U.S. Manufacturing Today Podcast

Episode #15: Empowering the Workforce: How Cobots Are Transforming Manufacturing with Rob Goldiez of Hirebotics

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In this episode of U.S. Manufacturing Today, powered by Veryable, host Matt Horine speaks with Rob Goldiez, co-founder of Hirebotics, about the future of American manufacturing. They discuss how Hirebotics is making automation simpler and more scalable through collaborative robots (cobots) and cloud software. The conversation covers the impact of reshoring, labor utilization strategies, and how cobots enhance the productivity of existing workers rather than replacing them. Rob shares his journey to founding Hirebotics, the benefits of cobots in welding, and how small to mid-sized manufacturers can adopt automation effectively. Tips for workforce development and the role of trade schools in preparing the next generation for automated manufacturing are also discussed.

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Timestamps

  • 00:00 Introduction to US Manufacturing Today
  • 00:14 Meet Rob Goldiez: Co-Founder of Hirebotics
  • 00:33 The Rise of Collaborative Robots (Cobots)
  • 01:00 Rob's Journey to Founding Hirebotics
  • 01:37 The Concept of Collaborative Robots
  • 03:06 The Birth of Hirebotics
  • 03:59 Labor Utilization and Cobots
  • 04:33 Challenges in the Manufacturing Sector
  • 07:51 Reshoring and Automation
  • 12:27 Simplifying Automation for Broader Adoption
  • 15:43 Supporting Small and Mid-Sized Manufacturers
  • 17:10 Workforce Development and Automation
  • 19:04 Advice for Manufacturers Considering Automation
  • 20:42 Conclusion and Resources

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Episode Transcript

Matt Horine: [00:00:00] Welcome back to US Manufacturing today, the podcast powered by Veryable, where we talk with the leaders, innovators, and change makers, shaping the future of American industry, along with providing regular updates on the state of the industry, the changing landscape policy and more.

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In this episode, we sit down with Rob Goldiez, the co-founder of Hirebotics. A company revolutionizing how manufacturers deploy robotics, making it as simple and scalable as possible.

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We'll dig into the intersection of robotics, reshoring, and the reindustrialization of America, and as US factories face persistent challenges, hirebotics offers a compelling answer.

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Collaborative robots or cobots integrated through cloud software that adapts with your operation without the traditional complexity or the CapEx required.

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We'll explore how labor utilization strategies are evolving, why automation and reshoring and labor aren't at odds, but tightly aligned. What scalable operations look like in a modern industrial economy and how cobots fit into the future of US competitiveness on the global stage.

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Rob, welcome to the show.

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Rob Goldiez: Thanks, Matt. I appreciate you having me. [00:01:00]

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Matt Horine: You've got an impressive background in operations and automation. Can you walk us through what led you to founding Hire bot and what problem you saw in the market?

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Rob Goldiez: By trade, I'm an engineer, background in engineering, and an MBA. And so I've been in kind of business and management roles for a while, but I've been involved in manufacturing companies for quite some time as like an operator type folk, you know, person at, at other people's companies. Very enamored with American manufacturing, local manufacturing. You know, the closer you can make something to where it's gonna be consumed seems like an obvious thing. And maybe my, my technical background in engineering and, and computer type stuff. Always looking for ways to, to automate things, whether it's through software or otherwise, I got introduced to collaborative robots or cobots as they're called in 2014. I was running a small subsidiary of Berkshire Hathaway and we made electric motors and literally neon power supplies. It's where I eventually found my co-founder, Matt, but you know, we needed to automate to compete with China, right? We were making these things right here in Nashville, Tennessee, and our competition was thousands of miles away in China. And so. For us, the way we [00:02:00] thought we needed to compete was how do we make the people we have as productive as possible by using automation where it makes sense and giving them that force multiplier. And we found back in 2014, collaborative robots. We use arms from universal robots. You know, a lot of times people think of robotics as like big scary things that are in cages and you know, it's like the keep the robots from the people and the people from the robots and they're kind of so to speak, looking at each other through the cages.

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Cobots are an interesting thing because they are designed to work around people. You certainly need to make sure that the task is safe for humans to be around, but the robot itself is safe to be around humans, and so when you start to not need a cage for a robot, it starts to unlock some interesting applications where humans and robots can collaborate, which is where the name came from to do tasks.So we put in, uh, initially two, and then this is at the company prior to hire bot, but we put in two and eventually I think up to 14 or something cobots on these various lines. And it might just, you know, be to transfer something from one conveyor to another, or clip wires on an electric motor. But different things that were hard to staff for [00:03:00] or to augment the people that were there as a way to give them, you know, like an assistant, like a worker that was gonna gonna help them be more productive.You know, the, the idea for higher robotics came about in the summer of 2015.

