In this week's Industrial Talk Podcast we're talking to Ricky Watts, Industrial Solutions Director at Intel Corporation about “Utility 2.0 and Modernizing Utilities Supply and Demand through Digital Transformation”. Get the answers to your “Utility 2.0” questions along with Ricky's unique insight on the “How” on this Industrial Talk interview!

You can find out more about Ricky and the wonderful team at Intel Corporation on solution to modernizing the Utility Industry by the links below. Finally, get your exclusive free access to the Industrial Academy and a series on “Why You Need To Podcast” for Greater Success in 2020. All links designed for keeping you current in this rapidly changing Industrial Market. Learn! Grow! Enjoy!

RICKY WATTS' CONTACT INFORMATION:

Personal LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/wattsricky/

Company LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/intel-corporation/

Company Website: https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/homepage.html

PODCAST VIDEO:

THE STRATEGIC REASON “WHY YOU NEED TO PODCAST”:

OTHER GREAT INDUSTRIAL RESOURCES:

CAP Logistics: https://www.caplogistics.com/

Hitachi Vantara: https://www.hitachivantara.com/en-us/home.html

Industrial Marketing Solutions:  https://industrialtalk.com/industrial-marketing/

Industrial Academy: https://industrialtalk.com/industrial-academy/

Industrial Dojo: https://industrialtalk.com/industrial_dojo/

Safety With Purpose Podcast: https://safetywithpurpose.com/

YOUR INDUSTRIAL DIGITAL TOOLBOX:

LifterLMS: Get One Month Free for $1 – https://lifterlms.com/

Active Campaign: Active Campaign Link

BombBomb: BombBomb Link

Social Jukebox: https://www.socialjukebox.com/

Industrial Academy (One Month Free Access And One Free License For Future Industrial Leader):

Business Beatitude the Book

Do you desire a more joy-filled, deeply-enduring sense of accomplishment and success? Live your business the way you want to live with the BUSINESS BEATITUDES…The Bridge connecting sacrifice to success. YOU NEED THE BUSINESS BEATITUDES!

TAP INTO YOUR INDUSTRIAL SOUL, RESERVE YOUR COPY NOW! BE BOLD. BE BRAVE. DARE GREATLY AND CHANGE THE WORLD. GET THE BUSINESS BEATITUDES!

Reserve My Copy and My 25% Discount

PODCAST TRANSCRIPT:

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

vehicle, Balyo, talk, distribution centers, industry, people, company, concept, driving, industrial, tech, moving, equipment, world, john, floor, expensive, autonomous vehicles, important, solving

SPEAKERS

Scott MacKenzie, John Hayes

Scott MacKenzie 00:04

Welcome to the industrial talk podcast with Scott MacKenzie. Scott is a passionate industry professional dedicated to transferring cutting edge industry focused innovations and trends while highlighting the men and women who keep the world moving. So put on your hard hat, grab your work boots, and let's go Alright, welcome to the industrial talk podcast. Once again, we take a journey into why industry is so doggone cool. I'm telling you right now you're bold, you're brave, you dare greatly you solve problems. you innovate like nobody's business. You're changing lives and you're changing the world. That's why we on this podcast, celebrate you, the industrial hero, that's who you are. Thank you very much for what you do. And that's why we love you here on this platform. In a hot seat in the industrial talk hotseat, we got a gentleman by the name of john Hayes. He is the director of sales at a company called Balyo. And we're going to be talking about autonomous vehicles. So let's get going. Yeah, so there's some challenges that we are experiencing. And and of course, you know that the industrial talk platform is all about innovation and being able to apply that innovation, creativity to apply those solutions to industry to be able to be better, stronger, faster, the Steve Austin approach, and Balyo is no different. We're talking about autonomous vehicles. Now, before we get into that particular conversation, let's just have a just a recap of industrial talk to Dotto again, if I keep on preaching the necessity for education, it's out there, if I keep on preaching the necessity to collaborate, that the people are out on industrial talk, and they do want to collaborate, they do want to solve problems. And thirdly, if we're talking about innovation all the time, and how that innovation is applied to each industry and how they're using that in innovation to well make you better, provide greater customer service, everything in between. It makes sense. So Industrial Talk 2.0 is a focus on being able to make that process the education, the collaboration and the innovation process simpler, because we need to bring people together, we need to be able to have that conversation in a big way. And john Hayden and the wonderful team out of Balyo, they're just like right in the thick of it. And they've got solutions that are very, very important. Now, let's get on with the interview. So we're going to be talking a little bit about the over the period of times we're finding that that labor is a very tight commodity. And yet companies need to keep going. And companies need to keep their doors open. And company needs to continue to deliver good customer service and survive in this particular unique market that we find ourselves in. And of course, the conversation has to revolve around autonomous vehicles, what do we do within the warehouse? And how do we create a safer environment of course. So john and and team Balyo have a great solution. But we definitely talk about a lot of stuff that's associated with the market today. So with that said, Here's john. JOHN, welcome to the industrial talk, podcast absolute honor that you have joined and start to share your wisdom and insights with the listeners of industrial talk. How you doing?

John Hayes 03:35

Very well, thanks for having me on today. Thank you very, very cool,

Scott MacKenzie 03:38

man. I'm gonna enjoy this particular, you know, conversation, because it's really wrapped around and listeners, we're going to be talking a little bit about sort of that lack of labor that exists within today's market and sort of this push for autonomous or automatic vehicles. And then Fortunately for us, john with Balyo sort of understands that particular topic. But before we get going, give us a little background on who you are.

