson & Johnson’s Vistakon division, and has been automating equipment and manufacturing lines for well over a decade. In this episode he shares practical advice on when to automate a process and when to NOT automate a process, and even shares a few of his favorite automation suppliers.

The Being An Engineer podcast is brought to you by Pipeline Design & Engineering. Pipeline partners with medical device engineering teams who need turnkey equipment such as cycle test machines, custom test fixtures, automation equipment, assembly jigs, inspection stations and more. You can find us on the web at www.testfixturedesign.com and www.designtheproduct.com 

About Being An Engineer

The Being An Engineer podcast is a repository for industry knowledge and a tool through which engineers learn about and connect with relevant companies, technologies, people resources, and opportunities. We feature successful mechanical engineers and interview engineers who are passionate about their work and who made a great impact on the engineering community.

The Being An Engineer podcast is brought to you by Pipeline Design & Engineering. Pipeline partners with medical & other device engineering teams who need turnkey equipment such as cycle test machines, custom test fixtures, automation equipment, assembly jigs, inspection stations and more. You can find us on the web at www.teampipeline.us

Transcript

Presenter: 0:00

The Being an Engineer Podcast is a repository for industry knowledge and a tool through which engineers learn about and connect with relevant companies, technologies, people, resources and opportunities. Enjoy the show.

Aaron Moncur: 0:28

Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Being an Engineer Podcast. Our guest today is Mauricio Romero, who holds a degree in electrical engineering from the University of Florida. Mauricio is a principal engineer at Johnson and Johnson's VistaKON Division, where they develop eyecare products and he is heavily involved in automation, which will be much of the focus of our conversation today. So, Mauricio, welcome to the show.

Mauricio Romero: 0:56

Thank you, thank you very much.

Aaron Moncur: 0:58

What made you decide to become an engineer?

Mauricio Romero: 1:01

So I think I think early on in my life, right? as a as a young kid, I think I used to love technology, I have always wanted to learn how things were work. I've always been involved in software. I remember writing software programs for my younger brother to learn how to how to how to do math problems. When I was probably middle school

Aaron Moncur: 1:22

Oh, wow. And what programming were we using back then?

Mauricio Romero: 1:26

Ah, so I was gonna tell you how old I am. I had a TI-44 programming in basic

Aaron Moncur: 1:33

TI-44. That's a calculator, right?

Mauricio Romero: 1:35

No, it's a, well it probably is as powerful as as today's calculator. But it was easy with that you cannot put a slot on the side for for basic programming, and believe it or not, programs on cassettes. So long time ago.

Aaron Moncur: 1:53

Interesting. Okay. Back in the early days of programming, yeah. Okay, so you started programming helping your brother and that was one thing led to another?

Mauricio Romero: 2:03

Yeah. So when I was in high school, I took a aptitude test, and a two things came out, so I've always loved math and sciences, I think it came out as either, you might want to look into accounting, or engineering, I was taking an accounting course. And my wife is an accountant. So I don't think I can be an accountant. But I'm sure people find it rewarding. So I started looking into engineering and what options I had there. And I remember looking early on, through, through one of the colleges, the type of courses you'd be taking in college, and what the topics were, and I want to take them all, I was interested in all of them to try to almost take them all. So I knew right away that engineering was my passion. Right? So, my parents always told me, find something you love, and get paid for it, right? That's the best thing you can do. With any job, you're gonna have some days that are not the greatest. But you can always get up in the morning and say, this is what I love to do. I don't want to do anything else, right? You shouldn't have any regrets with your career, you should always do what you love, not chase the money or any fame or anything like that. If you if you love what you do, that's the best kind of reward you can have.

Aaron Moncur: 3:20

Oh, wise words. Absolutely. Yeah, money only goes so far right? At the end of the day, you need to be happy with what you're doing.

Mauricio Romero: 3:29

Absolutely.

Aaron Moncur: 3:30

Let's see, you were early on for a company called Americ Disc in your career. And I couldn't find much about them online as far as I could find they were or maybe are still a manufacturer of was it compact discs or something like that?

Mauricio Romero: 3:45

Yeah, they may compact disc. It's, it's a French Canadian company. You probably don't see it because the mother plant is called Disc Americ in Canada. Okay. But yeah, it was early on in my career. It was just very small plant down in South Florida, and we made compact discs, and back then it was mostly music and in some software we used to make. So I don't know if you you probably may be too young. But AOL has sent out gazillion discs for

Aaron Moncur: 4:15

I remember that, yeah.

