Sales Engineer – Become a Storyteller! Share your Wins & Learn from your Failures!

Over the years, I have had the ability to support the sales teams in many ways. I have interacted with sales teams as a consultant, project stakeholder, designer, sales engineer, project manager, and more. The most enjoyable projects and sales “wins” for me were the ones that delivered a lot of business value at a low cost. The projects that captured the “low hanging fruit”.

Years ago, I was approached by a plant engineer and tasked with redesigning their current case packing equipment. I quickly partnered with a salesperson, and we started engaging with the customer. The plant engineer and I started down the path of creating a retrofit option for the existing piece of equipment that was used to place the cartons into the finished case. This existing piece of equipment was very labor intensive and was not safe to operate though. This system required the operator to lift and hold an empty case in position while a push ram actuated multiple times to place the cartons into the case. The retrofit solution was not going to be able to remove all the hazards and deliver the desired business value.

Cartons = Primary Packaging – Packaging that holds the product and ensures food safety and quality

Finished Case = Secondary Packaging – Multiple units of Primary Packaging and provides additional protection during storage/transportation.

It did not take us long to realize though that we should investigate an approach to automate this process and improve safety!

What better way to automate and yield a safer environment than a robot? In hindsight, there could have been an off the shelf type solution that we could have implemented, but the robot proved to be a successful alternative.

I started off by creating a system layout that would receive the product from the current line and then orient the product, group the product, and then stage it for the UR5e robot equipped with an end-effector to come to that position and pick it up.

The layout also included a line to take an erected case and auto deliver it to a staging point where the robot would place the product into the case. Once the case was full, it would actuate a pneumatic cylinder and send the case down the line to a taper machine.

Once the initial layout was created, I set up a meeting with the plant stakeholders to review. In the meeting, we discussed the layout and how the product would move through the equipment. We talked about the end-effector design and the payload capacity of the robot. We found that we would need to construct the end-effector out of aluminum because the robot payload capacity is 11 lbs. and we needed to lift 9 lbs. of product per cycle.

We determined it was time to proceed forward with quotations and identified the equipment that should be included as well as the process parameters.

This information was passed on to the estimating department. I worked with them to answer questions and capture customer specifications and requirements. In a few days’ time, we had a detailed proposal in hand to present to the customer.

We sent the proposal and layout to the customer for their review. The customer was ecstatic and accepted the proposal. At this point, I assisted the salesperson with coming up with terms and timelines. I also was the link between sales, production, and engineering.

The equipment was fabricated, installed, and commissioned. This was a huge success for the company and had a great ROI. Since the installation of the first system, the company has implemented the exact same solution 2 more times!

Check out the Sales Engineering 101 guide on the site for more insights, tips, and tricks!