John Hayes 04:05

Well, thank you very much. I hope I have some knowledge and background I started in 1993. In the industry, yeah, I'm old. That's right. I'm getting gray.

Scott MacKenzie 04:19

Hair I don't.

John Hayes 04:22

I started way back then started building vehicles and then went on site to install. And then from there, I was lucky enough to be kind of adopted by this industry. It was a very, very small industry in 93. And most of those folks that I work with moved on to other companies and as did I and jumped back in finishing after I got back from a project in Japan, and sent a resume to a company that happened to have probably four or five people that I was in Japan with that was another AGV company. And it just grew from there moved into sales. Then from sales and applications, engineering into More of a strategic role. Vice President of Sales and Marketing, I think that marketing is a strong component of what we do as well. And then Director of Sales here at Balyo. So I've been, unfortunately, I've been around if you say they've been around for quite some time through the HGTV concept, and now into the EMR world, and you know, some differences, the concepts are still the same, there is still moving product from point A to point B, there's a lot of technology that we talk about, you know, this is different how this works, and those sorts of things. But in the end, I think that customers or users really only care, and can really only afford to care that things get from point A to point B efficiently. And they don't have to worry about it, why put a system in, that's going to be more problems than it's worth.

Scott MacKenzie 05:46

Yeah, for, for the listeners to define AGV.

John Hayes 05:50

And Mr. absolutely happy to do that. So he is he is kind of the catch all term that's been around for ages. And it stands for automatic guided vehicle. And you know, that goes back to the 50s. Really, a very early system, I believe Barrett was the first company that put one of those in on wires. And the fundamental principle of AGV is that path follows. So if you think about the earliest vehicle, it just ran, it had a sensor under the vehicle that looked for the wire in the floor, so the frequency frequency generator and for that frequency, but conceptually, they all do exactly that same thing today, even though most of them are virtual, using something called laser guidance using laser triangulation, they still do virtually the same thing. Now Amr is a new concept, which stands for automated or autonomous mobile robot. Really, it's a technology difference. And then it's highlighted by the way that it gets from point A to point B autonomous mobile robots path plan versus path follow. So that whole concept going back to the 50s with the wiring the floor, has been turned on this year. So use a similar technology, sensor base, much more sensor, which has a lot more sensors on the vehicle, but the vehicle itself maps its environment and then understands where it's at, and doesn't follow a defined path. It creates its own path now many companies constrain them but really that's the difference. One path plans a Mars path plan and agvs path follow. Now there are shades of grey and companies are starting to overlap AGV companies are being more Amr like but they in principle, that's really the what makes them different.

Scott MacKenzie 07:34

So why is this important? What why the why is this tech important with the industry?

Scott MacKenzie 07:39

Well

John Hayes 07:42

agvs have historically been very custom. So most vendors would build a custom vehicle every single time for every single customer. And the integration was difficult installation and integration because it required that line in the floor, keeping in mind that it doesn't really exist that much anymore. But it meant a lot more time in the field. So they were expensive. At the root of it, they were expensive, is the shifting to a Amar began a few years back probably 10 or more years ago with respect to ACD vendors putting controls on that we haven't vehicles ever again, being vehicles being high street Ale, which is one of the companies we use lambda in Europe, those types of vehicles platforms and putting controls on them. And then the structure of going to a controls platform that didn't require infrastructure. So that wire in the floor or the targets or those sorts of things, that concept called slam and stands for simultaneous location and mapping, and almost masters of infrastructure for use that concept. What highlight said is the fact that it's inexpensive, because we don't need anything to Matt, I mean, we use the vehicle to map the facility, we don't need any infrastructure. And the systems become smarter and smarter. So as time went on, the systems become smarter and smarter, the tech gets better. But there's a trade off, as with anything, right? That new tech is still It has great promise. But it's not as stable. It's not as accurate, generally speaking, and it's not as fast as AGV technology. So it's almost like going to you take the car concept. You've got gas powered cars, right. And you could have a drag race gas powered car, you know, like the john Porsche concept of drag car. You can have an electric car. Obviously electric car is more technologically advanced. But right now there's no drag race, electric car, maybe in the future, right? So to draw an analogy, that's kind of where we're at You can, you can have a Cadillac of a system that, you know, you can trust with an AGP concept. We'll just do the job all day long, it's a little more expensive, maybe in some ways a little, you know, maybe has a little bit more maintenance because of the awkward equipment. But you know, it works. And then there's the other side. And then there's the far side is the tech of the situation, the the tech, the Amr, Amr tech in and of itself, with respect to some of the applications suitability is great, because it doesn't require high accuracy, and it doesn't require high speed. And when I say that application will make it more clear, picking applications where people walking along, or being what we call, picking those say, in an area in the vehicles will come to them. And they will place something in the bins, that doesn't require an awful lot of speed. It doesn't require an awful lot of accuracy. A lot of integration work. But you know, that's expected across the spectrum. But when you start to get into the middle ground, and then moving over to speed and efficiency, that's where the Tech has promised. But it's not totally there yet. So you know, you're just not quite yet. Okay, this

Scott MacKenzie 11:17

is all great. Well, what problems are we solving? What What is the problem that's demanding this?

