Tech Talk: Selecting a Site Champion for You Robot System Project

1

Identify and Involve Early

Select a Site Champion during project planning. Make them the main contact for system questions and updates. Involve them from day one so they feel ownership as scope and schedules evolve.

Selecting the right person as your Site Champion starts during project planning. Choose someone who already understands the process and has a strong sense of company pride. The ideal Champion is a trusted, long-term team member who communicates well and shows genuine ownership in their work. From day one, they serve as the main point of contact for system questions and updates, ensuring consistency as the project moves from planning to production.

2

Involve in Every Stage

Involving the Site Champion in every stage builds ownership and confidence.

Include the Champion in meetings and the Factory Acceptance Test. Ensure they are present during installation. Hands on time builds a clear understanding of design intent, testing, and deployment, which increases credibility with peers.

To build ownership, the Champion should attend all meetings, be on site for the Factory Acceptance Test (FAT) and be present during installation. This hands-on exposure gives them a clear understanding of how the system is designed, tested, and deployed, creating confidence and credibility with their peers

3

Train Deep and Ask Questions

Deeper knowledge builds stronger ownership and faster problem-solving.

A Site Champion goes beyond basic operator training. The site champion should get to know the programmers and service team so they can learn about common spare parts to have on hand, the HMI screens, recovery steps, and troubleshooting. Just as important, they’re encouraged to ask questions throughout the process ensuring that potential issues are addressed early and system knowledge is solidified. Below is a list of items that we think are important for the Site Champion to ask questions about during the process. You can also add items that you might want to also make sure to ask questions about. This provides you with a checklist to make sure you don't forget to ask the important questions. You are able to copy and paste your list for your project records.

4

Build Shift Leaders and Spread Excitement

The Site Champion selects one leader from each shift and trains them directly. This gives every shift a clear owner. Knowledge spreads. Energy builds. Buy in grows across the floor.

The Site Champion takes this knowledge back to the facility and trains one leader from each shift, ensuring that every team has an owner who feels empowered to run the system. By sharing knowledge and generating enthusiasm, the Champion creates buy-in across the entire operation, turning automation into a shared success. We have an article about steps to get employees ready for robotics.

Learning from and seeing past examples, it is not really a question of whether you should start preparing your people for automation, but more a question of how. So, we developed a 4-article series to help you get ready for robotics.

Read Article >> https://motioncontrolsrobotics.com/resources/tech-talk-articles/employees-ready-for-robotics/

A Site Champion can review the articles and keep these ideas in mind while working with his team on each shift.

One example of information from the articles - Other countries are currently increasing robot use at a much higher level than the US. In some cases, companies that continue to ignore the benefits of robots may discover that competition in the areas of efficiency and productivity is just getting too high. This does not help your current employees either. So locally, the answer comes down to addressing these facts with your current workforce. Nationally, it means making it a top priority to engage younger students in programs and activities focused on new technology, science, and engineering. The process of getting your employees ready for automation needs to be addressed and keeping employees involved and making them an important part of the transition will make the process go more smoothly.

5

Empower, Reinforce, and Recognize

When leaders empower and celebrate their Site Champions, they create a culture of ownership and continuous improvement.

For the role to be sustainable, leadership must empower the Champion to make decisions and solve problems. Recognizing their contributions reinforces pride and accountability, and helps establish a culture of continuous improvement around automation.