Episode 49 – Matt Clark from Euchner USA
Amanda Del Buono: [00:00:07] Hello. Welcome back to Manufacturing Matters, the podcast where we talk about automation trends and technologies that are shaping the industry, logistics, and other sectors of the global economy. Joining me today are Dan McCarthy, my colleague here at Tech B2B Marketing, as well as Matt Clark, industry manager of intralogistics and packaging at Euchner USA. Welcome to the podcast, Matt. Thanks for joining us.
Matt Clark: [00:00:32] Hi. Thanks for having me.
Amanda Del Buono: [00:00:35] Absolutely. So just to kind of kick things off, can you start by telling us about the company and what you do there?
Matt Clark: [00:00:45] Yeah, sure. I’ll start with myself. Right now I’m part of the business development team, and I’m handling industry management, for, just like the title, intragistics and packaging. For me that’s a fancy way of saying sales, but from a day-to-day perspective, I’m looking at end user spec, steering new business in my verticals. So find new customers we don’t do business with that are similar to the existing ones and then coordinating a fit of products between my verticals and product management based out of Germany. And then, company-wise, Euchner, it’s a long-standing family-owned company. We’ve been around 71 years. This year is our anniversary. Third-generation owner. So globally, we’re based out of Germany. In the U.S., Chicago. We’ve got 25-plus subsidiaries globally and a workforce globally of over 1,000 people. We’re pretty well-known for safety. You’ll see us definitely in machine tools and automotive verticals. Heavy, heavy automation focus. But we do other things there, like mine, right, I’m in packaging and logistics and not in automotive. And we make other products too. We’re not just known for safety. We make pendant stations, limit switches, various little things, and we offer engineering services. So if you have companies looking for risk assessments, that type of thing, that’s a piece of the business that we do. And honestly, a little-known fact of ours is that we started out making limit switches and then branched off into safety. So I think for us as a company, being that it’s family owned, there’s a real heavy focus on the relationship with the customer and making sure it’s a good fit. It’s a pretty nice change of pace. I’ve worked for big companies and medium-sized companies, and the fact that we manage that relationship and we don’t focus on a million different things. I think it’s real nice.
Dan McCarthy: [00:02:42] Great. So let’s jump into the safety topic, Matt. I think it’s an often undervalued KPI for many manufacturers. Maybe that’s a little judgmental but especially as more automation systems and robotics are entering the space. What are the big trends you see shaping safety going forward?
Matt Clark: [00:03:00] Yeah, I think that’s probably not a bad assessment. There’s some fundamental differences between the U.S. and Europe, how we handle safety. For us it’s more on the end user to deem safety. And in Europe it’s on the machine builder. So I think that can drive that feeling, that I feel as well. But I think there’s a lot of things working to change that, right? We’ve got a lot of really smart people out there doing a lot of good things with standards, changing things, improving things. You’ve seen a lot of standards change over the years, and that doesn’t just come across from end users. It comes across from the association groups. So, for example, A3, all the new RIA standards they develop. It’s not just about your traditional six-axis robots anymore. They’ve got new standards for AMRs, new standards for collaborative robots. So when we look at that as a whole, you see not just these big conglomerate corporations looking at corporate specs on safety, but some of the smaller guys in their medium and small companies as well have specs, and all that working together on standards has I think changed the trend of how things are viewed in the U.S. I think we’re more aligning with Europe, and a lot more people are taking it seriously. And it’s now almost like a barrier for entry when you make a machine or a piece of equipment. Just like quality is; it’s synonymous with that. So it’s not something that you can just add on down the road. It’s thought about ahead of time.
Dan McCarthy: [00:04:39] It’s built into the equipment as it goes. Does that mean you’re doing a lot more partnering with integrators?
Matt Clark: [00:04:46] For us, obviously we go to market for me with end user specification, but we have a whole other sales force that goes to market with the integrators. They definitely partner up and they definitely work off your specification. So you’ll see them essentially looking for maybe more robust safety items than in the past, because the big end users of the world require it, right? It’s part of what their corporate spec is. And it’s more commonplace now than it used to be. And with all the various new pieces of equipment that are coming out and all the standards being written for it, it really makes it that people have to focus on it.
