Shawn Tierney meets up with Aaron Moncur of Pipeline Design and Engineering to discuss “The Most Underrated Skill in Automation,” as well as the upcoming Product Design Expo, and the “Being An Engineer” podcast, all in this episode of The Automation Podcast.
For any links related to this episode, check out the “Show Notes” located below the video.
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Read the transcript on The Automation Blog: (automatically generated)
Shawn Tierney (Host): Hey, everybody. Thank you for tuning back in to the automation podcast. This week, I meet up with Aaron Moncur from Pipeline Design and Engineering to talk about what he thinks is the most important skill to have in industrial automation. And we also talk about his upcoming event, PDX, which is, coming up just in a few weeks, and we even have a coupon if you wanna go to save you $50 off the admission price. And we also talk about his podcast.
He has over 300 interviews with engineers from all kinds of backgrounds, and, I think you guys will find that interesting as well. And, we just had a great time just talking and chatting about different strategies and different challenges we’ve had over the years in the automation world. So with that said, let’s go ahead and jump right into our interview with Aaron Moncur of Pipeline Design and Engineering. I wanna welcome to the show for the first time, Aaron. And, we have a very exciting topic to talk about today.
Should be very interesting to all you controls engineers and you high end electricians and technicians out there do automation. But, before we jump into the discussion, Aaron, please, tell the people a little bit about yourself.
Aaron Moncur (Pipeline): Alright. Well, Shawn, thank you so much for the introduction and having me on the podcast. I’ve been excited to talk with you. I have my own podcast as well, actually. I’ll I’ll touch on that a little bit, but, I love talking about engineering and, business and automation.
My company, Pipeline Design and Engineering, we’ve been around for about fifteen years now, and our focus is, industrial automation. We’re integrators. We also do a lot of, just test fixtures, you know, smaller, not necessarily automated, but manual fixtures, things like that, machine building. We even do we actually started fifteen years ago in in general, product design. And so we did a lot of medical device design, consumer products, things like that.
And then about three, four years in, one of our customers asked us if we could design a test fixture for them. And we said, what’s a test fixture? Yes. And so, we figured out, you know, what that was all about and delivered it and they really liked it. And they said, this is great.
We need more of this kind of thing. And so ever since then, slowly but surely, we we’ve, been moving more and more into that area of, like, fixtures. And then at some point, we started adding a little bit of motion, a motor, and a pneumatic actuator. And then at some point, we started doing full automation. And and at this point, that’s that’s kind of our focus is automation machine building, and we still do test fixtures and, a little bit of of product design as well.
But I I have a degree in mechanical engineering, and I’ve been doing this, for a little over twenty years. Interesting story of getting laid off and then starting my company and, just living the dream here with a wonderful, wonderful group of people doing engineering and automation work.
Shawn Tierney (Host): You know, I’ve worked with a lot of custom machine builders over the years, and a lot of what they do is test stands. And a lot of them are automated, and some of the most interesting ones I’ve seen were a lot for medical devices and whatnot. A lot of them are for things that we use every day, like the pieces that go in your door, like the door switch and the windows, you know, that send them up and down. Those things need to be not only assembled, a lot of time, pick and place type of, systems, but they have to be tested. And they’re gonna be tested a lot, like, millions of times.
A lot of times, if the prototypes, they gotta go through some very rigorous testing, and there’s a lot sometimes lots of data collection that goes along with that. So I got an idea for for what you’re saying and some, you know, test stands and actually, you know, manual assemblies. Sometimes you just need a bunch of jigs and different layouts so you can put something together quickly and, you know, in manufacturing, some of that has to be done by hand as well. So very interesting stuff. And so, with that said, I know we wanted to jump into a go a couple different ways here, but I do know I before we get too far in, you do have a upcoming event.
So I wanted to make sure we get the talk about that a little bit before we jump into the topic of what would, you know, the meat of what we’re gonna discuss today.
Aaron Moncur (Pipeline): Yeah. Thank you. Something that’s really big for me, important for me is, building community around engineering. And, we have a few ways that we’ve done this. We have our podcast, Being an Engineer.
We also have an online community called The Wave. It’s thewave. Engineer, free resources and tools, education for for engineers. And then we also have an event called PDX, and PDX stands for the Product Development Expo. It is, inclusive of all things hardware.
So that includes, you know, product designers. It includes metrology folks. It includes automation experts. Basically, anyone who touches hardware developing, hard goods products would be a good fit for for this event. The, the PDX event is happening this October.
That’s a Tuesday and a Wednesday just outside of Phoenix, Arizona. And, kind of the unique innovative format of this event is that it’s it’s not just like a trade show where you show up and and, you know, you get a flyer or a brochure from a vendor. The focus of this event is is training and education. It’s kind of like a two day boot camp for hardware professionals, whether they’re mechanical engineers, automation engineers, manufacturing engineers. And so we have about about 35 experts in the industry who are are gonna be there as instructors training on different topics.
These include AI tools for engineering workflows, GD and T, tolerance stack, modular extrusion for machine frames, robot programming, linear motor, motion control, precision fluid dispensing, CAD data management, FEA, engineering documentation, simulation, DIY, PCB design and prototyping, three d scanning, reverse engineering. So it’s pretty extensive. There’s something for everyone there. Again, it’s a two day e event, a training boot camp, October, just outside, Phoenix, Arizona. You can go to pdexpo.engineer to learn more about the event and sign up.
The cost is $295 and that’s inclusive of all the different training topics that you can choose to sign up for at the event.
Shawn Tierney (Host): Yeah. That sounds like a pretty good deal too. If you have somebody junior on your staff or if you’re changed roles in your company and you’re getting more into this kind of type of product design and engineering, then, definitely check that out. You typically can’t go anywhere for two ninety five. Right?
