Shawn Tierney meets up with Rylan Pyciak of Cleveland Automation Systems to discuss Trends in Automation, Inspiring a New Generation of Controls Engineers, and more in this episode of The Automation Podcast.

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Shawn Tierney (Host): Welcome back to the Automation Podcast. My name is Shawn Tierney from Insights and Automation. And in this episode, I sit down with Ryland Pychak from Cleveland Automation Systems, a system integrator house, to talk about all things industrial automation, including how do we get more people involved in controls engineering as well as, like, what are the latest products and technologies people are using. So with that said, let’s go ahead and jump right into my interview with Ryland Piechak from Cleveland Automation Systems. Ryland, it’s great to have you on the show.

Now before we jump into our conversation, can you start by telling us a little bit about yourself?

Rylan Pyciak: Yeah. Certainly. Well well, first and foremost, thanks for having me as well, Shawn. Definitely appreciate the opportunity. Yeah.

To give a little bit of background, I’m Radom Pyshak, founder, president of, Clearwater Automation Systems, as well as a controls engineer. You know, we’ve we’ve essentially been in business for ten years now. And, ultimately, you know, my background has been controls engineering through and through. Actually started the manufacturing floor myself. You know, a lot of maintenance technician role, a lot of day to day kind of supporting troubleshooting equipment and whatnot.

From there, obviously, went off to college, got a controls engineering background, did a little stint at Rockwell, also worked at an OEM as well as a system integrator. And then from there, kind of saw the entire picture of manufacturing and decided to go out and start cleaning automation systems myself. You know, so since then, like I said, we’ve been in business going on ten years so far. And, yeah, it’s been been great. You know, there’s a lot of unique things we’ve come across in the manufacturing industry, and, I’m definitely very passionate.

And it’s, something that’s very interesting from my perspective.

Shawn Tierney (Host): Well, I appreciate you coming on the show. And, really, that’s our audience, the controls engineers, the, really, the automation electricians, those electricians who just really get into automation and do that as kind of a specialty, as well as the, maintenance technicians and control technicians, you know, maybe have an electronics background, a mechatronics background, and then get into automation. And so, really great to have you on. And it’s you have a great pedigree. They have different companies you’ve worked with.

You’ve kinda seen the industry from different angles, which, you know, a lot of people don’t get that get that chance to work for a vendor and a integrator and an OEM and on the plant floor. So what really, tell us about your company, Cleveland Automation Systems. What do you guys do? Like, what was the purpose and found doing it? And and, really, what’s your what’s your focus?

Rylan Pyciak: Yeah. Yeah. Certainly. So click on automation system is probably the best, you know, term for us as a system integrator. Right?

We typically have various clients that come to us to solve unique problems. That’s anywhere from simple, you know, field troubleshooting, simple service calls we get to complex equipment development, a lot of custom automation, as well as a lot of integration. You know? So, really, we work pretty much with every clientele across the board. I would say the main one, pretty much the only thing we don’t do is oil and gas.

But we support clients across various manufacturing industries. And, really, you know, we essentially got into business to solve a lot of these complex problems. What I saw from my perspective was a lot of, you know, lack of support for various legacy systems, you know, other challenges that our our clients would have where, hey. How do we integrate various components together? So really going into business kinda to solve a lot of those problems, and that’s still what we do today.

You know, anywhere from upgrading, you know, obsolete components and hardware, software control systems, all the way to developing custom unique, you know, different kinds of equipment and machinery. So very interesting industry, and our client base is pretty wide as well.

Shawn Tierney (Host): Now I know with your background, right, there’s probably a focus on, like you were just saying, on helping people migrate to the latest generation or to a platform that’s gonna be stable for them. I know in the pre show we talked about some of your clients have, like, just a mishmash of controls. And so, and I know a lot of people in the audience, they have to deal with all different types of vendors. And so, just a, you know, a minute and not that not you know, we’re gonna be preaching to the choir here. But when you’re when you have a a one of your customers come to you and say, here’s what I got.

What’s the best path forward? What’s some of the things you tell them about? Maybe not having every vendor on the planet every control system on the planet in your plan, well, that would be great for a museum, is not really great for your your people because it can be difficult. I mean, people struggle understanding an iPhone how to use an iPhone and an Android. Right?

Because it’s so different. And if you take that times five or 10, it really just puts a lot of stress on the, the maintenance staff, the electricians, and and the engineers on-site. So what’s some of the advice you give when when you’re working with your your, vendors? Your I’m sorry. Your, customers.

Rylan Pyciak: Certainly. I mean, I think you hit the nail right on the head there with the, you know, the iPhone to Android comparison. I use that as well. You know, the biggest thing is what we like to do. First and foremost, we usually do a site assessment for our clients, and that is coming in and understanding everything within the facility.

Right? That is, you know, what control systems, hardware, software, motors, kind of everything that makes automation run. And really from there, it’s identifying and saying, hey. You have these, you know, five, six, 15 different vendor hardware, software platforms in your facility. You know, which route do you wanna go?

Obviously, there’s some name brands that, you know, all of us understand are are primary here, you know, at least in The US that most people use. And and, really, it’s more of an educational thing than anything else with our customers of outlining and saying, hey. You know, to be able to hire somebody, you know, to fill a maintenance technician role, to fill a controls engineer role, you know, not only do they have to bring the skill sets of actually doing that work, they also need to bring along the skill sets of how to support these systems. You look at something such as DeviceNet versus Ethernet IP. Right?

