Enabling Versatility and Innovation: iRobot’s Part-Centric Approach to Product Development
00:11 Welcome. You're tuning into conversations with customers where we chat with PTC customers and hear their real world experience of realizing success with our technology. Hello, everyone and welcome. My name is Trish Barrera and I have the pleasure of introducing this webinar featuring Irobot today. You'll see Mark Tabor V P of marketing at P T C and Scott Morris Windshill manager at irobot. Talk about how I robot weathered a series of challenges during the COVID-19 pandemic that included supply chain disruptions,
00:44 strict cost targets and unpredictable swings in demand. You'll also hear how I robot manages component selection drives efficient product reuse and collaborates with contract manufacturers using a part centric approach to product development. Enjoy Scott, you've, you've seen it all at Irobot. I, I love the initial story that I've heard about Irobot where it was, the company was founded to uh to build a robot for the rover for the um moon
01:17 exploration. And sort of the quote that I saw was, you know, build a robot, go to the moon, make a movie. Uh The company has obviously come a long ways uh over that time. So if uh if you could set the context for us. Uh and, and help us understand about, you know, maybe a little bit where I robot came from and, and where I robot is today. Yeah, absolutely. Um, so it was before my time, but, you know, Colin and a college colleague started the
01:51 business many years ago, um with the idea of improving quality of life for people through robotics and they, they built lots of robotic projects and it took them a number of years to get to something that we would consider a commercial success that homeowners understood. And that was with the launch of Rumba. So it was uh uh somewhere around my first or second year with a company that we had a one million party and that was one million connected robots in consumer houses,
02:25 which was pretty amazing. And I think that number has scaled significantly since then. My robot has about 1000 employees globally. So headquartered in Bedford Massachusetts with some design offices in California and then distribution and manufacturing around the world. It has to be a huge number of overall robots. But um so the, the company uh invented, literally invented the category of robotic vacuums uh and has had tremendous success.
03:00 Uh But you're, you're no longer alone in that, that business. So you have competitors, you obviously are not resting on your laurels. I see new products coming out, you know, all the time. So maybe give a sense. Uh You know, I I realized the business has been up and down with the pandemic and, and all different things and we had component shortages, you know, out there that I'm sure uh have impacted you and tariffs and, and all these other things give give a sense of maybe challenges from a perspective of
03:36 externally but, but also internally. Yes. So let's start with the pandemic, right? We were as a business, our robot was trying to make decisions and plans on what the business would look like for that year. One of the first things we did was close, a development program for a new product that would have come out that year and expectation for low consumer turnout. Um And at the same time, we, the company started to dial back manufacturing,
04:06 assuming there would be less of a demand for products. But really what happened is there was a huge demand for products. The beginning of the pandemic and people were suddenly home with their families, not looking to vacuum and clean all the time. But suddenly there were many more people in the house contributing to, you know, the need to clean up. And uh our robot had uh a a very big year that year because of the very high
04:36 consumer demand. Since then, we've struggled a little bit with the supply chain and being able to get the required components to build the electronics for a robot, right? So in some cases, it could be a primary component. It could be a secondary component. It could be how we source them or where, where we source them from and what geographies. So we don't have to ship them around the world to get them to places. But it's been very difficult, especially with the primary circuits that we install software
05:12 on to, to run those robots when those are no longer available. It's up to our robot as a company to find and source a replacement, get software for it, conduct all the product testing to ensure that that product meets or exceeds the quality of the original product and can build in tandem both of those variants of exactly the same product. It sounds like the pace of R and D is just like incredible, right?
05:43 So you know how, how do you keep that edge? Maybe I'll maybe shift the discussion over to the things that you've done. Like um you, you mentioned variants of, of robots, what percentage of, let's say a new robot that you come out with is similar to one before. In other words, reuse, how, how does that play into uh your product development? Yes. So it really depends on the requirements for the new product. The engineering and product team may look at
06:16 existing product portfolio and realize that there's some elements or components from those products that could be reused and they may target them as such. They may want to use a drive base a drive train a control system, a vision system, whatever it is. So they may take a few of those pieces. But the nice thing is those items all exist in windshield, they're all structured content. They can pull the part structures, they can pull all the associated CAD, make copies of them and make it their starting point.
06:48 So yes, we, we never have to start from zero when it's a, a new iteration, new variation of a Roomba product uh which is really great for the engineers because they, they don't start at zero, they start much further ahead and can then just focus on what makes this particular new product a new product development different from what we had previously, right? So let's focus on what sets it to be unique in the category and focus on that and make it just as good as the rest of the product.
