The Automate Journey and End User Implementation Roadmap

Welcome to the Industry 4.0 Club's fireside chat. The club's purpose is to engage the power of diverse worldwide talent to accelerate the global evolution to Industry 4.0. We accomplish this by hosting and supporting respectful, thoughtful, and interdisciplinary open conversations and creating quality content on wide-ranging Industry 4.0 topics to, to expand the reach of our community. My name is Mike Ungar, and I am the CEO of the Industry 4.0 Club. I have over 40 years of leadership and, and management experience, most of that in manufacturing at Michelin. I'm joined today by my co-host Tim Stewart. Tim is the co-founder of the Industry 4.0 Club, and I think the president and founder of Visual Decisions. Tim, would you mind introducing yourself further, please?

Sure. Tim Stewart, Visual Decisions, as Mike said. I do a lot of work with manufacturers across different industries, primarily discrete manufacturing. I work with national organizations like SESME around strategic roadmaps or smart manufacturing roadmaps, as well as digital lean and a variety of other initiatives. Let's see. Today we have the pleasure of speaking with Craig Savellagio, President and COO of Applied Manufacturing Technologies. Craig will be presenting at MD&M West in Anaheim, California on February 4th, 2026. The title of his presentation is The Automate Journey and End User Implementation Roadmap. Craig is a dynamic leader and the driving force behind the success of AMT. Starting at AMT as a robotic software engineer in 2003. Craig has worked his way up through the ranks to become Vice President of Engineering, Vice President of Operations, Chief Operating Officer, and finally President as of May 2023. In his current role, Craig oversees all aspects of operations including sales, engineering, and talent management. His extensive technical expertise in automation and robotics combined with his exceptional leadership abilities has propelled him into his current role. Craig possesses a deep understanding of the company's operations and clients. Welcome, Craig.

Thank you, Mike.

Thank you, Tim. So before we get rolling, and just for those listening in on, on LinkedIn, if you have a question for Craig or a comment you'd like to add, please put it into the comment box and we'll make an effort to get that to Craig. so that he can address it during our conversation today. So, Craig, you know, before we get started on talking more about your presentation and your expertise, it's really rare for someone to spend 20 years with one company, and you've done that at Applied Manufacturing Technologies, AMT. What motivated you to stay with one company for so long, and what advice do you have for young engineers who maybe are starting out on their career?

Yeah, no, glad to be here, guys, and presenting on the topic of automation and how folks get from a starting point to their end goal. You know, when you look at organizations and where you're at and where you spend your time, you know, it's almost like a second family. So it's important that first off there's a good cultural match. And here and where I've been, you know, it starts with the purpose of the company, the core values. And, you know, I had the pleasure of being mentored by our original founder, Mike Jacobs. And, you know, he created this entrepreneurial environment for a lot of us to propel within the organization, for anybody that had a passion for automation or manufacturing. So for the last 25 years, I've been able to do that with both our customers and the employees and the types of individuals that we hire. So, you know, we feel— I feel personally about tenure in an organization. Again, it's, it's the people you surround yourself with just as much as your family, and you want to be able to look at, you know, you know, where you spend your time around high-performing individuals as well. We've built that culture here. I also like to see consistency in leadership and the decision-making tactics around the organization as far as strategic planning, quarterly planning, and how business decisions are made. So as you look at, you know, someone, uh, just entering their career and what they're looking for in an organization, those are some strong points. Also, you know, they got to play with robots and high-level vision systems at a young age, and who doesn't like to play around with that type of technology in factories? You know, when I got started, it was, you know, lots of code being written, drivers that didn't exist, you know, guidance of 6-axis articulating arms, and a lot of that stuff now is, you know, modules and more little, say, interfaced at a product level than what it was in the past. But that taught you how to write software, that taught you how, you know, manufacturing worked. And, you know, you're looking back at all that, you know, how, you know, automation matures through an industry is what allows folks to put that into their factories. But, you know, for me, it was about getting involved. I got early adopter of A3, which is the Association for Advancing Automation, used to be called RIA. And, you know, that allowed industry leaders to, with like-minded conversations, to interact. And then also staying close with, you know, your college professors as well. I still talk to many of mine. That helps with, you know, new talent coming in the industry, staying abreast of what academia is looking at and how far ahead of the curve they are or behind. and how to keep them, you know, in the right direction. So when the talent enters your organization, you know, they can be at the phase in their lifecycle that makes sense for you. So, you know, you look at all that, great, back to culture.