So Right. Just a walk in the door for a day is typically it’s not and and I know that the people out there, they’re probably gonna have some services that they can offer as well that some of you guys may wanna take, take advantage of. But for you folks, especially if you’re in the area or if you have a need at work for one of these things, please check it out. And, if I get it correct, it’s pdexpo.engineer?
Aaron Moncur (Pipeline): That’s right. P d e x p o dot engineer.
Shawn Tierney (Host): Excellent. And speaking about engineering, of course, you’re a mechanical engineer. We see a lot of mechanical engineers in automation as automation engineers when especially when it comes to, systems that have servos on them, systems that are very, you know, a lot of acceleration, a lot of mass, systems that require more than just, you know, very sequential type of logic that, you know, we have lots of parts moving around that have to be in certain places at certain times. And so, can you tell us a little bit about, you know, your journey as, the owner of a company? And I know how you came came to this conclusion about the most valuable resource in automation.
We’re not gonna give the answer away yet, because then we would never show. But, in any case, can you talk a little bit about that, your journey and what you’ve gone through and the different things you ran into and learned?
Aaron Moncur (Pipeline): Yeah. I I think there is a a very underrated skill in automation, and it’s not something that people talk about very often. But over twenty years in the industry, I’ve definitely seen this over and over and over. And so we’re we’re gonna talk about that today. In terms of my journey, how I got here, I worked at an engineering company twenty years ago and great company, very smart people.
And in the beginning, I loved it. I got to do all the things that I enjoyed, right? CAD design and prototyping and, you know, working on a mill and a lathe to to make some parts and assembly is wonderful. Then the economy slowed down. Right?
This is back in 02/1989. Mhmm. And the I’ll just call it the the fun work, the quote, unquote fun work, kind of dried up. And what our company had left was kind of a lot of documentation and and paperwork, not fun work, at least by most engineers’ standards. And, I was young and and probably, immature, and I kind of checked out mentally.
You know, I’d show up every day and I’d put in the the hours, but, my heart wasn’t in it and and my mind wasn’t really in it. And the owners of the company, they were, you know, intelligent people. They could tell that my heart wasn’t really in it. And they pulled me in one day and said, hey, Aaron. Unfortunately, we we need to let some people go.
And, we can tell that you’re just not very engaged right now. So you are one of the people that we’re gonna let go. And it was a a shock. It shouldn’t have been. Right?
Like, looking back, hindsight is twenty twenty. I should have seen it coming, but, again, young, naive, immature, I didn’t. So it was a shock. My wife and I had, just bought our first home. We had a new child.
Right? Our first kid had just been born, and so it was it was a gut punch for me, and I remember feeling physically ill for several days after that. But eventually, I I got my feet back underneath me and decided, okay. I need to figure out what’s next. You know, what am I gonna do?
And the the the first thought was, well, I’ll just go out and find another engineering job. But I started thinking, and, it was true. What the statement that the owners of this company had made saying you weren’t very engaged. And I thought, you know what? They’re they’re right.
I I wasn’t very engaged. Why is that? What what happened to make me disengaged? And I I thought that maybe I had fallen out of love with engineering. And so I was I had actually been doing some side hustles, but I was still employed at the company.
I had started a photography company with a buddy of mine. I’d started a little web design company on my own. I was even exploring commercial real estate. So kind of very different things, right, than engineering and thinking to myself, I I I don’t know if I like engineering anymore. I think I I might just wanna do something completely different.
Well, a few months into that, my father-in-law, he pulls me aside and he says, hey, what’s the plan here? Like, what what are you gonna do to he he didn’t come out and say it this way, but support my daughter and my grandchild. Right? And, he suggested that maybe I did still like engineering, and and maybe it was just the way I was doing engineering that had turned me off. And I thought, that’s that’s pretty sage advice.
I’m I’m gonna take that. And so I jumped back into engineering only the way I did it differently this time was instead of going out and looking for another job, I just started doing it myself as a a freelance engineer. And I would just call companies up and say, hey. I’m I’m Aaron. I’ve got some good engineering skills.
These are the things I can help with. And lo and behold, I I got a few jobs, you know, some small things. Didn’t pay well. I remember working sixty, seventy hour weeks and getting paid like $35 an hour back in the beginning. What was so interesting was that I loved it.
It was so fun. You know, all of a sudden I loved engineering again. I was back in it and I, what I learned about myself back then was I really thrive on high level autonomy. When I’m given, responsibility over kind of the the entire machine as opposed to just being a cog in the machine, That’s what really lights me up and and gets me excited. So that was the start of my company, Pipeline Design and Engineering.
We did, largely consumer product design back then, medical devices, things like that. And then we talked a little bit about the the test fixtures and that led into machine design and automation. And these days that is our focus. Everything from kind of desktop to standalone, you know, maybe five by five by seven, eight feet tall, something like that. That’s our sweet spot for automation and engineering.
Along the way, I decided, the company where I worked before, great company, good people for sure. Right? Very grateful for the experiences I had there. Nevertheless, there were some things that I didn’t love about the culture at that company. And so I decided when I started Pipeline, I really wanted to focus on developing, a wonderful culture where people just they liked being here.
They enjoyed, the camaraderie with the different team members. They enjoyed the work. They enjoyed the environment. And so, building a successful culture was really important to me. And, you might be thinking right now, okay, culture, that’s the underrated skill.
Well, it is one of them, but it’s not the underrated skill that we’re going to arrive at. So so stay tuned. But but, that became a a big focus for me. And, it is to this day. And there have been a variety of things that we’ve done to to cultivate a culture where people really love being.
Shawn Tierney (Host): You know, I was thinking about what you were just saying and and, you know, I was always surprised. I’m I’m thinking about it. I’m like, you know, as a parent, I was surprised how different the personalities of my children were. And I still I’m thinking as you’re talking, I’m like, man, they’re they’re they’re so different. And then when I started visiting customers after I got my college degree and got into this crazy industry and I was visiting helping customers with their PLCs and other products, I was amazed how different company cultures were.
