Early in the first months of Fifth Wave Manufacturing, we had a chance to interview Kristian Hulgard, General Manager – Americas for OnRobot (based in Odense, Denmark, with its Western Hemisphere headquarters in Irving, TX). We returned for more in August 2022. Hulgard has already amassed a lot of experience in the sales channel and in the technical challenges faced by end users which are often solved by integrators. We are teetering on the edge of the Robot Age, a logical successor to the Jet Age and the Space Age. Every market research company sees the same picture taking shape in the next few years—lots of robots coming into manufacturing plants, fabricating companies, machining companies. This is part of the Fifth Wave (as it succeeds Industry 4.0, a dozen-year-old descriptor of technology) that will be pervasive as well as affordable.
Hulgard seems to be at the epicenter of all of this change. He brings us a lot of information with the ease and informality of someone who knows his subjects very well, and here is Part 1 of that interview.
Fifth Wave Manufacturing (FWM): This is our very first, our inaugural episode, of The Story of Making Tomorrow. And our very first guest is Kristian Hulgard. He runs the Western Hemisphere for OnRobot, famous for not only end effectors, but other things. And we’re going to talk about some of those things like software, I think. We’ll talk about the market. In our very recent conversations, we we’ve woven in those two things, you know, they kind of go hand in hand. We’ll see what the market drivers are, and how on earth we as an industry, how we’re going to serve the needs of the industry. The needs are so high right now. And we’ve got a lot of work to do. But first, if you could tell us a little bit about, your title, what you do with OnRobot and we’ll start there.
Kristian Hulgard (KH): Yes. Thank you, by the way, it’s an honor to be on the first episode here! It’s so cool, I’m happy to be part of it. OnRobot started out as a gripper manufacturer. Today, we are a manufacturer of all types of robotic tooling software–more solution-based products like palletizers so on. We have a global outreach. And as you mentioned I manage the North and South American operation. Yeah, we work with all the different robot manufacturers. We work in all the different application types. But I think importantly, to set the scene for the listener or the viewer, the things that I’ll be talking about and the market that we are exposed to and addressing, is mainly small- and medium-sized companies.
When we talk about four companies like GM, Boeing, Apple, Google, so on and so forth, their needs and the type of automation that they’re implementing is completely different. Most of the large manufacturing companies, they are pretty saturated in terms of automation. You know, they’ve already figured it out. They’ve used automation since the sixties, or maybe even prior. When you look at the output of manufacturing in the USA, 80% of that comes from small and medium sized companies. And 90% of that 80% does not use robotic automation.
I don’t think it’s that interesting to talk about the big guys when we’re talking about growth. A lot of the issues we’re going to address today are mainly in small- and medium-sized companies.
FWM: Okay. And we can define that by, I’m guessing maybe anywhere from 10 to a few hundred employees.
KH: That is our sweet spot.
FWM: Okay, good.
KH: But of course, if you have a larger company but you are not using automation, there would be a lot of valuable information that we are going to talk about as well. You know, I’m just trying to separate my conversation from, you know, fully automatic production lines of cars. I mean, those are completely different conversations.
FWM: You see the pictures of that and I envision in my head all the spot welding that’s going on and you have all these huge robots, bam, bam, bam . And that’s not what we’re talking about. We’re talking about things for a lot for viewers of this channel—they’re metal fabricators and some machining too. But those are the kinds of things where it’s about machine tending, which is a real art unto itself because you’re working with many, many parameters. With a welder, you know where the universe is, where the spot needs to be welded. A lot of that is what I call X, Y, Z processing. Not so with the machine tending at all, because it’s very conditional, right. It’s X, Y, Z, but it’s conditional too.
KH: Yeah, the machine tend application is probably what we’ve done the most in our company’s lifetime. It is our bread-and-butter business. It’s something that is done very quickly, it’s an easier type of deployment. And it has a low investment involved. For people who interested in, in machine, I can talk for days about that. We have a big machine show coming up and we’ll feature that.
FWM: Oh, right. IMTS at McCormick Place in September.
KH: In Chicago. And if there are readers or viewers out there who are interested in seeing CNC automation, then please go to that show, come see us.
FWM: All right. We talked about the sales aspect of rolling out these solutions. Once you have the solutions and it’s rolling that out to people, you simply cannot accomplish that with internal company people; there aren’t enough of them. There will never be enough of them.
KH: Yes! We’ve managed to set up a partner network for us here in the Americas. We have about 200 registered resellers of our products, which covers all of the US geographically, but also all types of robot brands, all types of applications. Kudos to my team–in four years we’ve been able to set up agreements and relationships with so many companies. And it’s also proof that there is such a huge demand for automation currently. All these companies have been fast to pull a trigger on automation. They want to move forward with automation, with automation components and our suite of products that we manufacture, because it helps them deploy robots.
To paint the picture, when I talk about the demand and integrators and distributors and robot manufacturers right now, I call it the perfect storm. We are coming out of the pandemic. During the pandemic companies were a little bit hesitant to pull the trigger. They were wary of the future. It was unpredictable what would go on in the market, but we buy more products now than we probably ever have.
