Interconnecting Automation - Interview with Doug Bell from AutomationDirect

[Music] one of the reasons that allows automation direct to offer great products and services can be contributed to our Federation Partners one of these Partners is interconnecting automation headed by Mr Doug Bell Doug was instrumental in providing input when automation direct was formed and he soon took the lead in providing training Excellence to our customers covering the products that we offer today we have the pleasure of talking with Doug so we can learn more about his company and the services that provides please join us over in the auditorium as we catch up with Doug while he's finishing up a training [Music] seminar Doug want to thank you for coming in here and uh spend a couple minutes with us we're going to ask some questions and find out a little bit about your background and maybe how you got started in the auto industry can you tell us about your approach to it you know what got you started um maybe a little bit on how you started your company and the uh no BS technique of of training sure um well I actually I started out um I was I was interested in electricity as a kid and I went to a high school in Milwaukee that was all boys and it was a trade school and they had machine shops electric shops and carpentry shops and automobile shops they were big shops I mean the first year we bent pipe and pulled White wires we actually had our own house to wire each student in electric shop wired their own house the second year was all DC motors and generators the third year was all AC Motors and generation the fourth year was control and then Milwaukee being the town that it was we have a lot of heavy industry there such as Harish vager and keran treker and bis Erie and they would come down to the trade school and say to the instructors we need three electricians so they would say you you you you're going to that to work there and you didn't say no you took the job um I happen to get picked for a found which was a dirty grimy environment but I learned a lot um bending pipe and pulling wires and big control relay panels with 3 in of thick dust in them from all the sand and I did that for about three years decided that wasn't for me so I was looking for a job and there was a adding a paper for a bottle cap plant where they made bottle caps for soda bottles and beer bottles so I went and applied there and very clean plant because it's a food product it's a nice clean environment it was high speed though they made 25 million a day and they also made cans not at our plant but at corporate headquarters they had 300 some plants around the world so we were just one entity out of the whole Corporation and as they phased it down if you look around to there's not many cans left I mean there's not many bottles left it's mostly cans or plastic I took a corporate job with them traveling around the world putting up plants or troubleshooting lines debugging lines so um you learn real quick what plcs are because depending on what country you go to they'll have a different brand because some countries are very brand specific right um after doing that for three years I decided to go to get out of that cuz I like the full-time travel so Cutler Hammer was starting up a brand new group and Cutler Hammer is based in Milwaukee like alen Bradley is and they started a group called the Apollo project and it was PC based control so I worked on PC based control with them for two years using device net and a software called steeple chase float charting software and um it was good we we developed the product line and I was the group I was in wrote the specs and stuff and also went out and installed the products at at facilities but I could see it wasn't going to take off real big and what happened happed was I was kler Hammer made you go to two courses a year it didn't matter what it was in they wanted you to go to two classes a year so I wanted I never really understood the half Slot full slot two slot addressing of Ellen Bradley so I went to an Ellen Bradley course and I was sitting in there this course and um it was terrible it was we spent we had four guys on one trainer and we had the whole day was on one timer so I was sitting in the back of the room thinking I could do this and a light bulb went on so that evening actually was that evening I called Tim who I knew for my past life and said what are you going i' like to have dinner with you and we sat I had dinner with them a couple weeks later and we sat down and told him what I had for an idea and he said go for it that's kind of how the whole thing got going but one thing I based it Al on is that the no BS part is I don't want to sell people anything right I want to train them on the product so they can use the product and make their job easier that's kind of where that comes from so a little bit about uh your company is interconnecting Automation and a lot of our customers don't know but you offer training for you know automation direct productss or plc's automation direct uh unlike some of the other PLC you know resellers or manufacturers we don't have our own training you actually take care of it for us um but you know you're like a a very tight partner with automation direct Federation part yes so that's that's how that that you know ties together that's correct at the dinner that night that's one of the things Tim said he didn't he made a comment to me because I was working at Cutler Hammer at the time he said