And and and some of them were definitely toxic. I mean, it came to the point where you’d be like, yeah. I’m not going there. I don’t care if they never buy anything from us again. You know?
They’re just so toxic. Right? And the salesman, we used I’m the I was always a technical guy, so the salesman would have heartburn of that, but I’m like and then some places you just didn’t wanna leave. They had such camaraderie, such they worked so well together. They were they were just they you know, nobody was out trying to prove that they’re better than everybody else.
They were just trying to make the customer, get them the machine or the service or, you know, make the product as good as possible. And it’s just such a a a range. And I you know, I’m sitting here. I’m thinking, why why are the cultures so vastly different than the cost leadership at each facility? You know, gen you know, promotes different types of cultures, and there’s such a age gap from boomers to, you know, now Gen z.
Right? In the in in the, you know, in these facilities that you don’t even know what you’re gonna get. You could have something that feels like you’re out of the sixties or something that feels like you’re out of the twenty second century. You know? But, yes.
So it it is amazing how many different cultures in, and I I guess not a lot you know, a lot of people maybe they have four or five different jobs. So they’ve probably been through four or five different cultures, and they can relate to what we’re saying there about how how how, you know, cultures can really affect not just the efficiency and the effectiveness, but also just the the the satisfaction of the employee. And I think I think in today’s world, especially in The US where people change jobs every three to five years, if you’re investing in a high-tech person, if you’re gonna invest in training, invest in education and mentoring, you you know, having a good coach is so important. Are you gonna you gonna keep having turn I and I’ve met a lot of people that are like, we just can’t keep somebody in this position. Well, it’s because you guys are a bunch of jerks.
It’s not your pay. Absolutely. It’s not what they have to work on. It’s just that you guys are unpleasant to be around. I wouldn’t wanna work here.
You know? And so just some random thoughts about culture as you were talking about that, but that’s that was what’s going through my head.
Aaron Moncur (Pipeline): Yeah. People need a certain amount of money, right, to to
Shawn Tierney (Host): pay their
Aaron Moncur (Pipeline): bills and live. But but beyond that baseline, money isn’t much of a motivator. But good culture is enjoying where you work, enjoying the people with whom you work. Even though I didn’t I haven’t worked at a lot of places. I had a few internships and I had even after I started pipeline and it was just me, I worked at a a few places contract, right, for three months, six months, things like that.
There’s this one place I work. It was an an automation, place here locally. I won’t say the name. Actually, I think they’re they’re gone at this point anyway. Anyway, the the owner, I think I think maybe he was bipolar is my guess.
Sometimes he would be super nice. In fact, I remember, when my wife and I had our our second child, he gave me I was a contractor. Right? So I didn’t have any PTO or anything like that. He he gave me two days pay while I was, you know, just out at the hospital with my wife and son.
I thought that was so kind and and generous. So he had these moments when he was just very thoughtful and then other moments where he was a tyrant. He would just he’d walk into the office, just start yelling at people, literally yelling at people.
Shawn Tierney (Host): Mhmm.
Aaron Moncur (Pipeline): I had never been in an environment like that before, a work environment like that. And so it was it was a shock to me. And you could see the effect on culture. You know? People were scared of him.
They were not performing at their best because they didn’t know what to expect when they showed up at work. So when I started Pipeline, I I decided that I wanted to have a strong purpose and and core values. Now people talk about purpose and core values, and and I think oftentimes they end up as as platitudes on a wall that don’t really mean much. You know, they’re they’re corporate marketing bullet points, basically. I like to think that our purpose and core values are are things that have actually meaningfully contributed to the culture that we have.
And and that shows up in comments from team members. I’ve been approached by team members. We do one on ones where we just, you know, create an open forum for people to talk and and share. If they have questions or concerns, they can talk to me directly. And in these one on ones, I can’t tell you the number of times where an engineer has said to me, I didn’t know it could be this way at a company.
This is the best place I have ever worked. I’m not afraid to tell you what I actually think. You know? And these these comments go on and on. So the purpose that we have at Pipeline is to promote joy in the lives of our team members.
Now be before you, stop listening because you’re thinking this is way too woo woo for me and and hippie dippie, I I’m telling you that a happy employee, a happy engineer is a productive and effective engineer. This this leads directly to productivity and taught in fact, one of our core values is focused on productivity. But if you ask why enough times, you know, you look at what you’re doing day to day and ask why am I doing this? Well, here’s the reason. Okay.
What’s the reason for that? Why? Keep asking why. In my opinion, you ultimately end up at joy. You know?
The that’s really why we do anything because we want to experience joy in our lives. I won’t get too philosophical about that, but in the doctrine of Aaron, that’s why we do pretty much everything we do to experience joy. So, that’s our purpose is to promote joy in the lives of our team members. And then we have our our four core values. We have, number one is treat the customer well, but treat your team members better.
Number two is governed by productivity, not bureaucracy. Number three is suffocate chaos, promote order. And number four is prevent surprises. And we use these core values to to make decisions and to manage and govern the company. There was one example.
We moved into a new building years ago. And, in this building, we had a warehouse where we’d build, you know, machines and and, automation and and things like that. And one day, an an engineer had, I can’t remember what, a drink or or maybe it was even, you know, some food or something like that in in the build area. And our our director of engineering walks in and he says, hey. You can’t have food in here.
Like, we’re we’re building machines. Right? Totally reasonable statement to make. Like, it’s it’s not safe for you to have food in here. Either you’re gonna contaminate the machines or the machines are gonna contaminate your food.
Either way, it’s not good for anyone. And, so we had a conversation as a team about this because while the the sentiment I agreed with wholeheartedly, it it creating a policy and just flat out saying no food in the warehouse didn’t feel like the pipeline way to me. It didn’t quite sit right with me. And I I asked myself, why is that? It’s a very reasonable request.