John Hayes 11:24

Well, taking tech out of it, and let's just look at it as an industry. Historically, going back many years, the problem we were solving was one of our ally, it was one where you erred on the side of the company every single time, which was, I would theoretically talk to someone about, well, we could take a person off of a forklift, and that would save you X number of dollars a year. And in order to do this project, you will need to remove this many people. And you will get what you call her rate. Typical hurdle rates in the US are 18 months or two years. So it's always been at that point about ROI. And it's completely changed. So what are we solving today, I'm driving down the highway and you'll see manufacturing plants and distribution plants with banners hanging outside now hiring. And what we're solving is an inability for businesses to find people to move product. And it is a it's a real problem. And it's one that exists this move the needle for this type of equipment, it's it's wildly popular now used to be new people were looking at moving around autonomously and would back away like what in the world am I seeing here is becoming more adopted. The ability just to get Labor has eclipsed nearly any other reasons, purchases, equipment, safety is still a reasoning, certainly. But it's the ability just to find someone. And then when you do so we did a project a couple of years back for a large shipper. And everybody knows who the big two are, it was one of those. And they said that, you know, we're looking at this project because our turnover is over 100%

Scott MacKenzie 13:11

hold a turnover a people,

John Hayes 13:14

turnover of people over 100%. So what what they say, what they said they were seeing is that one of the larger companies put a put a warehouse distribution center and down the road, and people were getting paid a little bit more problem and went down the street. And you can't blame a forklift operator, he's making X number of dollars an hour, if he's going to get a nickel dime, quarter dollar an hour more, he's going to go down the street, that's what's going to happen. But you know, one of the things that I found funny is they would say, Well, you know, eventually they come back because we pay them to come back here, but didn't have you know, you have resources bouncing back and forth and those things. And when you think about trying to run a business, when your primary concern is moving product from either a manufacturing line or through a distribution center, your primary resource is the movement is that person or that equipment. So it's gotten to the point where when you have that risk, you have to find a way to mitigate it. And that's really what we're what it's coming down to. So that I think that's the problem that we're solving today. It's interesting.

Scott MacKenzie 14:24

Yeah, it's interesting, because I would imagine a lot of these distribution centers are not located where there's a big pool of skilled individuals. So that's also a problem, correct?

John Hayes 14:40

It's not, you know, it's funny. If you think about a forklift driver, we don't need a Harvard graduate to drive a forklift and god knows what the savvy ones are the ones that do look at the guy who just moved across the street, and take that Our our network over there. And and the ones that stay. And frankly, any forklift driver, when you look at the safety aspect, the number of injuries for forklift drivers is quite high. Simply because driving a forklift is not the most gentle thing on your body, you know, you're driving, in some cases, a 10,000 pound vehicle around, that's bouncing off of, you know, expansion joints and holes in the floor, or maybe running into things. So you have a lot of injury, you have a lot of those things, which obviously drives your costs up for, you know, insurance as well as workers comp and those things. So, you know, it's even though they may not be, you know, the Harvard grads of the world, they're getting hurt. And if you can find a way to not get hurt, then that's obviously a beneficial thing. And I think that my message has always been, you know, we don't want to put people out of work, what we want is a benefit, mutually beneficial position for these folks, I think, at least I think I would, I don't know that I wouldn't want a mindless job, or I was driving back and forth. Some of these distribution centers are 200 or 2 million square feet. Yeah, they're driving, you know, a half a mile. And by the end of this their day, they're, they're thinking about anything, but what's going on in the plant. So I think that having the ability to move folks into a position where they can do stuff with their mind versus just driving a vehicle over and over and over again, the same path, can you imagine, you know, eight hours a day, you drive the same path over and over and over again, we mean, people run into things because they just get tired mentally, they get tired, worn out at the end of the day, mentally more than physically.

Scott MacKenzie 16:50

And I would imagine the same thing exists, there's a greater demand concept.

Scott MacKenzie 16:55

It's there's an increased demand to I I see it out there, that there's just more movement of products. And this, this, this logistics backbone is becoming more and more important, and creating more and more demand on that. That professional that is just driving that, that forklift around. And I like the point that you talk about safety, you're absolutely spot on. I think that there's business continuity.

John Hayes 17:25

Huge.

Scott MacKenzie 17:27

And and, and you're sure you're hitting on some great, great points. With With that said,

John Hayes 17:33

What, what's,

Scott MacKenzie 17:35

what's the biggest pushback here? I mean, it makes sense.

