Elm Electrical Advances in the Realm of Robotics

Armed with Automation

A robotic palletizer tackles a load of boxes.

No one likes loading boxes onto a pallet. But machines don’t seem to mind.

Mike Holmberg noted as much as he pointed to a neatly palletized pile of boxes from a liquor distributor. In a non-automated facility, he said, someone would be loading those by hand.

“They’re making the different spirits, and then they put them in a bottle, put the bottle inside a case, then the case comes down a conveyor, and some person is picking up each one of these, and they’re stacking it in this stack, all day long. It’s not a fun job,” said Holmberg, senior vice president at Elm Electrical in Westfield.

“So we developed a solution for a robotic palletizer,” he said, pointing to the robotic arm and related equipment on Elm’s engineering floor. “It will now take the box as it’s coming off the conveyor, pick it up, and build this pallet. That’s called robotic palletizing.

“It’s a huge labor saver. And it’s about safety, too. It’s backbreaking. And it’s also work that people don’t want, so they don’t last. And in today’s day and age, it’s hard to find employees,” he went on. “Customers, manufacturers in particular, are having difficulty keeping those kinds of jobs filled. You’ve got to train them, they have to go through all the safety protocols, and then they come in and work for a few days and go, ‘hey, I don’t want to do this,’ and they’re out of here. Now you have to start over.”

On this recent afternoon, Holmberg led BusinessWest on a tour of the floor where it builds, programs, tests, and demonstrates robotic equipment in a growing automation division that serves clients in a number of fields.

“We essentially procure robotic arms from them, and then we integrate them. We do the programming, and we come up with the end-of-arm tool, which is like the robot’s hand. We develop that solution, and then we teach the robot to do whatever task it needs to do.”

Elm Electrical’s journey into automation was gradual, he explained, as the company originally specialized in electrical contracting and eventually moved into programmable logic controller (PLC) systems, which automate and control electromechanical processes, becoming a Rockwell Automation integrator.

“We integrated their product, and we use their product to develop solutions. And over the years, we’ve morphed into supporting different market segments, whether it’s water or wastewater, food and beverage, machining, material handling. And as automation started to grow, we started to get involved in robotics,” Holmberg explained.

To that end, Elm is an authorized FANUC robotics integrator, partnering with FANUC, a global leader in robotics and automation products.

“They make the robotic arms — that’s an arm that’s programmed to pick and place and move things. So we essentially procure robotic arms from them, and then we integrate them. We do the programming, and we come up with the end-of-arm tool, which is like the robot’s hand. We develop that solution, and then we teach the robot to do whatever task it needs to do.”

This FANUC robotic arm is set up to demonstrate its capabilities for an Elm Electrical client that makes wine racks.

One arm on display was being used to nail together components of a wine rack. “The wood gets put down in this fixture, and now the robot holding the nail gun can go and build this for them,” Holmberg said. “And so you can rotate this on a table, rotate the next one in, build the next one. That frees the operator up from doing this tedious task all day to focus on quality control or doing some other portion of the business — more high-value tasks.”

Behind the Scenes

Holmberg noted that he brings that arm to trade shows to demonstrate opportunities for robotics.

“Behind the scenes, there’s a controller, which is essentially a computer that’s controlling that robot, telling it what to do,” he said, pointing out the physical capabilities of the arm and potential tools that can be attached to it. “There’s a motor in each one of those, and it can move in six different directions — it can spin, or it can move forward and backward. And those little motors have to be controlled.

“So we build control panels to hold all those controls, and we give the operator a touchscreen interface to make it easier to operate. Behind the scenes, here at Elm, we wire this; we put in all the technology to make that robot run. We design the control panel, we’ll connect it to the robot, then our engineers will program it to make it work.”

The robots can also be “set up for vision,” as he explained by using a set of multi-colored dice, which the arm can sort.

“Let’s say I want all the blue colors to be picked up. Well, it’ll roll them until it sees a blue color, and then it’ll pick it up and put the blue over here. That’s to show that, in the world of automation, there are times where random parts are coming down a conveyor, and I need to pick those random parts up. That illustrates to a customer that we can do vision-guided robotics. There are industries that would support.”

Whatever the capability, Holmberg continued, “we do all the programming, we do all the testing here, and then we take it to their site, install it, and then train their operators. We do the whole thing.”

While there has always been negative talk about robots replacing workers, Holmberg said this technology can be a positive for both employers and employees.

“Automation sometimes can be a taboo thing because people say, ‘well, it’s eliminating jobs.’ But in some cases, it’s creating opportunities for clients that can’t find laborers to do the work anymore. So in some instances, without automation, they’re not going to survive because they can’t do the work. This allows companies to be able to differentiate themselves and do things less expensively because they can do things faster. This doesn’t take a break, doesn’t go home sick, it doesn’t do any of that stuff because it’s running all the time.

“But I also look at it as an advancement for the employee,” he went on. “If I’m the employee that was doing that tedious task of picking something up and placing the round peg in the round hole all day long, now I get to operate the robot that’s doing that. And maybe I’m operating several robots. So I’m able to achieve a higher value at a job by learning the robotics, learning those skills, and now I have a much different career.

“I envision it as creating opportunities for people in the technology space. If they’re operating the robots, they get a little higher-tech job, and it’s much easier than the backbreaking work they were doing before.”

“So I envision it as creating opportunities for people in the technology space,” he added. “If they’re operating the robots, they get a little higher-tech job, and it’s much easier than the backbreaking work they were doing before.”

Complete Package

Holmberg explained that Elm Electrical has long operated as a four-legged stool, so to speak — its construction division (the main business, which launched the company), an automation group, a service group that provides 24/7 support service for companies, and its control panel business.

“So, ideally, we like to sell a solution that has all four of the legs in the stool. If we can sell an automation solution where we get the after-market support service, that’s great. If we can do our installation, our construction group can install it and put it in place. And if it has control panels in it, now we’ve sold all four legs of the stool. That’s what we try to do.”

Most electrical contractors don’t offer all four niches, he added. “Typically, they would have the service business unit and the contracting division, but they don’t have a panel shop where they build the control panels; they would typically farm that work out. And most integrators doing the automation work like we do, that’s all they do, and they would hire an electrical contractor to do the installation. So it’s rare to find somebody that has all four legs and be able to supply that complete turnkey solution.”

While automation is a growth industry, he added, it also requires significant investment up front, which can be a challenge for potential clients.

“There’s not a manufacturing facility that can’t leverage automation. They want to do something to make their job easier and to make their products faster. They want to open up capacity. They want to make it higher-quality. Now, whether or not they can afford to do that is the next question. Do they have the capital to do that? That’s an investment.”

He acknowledged that further growth is complicated by uncertainty in manufacturing around the economy, tariff impacts, and other factors, but the overall potential remains.

“I feel like automation is a place to be. Think about it — today, everybody wants something now, they want it tomorrow, they don’t want to wait. You can order something on Amazon, and it’s delivered that day,” Holmberg said. “That mindset means you’ve got to build it faster, you’ve got to have it ready faster — and all that is going to take automation.”

At the end of the day, he told BusinessWest, “we want to help customers solve their problems. That’s what we hope to do. We want to develop solutions. That’s the business we’re in — developing solutions and helping customers solve a problem.”

And those customers aren’t choosing from pre-designed models, he added. “Everything we do is custom. We develop it for you. It ends up being your solution for your project. So we like to be a partner with our clients. That’s how we get more work — by doing good things for good people.”