Right? No food where you’re building machines. And, it just just the idea of adding, like, layers of policy doesn’t sit well with me. So we sat down as a team and said, hey. Core value number one is treat our customers well, but treat our team members better.
How how how do we treat our team members better, in this particular situation? And what we came up with was instead of just adding a policy, we’re gonna we we do we do something called governing principles and supporting behaviors. And so the the, the governing principle is the high level, like, why. Right? Why are we doing this?
Why does it matter? And then some people do like having actual rules to follow, and that’s fine. So the supporting behaviors are are kind of those rules. And we empower our team members to circumvent those supporting behaviors if it’s in support of the governing principles, which is ultimately all we care about. So for this particular situation, our governing principles are we wanna keep the human safe.
We wanna keep the machines clean. We want an area that we can be proud of when our customers walk in. Right? And they’re not seeing, you know, food wrappers or things. These are the things that we actually care about.
And then we have some supporting behaviors that are things like don’t keep, open beverages in the you know, that we have a perimeter where the this is the designated build area. Clean up clean up after yourself after you’re finished working in an area, things like that. And, we found that the the team really appreciated the fact that management didn’t just layer on another policy. Right? We had an open conversation about this core value number one, how can we treat the team better, and, that’s that’s worked out really well.
And we use that same philosophy, the governing principles and supporting behaviors in other areas of the company as well.
Shawn Tierney (Host): Yeah. You know, I yeah. As you’re as you were saying that I think back to I think it was the seven habits, by Stephen Covey. And and one of the things that he he through his research, he found was that, you know, you can’t be efficient with the people. You can only be effective with the people.
And what brought my mind to that was the fact that, like you said, some people want a bunch of rigid rules, some people don’t. And in fact, every person is different. And so, you know, there are some people who you need to have meetings with often to touch base with them. And there’s other people who you don’t have to have meetings with as much because they’re much more in tune with your what you’re thinking, the way you’re doing things, and it’s kinda like you end up just having the same conversation over and over again. But there are other people who maybe not know as much as, may maybe don’t feel as in tune to this to the, to the to the system.
Maybe they’re a new employee, and it can be very helpful. I it’s amazing the misunderstandings as both as a father and it being in this business that I’ve seen other people have. You know, you try to choose your language, your words, the extra words you use. I’m trying to be aware of the connotations you to attach those words with different age groups even in different areas of the country, and still people can get. And a lot of times, it’s not because of what you’re saying.
It was because of something else they were thinking about when you started talking to them. And so it’s it’s very easy for people to misunderstand, and that’s why I have an open communications. You You know, those companies that have open communications like your company, I think, do very well as far as employee satisfaction because then then, you know, somebody’s not going around with a ruler in a in a pad trying to get people in trouble. People are talking to each other. They’re sharing with their ideas.
They’re sharing the thoughts and and the things they’re running into. And, they get to talk through, like, you just gave in this example. They get to talk through different situations. The other thing I you know, when you as you were talking, I was thinking about too is, you know, it it’s it’s, you know, what do people want? And and a lot of people have said this a lot of different ways.
You you say people want joy. I think people want to feel like they’re part of a team. That that that team and that team has a purpose, a good purpose, a purpose that they can sign up for, they can believe in. So I wanna create test stands that help my customer test their products quickly and efficiently so they’re selling products that work to their customers. And they can’t build a test stand themselves, so we build it for them.
We wanna do the best job we can for them, but we don’t wanna we don’t wanna become slaves to them. We wanna we wanna be able to enjoy, you know, a a good pay, a clean work environment, you know, a happy work environment as we do this very valuable and important thing. And I think most people and I think a lot of times and, again, I you know, with my my youngest son is still in his, late twenties, but some of the jobs he’s worked at and the stories he’s told me, it’s like he’s definitely not feeling like part of a team. You know? You get a college degree.
You go work as an engineer somewhere. And when you don’t feel like a part of the team, there’s really something wrong. Like, he’s had peace jobs during the summer, you know, during college where he he just worked either at a UPS facility or at a at a injection molding place just doing piece work. Right? And you really weren’t there wasn’t a big team.
It was like you had to move so many boxes from here to there. Right? So it was very goal orientated and but, when you’re in an engineering role or a higher level role, management role, you’re working with the sales team or whatever it is, something above just, you know, digging a ditch or moving boxes, something where you’re doing a lot of self work. That team, they feel like you’re all pulling together on the same row. I think for most people is very important, and and that’s what I thought of when you’re talking about joy.
Right? The the joy of work. Right? Is that you guys you’re all pulling for the common for a common goal, and you wanna achieve it, but you also don’t there’s no slavery involved. There’s no, we’re just gonna have to work eighty hours a week, and we’re gonna just gonna have to pay ourselves half as much as the other guy so our customer would be happy.
Of course, that would be ridiculous. But in any case, so that I guess that’s kinda my reaction to what you’re saying. Do you see any of that in, in your facility, in in your business?
Aaron Moncur (Pipeline): Every single day. Yeah. In fact, we had a customer walked in. This is a few years ago. Right in in the front of our office, as soon as you walk in, there’s a large mural with our core values.
Right? Treat the customer well, treat the team members better, governed by productivity, not bureaucracy, etcetera, etcetera. Mhmm. And as this customer walks in and and he looks at core value number one, treat your customers well, treat your team members better. Mhmm.
And he kind of cocks his head and looks at me and he says, I think you had that backwards. Shouldn’t you be treating your customers the best and then your employees? And I thought it was such an an interesting, statement to make, you know, and I explained my reasoning, which was, ultimately, we of course, we have to treat our customers exceptionally well. We need to bring, profound value to them or or they’re not gonna come back, and we understand that. The best way to accomplish that goal of of treating our customers well and getting them what they want is to treat our team members so well that they are overjoyed to be here doing this work.
