Industrial Talk is onsite at Xcelerate 2025 and talking to Jeremiah Woodford, Chief Revenue Officer at Verusen AI about “MRO powered by AI”.

If interested in being on the Industrial Talk show, simply contact us and let's have a quick conversation.

Finally, get your exclusive free access to the Industrial Academy and a series on “Why You Need To Podcast” for Greater Success in 2025. All links designed for keeping you current in this rapidly changing Industrial Market. Learn! Grow! Enjoy!

JEREMIAH WOODFORD'S CONTACT INFORMATION:

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

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

Company Website: https://verusen.com/

PODCAST VIDEO:

THE STRATEGIC REASON “WHY YOU NEED TO PODCAST”:

OTHER GREAT INDUSTRIAL RESOURCES:

NEOM: https://www.neom.com/en-us

Hexagon: https://hexagon.com/

Arduino: https://www.arduino.cc/

Fictiv: https://www.fictiv.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/

We the 15: https://www.wethe15.org/

YOUR INDUSTRIAL DIGITAL TOOLBOX:

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

Active Campaign: Active Campaign 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

The post Jeremiah Woodford with Verusen AI appeared first on Industrial Talk.

Scott MacKenzie hosts James Smejkal, Vice President of Sales and Marketing at CAP Logistics, to discuss asset management, reliability, and supply chain planning. James emphasizes the importance of having a plan to minimize downtime, noting that two-thirds of industrial companies experience unplanned outages monthly, costing $100,000-$125,000 per hour. He highlights CAP Logistics' unique approach, using technology and long-term employee tenure to provide customized solutions. James will speak at the Outages Conference in Calgary on downtime and reliability, focusing on maximizing plant outage time for maintenance. He encourages listeners to connect with him on LinkedIn for insights and best practices.

Action Items

• [ ] James to speak at an upcoming outage conference in Calgary on downtime and reliability.
• [ ] CAP Logistics to help customers with rapid response for emergencies like a $20k/minute well outage.
• [ ] Listeners to connect with James on LinkedIn to learn more about CAP Logistics.

Outline

Introduction and Overview of Industrial Talk Podcast

• Scott MacKenzie introduces the Industrial Talk podcast, emphasizing its focus on industry professionals and their innovations.
• Scott welcomes James Smejkal, Vice President of Sales and Marketing at CAP Logistics, to discuss asset management, reliability, and supply chain planning.
• Scott highlights the importance of integrating uptime solutions to improve reliability and minimize downtime.
• Scott encourages listeners to use the Industrial Talk platform to amplify their messages and connect with the industrial community.

Introduction of James Mickle and CAP Logistics

• Scott MacKenzie asks James Smejkal about his background and current role at CAP Logistics.
• James shares his 28-year tenure at CAP Logistics, starting as a salesperson and rising to his current position.
• James explains CAP Logistics' approach to transportation, emphasizing their customized solutions and long-term employee tenure.
• James discusses the company's focus on technology and understanding customer needs to provide personalized service.

CAP Logistics' Unique Approach to Logistics

• James elaborates on CAP Logistics' technology-driven approach, developed by their in-house IT team.
• He emphasizes the importance of understanding customer needs and integrating with their operations to provide seamless service.
• James mentions the company's commitment to continuous improvement and innovation in the logistics industry.
• Scott and James discuss the concept of “logistics as a service” and how CAP Logistics provides comprehensive solutions to address customer pain points.

Challenges and Opportunities in the Logistics Industry

• James talks about the dynamic nature of the logistics industry and the impact of technology on business practices.
• He highlights the importance of having a reliable logistics partner to ensure timely delivery and minimize downtime.
• James mentions the upcoming Outages Conference in Calgary, where he will speak on downtime and reliability.
• Scott and James discuss the critical role of logistics in maintaining business continuity and the importance of planning for outages.

Planning for Outages and Reliability Strategies

• James outlines the importance of having a plan for outages to minimize downtime and maximize efficiency.
• He shares statistics on the prevalence of unplanned outages in industrial companies and their financial impact.
• James emphasizes the need for proactive maintenance and monitoring to prevent unplanned outages.
• Scott and James discuss the role of diagnostic equipment and AI in improving asset management and reliability.

The Role of Logistics in Asset Management and Reliability

• James explains how CAP Logistics can support asset management by providing logistics solutions during planned outages.
• He highlights the importance of having a reliable logistics partner to ensure timely delivery of critical parts and equipment.
• James discusses the company's approach to understanding customer needs and providing customized solutions.
• Scott and James emphasize the importance of having a comprehensive plan for asset management and logistics to ensure business continuity.

The Impact of Technology on Logistics and Asset Management

• James talks about the advancements in technology and its role in improving logistics and asset management.
• He mentions the use of AI and diagnostic equipment to monitor and maintain critical assets.
• James discusses the importance of having accurate data and measurements to optimize maintenance and reduce downtime.
• Scott and James highlight the need for continuous improvement and innovation in the logistics and asset management industries.

Conclusion and Call to Action

• Scott and James wrap up the conversation by emphasizing the importance of planning and proactive maintenance in logistics and asset management.
• James encourages listeners to reach out to him on LinkedIn for more information and to discuss potential solutions.
• Scott reiterates the importance of having a trusted logistics partner to handle complex logistics and supply chain challenges.
• The podcast concludes with a call to action for listeners to connect with James and explore the Industrial Talk platform for further insights and resources.

If interested in being on the Industrial Talk show, simply contact us and let's have a quick conversation.

Finally, get your exclusive free access to the Industrial Academy and a series on “Marketing Process Course” for Greater Success in 2024. All links designed for keeping you current in this rapidly changing Industrial Market. Learn! Grow! Enjoy!

JAMES SMEJKAL'S CONTACT INFORMATION:

Personal LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/james-smejkal-749723b/

Company LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/cap-logistics/posts/?feedView=all

Company Website: https://www.caplogistics.com/

PODCAST VIDEO:

OTHER GREAT INDUSTRIAL RESOURCES:

NEOM: https://www.neom.com/en-us

Hexagon: https://hexagon.com/

Siemens: https://www.siemens.com/global/en.html

Palo Alto Networks: https://www.paloaltonetworks.com/ot-security-tco

Palo Alto Networks Report HERE.

Hitachi Digital Services: https://hitachids.com/

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

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

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

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

We the 15: https://www.wethe15.org/

YOUR INDUSTRIAL DIGITAL TOOLBOX:

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

Active Campaign: Active Campaign 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

The post James Smejkal with CAP Logistics appeared first on Industrial Talk.

Industrial Talk is onsite at the OMG Quarterly Standards Meeting and chatting with Satoshi Morinaga, Hideaki Fujimori with NEC and Mitch Tseng with Industry IoT Consortium about “Negotiation Automation Platform”. Tune in and hear more about the importance of AI Negotiation and Team NEC's unique insights on this Industrial Talk.

