In this live, on‑site stream from the Automate conference in Detroit, a group of community members from the Industry 4.0 Club, Automation Ladies, Manufacturing Happy Hour, and related organizations introduce themselves and share their highlights from day three of the show. Grace Donovan opens with a round‑robin of speakers – Nikki Gonzalez (Automation Ladies & Copine), Tim Wolborn (TW Controls), Jason Bean (Industry 4.0 Club), Mary Bruce (TW Controls) and others – each describing their role, the startups they represent, and what impressed them at the event. Key themes include the Startup Alley and Cowen Startup Challenge (Copine’s AI‑driven supply‑chain marketplace), the surge of partnership‑driven solutions (e.g., Universal Robots collaborating with multiple partners, OLISS Robotics with Blue Collar Automation), creative robotic demos such as beer‑pouring robots and an automated candy dispenser, and discussions about the evolving workforce and new job opportunities. The participants emphasize the value of in‑person networking after a period of virtual interaction, culminating in an impromptu “manufacturing happy hour” sponsored by Ollie's and Blue Collar Automation. The overall tone is informal, enthusiastic, and community‑focused, encouraging viewers to attend future Automate events.
Chapters
Come here, get over here.
Hey everyone, this is Grace Donovan. We're here live from the Automate conference in Detroit. There's a whole group of us from the online community, from Industry 4.0 Club, Automation Ladies, Manufacturing Happy Hour. We're all here, we're all meeting for the first time, so it's very exciting. I'm a co-founder of the Industry 4.0 Club. I also work for Andonics, which is a startup in Detroit developing connected worker technology for the We're gonna go around and do a round robin so that you can meet everyone who's here and we'll hear about Automate. So I'm passing the phone to Nikki Gonzalez.
Hey guys, I'm Nikki Gonzalez, one half of Automation Ladies. Unfortunately, Allie had to go home 'cause she's got work to do and customers to serve, but we've been going live the last couple days, which has been awesome. A3 is such a cool association with their live stuff. Thanks, Grace, for doing this as well. So I'm here in 2 capacities with Automation Ladies. We've been hosting the conference, doing some lives, trying to encourage more women to showcase what they're doing here. And, you know, we've seen some people bring their kids, their daughters, which is awesome. I'm also here with Copine. So I work for a startup, we're called Copine. We're a marketplace for industrial automation parts. We're both creating a marketplace and workflow automation to make it easier for buyers to find parts and for distributors to stock them to sell them.
Awesome.
And we were part of a startup competition yesterday. They had the Cowen Startup Challenge. There are 10 different startups here that all have booths in what's called Startup Alley. My booth is number 4456. I would definitely encourage you, if you're here at the show and see this, to come check out all the startups. If you're not here, you'll probably find a recap post from me with links to all of them and what they're doing. We didn't win, but that's okay. You know, there's only one winner out of 10. I hear that the judges still liked me, so we'll see how that goes. But I— it's a great privilege to get to be one of the top 10 most innovative startups here at the Automate Show. I'm also stoked to be back in Detroit because I used to work for a Troy-based startup called Algo.
Oh, okay.
Doing AI for supply chain analytics. And at this very moment, dealing with automation parts and our supply chain challenges, I'm actually super grateful for my background in supply chain and AI. Also, Will Healy was here, but he had to leave. Otherwise, that's our other supply chain person. So maybe we'll follow up and do some sort of supply chain live at some point. But yeah, let me pass it to Tim Wolborn. I think you guys know him already.
There you go.
Hi, I'm Tim with TW Controls, and I am here for 2 reasons. One is to meet all the great people in our community that, I mean, it's just so awesome to finally put a real face with our profile pics. Also, we are looking at building some new equipment, some new trainers, and so we're looking for some new ideas. And my goodness, can you find them here if you are trying to learn about the up-and-coming things and all that. I mean, I never knew there were so many robot manufacturers out there. But yeah, it is awesome. It's been great to meet everybody. And really, I— we're on day 3, and I just feel like I need another week here to really let it all sink in.
Hi, I'm Jason Bean, co-founder with the Industry 4 Club. Dave Jobe works for PNF as the Industry 4 market specialist. We have a booth here, been here all week, been talking to customers and other people about how to actually leverage Industry 4.0, where they need to go. I've been using the day to meet up with the other people within the community, meeting with people from the 4.0 Solutions, the Industry 4.0 Club, Automation Ladies, Tim, Jake, and with Chris Luthi as well. If you're still sitting on the fence about getting back out into the trade shows, I highly encourage you to get back out. It's a great way to connect connect and just see what's coming up in the industry.
Hey, Mary Bruce here with TW Controls. So excited to be at my first Automate conference. I've met a lot of good friends and I'm actually very encouraged by the amount of— I hate to take it to the gender scenario, but how many females I've been able to meet here, especially females that are coming from totally different, totally different industries and are absolutely new to this just like me, which is fantastic. I've enjoyed, I enjoyed Nikki presenting yesterday. That was fantastic. And it's been great to make some new friends here. I strongly encourage you to check it out next year.