I mean, would you if you’re paying hundreds of thousands of dollars to have this custom machine developed, who do you want working on it? The guy who’s just showing up for a paycheck or the guy who loves being there, who who enjoys working with his team members, who feels fulfilled by the work that he does. So it it might sound backwards to some people, but, I mean, if if you flip it and think about who’s gonna be the most effective at at producing value for the end customer, it’s it’s the team members who are being treated really well and are happy there.
Shawn Tierney (Host): Yeah. And I think a lot of times, we we they we’d people do think that that’s backwards because they think that, you know, this is your job, so you should be, miserable doing it. And and you should wait on your customer like they are the second coming. And it’s like, no. A better situation is the customer is overjoyed to do work with you because they know you’re gonna give them a great product, and they know your staff is exceptional and top top of the top of the industry.
And so they would expect that if you wanna keep your highly talented staff that produces these phenomenal machines, then you’re gonna have to treat them extremely well. You’re gonna have to treat them more than just a customer who’s you know, buy something every once in a while. You gotta treat them like the true members of your team, your family, and that they are the they are the they’re the golden they’re the golden, they’re the goose that lays the golden egg. Right? You can have customers can come and go, but if you don’t have these people producing these awesome pieces of equipment, then what’s left for the company?
And I think we I’ve seen a lot of companies over the years kinda really go down in the tubes because they were treating their people so horribly. They couldn’t get anybody good to stay with them. And that in the in the short run, the the lower price you may be charging may help business. But I think in the long run, you know, if you have just so many different issues with your production, eventually, you’re just not gonna get any more orders. And, yeah, that that’s just what I’ve seen from my experience.
So we’ve talked a lot about these different topics. Right? How how does this or or does this segue us into what you think the most important thing in in in automation is? Like, what is like, if if people are looking at, like, whether you’re an OEM, an integrator, or an end user, I mean, when as we’re focusing on, you know, trying to trying to answer the question we put in the title of the podcast, Have we gotten close to that? Are we ready to talk about what you what you and your company say that is?
Aaron Moncur (Pipeline): I think so. Yeah. We’re ready for the grand reveal. This is not gonna be a shock to anyone after we’ve danced around the the topic of culture. The the most underrated skill in automation, in my opinion, is is people, is making people happy and, the the soft skills.
Right? It’s a lot of people you can learn the technical skills at college, but there’s there’s not really or on the job. There are not many places where you can learn the people skills. Right? How to communicate, how to get along, the soft skills of engineering, I like to call them.
There’s a book called Culture Code by Daniel Coyle. And, he cites three pillars of building great culture that ultimately the purpose of culture, right? If we go back to our governing principles and supporting behavior, why do we care about culture? Who cares, right, good culture, bad culture? Well, the reason, the why is because culture leads to good people.
And and that’s ultimately the objective here is is to build wonderful people who are happy about what they do and and understand, you know, how to communicate, how to get along with others. And, in in this book Culture Code, he he talks about three principles that are are most effective for establishing environments, cultures in which people can thrive. And the first one is is build safety. The second one is share vulnerability. And then the third one is establish person purpose.
We’ve talked about, pipelines purpose already. By the way, on the topic of purpose, you know, again, companies some companies will have these just kind of generic, like, platitudes that don’t really mean much. Right? I think the purpose needs to be it needs to be like a just cause, I think is what Simon Sinek calls it. He’s got a couple wonderful books, The Infinite Game and and Start With Why, but he refers to purpose as as a just cause.
It needs to be something that is, transcends just, you know, the the the technical side of work. And so ours promote joy in the lives of our team members. People hear that, and they’re motivated by it. I I’ve I’ve received so many applicants for jobs here who say, hey. I I read about your culture, and I I love it.
I love what you’re doing there. I would love to work there. Like, it means something to people on a deep human level. It’s not just let’s go out and make money. Of course, making money is important too, but, there has to be purpose behind it.
Anyway, I I had a, an example of that first principle, build safety. Right? People need to feel safe in in order to develop their their skills. And unfortunately, there was a time in the past at Pipeline, our company, where, we weren’t doing so hot. You know, there were a few reasons for this, but work was pretty slow.
And, I could see the writing on the wall that, unfortunately, we’re gonna have to let some people go. And, I, this was another another kind of pivotal moment for me as, as a business owner as a because I hadn’t had to do this ever before. Right? And I thought, okay, How how do I do this? How do we do this in a a humane way for our team?
And so the first thing I did was I I told the team what was happening. I said, hey. Everyone was probably aware that we’ve been slow for a while. Here are our financials. Like, I actually show them the the full p and l.
Right? Like, here’s what’s going on. Unfortunately, we’re we’re we’re gonna have to we started with a few furloughs, and I said, we’re gonna have to furlough some people if this doesn’t change in the next thirty days. Mhmm. And I was really reluctant to say that because I didn’t wanna scare people.
Right? I didn’t want people to think, oh, shoot. I’m gonna lose my job. I better just bail right now and go look for something new. I was really worried that that would happen.
I I certainly didn’t wanna lose any of our, like, our our best core team members. But I thought, you know, core value number one, I think the right thing to do is to tell people where we are and what might happen. And, and and sure enough, things did not turn around. And we did have to furlough some people and eventually let some people go. But not a single person was upset with me when they were furloughed or or let go.
In fact, I had so many people on the team contact me and say, hey. I’ve never been at a company where they were this upfront and, like, told us what’s going on. Thank you. None of the core team members left, and, you know, it it sucked that we had to lose some people. But in the end, we were we were stronger for it, and, everyone just really appreciated that that openness.
Shawn Tierney (Host): Yeah. Yeah. And I I can think back to some of the great people I worked with who, you know, went through at our monthly meetings and talked about earnings before interest and taxes and, you know, revenues and, you know, really helps you I think it’s easy for somebody to just assume that this is a big company. They just make lots of money, and I just come show up eight to five, and everything’s gonna be great. And and in most cases, that’s not the case.