There are, you know, different I’m gonna call it generations, different demographics that grew up supporting that versus what is currently used in the market. So, you know, really, it’s sitting down, talking to our customers, kind of looking at that list we’ve developed with them and saying, hey. This is everything you have within your facility. Which route do you wanna go? What does your current maintenance staff look like?

What can you support? As well as what does your infrastructure look like? Because end of the day, it’s you know, one, obviously, obsolescence is huge. I’m sure we’ve all been there. Right?

You have a an obsolete hardware software device that goes down. Now you’re scrambling to go and find another one, right, typically on eBay, pulling it off the shelf, potentially opening up and soldering things. Nobody wants to go that route. So it’s more so understanding this is the route you should go and a lot of guidance education on, you know, one, why you should migrate as well as two, what that’s going to look like, you know, from your support and maintenance perspective where, hey. Now you only have one software license to manage.

You only have one platform to manage, and it’s not, you know, five, six different platforms and somebody’s old Windows XP sitting on the shelf that you have to clean dust off of every time. So that’s, you know, I’d say in a nutshell, a lot of education, you know, goes into a lot of these conversations.

Shawn Tierney (Host): Yeah. You know, I think about over the years, all the peat times people upgraded and the reasons for upgrading and just the the cost of upgrading. There was a lot of people who upgraded in, for y two k when there was no reason to. And but they would there was a fear factor there. You know?

Fear and certainty, doubt. Right, FUD? And so they would do upgrades, and they spend hundreds of thousands of dollars. And I was just sitting there as a technical person being like, you’re wasting your money. You don’t need this.

And, you know, I often see, like, an end user where they have a, you know, they have a a storeroom full of every IO module and every terminal block and every, processor and memory card, and it’s like, should we update the entire plan? I’m like, why? You not only is everything running smoothly and everybody’s trained on it, you have all the speeds you could ever use, and this stuff will last forever. Whereas when you’re sitting down with an OEM and they’re like, well, now I need to do six axes, and I have to do, you know, coordinated motion. You’re like, well, yeah, you’re not gonna wanna use that old stuff.

Right? You we need to get you into the latest stuff where we have these new text test axes, commands and different things we can do that will just make your development so much easier. Plus, you’re gonna want tech support because if you go into the new generation, you’re probably gonna have some questions because you’ve been using the old generation. So it can really be case. And then I see, like, a lot of the the sensor vendors we have on, they come out with this new sensor that has features that no other sensor on the market has.

And so I can see an end user saying, well, we usually use brand x, but brand y is really killing it. And this is the application brand x couldn’t solve, so we’re gonna go with brand y. And so it does make sense to I mean, you know, you can come at this from every different angle, but at the end of the day, I guess, like you were saying, you don’t wanna have a plan with 15 different things in there, 15 different software licenses. And, you know, it’s like, just because you’re good at Word doesn’t mean you’re an expert at Excel or PowerPoint. Right?

And just because you’ve learned brand x does not mean you’re gonna be able to pick up brand y quickly. I know when I started working with Siemens, it was like a huge just, it was like going from, you know, Photoshop to PaintShop Pro or you know? It was just like a huge, huge change, and you really just you’re not as efficient when you first start off. So definitely definitely a lot of considerations there. You know, I think one of the things we’re talking about, in the preshow was the you know, how do you attract young people?

Because so many people like us who are getting older. Right? And then the people who taught us who are retiring, you know, there’s a a lot of a lot of the younger, audience, you know, they they’ve been using a touch screen since they were. My grandkids have never known, devices without touch screens. Right?

Rylan Pyciak: Mhmm. It’s

Shawn Tierney (Host): so and so, you know, how do we what do what can we do to help get that younger generation in? Because we need to bring before everybody retires who has that that, you know, that knowledge. We’re gonna we’re gonna get that the younger folks to keep coming in and, you know, maybe we won’t have as many because, you know, systems are more mature and the you know, when I first started PLCs, we’re still relatively new. So programming PLCs with software was still relatively new, only a couple years, three, four years old. And so but today, we’ve been doing it for, you know, thirty five years, forty years.

So, we may need less people as as as the knowledge is easier as a and and the products get easier, easier to use too. But how do we attract, younger engineers into this? I think we would both agree is a phenomenal, industry of, you know, automating manufacturing and other and other

Rylan Pyciak: things? Yeah. Yeah. No. That that’s a great question.

You know, honestly, I think some of it from my perspective, manufacturing is almost like a black sheep. Right? A lot of people haven’t heard of manufacturing. They typically look at it of, hey. It’s something either I see on TV or it’s how cars are made.

But I feel like there are a lot of younger generations that may not just fully understand what we do day in and day out. You know, from the technical aspect, from problem solving, from engineering design, you know, all of the things that go into manufacturing a product, both on our side as integrators, programmers, things like that, but also from support, from production, you know, on the flip side. So, you know, I think there’s some of that of actually drawing an awareness to what our industry is and what it does. You know, if I’m being frank, a lot of my first introductory really was just talking to friends of friends, you know, and primarily, you know, older generations of, hey. You’re really hands on, really like to do things like this.

