From Tesla Batteries to Underground Tunnels with Riddhi Padariya

Ever wondered what it takes to lead automation projects at trailblazing companies like Tesla and The Boring Company?

Nikki chats with Riddhi Padariya about her journey from nerdy high schooler inspired by "How It's Made" to becoming a controls engineering leader in industries ranging from tissue manufacturing to carbon capture and underground tunneling. They dive into hands-on lessons, breakthrough technologies like virtual commissioning, the power of industry communities, and Riddhi’s passion for making automation more accessible, especially for the next generation of engineers.

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This episode is brought to you by SPS Atlanta.  Smart Production Solutions is the world's premiere industrial automation trade show is coming to the US!

Register today:  https://www.xpressreg.net/register/SPSA0925/landing.asp?sc&aban&hkey&iq&vip&tm

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Connect with Nikki on LinkedIn:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/nikki-gonzales/

Connect with Ali on LinkedIn:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/alicia-gilpin-ali-g-process-controls-engineering/

Connect with Courtney on LinkedIn:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/courtneydfernandez/

Connect with Riddhi on LinkedIn:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/riddhipadariya/

Transcript

SPEAKER_03 0:00

All right, welcome to another episode of Automation Ladies. I'm your host, Nikki Gonzalez. Today I have uh a guest that we've had some misconnections, so I'm very happy to have her on the show. Uh welcome, Riti Padaria. How are you? Thank you for being with us.

SPEAKER_00 0:16

Thank you, uh Nikki, for taking your time out and inviting me. Uh I'm doing wonderful. Yeah, I'm super excited to uh join you uh today and other people on this podcast.

SPEAKER_03 0:28

Yeah, thank you so much. I I know we connected on LinkedIn, um, had a misconnection at Automate. I noticed that you uh have worked at some places that I'm very interested in. Um currently working at the Boring Company, if I'm getting that right.

SPEAKER_00 0:42

Correct.

SPEAKER_03 0:42

And actually, you're at a conference that I was also very interested in, which you mentioned before we started. Um can you tell us a little bit about, I guess, where you're at? And then I'll start by asking kind of our starting background question.

SPEAKER_00 0:56

Um so um currently I'm in Denver, Colorado, and uh I'm attending one IEEE's American Control Conference.

SPEAKER_03 1:05

American Control Conference. So I wanted to bring that up to our audience because I'm not sure if a lot of our audience attends um IEEE uh events, but I have attended um quite a few IEEE conferences in the past for other engineering disciplines and always found them to be a really good format because a lot of it is kind of research, people doing research, foundational work in that particular area. Um and then also commercial applications. There will be some companies, that sort of stuff. There's typically papers being presented, um, posters. There's a poster section usually where like, you know, people earlier on in their career or s or doing research can present their ideas. And and uh maybe it's because it's an IEEE conference and the controls engineering and automation world is not necessarily filled with all electroengineers, right? Which is so IEEE stands for the International Electrical Engineer. What's the third one for? I don't know.

SPEAKER_00 2:03

Electrical and electronics engineers.

SPEAKER_03 2:05

There you go. Electrical and electronics engineers, which we certainly do have electrical and electronics engineers in our uh sort of listener base and our community. Um, but I just haven't had people talk about IEEE conferences before. So I would encourage anybody that's interested that is either a member of IEEE um or is an electrical engineer or electronic engineer to consider uh checking it out and then maybe checking out the ACC conference.

unknown 2:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 2:32

So with that, um, yeah, I would love for to you to tell us how did you get into automation and what you know, kind of tell us a little bit about your journey.

SPEAKER_00 2:42

Um I was in high school, I used to uh watch uh the show called Habits Made. Oh, I came from school. Bit nerdy, but I think I used to have fun. I was it was pretty cool to see how toys were made uh made and then cars were made. Uh mostly I think it was kind of cool to even see how candies were made as a kid. And over the period of time I just wondered um what are the ways that we can basically make these processes automated in a way that people don't have to do mundane work. Uh at the beginning I was just trying to figure out how to visit such factories where I can basically understand what is going on rather than just watching those things in the TV. Um as I grew up, I developed my interest in mathematics and physics, and eventually I decided to study electrical engineering. And that fascination of like how the industry, industrial products are manufactured, stayed with me, and then I decided to like do the internship while I was doing my masters, and I definitely enjoyed that. I was like, wow, this is kind of cool that you get to see something which is an idea all the way uh to uh something which is like being mass-produced and being used by many people all over the world, uh, and not just in one industry, uh, but in multiple industries, uh like starting from food processing to process, automotive transportation, so on and so forth. And um, after that, I um got a job at Kimberley Clark. Uh so I worked on Kleenex manufacturing products in Connecticut, very well-known product, everybody knows. Yep, and uh, whenever I walked into the factory, I had my head blown because I had no idea that just something as simple as tissue could require like maybe 75 or 100 different steps from the time you get simple pull all the way it gets up from all the way till it gets packaged and get distributed. Um, and that too, in so many variants, um, based on the way people prefer. So down there I think I funn I got fundamentally trained uh as an automation engineer, and um after that I was like, yes, I also like to work in the automotive sector sector. Uh so from there I decided to join Tesla down there and working on products like uh battery, uh the 2170 battery cells and 4680. Those are the battery cells uh that uh Tesla used to make their uh Model 3Y and Cybertruck uh battery packs, um, as well as I worked on uh megapacks, so our container-sized battery pack in which um people or the industry um could store the uh electricity during off-pick hours and then sell it during peak hours, so that's for that that way they can make money. So overall, there was a giant best uh from like me coming from process industry to automotive uh industry overall. I like Mega Pack uh weighs about like 15 to 20,000 pounds. Wow. And like moving, seeing them or figuring out a way to like convey them from one station to the other. Like the exact opposite of a tissue, right? Yep, exactly. Size, weight, compl everything. Yeah, yep, absolutely. Uh yeah, that was that was pretty cool. Um, a product to work on uh overall, different challenges uh that I ended working on or taking on um to be able to like automate that. And that factory, the Tesla megapack factory, which is in Lathrop, California, that was the first ever pack, uh the first ever uh first of its kind factory that we made it uh or uh built it uh out there in the world because nobody else was producing mega pack size, container size, pretty much the battery packs out there in the world. Yeah, so that was another another challenge. Um, and after that, I end up um joining uh Erlum, that's a carbon capture startup. Oh um, uses um basically limestone, crushed limestone, um, and then exposes that to the atmosphere for three to five days, and over the period of time, it basically absorbs the carbon dioxide. That just to um basically save the environment. And the compressed uh carbon dioxide was the product that was sold to uh the customers uh were building hospitals uh or any sort of buildings, or uh they basically mix that carbon dioxide with the concrete so they would get permanently stored um in the product where it would basically not uh harm our atmosphere. Um so so some somewhat similar to what I was supporting at Tesla. It's like working towards uh climate change or at least accelerate that um climate energy um mission overall. And after that, currently I'm working uh at the Boeing Company, so we are digging underground tunnels uh in Las Vegas. So we have gotten about uh we have gotten a contract to dig 68 mile long tunnel all around the strip area, which is easy. Yeah, yeah, we have I think completed about 12 miles of it.