Now the bigger the company, the less visibility you’ll have into that. But, you know, the smaller company, the more visibility you have into that. And I think that’s important. And, you know, a lot of times, you know, this this cycles to the economy. Things go up and those goes down, and people have you know?
Most companies I’ve worked with, they’ve been layoffs over time. So it’s not it’s never pleasant, but it’s part of it’s part of the cyclic economy that, we’re we’re we’ve been through this this last last many decades. That said, I feel like we’ve left something out. Is there anything else you wanted to bring up before we wrap up and talk about I wanna talk about your podcast again. I wanna talk about the expo again.
But, what are the things as far as, you know, people? And that that really it’s people and culture that are the most important things in in our industry today. Do you wanna Yeah. Can you expand on that at at all?
Aaron Moncur (Pipeline): Yeah. Yeah. There are a couple of specific, topics or or principles that I’ve noticed, a pattern over the years with with engineers, when it comes to their nontechnical skills, right, their communication skills. One is that engineers generally don’t love asking for help. And it’s not because they’re prideful.
It’s because as technical professionals, what we love doing is solving problems.
Shawn Tierney (Host): Mhmm.
Aaron Moncur (Pipeline): So it’s fun for us to sit and, like, work through a problem and just, you know, spend whatever time we need to solving that problem. Unfortunately, that doesn’t work so well on the commercial side of things. Right? So a skill that I try to cultivate here at Pipeline and with engineering groups that I I I speak at is, the skill of asking for help early. There there’s a a non engineering example I have.
I have engineering examples as well, but, I don’t wanna throw anyone under the bus. So I’ll share a non engineering example. My team and myself, we were at a a large trade show a couple years ago, And, I had recently purchased a, a Rivian R1T truck, and I I love the Rivian. I won’t I’m not afraid to admit it. I’m a fanboy.
I love the company. I love the product. I love everything about it. But it was my first EV. And, I I wasn’t super familiar with it yet.
So here we are at, the hotel in the morning getting ready to leave to go to the trade show, and I could not get the charger out of the port. We’re, you know, we didn’t wanna pull too hard, of course. Yeah. And, you know, we’re engineers who are like, okay. There’s a latch in there and the mechanism’s not disengaging.
How do we get it off? And, I mean, we we were starting to get to the point where, like, we’re getting flashlights and tools out. We’re about to take things apart. Right? And we probably spent, like, ten minutes trying to figure this out and and didn’t figure it out.
And when I saw the toolbox come out and I was like, alright. Hold hold on, guys. Let’s let’s not do that. We just called Rivian support and we said, this is what’s happening. How do we get it out?
And in five seconds, they told us how to get that charge charger out of the port. It was so simple. It was just something that I had neglected to do because I wasn’t super familiar with it. But the point is spend some time trying to figure it out on your own. Build that muscle because that is important, but don’t spend an obscene amount of time trying to figure it out yourself.
Ask someone who knows how to do it. Try for whatever a reasonable period of time is, and that depends on the scope of the task. Right? Might be thirty minutes. It might be a few hours.
May might be a few days, but but ask for help soon. It’s it’s okay to do that. And it it will be so much better for you and your business if you can learn to do that. Another one of these soft skills is apologizing when you’re wrong. You know, we all make mistakes.
It’s understandable. It’s expected. We’re human. We make mistakes. That’s fine.
Just apologize when you’ve made a mistake. Another non engineering example of this long time ago, probably twenty years ago, I was driving down the road, came to a stoplight, and it was turning red. And so I I, I I changed lanes probably kind of abruptly. I can’t remember why I didn’t change lanes, but I did. And then I stopped at the light.
And all of a sudden, I see this motorcyclist come up on the side of me. And he’s yelling and he’s gesticulating and and I realize he’s he’s looking at me. Right? He’s this big dude tattooed up, like, not the kind of guy I would wanna mess with. I’m not a a big guy myself.
I was like, oh, crap. What have I done? And I rolled my window down. He said, you cut me off. You almost, you know, side swiped me out of my motorcycle.
You could have caused an accident here. And I realized that he was right. I I I didn’t, like, check before, not well enough. And I just said first thing I said was, I’m so sorry. You’re totally right.
It’s my fault. I’m in the bad. Are are you okay? And it was amazing how this guy went from a level 10 of of anger and fury down to zero just like that. He said, I’m okay.
Don’t worry about it. And that was it. Right? A simple apology. These things, they seem small, but the soft skills, they matter so so much.
The last one I wanna talk about is being a a principle that that, I teach here at Pipeline called being respectfully aggressive. Now time is a big deal in our industry. We need to get things done fast. And it seems like the the the more the years march by, the the faster, our customers’ expectations are that that we can get things done. And this partially goes back to asking for help.
Right? There there there’s a way to ask for things to be done more quickly and a way to to not I’m gonna go back to Rivian here, my my fanboy. So they have, mobile servicing that they’ll do for your vehicle if something’s wrong. There was something wrong with my vehicle, and I called up and said, hey. I’d love for your mobile, servicing to come out.
And they said, great. We’re about a month out right now. I was like, ugh, a month. I don’t It wasn’t a critical item, so I said, okay. Fine.
I’ll I’ll wait for a month. But then I thought, you know, I’d really love to get this taken care of sooner than a month. And I I called them back the next day, and I said, hey. I’m scheduled for a month from now, but is there any way we could do it, like, next week? And I was super nice about this.
Right? Respectfully aggressive. And, they said, you know what? Not the mobile, but I think we might be able to get you in, like, in the shop if if you could do that. I said, that’s not ideal, but sure.
I’ll do that so I can get in earlier. And, then I thought, you know, we scheduled it for, like, the the following Thursday or something. They said, next Thursday is a lot better than a a month from now, but, yeah, I sure would like to get it taken care of even earlier than that. So I I I think this time I may have texted them or something. I was like, hey.
I’m scheduled for next Thursday. There’s probably no way you can do this, and I totally understand. You’ve got, you know, plenty of customers that you’re supporting. Is there any way that I could maybe get in Monday instead? And they said, you know what?