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This sounds really corny, but this is how it happened. I was on a cruise with my family in the Caribbean somewhere and woke up in the middle of the night and had this idea of like, Uber and Airbnb are disrupting the industries that they're in with this new business model. Everything's getting cloud connected and automation is still really hard. You buy a robot and it's just a, a thing in a box, and you gotta figure out what do you attach to it, what does it do, how do you program it? And it's kind of that overarching theme that we were trying to solve or had the idea to solve was.How do you make automation as easy as hiring a person? So this is back in 2015. So I woke up in the middle of the night on this, on this cruise and started jotting down notes, like there was no business name, right? It was just ideas, right? But these triangulation of things, which felt like maybe there's something here and really noodled on the idea for, for several months and brainstormed it with some friends and stuff. And later in 2015, decided to start hirebotics.

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Matt Horine: You touched on [00:04:00] a few key points there that people think about these things in terms of automation or other buzzwords like ai, like how does it replace things? And really it's about uplifting the resources that you already have. And I really want to dive into how hirebotics have used labor. It's not just as some type of constraint, but more of like a strategic asset that we view it as as Veryable, but how it can be enhanced through your technology.

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Rob Goldiez: Sometimes companies come to us or have come to us and they're looking to replace people, and that's usually not a good sign of future success for that company or for us.You know what is prevalent almost in every manufacturer, and I'm sure you've seen this and and your customers feel this, is that I. They struggle to find people. And so the tasks I feel like we're trying to help solve is not how do you replace people? They can't find people, right? They're short staffed.They have openings on first shift. Maybe they're trying to get a second shift going, you know, there there's some constraint around people and trying to get the job done. And so we like best when people look at what we do as a way to supplement their people and give them a [00:05:00] force multiplier. And so a huge gap in our background. My background in hirebotics, but like we focus on welding today. We really look at it as a force multiplier. This is not replacing welders that you have. This is how do you make the welders you have more productive, right? So it's a tool for the workers that you have. You know, maybe, you know, the average age of a welder is, I think in the late fifties right now, and every year it keeps going up because new people aren't entering as fast as people are exiting.So they average age keeps moving up and there's a lot of skilled welders out there in the world and in the country. And so if you can give them a tool to be more productive, they can get more done in the day, they are gonna extend their careers. They're gonna go home and be happier. They're gonna do tasks that they didn't have time for during the day.And so automation is just one tool, one piece of the puzzle to, to make the humans more productive.

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Matt Horine: No, you bring up a really great point there on utilization and labor utilization because it's something we hear a lot of at Veryable people are looking for a plug and play welder or somebody. I can't find welders as a, a common refrain.You and I had talked previously about an [00:06:00] amazing stat that we see all the time, but maybe others in the market don't. The utilization rate of welders who are actually on the job is quite low, and I don't want to steal the thunder, but you gave me that statistic. What was it, 40% or 50%

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Rob Goldiez: Not my statistic originally, right? But I think American Welding Society cites that like the average arc on time for a welder, which is they're pulling the trigger, they're making sparks, right? They're joining metal. The average arc on time is 15%. One five. You think about over the course of a week, right? 40 hour shift, like the work being done, the arc on, right? Their job is to weld, is about six hours. That's not to say that they're sitting around doing nothing, right? There's just other tasks that they do. Maybe they're trying to fit things up. Maybe they're checking prints like there's, there's work that's being done. When people think about welding, they are oftentimes surprised at that stat and guarantee people listening to the show is like, oh, my welders are much higher than that.Like, okay, may maybe so, but the average, right, according to American welding societies, somewhere around 15%, right?

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Matt Horine: I just stepped right into it because I think I tripled the average [00:07:00] time of utilization just off the cuff there. So, you know, that's something that we see a lot of at Veryable as well, where it's the utilization rate, it's not necessarily a shortage, and certainly there are.Shortages based on skillset shortages, based on geographies, some of those types of things. And it's mostly about labor access, but also the types of tools that they're using. And if it hasn't stepped into this, you know, modern industrial economy, they're gonna be faced with persistent challenges from places like China.Your competitors are thousands of miles away. There's certainly no shortage of a labor issue in China. They're bringing people out of the provinces. They almost have this floating structure of people who come in and work. And Chinese New Year is usually the downtime that they experience. So you're competing on a global scale constantly, whether you know it or not.Certainly in the productivity realm.