Finally, get your exclusive free access to the Industrial Academy and a series on “Why You Need To Podcast” for Greater Success in 2023. All links designed for keeping you current in this rapidly changing Industrial Market. Learn! Grow! Enjoy!

NEC CONTACT INFORMATION:

Hideaki Fujimori: h-fujimori@nec.com

Kazuhiro Takahashi: takahashi321@nec.com

Mitch Tseng: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mitchtseng/

Valuable Resource:  Automated Negotiation SCM Consortium (automated-negotiation.org)

More Resources: Customers_and_Partners_Guide_to_Setting_Up_2-Step_Verification_in_Box_eng

PODCAST VIDEO:

THE STRATEGIC REASON “WHY YOU NEED TO PODCAST”:

OTHER GREAT INDUSTRIAL RESOURCES:

NEOM: https://www.neom.com/en-us

AI Dash: https://www.aidash.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/

We the 15: https://www.wethe15.org/

YOUR INDUSTRIAL DIGITAL TOOLBOX:

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

Active Campaign: Active Campaign 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

The post NEC’s Negotiation Automation Platform appeared first on Industrial Talk.

Industrial Talk is speaking with to Alberto Villarreal, Managing Director with Nepanoa about “Latin America Reshoring or Nearshoring Solutions”. Get the answers to your “Reshoring” questions along with Alberto's  unique insight on the “How” on this Industrial Talk interview!

Finally, get your exclusive free access to the Industrial Academy and a series on “Why You Need To Podcast” for Greater Success in 2023. All links designed for keeping you current in this rapidly changing Industrial Market. Learn! Grow! Enjoy!

ALBERTO VILLARREAL'S CONTACT INFORMATION:

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

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

Company Website: https://www.nepanoa.com/

PODCAST VIDEO:

THE STRATEGIC REASON “WHY YOU NEED TO PODCAST”:

OTHER GREAT INDUSTRIAL RESOURCES:

NEOM: https://www.neom.com/en-us

AI Dash: https://www.aidash.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/

We the 15: https://www.wethe15.org/

YOUR INDUSTRIAL DIGITAL TOOLBOX:

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

Active Campaign: Active Campaign 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

mexico, alberto, companies, scott, people, latin america, nepanoa, industrial, business, conversation, manufacturing, client, countries, supply chain, talk, sourcing, financial, state, wrap, operating

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

00:21

Alright, once again, thank you very much for joining industrial talk a platform that is dedicated to you industrial professionals all around the world. You are bold, brave, you dare greatly you collaborate, you're solving problems. You're making the world a better place. That's why industrial talk is your cheerleader. In all things industrial. All right in the hot seat. Alberto Villarreal Nepanoa is the company we're talking about nearshoring, we're talking about seeing what we can do, what are the strategies? What, what avenues can be taken to try to sort of bring back maybe some manufacturing? And and make it a little bit more efficient? Maybe south of the border type of solutions? Napa? No, it is your team? Let's get cracking. Yeah, it's gonna be a great conversation, you'll like this conversation. It's an interesting conversation, because I know that from my perspective, that I've had a number of conversations sort of wrapped around supply chain, what are those strategies? What do we do? How do we become more efficient? How do we create a supply chain that is a little bit more durable than what we are expected? That what we experienced? So anyway, great conversation, great solution, Nepanoa. All right, once again, before we get into the conversation, we're going to be doing a 2020 to wrap up. And not to not to sort of explain to you what, what's going on. But I've been very fortunate to be attending conferences, meeting with companies and professionals, talking to them about some of the challenges that are taking place within manufacturing, digital transformation, you name it, it's all out there. And there's a lot of great, great thinking, and solutions that exist out there. So I'm going to be wrapping it up. But sort of a precursor, there are a couple of things that sort of fall into the category one is, and this is this is a constant theme. There's a trust, who do I trust? I'm out there on the World Wide Web, I'm looking around, I'm trying to figure out how to create a business that's more resilient. What do I do? Where do I go? What are those avenues? Who do I trust? Because there's a lot of people hanging shingles out there saying, I trust us do this, trust us do that. But who do I really trust because I know I need to do something. So trust is a big deal. The second sort of theme that exists out there today is one there's a speed there's a there's a sort of a there's a rapid expansion, the solute, there's just so much speed and velocity that exist out there and industry. The challenges, again, I just trust, but where do I start? What what do I do? And and, and I think that that's really important. And I think that there are a lot of great companies out there that can definitely help you navigate those waters and to be able to deal with velocity that exist today in industry. So those are coming to the sort of the themes that are going to be communicated in the 2020 to wrap up. The other thing that we're doing is in light of the same thing is that you have these verticals. And I'll say it's manufacturing, okay, manufacturing, and there are so many solutions that are hammering, manufacturing, is how do you sort of pull that and to create a great sort of a cogent picture behind it? And and that, you know, that could be digital transformation? What do we do? Where do we go? Is that really necessary to, let's say, cybersecurity, if you're going to, if you're going to be digitizing your business, you need to make sure that you're upfront with your conversation around cybersecurity, that's to, again, who do I trust? Where do I go? All of these things? And how do you pull all of these solutions? What What technology do I put in place? What what does that mean? How do I compress those times? So these are just conversations that had happened over the past year, attending conferences, meeting up with people all fantastic stuff. So be on the lookout for one the year wrap up and then to the series that I'm going to would love to be able to pull together that maybe its manufacturing oil and gas, pipeline, utilities big, big need to sort of pull all that together and what does that picture look like? So all of these things are just really absolutely spectacular. So that's that's your that's where I'm at. That's where I'm going. That's what I'm pushing. So be on the lookout for that and go out to industrial talk and you know No click and be a part of that. So, all right, Napa Nova. So the reality is, is that we had this this COVID, it had its supply chain went for galley. And we needed to come up with some solutions and strategies that maybe address nearshoring reshoring, bringing some of the critical manufacturing components in North America, and Nepanoa is are the leaders in opening up, Mexico and South America and areas in there to be able to begin sourcing from those locations. And so anyway, it's a great conversation. Really enjoyed it. It's timely. So enjoy Alberto Alberto, welcome to industrial talk. Thank you very much for finding time in your busy schedule to talk to our listeners, which happen to be the best in the world. How about that?

05:54

I believe you. How are you doing? Very good. Scott, thank you so much for the opportunity. It's a pleasure. Yeah, talk to you and share perspectives with you.