Dan McCarthy: [00:05:36] When you talk about partnering, how deeply integrated are you in that process or is Euchner getting involved in the design, the industrial design level, or is it just a supply level or are you on-site?
Matt Clark: [00:05:52] Yeah, I mean, it’s a mix of all, to be honest, since we offer services, and when I say services, it’s not just a risk assessment. We will come out to look at a piece of equipment, whether it’s a new design or an existing design, and do the full-on suite of things, validation, everything. So yeah, you could have us on-site doing all that. It can be pieces, parts of it. It can be as simple as us saying, “Hey, you work with [insert end user]?” Pick a company, Target, whatever. You work with these folks. This is their spec. Here’s what they want. You know, it goes from end to end I guess. I don’t think there’s one thing that we don’t fit in, but we definitely have various customers, various levels of knowledge, where they call on us for certain things. Sometimes they do, sometimes they don’t.
Dan McCarthy: [00:06:42] So one thing that impressed me when I was doing a little prep for the call here is, a lot of your safety solutions – switches, relays, controllers – they’re geared for access control, which work well in keeping away non-qualified personnel out of controlled areas. Like a robotic work cell. What safety measures have evolved amidst the increasing adoption of cobots and autonomous mobile robots on the floor, where you can’t control access between the humans and robots?
Matt Clark: [00:07:11] Yeah, I think before we jump into that, there’s an important distinction between protecting personnel and also protecting processes. And we do both. And we have a pretty good distinction in that. So you can protect a process, and it doesn’t necessarily have to be a cage and guarding. It’s access control, so you don’t lose a batch of a chemical, whatever it may be. So I think safety is not only about protecting people but processes as well. But if we jump into the process side, we have a lot of new things that we’ve seen come out. It’s not just about writing specialized code anymore. We have products that integrate in where it’s a simple RFID key fob to give people the flexibility to change between users to protect processes. But if we go back to safety, I think, yeah, we’ve seen a lot of things change with the advent of cobots and AMRs that definitely brings lidar and different vision systems into it, where they take away caging and guarding. I think as factories evolve you’re still going to see a mix of technologies. You’re never going to get away from the risk involved with picking up a car or moving a heavy load.
Matt Clark: [00:08:36] So you can’t put a lidar sensor on that and build a cell big enough. It’s just the footprint wouldn’t work. But they definitely have their place. And yeah, no one’s going to put a cage around an AMR in the future. They’re going to have the sensors on the AMR, and it’s going to stop when it gets in place. So I think there’s a fit for let’s say traditional technologies and emerging technologies in the factory. And really what’s going to dictate that is floor space and risk honestly. There’s too many variables to make it just a vanilla, cut and dry: you can put a lidar sensor on one thing or you can put a gate switch on one thing and call it a day. So we’ve definitely seen that come out. Not our field, not something that we play in with lidar. Definitely on the services side, we’ll look at applications and make recommendations and help with that. But from the product side, we’re heavily focused on what we do well and we continue to focus on that.
Dan McCarthy: [00:09:36] Okay.
Amanda Del Buono: [00:09:38] Awesome. Just to kind of follow up on that a little bit, are you seeing a trend toward more integrated safety solutions, like embedded sensors? And AI adding external solutions like access control, work cells, anything like that?
Matt Clark: [00:09:57] Oh, yeah. Yeah, you definitely see that in fulfillment centers. And you’ve probably seen it in the news: Amazon safety vest. So they’ve got sensors built into their vests to keep the robots away from them. That’s going to continue to be developed where it fits. And again, I think you’ll see more and more places where there’s integration of maybe our standard style but still going to use our standard-style gate interlocks to get into the pen. But once they’re inside the pen, the vests protect them from the robots that are flying around, moving goods. That’s going to continue to happen. And you see it on the units themselves. So maybe not embedded on the worker but embedded on the units. Look at Tesla with self-driving cars. The technology is out there. I think it’s proven, maybe not robust over 10 or 15 years, but I think there’s a lot of testing to make sure it’s proven. And we’ll see a lot of those products move into the industrial space. I think you’ll see it and you already are with tow motors and AMRs, AGVs, and it’ll expand into other things as well.