SPEAKER_03 8:01

And I was just in Vegas like three weeks ago and it was so hot, I just didn't go outside.

SPEAKER_00 8:06

Yeah, maybe going under the tunnel would have helped me because it's uh cold right now. Yeah, I didn't it gets pretty hot down there in Vegas.

SPEAKER_03 8:12

Um we have tunnels actually here in downtown in in Houston, like going between buildings. Um with I think there's like some shopping. I actually haven't been down there, but I've heard about it. And it's it's so that you don't have to like go walk outside in the extreme heat to get between these places in the in the daytime. And I think obviously as with the acceleration of global warming, places are gonna get even more hot. We're gonna need more underground.

SPEAKER_00 8:41

Yep, yeah. Very cool. Yeah, so yeah, the main main goal of the company is to uh save uh people time when they're commuting or transporting from one location to the other. Yeah. Um, and um yeah, so the newest concept that the boarding company uh is trying, which is different than the other boarding company, is that whenever we actively dig the tunnel, we'll not have people inside the tunnel operating machine, but we will instead be doing that from uh one office like a remote remote remote control center, and then of course, whenever there's a maintenance issue at that point, uh somebody will be taking care of those. But yeah, that's a huge step forward from um what other traditional Boeing companies are doing. Um, company have produced like four different versions of a peripheral machine, that's the fleet name that they have given. So, in all of the roles that I've taken, um, I use uh PLC like programmable logic controllers to be able to automate machines that could produce parts or uh basically automate the processes that we need to do, um, while keeping the safety in mind so we have safety logic around um the entire design that we have for specific machine or the stations. Apart from that, I work on developing user interface like human machine interface, particularly, that get used by operators who is operating the machine, and I also configure uh SCADA system, supervisory control, uh, and data acquisition. So as issue occurs, let's say in the past, or if something is reoccurring, we can capture um those data and then uh we can re-evalue it or evaluate uh specific scenarios just so we can prevent the downtime or could sometime figure out the root cause based on uh the data that we captured that comes from like PLC, PLC gather set, we put it and set it to cloud, things like those. And currently I'm leading a team of three people in Las Vegas at the Boring Company, and apart from that, I'm also involved in some other societies, uh like International Society of Automation, IEEE. I'm happy to talk more about it, but in short, like how I got into automation basically started from like high school, where I started watching the show and started taking action towards it one after the other over the period of time.

SPEAKER_03 11:07

That's very cool. Like you kind of had you found something that you really wanted to do and were able to get after it. Um the show How It's Made gets brought up a lot in our in our podcast, in our conversations, because it's kind of the only show that anybody can think of that really showed them the inside of a factory.

SPEAKER_01 11:24

Yep.

SPEAKER_03 11:25

And my observation about it is I always loved watching it too, but I was like most of the sh the factories that were showcased were rather old school, right? They're kind of manual processes, oftentimes ones that had been around for generations, and they were, you know, showing off some legacy way of making something, um, which for me had now like a couple of implications. One is A, like a custom-made automated machine that does do something. Like, because in some cases, some of these shows you they show you, like I remember one that was like balloon manufacturing. And it was almost completely automated, and the machine was very intricate, very fast, but it was built a long time ago. So like the logic and a lot of these things, they're not state of the art, but that machine is still running and it's still pumping out thousands or millions, whatever. Like the the number was insane just of how much it's producing. Um and it shows that A, like this automation can these machines can last a really, really long time if they're if they're properly maintained. And sometimes, you know, you update the controls along the way. But the other thing I thought of was like, yeah, but a lot of the companies that are more automated, they are not, they're not allowing anybody to see their operations like this because it's a competitive advantage for them. Um, and so to me, it's always been a little sad how few people really realize how cool this stuff is. Um, and it's cool that you kind of saw that and were like, how could it be more automated? And I want to see more factories because I didn't see a factory tour until I was in college. And it just so happened to be that we got had like a brewery tour lined up when I was studying abroad in Mexico. It was one of the extracurricular activities that we could do from school because there was a Coors brewery in town. Um, and I think that's the first time I saw like a high-speed bottling line. And I also was just mesmerized, you know? Yeah, and then I couldn't get enough of seeing all types of different factories and like how different things are made. And yeah, there's so much to it too. It's not just making the product, but then it's packaging the product and then packaging, you know, packaging it on the pallets, or like for breweries, even just thinking of like the different you got cans, you got bottles, you got variety packs, you got you know, oh it's yeah.

SPEAKER_00 13:44

Yeah, it's a great way of learning uh about automation, yeah. To think a certain way, right?

SPEAKER_03 13:49

Yeah. Yep, yep. Um what has been one of your favorite technologies to learn um once you kind of got your hands on something? I know you mentioned PLCs, HMI, SCADA. Um, I'm sure you've worked with a variety of other things, you know, along the way in your career. Do you remember anything in particular that when you discovered it or first worked with it, you were like, oh, this is really cool?

