Welcome to The Robot Industry Podcast, edition #110. Ray Minato is an accomplished engineer, leader, and entrepreneur on a mission to build world-class product design, and manufacturing teams who deliver outstanding products and customer experiences. 

With a professional career now spanning over 30 years, Ray is constantly learning and adjusting course.  After graduating from Queen's University (Mech Eng), Ray started his career in automotive manufacturing, moving on to racecar engineering and design, and eventually business operations, entrepreneurship, and more recently, angel investor. 

Prior to starting his company Inertia, Ray set out and accomplished his childhood dream of designing racecars and then competing as a race engineer (and winning) on the world stage at prestigious events such as the 24hrs of le Mans and the 24hrs of Daytona.   Ray left that world of speed and excitement to create his own exciting entrepreneurial journey with the founding of Inertia in 2004. 

Recently recognized as the #1 Best Place to Work in Canada, and one of Canada's fastest growing companies, Ray leads an outstanding team at Inertia  a global hardware-product innovation, design, and manufacturing consultancy with offices in Toronto and Guangzhou.  Inertia works with start-ups to multinationals across a wide range of industries spanning medical devices, agricultural robotics, internet-connected home products, and high-tech sporting equipment.  

Tell us about yourself and your company, what do you do at Inertia?

What is their pain?

What is your value prop?

What is a microfactory?

We have some clients in common, can you give us some ideas of what you have done with LabForge or Kinova or other Use Cases.

What is happening in the industry? 

Which projects are the most fun for you and your staff?

NGEN Organization and AI for Manufacturing Grant program

You must have staff with a varied background?

How do you train, or staff up?

Did we forget to talk about anything?

When you are manufacturing and project managing,  what do you like to do, hobbies?

How can people get a hold of you?

Enjoy the podcast. Thanks for subscribing, thanks for listening.

Regards,

Jim

Jim Beretta

To find out more about Inertia Product Design visit their website or check them out on LinkedIn. To check out Ray, you can find him on LinkedIn here.

If you would like to get involved with A3 | The Robot Industry Podcast, would like to become a guest or nominate someone, you can find me, Jim Beretta on LinkedIn or send me an email to therobotindustrypodcast at gmail dot com, no spaces.

Ehrhardt Automation is our sponsor. Ehrhardt builds and commissions robot and custom turnkey automated solutions for their worldwide clients. With over 80 years of precision manufacturing they understand the complex world of automated manufacturing, project management, supply chain and delivering world-class custom automation on-time and on-budget. Contact one of their sales engineers to see what Ehrhardt can build for you at [email protected]

Keywords and terms for this podcast: Ray Minato, Inertia Product Development, contract manufacturing, product development, The Robot Industry Podcast, Ehrhardt Automation Systems #TheRobotIndustryPodcast

Mentioned in the podcast:

Kinova Robotics https://www.kinovarobotics.com/sector/industrial-automation

LabForge https://www.labforge.ca/

NGEN https://www.ngen.ca