Mauricio Romero: 4:16

Early on, but we made millions of them.

Aaron Moncur: 4:18

Okay

Mauricio Romero: 4:19

That's a lot. It was a great company to work for. Because early in my career, especially because being so small, it allowed me to wear many hats. So I'm an electrical engineer by degree. But I was involved not just in electrical engineering, but in injection molding, a lot of software, a lot of mechanical engineering, so really exposed me to many disciplines of the engineering sector and accountable. You know, a lot of a lot of times at least when I was coming out of school, I thought what I'm going to electro engineer must do electrical engineering only. And what you learn out in the industry is I've worked with many mechanical engineers that are excellent software developers, right? So engineering really teaches you how to learn. It's my opinion, once you get into the career, you might, you might go one way or another. Like I said, in this particular company, I learned a lot about injection molding, I learned, I learned a lot about mechanical engineering, mechanical design, and as well as software.

Aaron Moncur: 5:20

Yeah, I think that a degree in engineering is so valuable because it opens a lot of different doors, right? You're not pigeon holed into like one tiny thing, you can do so many different things with a degree in engineering.

Mauricio Romero: 5:32

Even if you stay within the electrical engineering area, there's so many different places communications software, just power. I mean, there's control system, there's so much.

Aaron Moncur: 5:45

Yeah, what what what is the manufacturing process like for compact discs? I'm curious about this.

Mauricio Romero: 5:52

So it's, there's an injection molding process. So the first the first thing that happens is you create a master and a master gets created from it's actually it's a nickel disk that has all the little pits and grooves that make the information right, so everything gets master from my leg, if it's a, if it's a piece of music, you get a master deed, like a digital tape, and then

Aaron Moncur: 6:17

The ones and zeros?

Mauricio Romero: 6:19

Yep. So then the bits and the little peaks and valleys are the ones that determine whether you have a one zero, so everything becomes binary. So so that's the master right from there, that gets put into an injection molding machine and the discus injection mold, and so you get this clear disc that comes out of injection molding machine. And then it goes into a vacuum process where it's a sputtering process, essentially, you pour a vacuum, you inject an inert gas, like argon, you create a voltage difference, and essentially, the argon crashes into aluminum target, and passes aluminum over the plastic, increase that reflective layer that use the you familiar when you look at compactness, you then put it on on a lighter, you get a covering of lacquer to protect the aluminum, so it doesn't oxidize, or anything happens to it. And and then you do the artwork over it. Right. So

Aaron Moncur: 7:13

Okay

Mauricio Romero: 7:14

High level, that's the way it works, right? It's

Aaron Moncur: 7:16

Very interesting

Mauricio Romero: 7:17

Very, very interesting process.

Aaron Moncur: 7:20

Where physically, where are the little the pits and grooves? Is that in the injection molded plastic? Or is that in the deposited aluminum?

Mauricio Romero: 7:27

In the injection molded plastic

Aaron Moncur: 7:28

Oh, it is actually in the plastic. So if you were to look with a microscope at that plastic, would you see these little?

Mauricio Romero: 7:36

You, probably could. So if you flip up our CD, you can see how the light gets refracted in different colors, you see like a rainbow there. And that's because of the light being refracted within the little, the little, the little pits and stuff. So you stay information there, you would have to really look really closely to be able to see that.

Aaron Moncur: 7:54

But in theory, if you look with a high enough power microscope, you could see little details and get interesting. Okay, cool. All right, well, you have a ton of experience with automation, at least for the past 10 years, or maybe more, that's been your primary focus PLCs and HMIs. How did you first learn about the world of automation

Mauricio Romero: 8:19

So in that, in that in that environment, so always like control systems? Right. So that was one of the things that I was interested in were two areas control system and power systems, what I enjoy studying when I was in college. So in when I went to work for this company, this manufacturing plant, everything is very automated. So the even from all the machines and everything that you're making the compact this from it was you you put out, you put a master of the front, you get a finished CD at the end, right. So very, very automated. So that got me involved in the automation piece. When I moved over to j&j where we will make contact lenses. It was also a very automated process. So that kept my career going, if you will, in this automation area. And in and I've been lucky in the sense that both at the American desk and J&J. I've been allowed to get involved in multiple areas like so my injection molding background is what got me the position over in, in in j&j. But really, if I look at my career, I've probably done very little injection molding since the beginning. And it's been more on the software automation piece.