SPEAKER_00 14:12

Yep. I particularly like to talk about the Horsfield Commissioning. Um mostly whenever I heard had heard of it, uh heard of that in the past, I thought, oh, those are the technologies just uh for the labs, you cannot use that in the industry. But I was proven wrong when I was deploying one of the robots at Tesla's uh Model 3 uh battery manufacturing line where we had to uh basically revamp the station. In other words, like there was already an existing station which was like a few years old, but we were having some repetitive issues. So we had data collected, but based on that, uh we wanted to see how we can modify our existing station in a way that it could produce more number of uh parts uh through the station. And we did not have enough amount of downtime or let's say several months. We were given four months to be able to like figure that out. Uh at that point, I I thought like we can just give a shot to virtual commissioning and see how we can pretty much mimic the issue that we are having at the station virtually in the computer, yeah, and how would we go about like solving that problem? So, like PLC would be talking to robot, robot would be listening which particular program is being asked to run, and they would complete the task. And at any given moment, I would just randomly fault the robot and then figure out the recovery sequence. Yeah, so there were multiple locations where it was faulting out, so we had data. So, like at that point, when we leveraged the virtual commissioning, in short, like kind of rewriting uh the robot code in a way uh that would not only reduce the cycle time to be able to finish the process on one product, but also told us um how can we minimize number of moves when let's say at that point we were picking the board from one location, uh the PCB board to the other, and we were applying that board on the battery modules to be able to gather the data about the battery overall. Um and whenever uh I was going through the iteration of like faulting out robot at any random time, I collected more data by just um producing um random faults. So, and based on that data, we were able to even further save the cycle time. We were able to also save the troubleshooting or the commissioning time because I was able once uh the code was rewritten um or the robot, I was also able to test it. And um uh at that point I was able to like cure out many bugs um beforehand uh before that code was like deployed on actual station. So that was in my opinion kind of cool. Um, and there are still so many products that nowadays I see that are coming out where you can pretty much import the 3D view of your drawing that mostly mechanical engineers uh designs, yeah, and you deploy that in your robotic tool. Like a RoboGuide was the tool that I end up using for Funac. And uh we had um third OEM system in which we were storing the data. Uh so all three uh things like PLC, robot, and OEM, three, all of them were communicating to each other, uh just virtually. And uh yeah, it ended up saving us about like two weeks of downtime. Uh and that's huge. Yep, and OEE was improved by like seven percent. Wow, so yeah, so that was a cool one. I I thought the virtual commissioning is not good for that, it's just good for you to figure out um maybe a small uh level project where um maybe just the PLC is commanding few actuators and small devices, not something complex as like a robot where it's doing multiple tasks and have have to choose like multiple different boards that it had in front of it, uh having a rejection cycle, recovery cycle, all of that. So yeah, that that definitely pumps me up. And now I keep using the similar tool for other projects that I work on. Um that's yeah, that's one example I could think of.

SPEAKER_03 18:14

That's really cool. That's one that I kind of wish that I had had a chance to play with when I was uh back in the industry doing some stuff on the floor myself. Like we did not have that ready yet. And I myself have haven't heard too many stories of actual successful um stories like that. I've I definitely have also heard of systems integrators starting to do more virtual commissioning or or OEMs, right? Before they actually go on the floor. But to kind of take that, take a trouble piece of the line, redesign it, and or you know, use it to figure out how you can improve. I haven't heard a story like that before, so that was very cool. Yeah. I can see why having that experience and now the ability to apply that to many more problems as you see them, right? That's a great tool to have in your toolkit.

SPEAKER_00 19:02

Yeah, yep, yeah, definitely. I think it's engineers, another friend, just like ChatGPT helps you along along the way as you try to solve specific problems through prompts. Yeah, I think virtual commissioning is a similar way.

SPEAKER_03 19:14

What are are there any new tools that are not quite there yet, but you have seen or glimpsed that you think are promising that you're excited to potentially get your hands on?

SPEAKER_00 19:23

Yep, so another uh tool that I recently learned from the startup, which is based in the Bay Area, what they're doing is uh they uh are developing a platform in which people could write down the code in Python or C. Okay, and then based on that code, you can automatically uh convert that logic either to letter logic, structured text, and function block. So Aaron Bradley, like Beckov, all of those um platform all of those uh companies have like their own tools like Twinket, Addis Logics, but I've not seen this, and I feel like people who are even in the computer engineering, if they wanna they have develop any interest in like manufacturing and automation, yeah, just because they know Python and C, they would be able to like come uh towards this field. I've seen that uh I I read this statistic somewhere that the only 5% of all the people who are controls engineers uh in the United States are below the age of uh 30 uh two. And I feel like that number is low, and we need to like encourage more people to get into this field because it's cool, it's like you can do many things, hardware plus software, it's and like dangerous combo. Like you so people who actually are interested in like computer science would like to come in. I feel like tools like this, tools like this, um, would definitely get them more excited. It's not there yet. I feel like it's uh so that uh the startup uh who have developed this, they only developed this for Ellen Bradley tool. Okay but the codices is the background or the um uh application that all of these companies mostly use to be able to make their environment. Like Twinket is also depends on codices, and codices you could have the Python C stuff like that. So I feel like it will eventually come to four other platforms too, like Backoff is the PLC that nowadays I program or have been programmed in in last few years, but before that I programmed LRM Bradley. Transition is not too bad, but like six months, maybe here and there, to be able to like get used to of those um uh new techniques of like dealing with uh to to be able to deal with like how to troubleshoot or how to integrate something. Um if the the tool that I was talking about where you can write down just a Python or C code, I feel like it will maybe reduce that time from six months to even three or two. So yeah, that's another tool that uh I'm pretty excited about right now.

SPEAKER_03 21:45

Yeah, that is pretty cool. Also, I guess then if you just you know want to convert your programs from one to something else, I'm assuming some technology that can translate between common languages like that would be super helpful. Yep. Um but yeah, it it Your the demographic point that you made is spot on. There's still an argument here in the United States that Alan Bradley controls the market, everyone knows how to troubleshoot and program uh Alan Bradley, which is why big end users default to it, and that it's safe to stay in that ecosystem and that it's risky to go with anything else because you may or may not have technicians around that know how to troubleshoot that code, or maybe your maintenance technicians won't understand if it's not ladder. Um and it's it's an argument that I think has you know kind of held us at a status quo for a really long time. But the problem is eventually all of those this crop of people that know how to support this, they're going away and people aren't replacing them either. So you were you're gonna have to find interest, you're gonna have to find ways in for more people into our industry that want to do it and you know, not chain them to, oh, it we have to do it this old way because that's you know kind of the only way to support things going forward. Um and I think there is probably a little bit of a difference between like where newer companies, like startups like you work for, companies that are more adjacent to you know, Bay Area, they they tend to look more towards these emerging technologies maybe than some of the uh other players that have been around a long time and then they're kind of caught, not caught, but like they're very bought into a specific kind of ecosystem. Um what is it about Beckoff? Is it is it the um the Ethercat, you know, quick, I guess is very fast communication, right? For robotics and things like that that you find to be uh an advantage with the Beckoff?