We’re not sure if we can get you in Monday, but give us a few hours to look into it, and and we’ll get back to you. So this was on a, a, a Thursday that I had sent this last message. The next morning, Friday, a mobile tech shows up at my house. And he says, we had a cancellation. We saw your notes, and I’m here.
So it went from a month out to next Thursday to requesting next Monday to the very next day, Friday. And so this this principle of re being respectfully aggressive, it can dramatically move the needle in your projects. I can’t tell you how many times we’ve had vendors say, it’s gonna take us three weeks to get this part to you. And I’ll be like, guys, respectfully aggressive. Call them up.
Be nice about it, but let them know what we want, what we need, and and ask them not can this be done, but how can we get this part by, you know, two days from now or or or whatever it is. And it it has moved mountains, that principle being respectfully aggressive. So those are a few of the common themes that I’ve seen when it comes to, like, the soft skills of engineering and and people development.
Shawn Tierney (Host): Yeah. You know, and I I would add to that too. A lot of times, it’s it’s so easy to assume the other person knows your state of mind or knows your urgency, but that’s not always true. And I’ve I’ve I know in just in my history of people upset they needed a PLC quickly, but when they called and they said, do you have that PLC? It’s like, no.
They’re back ordered for a month. They just said, oh, okay. And they hung up, and then they get all mad with their with their staff. And it was like, woah. If you told me this is emergency, I mean, there’s several different things we can do.
If you just want a plain Jane one off the shelf, you don’t wanna pay any special shipping or yeah. Then, yeah, they’re backed up a month. But if you have an emergency, let’s say you have to you have to bill it this week or you have to install it this weekend or, you know, you’re in a down situation. There’s like, look. You have to tell us if you’re down.
If you’re down, we do anything. We’ll take it out of our out of the showroom. We’ll we’ll go to another customer who has spears and buy one back. I mean, don’t assume that the the person you talked to knows again, maybe they just get off the phone with a a family member. Maybe there’s some hardship going on in the family.
Maybe somebody got hurt. Maybe somebody’s in an accident. Don’t assume that they’re a 100% dialed in. You know, if you have an urgent need, you know, be respectful like you said, but be aggressive too. Don’t settle for no right away.
And, and and, you know, sometimes, no matter how how forceful you are, it doesn’t change it doesn’t change the situation. But, in any case, I agree with that. The you know, another thing too is, asking for help and then sharing sharing what you learn. Right? I think these are very important things.
So I used to love going to the factory, talking to the product managers, and then coming back and sharing that with the engineers, saying, oh, there’s this new thing you could do here. You like, you’re Arabian. You may not this isn’t obvious, but you’re gonna love it because it’s gonna save you tons of time. So you go here, you do this, and then look at what that gives you. Right?
And so you can always have insight into why the software is designed a certain way. But if you know of a trick or a feature or something that you can do to to make lives easier, then share it. And I know there were so many cultures that I got the experience where sharing information you know, The people always thought that I can’t share any of my secrets because when it comes time for the layoffs, you know, I gotta be show that I have value and that I know things other people don’t. And, you know, god bless you if that’s what you think, but that’s not I’ve never been that way. Share everything.
Save people pain. Save people agony. Help them be more efficient. You know? Be be a true team member.
Nobody wants a ball hog. I played basketball as a kid. Nobody wants a ball hog. They want people who are gonna pass it to whoever’s open. Right?
That’s right. Absolutely. Attitude. But, also, you know, I have this, issue with my car. I have a I’m a Dodge Charger owner, and the damper wasn’t closing.
So in the summer, it’s only 95 here in the summer, not a hundred hundred and ten. But in any case, the dampers weren’t closing, and it’s been this way for a while. And I’m like, ugh. I don’t wanna take apart all the different now I’m thinking that one of the the the the ducks is stuck and there’s maybe some leaves or something in there. And I’m like, this is gonna be nightmarish.
You know, should I get one of those telescock telescoping, cameras to go through all the ducks if I could find it? And so I was really just dreading it. And then I said, I’m gonna research this. Maybe I’ll get lucky. Right?
Maybe it’s in in in this in researching, I found it was a $30 part. It was actually a humidity sensor that’s mounted right on the side of my my mirror on my dashboard that stops that from closing. And I’m like, really? In literally ten minutes, I had it off and back on, And now I have cool air conditioning again.
Aaron Moncur (Pipeline): Beautiful.
Shawn Tierney (Host): And it’s like, if I hadn’t if I hadn’t I just imagine I could dismantle all the ducks, taking apart the dashboard. I could have done so many things. You know, wasted so much time just to find out, you know, just with the you know, hey. I and then a lot of times, you don’t have luck when you search on these things. You don’t find the answer you’re looking for.
I know it’s frustrating, but, you know, if you know somebody, you can call them and ask them. I think that’s when humans are best is when we’re working with each other, helping each other, and and also educating each other on these type of things. So just a couple stories to add to what you are talking about.
Aaron Moncur (Pipeline): I love it. Thank you for adding, though, Shawn. Yeah.
Shawn Tierney (Host): Now I wanna make sure as we come to the end of the show, I do wanna make sure we cover, the expo again. So let’s go through that, and then we’ll talk a little bit about your podcast before we close out. So, give us all the details again. If somebody just tuned in or maybe didn’t have a pen when we talked about it earlier, now they’re they’re ready to text themselves, so they got a pen to write this down on. Tell us the details about the expo one more time.
Aaron Moncur (Pipeline): Yeah. The the innovative format that we’re doing here is, again, you’re not showing up and just getting a a brochure or, a flyer from a vendor. You’re receiving meaningful training on technical topics. Right? So I talked a little bit about there’s like FEA and, PCB design and programming robots and motion control, linear motors, GD and T, all these different things.