Aaron Moncur: 9:33

Okay. Can you tell us about I mean, without disclosing any confidential details, of course, some of the projects that you've worked on where you had to automate I don't know an assembly line or some kind of inspection process or whatever it was piece of equipment.

Mauricio Romero: 9:48

Yeah. So we have multiple generations of equipment that have that have improved upon each other right. So if you in based on the needs of of what we're trying to, we're trying to manufacturer. I've been involved. So for the first probably 10 years of my career, I worked in engineering, then after that I moved into R&D. So I have a little bit of experience with promote perspective. So in when I worked in engineering was a lot about improving upon the processes that we have right now. So some of our equipment came in and was only able to, I can't tell you the numbers, but it was only designed to make a certain amount of lenses per shift, right. Since then, it's probably been triple or quadruple

Aaron Moncur: 10:34

Wow

Mauricio Romero: 10:35

So in that's gone through just looking at different areas, and how can we improve, looking at new technologies and seeing how can we? How can we essentially, we're a manufacturing site, so the more you can make the better, right? So, so that's been my experience within the, within the engineering side of things. And then when I moved to R&D, it was a little bit different, because it was like,'Okay, we need to come up with something new.' Right? What is the next generation? What is the next piece of equipment that's going to meet the needs of the products that are coming? So that was a different challenge, because now you're not just improving upon what you were given? But now we have a blank slate in okay, well, how does how does that form? How does that become a product that that's going to be scalable, and can be transferred over to manufacturing?

Aaron Moncur: 11:24

Yeah, yeah. How do you decide, or how should a company decide that it's time to start automating a process, as opposed to just doing it manually? What are the triggers that when you experience these triggers or noticed these triggers, you should think,'Okay, it's probably start, it's probably time to start automating this process.'

Mauricio Romero: 11:46

Yeah, I think I think a lot of things have to deal with what you're trying to gain out of it. I think we've we've been guilty of maybe over automating some areas, right? In some some some areas is like, really the you want to know, what's the value, what's the value proposition of automating this. Now, at the end of the day, you need to be able to weigh that value to the effort, because automating things is costly, right? You you're investing on new equipment, you're investing quite a bit of resources and funding to come up with a new piece of equipment. But at the end of the day, is the piece that you're automating worth it. And I'm not saying that you don't automate a part of it, but you got to figure it out how big is that automation, you don't want to automate too much, because then you're wasting a lot of effort, and you end up making things a little bit not as flexible as you should. Burning areas that you can look at and bring value into, into into the automation piece. I'll tell you one project that we probably that was not successful, where we went a little too far, we build a specific equipment, it was a good idea at the time. But we went too far on automation process. The good thing about our project is we were able to leverage two technologies out of that, that became very successful. So while the project itself was not a successful project, there were two pieces that we were able to forward into into other products. And it really made a big difference into smaller pieces of that overall automating automation project that we were able to leverage. So I think I think it's about looking at what you're trying to achieve. And seeing if it's, what is the return on investment? How much is this really going to buy me? At the end of the day, right? automating for the sake of automating it's not it's not a good plan?

Aaron Moncur: 13:43

That's that's a great point. Are you aware of any rule of thumb as far as automating a process is going to cost this much x versus just doing it manually? Maybe it's like, 2x to automate it or 5x to automate it over the the first year or something?

Mauricio Romero: 14:03

Well, I mean, this the sunlight is not just the cost, that you look at what you also look at the people, right, safety has a lot to do with it, if you if you're doing something that's that's, that's very repetitious and may lead to some ergonomic type injuries for the for for the workforce, you definitely want to look into automating it right? And then you start looking at that from a different perspective. You also look at the quality capability, repeatability of the process that you want to do and whether all those drives as many factors are you looking to, to figure out, does this make sense for us to go forward? We will automate places where we've done it just for the for safety purposes, right? It's not that somebody is going to get hurt, but it has a potential to lead to somebody having an ergonomic type issue because of the repetitiveness of it. So when you look at those things, automation is a perfect way to eliminate the the human risk factor of somebody having an elbow issue.