06:03

I'm all into it. I'm telling you right now, listeners, we're gonna be talking a little bit about nearshoring is a great topic. Primarily Mexico, Latin America. And Nepanoa No, I got it. Nepanoa, the hey got leaders in in being able to make that happen. And I think that that's an important conversation to have specially with challenges with supply chain and, and the importance of manufacturing. Before we get into that conversation. Alberto, give us a little background on who you are. Sure.

06:37

Scott, thank you very much for the opportunity to connect. I am indebted to ERL. I was born and raised in Monterrey, Mexico. And I noticed that sentence was in Spanglish. There was a lot of our rolling there. In English. It's I'm Alberto Villarreal. And I was born and raised in Monterrey, Mexico. It works. Either one works. I've been in the United States since 2003. I went to school at Georgia State University. very stereotypical story. Scott, Mexican kid played soccer, I ended up getting a full ride at Georgia State and playing there. For four years. I had a long career in consulting, one of the one of the big consulting firms. And three years ago, I decided to start my own firm, which is net Bonilla and net Biloela. Yeah, net. benowa is the verb. It means a company, it means to be a companion, right? And the language has Now what'll now what tool was spoken by the Aztecs, who are the fastest the Aztecs lived in Mexico City. And there were the most important civilization in the pre Columbian era. And the name of our company, I love it, because it really describes what we do, we are a companion, right to businesses that want to establish operations, grow their operations, or transform their operations between the US Mexico and Latin America. I've been a resident of Chicago, and for the last 12 years, I moved to Chicago in 2010. And the Chicago Booth grad, for any, you know, MBAs out there, and, you know, very proud of what we're doing in trying to unite us and Mexico, US Latin America, particularly if we're what you're saying nearshoring ally shoring, right there is

08:11

Whoa, hey, I got all the government I didn't get that ally short.

08:19

I mean, well, we need to think about it that way. Right? It's not only a supply chain issue, but with the complexities that are happening around the world. Europe, Asia, I mean, just yesterday, right? We were looking at some missile tests in Asia, we not only need to think of our supply chain, we need to think of as Okay, which countries which markets, which regions are our allies. Alright, so that's a way to take a look at every risk counts when we're thinking of moving operations.

08:45

So one of the questions I have is, is, let's say I approach I'm a business I'm interested in, at least beginning i, i source my products here, I manufacture my products here. I do that over here, wherever here is let's say it's a wherever it is, right? And I see the value, I see the importance of sort of bringing critical items nearer to me, right? And how does that sort of journey begin with you? Like, how do I just approach it? What's that journey look like?

09:17

Sure. So Scott, it's not usually about moving all of your production or source everything from one country. But if anything, the last three years proved to us that, you know, diversification having 123 suppliers of the same part is really beneficial, especially in a state like the one that we're living today that it's really unstable. Um, how it works with us is we have a methodology, which we call the EPA, NOAA lifecycle. And our conversations usually begin with a question. And it's usually the CEO or the CFO, right or just the owner of a manufacturing shop. And the question is, Hey, can I take my facility to Mexico? Can I expand my facility to Mexico, can I find X or Y product in blue? I've heard that Brazil is fantastic for this type of part. That's usually the question. And that's how we begin conversations. From there, we focus on making an analysis. Okay. Let's talk about financials. How would your company look? If you started working in Mexico? Right? How would it work if you sourced this product? From Colombia? Right, let's talk about the people. Okay, if you're going to be manufacturing elsewhere, what type of people do you need? What capabilities are you looking for? Right? What are the biggest issues that you're facing today? Operating elsewhere? Right? How can that play a role? Because Scott, many times when we have these conversations, we think of Mexico as a whole, we forget that Mexico has more than 130 million people in it. Right? We think of Latin America as a whole. But operating in Brazil, Colombia, Chile, Peru, is completely different, different regulations, different, different people, different cultures, and it's important to be able to navigate them. Once we make that analysis, we encourage our clients to make a decision. And you'd be surprised because sometimes the decision is no, guess what? Continue working with a company you're working with or maintain your operations where they are. At this point, it truly doesn't make sense for you to expand. But of course, in a patient's

11:26

so you don't have you can if I came to you and I just said I'm interested, I don't know where to go. I don't know where to start. I don't even I just think it might work out well. The Napa NOAA team net Bonilla will say okay, let's look at let's look at it. And yeah, this is fine. This could be improved this whatever. You give us that roadmap, right?

11:52

I'll give you that, that roadmap, and it will always be backed by data. Right? And it will always be backed by how does this? How is this coherent with the strategy of your business going forward? I'll give you an example. Just today, I had a call with a client that it was going to Mexico, but guess what, the facility that they were looking to, it was 30,000 square feet. They wanted to start with something small, maintain all their operation that us, but they were just looking at Mexico for that specific piece. Well, guess what, we weren't able to find a facility at the price point that they needed it so that it made sense for them. We're gonna revisit this in six months, because today, it doesn't make sense, right? And that's okay. Now, that's one story. The other side of the story is it makes sense. And then our team will accompany through the expansion or through the engagement of sourcing product from Mexico and Latin America. And that is a whole different ballgame. Scott, we're talking government relations, we're talking negotiations, we're talking understanding customs and our border, understanding logistics in general, very well. So we become an extension of the companies that are coming into Mexico and Latin America. And we take care of that project for them. So that way, they can focus on operating do what they do best. And we become their Mexico slash flat tam team to get things done them

13:08

here. What is the value proposition of why I would consider moving operations down to Mexico or even you know, Latin America? What what? What's that driver? Why, why? Why is that important?

13:22

There are several drivers, but there's two that are very important. The first one is people. When you look at the demographic of Mexico, when you look at the demographic of Latin America, you're gonna see young people, the average age in Latin America is between 25 and 30 years old Scott. So when we have young people, young professionals that need jobs that want to innovate, that really gives an opportunity, more importantly, in specific countries, because when we say Latin America, in this conversation, we're ignoring your why we're ignoring Bolivia, Venezuela, right? I mean, we're truly focusing from Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Peru, a little bit of Argentina, and of course, Mexico, but in my world, Mexico counts as North America, Mexicans just happen to speak Spanish. But when you look at dedication level, would you be surprised if I told you that in Mexico, more than 300,000 engineers graduate every year? industrial chemical Central, mechanical?

14:17

That's it's another I would imagine, yeah, that's the case. But you know, it. It's never been a source of topic. But it's important, and especially when we're struggling with finding people here.