All right, thanks, Mary. So I am just coming in here. I arrived maybe an hour ago. I came in from Pittsburgh from the Smart Manufacturing Experience. So I'm kind of on the conference tour this week, so I'm still kind of taking it in. But I want to ask every one of you, What your highlight has been now that we're on day 3 of 4. So Nikki, we'll start with you. Hot potato.
Okay, so to be honest, what I've heard— because I haven't been to Automate before, I think Automate happened 2 years ago or 3 years ago was the last conference, they had to take a little bit of a break— um, asking some people like Aaron Prather and people that I know have attended before, in terms of technology, there isn't that much that is groundbreaking, you've never seen before. You know, our industry, we're continually innovating. There's a lot of cool new stuff. But the thing that has really impressed me about this show is the level of partnerships. You talk about like Universal Robots, they've got their own booth and then they are in probably 10 plus more booths with their partners. You look at this booth behind us, OLISS Robotics, or OLISS Connect they're called, and you've got them and Blue Collar Automation hanging out together as partners because it's systems integrator and the software company that works with them. There are so many booths here and companies that are partners in one way or another, and that's something that we love at Copium. We've got 2 of our partners with us. Ali G from Process Controls and Process and Controls Engineering was at our booth the last 2 days. Carlos Colon with Vanguard Vision has been at our booth as well. Anybody that wants to partner with us and come join our booth next year, you're welcome. We've also been having some great beer poured by robots from Oly's and Blue Collar Automation. So that's honestly, to me, has been the biggest innovation and change from before conferences. It's not just a dry, you know, here's my product and bullet points of what's new or what's best. It's how do we all work together to help our customers move forward. And some of that is brand new technological innovation, but a lot of that is how do we come together and create solutions with all these innovations where we're partnering up and adding more value to our customers by doing that together. So that's been my favorite thing about the whole show.
I'll jump in here really quick, but I think one thing that you mentioned, Niki, that's really important and something that we at like the Industry 4.0 Club like really, really prize, and it's something that we like want to promote is that level of collaboration to foster that adoption. They're like, by collaborating, we're going to be pushing forward Industry 4.0 with a speed that we haven't seen in the last couple years. So it's, you know, absolutely on point that you mentioned that and something we're really excited to see.
Well, this is my first year at Automate, so probably my big— I'll just go for my favorite exhibit was definitely PhD. They have an automated candy dispenser. And really, you press, you select your Reese's or your M&M's or whatever, and a robot goes over with a linear conveyor, picks up the piece, runs it back around, does some inspection on it and everything. You talked about collaboration. I mean, this, this is an old relationship for me. Uh, it comes from a friend of mine, Chris Elston, who, if y'all don't know, was the OG of MrPLC. And really, we've been friends all this time. Over the years, even though we're kind of semi-competitors at times, I mean, we've always worked together and that's always helped our industry move forward much faster.
We really need a selfie stick.
So for, for me, the highlight really has been, um, you know, all these last 2 years a lot of the relationships have been very virtual, so it's really nice to get out and actually meet a lot of these people in Walk the show with them, help them, you know, find additional solutions that'll help them get where they need to go, and, you know, really connect with the rest of the people within the community. Um, you know, I— it's been a busy, like, 3 days for me. I don't think I've gotten off my feet really in the entire time of the show because I've just been constantly around and, uh, talking with the customers. Talking with different customers, talking with different collaborators, and just other content creators that have been here.
Uh, favorite part of this show so far has definitely been seeing the applicable processes that I hadn't really had a concept on how they would be integrated into other systems. Another part has been interesting is trying to find out what is Something that will grab someone to actually look at your product without it actually having to do with manufacturing at all. So using robots creatively has been fantastic on how educators might implore kids to be related to that rather than just moving one part from another place to another place. Seeing how people are using 3D printers and beyond has been great. But networking above all else has been the best opportunity here.
So.
I'll pass it back to Grace. We're going in a circle, so there we go.
All right. I think my highlight too is also just seeing a lot of the conversation around the workforce that's also involved. We see a lot of robots here that are fully automating a lot of processes, but we know there's still a lot of people behind the scenes. And seeing a lot of conversations and thought leaders here that are really connecting the dots about the role of people still on the factory floor and how that's going to be evolving. And what are the new cool jobs that are coming out of this? And, you know, really operating like really awesome robots. Honestly, there's so many. It's you can really geek out here. So that's really fun. But we'll go ahead and sign off. We want to give a big cheers. So we're having our own impromptu manufacturing. Happy hour. Cheers! Sponsored by Ollie's and Blue Collar Automation.
Cheers!
All right, thanks everyone. Enjoy your day and come to Automate next year.