SPEAKER_00 23:40

Yep, that uh yeah, so Ethercat is fast. Second thing is they also have some hardware which you could use or leverage for a redundancy. Let's say if one set of frames get lost, you have a second backup. Okay, similar to like be uh double sec for the safety PLC. Most people use for L and Bradley, that's a cool one. Second one is just because overall I I like programming in like Python C. I think structure text seems intuitive, like rather than having more number of lines. Um, I think one feature that they recently enabled is like if you right-click on specific program, you can switch over from structure text to letter and then function block. Yeah, it's um I think it's more possible for the newer version of Twinket as compared to the older one. That's another cool one. So whoever is more familiar with uh letter logic, they can choose to see that logic in a letter as compared to the uh structure text. Um, also, uh, I kind of like um the Slim uh I.O. cards uh in the blocks that they have um as compared to others that I have seen in the market. Seems intuitive in my opinion. Um I think those are the three or four reasons that I I prefer, particularly backup PLC uh for the design and development.

SPEAKER_03 24:54

But it is hard. I mean, just nobody has time to like get to be an expert in every single PLC platform there is out there. So I I think most people's opinions are oftentimes colored by A, I like some things about this and B, it's what I'm used to, or I got to use it somewhere, liked it, then used it some more, right? Because you you kind of can't be a master of all the things all at once. Yep, yep. So I still wait for the day where I can talk to someone that, like, oh yes, I use them all, and here are all the pros and cons, you know what I mean? Yep, yep. But we yeah, we I want to give a shout out to Beckoff. They're one of the sponsors of OT Skatacon. Um and we recently got to Ali and I got to visit their offices in Houston, which is very process automation heavy down here, obviously. Um they have a nice little demo skid in their office that I guess they used to take to a conference called OTC, Offshore Technology Conference, which I went to for the first time this year also. But uh I guess OTC is shrinking year over year. And people have told me that people used to bring like huge demos, like just it was a how much bigger production um than it is today. And I don't know if it's the change in you know, kind of more online communication and and that sort of thing, or you know, the industry itself, oil and gas, maybe contraction. I'm I'm not entirely sure, but um it's kind of cool to see like some of these big demos in person. Um the host of OT Skatacon this year is Andres Hauser, and they are an instrument manufacturer, also uh very big in in oil and gas, but they have a huge process training sent unit in their uh facility that all of our attendees are gonna get to see, which is pretty cool. And they've got like control systems of all different kinds. They've I think mostly um Alan Bradley on the PLC side, but different things mixed in. So it's not just like one vendor's thing that you're seeing.

SPEAKER_00 26:47

I see, got it.

SPEAKER_03 26:47

Um one of the reasons why we've liked having OT Skatacon at Experience Centers is Phoenix Contact hosted us last year. I see. And they have a really nice facility here in Houston, also focused on kind of their their power, um the stuff also that's like more useful in in oil and gas, power transmission, things like that. But they all had a really cool like demo wall. Um and there's something about it to me having an event where there's like an environment that speaks to you rather than a generic hotel like lobby or conference center. And while we're still small, it works out really well because some of these comp companies have training rooms that are big enough to hold us. Unfortunately, back off their office is you know fairly big. They can, I think they have a training room for like maybe 20 something over there. Um, but we would have had to get a theater that's co-located by their office to be able to fit everyone, and the theater was busy this uh during this time that we have OT Skatecon.

SPEAKER_00 27:48

Um but yeah, it makes a huge difference to see yeah, products being used for specific applications. And uh yeah, I think I I felt a similar way when I was at Automate 2025 in Chicago. Yeah, I got to see different kind of robots, like different um differences that they have. Product-wise, one uh is somewhat better than the other in based on what applications you're trying to program. Uh, same with uh lots of uh I.O. module options. I think Phoenix Contact is where I started my internship. That was I think my first career. I mean, my first job as an intern uh in this field overall. So yeah, I also end up seeing new I.O. modules and all. I feel like yeah, it makes a huge difference where you get to like see them actually in action as well as uh get to compare based on like what you like to do uh for specific projects. So yeah, I feel the same way that just being there, seeing those things make makes a lot of differences compared to just sticking to like one location where you just only get to see one product. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 28:46

So was this your first time at Automate this year?

SPEAKER_00 28:49

Yes, it was, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 28:50

Okay. And you only had one day, you said?

SPEAKER_00 28:53

Yes, I was, yeah. I was delivering the talk.

SPEAKER_03 28:55

I bet that was overwhelming. Like there you couldn't have walked the whole floor in one day, right?

SPEAKER_00 28:59

Oh, absolutely not. Yeah, there were so I think there were like maybe three or four hundred different companies, if I'm not wrong. Yeah, I bet you could do maybe like 50 or 60, and that too was like maybe it's too much to take. I try taking as much notes as I could. Um, but yeah, definitely it's one of the best ones uh if you're in like automation controls uh field overall. Um yep. For sure. And so you had you said you had a talk there? Yes, I ended up uh delivering a talk on how to leverage um new HMI standards uh which are getting developed by International Society of Automation. Um like for modern factories uh overall. Um there are some standards which has come out over the span of time. Um, but some of the lessons that I had learned over the period of time were like HMIs are cluttered, or the choice of colors are wrong, or they're uh a bit distracting, or the choice of uh the let's say the touch screen uh or the tangent is not uh chosen wisely. Like things like those um were the topics that I end up covering uh during my talk. And uh yeah, I think it was a good conversation. I ended up getting an audience of about 30 people, and uh yeah, hopefully.

SPEAKER_03 30:14

I wish I had caught it. Honestly, that's my that's my area now that I I want to be involved in. But it's hard at a show that big you can't be everywhere, uh, and there's so many potentially interesting things to do. Yeah, man, I would love. Do you have slides from your talk now? I'm gonna nerd out. Yes, I do. Yeah, literally share that with you. Yep, yep, yep. I'm so bummed I missed it. Yeah. Maybe we should do a webinar sometime based on that.