07:20 So, in that vein, how do you help them to not duplicate a part? Not, not because, you know, they're trying to duplicate a part, but they, they just can't find the right component that they need or they don't see what they would they could use and and reuse in in the next generation of product. So our primary approach for that is classification, right? So we use windshield classification to identify different categories and types of components and systems throughout the entire database. So simple things like fasteners and connectors
07:55 and electrical components completely makes sense. They're single components that go in. But we also use that same classification to identify key systems within the robot, right? For instance, if we had something like a structure or drive train or assembly, um we're able to break that down a little bit finer. And to go along with that teams can also find the very specific item that they're looking for, but also go over to where used and find out where that component has already been used
08:29 in another product or in a different product. And how prevalent is it maybe it, it's just a one time use. We wanna look at something that is used more frequently or used more commonly or was its use? Was it a bit old? Right. There's, there's times when yes, we definitely use this component but we, we used it five or 10 years ago. And so then let's go look into it and see what it has for replacements. And does it have alternate substitutes or manufacturing parts that are more modern that
09:02 we should use in the current product? Now, at the same time, are they looking at, let's say the risk of using a component, you mentioned, you know, supply shortages and things like that. So what what what sort of information do they have available on the risk side? Yeah, so built into windshield, we use the Silicon Experts connector. So anyone can go to a bill of materials and run a bill of materials. Health check through silicon experts and that will give them uh a couple of categories of
09:36 reports that will let them know the status of the various components, the risk of those components and risk being a combination of things such as availability, cost, age or other factors that could play into whether or not that component is available. You, you said other factors and I'm I'm just thinking about like compliance and meeting like local requirements or sustainability. Yeah, from a compliance perspective, we use the compliance map as our primary tool to capture all of that information.
10:12 So we have uh an a nightly connection between Windshill and compliance map that will take our skew bill of materials. Push it over to compliance map and that is where we are going through all of the efforts to get the material information, the supplier information, everything that we need to assure that our product meets regulatory compliance in all the locations that we anticipate to have it in the market.
10:42 There's a wealth of information inside the compliance tool. We only bring back a handful of verdicts that the engineers need to know before they make a decision on a component. If they would like to get more information, there is a link to directly go to the C map tool and get that information. And when it comes to cost, we, we use another system to do cost and that's impact ECs. We send the information from Windshill over to impact ECs to make sure that it is current
11:15 and updated. And our cost management team takes care of all of the sourcing, supply and demand planning for all of those components. So we can set pricing accordingly. And so are you, are you doing that on each variant to your product? And like how do you look at this over time? You know, and, and see how the cost is evolving over time. All right, when it comes to cost, I robot tries to collect that information as early as possible in the design life cycle so that we can achieve the cost target for a given product
11:51 when it comes to market, right? That's critical for any company building a new product. If you can't achieve your cost target, then you can't achieve your profit target. So critical for us to make those things achievable and visible to everyone in the process. And once the product has made it to release, I robot will continuously look at how we can improve the product cost in order to improve profit, improve product features
12:26 and product capabilities. By looking at other technologies, advancements and components and other systems that we could build into the robot that would provide the product at a lower cost. I would assume you're you're doing quality testing in parallel and testing each of those configurations. Yeah, the headquarters building in Bedford has a pretty extensive quality lab. We have a number of home labs. That you can go into that have a home interior
12:59 with all the various rooms that we do testing in. We also have a lot of automated testing internally and have started to use more robotics to complete our testing process. So instead of having an individual with a product in a test system, taking them on and off, we can queue up a matrix of robots of different types and different styles and run them through a sequence of testing by moving that cart from one test station to the next by having the robot pick in place,
13:33 run test, put it back and go again. And so you're tracking and testing every configuration of a robot in in this manner. Yeah, I'm going back to the variability question. So there's, there's really 22 kinds of methods that we could talk about there. There's this testing program that's happening at the headquarters building to make sure the quality that's coming off the manufacturing line meets or exceeds our expectations. But a lot of the equipment that goes into our contract manufacturers is built by robots.
14:08 So the build stationss, the test stations, the software check the mechanical checks, the physical checks, even the packaging checks are all part of that part of that process. And we collect that data and information in our manufacturing execution system. So we know what those serial numbers are when they're built, what was included in that, how that bomb might be different from another product built with another contract manufacturer. So we can always work with the consumer through
14:39 customer support to get them the information they need for their particular product. Uh Interesting you bring up contract manufacturers and maybe to ask you a bit more on how you're working with those contract manufacturers, especially with the rate of change that we just talked about. And I'm interested in first article inspection. Yeah. So let's talk about first article inspection. That's our primary means of of taking an Irobot owned plastic injection molding tool,
15:11 having it installed with a manufacturer and starting to create plastic parts, right? So that process is custom inside of, of Irobot and we use windshield to manage that. So there is a data collection report that we have with the manufacturer and with the manufacturing engineers that they can validate and confirm first components coming off of this tool. Send it back to Irobot through windshield, collaborate with the engineering team, the production team and make sure everybody has a
15:45 view of the critical data to make sure that the first article inspection documents have passed been approved and we can move into production, right? That used to be a paper process or uh you know, electronic paper process through the spreadsheet that got emailed to all the right people. Um Now it's a controlled process that we run through windshield to manage completely when it comes to collaborating with the contract manufacturers. Our process usually starts with going to Windshill and generating a bill of materials
16:18 report which we can generate in various formats. Most importantly is we need to output from Windshill, a bill of materials report that would include all the replacements, the alternates, the substitutes, all of the manufacture components and the vendor components that we use throughout uh a particular product. So that they have a complete view of which items are regionally specific to them, uh which suppliers are regionally specific to them and which manufacturers aroar prefers
16:52 right over the available ones that we could potentially use. So it's a, it's a great tool to communicate with them and that usually begins our initial start on manufacturing and from there, we have to communicate any changes, right? So if we're in an early prototype build, there's gonna be lots of changes and things are a little more fluid, but we'll still record those using windshield change management, right? So we'll do an E C R, we'll process an E C N,
17:22 some work will be done and we're starting a very new process where we take the change notice and create a windshield package from that which collects all the associated content that comes with that E C N. It could be the mechanical drawings, mechanical model could be gabling, it could be harnesses, it could be a printed circuit board, it's components or the PC B A. All of that information gets collected in the package. We share it to a project in project link that the contract manufacturer has access to.