Aaron Moncur: 14:59

Yeah, we were on a project like that, a few years back, there was a medical device that needed to be actuated over and over and over to test it, make sure it was working correctly. And the company had just an operator doing that. And the operators were getting like carpal tunnel syndrome, repetitive stress injuries from doing this over and over and over. And so we just automated a quick little fixture for them to do that. You mentioned that there is always the risk of over automating something, and you mentioned specifically that, over automating something could cause the problem of the process not being flexible enough. What what types of processes do you think should not be automated, because they'd be too inflexible? Or just for whatever reason?

Mauricio Romero: 15:49

So I think you have to look up from the, from the, from the manual process itself, right, and what is that you're trying to do to achieve? Is it a simple game? Like, okay, we're gonna automate this process, but it's really not, you're not gaining anything by automating? In other words, there is no risk to the to the operator, there's really no risk from, from a capability, perspective or repeatability. And then are you just automating it because you want to automate it? Right? So I think those are, there's many factors that you have to look at, what a lot of times we just look at the really, okay, the average just needs to do this little simple thing. Do we need really to automate this? Is this going to bring us a lot of volume of value? Or should we focus on more complex, repetitive type issues, or areas where we know we have, a repeatedly ratio, or a capability issue or something that a machine can do better than I do, right?

Aaron Moncur: 16:40

And as an engineer, it's probably hard at times to pull yourself back and say, 'No, we, we don't need to automate this,' because automating things is fun, right?

Mauricio Romero: 16:49

Automating things is fun. Yeah, absolutely. That's probably the best thing. It can be. It can be but I think that's where you work. You know, we work as a team, right? So it's not here, you have a lead for our project, but we they it gets discussed. And in people challenging, right? People will challenge the fact that you are, you're really thinking that we need to put an effort into this when it really doesn't, what are we going to gain from it? I mean, you're going to spend all this money, and you're really not gaining much from it. Right? So

Aaron Moncur: 17:15

Yeah

Mauricio Romero: 17:16

It does pay to take a step back and look at the big picture every so often to make sure you're going on the right path.

Aaron Moncur: 17:25

What are some of the limitations in automation today that you think might be solved in the next five or 10 years, but what kind of technologies are going to be introduced to the automation environment that that just don't exist now.

Mauricio Romero: 17:41

So I think some of the stuff that's coming in now, that's pretty interesting is is around robotics, right? And you see this role autonomous robots that can that without. You know, we're used to, you put a robot, you have to have a guarding around there, right. And for safety purposes, and now you have these, these these little, tiny little robots, like all over the place that can interact with humans, right, they could walk around you, they can, they can do a lot of stuff for you. And I think it's an interesting technology, in the sense that, what can that open for for, for, for the automation side, because a lot of times, it's difficult to automate because of the guarding that you have to put in there to protect the operator. But now, these are just this new robots are, are meant to be interacting with people. Right. So the safeties there. It just, it's interesting to, to to figure out how is that going to change the way we look at, we look at automation today.

Aaron Moncur: 18:39

Yeah, yeah. You're referring to like, collaborative robots.

Mauricio Romero: 18:43

Collaborative robot, yeah.

Aaron Moncur: 18:44

Old robot, and yeah. Okay. Can you describe for us the general architecture of an automated system? I mean, what are the main components or categories that that an automated system typically will have?

Mauricio Romero: 18:59

I mean, usually you have your devices, your low level devices, right, that are either connected to some kind of boss or or directly to way some type of controller, right, could be a PLC. I mean, we've had PCs, PC-based controllers. And then it depends on the automation of the sites, we're usually like, in our site, we have everything interconnected up to our, um, yes, DRP systems, so that the whole is the whole ecosystem, right? That work together to to really deliver whatever product you're trying to make right but usually have layers right, you have your devices and sometimes you have smart devices that have some, some intelligence on them, like servo controllers, vision systems and such. But usually on a manufacturing line, you should have like a master controller, which is either a PLC or some type of PC.

Aaron Moncur: 19:53

Okay. We, we actually use LabVIEW quite a bit to do some of our automation And then that ends up being effectively a PC controller. Is that something that you folks ever use? Or are you strictly Allen Bradley Siemens, the big, traditional industrial automation giants?

Mauricio Romero: 20:12

Yeah, and most of the most of the manufacturing lines is probably, the big rally people, Siemens type type stuff in some of our smaller, probably instrumentation stuff that is a little bit mixed of, we probably start with LabVIEW. But it doesn't it I don't know, if we've actually made anything final in lab, you will have us like a place for that we've been using to test things and come up with copying this work, like an R&D environment.