Amanda Del Buono: [00:11:05] Well, I guess leading to my next question: You were talking about workers in the Amazon warehouses. You know, we have a really tight labor market right now. And we’ve been dealing with that for a little while. I imagine there’s a lot of people looking at safety as a way to help improve their employee retention. How does the human factor play into the design and implementation of safety devices as far as you’ve been seeing?
Matt Clark: [00:11:35] Yeah, man, the job market’s tough out there for people trying to hire, isn’t it? It’s crazy. It’s not just in manufacturing too. I think we’re going to continue to see a labor shortage. And I really don’t think that has anything to do with safety as much as it has the need to automate more. And because we’re going to be automating more, you have to protect people from the systems that they’re automating. So I think it’s a one and one. It goes hand in hand. Again, you said before that safety is a KPI people don’t pay attention to. I think in the past, had we had to automate America in the ’70s or ’80s, it would have probably been a lot more dangerous. But nowadays it’s really a focus. It’s almost a barrier for entry for most folks. And yeah, we’re going to have to automate a lot of new things. Maybe the RIAs will change for people to make the decision to automate, and safety is going to come along with it. Outside of just making it attractive to future generations to come work somewhere that’s safe, there’s insurance implications, worker’s comp claims. There’s a laundry list of reasons why safety is important. Not just safety but ergonomics and just automating tasks that people don’t want to do anymore or tasks that they can’t find people to do. So it’s going to go hand in hand. I don’t see that changing at all. Honestly, I see automation growing exponentially more and more. You know, I’ve got kids. I’ll advise them to get into the field. It’s a never-ending career path. Like all the robots right now, if you look at a map and you see things online posted all the time, they’re kind of in the Midwest area: Illinois, Michigan, Ohio, Indiana. It’s a ton of robots there. That’s going to spread out. It’ll get to the Southeast, where automotive has moved, picked up roots, and there’s a lot of great long-term stable career paths.
Dan McCarthy: [00:13:32] And logistics are everywhere too. Distribution centers.
Matt Clark: [00:13:34] Yeah, logistics, as people try and manage that two-hour delivery window, if that’s still going to be a thing, yeah, you’re going to see them pop up everywhere.
Amanda Del Buono: [00:13:46] When it comes to your safety products, like the switch you have behind you in your photo, do you see a stronger desire for more ease of use in the designs or, like you had mentioned, ergonomics? Is that something that’s kind of playing into the safety space? Making safety easier for the employees that are on the floor?
Matt Clark: [00:14:07] Yeah, I think, when you look at the product, I guess over my left shoulder. It depends on what you’re looking at in the screen. For us, we took a really, really complex, the most complex requirement we had from a customer and put it into this what we call box of endless possibilities. So we see from an engineering perspective, they want to incorporate a lot of different things and make it easier to take off-the-shelf products, mix and match, and make something that would be normally a custom product for them. Not every application needs something like that, but yeah, definitely from the engineering side, we’re hearing from folks that they want to combine operations to make it easier to manage implementation, maybe make it easier to get running from design to actual running. And then from an operations perspective, it’s got to be easy to interface with. It’s got to be easy to see what’s wrong if there’s a situation. That’s definitely something that we’ve had folks ask us for is to make ease of implementation and then ease of maintenance after the fact. I don’t know that it relates necessarily to ergonomics. You definitely see people out there worrying about placement of objects. And they’re worried about not just standards and codes but how people interact with it. I don’t know that it necessarily plays into ergonomics, but yeah, Amazon’s super-focused on ergonomics for the workers. That’s just another component of safety.
Dan McCarthy: [00:15:36] We talked about that on a recent podcast episode. Maybe just a little bit off topic. I’m not sure if it’s something you have insight in, but I’m curious about it because I’ve been reading up on it a little bit lately. But industrial automation systems are becoming increasingly interconnected with the Industrial Internet of Things, the Industry 4.0 initiatives. Can you tell us a little bit about how safety measures have evolved to ensure safety and integrity of those interconnected systems? It used to be a cyberattack question, but maybe there’s another angle I’m not seeing as well.