17:54 And now instead of needing to invite them into our Windshill proper with access to more things than we really want them to have access to. We can exclusively share the change and change objects with them so that we are all communicating in the same way using the same process inside our P L M application. Maybe an another area that you just made me think about is just the overall product configuration. So it sounds like, you know, you have a pretty
18:28 comprehensive cross discipline uh bill of material that's including the electronic parts, the software, the mechanical parts, drawings, packaging, all all of that together. Do I have that? Right? Yeah, absolutely. If, if we look at what we refer to as a skew bill of materials, it it includes everything, it includes the core robot, the face plate, the bottom plate, the battery package, the accessory, everything that goes in the box,
18:59 the documentation, the packaging, the labeling for the location in which it will be sold. It's all included in all of that information is captured in wind chill, going back inside of R and D. How do you um how do you leverage Windshill, let's say, working with the uh electronic uh design tools. So the E tools or you know, how are you doing that on the mechanical side?
19:29 Right. So from a mechanical perspective, we use creo exclusively for all of our mechanical designs. So CREO is our primary CAD system. It's how we generate 3D models, assemblies, drawings and all of the artifacts that go with the mechanical design and that is completely integrated directly into Windshill. So from CREO, I can connect to windshield, I can find the items that I need and I can put them back in as they are changed, iterated and modified over time with electrical components.
20:02 I robot uses altum. Uh We use the all team designer product for making the authoring changes. And we are currently using the alt M Nexus P L M solution to provide this single location for all of the electrical engineers to design, build, collaborate in a single space, all of their work in progress content. And when they feel that their progress has achieved a particular point that they can release it for early production, pre-production or production,
20:35 we can publish that information back to win. So we still use Windshill as our primary source of truth for both mechanical and electrical. We just use uh T M nexus as our primary source for the electrical engineering team to do their collaboration and the rest of the company will consume or collect information about the electrical designs, components, schematics directly from Windshill. Once you leave R and D.
21:05 Uh how do all the other stakeholders leverage this rich digital product definition that you've put together at our robot? We have a lot of occasional users of windshield who might come in to find a schematic for an electrical design or find a particular drawing for a mechanical design or collect some information about suppliers and other pieces. So it is the primary source of information that the business uses to find all the data that we
21:35 need. Um In addition to that, we also use the windshield rest api to take those very specific skew bombs out and store them in a data warehouse where we can use advanced B I tools that help support things that or across multiple products or across a family of products, right? If we wanted to do some resource planning or component planning based on demand and location for manufacturing, we can use the B I tools to make some of those things happen towards the end of 2023 or start
22:11 of 24 we would like to get thing works, navigate deployed for those same casual users who are not in the tool as frequently to give them a much simpler and easier way to access the information that they need the most. You've mentioned a tremendous amount of things that you're doing and support for the R and D community with your contract manufacturers, with your suppliers. It must have taken quite a bit of organization change through the years.
22:43 You've been there for 30 years, maybe describe that journey for us a bit. I robot started uh with wind chill and Creole, right? In the very early days, it was the it was the hottest CAD package available on the market. They wanted to start with the best tool that they could, they were early adopter of Windshill. And you know, the P L M footprint at irobot didn't start with all of the tools at once, right? It started with CAD data management.
23:13 It moved into generating part structures to link that CAD to it. And then over time, P T C also advanced the capabilities in the P L M platform. So we got things like classification and supplier management and other bits and pieces that we were able to use to expand and increase the amount of information we were storing in the P L M tools. So it's really an evolutionary journey both for the business and for the products and really staying current with where P T C is in the P L
23:47 M solutions, taking advantage of the newest capabilities as soon as they're available to make sure we have the best information we can possibly have. Thank you everyone for watching this webinar and learning about irobot's journey to product development with Windshill. Have a great rest of your day.