companies like you think you do everything well you do nothing well do one thing and do it well so if you're going to do training Doug make sure you give a good class don't try to do training and Consulting and panel building and everything else just do one thing and do it well right that's kind of what he's focused your company on is one thing I have to ask you know you've been in the industry for a while you've worked with a lot of different plc's uh at what point did you notice or you start working with the coyo plc's which is you know what we sell it's coyo branded plcs um where did you see those first and and you know how'd you get started with them well we were using a PLC from at the bottle cap plant from micros switch a lot of people aren even aware microswitch made a PLC at one time but it's been obsolete for 20 years and they were they brought it out and three years later they obsoleted it so I got stuck in this Quagmire and I invited all the vendors in Alan Bradley Seaman Cutler Hammer everybody came in showing me their wees and the Texas Instruments guys brought in this 405 product and I said said he gave me the software and I played with for a little while and it was very easy to use so we kind of Switched the corporation over from the micro switch stuff that we were sticking our toe in the water with we didn't have a lot of them and we only had like a hundred of them installed around the corporation which it's a lot but it wasn't a tremendous amount and we switched over to the 405 and that's when I first started working with the coyo plc's was under the ti days right and I noticed that uh your training class back here you've got little training kits for all of the students in here and you've basically got the same Hardware it's it's you know not the old 405 but it's a newer version of that 405 yes it is it's the same chassis but it's got the new CPU that can do the floating Point math and the p and the analog card so we can do p simulation and everything so it's still the 405 footprint right but it's got the newer ethernet cards in it and such for remote iio and ethernet Communications and so on at one point I understand that Tim Holman had contacted you um he was going to start up with company and sell the coyo plc's directly and he asked for your input since you had been a uh end user of the plc's do you remember what kind of input or suggestions you might have had for him or yeah I remember well the um we had used the 405 product extensively and Texas Instruments was brought out by seens Corporation and the local salesman and other salesmen from other companies were giving me rumors that Seamans was going to discontinue the coyo products and I was putting up a brand new plant in Chicago for our Corporation and I didn't want last thing I wanted to do was put up a brand new plant with plcs that were going to be announced would be obsolete in say six months or something right I kept trying to contact coyo in Japan in the meantime I was making other arrangements with GE to use their PLC um one day I got a call from Tim and he said we're working on some things to make the product better and cheaper and easier to read the manuals and better service and support and such and remember telling them clearly in 10 years we either going to read about you in Forbes or you'll be out of business because nobody's ever tried selling plcs through the mail and um but I think you're going to do well at what point in your life or in your career did you decide to uh just quit your job and start out you know training uh in automation controls and what did you do to control the the anxiety and the the nerves of just jumping out there um it wasn't easy the um I was at Cutler Hammer and I had gone to this Ellen Bradley course and the light went on that night that I could do this went back and started figuring out what laptops would cost and to build trainers and I had contacted Tim he was already in business for two years under PLC direct and um my wife and I pretty much made a decision we were going to do it but um I don't think we slept but about 4 hours a night for the first 6 months and all mostly what I got from the PLC direct folks was don't worry about it'll work right I'm trying to understand if I was going to start a training program with you know you got equipment you got locations travel materials you know uh getting schedules and stuff like that what what does it actually take to get all that rolling and you know do you have suggestions of a tremendous effort it was it was tremendous effort we basically when I was at the course that triggered me to do this the instructor had four gentlemen on one trainer we spent the whole day on one timer we spent eight hours of training on one timer and I was fit to be tied wow and I said this guy has never been in a factory in his life he's reading me the book I could have stayed home and read the book I didn't have to be away from home to do this that's what triggered all this to happen so I kind of took the things in the courses that I had taken over the years to make them better in other words I want to be able to give people real world examples when I'm up there not something that I'm read out of the book that I never did I want to be able to tell them things that I did so that they don't do the same thing and have the same effect if I were out in the customer seat paying for a course what would I want to learn right what I would I don't want the guy to romance me and try to sell me