Matt Clark: [00:16:10] Yeah. I mean, for us, I definitely saw this in a past life, different company I worked for, and it’s definitely coming up. I don’t know that I’m versed to answer for our products, and I don’t know what stance we’ve taken on this. We obviously operate the product over my left or right shoulder. It operates on a fieldbus level, so it’ll be an Ethernet IP or a PROFINET or an EtherCAT system. And there’s definitely an awareness by, if you want to say the names, Siemens, Rockwell, Beckhoff, to make sure their systems are secure. I think we push that on to them. But as an industry, yeah, definitely. There’s a new standard that came out B11.TR9. It’s based on cybersecurity and making sure systems are safe. So yeah, as an industry, it’s definitely out there. And people definitely want the information. They’re definitely asking for that data to go from a device up to whatever it is, some ERP system, whatever they’re doing with it. So yeah, it’s a realistic concern that we hear from a lot of folks, enough to where they have definitely standards within big organizations that are focused on it. And the manufacturers have responded. I know for a fact that all the big controller manufacturers and all the switch manufacturers are focused on cybersecurity. I think we punt that to them. But again, I don’t know that I’m versed enough to answer that.
Dan McCarthy: [00:17:38] It’s a little bigger scope than worker safety. It’s more enterprise integrity. So it’s probably a different part of the C-suite is interested in that. We’re talking about standards. For selecting safety devices, how aware do end users need to be of standards? Is it something that you pretty much take care of for them or is it something that they come to you with?
Matt Clark: [00:18:11] Yeah. So as an organization, we are voting members of many, many standards. I couldn’t tell you the list. Folks in the U.S., there’s probably at least 20 or 25 different standards committees that we vote on. In Europe, all the ISO standards we’re involved with. So there’s definitely some demystification of that. And again, there’s a lot of really smart people out there in the U.S. that work with great organizations. A3’s a huge member involved with RIA and their standards. PMMI’s got their own standards for packaging. ASME does things, ANSI does things. So there’s a lot of people out there focused on it. I think there’s a lot of manufacturers that put out information as well, maybe geared towards their product. This is kind of a selfish plug here, but yeah, we do a really good job of demystifying 13849. We’ve got documents for it. We’ve got webinars you can join. If you follow us on LinkedIn, you’ll see links to various trainings we do. So we look at the ISO standard and break it down and kind of try to put it in plain English for everyone. We also do I think a fairly decent job of doing it on the U.S. side as well. I don’t know that we get into every single standard, but you can definitely call on A3. They have their webinars you can log into. The industry groups do a pretty good job of making it, let’s say not product focused. So you get the information about the standards, and they have great hands-on classes as well, where you go in and learn things. So I would look to the industry associations. And yeah, selfishly, if you follow us, you’ll see opportunities to learn about basics of safety and then the ISO standards as well.
Amanda Del Buono: [00:20:00] Hey, that’s good. Someone’s got to be putting that out there. So, yeah, follow you and we can get it. So obviously standards are always evolving and changing. And safety is evolving and changing with that as well. So I kind of wanted to ask you to take out your crystal ball and give us what do you see for this area going forward in the next five, 10 years?
Matt Clark: [00:20:25] Yeah. Obviously you’re going to see new products come out and there’s going to be standards developed for it. I think that’s inherent. That’s why they came out with the mobile robot standard. That’s why they came out with a collaborative robot standard. So there’s going to be a lot of things software-wise they’re going to change in the field of automation. I think along with that, there’ll be things to change with that. So AI is going to become really important in moving goods around a warehouse or vision for picking. And we see that now. There’s a lot of companies vested in it, whether they’re out in the Bay Area, or Pittsburgh’s kind of a hot spot for robotics, Boston as well. So there’s some hot spots, maybe Atlanta too, where folks are working on these things. So as these ways of doing things change, it opens new possibilities for automation, which is going to open new possibilities for products. Again, I think we’ll see things hand in hand. You’ll see some new products developed. You know, I don’t know if you guys want to MODEX, but I saw quite a few robots at MODEX with the skin on them, where if you run into it, you hit it with your hand, the robot stops.