You should look at this industry. And if it weren’t for those conversations, I probably would have never ended up in this industry either. You know, so, really, I think it’s it’s kind of opening up and saying, hey. You know, First Robotics, other, you know, kind of vocational or technical, you know, trades kind of situations when you’re in high school, even middle school of identifying people that are interested in these industries or interested in more, you know, hands on designing things, building things, and getting in front of those younger generations and showing them, hey. Manufacturing is something you can get into.

And, right, you could pick up a teach pendant and move half of a car around with a robot. That’s really cool. So I think it’s a lot of kind of, you know, not only educational from a sense of educating people, but also just, you know, getting in front of younger generations, showing them what’s out there, you know, things that we like to do. There are a lot of career days at schools if we can go in and do things like that. Any kind of, you know, I guess, community involvement or outreach where you do have middle school, high schools, you know, even vocational schools of having introductories.

Definitely love to do that. I mean, I sit on a couple advisory boards. Anytime we have professors that wanna invite us in, absolutely would jump on board and say, yes. I will sit down, show everything what we do, show Dawson pictures, kind of walk them through what you can do, you know, as controls engineers, as mechanical engineers, and really get a better sense of of this is what this industry looks like.

Shawn Tierney (Host): Yeah. You know, I think, when my kids were growing up they’re all grown up now, have kids of their own. When I was when I was when they were growing up, there was really no inexpensive way to to they nothing inexpensive I really could put in front of them to let them let them learn, you know, electronics and programming. We had, you know, we had PCs, but, beyond that, that’s not the way it is today. Today, we have, and we’ve covered them on the channel is, you know, I think one of the best places to start is with the Arduinos.

And you can buy kits from kits with lots of electronics. It’s kinda like when I was a kid, they had a thousand and one experiments. Right? So you can buy buy, you know, kits that are, you know, $20 or $30. And we’ve reviewed a lot of the kits and and and the what comes in them, but they they come with all kinds of electronics and then the world, you know, the the world’s your oyster from there.

You can do so many things. But even before you get to that point, I loved and I used to coach legal league. And for those younger middle school kids, right, legal league, you know, you can I was I had kids in there in fourth grade, right, learning to do the Lego League stuff, and they they do a great job of trying to make it fun? You you’re plugging the like, motors into into bricks, onto a a computer, and then you program it graphically, you know, with, you know, moves and, you know, if you’re into motion, everybody you know, you got a gut moves and how far you’re gonna go and sensors that tell you when to stop. And, I mean, it’s just I think it’s amazing.

But the one thing I found, though, that that is difficult is that, you know, most most parents these days, they’re working, they’re both working, they don’t have a lot of time, they come home exhausted, and so they they have, an Xbox or a streaming surface that is their babysitter just so they can have some some alone time. And and I would just recommend, you know, limit that time. You know, the especially with video games these days, everything’s a season. You don’t wanna miss the next big thing that’s happening and and you would think from roadblocks to to, Destiny or, you know, Call of Duty or whatever. But don’t limit your kids’ time so when they’re bored, they have to they have to pull out that kit and stop playing with it.

I was with my grandson recently, and he got grounded. And I said, well, I bet your mom well, you can’t play video games. I bet your mom will let you create your own video games. It’s like on her computer. He started, you know, designing his own levels and whatnot.

It’s like, you know, if they if, you know, people are gonna go for easy. Right? But once easy is not there anymore, then they’ll they’ll look for something else. And, now talk to me about how how have you worked with the young have you done anything with the with the first robotics or with training? You said you’re on advisory councils.

Rylan Pyciak: Yeah. Yeah. So we’ve, you know, we’ve sponsored a few high school competitions as well as some other local high schools that essentially, you know, they’re they’re just looking to do introductory into robotics design. You know, I think it almost goes back to the educational standpoint where, you know, your typical curriculum is is pretty standardized now. And a lot of, you know, shop classes, I feel like don’t exist at many high schools like they did, you know, ten, fifteen, thirty years ago.

So some of it’s conversation. Some of it is honestly just where we’ve engaged with, you know, either prior high school, you know, where I went or other high schools that are interested in that and supporting it. Right? Like you mentioned, the biggest thing is is funding and finding opportunities. And to your point, yes, nowadays, it is hundreds of dollars.

It’s not thousands or tens of thousands to do that. Exactly. But that that’s something I feel like us as, you know, us as companies in the integration world, and just speaking kind of at in general, being able to identify those things, you know, from anyone listening, if you are on the integration side or even if you’re on the manufacturing side of maybe having conversations with, you know, what your your current layout looks like, potentially your your children or high schools that you worked with, you know, and then going to higher ups and maybe asking for a little sponsorship. I mean, a couple $100 can get quite a few different pieces of hardware and software, and you could start building these things that, you know, allow for that aptitude and that intriguing, you know, design and and doing hands on design, you know, I think opens a lot of doors from that perspective. Yeah.

I mean, definitely having good conversations with with, like I said, high school students, as well as trying to find other opportunities where you can work with these generations and allow them to have that curiosity. You You know, I think that’s the biggest thing. Once you get that spark and that curiosity, really just continuing to run from that and seeing what other options are out there in the world.

Shawn Tierney (Host): Yeah. And and if you’re gonna sponsor as a company or as a group or as a, you know, organization, I would definitely put a put a requirement in there and and maybe go and and see the final project. Because my wife’s a principal, she’s been teaching for twenty years, and, people have sponsored different different, you know, things that she’s tried to implement in her school. And I think the one thing they fall down on is, yeah, they they have you fill out a form. They give you the money.