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Rob Goldiez: That's right. You, you may not like it, you may not look at them as com competition. Right. But that, that's real competition.

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Matt Horine: Absolutely. Well, speaking of China and talking about some of the challenges in the American manufacturing sector, we are seeing a wave of reshoring efforts across industries a lot in [00:08:00] manufacturing.In your view, what role does automation cobots all the above play in making us manufacturing more cost competitive.

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Rob Goldiez: It is one tool to that puzzle, and it is an interesting dynamic that we're all facing, right? And regardless of how people feel about the changing dynamics, the dynamics won't stop changing, right?Like it is a dynamic marketplace that, and those changes continue to accelerate. And so I think for any company, they have to look at new ways to solve old problems. Those old problems are, you know, I've gotta deal with backlog, I've gotta deliver quality products, right? I've gotta do it efficiently, cost 'em competitively.Like those are the same o overarching problems and just kind of new things that are sort of disrupting those things that you gotta gotta service solve. And so we look at automation or cobots and what we do as one tool to have predictable cost, quality availability of welding talent. If you look at bringing in a cobot, oftentimes people will, you know, to, to do welding, at least oftentimes our customers will see three to four X improvements in output.[00:09:00] And sometimes it's higher, sometimes it's less, but that's sort of an average. And these are typically being run by welders, right? So it's, this is not a solution where you just wheel this thing in and it's just gonna do work, right? We have a, a cloud connected product, so we have a lot of data on how people use the product, and that informs us on what we should build and how we improve it.When somebody hits, go on a part till it's done is just under two minutes. So that's about two minutes of work that's being done by the robot before it's needing human intervention to swap out a part, reposition, or what? Whatever they're doing. Our solution is not, you throw a bunch of work out it, you leave for the day, right?It is. There is a welder around. He's loading parts, he's checking things. He may be welding on parts that are too complicated, too complicated or something, you know, that is not a good fit for the cobot, but he's making, it's making that welder significantly more productive.

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Matt Horine: That's such a fascinating example because we could talk about utilization and I think the word that I like to use for it is the compression of operations time.Like basically enhancing the productivity into shorter [00:10:00] cycles and augmenting and, you know, adding layers or removing layers of complexity, you know, out of the human hand, but basically upskilling at the same time that that worker and getting more productivity and more throughput and more output at the end of the day.What are some examples you've seen where cobots maybe enabled reshoring or some type of operational scale up on the reshoring side?

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Rob Goldiez: You know, when you, when you have smaller and smaller batch sizes, right? So higher mix, which seems to continue to happen, right? Having the flexibility of a tool that shows up every day and is gonna be as productive at 8:00 AM as it is at 4:00 PM gives people more flexibility and more output. And that seems to be a key theme in today's, you know, dynamic changing environment and, and reshoring. Oftentimes something companies haven't thought of is if it's like they're, they're driving the Jeep and the wheels are spinning, right? They're just kind of going down the same path. It's like, I gotta find welders. I gotta go call this temp agency, and they think about the solving the problem in the same way they did 10 or 15 years ago, and there's just new ways to do it, right? I think you guys take an innovative approach to solving that staffing problem. We take another approach, [00:11:00] which is putting a tool in the hands of the people you have and getting more output out of 'em.And so the, those are themes that our customers are asking about pain points that they're trying to solve, which drives 'em sometimes to a solution like a collaborative robot or cobot for doing their welding tests.

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Matt Horine: Yeah, absolutely. You said something really great there. It's about getting more out of the worker, and I think what we've seen, especially in, you know, the reshoring movement is people looked at cost out as a way to enhance the bottom line.So basically offshoring the labor. Ultimately to drive the wages down and take a step back from the American labor market. American manufacturing and cost out doesn't necessarily mean it's better goods or better quality or anything along those lines. It just means that you found something cheaper and you're not getting anything better for it.And the ramifications for that have been. Pretty astounding. I think we've seen an undermining of the American manufacturing sector for years, and now all this comes roaring back into the 21st century with more automation, more cobots and an upskilled workforce of people who are engaging on different [00:12:00] types of technology, which you know specifically about your technology.And one thing that stands out about hirebotics is the focus on ease of deployment and the cloud integration. And like you said earlier, you know, you just don't order a robot that shows up and becomes self-aware and decides to. Get right to work. Why is simplicity such a key to broader adoption in these manufacturing environments, and is it.Really fitting well right now with how people are looking to in invest in their business and potentially reshore operations.

