Redmond McDonell is an accountant by profession, yet he has found himself at the head of a robotics company in Co Limerick.

McDonnell worked for Ernst and Young for 12 years, and spent a year in Grant Thornton as well. He worked in both the audit and corporate finance divisions. He also spent some time in the entrepreneur of the year division. Then he met the founder of robotics company DesignPro Paul Collins.

“I met Paul Collins roughly three years ago through a contact of mine, and I agreed to come into DesignPro as the financial controller moving into a CEO role last year,” says McDonell.

Collins, originally from Co Roscommon, has a background in engineering and previously worked for the US electrical component company Molex in Co Clare, which shut down last year resulting in the loss of 500 jobs. After leaving Molex, he worked for the German owned electronic and mechatronic product manufacturing business KOSTAL in Abbeyfeale Co Limerick. He got married and settled in Co Limerick, so when he decided to create his own business, he chose to do it locally.

“We are making bespoke machines to automate the testing process of Covid-19 diagnostic test kits.

Redmond McDonnell

He set up DesignPro in 2004. At the beginning, the company was initially set up to provide consultation to companies in the electronics space. Then in 2005, Collins took on his first employee and they started moving into the realms of designing and building machines for manufacturing companies. The firm now employs 50 people.

“All machines built by DesignPro are bespoke automates machines. They are designed, built, programmed, robots integrated, debugged and installed by DesignPro, it is an end to end service that we offer our customers, from initial concept to completion. Each machine delivered to our customers is bespoke to their needs and their product assisting to automate their processes,” says McDonnell.

Collins wanted to step down as CEO last year and move into the role of COO role as he wanted to focus on the operations and innovation in the businesses.

“That’s what he loves doing best,” says McDonnell.

McDonnell’s new role as CEO of the tech company is a leap from his comfort zone working on finance and company accounts. Yet, in a company like DesignPro, where a lot of the attention is given to the technology output, McDonnell says there is a need for his expertise.

“With quick growth, the focus can often be on revenue and technology.  However, to prepare the company for the next growth phase there was a need to focus on financial information and operational controls. My background is very much in that. So, I was able to bring that to the table coming into the financial controller role and then into the CEO role,” says McDonnell.

Although McDonnell knows how to run a company financially, he relies on other members of his team when it comes to the tech side of the business.

“On the technical aspect, I always surround myself with a good team. If there are any meetings that I need to attend from a commercial aspect that may move into the technical realm, I always make sure that I have the right technical individuals from our team with me,” says McDonnell.

“Of course, it’s great that Paul is still very much active in the business on the day-to-day basis, where if there is anything that I need to understand that I can just run it by him. I’m still learning about the business. But we have a great technical team here who can assist me with that,” he adds.

Tackling Covid-19

DesignPro was not immune to the impact Covid-19 has had on business their customers were not spending as much capital expenditure (CapEx) as they were pre-lockdown.

“What happened is there was really a CapEx freeze from mid-March and the start of April for lot of customers who were potentially about to place an order for a line. They put a freeze on their CapEx for a period of time. So, the pipeline would have been weaker for three or four months,” says McDonnell.

“Then it’s like the tap has been switched back on from the end of August onwards. Quite a few orders have come in,” he continues.

Although the pandemic halted some of the company’s plans, it also presented an opportunity. DesignPro had already shifted it’s focus back onto designing robots predominantly for medical devices, so it made sense that they would end up making one to help with the Covid-19 testing process.

“There’s been a couple of orders relating directly to Covid-19. One such one is we are making bespoke machines to automate the testing process of Covid-19 diagnostic test kits. It’s putting the diagnostic kits that are used to test for Covid into a chamber and testing to ensure that there are no leaks in the device before it goes out of the manufacturing process. There’s quite a large order relating to that,” says McDonnell.

McDonnell did not want to disclose who the customer for this project was or how much it cost at this times.

“So, it’s really a tender proposal process. And quite often, you’re talking quite large sums.”

Redmond McDonnell

DesignPro recently fulfilled an order for a device that automates the process of making materials for masks. The company are looking at other areas of the medical industry where they can make robots to make the manufacturing and administration process more efficient as well.

“A recent project we did for orthopaedics is an automated laser-etch machine. So, that would be where a robot was essentially picking up and an orthopaedic joint for the knee and then it holds it up to a laser-etch machine. It laser marks the serial code on the knee for track and trace and validation paperwork in orthopaedics,” says McDonnell.

Making the robots

DesignPro create robots mainly for the medical uses for areas including orthopaedics, diagnostics, vascular and wound dressing. Companies contact DesignPro and commission them to design and build a robot that is needed during a manufacturing process.

“Our customers, our prospective customers, often they have existing processes in place that might be more manual and people-intensive processes. They look at how to make their factory and manufacturing process more efficient and also to increase the yield and quality output,” says McDonnell.

Then they would contact companies such as DesignPro with a URS (user requirement specification) as to what exactly they need and if they don’t have a URS then DesignPro provide a URS generating service know as part of our FEED offering (Front End Engineering Design),” he adds.

DesignPro then decide the price of each bespoke robot after the customer provide the company with the details of what it needs. On occasion, the robots made by DesignPro can cost millions.

“Then we price it up based on the URS and come up with a concept solution for them. If they like our concept solution, then it would progress to an appeal being generated and we would do the detailed design phase of that project,” says McDonnell.

“So, it’s really a tender proposal process. And quite often, you’re talking quite large sums. It could be anything from €100,000 or €200,000 right up to a seven figures like €3 million or €4 million. So, they’re quite large CapEx requirements,” he adds.

The robots are built from materials and technology sourced from other companies that DesignPro partner with like the Kuka, which is one of the big four robotics companies in the world.

“We integrate a lot of different technologies from different companies. So, we would design all the custom tooling, all the custom frames, we would design to the spec of the type of transfer systems. And we would program the robots and decide which robots need to be integrated at what point in the process,” explains McDonnell.

“So, we would spec out what type of robot we need for a particular point in our line. And then we would write all the industrial code for how the robot moves and works within our line,” he states.

The company generates €5 million to €6 million in revenue a year and expects to double that to around €10 in the next three years.

“We get many orders a year, large and small.  However, it would be made up 10 to 12 large projects which make up 80 per cent of our turnover with bespoke tooling design and build, research and development, proof of concept and Robotic and automation training making up the remainder,” says McDonnell.

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DesignPro have made robots for the automotive, aviation, cosmetics industry as well. The company would have been more focused on automotive customers through the years.

“Historically DesignPro from, say, 2015 to 2017, would have grown quite a lot off the back of actually one large automotive customer. The automotive industry is quite cyclical and it often has a three year CapEx spend and then it rolls down for a number of years,” says McDonnell.

“So, in 2017, that automotive customer was starting to end their CapEx cycle on the current machines they required,” he adds.

Now, McDonnell states the aim is to increase DesignPro’s foothold in other industries again. Particularly in the medical device industry.

“There’s been a clear focus from 2017 onwards in the medical device industry. And in particular, we’ve worked with customers in automating the assembly and inspection for products such as wound dressing, orthopaedics, diagnostics as well as performing leak testing and automated packaging solutions,” says McDonnell.