diff --git a/swarmlab/Makefile b/swarmlab/Makefile
index a25c492..da91058 100644
--- a/swarmlab/Makefile
+++ b/swarmlab/Makefile
@@ -1,4 +1,8 @@
-all: hello piechart
+all: required_packages hello piechart
+
+required_packages: 
+
+	Rscript ../examples/required.packages.R
 
 hello: 
 
diff --git a/swarmlab/required.packages.R b/swarmlab/required.packages.R
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7b1b2b2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/swarmlab/required.packages.R
@@ -0,0 +1,12 @@
+#create a function to check for installed packages and install them if they are not installed
+install <- function(packages){
+  new.packages <- packages[!(packages %in% installed.packages()[, "Package"])]
+  if (length(new.packages)) 
+    install.packages(new.packages, dependencies = TRUE)
+  sapply(packages, require, character.only = TRUE)
+}
+ 
+# usage
+#required.packages <- c("ggplot2", "dplyr", "reshape2", "devtools", "shiny", "shinydashboard", "caret","randomForest","gbm","tm","forecast","knitr","Rcpp","stringr","lubridate","manipulate","Scale","sqldf","RMongo","foreign","googleVis","XML","roxygen2","plotly","parallel","car")
+required.packages <- c("plotrix")
+install(required.packages)