It brings me great pleasure to welcome two experts in the industry to this edition of TRIP (The Robot Industry Podcast) #141.

Steve Hoenig is a senior executive with expertise in marketing, sales, product design, business development, P/L Management, Strat planning, engineering, and leading complex teams. He is an astute, decisive, and energetic leader recognized for outstanding interpersonal relationships and bottom-line results. 

On June 2024, Mike Gunner joined BBS Automation Chicago as their Managing Director/President. 

Mike comes to BBS with many years in the global automation sector which include roles at KraussMaffei as VP of Automation and at Mikron Corporation  

During his 30+ years in Automation, Mike has had Management positions in Sales, Applications, Controls Engineering and Project Management. Some of the industries he has touched on include Medical, Automotive, Consumer and Defense.

Mike has a B.Sc. Honors in Electrical Engineering and also a PH. D in Electronic Engineering both from the University of Hull, England.

Welcome guys, thanks for joining me. It is great to catch up.

Can you give our audience an idea who is BBS?

What are some of the changes that have been happening at BBS?

How many people are you now?

Where are your facilities?

Who is your “perfect” client?

What value of jobs can you take on?

Tell me a little bit about the technologies “stack” of machine systems that you have at BBS (high speed, high accuracy, robotics, etc) 

What are some of the automation trends that you are seeing from a high level?

How do you share these capabilities between divisions, say Germany and Italy? (ie the “One Company” convo)

“Can you walk us through a recent project where a customer came to BBS with a unique challenge—and how your team developed a custom automation solution from concept to completion?”

Building for Scalability

“How do you help customers future-proof their automation investments? Is scalability built into your systems from the beginning?”

Culture of Engineering and Innovation

“How do you foster innovation internally at BBS? Are there systems in place that encourage new thinking or cross-functional collaboration across your global teams?”

What about sectors, I assume that medical device and pharma are areas of interest?

Are there any new areas (of note) happening? 

You work in the electronics area and have some specialties in solder, paste and wearable tech, correct?

Service and support

We talked in the warm up about customers, Industry 4.0 and Mike you mentioned about getting  your OEE up, then worrying about Ind 4.0

Data and MES and Ignitioninfluenceing machine design

Automation Inspiration

“You both work deep in the world of automation—what’s a piece of tech, a machine, or even a moment in your career that made you stop and think, ‘This is why I do what I do’?”

Thanks Mike and Steve, for this update on BBS and what is happening in industrial automation. Did we miss anything?

If someone wants to find out how do they get a hold of you?

https://www.bbsautomation.com

https://www.linkedin.com/in/steven-hoenig-b5b0921

https://www.linkedin.com/in/mike-gunner-973691b

I would like to acknowledge A3: the Association for Advancing Automation. they are the leading automation trade association for robotics, vision and imaging, motion control and motors and the industrial artificial intelligence technologies.  Visit Automate dot org to learn more.

If you would like to get in touch with us at THE robot industry podcast, you can find me jim beretta on LinkedIn. https://www.linkedin.com/in/jimberetta/

Today’s podcast was produced by Customer Attraction Industrial Marketing and I would like to thank my team Chris Gray for the music, Geoffy Bremner for audio production, my business partner Janet and our sponsor: Mecademic Industrial Robots . manufacturers of compact and precise industrial robots. https://mecademic.com/

Warm Regards,

Jim

Jim Beretta

Customer Attraction & The Robot Industry Podcast

London, ON