It's interesting, you talk about the staying at one place and the culture, how important that is, you know, I, it's, it's really important when you're interviewing, I think, as well. to ask culture questions. You're going to be— a lot of times when you go to visit a company and you get that 5 or 10 minutes to say, well, what questions do you have for us? When you ask culture questions, it's also very helpful for the company to know that's what you're interested in as well. I think that's a wonderful suggestion about really your reflection on the culture. Digging into your presentation a little bit, what are some of the common mistakes that you see manufacturers are making today when bringing automation into their factories?

Yeah, I've had the opportunity to see quite a few different manufacturing facilities throughout all different industries. So from automotive to warehousing to food and packaging with a variety of different technology levels. Early on in the career, we started doing a lot of automotive work with heavy standards. So there was a lot of definition on safety, how things are programmed, components. But as you get into the general industry space, there's a little more inconsistency. There's a lot more first-time robot users and adopters. And, you know, throughout the years, we were brought in a lot of times where we started an automation project, it didn't go as planned. The scope wasn't defined, it wasn't well managed, the automation might have been turned off, and you come in and you try and pick up the pieces and learn from those failed results. And, you know, what that led us to over the years is kind of defining on how you start, you know, where do you get started. A lot of times what happens is manufacturing organization has some level of a challenge, could be labor-related, could be safety, could be throughput, and they want to go after the biggest, the brightest end-to-end solution and automate everything. And a lot of times that is a great starting point if you have the team to do it, if you've defined, you know, how you're going to get there, if you've understood what your ROI is versus starting small. So we always tell people and team members, you know, first off, understanding, you know, what is that goal that you're beginning with? You know, is it focused on cost reduction? Is it throughput gains? Is it labor relief due to adjustment? Is it safety incidents? Is it quality? You know, so if you can define those goals up front, that's the starting point. And then, you know, do you have your stakeholder team involved? And to what degree are they all on the same page? Whether it's executive leadership down that says automation is the right thing for our organization or not, depending on, you know, what they do. But do you have that sponsorship buy-in? And then internally, you know, a lot of times most manufacturing teams have like one automation engineer, one controls engineer, and they have to rely on partners. So it's understanding how much you want to staff up to maintain your own equipment or use external resources. So building that team, it could be a combination of upskilling your current workforce, sending them to training, you know, getting folks involved, or it could be a a pivotal approach and use a partner strategy. So almost every robot OEM or, you know, controls OEM has an integrator network that you could use to deploy full turnkey solutions. So, you know, you got to look at comparing all those offerings and just evaluating what's right for you. But I think as an end goal, you know, a lot of times with traditional automation, folks tend to start with with a larger piece and then maybe versus starting small. So, so for example, you know, if you're going to automate, you know, entire line or process or application versus, uh, you know, an end-of-line palletizing solution that is just material handling and they have some pre-engineered solutions, maybe that's an easier start for the organization. I saw that a little bit just recently with the larger deployment of autonomous mobile robots where Where some folks wanted to deploy units in the 50 to 100 range, and we'd always say, why don't you start with 1 or 2, get to know the technology, the equipment, cultural adoption. You'll know what kind of fleet size you need, and, you know, you might have a clearer path to the end goal. So it's really kind of— it depends on your organization. We always like people to kind of start with some of those basics first.

It's interesting, you talked about kind of beginning with the end in mind, and I noticed the word roadmap is in your title and so forth for your speech. I'm a big fan of working backwards from what are the goals of the organization, right? So you talked about, you know, increasing throughput, reducing cost, quality, etc., and Which of those you're really going after helps determine what is the form of automation you want to put in place and so forth. The other thing that I picked up on that you talked about is how do you create that alignment within the organization to get the adoption and use of those technologies that you're putting in place so that something doesn't end up in the corner of the shop kind of unused? Could you expand on those thoughts a little bit?