John Hayes 17:40

Well, it's still a bit of black magic, and it is still a bit expensive, um, the pushback has been reduced greatly, mostly because of what's been termed the, you know, the Amazon effect. And I am part of it, and I bet you're a part of it as well. We had a conversation the other day, and you say, go get these headphones, because they're, you know, they're gonna work very well. But guess where I'm from? I'm from Amazon. There's an Amazon distribution center, I'm outside with Virginia, it's more than 50 miles from here. And with the truck stuff that we talked about a few minutes ago, the over the road, trucking that they can only do eight hours a day. Well, they pop distribution centers up around larger cities. So you're right, that the regular desire and need for automation means more people, more people harder to get. So by proxy, the automated equipment becomes more and more in demand and favorable. I think that it's it's not black magic any longer. The costs have come down. But even so, if you look at the paradigm, us versus Europe, the hurdle rate, or the internal rate of return for Europe, in many cases is five years or more. In the US early on, in conversations about this equipment, we're looking at 18 months to two years, which means that really we're looking at two or three shift operations and sometimes for it's a no brainer for three or four shift operations just makes because we're providing the vehicles that operate on all four shifts with no people if you thought about that very same operation, you have four times the number of people so the numbers start to make make a lot of sense. I think that we're personally I think this will start to make a lot of more beneficial use. We talked about this internally Balyo the other day, you know how do we kind of work towards being a more we're all responsible company I guess is the best way to say it. My view is when we can take this equipment and mom and pop companies can have Third, to take a piece of automated equipment and grow their business, then they can compete with and I don't want to, say, the Amazons of the world, but I think you kind of see where I'm going with it, they can grow their business without having to add the expense of, you know, multi shift operations they can grow and, you know, moving people again into this more mutually beneficial roles, you know, running a machine or working on things, or there's things that use your mind when when we can take this concept and it becomes less the purview of Fortune 100 companies, and becomes more available to mom and pop. I think that everybody's going to be a lot happier with what with what we can do in this world. But you know, it's still expensive equipment, expensive, the sensor basis, something else,

Scott MacKenzie 20:48

but you're getting there. I mean, yeah, continue.

John Hayes 20:55

Yeah, the tech, when we talked about Amr, originally, you talked about the Gulf of differences, you know, the cost for EMRs are less expensive than average. And almost all cases, and the costs are coming down. Now, one of the things that we're seeing is, the average used to be kind of built jack of all trades. And that was the expectation that I could buy an ATV and it would do just anything, you know, where it could pick from the floor and put something in a rack 30 feet tall. But if you reset your expectations of what automation can do, and you're smart, start small. This stuff can be inexpensive. So you know, you pick something very simple to automate, you don't have to start. And frankly, I recommend that you don't start with a 3030 vehicle system that's super complex, the rapid pace of change within your organization would be head snap, and you would you you entire organization would be turned upside down quickly. The thing that the new tech is allowing us to do is do things like proof of concepts and those things where we can come in and put a single vehicle system in and show you in your organization, how that works, what the process changes might need to be and how to get used to them before rolling out more and more vehicles. So most all of our aging VA Mr. Brother, brother in reports to the MH I used to be called MH I think it's called MH II now material handling industry of America. And so the numbers used to be represent we would all report our numbers. In on average, the average AGV system was about five to seven vehicles. And the reason for that was just the three line items outside of the hardware, which was engineering, installation and integration. That was the time on site really. And you had to amortize that over the vehicle cost and five to seven just happened to be the sweet spot where it started to make return on investment sense, right? The new tech allows us to put vehicles in for a much lower number so people can now afford to put a single vehicle system in and learn from it. So the tech is pushing all of us forward. It really is.

Scott MacKenzie 23:04

I like it and the what stands out would be that incremental approach, even proof of concept it I think that's great. It doesn't have to be big bang, you don't have to dig a trench of some sort. It's it doesn't have to be that complex. Now we're gonna have to wrap this conversation up. JOHN, how does somebody get a hold of you?

Scott MacKenzie 23:26

I think the best case scenario would be to reach out via the internet. That's Balyo comm www.meliar.com. And you'll be able to reach out to us as a company there. My personal email address is certainly available. That's john dot Hayes ha ye s Balyo COMM And I'd be more than happy to help. I tend to take a more consultative approach to everything that I do so pretty little to salesy with me. So I'm more than happy to just chat with people if it's something they'd like to talk about.

Scott MacKenzie 23:53

And if you type in john Hayes, if this just blows me away on on LinkedIn, you've got john Hayes. I was looking at him going, and I saw john Hayes 7953 blah, blah. No, that's impressive.

John Hayes 24:17

Right.

Scott MacKenzie 24:18

All right, a couple of things that I want to put before you listeners, once again, I love the concept, and we've got the problem of up labor, we've got to be able to look at it from that. From the technology perspective, I think Valley has got an interesting value proposition. I like the fact that we're talking a little bit about the incremental approach. I think the future's bright when it comes to this and and I think if you're driving down the costs, and and trying to have that mom and pop mindset, I think you've got a great value proposition. I like it.

John Hayes 24:54

Thank you very much. All right, we're gonna wrap it up. I really appreciate you. Yeah, we're

Scott MacKenzie 24:58

gonna wrap it up on the other side. You're not go away. We will be right back. You're listening to the industrial talk Podcast Network. All right, that is john Hayes i t y e s and you definitely can go out to john hay. His Lincoln stack card is all out there and you know what? It is truly john Hayes h A y e. s. Balyo is the company go to be a lyo.com find out more about how those that solution and what they're doing. Balyo can definitely help you and your manufacturing process as well as your warehousing stuff. It's everything that's john right there, man. I'm looking at it as that card right there. JOHN, good looking guy with the beard can't miss. Alright, once again, we are talking about industrial talk to Dotto. This is where you're going to go this is where you're going to go. You're going to go to educate, you're going to go to collaborate and you're going to glue to innovate. We are all bound together without a doubt. We have ties, every industry whatever it is, let me Valley Oh man, that's important stuff and they have ties to the warehousing and and the manufacturing world. important stuff. Reach out to him. All right. Thank you very much. Be bold, be brave, dare greatly you change the world. Thank you very much for joining the industrial talk podcast. We will be right back

The post Mr. John Hayes with Balyo Talks About the Power behind Automated Transportation Solutions appeared first on Industrial Talk.