Aaron Moncur: 20:43

Okay.

Mauricio Romero: 20:44

Eventually, it makes it into something, it could be to a PC, basically PLC base, it could be a mixture of both right, so,

Aaron Moncur: 20:52

Yeah. You mentioned Allen Bradley and Siemens, and you're familiar with both of them. Do you see distinct advantages of one over the other Allen Bradley or Siemens? Are they the same? And you can do pretty much the same thing with either one.

Mauricio Romero: 21:07

Oh, man, that's, that's, you can have you can have like a three year discussion on this. So you get some people that are diehard one.

Aaron Moncur: 21:17

This is like Canon versus Nikon for photographers.

Mauricio Romero: 21:20

Yeah, it's like my opinion, right? This is my opinion, I think Siemens is brown in my opinions, poly gear more towards, like the process industry where you're actually, you have this big batches, and you have mixers and things are such, and for like discrete time manufacturing, I probably will say, I don't rallies, polymorphous to that I'm sure I'll get more people that will disagree with me. Yeah. But it's funny, it's funny that still though I see a convergence in the way in the way things are going from a PLC perspective, traditionally, ladder logic was is king still is in most areas, but this structure tech's areas coming up a lot quicker and, and really with younger engineers, they're coming ready to program instructor texts, as opposed to ladder logic, is what

Aaron Moncur: 22:16

When you say Stretford, Texas, you're referring to like C Python, that kind of thing?

Mauricio Romero: 22:20

Yeah, automation, basic, whatever, whatever you wants to call it, right. But that's comes in a big trend. Even with the newer engineers that are coming on board. They're coming in ready learned a programming language with which a lot of logic might not be there. The easiest thing for him to learn.

Aaron Moncur: 22:39

Interesting. All right, well, this is a good time to take a short break and share with the listeners that testfixturedesign.com is where you can learn more about my team pipeline design and engineering, and how we help medical device engineering teams who need turnkey custom test fixtures or automated equipment to assemble, inspect, characterize or perform verification or validation testing on their devices. We're speaking with Mauricio Romero today, a principal engineer at Johnson and Johnson's VistaKON Division, who specializes in automation. So, Mauricio, I'll take a step outside of automation just for a second here and ask you over the years have Are there any any habits that you've developed that have proven useful to you just in terms of being more productive?

Mauricio Romero: 23:30

Yeah, so I think attention to detail is something important in engineering professor, right. I think when I was a, there's something I learned when I was in college, I had a professor who would like if our problem was worth 10 points in your in your answer was way off, he will take seven or 10 points off, right, so you can actually get a negative score. I felt really bad. And because he always used to say, a negative sign makes a difference between a rocket going up or crashing down, right?

Aaron Moncur: 24:00

Intresting, yeah.

Mauricio Romero: 24:01

This thing was always you need to understand the problem enough so that when you get the answer, you should know that your way. Right, if you know that you're not in the ballpark, at the very least, I think that's carried on to to my, to my career, in the sense that I put a lot of emphasis, especially early on, right, I think I like to put a lot of effort early on the projects, to make sure that that at the end, it should be it should be smooth sailing, right. It involves a lot of a lot of research and a lot of, a lot of work just to make sure that we we have good documentation, we got good understanding. And we started the project correctly. I think that's probably one of the things that I've carried on my career pretty much from from the get go.

Aaron Moncur: 24:53

How do you think that you have developed this attention to detail? I mean, is that something that just comes with experience or Are there specific tactics that one can take to develop that that trait?

Mauricio Romero: 25:06

So I think the, the main thing that I, that I think drives me to that is, in my opinion, right, avoiding the fire is always the best approach, right. And the way you avoid the fire is by preparing early. So just like when we, when we, when we take a test or something, the better we study, the better we're going to do on the test the same thing with a project, right, the better we prepare ourselves, before the execution starts, the better the execution is going to be. So it's a way of thinking, by nature, humans like procastinate and leave it for last. But it's a way for thinking that I like to, that I like to follow, right. And I think you kind of, again, my team to buy into it by saying, we will celebrate bigger team than when when we avoid the fire, then we'll be having to fire the fire sometimes. And sometimes you get a lot more recognition by firing the fire because people see it as a fire and they see you working really hard at it. And maybe you don't get recognition when something goes well, just because it just happens. Right?