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Rob Goldiez: We sell a solution in a box, and when I say solution in a box, I truly mean it, right? We've chosen to standardize our product. We don't wanna solve every problem. Sometimes companies think about automation.It's particularly ones that don't have any, and they're like, I want a robot that will load parts, do this, and they want to be able to just walk away and work gets done. That is oftentimes unachievable, extremely expensive, and they're trying to solve the 99% problem versus 85% of it with the robot. So we kind of try to solve the middle of a fairway problem, help make the welder more productive with a cobot.[00:13:00] So we focus, you know, that ease of deployment we focus on. Selling a solution in a box, which allows us to have standard setup instructions self. It's a self installed product that ships quickly in-app tutorials and things like that. The simpler you can make it to use, the simpler you make it to set up, the quicker they can start to alleviate that pain point.And when we think about our user, right, who's using our technology, we really focus on the welder, not the robot programmer, because. Our view is if you're building a product, a robotic product, or an automation product for robot programmers, now you're just trading your problems, right? I can't find, well, there's two.I can't find robot programmers, or you have one guy that can do the robot programming. So we really try to, I mean, this sounds cliche, but we want to democratize automation, so. We focus on ease of use. That app-based literally means the software, our software to run the robot is on an iPhone, Android, tablet, web browser, whatever the user wants, and really making it easy for that welder.That is our customer, right? How do we make that welder more productive?

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Matt Horine: Absolutely. You don't want to double up the knowledge transfer problem in the [00:14:00] workforce where you have this one funnel. And I've been at plenty of companies where there's one guy who knows how to program, you know, X, Y, Z piece of equipment, and then you've got the added layer of complexity of what's the work we actually do, which is welding, for example.That's a big enough challenge in itself, not making the operation more complex. Another great follow up to that would be what does ROI typically look like? The time to value, the cost versus, you know, maybe traditional methods, increased flexibility. What's the, what's the time horizon on that and how do you, you know, talk about that with manufacturers?I.

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Rob Goldiez: Our common like heuristics around, you know, what's, what's the framework that people should be thinking about? And it's gonna depend for every company, but customers are typically seeing three to four X improvement in output and output is the key metric for us and our customers more so than how fast does the rub up move and things like that. At the end of the day, if it moves fast and waits for a long time, doesn't really matter. The system roughly costs a hundred thousand dollars, three to four x productivity improvement. Oftentimes people are seeing an ROI in less than a year. But again, it depends on the application. We've had some customers that have moved from [00:15:00] one welding process to another, not just automating it, but moving from TIG welding to MIG welding and seeing much higher productivity improvements.And some customers are doing pretty well by hand and they're just seeing something a little bit less, but roughly about a year in terms of an ROI.

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Matt Horine: Yeah, that's a really, I mean, that's, that is fast. You know, a lot of companies have to look at these as like a, a CapEx type structure, which, you know, hopefully there's good news on the way.I think legislation for some tax policy and regulatory policy changes that are coming down the way are looking at making those more deductible maybe for r and d. Some of those things which have gotta be great for people who are looking to invest. It does bring up a really interesting question about how can small and mid-sized manufacturers participate in this evolution of what we see on the factory floor without being left behind.Because as you and I have talked about before, most of the manufacturing businesses in the country, somewhere above 90%, are what we would consider small, medium sized businesses.

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Rob Goldiez: What we see is a few challenges that we wanna help them overcome, right? One is oftentimes, not always, but oftentimes small to mid-size companies don't have [00:16:00] familiarity with automation, or at least don't have it in-house. Maybe they don't have robotics, maybe they have one, but they rely on an outside party that it can sometimes be expensive or they use it for a project years ago. So it's gotta be easy so that it's approachable to the small to mid-size enterprise. The other side of it is how they pay for it, and so we try to meet customers where they're at.We have tried before you buy. So, you know, think of that as like a rental option. We have financing partners if people wanna finance it, and oftentimes people are just, you know, when they're ready and it feels right, you know, they'll make the investment, you know, get, capture that. ROI, people will ask about training.Sometimes they wanna bring their welders to us. We love that because it kind of shows the buy-in of the people on the floor versus just a top-down management, which happens at times, right? The owner's like, we gotta get a robot in here, you know, and he comes and visits us and he buys it. And then the people on the floor are like, what is this?I, how do we use it? Some of those keys to success beyond ease of use and, and how do you pay for it is, is getting the buy-in and getting those champions on the floor, right. When your employees embrace technology, you're gonna get a lot more out of it than when it's forced on all.