In this week's Industrial Talk Podcast we're talking to Andrew Schutte, General Manager with Smooth Logics and Counterpart-ERP about “The Challenges of creating accurate BOM and Strategies for BOM Success”. Get the answers to your “Bill of Materials” questions along with Andrew's unique insight on the “How” on this Industrial Talk interview!

You can find out more about Andrew and the wonderful team at Smooth Logics on how you can up your BOM game by the links below. Finally, get your exclusive free access to the Industrial Academy and a series on “Why You Need To Podcast” for Greater Success in 2020. All links designed for keeping you current in this rapidly changing Industrial Market. Learn! Grow! Enjoy!

ANDREW SCHUTTE'S CONTACT INFORMATION:

Personal LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrew-schutte-90838919/

Email: andrew@counterpart-erp.com

Company LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/smoothlogics/

Company Website: COUNTERPART | SOLIDWORKS ERP (counterpart-erp.com)

PODCAST VIDEO:

THE STRATEGIC REASON “WHY YOU NEED TO PODCAST”:

OTHER GREAT INDUSTRIAL RESOURCES:

CAP Logistics: https://www.caplogistics.com/

Hitachi Vantara: https://www.hitachivantara.com/en-us/home.html

Industrial Marketing Solutions:  https://industrialtalk.com/industrial-marketing/

Industrial Academy: https://industrialtalk.com/industrial-academy/

Industrial Dojo: https://industrialtalk.com/industrial_dojo/

Safety With Purpose Podcast: https://safetywithpurpose.com/

YOUR INDUSTRIAL DIGITAL TOOLBOX:

LifterLMS: Get One Month Free for $1 – https://lifterlms.com/

Active Campaign: Active Campaign Link

BombBomb: BombBomb Link

Social Jukebox: https://www.socialjukebox.com/

Industrial Academy (One Month Free Access And One Free License For Future Industrial Leader):

Business Beatitude the Book

Do you desire a more joy-filled, deeply-enduring sense of accomplishment and success? Live your business the way you want to live with the BUSINESS BEATITUDES…The Bridge connecting sacrifice to success. YOU NEED THE BUSINESS BEATITUDES!

TAP INTO YOUR INDUSTRIAL SOUL, RESERVE YOUR COPY NOW! BE BOLD. BE BRAVE. DARE GREATLY AND CHANGE THE WORLD. GET THE BUSINESS BEATITUDES!

Reserve My Copy and My 25% Discount

PODCAST TRANSCRIPT:

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

solidworks, design, machine, engineer, parts, industry, industrial, cad, order, world, andrew, shop floor, line, robot, material, handle, create, challenges, counterpart, keyhole

00:03

Welcome to the industrial talk podcast with Scott MacKenzie. Scott is a passionate industry professional dedicated to transferring cutting edge industry focused innovations and trends while highlighting the men and women who keep the world moving. So put on your hard hat, grab your work boots, and let's go. All right, you industry heroes from all around the world. Thank you very much for joining the industrial talk podcast, you know, this platform right here. As I point to it in the video, it's all about you. It's all dedicated to you. You are bold, you are brave, you dare greatly you innovate. And you're changing the world as we speak, as well as lives. That's why we celebrate you on this particular podcast, because you deserve it. All right, in the hot seat.

00:52

We got a gentleman by the name of Andrew study. All right. He is definitely a person who is with a company called smooth logics. He is the general manager. And we're going to be talking a little bit about

01:09

bill of materials. boms you're saying to yourself, Scott, that's not sexy? Oh, it's dead sexy. So don't argue with me. Because we're here to celebrate.

01:18

Before we get into the interview, just let's let's take care of the business.

01:24

All right, you know that this platform, the industrial talk platform is all about the education. It's all about collaboration. It's all about innovation. And it's imperative, that that you hear that as you take action. Because without innovation, you're I mean, you're not moving that what proverbial ball forward, right. And it starts with education. And it starts with the ability to be able to collaborate, collaborate with great people out there and what's really spectacular, especially on the industrial talk podcast, we have great people that are absolutely have a big desire to collaborate with you. Nope, they do. They do they want to collaborate, they want to educate they want to innovate with you. Because right now, I don't even know what we call this time we live in the squiffy pandemic, whatever it is all I know. One is that we don't have all the answers and we're looking for answers. And we've got to be able to survive, rebuild and prosper whatever that future looks like. And to do that, you have to educate, you've got to collaborate with great industry professionals, and innovate not just from a technology perspective, but innovate on how you interact with your market, interact with your team, and really create some high performance solutions. The next business, because I talk all about that, because it is all about that education, you know, collaboration and innovation. I want to be able to highlight an organization at the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee

03:02

connected systems Institute that's an S on that systems and their training,

03:09

that that workforce of the future, that digital transformation workforce of the future. They've got an incredible team. Mary Bunzl, the executive director at the connected systems Institute has just put together a rock star team to be able to develop the education that is needed for this incredible, one. Incredible.

03:31

You know, training of, of this digital world we live in, we need to do that. Manufacturing depends on that. Okay, I've covered all my business that you need to be aware of.