Yeah, you know, I always, always say, you know, what is that end goal and how do you measure it? A lot of times people, you know, are excited about maybe like the product of the technology. So they got introduced to a specific technology at a show, and then that technology is driving the ultimate solution where it needs to start with, you know, what's the process and what are the goals first. That happens a lot of time on technology maturity where you go and you see something, you say, wow, That looks really well at a trade show or in the lab. And that happened a lot with the picking technology for warehousing. If you looked at 3 years ago, a lot of startups doing mixed load, PAL, DPAL, a little bit of consolidation both in the technology of the sensor and the industry. And now it's a little more adopted to be able to put those into your warehousing application. Again, you go back to a show 3, 4 years ago, we look at robots doing truck unload, which is a very intense labor case. And now there's 3 or 4 technologies that, that do that type of thing. So a lot of times people chase the, the latest technology to put in their factory, and sometimes it may work really well in the lab, but it's not ready for, you know, full industrial use at the reliability rates that some folks are used to. So we always say from that perspective, you know, do those lab trials, do those proofs of concept, But at the end of the day, it's selecting the right application, ensuring the right technology meets that application, and that the technology is not driving it backwards. And then the use of your partners and vendors to get it done and rely on them. There's integrators that do certain things. They do welding or painting because they've been doing it for 20, 30 years. There's also the size of the integrator as well to the end user. If it's a small integrator and they're taking on too large of a project, you know, they're going to have resource issues. Vice versa, they're a really large integrator and the project's too small, you might not get the attention needed for the size of the application. So there's a lot of matching going on in that, but that's overall kind of what I would say from that perspective.

Okay, so one of the things I think you've touched on a couple of these things have been Key principles for success. I think I heard you mention having a clear goal, having the stakeholders involved, and then deciding a little bit about where, where are your resources going to come from for the project itself. Are there other key principles for success that you would like to highlight?

Yeah, I think, you know, a lot of times, you know, sometimes people are afraid to share information. And so there's a lot that can be gained by meeting with other manufacturers that maybe are in a different industry to see what were their success factors or failures from that perspective. So sharing of information that can be done through associations and trade shows like MDMM West. It could be through the network such as the robot companies themselves or the technology suppliers. I think before in the years past, it used to be you're protecting all that intellectual property, That process. And you'd be surprised now how much people are willing to share. Here's what led to the success of our factory, whether it was people adoption, whether it was training, whether it was the timeline to implement. You know, a lot of times people try and race things through, and sometimes that could lead to, you know, cutting corners in the project. We all know that safety drives some additional component costs, but Also, when you look at safety, it has to be designed, you know, to the relevant industry standards such as ISO 10218 or R1506 for traditional robots, R1508 for autonomous mobility. But then you can't overdesign it as well, so that way operators and maintenance folks can't use the equipment or maintain it or do cleaning on it or preventative maintenance. So it's a balance of all those things when you're trying to look at the, the, you know, You know, the elements of, you know, what is the ROI, you know, what are we trying to achieve. At the end of the day, it all goes back to those business objectives.

How do you balance, uh, when you're looking at a lot of these projects, um, solving individual problems, you know, someone's got a machine that's on fire and they need to address that, uh, versus taking that step back and thinking through what is the kind of overall architecture that I'm trying to put in place so that you don't make overly large investments in solving this problem without fitting it into that bigger picture.

Yeah, you know, it's something I thought was maybe 20 years ago, but it still happens today where, you know, sometimes, you know, it's just communication within the organization where, you know, an end user will go out to 3 different integrators and then not have a specification. Whether it's components, software, safety, technology, and then they'll get 2 different machines. That's one element. A lot of times it's one person responsible for one area that says, I just need to solve this. I brought a technology company in. They told me I need this type of robot or AMR, and they're headed down a path, but they haven't studied the process. They haven't looked at those goals. They haven't looked at the data to say, you know what? Actually, if we moved upstream, there's a different bottleneck in the facility. Or if we looked at this, this might inherently fix the quality problem that we're trying to put automation in downstream that didn't exist. So it's starting with that, you know, start to finish, you know, look at it from a holistic perspective, take a step back. You know, a lot of people have very narrow approaches when they look at things, and it gives you a different perspective. So You know, that could be done through an internal process or bringing in some partners to consult just to show you, you know, where to start versus letting the technology drive where things are going.

