TransAutomation Technologies Inc.’s mission is to “help businesses succeed through automation,” and get them to “re-shore, remain in California and remain profitable.”
The Santa Ana-based company’s president, Phillip Meilbeck, puts it this way: “I know I sound like a politician, but the most joyful part of my job is when I can help a company do that.”
The systems integrator recently partnered with FANUC America Corp.’s team in Lake Forest to develop a robot that will improve a packaging process at Robinson Pharma Inc., a Santa Ana-based maker of soft gel vitamins and dietary supplements.
FANUC’s Japan-based parent manufactures the robot body, and TransAutomation builds the assembly, plus “end-of-arm” tools—the robot’s hand—to give the machine a function.
Companies usually bring in Meilbeck’s team to assess an entire production line and look for opportunities for automation. From there, it develops a robotic assembly that includes incoming and outgoing conveyors, electronic controls, and programing that guides the robot to perform a task, be it handling material, moving products from process to process, assembly, packaging of food or medical products or welding.
“What an integrator like us does is actually brings the robot to life,” he said. “We give it a job, we give it a purpose.”
Automation’s role in manufacturing is increasing, changing many of the tasks people now perform and even filling their jobs altogether.
About 38% of U.S. jobs could be at high risk of automation by the early 2030s, and 30% of jobs in the United Kingdom, according to a recent report by Big Four accounting firm PwC. Both countries have “a similarly service-dominated economy,” and their most vulnerable sectors include wholesale and retail trade, manufacturing, administrative and support services, and transport and storage.
“The work environment has evolved, and it’s always going to evolve,” said TransAutomation Chief Executive John Thompson. “Lifting 30-, 40-pound boxes is going to become less and less acceptable in the workplace. Also, the client’s labor costs are going higher, and the cost of automation is dropping, so they reach that point where it only makes sense (to adopt the technology). When computers came out, they were very expensive.”
Industrial robots usually take jobs “that are very hard to fill with humans,” those that “are tedious, repetitive, dangerous, and have low retention,” Meilbeck said, adding that in some cases companies struggle to replace workers who are retiring, as the “new generation” prefers to “work at Google or be an Uber driver … They don’t want to do hard manual labor.”
Mission Rubber Co. LLC in Corona hired TransAutomation to improve its manufacturing processes and help it stay competitive by eliminating one work shift.
“Through robotics automation, we were able to get them to operate one shift at a higher level of productivity,” Meilbeck said. “Some may say, ‘Wait a minute, if you’re cutting the second shift, you’re eliminating jobs.’ True, but if Mission Rubber leaves, everybody loses their job. So I didn’t eliminate the second shift, I kept the entire first shift.”
Local Effort
Meilbeck, a mechanical engineer by trade, co-founded the company in 2010 with Thompson—they saw the “coming of the robot age” and left their jobs to bootstrap it.
They started in a 1,500-square-foot space with two employees and now have a dozen workers and have recently expanded their digs to 10,000 square feet. They say they buy most of their parts in Orange County, including “gears, bearings and steel, right here in Santa Ana,” a town that has “good rent and a good workforce,” and is centrally located.
Companies like TransAutomation and Inventek Engineering Inc. in Santa Ana help adapt FANUC’s robots to various tasks—from sorting almonds and milking cows to welding and painting cars on an assembly line.
“There is a tremendous amount of engineering talent and knowledge that the integrators bring,” said Scott Melton, director of sales for FANUC’s Western Region. His team of 17 has been in Orange County since 1995 and handles sales and service for Louisiana, Texas, Oklahoma and all states west of the Rocky Mountains. “We want to be the best at our robots and CNC equipment, and the integrators to be the best at the process and designing systems for industries.”
Dutch company Universal Robots, a maker of collaborative models, recently established a West Coast base at a 3,000-square-foot sales office in Irvine.
Technology Advances
FANUC, whose Americas region posted $1.2 billion in revenue over the past four quarters, has a roster of clients that includes Tesla, Amazon.com Inc., Boeing, Jelly Belly Candy Co. and Superior Industries International Inc., a manufacturer of cast aluminum wheels for automakers. It plans to increase robot production capacity, as “demand for robots is expected to expand in the future,” its latest financial statement said.
FANUC designs and manufactures about 200 models of industrial robots, some of which “have integrated vision and force sensing—they can see and feel and think,” Melton said. “We have the ability for the robot to learn its path, so it gets smarter and produces a more efficient (work) path.”
TransAutomation has also integrated collaborative robots that can safely work alongside human counterparts.
Most of the company’s business—about 85%—comes from automating manufacturing processes. But, thanks to robots’ expanding capabilities, it’s getting more work from the warehousing sector.
“Vision systems are helping robotics to break into distribution centers,” Thompson said.
Robots can be programed to sort boxes or items like strawberries dropping randomly on the conveyor belt.
“The camera is taking a picture and telling the robot where they are at, and it’s picking them up exactly where that camera told them they are at.”
Thompson said “machine vision” can also be used for quality control. “The camera can take a picture of a product, and the robot can pick it up or reject it if, for example, it does not have a tamper band or the label is wrong. Instead of putting it in the pack, the robot will put it in a reject box.”
“This is just developing,” Meilbeck said. “People are finding new applications for it all the time.”