03:43

All right, how are you doing, Andrew? Welcome to the industrial talk podcast, my friend. Thanks. It's a pleasure to be here. Hey, did I get the last name right study? You did? Indeed. All right, you listeners out there. You're gonna say to yourself, Scott, how do you spell Scotty? Yeah, I had to phonetically lay it out. But it's s ch u TT E. That's great.

04:05

All right. Okay, for the listeners out there. Give us a little 411 on who you are, Andrew, and then we're gonna start talking a little bit about the challenges with Bill of Materials. Yeah, thanks for the intro. I was born and raised in West Michigan, Zealand, to be specific Not to be confused with the Netherlands, although a lot of people came from the level and

04:28

we're on the west side of Michigan, but west side of Michigan seems to be the one of the manufacturing and automation machine capitals. We send a lot we build a lot of parts of the automotive industry office furniture medical, and we ship a lot of equipment and product over to the east side of the state by Detroit. So I grew up my father had a small machine shop and equipment building. Shop for we predominantly did automotive and consumer goods. So

05:00

Before I had a driver's license, I was making chips, running a mill lathe welder designing in SolidWorks running CNC programming and CNC wiring and plumbing equipment, mostly to assemble automotive parts or office furniture.

05:20

See, you know, that whole area, Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, Wisconsin, that whole area up there is just this is just rich in manufacturing rich in crafts, and termit the people up there are so proud of what they can accomplish and and what they build. They just there's a lot of energy in building. I love it. I just I love that passion. Yeah, absolutely. We have a

05:54

whole support for it to

05:57

the local public schools, tech centers, I run a educational department at a local adult technical training school. And there's a lot of companies support for the training in the school systems so that we have the next generations that are able to continue to weld and machine and design and make and make great things is huge. Don't get me wrong, I think that there's, you know, other countries around the world are there they're investing a lot of time energy and, you know, the old money into developing that workforce of the future. And, and I've just, I've been very impressed with that commitment to education, that that trade, education. And and it's, it's not like, like, for me, it's not like my dad's

06:46

view of what what we did. It's, it's, it's pretty sophisticated stuff. There's a lot of real incredible innovation that exists today. And it's only getting better. And it requires some really sharp individuals to be able to, you know, build, we need them. We just don't just need them in a big way. And you need to educate them. You can't just throw them on the floor and just say good luck. Have a good time. Figure it out. Nope. This is sophisticated stuff. Now give us a little background on the company that you represent. Yeah. So this created by our

07:24

by our need to solve an EMP problem in the industry. I was a automations design engineer for many years and still do a little bit from time to time. And one of the great challenges with designing a machine. To put something together we'll use the quintessential, you know, like a door handle or view mirror or something like that. West Michigan is famous for making those. And as an engineer, I would get a new door handle or a new rearview mirror for a new

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vehicle that I've never seen before in my life, right 2023 model of the Chevy Suburban, for example,

08:04

I then have to design a machine that's going to put together anywhere from maybe six to 25 parts. And usually the cycle times are, you know, five to six seconds. So it might be a palletized conveyor line, it could be a rotary index dial, it could be any number of things. But every five or six seconds, we need to assemble let's say a Chevy door handle or a Ford f150 door handle or whatever it might be cheese and enemy. And these days, the same door handle fits on multiple platforms. So it's you know, pi Chevy, suburban Tahoe, Yukon, etc. Silverado or whatever it might be. But one of the last machines I did large machines I did for the automotive industry were assembling f150 door handles every five seconds. And it was I can't even I can't even wrap my mind around that. It was five I just can't I'm sorry, I just like that is innovative. I just can't wrap my mind around. Well, it was just spectacular. I mean the statistics as best I can. And this is about a decade ago, but it was only five, five and a half seconds. The most complex version had 36 parts in it. Because between the grip, the pin, the spring, the shock, the dampeners, the bezel, the back frame, the keyhole, the keypad, the retaining pins and springs to hold everything together. And it was all lean manufacturing. So we could do a red door handle for the front right of a four door and then a green door handle for the back left of a four door. And then we could have a right driver side door handle with a keyhole without a keypad. Any combination totally lean quality checks along the way. And then the robots would palletize them accordingly so that the last pallet going on the semi was the first one coming off and it would go right on the final production of the door panel assembly or the line assembly at the Ford plant. See I'm just telling you right now if that doesn't get your skin a little tingly because you've recognized

10:00

That, that it is through the ability to be able to collaborate with these, like companies like yours to be able to be able to do this. It is just it's and, and the simple fact that you're creating these things, and you realize the economy and the auto industry, if you create a dork it

10:21

Oh, my ears bleeding. Yeah. And it's what happened. And I mean, it's really amazing. We're kind of the the tail on the end of the dog, right? We're taking any, we're taking 50 some parts, not counting colors, uniqueness's and that kind of thing. And we're I mean, we're just simply assembling them, we're not even manufacturing, the components themselves, they come to us. So we take a spring, we take a piece of plastic, we paint, you know, we take a keyhole or lock cylinder or something. And we're just putting them on putting them together and assembling them. There's an entire production line before that, that even manufactures and delivers and ships the product.