SPEAKER_00 30:42

Yeah, as long as yeah, if it's helpful to any of the people in the audience.

SPEAKER_03 30:46

Yep. I think that would be. That would be really helpful. Um so I know, yeah, there's quite a bit of debate about good HMI design. Um, and I think sometimes, you know, there's context around that, depending on what the what the use case is. It's not always that the standard is going to be ideal. There are outlying use cases for all kinds of things, right? But the standard the point of the standards is to try to make sure that for the majority of applications there it are common standards, particularly when it comes to things like safety and you know operator strain and and making sure that things are designed in a way that then can be operated properly, right?

SPEAKER_00 31:24

Absolutely, yep, yeah. Sometimes I've seen myself uh in the situation where operators are not able to find the buttons because they're like two or three way uh levels down, right? And uh the factories which are as big as like Tesla's where operators uh same operator might not like run the same station, they would just uh shuffle around uh to keep uh keep the work a bit exciting as well as um making sure they understand many process uh steps along the line. Yeah. So if they don't find familiarities between two different HMIs, even though it is from the same, it is they are there to uh develop the same product. Um I think yeah, that's another disconnect that I've seen. I feel like it's the HMIs are mostly there to hate uh help operators and keep them safe if they need to like stop any process at any given point. If the E stop, I mean they should be reachable, but if they are not, uh like how how they react uh at that given point.

SPEAKER_03 32:19

Have you had a lot of frustrations with HMIs coming in on I guess equipment built by uh other OEMs? And go ahead. What kind of variation, I guess? Do you have any kind of stories or examples of like the worst thing that you've seen that you hope never to see again in an HMI?

SPEAKER_00 32:37

Yeah, yeah, I think uh most of the time the HMIs uh that I have uh worked on or used were developed internally, but that doesn't mean they were always perfect.

SPEAKER_03 32:47

Okay, okay, so even internally there's differences and changes.

SPEAKER_00 32:51

Yeah, okay. Yeah. Um so I have worked with Factory Talk that's from Eleanor Bradley or Rocco Automation. Uh another one that I've used is ignition, uh, and the third one uh is back-off HMI so that they have uh their own um yeah, face plates. Sometimes you can build your own. Similarly, um, so some of the uh discrepancies that I've seen, even for the internal HMI projects that I've seen, are there like the face plates uh would not look similar. Um those those are nothing but just showing which interlocks are okay, which permissives are okay or not, if something is running, faulted, uh what were the pile error files? Let's say if something was faulting out, um if there were errors, there were missing timestamps. So it's basically defits the purpose of knowing why it faulted and uh sorry when it faulted, it tells you why, but it doesn't tell you when. Yeah, so things like those, like people miss it. So like standardizing those things um um also takes effort into uh even within the company. Yeah, like there I I had also worked with different kind of different uh engineers where they were only developing face-face for factory talk, but not for ignition. So they would do work their own way. Um but if they do not collaborate or if if they do not discuss even internally uh within the company, then it would also confuse people overall. I mean it it takes lots and lots of iterations when particularly we are developing those face plates from scratch for multiple platforms at give any given point. Yeah, um, yeah, same with the color standardization as well. If something is in manual, do you put it in gray color or you want to put it in blue versus whatever the other standards are there from the International Society of Automation and um IECs. Um people the people start uh start heading uh their own um well, they have their own preference of like uh developing the user interface and the face plates like that. Um so yeah, I've seen some examples like that, uh, which is misleading. Uh I feel like getting operators input uh is most pretty cool as once you develop and deploy the HMIs to the machine. I mostly try to stick around uh through the station as much as I can just so I can interact continuously with operators to see how things are going, get the input, work with the team of engineers to be able to like make those things better, apart from like standardizing the faceplate looks and uh what are the ways of like making it better. Yep.

SPEAKER_03 35:25

No, that's actually a good point. I haven't thought about the fact that it's a really smart thing to do to rotate your operators, get them to learn more of the process, be able to operate more than one machine. But I think oftentimes the older way of kind of doing it was to have dedicated operators for certain machines. So they get to know that machine really well, but that also makes it a very rote repetitive job. And you probably get less retention of people when they're just operating a single machine. And then if that person, if somebody's out, then you end up with people that are less equipped at running that machine, taking the next shift or whatever. I mean, challenges, pros and cons with both models, but I think at this point, manufacturing does need to up its game in attracting and retaining people. And obviously the companies like Tesla and the boring company don't really have a problem with attracting talent, and people do know that probably when they come to work for these companies, they're gonna learn a lot. It's a it's gonna be you know a positive thing for their career. Um but some other less well-known or less you know fast-growing manufacturing company um may want to consider how they're treating their operators in terms of the kind of ongoing career opportunities, advancement, and then even just cross-training across like the different disciplines within the factory, right? Yeah, there's something to be said about just having the expertise in like how the entire product is made.

SPEAKER_00 36:54

Yep, absolutely. Yep. It keeps, in my opinion, things exciting day-to-day or weekly, even if the rotations happen every week, not every day. Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 37:03

What about scheduling? Do you do you have a very like is it very demanding um being in a type of position you are in terms of like the the times that you have to be available, or or um, do you feel like you have this is a dumb word, but I'm gonna ask it anyway, some work-life balance, or are you pretty much all in on the work right now?