Aaron Moncur: 26:15

Yeah. Yeah.

Mauricio Romero: 26:16

Especially in software writing software, you don't really you know, you see Google, right, Google's a button, you put a warning that you're supporting magic happens, right? We depend upon millions and millions of lines of code, right?

Aaron Moncur: 26:29

Right.

Mauricio Romero: 26:29

You only see it, you only take it for granted, you put a search term, you hit a button, and boom, all these results come out, right? You only notice it when the button doesn't work. Right. But otherwise, you take it for granted.

Aaron Moncur: 26:42

That's a great way to think about it. I like what you said about procrastinating. I have never been one to procrastinate I, a customer of mine once, many years ago said I bet you were the guy in college that waited till the very end to study for the test. And as a no, that was the opposite of me, I was the guy studying three weeks in advance for the test. But yeah, I've never been one to procrastinate. And we've actually started doing pre mortems at at Pipeline where instead of doing a lessons learned at the end of a project, which we also do at the beginning, especially of a large complex project, we'll do a pre mortem. And we'll pretend that the project has ended. And it was a disaster, everything that could have gone wrong, went wrong. And putting ourselves in that mindset will ask the question, 'Okay, what went wrong? And how could we have prevented it?' And it's been a really great tool to identify beforehand, some of the problems that could come up that maybe we wouldn't have caught otherwise?

Mauricio Romero: 27:43

I like the idea. I may have to steal that from you and use it with my teams.

Aaron Moncur: 27:47

Yeah, absolutely. It's a I wish I could take credit for it. It's not mine, but we still are from someone else. Feel free to free to steal from us. All right, um, you mentioned briefly, safety earlier, what what safety precautions do automation teams need to take into account when when performing, when developing a system that's going to be used by an operator?

Mauricio Romero: 28:14

I mean, I think I think the best approach is, is to look at it from a zero access perspective, right? So that means that even if the even if the technician wanted to get hurt, I mean, sometimes you look at it like, okay, somebody is not going to do that, but you'd be amazed what people end up doing. Right?

Aaron Moncur: 28:33

Sounds like you have some stories about that.

Mauricio Romero: 28:35

Yeah. I think and I think it pays to look at it from a Xerox machine perspective and say, 'Can somebody intentionally get hurt doing this stuff?' Right? And if they can't, then you achieve the ultimate goal, right? I think, I have a personal connection to the to the guys that are running the manufacturing lines, I know them I've been there for many years. So for me, it's a personal connection that, I'm building something for them. And I want them to come to go home the same way they came to work, right. And so we take it very seriously at J&J. And we look at it from from that perspective, where Xerox is at the bare minimum,

Aaron Moncur: 29:16

That's a great way to think about it if they can't get into the system, that they can't hurt themselves

Mauricio Romero: 29:20

Can't hurt themselves, right. And their safeties guard doors and making sure that power gets removed when you open a door. And there's all kinds of stuff. So there's, there's, there's definitely ways to get around things. To make sure that that at the end of the day, there's there's really zero access for the individual to get hurt.

Aaron Moncur: 29:37

Yeah, that's great. Let's see, if you were designing a system that you wanted to be used manually, you're designing a manual, non automated system, but in the future, you want to be able to upgrade it, so that it can be automated, what are maybe some some considerations that one should take to account for the the future upgrade.

Mauricio Romero: 30:04

So I think if you're looking at if you're looking at a process that you want to that you want to automate, right? The first thing is, first you have to decide whether it's worth automating. Right. I think that's, that's, that's given as far as the automation, and what are the things that you need to look at. From from? It depends, right? If I, if I'm putting something I remember one thing that we used to do that was very manual was on the repackaging. If we have to do an inspection, we have to repackage product, or to do those type of things are we started, we started very small, very, we started manual, we went to a semi manual, and then we fully automated the process. Right? So I think taking it in chunks is probably the best, it's like, how do you how do you eat an elephant, one bite at a time, it takes off in some of these some of these things. Now, some, some, some minor projects are easy to automate, right? And maybe you just go in and fully automate those those process. But usually, if you start in manual, then you probably it probably is probably a complex manual type process that requires some steps for you to be able to automate. And, and you don't want to make the mistake of completely automating something or automating incorrectly or making it so inflexible that you have to redesign the equipment every time something changes, right. So I think automating eyepiece is probably a good approach.

