From Order to Chaos: The Automation Journey

The Engineering Lab Symposium is an annual event where Mirapath brings together end users and industry leaders to discuss the current trends, challenges, and best practices for engineering labs.

This year, our featured speaker is Dan Lunderville, Manager of Global Customer Labs at Palo Alto Networks. Dan has worked in customer support since 1997, running multiple labs at technology companies including Ascend, Redback, Juniper, Gigamon, and Palo Alto Networks. He has been working with automation for the last 7 years and has launched a global automation system in 5 locations servicing 250 engineers.

From Order to Chaos – The Automation Journey

Benefits of Automation

Lab automation is no longer a luxury that companies can afford to put off, but rather has become a necessity in today’s engineering labs. Some questions Dan answered included:

How do you know you need Lab Automation?
What benefits can be realized from automating your labs?
How do you go from concept to realization?

Building ROI

Knowing you need automation and conveying this to management are two very different things. To be able to convince management of the need for automation requires you to quantify time, staffing, capital expense, and operational savings.

Project Plan

Once you are given the go-ahead, the process of planning this out from concept to launch requires proper planning and includes:

Building an automation team
Choosing an automation system
Statement of Work and Proof of Concept

Implementation

Dan provided key points and considerations for a smooth implementation which include:

Building an automation ready network
Transitioning to automation
Launch and training schedule

Metrics and Reporting

One of the biggest advantages to an automation system is the ability to pull metrics on equipment usage and user data. Ever been questioned by management on why you need more resources to run the lab? These metrics can give you hard numbers to prove it.

These are just some of the key takeaways from Dan’s presentation. To get the full version of his presentation, click below.