SPEAKER_00 37:23

Yeah, it's mostly all in. Um yeah, it's uh mostly maybe 55 to 60 hours a week uh kind of schedule is something what I follow. I including my team members as well. Uh, particularly just because the boarding company is still a CDC startup. We are trying to figure out uh to make our uh operations uh much more smoother. Like uh when I was working at Tesla, many um products or the stations were much more mature because we had to redeploy the similar station in multiple factories, like for example, uh I supported the projects at three different sites, so up to some extent, uh they were replica of each other by even let's say 85 to 90 percent. So there was an overlap, but right now uh even if we started having overlap because we have four machines, uh our four looks drastically different than our number two and three. So uh when it comes to like upping the game or increasing uh uh keeping up with the skill level is uh somewhat more demanding than what I would use what I was used to in my previous jobs. Um, but uh in fact it's um definitely exciting because I'm getting to learn about hydraulic systems, uh, which I've been learned in the past. Yeah, so yeah, that's I I feel like even though I'm a controls engineer, I also um wear a cap when I'm acting as a mechanical engineer where I have to troubleshoot hydraulic issues. Um I mean, people are there to be able to provide me support. We have this done the mechanical design. But as a controls engineer, I feel like I always feel that it's one of the tough, tougher jobs as an engineer because you need to know the software, you need to understand the electrical as well as mechanical. So at any sometimes like you end up wearing like two or three different uh heads at any given point. Um I think after a point, I now I see that um my first four or five months uh in the role was a bit more challenging because I was learning so many things, like coming from auto metal to process industry to transportation sector. I mean many processes were quite different than what I was used to, even though fundamentally PLC, HMI, and SCADA are there. Um yeah, I still had to go through a steep learning career. I have about like seven years of experience now, but every single time I start working in a different uh sector, I feel like it's yeah, re- reinventing, uh going through my um skill upping every time. So that that's kind of exciting.

SPEAKER_03 39:53

Yeah, because really controls engineering is not about writing the code. You have to know how to write the code, but if you don't know how the system functions and what's connected to it, and then can troubleshoot, then you're always gonna be victim to other people a pointing the finger at you and saying it's your code because you don't know what the heck else is going on. Yep, yep.

SPEAKER_00 40:11

It happens sometimes.

SPEAKER_03 40:12

Yeah, but then you know, you really, I guess not really a controls engineer, you're more of a programming, you know, person or technician or something at that point. But this is definitely one of those roles that you can keep collecting and keep broadening your scope just a little by little and learn that way, or in your case, or or probably both, going from sector to sector, you pick up like different ways of kind of doing similar things. Um have you found that there are some things that you've is there anything that you've learned in one sector that you've been able to uh kind of apply in another and go, actually, there's a way that this is done in you know auto manufacturing. I've heard that from some people. Like when they when they are able to kind of work across sectors, is like there's for whatever reason in this industry they always do it this way, but they don't know that there's a better way that we can borrow from this other industry. And then in some cases things are like nope, diametrically they have to be done differently because of these two you know it industries operate so differently. Um, I guess very convoluted question, but like how much cross-pollination have you seen between the all the different sectors you've worked in?

SPEAKER_00 41:17

Yep. So since um when I was uh working at uh Slide Nidlum, I was using Vaco. So PLC platform-wise, uh mostly I've seen uh function blocks or the libraries. We that's what we commonly defer them as. Yeah, um, they were um now we have um I've seen the function blocks and the library in both sides in both industry. Um also the way the state machines that basically controls uh all the state machines or the child control devices sequences that we have. Um, from programming set points, I've seen about like 95% of all the overlap when it comes to mechanical and electrical design. I think that's where I've seen uh lots of differences. Okay, because one definitely required hydraulic control as compared to the other, did not. So just like fundamentally, processor processes are different. Similarly, an HMI as well. Uh, I've used backup in the past, uh, and I do for my control as well. Um project exists. Uh sorry, the face space exists, uh, existed even when I uh was developing the HMI in the past, and there are some features that people use it, uh, which are uh provided where it comes with uh the tool itself. So people started like trusting more and more, and I feel like if the same tools could be used in two different industries, companies doing something right, like Backov HMI, yeah, yeah. People have a good tool that uh you could use it uh in multiple different industries overall. Uh I think those yeah, the PLC and HMI wise, I see lots of overlap. I would say maybe about 70-75% overlap. The new thing that I learned in my current role is uh have you link your input and outputs in the PLC. Um, I have some of uh software engineers in my team. We have written a Python script in a way that you can automatically uh uh link the co uh inputs and outputs. You don't have to manually do it, which is uh really time saving. Um like maybe you can save four or five hours because we have like thousands of input-outputs and motors, so on and so forth. So pretty much you would have about like over two, three thousand tags that need to get linked. So that is uh time saving. That is something I hadn't used in the past, but apart from that, yeah, PLC buys and HMI buys, um lots of uh overlap.

SPEAKER_03 43:42

Yeah, yeah. What if you uh got a chance to start over in a new industry tomorrow, what do you think you would pick?

SPEAKER_00 43:49

I would love to work in energy sector. Okay. Uh it excites me. Um by training, I'm an electrical engineer. Yeah. And I I feel like uh I know we uh people In uh general keep talking about nuclear uh energy. If we can make it uh work, um we could have our electricity being um generated at like few cents per hour. I mean it's already few cents per hour, like 10 to 15 per kilowatt hour. But if we can even bring it down by half of the coast or one third of the coast, yeah. Lots of research and development is going on, uh, but I feel like it excites me overall because uh it it will come with the new challenges, um different way of like designing the safety system. Like people have learned in the past that nuclear power plant could be somewhat dangerous if the understanding of the city.

SPEAKER_03 44:35

Yeah, obviously safety is one of the biggest things to think about there.

SPEAKER_00 44:39

Yeah. So I I have I've seen um that like whenever I have some free time, I read books about them or some blogs. I particularly follow Titans of Nuclear, that's one of the podcasts where experts from nuclear uh people who are nuclear physicists or uh who are working in nuclear uh power plant industry overall, they come down there and talk about what kind of challenges that they run into and how how to go about like solving their problem. Um so yeah, I think that's one of the sectors that I like to explore uh maybe in the future. Um another one is space exploration. Um I feel like doing something uh where pretty much not many people could get damaged because it's within the one factory, but if something you have developed that could uh get launched to the space, where you safety is another uh most critical element in that one as well, just like nuclear energy. That's another sector that comes in my mind because I um now I'm learning about hydraulics, propulsion, those are the concepts mostly they use also in the space uh industry as well. So that's another sector sector of role uh excites me.

SPEAKER_03 45:49

Very cool. Isn't it fun now that like we have podcasts of experts in a niche area? Okay, cool. Like you would never really have been able to learn all of that stuff in your spare time if you weren't, you know, either going to university for that program, being able to listen to these professors or something, or had a job where they, you know, you got a chance to research that. That's one of the things I love about podcasts now. I I like to listen to like experts in their field talk about their thing. Because I can learn more in two hours. Like just listening to them talk about their special interest. Because like I'm not gonna go out and like spend my days reading all their papers, right? But if if I get to hear them passionately talk about the thing that they do for a couple hours, they're gonna hit some of the gold nuggets that like I would just never it's it's amazing and and cool how much knowledge like we can get nowadays.