11:00

Yeah, so getting down to the bills of material, right? Imagine as a mechanical engineer, you're you're responsible for designing a machine that has will will take a guess I don't know that I ever counted but 70 80,000 unique components, right, I'm designing a machine for a part I've never seen before. So I design a nest I've never seen before I design hard to only, you know, robot end of arm tooling, there was presses, there were glue dispensers, there was everything. And it's basically all custom certainly purchase some things and ABB robot, for example, you can purchase some at 20. And kind of doing Erector Set framing and guarding. But we had, you know, torch, or we had plates that were torching out, machining down, lots of fixtures, lots of hard tooling. And all of that has never been before been designed to because it's for an assembly machine that's never been for but built. That's for a part that's never before been, you know, designed or made. And so the the great challenge, when I was a full time design engineer, my boss would come to me and say, you know, to meet deadline, or the shop is slow, or we got to get a jump on this, you designer give me parts so that the shop can make them. And from a designer standpoint, I my response is always well the designs not done. And my boss is like, well, we need some linear. So give them this frame, give them this base plate like is that part gonna change. So then as a designer,

12:24

actively designing a machine, I have to keep track of what's on the order, you know, what's on the shop floor, what what has the 10 week lead time that already had to start being maybe made or even bought, right robots have 1012 week lead time sometimes. So we might have bought the robot. So now I can't change the design too much less the robot not fit or not work.

12:47

So there's a very, very complex bill of material management problem not only in the design itself, right? How many 12 millimeter proxies Do I need to sense the 17 functions on this machine, in various sub assemblies in various quantities. But so there's there's a very complex build material management challenge, but it gets infinitely more complicated. When you are incrementally ordering a designing right, if I've ordered the frame, then I have a bill of material that has the frame on order, but then the Bill of Material changes. So now I have two bill of materials that don't match the one the bill material from last week when I ordered the frame and other parts and the bill of material from this week that doesn't match so I have to match those up. And then I have to carry over what was ordered and what wasn't so then I have to order more or cancel some or replace some more increased quantities or decreased quantities. And I have to interrupt here because this is all with this particular line. This this analogy this example is of you designing something new to be able to deliver a product at the end and be able to do it efficiently meeting whatever time specifications quality specifications, and in a big probably becomes your flexibility to be able to manipulate that line becomes less flexible as you progress down that road well and be able to and I'm also on that particular project, that f150 door handle project I was also working with four other designers. So right you know, element, right i mean a different designer could change something that affects my components or my bill of material without me knowing about it and then what gets ordered doesn't fit. So I mean there's always reworks there's always oh that part no longer fits I forgot to change something or I changed something and forgot to document or a document and I forgot to tell somebody I told somebody but it was already made. And you add the one of the great challenges of custom automation or custom anything machine building automation or otherwise, is at the end of the day when you start bolting it together, figuring out what parts you don't need that got ordered. What parts you do need that didn't get ordered what parts that did get ordered that were wrong or changed.

15:00

And what doesn't bolt together?

15:03

And then I've been I've been in this industry my entire life, I've done it. Since, like I said before I had a driver's license. And at the very end of the assembly, do we have the parts? Where are they? Are they correct and do they bolt together is, you know, always two or three weeks before the machine is supposed to be done. And it's all hands on deck. It's a total scramble it's, it's, it's absolutely insane, depending on the size of the project, and how well it's managed, if you don't have a good bill of material management and integration. So with that said, What are the solutions? Man, you my talk is already tight listening to you, and all the challenges that exist associated with pulling this together and getting the right bomb out there. What do you what do you what are the steps, man? Give us some actions here? Yeah, absolutely. So from a designer standpoint, you know, engineers are known for being meticulous and very percent precise and accurate in their trade. And that's all those good qualities. When I when I look back, I'll quick sidebar here just a minute because it's a fun, fun stat. Yeah. But when I look back at the mistakes I made as a mechanical design engineer, when I was in industry full time, most of the mistakes that I made were in managing paperwork, right, like fourth grade math between bills of material and trying to match up quantities and match up bill of material line items. Most of the mistakes I made were were clinical paper processing, book work issues, my design work and have historically always been very good and very accurate. It's just a matter of, are you properly communicating, documenting and managing from a book work standpoint, the design that you have in CAD, and so much of the industry is absolutely backwards, I would have to print off stuff that I wanted to have made and take screenshots of bills material to give to purchasing and say buy these things and give physical paper prints to the shop floor and say manufacturer this component right? You've never seen this block with a hole in it before. Can you make me three of them. So we're counterpart really shines counterpart is our EAP solution counterpart actually comm is we directly integrate with SolidWorks. So we get to explain SolidWorks, which is fine, but what's solid SolidWorks is probably the most prolific 3d CAD software in the world

17:28

have more licenses and more users out there. It's the software that I teach at our local adult education trade school for mechanical design. And it's a product from vessel systems. A sister product would be like Katia or x design as a newer variants.

17:47

But they're they're an OEM CAD design software. And it's pretty much the number one CAD software in the particular industry that I'm referring to as the automation machine build industry.

18:00

So we directly integrate with solver, which is really exciting, because I can design anything I want on SolidWorks. And from inside of SolidWorks never leaving the CAD program, which as an engineer, right, I that's all I ever want to look at. I don't really like looking at my email. I don't I mean, other than emails from you, those are pretty sweet.