Aaron Moncur: 31:29

That's an interesting approach. That makes sense. Okay. Can you share some of your favorite vendors for automation equipment, whether it's motors or PLCs, or HMIs, or just general automation, resources, any any vendors that you've really found to be useful or helpful that other listeners might also find value in knowing about?

Mauricio Romero: 31:51

So I think, I think from from from a PLC perspective, we worked a lot with, with Allen Bradley, they've been great partners. Working with us. We worked a lot with, one, one PLC, that's probably not as much known here in the US, but I really enjoy working is BNR. They've been also they were also very, very good to work with and it was early in my career, and I found that PLC to be extremely powerful. Some of the, you know, we work with wonderware for HMIs. I like, like Emerson Servers as well, I think they're, they're pretty easy to set up and pretty easy to use.

Aaron Moncur: 32:36

Great.

Mauricio Romero: 32:37

So I mean, as probably of my head, a few companies that are that I can think of, yeah.

Aaron Moncur: 32:42

Yeah, thank you for sharing those. All right, when when you're designing an automated system, I imagine that you're usually not designing that system to be run by engineers, but rather by less highly trained operators. What are some of the best practices that you've incorporated into your equipment to ensure that it can be used safely and effectively by operators who maybe don't have the technical, technical skills that an engineer does?

Mauricio Romero: 33:11

So in every project that I've worked in, I've always had the technicians be part of the team. I think that you'd be amazed how some things that you think are very important for the for the technician, the technician says, that's not gonna help me. You don't have to do this, right? This isn't this is not, it's not worth it just is, there's no need. It's not isn't it's not a big deal. But every, every project that I've been involved, I'll always have the, the technician or, or a member of the team is a technician that starts from the very beginning to the very end, they end up being part of the commissioning process. There, they sit on design reviews, they bring in all kinds of input. So to me they're your customer, right? They're the ones that are going to, it doesn't matter how good the system is, if they can run it is a failure, right? So think it Okay, not only does it does it help you from building a good system, that they're gonna, they're gonna be able to work in, but it gets that buy in from the technician, it's like, I had an input into this, this is my line, right? This is not a line you've given me but is my line. And it helps with training, it helps with so many other things. And I mean, we do it pretty much with every project, we always have the the end user or whoever is going to be running the equipment be part of the project team.

Aaron Moncur: 34:37

That's a that's a fantastic strategy. I love how your your mindset that you just shared of the technician is your customer, right? If you're designing a widget, I don't know some device, an iPhone case or a medical device. You're the customer is the customer, right? It's the end user the person who purchased that iPhone case or the doctor that uses that medical device, in this case in automation, the customer is the technician. That's, that's a really clever and wise way to think about it. Alright, I've just got a couple more questions for you here. What is the qualification process like for your equipment? So you've created this incredible piece of automated machinery, and it's supposed to do XYZ process? How do you go about validating that your machine actually does perform this XYZ process?

Mauricio Romero: 35:35

So we met, we sell medical devices, right? So we we follow, we follow the IQ, OQ PQ process, the V model, if you will, to validate our process. So it's very, because we were regulated by the FDA, we have a very specific documentation and process that we need to follow when we validate a particular piece of equipment, right?

Aaron Moncur: 35:58

Yeah

Mauricio Romero: 35:59

The installation of the equipment, the validation of the process, the validation of the product that's going to be running in the within the machine. So, so quite a bit of work, right. As you can imagine, this is a medical device people put in their eyes. So there's, there's, there's quite a bit of work on the validation side.

Aaron Moncur: 36:19

Yeah. Are there any few granular details that you can share about what that qualification process looks like in general for a piece of automated machinery?

Mauricio Romero: 36:32

So structural requirements. So it's just the V model, if you want to look at it that way, you have the requirements. And then you have a detailed design document and a final design document. And then after all those things are approved, then you start building the system. From there, you create test scripts, to make sure that everything is traceable, right from the from that every requirement has has been tested thoroughly, to ensure that you're delivering the what you would you say you were going to deliver. So essentially, that's what it is right is a requirement that ends up being validated with a tech with certain tests to make sure that it delivers what you need to do.

Aaron Moncur: 37:12

Yeah, every requirement has traceability.

Mauricio Romero: 37:14

Yep.

Aaron Moncur: 37:15

Yeah. What what career advice? Would you give younger engineers who are interested in going into automation that are already in an automation or they're they're wanting to go into wanting to go into?