Then so you can go buy the kits, but and then they don’t get involved. And it’s like, you know, people get busy. And if there’s not, like, this requirement that, hey. They have to show you know, at the end of the at the end of the season or year or course, we’re gonna come in and see what they did. Just to try to hold their feet to the, not hold their feet to the fire, but just to give the teacher or the instructor some accountability, some some, reason to make sure that this stuff gets used and covered because there are so many mandates.

Hopefully, this will change, but today, there’s so many mandates that it’s difficult. They really have to make an effort to teach, outside of what’s mandated, which is and and like you said, unfortunately, shop class shop class, and, you know, basic electricity, those type of things are not mandated anymore or not mandated today. But, you know, as we’re talking about this, let if you don’t mind, can we switch over and talk about smarter manufacturing? So we’ve talked a while about how we get youngsters involved, but as you go to work every day, right, and you work with your people and you work with your customers, I mean, what are some of the trends you’re seeing out there where people are doing things maybe smarter or adopting new newer technologies that, you know, we didn’t have maybe ten years ago that are really making a difference in their plants?

Rylan Pyciak: Yeah. Yeah. Certainly. You know, there are quite a few different things that we’ve come across. You know, there there are some buzzwords definitely.

You know, I think that you kind of have to sandbox exactly what they are, AI being one of them. Right? I think in the general sense, a lot of people may not understand. But there are some I’m gonna call them, you know, AI such as vision systems where essentially you’re teaching it, hey. Here are, you know, passable or passing products.

Here are failing products. And it’s not necessarily how vision systems traditionally were, right, where it always has to be the same picture if it doesn’t line up. If it’s not good, it’s bad. Right? That that’s kinda more of the traditional sense where some of these newer AI, you know, learning systems that are out there are actually able to detect and say, hey.

You know, I may be looking for something to be right side up, and it’s within that plus or minus 10 degree window. That’s gonna be a pass. If I see something flipped upside down, that’s certainly gonna be a fail. So we’re seeing some newer technologies like that definitely being implemented out there. IoT, smart sensors, IO Link are other ones that are huge.

We’re seeing a lot of deployments, especially in food and beverage where you’re no longer having to run analog sensors everywhere, but rather, you know, you’re basically implementing IO Link and other similar platforms where now I’m actually getting that process data over Ethernet IP. I don’t know if they’re about scaling other things like that. They make field installation and setup time a breeze. We do a lot of that as well. So definitely some newer technologies.

And then some other things I’d say are pretty unique too are more maybe around the robotics where we’re seeing a lot of your ROS and ROS two development where, you know, again, it’s kind of more of a open source platform that essentially allows you to run the control kind of independent of what we would traditionally look at from a controller where, hey. You may have a Fanuc or a KUKA robot that is essentially now running, you know, from a ROS perspective versus your traditional, you know, picking up the teach pendant and programming points. So it it it’s definitely interesting. I’d say, you know, we’re working on a quite a few different applications that are kind of bridging that gap between traditional and newer technologies, you know, where there’s a lot more dynamic going on. You know, for instance, an application we’re currently doing, essentially, we have, you know, a product coming into an area, a couple scanners doing a three d point cloud, and then robots that are actually going over top of that.

That product that’s coming in is never the same from one product to the next. So there’s a lot of kind of, you know, ongoing smart technology that’s feeding in there, vision systems, three d systems, and that’s actually using one of the the ROS, you know, approach as well. So, yeah, it’s definitely something that I think as our our industry grows, there’s a lot more, interest in it, and there’s a lot more funding coming in, private equity, venture capitalists, that are are starting to try and solve some of these more complex problems. And I think from that, it it does allow us to now look at this. Hey.

Traditionally, you would program with a PLC ladder logic. And the teach pendant. Well, that way you might be able to use more software based controls and engineering versus, you know, ladder logic programming and things like that. So, yeah. I mean, it’s interesting.

Again, from our standpoint as a system integrator, we get to see so many of these different things going on, that you walk in and you’re like, this it’s pretty neat to see what other people are trying to do out there.

Shawn Tierney (Host): Yeah. You know, we talked about AI quite a bit last year in in robotics. AI, you know, we and and I asked the audience to help me. Look. We gotta spread the the the knowledge about AI as far as what it really is.

Couple years ago, I was on vacation, and we were on a tour, and we had these dinners every night. And this older man, he’s he’s like, AIs self aware, and they’re programming itself, and we don’t need people anymore. And I’m like, that’s a great science fiction book you just read, but, I mean, I think if you know? You know, you try to explain to them. It’s like, look.

It’s like they published this. IEEE does a great job covering this. They’ve literally spent millions every year, like, 10 of the millions every year programming these AIs. They’re not self aware. They’re not then that people still are needed.

That’s why they’re paying people, you know, millions of dollars to program them. And, you know, it’s it’s it’s basically you know, as we look at the I always go back to, like, voice activation, and I should mute my, my device here so I don’t accidentally trigger it. But, you know, if we think back, like, I bought Dragon Natural Speaking back in the day because I wanted I my old job for twenty five years, I spent half or more of every day driving. So four hours driving, seven hours working, or eight hours driving, four hours. It was just it was just a for somebody who likes to do for a doer, it’s just demoralizing to be on the road that much.