the product I paid for a course obviously I paid to be here I want to learn the product I don't want you to sell me the product right Doug what is your philosophy on teaching about plc's and other autom industrial uh controls well I think we should do it I mean I don't think I should be up there on a PowerPoint presentation giving people slideshows I want to put the equipment out in front of them and let's do it let's program it let's see what what happens when you put a timer in and you change the preset value and actually do it handson because I guess that's how I learned I set electric shop and I would program things and see what the reaction I would get out of the machine so that's kind of how I like to teach is take take put a trainer in front of you have you sit down actually do it not just just teach you the theory but actually have you sit at a laptop write the code download it and see what it power it performs in the PLC and see what the reaction you're going to get out of the PLC when you do it so would it be more beneficial if you had a traveling machine that you could bring into class oh and actually in the advanced class we do have a small machine we set up it's a miniature picking Place welding line that we have people programmed from scratch and one of the things we do to them and I I tell them everybody on Tuesday the advance class the same thing you're not going to see it until Thursday at 8:00 because I have a saying it's called baptism by fire here's the machine make it work um tell us how your company's actually evolved from you started with classroom training and and you know what what are you doing now or what other things are you offering I know you have many different lines of products well what happened was um I'm I'm not going to give a class if I can't stand up there and give it to you I I I I know enough about PL for example I know enough about PID to stumble through it right but to give a class on it I'm not going to do that because that would go back to me reading you the book so I hired Cecil Smith to do the P courses because he's a very well-known expert in P um quite a few years back Andy here was after me to do tapes VHS tapes and I was adamant I wasn't going to do no tapes CU I was I was a concern that would kill the courses that we give right so we finally after they brought the 05 out for $99 I says now I could do a course and also include Hardware with it so that I'm using the hardware in the videotape that you get with the videotape and you follow along step by step and we take you from linking up with the PLC to creating a project to creating rungs of code and so on right so it was more interactive I I just personally I can't see shooting a video and just kind of nodding off on it and you're not interacting with it so we brought it out and uh it's done well and then I would say about a year ago we started researching the online stuff for doing online videos and a few months ago we open turned on a website where we have libraries of videos you can go in you can view for 30 days as many times as you want to view for a very low fee in the very near future we're going to turn all that off actually and we've purchased software to make a true school campus online campus where you will you will register with the campus and then there'll be multiple courses you can take just like you were going to a university or a trade school an online tech school and each course will be offered twice one will be just the pure videos if that's all you want to do is sit down and watch videos that's what we have up there now we're going to offer that as a course but the second version of it will be where you can take quizzes and you can leave messages on a forum and there'll be times when I'm online you can chat with me if you have a question and at the end of the course if you pass all the quizzes properly you'll be able to print out your own certificate and everything at the end of it you get a lot of customers um tell me the difference between customers you know do you get a lot of customer with no experience at all do you get some that have a lot of experience and just want to learn a different brand of plc's um you know what kind of students are are you seeing in your in your class training well in the intro class we get a lot of um beginners they um with the con consolidation in the industry and people losing jobs and people combining jobs we're getting mechanical guys who saw the PLC in their past in the cabinet but didn't know anything about it right so they come to the class and they know nothing about it now we get a few that have a little bit of background in it um the advanced class we see people that are going to be writing programs from scratch the introductory class that we offer that's good for maintenance people people want to troubleshoot maybe add a couple rungs of code change a timer change a counter just to give you a good solid foundation on how it works right then the advanced class actually teaches you the program from scratch as I said the third day you program a machine from scratch but the majority of the people that come to the intro class I would say actually about 80% get enough out of that class that they can do their maintenance work in the plant in the troubleshooting and debugging that they need to do so do you see um with industry evolv and as you know you've mentioned in some of the other uh answers that you've given us industry is constantly just changing evolving do you see