Q: Please share your philosophy on new product development for the automation sector. 

Anthony Leo: I think the key thing for new product development is first you have to figure out, is it something that's a new product in a completely different market that maybe doesn't look like your current portfolio products, or is it a special or a variation of something you currently produce?

Our company’s products are known as the hands and feet of robots. If we're going to make a 10-kilogram gripper into a 12-kilogram one, that's more of a special. It's evolving from our current product portfolio and engineering expertise.

If we want to go into a completely different market and make a product we've never done before, that'd be more of a brand-new product. If it's something that you're currently capable of, like a new version of a gripper, I look at that more as a sprint.

It's something we can go through quickly in the development phase. Our engineers already have the general know-how of how things work. That's a much quicker process. But for something that's a new product development from the ground up, I want to take a more conservative approach.

We want to ensure the design meets customer and market expectations. So it's not something we're designing in a vacuum, where when we release it to the market, they can't use it. Instead, we want to involve customers throughout that part of the process. And then, second, you're going to go through more iterations, potentially in-house, before we release.

It may take a little longer, but when you're entering a new market, and your brand isn't known for this type of product, you only have one opportunity to get it right. 

Q: Walk me through the process of transforming a napkin sketch into a usable product. What are some of the methodologies you use in product development in the automation arena to ensure you're creating something that customers want and need?

Anthony Leo: One way I did this at a previous company was that we had a large billion-dollar, worldwide company with an incubator that I helped run for new product and idea development. When I came in to manage that process, we had a conceptualized idea. Still, when I came in, I said, "Hey, let's pump the brakes, go out and find customers who we think fit the market we're trying to sell into with this product and the problem we think we can solve." Let's get real information from customers who will hopefully want to use it.

Something people skip quickly: like, "oh, this is such a great idea, let's just make it." And then again, you're missing out on what the customer might say. Oh, that's great, but my facility has this system or this protocol, and now we can't use your product. So, I spent a couple of months doing cold outreach.

Just cold phone calls, cold emails, and reaching out to customers who made sense for what we're trying to do. And eventually, I got about three or four, which I molded into a customer development board. And so based on what I told them, my pitch to them was I don't have a product that exists yet.

It's a very soft pitch, and at the back end, I want to give you free engineering resources to solve a problem you can't solve in your facility. Here's our thesis. Please help us mold that thesis into an actual product. We had three really engaged.

One that was less engaged. But we talked to them every month. We discussed the developments and where we're continuing to evolve. And then in about six to seven months, we had a good design for the product.

We went through a few more months of internal development testing. We went to the customer's facility. We were looking at a lot of food-type applications. For example, a HelloFresh-type service that orders meal kits. But, beyond just the meal side, there are others. For example, there's one called Pup Joy that was doing monthly boxes for dogs.

When I walked into the facility, there were foldable tables with boxes on them, and they were being hand-filled. It's tough to automate. We walk through the facility, where we end up landing, and are looking at ice packs. They freeze in a very different topography.

Every single one. If you grab them, a layer of water will melt. It's tough to manage. Instead of going right after the food applications, which are extremely difficult because they require a different level of sanitation, we went after the ice pack, which still solves the very heart of the problem for that entire industry, but it made the automation side simpler.

So even in our initial application in development, once we got on the customer's side, we went in a completely different direction, but it was the same product. Will the customer get enough ROI from this to justify installing? That was the approach we took, with more of a customer development board, to end up with a product that the customer essentially signs on to. You're going to solve a problem they haven't been able to solve.

Bring things to the customer earlier. They can help you avoid the landmines you might not think of until it's too late, and you've already spent all the time and money developing.

Q: Tell us about StackTrax. What went into the process of creating it? Why was it developed?  

Anthony Leo: StackTrax is a new, multi-axis, seventh axis. Something you put a robot on that allows it to move back and forth across a floor. Instead of an overhead gantry system, which is expensive and requires a lot of space in the facility to install, it's a bit more complex to maintain or program.

StackTrax allows people to have a much smaller footprint while still providing multi-axis extra reach for the robot. The idea and concept, again, were to involve customer feedback: they were looking for a more cost-effective solution than a gantry, something that could fit on their floor and still give the robot extra reach.

They have about six or seven machines, and instead of having a robot at each machine and trying to figure out how to hand off a product between each one, the time it takes for the machines to do their process, it makes much more sense from a cost-effective standpoint to have one robot on the rail, but they needed extra reach.

This gives us another rail on top of the bottom rail. The evolution of the product was: could we make this a new design, special, or a variation of the previous product? And we created it out of standard modular components.

We have developed this into an off-the-shelf custom brand. But the idea is basically that people can take this multi-axis system, and it's not just a standalone product. We can handle different sizes and robot payloads with the same style system.

It allowed us to create a new product much more quickly that meets the needs of a customer. And then two, it builds on the modularity of the products we already have, so we can get this custom multi-axis system out to the market quickly. It's not a custom process from a lead-time perspective either. It's a win-win. But it was designed for machine-tending applications.

Q: Several other companies make seventh-axis technology. What does IPR contribute or offer that other companies don't? How do you think your philosophy is different?

Anthony Leo: One of the big things is the customization of what we can do. We have everything from small robots to the largest robots on the market. We can build rail transfer units for the Kuka Titan and Fanuc 2000—those are the biggest robots in the market. We're able to handle rails for those types of robots. It gives us a wide range of things we can do. But if a customer wants a 2.75-meter rail, we'll cut it to the exact specs they want. That's something different IPR does because of how we've designed the product. It's a very easy way for us to customize based on the modularity of the system. That's a big difference. We also have aluminum and steel profiles. The steel is good for the bigger, heavier stuff.