18:17

Thank you very much appreciate that. But but as an engineer, right, I want to look at cat I want to design I want to be creative, and, and, and, and stretch my abilities and my thinking in what I am good at what I'm passionate about. The rest of it is just unnecessary evil. So Kevin Hart allows the engineers to stay inside of cat stay inside of SolidWorks. And from inside of SolidWorks, create an order request and say I the engineer, I need one of these frames made and then keep designing, I never have to print paper, I never have to talk to another person, which is usually a plus in the engineering world. We're not very eco friendly.

18:57

And then as I as I keep designing, I can I can continue to order modify that order. If I change the frame, I can process a revision. And all of that electronically gets communicated in real time downstream to purchasing to manufacturing to assembly to everybody else. So it really eliminates mistakes. We've had customers gain 15 to 20% of engineering efficiency and reduce mistakes. And that's not designed to say so I designed the wrong hole I'm going to get the wrong part. But the accuracy conversion from CAD from SolidWorks down to the shop floor, we've reached high 90th percentile of accuracy using the software correctly and the mistakes have been human error. So it's it's it's a really amazing tool. It drives a lot of innovation and efficiency in communication going mostly paperless because if I have brilliant 3d CAD on computer, why would I reduce that information to a physical paper prints to give to a machinist, a CNC machinist who's then going to go get the 3d

20:00

CAD and machine often 3d CAD, right, the paper doesn't really help much anymore in today's society, especially when, with the proliferation of 3d printing and everything else. Right? See, this is interesting because you're, you've created a platform as a system a process that instills a level of discipline, and you're absolutely spot on. If I, if I have to go from system to system to system to system and all of this around it, and everything in between.

20:29

There's challenges with that, I doubt about it, I get it, right, like what you're just saying, SolidWorks, boom, I'm there. Yeah, like one of the biggest competitors that we have in our space, I would say most of the companies that we sell to their, their previous product process was require the engineer to log into QuickBooks, and create a purchase order to buy the things that they need. Like that. That's most of what happens when we when we demo or when we are talking to a company. And the business owner is like, you know, I really like it if I could get my seven engineers, if I if I could, if I didn't have to require them to use QuickBooks every day. And you're like, that's just such the wrong tool for the application right?

21:13

Now, you don't want them in there, right? Yes, stay stay in your area, stay in your zone, right there, stay in that CAD program and get that thing done, and allow technology to generate what is necessary to fulfill those orders and to make it happen. Now, that's all great. That's all wonderful. But you know that there are roadblocks what what, like what, you know, nothing. Not everything is, you know, pink elephants and, you know, cotton candy. What, what are the challenges here?

21:42

I mean, so many of the challenges are discipline and rigor. Without having a direct SolidWorks integration, there's a little bit more flexibility, right, I can have design something and say, I know there's going to be a robot there. But I didn't put the robot my design, just go order a robot. So there's, it kind of raises the bar and it says, What's in SolidWorks, is what you're going to get. So make sure your SolidWorks models are accurate, update your SolidWorks data. And it's kind of a wiziwig product at that point, what you see is what you get, and it it requires a little bit more rigor and discipline on the engineering side to make sure that all the i's are dotted and the T's are crossed, to make sure that you're going to get what you really want in the end.

22:26

But they're roadblocks. I mean, what I mean, this sounds great. That sounds perfect. That sounds like the ideal. What's the point? I mean?

22:34

Why, why? What are the roadblocks? Why is it just people? Is it like I've, I've got my GRP here, I've got I use this? Can we do this? And I have no problem over here. Yeah, I would imagine that's the case. Most of our customers don't have the RP. A lot of the customers only sell into they're using QuickBooks or Excel. I mean, of course I got you kidding me? No, not it's not a slam on Excel, there's a purpose.

23:05

That was probably our is the is the software or we replace the most often.

23:13

But

23:14

a lot of these small automation companies, it's an owner that's really good in SolidWorks, or design or control engineer, or somebody like that, who started out designing and building with a three man team, where everybody communicates and you've got Excel and then they grow into a 30 4060 person company. And then pretty soon their old processes don't work.

23:35

It just overwhelms it's like this

23:38

guy's like walking through probably quicksand. It would be tough. It would be tough and you

23:44

just bite the bullet make it happen. Hey, we're gonna have to wrap it up. Here's the deal.

23:50

What you were talking about, resonates with me How do I get ahold of you? counterpart dash earpiece comm is our product website where you can email any of the sales team from the links at that domain.

24:05

So you don't have any issues with me providing your email address out on industrial talk.com don't mind or the the generic sales email address we can get you connected to the right sales individual or lead directly is no problem at all.

24:20

Excellent. I like that. All right, listeners. You got to get a hold of this gentleman. Andrew askcody is his name smooth logics is the company the other website is counterpart dash er p.com. And you know as well as I do, everything will be out at the industrial talk.com so Fear not, do not worry about it. I got I want to get a hold of Andrew but I don't know how just go to industrial talk.com find his

24:49

his podcast look at for the lookout for, you know all the contacts that are necessary. Andrew, thank you very much for joining the industrial talk podcast. Thank you, everyone.

25:00

It is a real pleasure. Excellent time. All right, listeners, I want you to be bold, brave, dare greatly hang out with people like Andrew who are bold, brave and daring greatly and I'm telling you right now, your view of the world will change and he will be a positive impact to changing lives. But that's what you do anyway. All right, we're gonna be having another great interview like Andrew right around the corner. Thank you very much for joining. We will be back with another great interview shortly.

25:34

You're listening to the industrial talk Podcast Network.

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