an increase in uh customers needing more PLC or automation uh knowledge oh yes the um eight for example the um seamour touch panels and such that you guys have um it's kind of interesting because years ago everybody wanted to know how the p work everybody want in the PLC and how to program it and debug it and such today everybody wants to see the glitz and the glamour they want to see the little the wheels spinning on the screen and the conveyor going by with boxes and so on so that's what the touch panels bring to the market a lot of people forget about the PLC that's the Workhorse that's what runs the machines turns the motors on and off and the valves on and off everybody likes the glitz and the glamour so yes there's a considerable amount of people requesting more and more training on the um hmis and the graphical user interface softwares and such I notic when I went through college um you know they brought out some we had some Hardware that we were learning on and it seems like now you hear of the same stuff that are in middle schools and even high schools so it seems like they're training more people you know people younger ages to do the same stuff now actually it's kind of interesting you brought that up last week we received two orders for our DVD kit with that comes with the PLC for two high schools yeah one was in Tennessee and one was out in Connecticut I was shocked there that's not the first ones we've sold to high schools but two in one week shocked us a little bit because we we may get one every couple weeks from a high school but we just had it happen again last week for high school level people so they must be teaching it in the shops in the school the control engines how does uh your training methods how are they much better than some of the competitor's training methods or what have you heard maybe in Industry that you know how much better you're doing things than somebody else well I to keep it handson and I like to keep it real world um I don't want to talk about Theory because theory is in a book right and I want to show them how it happens right in front of them so when they program it they get the reaction out of them PLC they know what to expect actually like I said earlier that's one of the things that dragged me into this was I was at a course that was a terrible course and quite a few times I've had customers come up to me after the course thanking me for the real world example such as a conveyor with cans going down you want to track the cans and we actually put it up there on the white board and show them how the cans go down the conveyor and we show them how they actually follow through in the PLC so they can relate to the real world and the logical world in the CPU which is a real world application not some theoretical thing you know it's always tough when you ask somebody well how does what does this instruction apply to well it's right here in the book you know I want to know the machine to understand what it's do you know exactly that's the the example with the conveyor is a shift register it's a true example how we used to track cans at a brewery down a conveyor and reject the can that was under fill or overfilled right and when we show it to them you can see the lights go on in their head that that makes sense we're tracking the ones and zeros in the memory just like we're tracking the good and bad on a conveyor okay and we're getting close to the end so uh one of my favorite questions is since you've been in Industry uh for so long and you've seen a lot of machines and a lot of applications what is give me some examples of say a simple application or simple machine using plc's and also a more complex or a very complex machine well actually I saw one today I was coming up to coming here and right on the toll road 400 there's a little Tollgate that goes up and down it's got a little 105 in it automation direct PLC with a little Banner photoi it's one of the simplest applications you can see little gate that goes up and down lets the car through um some of the more complex ones are refineries I was at a Refinery down in Louisiana where they're using 205s and they're actually tying it into their DCS system back door ing it because they can't get the old DCS parts anymore so they're taking 205 chassis and sticking them in over ethernet and using these 205 to do all their pad Loop controls and such another example is a roller coaster if you actually have go in and look at the control scheme behind a a roller coaster at like a Six Flags Great America right it's extremely complex they have sensors along the conveyor and they're they're monitoring how the velocity of the cars it's going by so you know exactly how much analog signal to apply to the brakes to stop you right at the right place so you can get out and walk off very very complex control going on those machines so well that about wraps it up for our discussion here with uh Doug Bell from interconnecting automation I want to thank Doug for coming in and spend some time and giving us a little background um about how all this got started it's always very interesting to talk to our Federation partners and learn about their backgrounds and um if you have any more uh if you want to look up some more stuff on interconnecting automation they have a website and uh Doug Bell got all his training materials his classes his online videos and like you said he's got some new stuff coming out so keep an eye open for that so thanks dog thank [Music] you