Hey there,

I’m JD and this is my site on automation.

My whole career has been in industrial automation and I’ve been busy solving tough problems in industry.

I consider myself fairly broad in experience with specific deep areas of expertise. Some might refer to me as a T-Shaped engineer, maybe even a systems thinker.

I cut my teeth on a 16 month internship for a Tier 1 automotive supplier. I really started getting interested in the whole picture. Amongst the metal grinding, cutting and assembly of bearings, I saw first hand how engineering solutions were combined with operations in the real world and good machine design was only a small part of the picture. Reliability, maintainability, changeovers, even personal relationships, on top of world class automation, were all pieces in the puzzle of real world manufacturing. This experience gave me my passion for creating these world class machines and an understanding that there is much more than just the technical aspect of a machine.

I’ve been lucky enough to “blank canvas” on large automation projects since then. I started in the systems integrator world where I continued to add building blocks. As a part of a small upstart “automation” group within a larger company, I learned what excellent project management and execution looked like and how important it was to the life or death of an integrator. Every project saw me and the team designing first-of-it’s-kind machinery. Creativity and risk management reigned supreme as mechanical design and clever controls engineering met together to breathe life into projects typically performing “difficult to automate” tasks.

Being on a small team also exposed me to the sales and business side of things. I learned what makes a project work, how to recognize risk and build in contingencies. I also honed in my contract writing skills putting air tight verbiage onto paper. These contracts were another key defense in the life or death of a systems integrator.

After a few years of designing one-off solutions, I decided to explore what productization of automated machinery looked like. I moved to Silicon Valley in 2016 and joined a small company making a fleet of robot workcells. The tradeoffs here were different than at a systems integrator – for example, oversizing actuators to reduce risk on one off projects was replaced with pointed R&D to get the exact actuators. Driving down unit cost and manufacturability ranked much higher in decision making but the principles of what makes a good machine still rang true. Product requirements were added to my vocabulary.

I ran point on designing and building this fleet into a manufacturing line of pickup truck sized workcells. Leveraging my inside knowledge of the industry, I guided systems integrators across the continent to build out my vision through many iterations. Being the operator of the machines on top of designing them gave me an instant feedback loop of issues and improvements needed. Iterations were quick and I gained a great knowledge of the challenges that come with a fleet of robots; retrofitting production machines, managing spare parts, gathering data and much more.

From here, I turned to even bigger projects. I moved to a company with a vision to create a nearly fully automated factory for indoor farming. Using the foundation of machine design and systems thinking along with some unique food space expertise I concepted, designed and built a multi million dollar automated packaging line. This project was a culmination of my past experiences and really let me spread my wings in the process. I designed a novel process through months of testing and requirement refinement to handle instantaneous crop changeover and product mixing while maintaining an extremely high throughput in an impossibly small space allotment. I sought out the best systems integrators worldwide to partner on this unique concept and meticulously managed every detail from specialized flooring in the space to novel end of arm tools on industrial robots. This was truly one of my proudest and most rewarding projects.

Following this project I went on to help a few other R&D machines get across the line that were being built in house.

Following these projects I decided to try and focus on JDH Design. In a consulting role I helped startups go from 0 to 1, sometimes even whiteboarding in my backyard with founding teams! Using unique food automation knowledge, I helped deploy some of Chef Robotics’ early machines ensuring things were ready for the “big time” and setting them up for the great growth they are seeing now.

From consulting, I still had an itch to scratch. I had managed projects with team members but I hadn’t led a full engineering team through a development cycle. I found an opportunity as the Chief Engineer of a wearable robotics company. This led to a whole new world of PCB design, fabrics and batteries integrating into a brand new product. Unfortunately, the company soon ran into funding issues and prototyping ground to a halt.

I luckily found Boxbot where I am now directing the engineering team and delivering a bulletproof industrial automation solution. While I inherited a solid prototype, I have led the team through a rearchitecture of the mechanical, electrical, controls and software systems. Flexing all of my system muscles, I have developed the team’s product and project management framework to deliver considerable output for a small but mighty team that is punching well above it’s weight in terms of the projects we are delivering.

The intent of this page is partially about a place for me to reflect but I also intend for it to be a place to share some of my favorite aspects of the modern world of automation. The industry is changing at such a rapid pace that I look back at some of my early projects and think that some of it is already “old school” automation. For example, modern software is such an integral part of systems now. Sensors are being released with amazing capabilities out of the box like vision and ML.

I feel blessed that I stumbled into this world of automation and hope I can inspire others to learn more about the field.

P.S. I love to talk automation – reach out on LinkedIn or contact me through this site! I don’t drink coffee but I’m happy to join you for one!

Sincerely,