When Siemens or Rockwell announces that a product is being phased out, plants typically have about ten years of manufacturer support before that product becomes difficult to replace. That is a long runway, with enough time to budget, plan, and migrate on your own schedule. Yet Jacob Foglia, Lead Automation Engineer at Premier Automation, regularly works in plants where the core control system went obsolete a decade or more before anyone started planning its replacement.
Premier Automation is a Siemens Platinum Solution Partner, the highest of the four levels in the Siemens Solution Partner Program. Siemens places its partners at the Authorized, Silver, Gold, or Platinum level, and reserves Platinum for integrators with advanced technical expertise and a proven record of successful Siemens projects.
Tariffs have put steel and aluminum production in the USA back in growth mode, and that growth is putting new pressure on the DC drive systems many of these facilities still run. As production ramps up, more operators are confronting a complex problem: continue to repair the DC system they have, or convert to a more reliable AC system.
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The strength of an industrial build is shaped long before assembly begins. It is shaped by the suppliers and partners involved in the project, the engineering conversations that happen between them, and the trust that determines how problems are solved when they arise. Premier Automation has spent years deliberately building that network, and häwa is one of the partners at the center of it.
When a system leaves the shop without being properly verified, the consequences follow it into the field. Panels that create problems at installation, documentation that leaves technicians guessing, and builds that technically meet a drawing but fail to meet the real demands of the application are costly mistakes that the right manufacturing partner prevents from happening in the first place.
Aging control systems rarely fail all at once. They degrade slowly, through years of patched fixes and workarounds, until unplanned downtime becomes routine and the system becomes something nobody fully understands anymore. Zachary Neudorfer, an automation engineer on Premier's Automation team, describes the pattern well: equipment ends up on the wrong controllers, “temporary” programming and
electrical changes become permanent, which leads to years of incremental fixes rather than intentional design.
Manufacturers investing in robotic systems face more than a technology decision. They are navigating complex engineering requirements, undefined processes, and a long list of integration details that can make or break the outcome. We sat down with Nolan Smith, lead robotics engineer for Premier Automation, to talk through how Premier approaches that work and what manufacturers need to understand before they commit to a robotic investment.
Industrial systems are only as valuable as their uptime. When a control system faults, a drive fails, or a robotic cell goes down, the cost of standing still adds up fast. At Premier Automation, service is not an afterthought. It is a core part of what we deliver, and it is backed by the same engineering depth that goes into every system we design and integrate.
Robots are becoming more accessible to manufacturers of all sizes. As labor challenges grow and production demands increase, many small to mid-sized manufacturers are considering robotics as a way to improve efficiency on the plant floor.
But one of the most common misconceptions is that buying a robot automatically leads to better productivity.
Premier Automation’s PanelShop.com specializes in custom, build-to-print panel manufacturing, supporting customers who may lack in-house manufacturing capabilities or need to scale beyond them.