Matt Clark: [00:21:36] I don’t know that it’s brand new technology, but it’s interesting. I think it has its place, and I think it’s a good fit for cobots. Maybe you won’t see our traditional products on cobot cells in the future, but you’ll see products like that, or we’ll see some type of vision system, maybe not lidar, maybe it’s a new type of vision system that’s going to stop collaborative robots or AMRs or AGVs or tow motors or whatever it may be from doing things. I don’t really know how humanoids are going to play into things. They’re interesting to look at. They’re cool to get chocolate bars from at shows. I don’t know the practical use case of it, but I still think six-axis robots are going to exist. Delta robots are going to exist, and they’re going to have guarding around them, because they move too fast. The loads are too heavy. I think for us, what we see is customers wanting to integrate a bunch of different things into one system and have essentially one cable for data and one cable for power running back to whatever their controller of choice is. We definitely see folks trying to put things together and make it almost like a system for safety or incorporate some things.
Matt Clark: [00:22:48] So that’s kind of why the product we have over my shoulders is well received. And it’s from the voice of the customer. So we’ll definitely see that type of stuff. I think you’ll see a lot more devices on machines out in space, whether it be drives or I/O or power, that type of thing. The machines are going to become a lot more complex from a software perspective but a lot more simple from a wiring and layout and design and go-to-market perspective. People are going to have less folks to build machines, so they’re going to need them to be able to hook things together, break it down into shipping breaks, that type of thing, and set it up on-site quite easily. Again, like I said, the automation field is great for engineering. If you’re a controls person, you have more work than you can handle essentially right now because that’s where the market’s moving. It’s not going to be giant panels anymore with everything running back to it. It’s going to be stuff that runs off batteries, stuff that runs on wireless. But devices all over the field, that type of thing.
Dan McCarthy: [00:23:53] That’s what we’re seeing too. On the note of taking chocolate from robots, Automate begins in less than two weeks. Any highlights that you want to share from the Euchner booth that’s going to be there?
Matt Clark: [00:24:05] I won’t personally be at Automate, but we’ll have a fully staffed booth.
Dan McCarthy: [00:24:11] That’s 3673, right?
Matt Clark: [00:24:13] 3673 is our booth at Automate. We definitely have a robot there to draw people in and talk about our guarding products on it. I don’t know that I can promise that it hands out chocolate at this particular show. But if you come to IMTS and PACK EXPO later in the year, that should be maybe something that it gives out. That’s the goal. And aside from the robot and the drinks and food we’ll have in our booth, we definitely have some other products. We have towers with all of our solutions, whether it be simple switches all the way up to the complicated MGB, where you can sit and play with and consult with us on an application. Come on by and definitely talk to us about that. We usually have very knowledgeable people at the shows ready to talk applications along with services as well. So if you’re not in the market for a product but you have services, maybe questions about risk assessments or any of that type of thing, we’ll have folks on-site as well to aid with that.
Amanda Del Buono: [00:25:13] Yeah, also super, super important. Awesome. Well, is there anything else that you kind of wanted to hit on or you wanted to talk about that we didn’t mention today?
Matt Clark: [00:25:24] I think, if you’re on this podcast and you’re listening for ways to get involved with safety, there’s places to start. Obviously there’s the standards to look at. So in the U.S., all the RIA standards, all the B11 standards is kind of what you want to hit up. If you’re looking for stuff for the EU, ISO 13849 is pretty important. Get some knowledge on risk assessments. It’s great to have. If you’re going to take the field seriously, a 2 certification really helps. I’m working on mine actually. And then outside of that, get involved with the industry groups. I’m involved with PMMI and MHI, and it’s really beneficial. There’s tons of information out there. When you go to the shows, there’s always good seminars they put on. There’s always various pieces of media out there for you to ingest. So if you like to learn, it’s a good place to start. I don’t want to not plug A3, but A3 does a lot of good things too. I happen to not be involved with it as much. But yeah, all the industry groups associated with the major shows in the U.S. they do a really good job of putting information out there for folks. And follow us on LinkedIn. Marketing will be happy if I say that.
Amanda Del Buono: [00:26:40] Always, of course. Yes.
Dan McCarthy: [00:26:42] You’ll be easy to find for anybody watching the podcast because I’m sure we have a link to your page. Well, Matthew, thank you very much and to Euchner for joining us on the podcast today. For those of you watching, if you’re interested in past episodes of Manufacturing Matters, you can find them on the website at manufacturing-matters.com. And for anyone wishing to be in the loop on upcoming conversations about automation, please follow us on LinkedIn. Thanks for joining us today. We’ll see you next time. Thanks again, Matthew.