14:28

That's exactly the point. So that's why people plays a very important role. The first conversation, the first question that companies have is, hey, what type of people will I find? And the response is, well, what type of people do you need? Right? Now? What if I told you that turnover for companies in Mexico is 60% less than it is in the United States? No way. 60 60% Think about all the training that goes in when you hire somebody, think about the years of experience that they You may have operating a machine managing a team, just knowing the culture of your company. And then having to do that all that investment again and again and again. And again. That's a big number. Right? So that one is the main point. The second point is the financial one. But I want to be very specific here. When I talk financial, I don't mean oh, it's cheap labor, because guess what it is, when you compare Latin America with Asia, very difficult and very, very, very, very few cases, you will find that it is less expensive than it is to operate in Asia. But when I say by financial, it's the whole supply chain, you will need to make sure that everything flows, right via Latin America until you know it reaches your final client. And of course, there's a labor component then, right? It's not as expensive as it is, you know, in Canada or the United States. But it's logistics, it's where are my suppliers? What are they providing? And definitely the people and of course, acknowledge, right? Is there availability for automation? Or even for management systems? Right? What's the cost of that? So all that added up? It gives you a financial picture. So truly, the play here is people and financial. Does it make sense?

16:13

Yeah, it does. Do you find their struggles within sort of the government area?

16:22

No, definitely. Scott, thank you very much for, for asking that. I always say that. Mexico and Latin America need the infrastructure to attract more foreign direct investment. And when I say infrastructure, people think, oh, it's roads and bridges. Yes, that's one piece. But I'm talking business infrastructure. I'm talking making it easy for people to go down there and establish a corporation. Yeah, get rid of bureaucracy, making it easy to hire and let go of people. That is very important. And that's what I mean, the business infrastructure, right, when you show up to a specific state, and they welcome you and say, Hey, we have all this land available. Hey, we have all this people available. Hey, here are the companies that could help you. While there are other states that you call them and let them know, Hey, we're bringing some investors or we're bringing this business to your state. All right, thank you very much. Appreciate it. No need to attract. Right. So definitely the government should be helping more right to, I would call it unite. Right this side of the world. Scott,

17:24

do you see any changes taking place there? I mean, do you see some sort of shift in that?

17:31

I've seen local efforts, once again, each one of these countries is large. Right? So let's talk about Africa, when you show up early on, which is the state of Monterrey right there in the north part of Mexico, very industrial. Right, many, many, many American companies operate there, you can see that there's a business infrastructure, right, you show up? Right? There's particularly investment. Right, which is, you know, it's an organization that is devoted to attract investment. Right. There's attorneys there, there's tax consultants, immediately, industrial developers, you know, show up, but then you go into another state, right? I may not mention any names, I will not mention names, but you go into another state. And you see that it's not seeing treatment. Right. So then you start wondering, okay, why does mobile noon receive a lot of this foreign direct investment? Well, that's the reason. I wish, I wish that countries would take more of united approach and say, Hey, come to our country, and get it done. You know, instead of just being the local governments of each state, because what will happen there is, you know, that gap between the rich states and the poor States will continue to widen. And that's not what he wants, specially in such large, large countries, like the ones that we operate in. The same thing happens in Brazil. The same thing happens in Colombia.

18:50

The so again, back with my company head on. I have a specific need. Nepanoa, Team Napa, Noah says, yeah, here we go, we're gonna do this. A part of that is determining where maybe Mexico is not the place, maybe it is another portion of Latin America. And because their strengths and weaknesses, and whatever, do you guys help with that journey to as well?

19:17

Definitely. Scott. So that's part of the analysis that we make, right? So we had a client, for example, Scott, and they had to do beanies, right, winter beanies, right for our heads. And, of course, you know, for cotton perspective, they'd always huge right, the industry with areas testing, but they initially wanted to go to Mexico. Well, what happened was, well, guess what? Yes, we can go to Mexico, but it's going to be more expensive. Perhaps there's not the necessary you know, volume that you need. And we ended up going to Peru with them. We walked them through what did we do? We got to prove and we analyze how many companies can actually make this product. In particular for them, their beanies are quite special, they have something that is that that is unique to them. So we do require a little bit of product development by The companies that we were talking with over there, but we took them through the whole process. Hey, first, give me an NDA. By the moment, you know, when someone Latin America signs NDA immediately, they're telling you okay, I'm serious about this right? Then second of all, hey, can never talk to some of your customers. Perfect. We do some due diligence there. And then we jump into, okay, here's our client, here's exactly what we're going to be doing. Can you do it? What's, you know, volume cost, you know, the usual. But we can do that, not only in Mexico, but you know, across la time, our network is truly expensive in the region.

20:33

Soon. Good point. I mean, I, I wouldn't know where to start. And and the reality is, is I see the necessity to find trusted individuals to help along this journey. The last thing I want is this saying, Yeah, we're all thumbs up, I'm, I'm heading down to Mexico got an extension of my manufacturing, whatever it might be, and then all of a sudden, something happens, right? And I can't do anything about it. That's not within my wheelhouse of, of capabilities. So it's I, I see that men, but that's with anything, you know, if I'm going to be manufacturing in Asia, it's the same thing. I'm not gonna, I can't do that. You know, so you hit,

21:21

you touch a very important point, because our clients are the companies expanding or working with within this countries. And we'd like to say that we have a lot of relationships, but no commitments locally, our commitment is to our client, we maintain that independence. And I'll give you an example. Somebody may come to you and say, Hey, I heard that you're expanding. And let's choose Mexico, that you're expanding in the state of Durango. Well, guess what, I'll get you the location, you need 100,000 square feet facility. Fantastic. But then that person will take a commission on whoever they bring into Mexico, and then they'll charge you for the service over here. That's not what we do. Right? We're a professional services firm, what do we do is we maintain their independence. And we're able to work with all realtors, with all industrial developers, with all attorneys, we all tax advisors, because we represent your company, right. And that's the only obligation. And that's something very important when you're doing business internationally be able to maintain that independence, but work with someone that knows the rules of the road and is able to navigate

22:24

set our expectations on a typical timeline, I understand generally speaking, right? And it also depends on the product, whatever it might be, but but how quickly can something like this take place?

22:38

So if it's a full expansion, Scott, and let's take the example of one of our clients that built a 125,000 square foot facility in Mexico as their third facility, that project took 16 months, okay? Why? Because there were a solid 10 months in there of just the build out of the facility. Right? Before that, we had to do all the legality of work, right, we had to find the people bring the machines in. So now, that's one of our longer projects, something that is smaller is, hey, we need rubber hoses, literally, in three weeks facility here in Illinois, can you connect someone, right? That's something that that's something that would be pretty short. Now, from a sourcing perspective, usually those projects take from four to six months, because very rarely do we work with companies, Scott, that have a specific need, hey, I need a pen. Right? Or it's usually this is proprietary from my product, and we needed to sign in, and I'm doing it in China or Vietnam. So the companies, you know, when that time we to understand what needs to be done, and there's some tweaking the process. So usually four to six months to vet them, find the right partner, negotiate and then actually start testing exactly,

23:54

that's relatively fast. FYI, I was expecting a little longer. And in that, in the case of your longer project, what 14 1618 months, I still think that that's a that's reasonable time expectations for a long term solution to whatever the pain is, or whatever it might be. And you're along the year along with them in the journey. And that, to me is a very valuable thing. roadblocks. Let's talk about that. So all of this sounds great. It does. I like it. Yeah, don't get me wrong. I think that, that given the way things are, are shaping up out there. I'm all I know, people are always looking for people. They're trying to figure that out. And they're trying to look for capable individuals, and they're also dealing with just churn. Gosh, it is just I'm glad I don't have a business like that because it's hard. I've been there done that hard. So I get the value but but what are some of the pushback what, what would prevent somebody from Xena, I can't spell just deal with my headache over here.