On top of that reshoring, moving manufacturing back to the States, has also meant a massive interest from the manufacturing industry. Then there is the massive labor shortage. We don’t have any people who want to move boxes or stand at an assembly line, or sand or polish a part. I don’t blame them. It’s not fun to do. More people want to work behind a computer.
We have skill gaps in the new working generation. There are more young people that know how to work a computer, but they don’t know how to work a CNC machine, for example. All these factors point toward a massive demand for automation. Our challenge is, how are we going to meet that demand in time for it not to become irrelevant? What we saw back in the ‘90s and early 2000s of offshoring our manufacturing, it was because we were not competitive in the west to manufacture things. Now, we’re moving it back because we have the opportunity to automate and to become competitive. But if we take too long, the equation doesn’t add up, and we’ll have to start looking outside again.
It’s definitely a timing thing. How can we solve this demand? IFR (International Federation of Robotics, Frankfurt am Main, Germany) says we have to install something like 10 times as many robots in five years. My question to integrators, to distributors, to robot manufacturers and to the actual manufacturing companies is how are you going to do that? How are you actually going to install 10 times as many robots as we’ve been doing? Like during the past year, you don’t have 10 times as many engineers. You don’t have 10 times as many salespeople. You don’t have 10 times as many operators on your floor. The way that I see it is that the only way we can do it is to minimize the deployment time for each robot that goes into manufacturing.
FWM: How do you do that?
KH: I usually split it up in two. One thing is the hardware, plug and play hardware. You can take a gripper, take a screwdriver, take a sander, you click that on to the robot arm, it works. You don’t need any expertise. It’s plug and play. I think we’ve come a long way here. You know, most, if not all major manufacturers of components and robots, they cooperate, they work together and they’re unified in communications and mechanical installation.
FWM: It’s an excellent situation.
KH: Now the next step–and I think what’s still missing–is the software part. You still need expertise, for example, to program the robots. You still need expertise to risk to make risk assessments. You still need expertise to do other things. I’m not claiming that we need to make integrators obsolete or remove them, because there will always be need for expertise, but we don’t have enough resources right now to meet the deployment needs. Why don’t we create software and a solution to take all that and simplify it so that every level of the supply chain can minimize the time they spent on deploying the application?
FWM: Yes. What you’re describing is software that actually helps you define what the heck it is you’re trying to do in the first place, right? We have a job where we need to move this over here and do some step in between…
KH: …and then [the robots] do it for you. Why do we have to program robots? Why do we have to program grippers? Why do we have to program all this stuff? Why do I need a person to take week-long training to be able to operate a robot or a gripper or a conveyor or a PLC? I should have software that handles everything. And again, we are talking about simpler applications, I’m not talking about huge, automated cells with multiple robots. All I’m talking about are those 90% of the small- and medium-sized companies that never seen a robot in their manufacturing floor before.
Now the software will do all the programming and will do all the risk assessment. It’ll do the path, programming, the trajectory, everything. Because those are the typical applications that integrators from engineering companies, while they don’t have time and resources to take on these things, they are tying up their resources on larger projects and nobody blames them. It’s more fun to work on a $10 million project than a $75,000 project. But the demand and the need for those $75,000 to $100,000 projects is still there and the projects are not going away.
We are coming out with our version of that type of software. That is one of the missing pieces in accelerating the deployment of robots.
FWM: It’s interesting because OnRobot has come up with online short courses based on different applications in an industrial environment. One of those was machine tending on a press brake. I took that course and it was very good. It showed you all the things you can select from and here’s how to build that solution. What do you think are the top five applications that you’re trying to serve. Also, could those applications fit into the profile you just outlined?
KH: CNC machine mills, lathes, press brakes—we take a part from here and put it into the machine. The machine does something and we put it somewhere else. That application is proven thousands of times. It is a very easy thing to solve with a robot. That is my top application. If you run a manufacturing company and you have a guy loading and unloading a machine, you’re not using your full potential. You have to automate. You have to do it! The ROI on something like this is less than a year. Even if you have only one shift, even if you have hundreds of different parts and you only do small volumes, it’s proven. It’s so simple to do that you have to do it. Now that is, and will remain for a long time, the most popular application when talking about small- to medium-sized companies.
There’s one other trend I’ve seen, which is also in the metal machining industry. It’s in a lot of different industries and that is end of line packaging and palletizing. Again, it’s easy. You don’t need to change the flow of your manufacturing because it’s at the end of the line. You have to take a box and put it on a pallet.
I definitely confirmed that I’m completely damaged by the industry because I went on a recreational trip to Louisville, Kentucky, last week. I took a few distillery tours, which were absolutely fantastic. Walking through their manufacturing, each one of them showed us a guy taking the box and putting it on the pallet. Why don’t you guys [automate] it? You know, there are so many companies that still have a guy standing there and putting boxes on a pallet. It’s such a simple thing to automate, and ROI is probably within a year. It’s a really hot topic right now.
So those are my top applications.