You mentioned earlier you're talking about autonomous robots. Can you talk a bit more about— because that's kind of an emerging technology. Can you talk a bit about that as well? What's happening there?

Yeah, so, you know, that space has been quite emerging. If you look at the last 3 years, the technology was there, but people weren't ready to put it into their factories yet from the reliability perspective. In the last 2 years, there's been almost a different adoption specifically for material movement to line side or to the warehouse because of the significant amount of safety related incidences that are due to forklift traffic. It's a big number. Those statistics are out there. But now you have these autonomous mobile robots. They call them AMRs. In the safety world, they call them IMRs, so industrial mobile robot, so that it could be related to an auto-guided vehicle versus an autonomous vehicle. There is now a 3-part safety standard related to You know, the deployment of the technology. So it's R1508. Part 1 is to the OEM, Part 2 is to the integrator, Part 3 is to the end user. And it has the industry vocabulary as far as how to deploy, how to map, how to zone, how to look at object detection, obstacle avoidance. And when you look at that space, it's completely different than traditional and fixed automation. If we were looking at hard and fixed robots, conveyors, traditional fencing, we walk into a facility, you look at what space you have, and typically you have some boundaries around it where parts enter into the system. There's typically building columns, overhead obstructions, and you say, how do I fit this solution into this box? With autonomy, these vehicles actually roam free. So now it's quite different. The 4 trucks interact with the technology. The people interact with the technology. Obstacles that you didn't think mattered, such as a gap on a doorway or interaction with a clear panel door, makes a difference. Or if you entered the manufacturing facility to the warehouse and there's a temperature change, well, now you have LiDAR and vision systems that can create condensation. AMRs, that type of technology doesn't like high-level gradients or, you know, rough floor or moisture. So it's just completely different. But you're seeing in this past 12 months quite a bit of a larger adoption to the technology, the reliability of it, and the maturity of it.

Thank you for that. One of the areas that I know in your presentation you're going to be speaking about Yeah, you mentioned is, is developing the workforce of the future. So how, how does, um, the workforce of the future— what do they need to know to be able to really interact with and work with the technology of the future? What does that look like from your perspective?

Yeah, so it's a little different now than it was maybe 20 years ago. Um, you know, one of our partners is, is Fanuc America, Fanuc Robotics, and, and they're a big advocate at the education level to get robots all the way down into the high school level. And they've had an education program related to that. You've seen them not just in university labs now, but at community colleges and all the way down into, you know, the high school and academia level. And that's helped quite a bit. So you're starting to develop those skills earlier now in your, your career life cycle. But a lot of times it starts with, with your factory. You know, if you're a factory line worker and you're doing material manipulation all day and you're, you know, the plant manager comes to you and says, we're going to adopt some automation, but we're going to give you some additional skills. You're going to learn how to program a robot, a vision system, a PLC. You're going to look at electrical drawings. We're going to show you how to do pneumatics. We're going to teach you safety standards. Who wouldn't be fulfilled with upskilling their career and learning those types of things? And going home to their family and said, instead of moving boxes around all day, I actually, you know, got to program a robot, and I'm going to show, you know, the kids how to do that and, you know, show others. So a lot of times it depends on how you approach it. If you approach it as we're going to put automation to replace your job, you're going to get a totally different level of adoption or not adoption than if you say, hey, we're going to increase your skill set. Whoever wants to do that, you know, Here's the tools we're going to give you to do that.

Interesting. I know that I've had a hard time convincing my kids to go into manufacturing, and maybe I just didn't have cool enough toys for them to play with at home. In terms of what they should be looking at and how to prepare themselves to go into there and learn some of those different things. Is there advice that you would give high school kids, college kids, and so forth that are looking for a possible career in manufacturing and so forth? What are the things other than, you know, the obvious ones like engineering college and so forth, what are the skill sets that they should be preparing themselves for?