25:03

Yeah, no, Scott. So the main pushback that we have when we deal with clients is I don't know, just as people, we are always afraid of what's unknown, right? We are afraid of going and literally stepping into another country. Right? There's always doubt in there. Is this person going to run away? For starters, will they ever take my call? Right? It happens a lot in technology companies, for example, when you know, they hire someone outside of the United States, and, you know, suddenly that person never connects, right? It's like, yeah, they showed up the first day took a first paycheck paycheck, and then they just laughed. They just, you know, left the company, we we avoid that we help you know, companies avoid it. So that's the first one. The first one is, hey, this is unknown. I have never done this before. I've seen a lot of success and success cases. But hey, I also read the news. Right? And I've seen that it's insecure in some areas, for example. Right. So that one is always the first roadblock. And the second World walk, Scott is the financial one. And let me tell you why. Particularly for medium to large projects, we're talking about an investment, right to actually set up operations abroad. And that's usually is gonna be depending on project, right, it can be as low as $10 million. You know, we had a client that invested $120 million. Well, where does that money coming from? Very rarely, a US financial institution, or any financial institution, different country, you will lend you money for you to place your assets in another country. Yeah. It's just rest, right? We're not going to do that they're not going to do it. Right. But then, okay, let's assume that this company is setting up in Brazil. Well, do you think that our Brazil, you know, financial institution will be like, Hey, Scott, good to meet you. You just made it into Brazil, here you go. $20 million. So there's a gap there. But it's also an opportunity, right? For financial lenders and companies to be able to say, Okay, guess what, particularly in Mexico, and Mexico works out very well, because we have us MCA Yeah. Right, that gives regulations for the region. Yeah, be like, alright, I'll lend you the money. So you can actually, you know, expand your business into Mexico, and your IP is going to be taken care of, and there's a rule of law right there. But those are the two main things that that we face. You know, the first one is, I just don't know what I don't know. And the second one is, Okay, this looks fantastic. I need to invest in it. Where am I going to get the money from right and have the slide.

27:23

And again, it would make me feel warm and fuzzy. If we go through the process and saying, yeah, it's the right decision from a business perspective to be able to expand in Latin America or Mexico, and then be able to sort of wrap it with the right financial and insurance and all of the stuff that is necessary to make sure that it succeeds the way you're supposed to, you know, there's always businesses business. So, yeah, I kind of like that. I kind of like that. All right, we got to wrap up. Tell us how does somebody get a hold of Alberto?

28:02

I'm very available, Scott, you can find me first in my email, which is Alberto. That's Albert. Just I don't know what the end at Napa nola.com. Pretty simple Alberto at Napa nola.com. On Twitter, I am my Twitter handle is at BethelVRL. So that's a little bit more complicated, but it's Beto is the short of Alberto. So it's B eto. And my last name, V as in Victor, I double L. A, WR? e al. Same handle on Instagram. And of course, you can always send us a note to connect at Napa nola.com.

28:42

I really enjoyed this conversation. I wish I'd like to do more. Absolutely. Just because I think it's a topic that I mean, we just sort of skirted on it. I think that you know, when you start talking or start rolling in the say, supply chain, when you start and even even the conversation that wrapped around the financials. I think that that is an interesting conversation as well. Wonderful job, Alberto. All right, let's, we're gonna wrap it up on the inside. We're gonna have all the contact information for Alberto and team Nepanoa, so don't go away. We will be right back.

29:17

You're listening to the industrial talk Podcast Network.

29:23

All right. Thank you again for joining industrial talk and as well, thank you very much for your support. 2023 is going to be a great year. Also. How about that conversation? Alberto Ville rial? Nepanoa is the company you're gonna have all the contact information for Alberto and the company out on industrial talk. So fear not, you'll be able to connect with this fine gent and team Napa Noa. You know, get it, have that conversation, figure it out, look at look at your supply chain, see if there's some ways that you can sort of leverage some other countries to be able to satisfy your procurement your sourcing needs to Napa No, all right, we're gonna be doing also we're gonna be doing is I figure I put my money where my mouth is, you know money rarely, but it is. There are a lot of great books out there. We're going to be doing some real book reports. And be on the lookout for that. And I'm going to summarize them. I'm going to do the reading. I'm going to summarize them. But nonetheless, check it out. We're going to be doing that too, as well. So anyway, thank you very much again for joining industrial talk. Be bold, be brave. They're greatly as I always say, hang out with people like Alberto boom, you're going to change the world. We're gonna have another great conversation shortly. So stay tuned.

The post Alberto Villarreal with Nepanoa appeared first on Industrial Talk.

On this week's Industrial Talk we're talking to Dave Evans, Co-Founder and CEO of Fictiv about “Product Development Manufacturing Speed Solutions”.  Get the answers to your “Product Development” questions along with Dave's unique insight on the “How” on this Industrial Talk interview!

Finally, get your exclusive free access to the Industrial Academy and a series on “Why You Need To Podcast” for Greater Success in 2022. All links designed for keeping you current in this rapidly changing Industrial Market. Learn! Grow! Enjoy!

DAVE EVANSS CONTACT INFORMATION:

Personal LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/evansda11/

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

Company Website: https://www.fictiv.com/

PODCAST VIDEO:

OTHER PODCASTS, BLOGS AND VIDEOS OF DAVE:

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-journey-from-traditional-to-digital-manufacturing/id1475280105?i=1000506232734

https://www.augmentedpodcast.co/guests/dave-evans/

https://open.spotify.com/episode/7mqqRraB8HBtAVrouXlQmk

https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/supply-chains-are-on-the-cusp-of-digital-transformation

https://www.forbes.com/sites/daveevans/2021/11/23/saving-the-supply-chain-wont-be-sexy/?sh=dd712976a1f8

https://www.forbes.com/sites/daveevans/2021/05/03/2021-state-of-manufacturing-digital-transformation-is-the-key-to-winning-in-the-next-normal/?sh=66a753384405

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T-YsWlv8eVU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0DTmoI2up4A

THE STRATEGIC REASON “WHY YOU NEED TO PODCAST”:

OTHER GREAT INDUSTRIAL RESOURCES:

NEOM:  https://www.neom.com/en-us

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/

We the 15: https://www.wethe15.org/

YOUR INDUSTRIAL DIGITAL TOOLBOX:

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

Active Campaign: Active Campaign 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

Fictiv, scott, build, supply chain, quality, supplier, world, industrial, people, product, manufacturing, ford, engineer, part, pandemic, wheels, dave evans, manufacturers, industry, solution

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, once again, welcome to industrial talk the, let's say ever expanding industrial ecosystem that is dedicated to you, the industrial professional solvent province. Yes, collaborating, absolutely innovating you back here, industrial talk. We're featuring incredible professionals that embody those qualities each and every day in the hot seat. Speaking of which, his name is Dave Evans. He is founder, co founder excuse me, of a company called Fictiv Fictiv FICT i v. And you know, we're talking about some of the challenges that are happening in the supply chain and what can we do for new product development? I'm telling you right now, that Fictiv platform, stellar let's get going.