SPEAKER_00 46:42

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_03 46:42

Yeah, thank you for your second from people that are that are s have devoted like their entire careers or their entire lives to researching these things.

SPEAKER_00 46:50

Yep, absolutely. And one thing that I like to add to that point is it's like if you try to network with someone, let's say via LinkedIn or a conference, I feel like you might get to meet that person or not, but podcasts they're recorded, yeah, you can listen to them anytime. And as I said, yeah, goal nuggets, like those people literally come to those specific conclusions or ideas after like so many iterations, and they are just there for you to like grab, implement, read more from some of the topics that they uh describe. Yep.

SPEAKER_03 47:22

Absolutely. Well, now you're you're added to the roster of experts on podcasts and and event conference speakers that people are gonna want to learn from. Um, and so with that, it looks like we're coming up on you know close to the end of the episode here. So, what um interest do you have in connecting with people um that are interested in the same things as you? Where can people kind of find you? Are you is there anything that you're looking for in terms of, you know, maybe in the next six months to a year, people that you would want to connect with or areas that you want to, you know, explore or get together with on?

SPEAKER_00 47:59

Yeah. Yeah, mostly I try to um collaborate with people through International Society of Automation. Okay. That's where I'm serving as a technical assembly um member as well as technical um uh associate um the committee for the automation and controls. Okay. So uh we have several groups, uh, but particularly we are basically uh have multiple forums under automation and controls where people from all over the world come, post their questions, we have uh conversations going back and forth uh with any questions that they might have, or if there is any specific projects that they are working on and would like to share, get their input, or even host the Connect Live. That's one of the live sessions that we do. Uh so yeah, that's one that's one of the ways that I collaborate with other people. I'm also uh heavily involved in the standards development at the International Society of Automation. So ISA 112 is for the HMI and SCADA. ISA 88 is for the batch control or for the processes, um, also one-on-one uh dedicated for the HMI. Um so they mostly revise standards maybe every three to five years uh because some of them uh become obsolete or some new ideas have emerged and like to make sure that people in the industry come to know about it. So people from all over the world they meet mostly once a month for two hours. And um I have been to ISA's uh automation summit and expo. They mostly have it in every year, October.

SPEAKER_01 49:38

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 49:38

Uh that's where I get to meet with people from different industries like digital transportation, uh transformation, cybersecurity, like it has a lot of different divisions.

SPEAKER_03 49:49

Yep, and divisions have kind of their own groups and their own things going on. And then is that a that is a joint meeting for like all the different divisions to get together?

SPEAKER_00 49:58

No, mostly we do division by division, uh.

SPEAKER_03 50:01

Okay, so you're still talking about within the automation and controls uh division.

SPEAKER_00 50:05

Okay. Yep. And then we also do a second set of meetings where all the chairs from different division meets. So that's also one monthly meet uh we do a monthly meeting for that, and down there you basically get to uh discuss the idea between uh two different sectors. That's the way most of the other members who are interested or in like collaborating with each other, uh different divisions, they can do it that way. Okay, and of course, those uh forums are like open to all the people. They can just join, comment, uh reach out to anybody. Another thing that I do is um I've been elected as IEEE's um uh controls chair uh for the standards as well. Congratulations. Thank you. So we have just working with the team uh to be able to like develop standards. Mostly I'm currently focused on like battery uh technology standards that we are trying to develop. Um there are others uh where I mostly provide my input uh for the other uh standards that has been created by somebody else based on like what I've come across. Not necessarily I will have like comment for each and every standards that they're developing, but whatever I know. Yeah, so that's that that's the other way for me to be able to like collaborate. Yeah, and uh since last two or three years, I will start going to more conferences like automate uh 2025 today. Um this week I'm here at IEEE's ACC conference. Um and very likely I'll be again go uh I'll go to Automation uh Summit and Expo, which is uh in Florida in October. So and yeah, I would love to join to the OTA that you're talking about in Houston. Um not sure if it has already been passed, or has already passed or it's upcoming. No, it's coming up in about two weeks.

SPEAKER_03 51:46

Uh two weeks. Let's see if I can make it. 23rd through the 25th. I see. Probably very last minute for you to attend, but open invite if you do get a chance. But we are, I I think, you know, we've gone back and forth on it a little bit. This is something that we want to keep doing because I'll be I'll be frank, it's a lot of work. Uh and I happen to be in a a stage right now where I have two little kids at home, and you know, running the podcast also, and then having a job, it gets to be a lot. Yeah, but I think I think we're gonna have to keep doing the conference yearly because there's just so many people too that can't make it this year, but they want to come next year, they want to speak, they want to come share their ideas, and um it really is something that is is hard to just walk away from because I think the what has happened at the the first conference, which was relatively small. I mean, but for a first one, it was like we we uh wanted to sell 50 tickets and we ended up with like 80 people roughly. And I think the small format of it is something that is unique, but you can't keep it small forever as you know interest grows and the word gets out. So we're trying to figure out also how do we keep the same feel while at the same time maybe allowing it to get bigger. Um, and so you know the answer to that is probably a little bit more of like different tracks or you know, something like that. But we I think we also then need more outside community involvement and just try to get more people involved in the planning and everything. So a lot to think through. Um but I I you know getting these right people together in a room, um, and then interacting on a regular basis. I mean, that's really what it creates a lot of things in our industry that are badly needed that nobody is gonna do in their job alone, right?

SPEAKER_00 53:38

Yep. Um, it's definitely challenging to do.

SPEAKER_03 53:40

Well, and obviously you're you're a very active contributing member to the industry in multiple different ways. Partially it's just reminds me of how many different associations and niches and things are out there that I'm missing out on, so now I'm getting total IEEE FOMO because I'm not a part of any of the IEEE stuff anymore. But at the same time, you know, you just you can't be you can't be everywhere all at once. Oh, yeah. But what you can do, and this is what you know, what this is doing for me, is now I I know someone that is on those committees, right? I know somebody that is active in those communities. So when these topics come up, or if somebody has a problem, I now have more resources at my disposal. Thank you to you to direct other people to. And that's really part of you know what we want this show to do is to help people hear more stories, get more things to relate to, get more people to maybe reach out to that they can learn from or that they can see as an example. Um and like nurture whatever interest you have in just a case. There is an infinite number of things that you could, you know, fall in love with and choose to spend time on. If you like how things go and how things are made, uh come on in, right? Like, yep. Do you think you're ever gonna get bored with controls knowing how many potential different applications there are out there for you to tackle?