Mauricio Romero: 37:29

So I think automation is a, it's a very interesting field. It's always changing technology has changed so much in the past few years. If you want, if you're interested in in making things move, and seeing how things work, it's a great field to be in, right. I mean, I think I have friends that work in it that build software, and nothing ever moves. Right.

Aaron Moncur: 37:56

Right. Yeah, me too.

Mauricio Romero: 38:00

This piece put in here to something, right. So I think from that perspective, is a great thing, you get such a huge system accomplishment, once you build something and there it is, right you see it, you can you can feel it, it's actually making something, making a product contributing to the to the goals of the company having built on. If you'd like that kind of challenge, if you like those type of activities, then then by all means, right?

Aaron Moncur: 38:26

Are there any? I don't know, any, any resources, or I don't know, curriculums? Or what, how can a young engineer prepare him or herself to succeed in the field of automation?

Mauricio Romero: 38:43

So honestly, I think the best thing an engineer engineers can do, and this could be, whether they're going into automation or not, is while they're going to school, take advantage of either internships or co-ops. We leverage a lot of co-ops, and a lot of summer interns. And we've had instances where, these guys came in thinking that they want to do something and they they just loved it right in and it's changed their career. It's changed the way they think about and we hired some of them some of my working with us, right. So. So I think if you really want to know whether you like this or not, I don't know if you get that, that you know, like a class that you if I remember going back to class, I never took a class on PLCs. Right? There may be classes on PLC. Now I took programming classes, I took C and all those things. So if you're interested, if you if you find that that is something that interests you, then definitely automation has that tool to want to offer to you what In my opinion, the best way you can really learn if that's what you want to do, and you're still in college is taking advantage of a summer internship and interning at an animation company or a local company that has high level automation and see firsthand what If that's what you want to do,

Aaron Moncur: 40:01

Yeah, get some experience actually doing it? Well, what are what are a few of the biggest challenges that that you face at work?

Mauricio Romero: 40:10

So I think, I think the from, from an automation perspective and from a product perspective, right, sometimes, how do you, you know that we talked a lot about taking risk, right, and especially in automation, as we, as we push that envelope, right, you can either look at some, some people look at it, where, an entrepreneur looks at risks and takes it right, a businessman looks to minimize risk, right? And sometimes you have to figure out, are you going to be an entrepreneur, or you're going to be a businessman, and sometimes, the business dynamics force you in a different direction. And I think some of the challenges is, as you building new things, you got to figure out what it is that you are, you're trying to achieve, right. And I think, a lot of it is selling your idea. As engineers, I think that's something that we don't realize how much of a sales people we need to be in selling your idea. Because you got to get, you got to get the money, you got to get the approval. And that's something that's, that's a little soft skill that most engineers don't have, right? We we see it and we're like, it's August, this is going to be great. I mean, look at it, look at the technology. You gotta you got to be able to sell that idea, and be able to get, buy ng in from the, from, from, from your business leaders to be able to fund that project for you. R ght. And I think that, that that that can be a challenge, because now you're trying to ommunicate your your, your proce s, and what is the value of a

Aaron Moncur: 41:46

Yeah to a non technical person, ri ht? Yeah

Mauricio Romero: 41:51

They don't care. They don't care that the PLC that you're using is the best PLC in the world, right? Or the on the servers that you're looking at, look how cool these arrows are and what I can do that they really don't care.

Aaron Moncur: 42:03

Exactly, how does it help them and their their goals? How does it help them achieve their goals? All right. Well, Mauricio, this has been wonderful. What if people want to get ahold of you or learn more about where you work? What's the best way for someone to get ahold of you?

Mauricio Romero: 42:21

Yeah, so they can probably reach me on my email. It's mromero@ipsdanger.com. That's probably the best way to get ahold of me.

Aaron Moncur: 42:31

All right, terrific. Well, thank you again, so much for spending some time with us. I really appreciate all the answers you've shared, and it's been just delightful getting to know you.

Mauricio Romero: 42:40

Thank you. Appreciate it.

Aaron Moncur: 42:45

I'm Aaron Moncur, Founder of Pipeline Design & Engineering. If you liked what you heard today, please leave us a positive review. It really helps other people find the show. To learn how your engineering team can leverage our team's expertise in developing turnkey custom test fixtures, automated equipment and product design, visit us at testfixturedesign.com. Thanks for listening.