01:13

So

01:15

in my past, I guess it's the past Yeah, it is, it's the past, the way I used to do product development as you you know, you design it, and then you'd have to go find some sort of company to be able to develop it and, and as as time goes on, as time went on, that you just keep on working at it and designing it and then try to come back and see what happens and then refining it. There's a lot of work that goes into this, this whole product development. And I think today, once you'll hear from Dave, that the future in new product development and supply chain,

01:52

it's bright, and I know that we're we're struggling right now with supply chain stuff, but I'm telling you right now, team, Fictiv Dave, his team absolutely got their fingers on the pulse of of a real solution. That if it's transformative, it's transformative. And I not It's not hyperbole, I really enjoyed the conversation. And it's all doable. Because of all the technology and the innovation that exists out there a couple of things.

02:19

One, again, we're going to be at IoT solutions World Congress, this is a Barcelona broadcasting live. So make sure that you catch all of those great conversations from industry leaders, companies that are truly solving problems, desire to collaborate, absolutely their IoT solutions, World Congress, we're also going to be up in Dallas. And that is for distribute tech, and we're going to be talking utilities, energy, and all the solutions that are around there, we're going to be broadcasting live there. And then we're going to also be in Chicago digital manufacturing Summit. And the same thing we're going to be doing, we just got word that we're going to be at IMTS, that is going to be in September, that's a huge manufacturing platform. So my call out to you.

03:06

If you are there, and you want to be able to talk about what you're doing, and you want to do it in person, and you're going to be at that conference there. You got to start, knock on the door, come see me. And if I have you down there, I'm gonna be pushing this all day long. But I would love to be able to have the conversation and have a conversation with you talking about what you are doing. So that's it. Another thing that I want to make sure that you guys are aware of we're starting the campaign called we are industry and and if you're looking out on video, I have this hash tag on my shirt there. And it really is just sort of a celebration of the human component of industry, industry as humans, right. It is made up of people who have a passion to try to solve problems. It puts food on the table it creates meaningful work for a number of people around the world. And so this campaign celebrates that and it's we are industry hashtag. We're going to put it out there on on LinkedIn and just hopefully be able to highlight those human stories of people solving problems helping people succeed, because that's what we're all about. Right here. Education, collaboration, and innovation. All right on to the interview. So Fictiv reached out and you go out to stack art. It's fantastic. And

04:30

it is just a wonderful conversation of how this platform accesses a number of of capable manufacturers to come up with great product development solutions, deals with the logistics, all of the components associated with that so that you new company, existing company, what you do is you just say hey, Fictiv. I've got this product, and then they work hand in

05:00

glove with you to come up with the right product and then be able to sort of begin mass producing it. It's a fabulous, fabulous solution. So you're going to tons of information that you're going to get gleaned from this particular conversation. So, enjoy the conversation. Again, Dave, thank you very much for joining industrial talk. How're you doing today? Doing great. How are you doing? Scott, I thank you for your flexibility. We had a bit of a burp up last week listeners and he was very kind and gracious and said, Okay, no problem. So here we are, we were able to good all good, all good. Yeah, I see. I like that. I like that flexibility. Real good. All right. Before we get into the topic, let's talk a little bit about your background. Give us a little background on who you are. Yeah, let's do it. So I'm sitting here in sunny California, in San Francisco. And I'm a mechanical engineer by training. So

05:51

founder and CEO of Fictiv and prior to that I started my, my world in the automotive industry. So I was at Ford building infotainment systems, so dashboards of cars called vehicle bucks. This was kind of 2020 12. So what we were trying to do was basically put, think about tablets, iPhones, iPads, Android devices into a car, you know, almost a decade ago. And the challenge was really its development cycles. So we took a lot of this time from Ford, my training as a mechanical engineer from Stanford, and saying, how can you help basically put better consumer electronics into a vehicle? How do you shorten development cycles to really make that happen?

06:34

But then how do you also make it easier to bring products to market? So you know, what we'll talk about the company, I think we'll get into the problems we've seen supply chain. But really, this comes from, you know, a decade ago, looking at how products are designed and developed in an automotive setting, and saying that to be a better way, Scott, and, and I wish we'd made more improvement in 10 years, but I think that the future is even brighter ahead of us. So we'll dive into all that I'm sure. Yeah, it's I love, I love the emphasis on speed. Because I know for me, personally, I expect things faster. Now, you know, I expect delivery of whatever quicker, right? And it's just a modification in my expectation DNA. And I think, across the board, I think what's crazy is, as a consumer, as you start using an Amazon or I use DoorDash, to get food delivered to me, right, I click a button and Uber comes, it's not like a taxi, and you call and you wait for it to come or you know that you had to go to the local store, go through five different shelves to find that, you know, pencil that you like, it's just everything's immediate in a consumer world. So then you come into your business world, wherever you're working. And you're back to like Excel spreadsheets and faxing forms to vendors and manufacturing, and like having to get on a plane and go to Vietnam to fix an issue. And you're like, wait, but in my consumer world, I can just order you know, that device. And and, or I can get a taxi, just, you know, an Uber directly to me, do I want to an SUV or a black car, or I just want to Toyota, you know, Prius to show up. But then you come to the industrial world. And it's like, nothing's happened for decades. And so that was my experience, being a hardware engineer at Ford building infotainment systems. I was like, Man, this is a mismatch and you know, speed was the emphasis. But then what you've learned is actually it's quality. Because speed without quality is nothing. But quality without speed is actually like, well, you know, if I wait two months for something, and it's the highest quality, I didn't get any learning. So we started with speed, but then quality had to become table stakes. And you know, that that's the that's really the emphasis that what we'll get into as we peel back the onion here, but definitely started with speed. Yeah, and and I think you're, I think that's an important component. I mean, I'm just I expect things faster. I just, I don't I don't have the patience like I used to, and maybe it's because I'm an old and crotchety son of a gun. But it's, it's the reality of business, especially today and that window of opportunity, right? If I'm able to work with Fictiv and say, I got this idea. Here's the design, let's get it rolling. And press that because the old way or no, even today, it still works the same way where it takes a long time. Give us a little sort of rundown on on the process. Yeah, for sure. Let's let's lay that process out. Yeah, I think so. Let's go back to that example. So I'm at Ford. I want to build a new vehicle Buck dashboard. How do you do it? Okay, I got an idea. I want to do some amount of you know, put an iPad in that you bring with you. Okay, you go to your CAD station we use CATIA, you're going to 3d model and design this