For a driver, that’s great. I mean, they love that. But in any case, long story short, it’s 90% and, again, I have an accent. But 90%, you think that sounds great until you go to edit what you said. It’s not good.

Right? It’s, like, too much work. I could just type this from scratch. And we we also see that with a lot of transcripts. Like, if you’re on a video streaming site, the transcripts, the, automatic English captions, right, closed captions, A lot of times, they’re not that good either.

But we’ve seen that grow. I know when I first got my, my iPhone and it had Siri, and I would be like I would talk to it and be like, I can’t answer that. Today, I can talk to it, and it does a great job. It’s it’s the the database that has backing it up is so much better. And so I take that and I go into, like, the vision system example you gave.

Right? Now in the past, like you were saying, we had to have the lighting perfect. We had the gauges and the tools, and the the product had to be in the spot all the time, and there was no way to for it to float around and find the product and and most early on. And today, you can shoot it, like, a 100 products and say these are all good, and it can the algorithm can figure out, hey. What are the minor variances of these so I can understand what falls into the good bucket?

And then you can shoot at a 100 bad products and say, okay. These are bad. And they can actually build some, some, tables or or value sets to know, to really know really well, you know, much faster than any person could, what’s good and what’s bad. And it’s amazing. Even one vendor said, hey.

If you need to give it train it do even more training, we you can upload it to our website. We’ll do it offline and send it back to you, which I just think is amazing. And I know it’s revolutionizing, you know, cancer treatment or or detection and all kinds of other things. But, yeah, no. This is not data from Star Trek.

Rylan Pyciak: Right? Yeah.

Shawn Tierney (Host): This is not Al from 02/2001. And, and, yeah. And so so go ahead. Go ahead.

Rylan Pyciak: Yeah. No. I was I mean, you’re you’re spot on, Shauna. It it it’s a good balance. Right?

I mean, you know, I even look at it. We’ve all been there, right, especially from the controls perspective where something isn’t running and you walk out and it’s that slight little turn of the photo eye. Right? So as much as I think a lot of people may look at it of, hey. It’s taking over the world and it’s taking over what we’re doing, It still requires people, you know, in in at least in our world, technicians to implement it, to program it, to set it up.

And, again, a lot of our equipment too doesn’t even have that smart that technology. So, you know, it’s something that as we move forward educationally, I think, you know, generations that that still have a pretty good length of career left, it it’s making sure you’re educating yourself on it, understanding what it is, how to deploy it, utilizing it as it becomes more commonplace, but definitely not you know, I wouldn’t be intimidated by it because it it’s something that it it’s like anything else. It’s a tool that’s going to be used. You know, and I think it’s making yourself aware of it, understanding how you can actually deploy it in the future. And and something else, I guess, you know, a thought that they brought up from my standpoint is actually investment in this new technology.

It’s something else that we have a lot of these conversations with customers. You know, I know automate just happened. Right? You go out and you see the latest and greatest of everything. Lot of cool technology, new technology.

You know, we always caution our customers to be, you know, cautiously optimistic and consider what you’re investing in, because one of the things you have to look at you know, there are all these these crazy new technologies that are out there. I’m gonna use collaborative robots as an example. Right? When when they first came out, it was universal robots. Now you watch the show, you know, there are probably 50, a 100, I don’t know, 500 collaborative robots.

The thing you have to really consider is not only are you purchasing this technology, you’re investing in education, you know, from an internal standpoint to to bring your teams up to speed. But you also have to make sure that technology still exists in five, ten, twenty years. A great use case, you know, we actually did case study on it. You know, Ready Robotics, I thought was a great platform, works really well, you know, kind of made robot programming agnostic. And and they had a really, really valuable, you know, use case, I thought.

And, you know, they went bankrupt. They went out of business. So you have to look at that too of, hey. I’m gonna go and spend this money as a decision maker for my plant, for my company, for my process. You have to also make sure that that hardware, that software, that firmware, that company that developed that is also there in the long term.

So you kinda have to do a pros and cons and make sure, really, our our biggest things, you know, how long have those companies been in business, what does their technology look like, what does their tech support look like, Right? Do they have a team? Is it one individual? Are they writing firmware on the back end as these bugs come up? But it really is a holistic picture.

And and, again, I really recommend having conversations with your personnel that are on the floor supporting this. Reach out to integrators, reach out to individuals within the market. You know, ask a lot of questions before you make those decisions.

Shawn Tierney (Host): Yeah. But, you know, it’s does it work with your existing architecture? So there are so many great cobot and robot manufacturers. And, quite honestly, some of them work better with brand a and some work better with brand b. And if you have brand b, you probably want one that works really well with it.

You know, if you have brand a, then, you know, that’s gonna be and I know they all try to work with all they try to be vendor agnostic as far as the control systems, but some do a better job with you know? A lot of times it’s geographical or it’s just, you know, the the mission of the company internally. But, and then there are there are companies out there who do just just do a phenomenal job or try to with all vendors. But, you know, I think Cobot’s, that’s one place we talk about the younger generation. I mean, you think about it.

Right? And and I worked in a machine shop one summer when I was, in high school, and it’s it’s a job that young people do not want. Right? If you’re if you’re if you’re machining products, right, it it’s similar to, like, if an injection molding facility. People don’t wanna work there either.