FWM: I’m going to throw one more out there. For the fabricators out there, a big thing for them, maybe on a laser, is part sorting. You have a nest that’s maybe 10 feet long by five feet wide, and you’ve just cut a bunch of 2D parts and they’ve fall into a bin. And now, the people you’ve hired to do this pull out this part and that part, and they’re wearing gloves because it’s sharp. No deburring yet at this stage. To me, this would seem like a good growth area for you. You could approach everyone with a laser, and off you go.
KH: Yes. We have we have both laser cutter and laser engraving applications and, and also case studies on our website. People can go in and see, and get a little inspiration there.
One feature I’d like to bring up involves electric tooling. For the small- to medium-sized market, a lot of people think about robots and maybe they think about the typical robot you saw back in the ‘80s. Big, bulky, with all these tubes and hoses on it. It looks so confusing from the start. The modern ology for grip and tooling technology is going electric instead of pneumatic. That eliminates a lot of both investment and maintenance, as well as the need for expertise to install.
You don’t need a compressor. The tubes or hoses, you don’t need maintenance again on the system. Now an electric gripper, for example, is not only smart because it just uses the power from the robot. It’s also software controlled. A motor moves the fingers so that you can read the size of the part you are gripping. You don’t need an external sensor to tell you how large your part is, you simply grip it and the motor will tell you that this is a two-inch part. Now the robot can move it to the bin with two-inch parts or put it into the laser cutter that needs to perform some task with it. There are a lot of intuitive things possible with the use of electric tools.
FWM: Okay, tell me about a palletizing or part moving application. A lot of times, a suction end effector is the one of choice—perfect for the application. Can you have that done electrically?
KH: Absolutely. Traditionally you would have the compressor externally and stand next to the robots. Some manufacturing companies would also have central compressed air. But instead of using that type of vacuum, we we’ve moved the vacuum and the pump into the tool. It’s still just plug and play with the robot and the tool will feed power off the robot and then actuate its vacuum pump. And what is the benefit of it? Again, air is extremely costly. Even if you have a central compressor system, the hardware, the maintenance of the system is very expensive. The only way you control it is through a physical valve. We control our vacuum with software. I can input that I need a certain vacuum level. I can detect whether I have a grip or not. I can detect if I lost my part, all this stuff is based on software. I have sensors in it. I know if I reach a certain level, I also know if I’m losing grip, so the pump will start back up and compensate for that. Look, you know, it’s just a smarter, more modern solution and it’s cheaper.
FWM: I can tell you the factories I’ve been to, I always see—not always, but often—you see these places where they have central suction air. And I just wonder, gosh, how much money is being wasted by this system. There’s no way to have a 200,000 square foot facility and not have a single leak in the system.
KH: It’s one of the largest operational expenses in many companies. And it’s not so much then actual cost of it, it’s the money wasted on it. There are always a lot of leaks in the system, and a lot of maintenance. That air is going somewhere. You always produce air and you have no idea where some of it goes. If you use electric tooling, which more companies are using, and you are more aware of where your costs are. And you can control them.
FWM: Let’s shift gears to something you already mentioned and that is software. I know you have a lot of stuff coming up on that and I don’t know how much you can even talk about it, but using general terms, I’m sure you can. Can you clue us in as much as you can?
KH: I see the evolution in the collaborative and lightweight industrial robot and automation and I compare it to the computer industry. It’s very similar, in fact; we are moving away from hardware-specific things and moving into software. More value is created on a software level and going into the future that won’t change. Now I already explained the ways we can meet the increased demand and how we can solve our issues in the desired speed and momentum for meeting the demand in market, and software is the only way we can really solve it. And I described our future product, which we’ll call D:PLOY, which will be fully automated programming for simple, collaborative, lightweight, industrial applications.
And what does that mean? It means a lot of things on a lot of different levels of the supply chain. You know, one thing is if we talk about the level of integration, integrators and distributors, it means that the companies can take on more projects. They can minimize their deployment time per project so that they can take on more and therefore meet the demand of the forecast of 10 times the number of robots in five years. They can choose to increase their profit margin if they don’t want to take more projects, or they can take in more projects and have a better competitive position versus competing integrators.
Then to the level of end users: you can actually get somebody to install your automation. And we can do it at a faster and a cheaper rate than ever seen before. There is a clear position and a clear place for this product in the market. It’s not just something we just came up with. We’ve been working on this for three years already, conceptualizing it and actually putting our R&D department on it. It is something that has come from demand in the markets.
Literally people are saying, we need this. Why do I need to program the robot? I don’t want to program the robot. I don’t have an engineer that I can put on the task, and the end users don’t know how to do it. So why don’t we have software that will just do it for us. Well, that’s what we’re coming up with. And a little promo for IMTS: We’ll have a working demo of this for the first time ever at the show. Globally, we have a demo that people can have their hands on D:PLOY software and they can program a robot to do CNC machine tending. Within like minutes you’ll have the robot working without you ever programming anything.
End of Part 1. To see Part 2 click this link: https://fifthwavemfg.com/interview-kristian-hulgard-part-2/
More information: https://www.onrobot.com