We we have we have, I think, 35 instructors, and some of these instructors are actually teaching two topics. So there are, call it, I don’t know, 35 plus, maybe 40 ish different, training topics that you can sign up for. There’s a event website. And once you register for the event, you have access to the event website where you can see all of the different training sessions. You can see the training sessions even before you register, of course, but you can see the time slots where all those different training sessions are scheduled.
You sign up for as many as you want. Conceivably, you could do up to a dozen. It’s a two day event, six hours per day, and each of these training sessions is thirty to sixty minutes. So it’s kind of a crash course. Some of them are are more basic one zero one type courses.
Others are more advanced, you know, graduate level, call it, courses for the, academic analogy. And and and that’s it. So, just outside of Phoenix, Arizona, October, that’s a Tuesday and a Wednesday, show up, and and we’re gonna have a good time in person. It’s all about learning and education, connecting with other like minded engineers. The focus is really on on really truly practical information and knowledge that that you can go back to work and start using right away and sharing with with your team members.
Many of the, exhibitors are are gonna be giving away, tools or materials that you can take back and and share with your team so that you’re not the only one who benefits from this training.
Shawn Tierney (Host): Yeah. And so, give us the website again.
Aaron Moncur (Pipeline): Pdexpo.engineer. So pdexp0.engineer.
Shawn Tierney (Host): And, guys, I will try to get that in the show notes. So wherever you’re watching or listening, whether it be YouTube or Spotify, iTunes, the automation blog, you’ll have access to those links so you don’t have to write all that down. But I did want you to go through it. A lot of people do listen or they’re walking the dog or mowing the grass or whatever. And so I wanted to make sure we gave that out.
Very easy to remember, folks. But please check that out. So valuable training. I think you said it was, $2.95. It’s very difficult to find at that price point.
And check out the website and see if there’s something either for yourself or maybe for one of your junior people that would make sense, especially if you’re in driving distance. But even for that price, it’s, and, typically, the hotels in that area are fairly reasonable because of where it’s located. It sound like you’re, you know, New York City. Right?
Aaron Moncur (Pipeline): Or Right.
Shawn Tierney (Host): You know, downtown. Right? So in any case, check it out and, let if you do attend or you have somebody attend, let us know. We want your feedback. I know we got a several weeks here before it actually takes, takes off, but I will remember that we had this podcast.
So please feel free to come back to the show on any platform and leave your comments. Let me know what you think. And, you know, if I was in the area, I’d definitely be checking it out. With that said, let’s talk a little bit about your podcast before we end here. So you you mentioned it earlier.
What is it’s an engineering podcast. So tell us a little bit about what is the podcast, what’s it called, what do you cover, and where can people tune in?
Aaron Moncur (Pipeline): It’s called being an engineer, and you can find it on all the major podcast platforms, Apple, Spotify, etcetera, etcetera. And this this whole thing started, over five years ago. So we’re in season six right now. We have over 300 episodes that are out there. We release a new episode every week, and we just interview engineers, largely senior level engineers, but sometimes we’ll have newer engineers in there as well.
And we ask them about how they do their work. You know, what are some pro tips, some insights that you can share with us to help us work better, to help us become better at, this this profession of engineering. And, there’s some some really cool episodes out there. There’s, we have the the founder of SolidWorks, John Hirschdick. He was a guest.
We had, the, the flight director for the Mars Curiosity Mission, David Oh, from, JPL, the Jet Propulsion Lab. He had some really cool stories about, you know, being the first person to see this, rover land on on Mars and living on Martian time for, like, six weeks as as the, rocket flew up there. Yeah. So, anyway, lots of episodes out there. We don’t we don’t get super technical.
Occasionally, we will go into a a technical topic and talk about it a little bit, but it’s it’s it’s more along the lines of, how do you do your work and and what are some pro tips that you can share with the rest of us.
Shawn Tierney (Host): That’s awesome. That’s great. So, guys, check that out. I know I only do a podcast. We we don’t we don’t do one every day of the week.
So, I love having other podcasters on to talk about what they have because I know most of us have 10 commutes per week we need to fill up with a podcast or 10 you know, five days or seven days a week we had to walk the dog or whatever you do when you do your podcast. But in any case, Aaron, I wanna thank you so much for coming on, and I wanna wish you a lot of, success with the event. And I would love to have you back on in the future to talk about, you know, what you’ve learned over the coming months and what happened at the event and also, talk more about your podcast and maybe start go over some of your favorite episodes with other different engineers. But for now, I think we’re gonna wrap it up. I’m looking at the time.
Aaron, thank you again for coming on the automation podcast.
Aaron Moncur (Pipeline): Thank you so much, Shawn. I appreciate you having me on.
Shawn Tierney (Host): Well, I hope you guys enjoyed our conversation. I know I enjoyed talking to Aaron about all those different topics. And I also wanna thank Pipeline for sponsoring this episode so we could release it to you completely ad free. Thank you, Pipeline. We really appreciate your support.
Also, don’t forget there’s a $50 off coupon on your screen now. If you wanna go to the PDXpo, check it out. You don’t find many, two day training sessions that cost just $295. Also, don’t forget to check out Aaron’s podcast and tell him we sent you. He has a lot of great guests that have been on.
He has over 300 episodes. And, it may be something you guys enjoy watching or listening to. And with that, I just wanna thank you guys again for tuning in. I wanna wish you all good health and happiness. And until next time, my friends, peace.
Until next time, Peace ✌️
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Shawn M Tierney
Technology Enthusiast & Content Creator
Support our work and gain access to hundreds members only articles and videos by becoming a member at The Automation Blog or on YouTube. You’ll also find all of my affordable PLC, HMI, and SCADA courses at TheAutomationSchool.com.
Shawn Tierney is a lifelong Technology Enthusiast who began programing in the early 80's on the Apple II and VIC-20 personal computers. After earning a degree in Electronics, he worked as a Certified Controls and Information Automation Specialist for 25 years before launching The Automation Blog and School in 2013.
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