Right? Younger generation, a lot of them don’t because they want something more, you know, twenty twenty five ish. Right? And so, if you can have a COBOS sit at that machine and put the pieces in and out instead of a human being, and I could tell you that was very boring work. And I and and and most of the people there were not college graduates.

Right? They were there because they were you know, it was the best paying job they could find without having any experience. And so as those people retire, if if you don’t have enough people to fill those roles, that’s where the Cobots, I think, could do a great job. And this people even have innovative uses for them. Like, this one company was it was a three d printing company, and so they like to work eight to five like most people do.

They have families. They wanna enjoy their evenings. And, the problem was, though, the printers would finish the print. You know, they would take custom print jobs. They’d finish, like, in the evening.

Right? And nobody wanted to drive back to work and switch out the trays so they could print something else. Right? Expensive machines printing expensive products. And so they bought a Kobo.

Now all that Kobo does is it goes around and replaces the trays on the three d printers when they finish their job so that you can print something else. And it gives them another, you know, theoretically, another sixteen hours worth of printing they can get out of their machines while everybody’s at home, you know, spending time with the family and and and sleeping. And so there’s a lot of innovative ways to use cobots. Now have you guys done any work recently with cobots?

Rylan Pyciak: Yeah. Yeah. That’s it it’s definitely something, you know, we’ve deployed quite a few collaborative applications. Yep. You know, really, when when it comes to I’m gonna say collaborative versus noncollaborative.

More so, we’re we’re kinda back to, I guess, what you just touched on is identifying, you know, what are the problems that you could potentially solve? Or, honestly even just walking in and saying, hey. There is a potential solution here that maybe somebody’s never thought of. You know, that’s identifying, like you said, that, right, the three d is dirty, dull, dangerous where people just it’s a boring job. People hate it.

It’s high turnover. You know, really kind of finding those applications where it’s something simple. You know, it it it’s low cost. It’s something you could implement very easily. And then being able to walk in and replace that with a robot with a collaborative robot, you know, with an automated solution that actually solves those problems.

Right? And then it takes those individuals from doing that that high turnover, boring, or dangerous, or, you know, mind numbing kind of position into something that that opens up a lot more doors, and now they can be technicians. They can, you know, kinda move into a higher position where they’re doing more from the company perspective. But, yeah, I mean, in terms of collaborative applications, definitely a lot of opportunity that’s out there. You know, I think the biggest things are, you know, obviously identifying what you’re trying to do, making sure you do proper risk assessments to make sure that application is actually collaborative, as well as, you know, really finding what are you trying to solve at the end of the day.

Right? Is it a labor problem? Is it, you know, just just an ergonomic problem is definitely a big one we see a lot of. Time saving problems. We deployed one two years ago, actually, that essentially just mixing the solution.

Right? In every fifteen minutes, operator would have to stop, open up the door, go in there and mix this this solution, essentially, to keep it mixed, shut the door, and hit go. That essentially removed that where now that operator is no longer there and actually doing the other pieces of their job. You know, it was a slam dunk for everyone involved. So definitely a lot of opportunities out there.

You know, I think, really, it’s it’s identifying what you’re trying to solve. But you can definitely utilize them in quite a few different locations.

Shawn Tierney (Host): Yeah. You know? And I that kinda brings another thought to mind is, you know, we hear a lot of people say, well, automation is bad because it takes away jobs. And I usually, it’s a boomer when I see somebody saying this on TV and not to pick on boomers. Okay?

But, typically, it’s a boomer. Right? Mhmm. And, they’re holding a, like, an $800 smartphone, and they’re standing next to a a, you know, a $5,500 big screen TV. And I’m just like I’m I’m like or with those products you love to use, the car you like to drive, that smartphone you love, you know, None of those can be made without automation.

Impossible. Literally impossible to make your modern devices without automation. Technology, and I like to just say technology technology gets rid of the lowest level jobs. Right? So from the day we learned to tie an ox to that wheel to turn it so we could either pump water or grind, you know, grain or whatever, right, or harness it harness the wind with the wind with the winter a wind wheel, a windmill.

You know, that where people are always trying to find smarter ways to doing thing. And, you know, not that mixing a container by hand is extremely difficult or but I don’t know how many times I’ve gone to the local, home supply store, and they’ve mixed my paint wrong, literally. Or I’ll say this too. Same place. Have my keys made wrong.

I’ve I have, like, half a dozen keys I’ve paid them I had made, and they mess them up. Right? And so I’m not picking on people. They’re they’re stressed out. They got lots doing.

But if If if if I need a key now, because I know there’s one, department store nearby that has the automated. You just put your key in. It does everything automated. I will only go there because I know it is done correctly every time. And quite honestly, I don’t have to listen to the to the the sales guy go, oh, I don’t like making keys.

I can’t believe I gotta do this. You know? It’s just so funny. Yes. I wish you didn’t have to do this either because you keep doing it wrong.

So Uh-huh. I mean, do do you agree with me? Or I mean, the technology I find is elevating. It’s giving people better jobs. It’s not it’s really eliminating the jobs that most people don’t want.

Am I right about that? What what are your thoughts about that?

Rylan Pyciak: Yeah. I you know, honestly, Shawn, I think I think you’re spot on with that. You know, really, automation and and I would say this. You know, the last couple years, a lot of our customers, they’re asking for automation because they simply cannot find enough people to fill their roles. It’s not that, hey.