Yeah, there's, there's so much more tools out there now than there was when I was doing it. There's a lot of coding tools and software development development tools that can be used. It still comes back to understanding, you know, basic electronics, basic mechanics, pneumatics, those types of things, motion articulation. In today's world, you know, LiDAR or SLAM-based, you know, navigation systems. Some of this stuff is used on drones and other toy technology that you can get them engaged at an early age. But, you know, instead of thinking about it as going to work in a factory, you're going to go there to create the factory of the future is a much more appealing environment for those up and coming in their career path.

It's a good framing.

Yeah, that's really neat. Well, we've been— just for those that are on LinkedIn, we've been talking to Craig Savalaggio for the last 20 minutes or so. And, you know, we're reaching the end of this conversation. But if you do have a question for Craig, Please feel free to put it in the comment box and we'll make sure we get it, get it to him before we wrap up today's presentation. Craig, as we just, you know, folks that are planning to come and hear your presentation at ND&M West, what do you hope that they'll get from that, from what you plan to share with them?

Yeah, we're hoping to use some, some live examples and some case studies of real life Scenarios that we've been through that help put some of these use cases into better perspective. But a lot of times it's you know those key factors on deciding, designing, integrating automation. You know what does it look like? Is it a simple power and force limiting single cobot solution versus full turnkey? You know how do you balance some of those technical versus business objectives? You know again there's a lot of ways to look at ROI. Some people look at it as you know, cost savings through labor. It could be cost of lost production. It could be the increased throughput that you're getting. It could be those safety-related injuries that you want people to go home from your factory safe to their families. It could be the quality justification. So there's a lot in that. You want to look at, you know, how you build the workforce of the future through the technology adoption. And then, you know, there's a lot out there. So, you know, You know, go to those trade shows and look at the different robot technology that's there, the different autonomous mobility, the different grasping units, the vision systems, and start to understand, you know, what's out there. But we'll use some real case studies of people that did really small stuff that went well, some stuff that went not so well, and then some big stuff that, you know, was game-changing for their industry and their production facility.

So Excellent.

Well, as we wrap up, maybe start with Tim and then with Craig. Do you guys have any final thoughts for the audience today that you'd like to share?

Tim? Craig, fantastic thoughts that you've given us today. I really like some of the framing that you've provided, both for people thinking about coming into the field, but also just You know, as you're thinking about how to utilize some of this technology within your own company, you know, thinking through what is, you know, the type of value that you're going to create, whether that's additional throughput or anything else, and kind of working backwards from there through how you're gonna get the support of the people, how does this become a win for them and so forth, and some of the framing that you gave us around that. I think all of it's been excellent.

Thanks, Tim. Craig, your final thoughts for our audience?

Yeah, thank you, Tim. Yeah, thank you, Mike. Automation's a journey. It's not a sprint. You know, in late 2020, we had to sprint just to, you know, get manufacturing organizations, you know, back on board. There's a lot of discussion whether or not those types of numbers would last. There's no doubt automation isn't a part of the success in profitability and, you know, manufacturing, uh, in this country. And, um, you know, you're looking at— you gotta look at your factory and, you know, figure out what makes sense. So get out, share stories, see people, ask questions. There's a big network up there that wants to help. It's not looking to sell you anything. They're just looking to guide you and give you some, some basic tools on how to get there. So I appreciate the time today, guys.

Excellent, thank you. So we'd like to thank Craig for, for taking time to join us. We really appreciate it. Maybe a lot going on. To give us a preview of his presentation at MDNN West, which will be happening on February 4th at the Anaheim Convention Center in California. We hope you're going to decide to join us, Craig and the Industry 4.0 Club. And if you haven't already, we'd love to encourage you to go register. Here's the web address. for the event. If you go there, you'll see the agenda, and please register and take time to be part of this great event. The Industry 4.0 Club would like to encourage you also to take action to advance the deployment of Industry 4.0. Read an article, attend a workshop, or maybe even develop a smart manufacturing roadmap for your plant or company, or challenge the team you're with to do the same. We'd like to know what actions you're taking, so please drop us a note on our website at www.industry40club.com or on our LinkedIn page. In addition, we host conversations like this routinely, and if you're interested in being a guest on one of our future broadcasts, please drop us a note on our website or our LinkedIn page. We'd love to hear from you. With that, Tim, thank you. Craig, thanks again.

Thank you.

And we'll see you guys in California. Okay.

Sounds good.

Thank you.