Tune in to hear from our President, Jeremy Anderson, on the CSIA Podcast!

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Beyond the usual excellent presentations and community, this was a really special feature that drew me in because it highlighted what truly makes the CSIA community unique. I also loved the playful “rip off and duplicate” approach, because, in the best way, many of us have leaned on others in the community to give or receive guidance. I told your president that it felt like the right time for us to step up and contribute. It’s a special event, and I’m really looking forward to it.

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My dad always told me that I started taking things apart at an early age—and eventually, I got pretty good at putting them back together. I think that’s really where it all began. Over the years, it’s grown into a desire to understand the pieces and parts that make up the automation community, and to connect with like-minded people. Now, in an executive role, I focus on building a pathway for the next generation. It’s a passionate, highly technical community, and both of those aspects really resonated with me.

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At first, we started with a simple approach—kind of like the show How It’s Made. We’d pick a familiar product, maybe a home appliance, and show how we don’t make the product itself but create the pieces behind the scenes that make it possible. That’s still a fun icebreaker for events. To make it more tangible, we built a tabletop batching demo for STEM fairs and career fairs. It really shows what our community does: taking commercial off-the-shelf items, customizing them for a purpose, and deploying them in real-world applications. That’s how we moved beyond the basic icebreaker to something more engaging and hands-on.

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That’s a cool story. We were founded in 2002, and our founders faced a choice: leave the Erie community or find a way to stay. Because of their strong ties here, they chose to stay. What started in a home office with a small core team serving the local manufacturing base in Erie gradually grew over time. Erie, like much of the Rust Belt, has faced its challenges, but our loyalty to the community remained. As we scaled, we quickly reached a staff size that required branching out, and thankfully, Erie’s food and beverage manufacturing sector gave us a unique specialty. From there, we expanded to a wider audience, which caught the attention of the KRONES Group. In 2017, we were acquired to serve as their digitalization arm in North America, solidifying our business plan and fueling continued growth. Now, we’re entering our first expansion, working with a strong internal candidate to solidify the new area—an exciting next chapter for the company.

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I would say the Entrepreneurial Operating System, or EOS, a big buzzword in our community—has been phenomenal for us. We’re blessed with so many talented people, but there’s never quite enough time to get everything done. Implementing EOS gave us a structure—a kind of project charter for the company, that we could work against and measure progress. Even better, as we continue to grow, it helps us break apart work, connect rising talent to the business plan, and involve them in shaping it. For us, that’s been a real, tangible success.

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We call it the PDA Way. One of the principles of EOS is to document and brand your approach, so that’s what we did. From the start, it’s been a full-service approach for the client—engineering-based sales qualification, coordinated project kickoffs, introductions to the team, and staying with them through to our guarantee at the end. Being part of the project lifecycle is central to what we do, and the PDA Way has helped us solidify a process that truly differentiates us.

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First and foremost, it’s the people. Being part of this community is incredibly empowering—seeing connections made through business that go beyond just work is really rewarding. So, people come first, absolutely. Second, our processes and commitments matter. Through EOS, we guarantee our work. Not every project turns out exactly as planned, but our unwavering commitment to support the client from start to finish speaks to the character of our organization.

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Excellent question. Any system integrator that’s been around for a few years and grown to a certain size will have a core team doing good work, that’s a given. But what sets a firm apart, and what clients should look for, is evidence of growth and scalability. That means moving beyond just a few excellent individuals and building processes and systems that can scale. This becomes especially important because everyone needs to step away sometimes—take a vacation, go on a honeymoon, etc. If one key person is the only one who knows critical parts of the business, that can be a problem. Companies that demonstrate depth in their team and robust systems really stand out from the rest.

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It’s an interesting time to be in the industry. I’ll focus on consumer products, specifically food and beverage, which is where my expertise lies. The challenge is reliably delivering products with ever-changing tools and fewer technical resources on site, all while navigating increasing government regulations and competition. Balancing Industry 4.0 initiatives with tighter regulations, tariffs, and other pressures defines this space. On top of that, more companies are leaving the market than entering it, which constrains our internal resources even further. When I talk with other executives, these are often the issues that keep them up at night.

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Well, the market is always evolving, and that’s something I constantly remind our team. Sizes, types, ingredients, packaging, market formats, and reach are always changing. For us, that represents opportunity, machines need retrofitting, data sets need updating, and growth keeps coming, even during economic downturns. We were founded in 2002, right after 9/11, and we’ve weathered the 2008, 2016, and 2020 challenges. When times are strong, we focus on scaling up and finding new niches to connect with buyers. When times are tougher, buyers are more cost-conscious, so we see shifts toward value sizing and value packaging. Each of these changes brings its own set of opportunities.

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Good question. Early on, as we were scaling up, from a local provider to regional and then national, we needed a way to show new customers a clear, verifiable metric of quality. That was the first thing that brought us in. What’s kept us involved is the community itself. We became certified in 2012, and we’re now on our fifth certification. On paper, many of us might seem like competitors, and in some ways we are, but the openness in this community—sharing what’s gone right, what’s gone wrong, and what’s next—is unlike anything I’ve seen in any other industry. It’s truly wonderful.

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A common joke in our office is that Tim, our vice president, and I have equal but separate responsibilities. The joke goes that I get us into trouble, and Tim gets us out of it. I tend to leap before I look—sometimes a weakness, sometimes a strength, depending on the day. Over time, I’ve learned that the time saved by jumping straight into execution often has to be made up later—and sometimes that cost multiplies. That’s my caution for anyone who’s wired like me.

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Travel writer. I had to think about this one a bit, but one of the greatest benefits of being in a service-based industry like ours is that it takes you to the customer sites. You get to see new Greenfield and Brownfield installations, which means discovering new places and meeting new people. To me, that’s the biggest perk—you still have a home base, but you get to explore more of your region, your country, or even the world, depending on your organization. It’s fantastic, and I hope to find a way to keep that sense of exploration as part of the next chapter of my life.