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32 SMT007 MAGAZINE I JULY 2023 Dr. Phil Voglewede has a professional back- ground in manufacturing and has been at Marquette University for the past 15 years, where he's a professor and associate chair of the mechanical engineering department. He was recently named director of Mar- quette's new Omron Advanced Automation Lab. In this interview, Phil shares his vision and mission for the lab, and how Industry 4.0 automation must be approached differently than the automation boom of the 1980s and 1990s. Barry Matties: Phil, let's start with an introduction to the lab. e lab is quite unique as it is a lab of failure. When Omron gave us the gi, they asked if I wanted a system integrator. I vehemently refused. I said, "I want to try to do it." For example, I'm not a computer scientist, I don't Advancing Automation know how to create an IT infrastructure. You learn by just stumbling through it. at's what we're trying to do in the lab. Matties: What's the purpose for the lab? What is your area of focus? I do most of my work in motion: How you make things move the way you want them to move, whether it's in a manufacturing environ- ment or in products, such as label makers, CT scanners, and so on. However, this lab is bigger than just motion. is lab is established with a million-dollar gi for teaching Industry 4.0. I call it a "lab of fail- ure" rather than a "showcase of perfection." We're trying to "fail" at automation. at way, we can get better at understanding where the pinch points are when implementing auto- mation and Industry 4.0 techniques into your overall Industry 4.0 framework. Feature Interview by the I-Connect007 Editorial Team All images courtesy of Marquette University