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Matt Horine: [00:17:00] Yeah, that's a really great point.I think one of the questions that I have about it and that intersection, and going back to what you said earlier about the knowledge transfer and somebody who kind of runs the program. How does automation at a bigger picture intersect with workforce development? I'm not talking about, you know, manufacturing labor specifically in this, but overall, are there new skills that schools and trade schools and others should be training for that align with the future, where this is kind of an integrated part of a, a workforce strategy or a productivity strategy?

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Rob Goldiez: I think so, I think, you know, at the very base level, getting people that are going through training programs, high school programs, trade schools, comfortable around robots and technology, like it is a, it is a tool for them and it's no different than I'll say desk workers leveraging AI to, to help with tasks, right.Like the more comfortable they are and exposed to it. The more they will embrace it. We have customers of ours that are schools and educational institutes that use these for training programs. Uh, recent customer of ours, it was actually in California, [00:18:00] four different, I think they're like high schools that have vocational programs that brought in four different ones, kind of in the same county, brought in a system at each school because as they, they already teach welding and they wanna level up their students at that early age and show them what's possible and get them comfortable with technology.So we do see that happening earlier, sooner. I think it makes the workforce that, you know, think about it from a school perspective. It the more competitive you can make your students, right? You're, you, you gotta make, help them, make them competitive if you want to be a viable school over the long term.And so wages of starting wages for different skills, things like that, the more you can get them trained up, the more competitive they'll be in the marketplace, which means the more competitive the school is in the marketplace.

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Matt Horine: We've had several guests on the show, you know, including Jim Vinoski, who is kind of a champion for this type of move into manufacturing.And you know, years ago it wasn't really the third way. There was this track for just college or this track for just whatever somebody was going to do after high school and how manufacturing has really turned into a popular destination for people coming outta [00:19:00] high school and, and is a great alternative and one that looks like it has a really sustainable future.If you were to give advice to a manufacturer who wanted to automate. They're unsure where to start. What would you advise them?

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Rob Goldiez: Start small. Go for the obvious. Don't go for the hardest. I think the trap that we see people start to fall into, we try to pull 'em back, is, you know, sometimes the hardest pain that you have is not the best place to start automating.It could be. It's the easy, repetitive stuff. Maybe your employees are okay doing it 'cause they don't wanna do the hard stuff, but. There are, there are tasks that humans are just better at doing, and there are tasks that robots are better at doing. And so it's like, you know, starting to sift through those things.Is it repetitive? And that doesn't mean a hundred million a year might not mean 10,000 a year, right? It could mean 10 a week, 50 a week, but where is there repetitive work that you could take your human labor and put them on things where they're getting to use their mind a little bit more, right? They're using their dexterity and their eyes and all the different sensors that humans have that robots don't have.You wanna sort of divvy up the types [00:20:00] of things that humans do best from the things that robots could do best. And then I think it's starting to reach out and talk to people, right? It could be us, it could be others, but. Understanding what people recommend, because I think it's pretty rare that if you're first time into automation and you're, you're willing to share that with people like us or others, is that people want you to be successful, right?We want customers to be successful. We're not just looking to sell a product and have the company not be successful. And so you start to collect data from. Different potential providers to figure out what are people saying are they all guided me to the same thing? And I think involve your employees, right?They know things oftentimes if yeah, ask them and getting them involved in the process generates that buy-in.

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Matt Horine: Absolutely. That's really great advice. Rob, where can our listeners find out more about Hire Bot about you and and your thoughts on automation and the future of American manufacturing?

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Rob Goldiez: Definitely our website at www.hirebotics.com.

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We're also fairly active on LinkedIn. That's where most of our business customers are in social media, and then we've got a fairly active YouTube channel. You know, people wanna kind [00:21:00] of learn about the product, watch videos to, sometimes people don't wanna reach out and hit a salesman, but you can watch videos and, and case studies and testimonials of customers that we have on YouTube that hear directly from them and on what, what problems they were trying to solve.

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Matt Horine: Yeah, that's a great resource. I know a lot of operations leaders who are very curious about this type of thing, and they kind of want to see it in action. So the YouTube channel is really big. Rob, thanks for coming on today and. Ton of great insight and we really appreciate having you.

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Rob Goldiez: Thanks, Matt. I appreciate the conversation.

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Matt Horine: To stay ahead of the curve and to help plan your strategy, please check out our [00:26:00] website at www.veryableops.com and under the resources section titled Trump 2.0, where you can see the framework around upcoming policies and how it will impact you and your business. If you're on socials, give us a follow on LinkedIn, X, formerly Twitter, and Instagram. And if you're enjoying the podcast, please feel free to follow the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube, and leave us a rating and don't forget to subscribe. Thank you again for joining us and learning more about how you can make your way.