We wanna, you know, necessarily improve a process or, you know, replace people. Nobody’s actually filling those roles where they don’t have enough resources to do that manually. So it’s a, you know, it’s a labor shortage issue, honestly, of what we’re dealing with. But by no means is it actually taking over, replacing jobs, anything like that. I mean, exactly what you said.

Right? You look at at jobs that are very labor intensive, that are, you know, very stressing, ergonomic issues that, you know, it it’s honestly it’s backbreaking work. And I definitely understand that I wouldn’t wanna do that kind of labor myself day in and day out, five days a week. And that’s where automation is key. Right?

So you now walk in and a robot, a control system, you know, whatever it is is replacing those things that are, you know, beating up your body or, you know, other things, you know, very toxic locations, locations that you don’t wanna deal with chemicals, things like that. Now those same persons that had to go in and do that are now actually supporting it. And kind of back to what we were talking about before, right, now those individuals are learning how to operate the HMIs. They learn how to recover the robots. They’re learning how to do basic troubleshooting on PLCs, you know, robotic systems, things like that.

So, you know, from from an employment perspective, from a technology and educational perspective, I think it’s taking them from doing a repetitive, laborious job, and now it’s opening up more avenues where you could walk in and say, hey. You know, I have background, you know, programming, doing basic troubleshooting on this system that has, you know, phanic robot, Allen Bradley PLC. I made edits. You know, we may be maybe that system, you’ve put in five new part variants since you purchased it. You know, so now you you have more applicable skills that I think, in general, our industry needs to head that rate.

Right? As you mentioned, one, to be able to be competitive with the prices of what we pay for the cost of goods sold in general. But two, just from a standpoint of, you know, if corporations and companies are going to try and remain competitive, they certainly are going to have to automate. You’re not going to be able to replace and do everything with manual, you know, human labor, and you need to start implementing automation, you know, in the right locations, but also making sure you’re implementing it so you can, like I said, obviously, fill those labor gaps, fill the labor shortages that you have, you know, high turnover positions or dangerous positions, replace that with industrial automation. And, yeah, I mean, end of the day, It it is definitely not taking people’s jobs.

I can’t say I’ve seen any project where we walked in and said, hey. Here’s a machine that runs x rate. These five people are now gone. Usually, they’re moving into higher level positions, technician positions, and and, honestly, getting more education. So, I mean, I’m absolutely on board that automations automation is nothing but a good investment from a company perspective.

Shawn Tierney (Host): Yeah. And, you know, I think back to, BeachNet, they make baby food. And, I was, working with them when they were building a new plant, and, the old plant looked ugly. It was like an old brick building, multistory. Yeah.

It I like, I walked through it, and I’m like, I don’t know that I could ever buy this baby food again. But their new plant was just beautiful. Beautiful. When you walk into the lobby, it’s huge and beautiful. You walk in the lobby, they have a mural on the wall.

It’s like endless mostly ladies in hair nets, endless table of ladies cutting potatoes and carrots, and and, they’re all happy. They’re like, yeah. This is great. The kids are in school. I can make some extra money.

Maybe we’ll buy a new car. You know? They were all pretty happy. It was like they can sit there. They can chat.

They can cut the carrots and potatoes, and they’re making healthy baby food for the community. And so it was great. Today, I don’t think my granddaughter would wanted that job for a a, you know, million dollars. You know? She’s never known a time when it hasn’t been, you know, high screen high resolution touch screens in her hand or in her mother’s hand or, you know, in her house, and it’s like, why would we do this manually again?

Rylan Pyciak: Mhmm.

Shawn Tierney (Host): Why would I spend all day repetitively getting carpal tunnel tunnel syndrome or whatever? You know? You know? And and so that’s just where we are. I think most of us see most people most people who who are paying attention to what they’re doing, they wanna do it better.

They wanna improve. You know? It’s that continuous improvement, CAN ban, all that stuff that talks about, you know, let’s let’s keep making changes to make the process better. And, you know, you’re not always not every change is is for the positive. But, you know, I think this kinda this brings us full circle too because, you know, I there was a technologist recently who was saying, we can import a lot of engineers because we don’t have enough engineers.

And it’s like, I replied to him, like, we have tons of engineers. What you’re really seeing is the schools are not teaching what you want them to learn. Partner with the schools so like, my youngest son and all these other software engineers out there are not unemployed because the schools didn’t teach them what you wanted. You need a you need a thousand engineers. Go to the local go to the local school.

Tell them this is why I need your people to learn. Trust me. They’ll start teaching it. Because the last thing that, you know, a competent school wants to do or college or university is, you know, put people out there who can’t actually get a job. They they love being able to brag about people getting jobs.

They love to be able to brag about hey. I’m working with company Y, and, we send them a thousand engineers over the last four years. So we kinda come full circle. I think we all need to think about that. How can we encourage our local educational institutions?

Maybe it’s our kids where our kids are going. Maybe it’s where our grandkids are going. Maybe it’s where nieces and nephews or siblings are going. How can we get involved and help those local you know, everything from grade school through high school through through, junior college, technical, you know, community colleges, and so on. We we gotta help them understand what we’re doing and what’s valuable so they can stay away from, you know, maybe saying, hey.

The Raspberry PIs gonna take over the world, so that’s all you need to learn. No. Sorry. Yeah. No.