10:00

From there, you have a physical, or you have a digital design of what you want to get done. Maybe you have some requirements for what that part or, or mechanism looks like. And you have that. And now you got to get a physical form of that meet, you got to build a prototype, we call this whole thing, new product development and PD. So in my Ford way, which not much has really changed, I would say in a decade was you would have kind of three options, you would go to your internal machine shop prototyping shop, wherever it's a Ford has a whole facility that's dedicated to this. That's option one. Option two is maybe I call it my tier one supplier, I call Magnus I called Dana call, I call someone I say, hey, tier one supplier go make this prototype for me.

10:48

And, and you use that tier one or tier two. And then there's a third option of hey, I'm gonna go a little bit rogue that I know Scott's local prototyping shop down the street from me. And Scott and I have a relationship we met at a trade show. And I'm, I'm just going to call up my buddy Scott and and have him build this. And so what I found at Ford was my internal shop had a backlog, that was way too long. And I was never prioritized. It was always too busy. The tier one shop, they wanted to make a million of something. And I said, Hey, build this one mechanism for this iPad, and they're like, I'm not busy enough. This is only 50 grand or, or whatever, I don't want to do it. And then I found myself as a mechanical engineer, I'm great at thermodynamics and fluids and all these things, having to build relationships with Scott's basically all these local direct relationships. And so yeah, I could get speed maybe from Scott's you know, local shop.

11:46

But like, Scott, you want to know how I bumped up the queue in your shop, I brought a six pack of beer. Not that I was gonna send hundreds of 1000s of dollars to your machine shop. I've literally I'd fly there I drive it. Hey, Scott, I know you love Guinness man, here's a six pack of Guinness, can you take me to the to the queue?

12:07

It's all crazy, right? So it is not it's yeah, it's like this is the way that the industrial world runs is it's relationship driven. It's some, it's some local, and it's primarily offline. It's low sets of tools. And so when we looked at the space, you know, I'm at Ford, and with my co founders, also my brother, Nate. And I'm like, Nate, this isn't just my problem at Ford, like every design engineer that I know, has the same thing of internal, a tier one supplier that they build relationships. Meanwhile, you know, Lyft and Ubers. Coming out, I can stay in someone's house with Airbnb, you know, there's all this what we, you know, Cloud is going on, that's things are transitioning. And I was like, Nate, there has to be a better way of not just relationships in the industrial world, where we can do this. And so what we set out to build, you know, almost nine years ago, so almost a decade ago, now, Scott was we said, hey, let's find all of these manufacturers in the world that have the best quality, we're going to vet them. And then we're going to find idle machine time at any of these factories. And we will allow engineers to order custom mechanical products, high quality products from this pre vetted network of basically Scott's machine shops of of all of these factories around the world. And this was just an idea back in 2013, right? And we said, well, if we did that, could the engineer speed up their development cycle? Remember speed at high high quality? Yeah, yeah. And could we drive more volume to the Scott's manufacturing plants all over the world? So kind of these two thesis of better for Scott because he's getting more work sent to him from like Ford, better for Dave as the engineer, because he can order things just like he does on on Amazon or Uber or wherever. And we said, Wow, that that'd be pretty cool. And so what we call this is a digital manufacturing ecosystem. That basically like we we digitize this ecosystem of manufacturers, to allow an engineer or a supply chain professional out of Ford, to order custom mechanical products from a pre vetted network of of machine shops. And there's a whole bunch of cool stuff that goes on there to make that happen. But it's it's really this basis of a of a distributed network, idle capacity, and really speed and quality. So I, Dave, now, all I have to go to is a platform just like Uber, or Airbnb, whatever, and be able to, in that interaction, find

14:49

a manufacturer with idle capacity that has the qualities already been vetted. You know, yeah, that's great. And be able to

15:00

create that dialogue, that relationship that is so important and begin compressing that time, but in it and still maintain quality, is that right? Totally, what I would adjust for you is like, Well imagine the scarf, what I did was, I just gave you the we have 250 of these partners globally. But now you still have to build relationships with them. I'm not actually helping you as a design engineer, or a supply chain professional. In the same way, it's like imagine if you ordered Uber, and you personally had to vet every car, or you had to have a relationship with everybody there, that wouldn't be much help. So actually, what we do is, we are your manufacturer of record Fictiv. Meaning if you're that supply chain professional, or they're you're buying apart from Fictiv. I just don't own any machines, but I'm accountable for the price. I'm accountable for the quality of that product. I'm accountable for the pre vetting and management of that network. So basically, what I'm doing is, Hey, Scott, I'm going to guarantee for you the fastest speed at the highest quality, but I don't own machines, but I have a whole group of people, you know, an entire quality department that vets all these manufacturers is boots on the ground for you checking your parts before they come out. And you want to know what we've made 19 million parts to date through the system. So like, You think we're good at this. I've done it almost 20 million times. And, and but we are your manufacturer of records. So it's not like you have to vet all of these ones individuals even better. Yeah, to me, it makes me feel warm and fuzzy. Now,

16:38

if I came to you and I have a budget constraint, right, it's like, here it is, right here. You work with me on that 200%. What I think about here is, how do you give an engineer or a supply chain professional choice? Meaning like, there's always three aspects, you're trying to do speed, which is a schedule driven quality, which is like something really hard to have to go to space or a medical device, or price, you have a budget. And so from there, think of this triangle, you're moving around into which one do you want? And so let's say you have a budget constraint. Great. We'll build that overseas for you. We have an entire team in Asia, it's a lower cost region, maybe the maybe it takes an extra three days to ship it. Oh, you have a lightning hot project, you got a trade show coming up needs to be there tomorrow. Great. We're gonna build this thing. You're in Charlotte. So we're gonna go build it in Atlanta for you like pretty close? Overnight it directly to you'll have it there on Friday. Oh, hey, you have the highest quality, you're in aerospace. But all of your manufacturers are capacity? Well, we actually have a medical grade supplier that can do the same level of quality requirements that has available capacity. And maybe you don't need that certification. Okay, great. Let's just leverage another supplier from another industry with available capacity to get to that quality need. Oh, you have a quality requirement. Great. These all have certifications of 1345 and medical as 9100 and aerospace. We all know that's pre vetted for you. So think of this as like, what I what I like to tell folks is think of this as like your sandwich shop. You know, your show up there. Oh, I want the sourdough roll. I don't want the you know, peppered crusted turkey with Havarti. And I want to avocado on it. Okay, great. There's a primo sandwich, and we'll build it for you, whatever, whatever you need. Scott, do you

18:37

know me as a user of your solution and platform part of the ecosystem whatever it might be?

