Michael UngarCEO of the Industry 4.0 Club

A Day in the Life of a Systems Integrator

7 Mar 2025 · 2 min

Watch on YouTube

1:37

In this first‑person monologue, a systems integrator explains how the role has evolved since the COVID‑19 pandemic. Before the pandemic, most of the work was performed on‑site in factories, with frequent field visits for start‑ups and installations. Post‑COVID, the job has shifted toward a hybrid model that blends remote design work with occasional on‑site presence for critical start‑up activities. The integrator details the core responsibilities: designing control panels for processes or machines, producing detailed engineering drawings, creating precise bills of material (BOM), specifying exact components (e.g., terminal blocks, Panduit products) to meet panel‑shop standards, and coordinating procurement. They emphasize the need for “panel‑shop grade” documentation that leaves no ambiguity for fabricators. In addition to design, the integrator performs programming and both on‑site and remote troubleshooting, highlighting the growing reliance on remote diagnostics. The speaker also critiques lax customer specifications that merely list “as required” parts, underscoring the importance of detailed, count‑based specifications for reliable builds.

Chapters

Before COVID a systems integrator's job was more in the, in the factory. That, that's not to say that we didn't have, you know, our offices. Like, I do a lot of work from home, but there was a, I think there was a lot more being in the field than there is now. Now we're still absolutely needed. Like, when we start things up, we're, we have to be there. Although we are starting to get into like some of these hybrid situations where we can have part of us remote. And some of us there, like, they're— we're doing things now to kind of make it so that you can do like a hybrid remote startup. But yeah, I spend— I either— I'm either spending time doing the design work itself so that it can get built. Either that's designing a control panel for a process or a machine. That includes doing the drawings for it, creating a bill of material, and then giving that to somebody to go buy all of the parts and then help Whoever's building that, get get their parts and also get their drawing. I need to draw it specific enough for a panel builder to build completely off of that. I don't. I can't just build drawings that are just like they'll take care of it in the panel shop because I need to get it to the panel shop grade. There was a lot of times I would see customers put like as required instead of actually counting how many terminal blocks that you need. That kind of stuff, or like the Panduit. No, no, no point in measuring it. They're just like, buy a couple sticks of that and throw it in there. And that's not a full bomb bomb. So I go, I go into the details of that, but I do programming, but then I also do like troubleshooting and, or remote troubleshooting.