SPEAKER_00 55:05

Um, one uh recently I ended up reading one tweet about uh how we can disrupt uh manufacturing industry in a way like when the industrial revolution started, we we have seen like more and more products getting mass-produced. I feel like once we'll have uh humanoid robots walking in the factory, which I've seen uh every now and then at Tesla factories, uh like Optimus Robot particularly, but I know many companies in the Bay Area like Figure A and many others that I also end up seeing at the conference where they end up bringing the robots and they're basically um programming the robots in a way that uh that could be useful not in the house but in the factories as well. I feel like that would have its once we can have some such robots like that in the factory, I think manufacturing will have AI kind of moments. And I am pumped uh about that. I think we are maybe decades away or more.

SPEAKER_03 56:00

Um, I was about to say, what kind of time horizon do you see? Because I I I know it's probably within our lifetimes, but I have a hard time gauging whether it's you know, the people say like the next five years, I'm not I'm not quite there thinking it's gonna be that fast. But it is it's coming. It's like it's undeniable. There's enough people pouring enough resources into this problem that they will solve it eventually.

SPEAKER_00 56:23

Yep, yep. Now that we see more like companies like Vaymo having their car being dri driven around now in San Francisco and uh also in Phoenix, I think they sorted that last year. I still don't see even the robots walking outside in the Bay Area itself. Uh so I I feel like it's a bit far. I mean, yeah, maybe closer to decade or more. Yeah. But no, but uh people are definitely taking like huge interest overall and like having robots as like right next to the station to be able to like operate, like just maybe do mundane tasks which people like not to do, so maybe something heavy, things like that. So I feel like I have enough bag of things which keeps me excited to stay in manufacturing. I cannot think of any other things as of now, but uh yeah, let's see, let's see when we can get there and um uh even uh get more people to work in manufacturing overall, in my opinion. It definitely has potential to um have a computer engineer scientist to work in the manufacturing uh overall. So I'm also again pumped about that too.

SPEAKER_03 57:32

Yeah, and I would say, you know, the the water is warm, it may not pay as well right now, but it is there for uh uh, you know, unfortunately, I guess a lot of the big software companies are laying off people because they've been able to use AI to automate a lot of the software engineering tasks. Um and then if they can apply those software engineering skills to more manufacturing or physical automation, especially with potentially some of these tools bridging that training gap or the differences right in the knowledge that you need to be able to do some of this manufacturing stuff. I I h I think there's a bridge to kind of get some of that talent in um into our industry for sure. But it's it's always rocky, like you don't get a one-to-one change right right away. Well, I guess uh yeah, so with that, I would like to um leave you with is there anything that we didn't get a chance to talk about in this episode or any resources or causes that you want to make sure that we get out to our listeners before we say goodbye?

SPEAKER_00 58:33

Yep. Yeah, I'd definitely like to point one thing out. I uh mostly find myself being the only or few women in a team of like maybe 90 or 100 people. Um if you're a woman and are interested in like working in manufacturing automation, um, go for it. Feel free to reach out, female, male, whoever is interested in manufacturing automation, I'll try my best and help you in whatever ways I can. So like um I don't want anybody to get discouraged uh just because they're the only standing person in the room. Yeah, um I you definitely find your table, you you make your way. It takes maybe somewhat more persistence if you're only by yourself, but uh there are many people uh who are willing to help. Uh particularly I've seen at IEEE, ISA. Um so, in whatever way, if I can help you, feel free to reach out to me via LinkedIn. Um Nikki, if you cannot uh share the LinkedIn uh link anywhere, I can maybe provide the email ID that audience might have.

SPEAKER_03 59:35

Yeah. Unless you want. I'm sure our listeners would not harass you over email, and I don't know that it would do any bad saying it out loud, but there will be so what we do for our guests is we have a guest profile that so if anybody goes onto our website, automationladies.io, um, it should be also linked in the show notes of this episode. But your uh your LinkedIn profile link will be in the should be in the show notes if you're listening on Apple or Spotify or whatever. Um but you can also go to automationladies.io, um, look up this episode or Riti's profile, and then we'll have your LinkedIn there. And then any time in the future, if you want to update us with any new links, like if you have a new project or a website or a presentation you'd like, you know, our potential listeners to know about, then we can update that profile with any links that you like.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:24

All right, sounds good. So now you have a way to reach out to me. Yeah, feel free to reach out. I'll I'll try my best in whatever way I can help you to get excited about this field, like I am.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:35

Well, if you're listening to this, add add iti to your network of friends and people in this industry. Um and a big part of I think what we do too as kind of an informal community or network around the people that have been on the show, um, that get on the show is we all kind of have the same mentality, right? We wanna, there's a reason we're willing to share our stories or talk about what we do is because we typically want to make it more accessible. We want more people to know about it. Um, and I would venture to say that pretty much anybody that has been on this show is open to helping other people in the industry that want to find their way, that need support, that maybe need some encouragement and some advice. What I always tell to people seeking advice though is think thoroughly about what you're asking of someone. These people are incredibly busy, they have a lot of demands on their time. And so just be respectful of what you're asking and try to be prepared. For instance, don't come asking, tell me how to get started and grow in this industry. That's a really broad question. Like, go talk to Chat GPT first for a while, ask your basic questions, do a little bit of basic research, um, and then come and ask specific questions or ask for a specific referral or ask for help with a specific problem when you reach out to one of the people in our network because we all want to help, but we also all don't have the time to tell everybody everything all the time. So thank you so much if you're listening. Um thank you, Riti, for joining us. And I really appreciate you being part of our network. It was a pleasure to get to learn about your story and what you're working on. And I um definitely hope to get you on maybe a LinkedIn live or do some sort of webinar where we can share some of your insights from your HMI talk um at Automate this year.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:22

All right, would love to do that. Thank you so much for your time and uh load being part of this.

SPEAKER_03 1:02:27

All right, thanks everybody. Bye bye.