The 2017 Robotiq User Conference ended 2 days ago. I am still overwhelmed by the level of passion, competitiveness and commitment that I’ve seen from our partners, customers and team members.

The highlight of the event was the hands-on challenge. The goal of the challenge was to bring to life our new products (Blueprints, Skills, Insights) and the Lean Robotics method. We used a real-world example where Ricardo, an Automation Engineer from Pump Co., called Robotiq to automate the assembly of a new pump model. Take a look at the scenario video below.

It all came to life! I knew we had great partners and customers but this was just on another level!

The Sales Track

The sales teams started the challenge with the technical teams to understand the manual process of the customer and to come up with a solution concept. Being part of the design concept phase and understanding how it is tied to the customer's buying process gave the teams a unique perspective. They were all open-minded and had great creativity in implementing the Lean Robotics process to help customers, who are experts in manufacturing but not in robots yet, navigate their robotic cell deployments. The last part of course was to go on stage under the spotlight, give the sales pitch and get the votes from the crowd. And yes, you needed to give a good show to get the votes out! Team 4 for the win!

The Technical Track

On the technical track, we had top UR +  Robotiq programmers from 25 countries across the world. We were mixing partners and end users. They started the design at 9 am and started programming at around 10:30 am. The goal was to program 5 robots to produce as many pumps as possible counted with Insights. When I got to bed at midnight, 2 teams were producing parts. When I got back in the room at 8 am the morning after, all teams but one had produced parts. So a lot of work had been done between midnight and 8 am. Several participants pulled an all-nighter aiming at winning the competition! We’ve seen people programming in pyjamas, seasoned engineers not wanting to go to bed just like they did in their college days and a lot of smiles in between moments of intense concentration and a sip of DoF beer in the gardens. The level of intensity was unbelievable, people took it at heart!

At the end of the challenge, Étienne, our Director of Technical Support, did a short filmed QnA with the teams so we could all share our learnings. All had slightly different approaches but agreed on the crucial importance of the design phase and efficient teamwork. Nope, this is not the first time that we learn this one, but it’s worth having a good reminder as we’re seeing it all the time in real-world projects. For more insights on this topic, I invite you to read the Lean Robotics book.

Massive kudos to all the participants of the challenge. I am extremely proud to have you as partners, customers and colleagues!