I hate to bring it to you, but there’s a reason why we have major vendors, and they’ve been in business for over a hundred years because they make the what the customers want. But, yeah, that kinda brings a full circle to what we were talking about at the beginning of the show.

Rylan Pyciak: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you know, It it definitely it it’s an entire ecosystem. Right? I think from from that perspective, right, from the large corporations that are manufacturing, it is having those conversations and saying, hey.

These are the kind of technicians, the controls engineers, the, you know, whatever roles you’re trying to fill. This is what we do day in and day out. And those individuals and corporations need to have conversations with, again, the the local vocational schools, the community colleges, the technical colleges, even, like I said, even high school and middle school and outline Yeah. This is what our career path looks like. This is what you know?

Right? This is what our process looks like. Honestly, you know, doing site tours, facility tours, understanding how things are made, looking at equipment and working with equipments where, hey. We may have, you know, humongous boilers or, you know, I grew up in Southern Ohio where steel at one point was was very large before it went overseas. You know, understanding what that looks like, how electric arc furnaces work and function, and actually working with local community colleges of, hey.

This is this is the kind of technical resources of what we need. Right? That’s low rates. It it’s electricians. It’s hands on labor, whatever that is.

And then, you know, aligning both what you’re trying to fill from a technical perspective with what is actually being taught in those vocational technical community colleges even back again to high schools where, you know, hey. Yeah. PLC programming is great. We actually utilize, like you said, we utilize Siemens or Allen Bradley. We don’t do Arduino for, you know, a a $100,000,000 production facility.

So I think a lot of it is honestly, it’s more community involvement. Quite honestly, it’s conversations like you and I are having, but on a on a bigger scale of understanding, hey. These are the skill gaps. This is where we’re currently at, and these are the roles we’re trying to fill. Because a lot of it, like you said, it’s it’s I feel like a lot of people in our industry more often than not, kind of stumble upon it or at least have some in.

But if it weren’t for that, people really wouldn’t know what manufacturing does. So I mean, I would definitely encourage that. Again, kind of back to the advisory boards that I’ve talked about, we have a lot of those conversations with the local community colleges of this is what we do. This is what’s good. Your training systems, this is awesome.

We don’t use any of this. And just having those those two way conversations and making sure you’re staying involved. I mean, end of the day, communication’s key, and I think that’s what we all need to do more of.

Shawn Tierney (Host): Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. Rylan, I really appreciate coming on the show. I’m just looking at my list of bullets of things I wanted to talk about.

Was there anything that you wanted to talk about that we hadn’t gotten through yet?

Rylan Pyciak: I don’t think so. I mean, I think we touched on a lot of great topics. You know, in general, Shawn, I’d say, you know, really, one of my passions is definitely bringing in younger generations’ education into this industry. You know, end of the day, we’re all engineers. I think by default, we like to collaborate and have conversations.

And, really, I’m just trying to encourage more of that, right, of of all of us being able to have open, honest conversations. I know you get onto the forums and you get onto Reddit and all these other, you know, areas of the Internet, and it’s great because there’s a lot of collaborative energy. And I and, honestly, I think it’s something we just need to do that more, be more supportive of other individuals, of others in the industry, and keep having these conversations. Right? Because the more collective minds we bring together, I think it’s gonna open up more doors, and it’s gonna allow us to have, you know, more exciting conversations like this.

Shawn Tierney (Host): Yep. Yeah. Absolutely. Well, Rylan, I really appreciate you coming on. Now if people wanna learn more about Cleveland Automation Systems, where would they go to find out more?

Rylan Pyciak: Yeah. Definitely. You can find us on our website since clevelandautomationsystems.com. I know it’s a mouthful. You could also look look up myself on LinkedIn, Rylan Pyshak, Cleveland Automation Systems as well as on LinkedIn.

But definitely feel free to reach out. I’m always open. I love having conversations like this. So definitely you can find us, like I said, website LinkedIn. Send me a direct message if you wanna talk about something.

I’ll definitely share my contact info, and, you know, we can connect any which way you want.

Shawn Tierney (Host): Yeah. And we’ll include all those links in the description so you guys, wherever you’re listening or watching, you’ll be able to have access to that so you don’t have to type it all in. But in any case, Ryland, thank you so much coming on. I really enjoyed our conversation today, and, just thanks again for coming on.

Rylan Pyciak: Definitely. And thank you for having me, Shawn. I definitely appreciate the opportunity.

Shawn Tierney (Host): I hope you enjoyed that episode. I wanna thank Rylan for coming on the show and talking about all things industrial automation. I really enjoyed our chat. I hope you did too. And I will put his link to his LinkedIn profile and to his company in the description.

I also wanna thank Cleveland Automation Systems for sponsoring this episode so we could bring it to you completely ad free. So if you’re talking to Ryland or anybody over there, please, tell them thank you for us. And, with that said, I just wanna wish you all good health and happiness. And until next time, my friends, peace.

The Automation Podcast, Episode 238 Show Notes:

Special thanks to Rylan for coming on the show, and to Cleveland Automation Systems for sponsoring this episode so we could release this episode Ad Free! Below you’ll find links to Rylan’s LinkedIn profile, and to Cleveland Automation Systems:

• Rylan Pyciak’s LinkedIn

• Cleveland Automation Systems

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.

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Shawn Tierney

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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