The aluminum allows us to have a smaller, skinnier profile for the smaller robot. It does reduce the footprint to install a rail for our type of product. A big differentiator is our lead times. We're the lead-time leader in the market right now. We inventory beams; we inventory a lot of our products.

If there's a situation that arises where a customer says, “I want to rail in six weeks, we can handle that. And that's something we're very proud of being able to deliver a very quick turnaround for customers.

Q: Do you think your philosophy is different than other companies? 

Anthony Leo: My big overarching strategy is to be easy to do business with. That encompasses everything we do, from a product management approach to how we interact with our customers. Early on, we like to ask a lot of questions rather than assume things. We like to ask a lot of questions up front to make sure that when the customer gets their rail, they're happy with it. For us, the being easy to do business with philosophy comes into play when a customer needs a quote. Sometimes we can get it out on the same day, sometimes it takes a couple of days, depending on the information we have from the customer.

But we want the interaction experience to be nonabrasive. One thing I've seen in my past is that many companies act as if they have a ‘customer prevention team.’ Whereas our approach is to help you identify the gaps you don't know about through the questions we ask you.

That way, you don't have to worry that when you come to us, we'll give you the solution you need to meet the application. That's how StackTrax came to be. It was because they came to us looking for gantry styles, something known in the market. We said, "Hold on, let's ask the right questions so we can come up with a new solution that actually meets your application."

So instead of customers trying to take our products and fit them to an application, we can make our products fit the application, making it more efficient.

Q: We talked about some of your philosophies of being easy to work with. Where do you think that foundation comes from? 

Anthony Leo: Before I came to IPR, I spent about 10 years in venture capital startups in the robotics industry. And one thing I've learned in startups: We had one that was extremely well run, and the employees were just like a giant group project that everyone got paid for. It was a very cohesive team. And in my experience on that side of the spectrum, where things weren't as cohesive, there was a lot of infighting and not making things easier internally, which will make its way into the customer experience.

And so when internal processes are abrasive, customers will notice. It's going to come up in the process. I had one customer, for example, with whom we had to go through five or six meetings because of a process required by leadership at the time.

And by the end of the process, the customers said we could have gotten to this in meeting two. And the interesting part was the other customer who was with him; his colleague said, "Well, I think they were forced to go through a process that he's not allowed to deviate from." And when the customer was able to call that out without me or anybody else basically saying it, it was very informative.

When a customer tells you, "I could have gotten to this exact answer in two meetings instead of six," that's not being easy to work with. The experiences I've had over time boil down to having a philosophy and a structure, and to me, that's the easiest way to think about going to market. Is this method easy for the customer, or is it easy for us? 

Q: Robots are big and heavy. They can move with a lot of force. What are some key design elements of a seventh axis to handle that?

Anthony Leo: One thing we do at IPR is use a patented hybrid rail. It's our steel structure for the larger rail or for the larger robots. But it's filled with concrete and reinforced with rebar. What this allows us to do, for example, with the M2000s, when those robots are moving, there's a lot of force and moment loads they can put on that.

And if you're trying to stop the robot to complete an application, there's a lot of vibration in the system. There are times when this process stalls because the robot has to settle. Then you can continue with what you had to do. The hybrid rail allows us to almost instantaneously settle.

If it takes three or four seconds to settle without it, it doesn't seem like much time. But when you have how many processes and how many stop-starts, that could be an extra five or six hours over the course of a week, where the robot is just sitting there waiting to settle. So that's the way we look at the big and heavy ones: we have a patented hybrid rail that we will look at to go with customers to help with a lot of those types of things. As we get bigger, we have different designs that allow us to handle larger robots.

Q: Why or when is a seventh axis necessary? Why not just get another robot?

Anthony Leo: The simplest way to answer that question is this: When the robot needs more reach. That's what it boils down to. It is an application-specific question, because there are situations where having multiple robots makes the most sense. But again, if you're doing machine tending, where it might take, say, 30 seconds to load and unload, but then the process takes two minutes, now that robot is just sitting there, so that the payments for the ROI are there, it's much longer to be achieved, where maybe you had one robot on one rail.

It's much simpler and has a lower overall cost structure, as happened with the StackTrax system. From a complexity standpoint, if you can get away with just a robot and a rail to manage the application, it's also easier to maintain. So, you're not having to do as much, say PLC work or programming to make all the robots and make everything talk to each other when only you have one rail and one robot. It makes the whole process much cheaper to install and easier to maintain.

Q: How does the seventh axis work with the robot controller? Can a seventh axis be used with a cobot?

Anthony Leo: On the control side, if it's basically just one robot and one rail, you can add an extra servo drive controller to the robot controller and then manage them separately. It really depends on whether you want the rail and the robot to move at the same time, independently of each other, or if the motion is going to be that I need to drive this robot, then stop.

Then move the robot. Stop, move the rail so you can get away with a few different methods of maybe not needing an extra servo, or you need the actual one. It depends a little on the application and the cycle time you're trying to achieve. 

As far as cobots, the answer is yes. The smaller aluminum profile rails fit that type of payload perfectly. Most cobots on the market are essentially in the 35-kilogram range. It all depends on the application. But it's something we're continuing to work on our side, specifically for a cobot-specific rail. It's something we're looking to add in the future.

Q: What's on the horizon for your company?

Anthony Leo: Going into next year, Automate is our big show. And you'll probably find us at a handful of other regional shows. We've got a lot of new products coming out over the next few months. If you're interested in talking with us further, you can't find something on the market that meets a specific need, and you need a slight modification from a tool changer gripper. We're the ones to do that for you.

Learn more about IPR Robotics.