18:45

Do I get an opportunity to sort of look at maybe the

18:51

the manufacturers or do I just say hey, here it is. I've got this budget constraint I'm looking for this type of quality and I'm and I needed in this time and just allow Fictiv team Fictiv just to come up with a the right solution for me. Personally, I'm lazy, I don't want to get into the details. I just want the delivery of what I want. So I'd say we have we have to, to kind of like personalities that come in. We have the Scots you describe I'm a lazy give me what I want. Yeah. We we define quality, as conformance to requirements.

19:28

It's always a good one. What is quality? Everyone's like, I don't know what quality quality is conformance to requirements. So if you come in Scott, and you say I want this product at the highest quality, what that translates effective is I need to make sure that every requirement can is conforming in the part that comes back to me. So then the question is the old school or traditional ways like I want to control the conformance aspect meaning like, I want to pick the supplier, I want to be on site. I want to go see it. And what I'd ask you is like, Well, why do you want to do that? Do you think you're

20:00

I'm better at controlling that quality than I am like, our entire livelihood. 19 million parts is controlling, you know, we can conformance to requirements. So hey, maybe maybe Scott, you as an engineer, you've produced maybe 5000 parts in your career? Yeah, I've done 19 million. And we've done it at the highest quality. And so it always takes a little bit of trust, like any relationship, you know, where, where you got to show it. And so we do that through data, you know, we can show what we call QBR is quarterly business reviews with them, we can show them quality ratings of like, how much in the last 90 days has this manufacturing partner been on time and to spec and I can show you data, not just for your parts, but every single part they've produced on a on a trailing basis and say, Hey, yes, you could go control this supplier, pick them. But don't you think that processes and system and data is going to have a better outcome than what you might do? And I think generally, after you break this down, you start to build trust. And then you start small, I build one part, I build 10 parts of the 100 parts. And it's this combo. And so I'd say you do have the two personas got you have you where it's like, it's not that you're lazy. It's just like, I trust you take care of it, rather than you have the skeptic that comes in. It's like, I want to do the whole thing. And to the skeptic, you say, Here's data, here's processes. Here's historical, like, trust me, we got you, you know what, we'll, we'll take care of you. Yeah, because you can't you, you can't afford to have a burp on that, right? No, you just oh, if you're, you know, if I got Johnny Ives from Apple showing up, and he wants to look at the quality of this part. You can't just trust Fictiv that you're gonna get it done. You have to like you have to guarantee and that's really what we do is we say, look, it is a combination of technology to make sure that part's right. But it's also people on the ground. And that's really important, Scott, it's not like, yeah, it's not like it's this marketplace of 1000 suppliers, we send it out there and you do this, cross your fingers and good luck. We've literally have supply quality engineers that have eyes on every single part that ships through our system. So with that said, if I would imagine the your manufacturing ecosystem that can manufacture it's expanding, because there's always going to be somebody that say, Hey, effective, can I be a part of your network part of your ecosystem? And you say, okay, here, this is the quality requirements, give it fill this out? Let's let's Batchi and all that. And yeah, you get the the seal of approval from Fictiv when that happens, and you guaranteed, you know, boots on the ground. And that person's in, you know, Timbuktu, you hire somebody out there and just say, hey, we need to find somebody to verify that the qualities if that supplier is that good. And there, they make, you know, magnesium parts, you know, for aerospace, and it's like, yeah, then we're flying out there. It's boots on the ground. We're living in the factory and doing it, because that's what it takes. This is the industrial world. But what we do on top of it, Scott, which is really important, is you put technology in place, so you don't miss park a button there. And so you stay there. We've used technology to come in. And so what I like to tell folks is like you can track a Domino's Pizza better than most people can track their supply chain, which is just absolutely mind boggling. Your mind boggling it Edwards somebody has to that except you sit there on the app, and you're watching it update.

23:48

And so you want to know what we built at Fictiv Scott, we basically built the Domino's Pizza tracker. But for supply chains, I kid you not. So you can sit there, you place an order 5000 bucks, I need this titanium part. And it goes boom, parts been ordered. Boom. It's been scheduled with a partner. It's in production. It's off the machine. Once when it's Oh, it's in quality photos are getting taken of the part through our technology going through quality. Hey, Scott, you get a little notification pushed to you and saying Do you want to see your parts with all the quality reports before they ever shipped it click the button. You can see photos of all of your parts and all the dimensions that have been measured, analyzed conformance to requirements remember before the things ever left the facility. And so all of that is like at your fingertips that it's like hey, it's been tracking great. It's just shipped out of Guangzhou, China and it's going through export through through their customs. Now it's going through import through through US Customs. Hey, now it's at a depot like all of that is able to be tracked through our technology through the platform we've built

25:00

You bring up a good point about the supply chain and and going through customs does Fictiv hat handle all of the paperwork associated with that? You have to? I mean, because what, how else would I manufacture a record? I'm the manufacturer of record. And what we found is that a lot of people just make this a manual process, Hey, okay, maybe this is streamline. But then once we get to the customs, it's back to email and and PowerPoints and Excel files. We've built a whole workflow, all for the logistics engine, basically, because like, if you can't get the stuff imported, what good is this Suez Canal stuff gets stuck in his ship? Like, I mean, look at the last two years, as I was gonna ask, you could get everything right. And it stuck in the LA port, and like, what are you going to do? And so when we say we control this ecosystem, Scott, it's from, you have a set of requirements, and I'm gonna give you choice, all the way through to that part being on your desk, and we are your guides to get you through that entire process. Because like, I mean, come on this thing is called industrial talk, right? Like, this is the industrial world. Like if I if I just said, Hey, Scott, you deal with customs? Yeah. Oh, yeah. So I'm having a hard time poking holes in your your value proposition, quite frankly, because I, I've been there done that manufactured overseas, it is a headache. It's, it's problematic. But the challenge I always had to deal with is, is is quality. I was that was always scary for me, you know? And I would say, look, it's scary to us to every day, we're making custom products that have to be perfect every time. So when we think about quality, you have QA, quality assurance, and you have QC, quality control. Assurance is all of your pre emptive processes, structure QMS quality management, it's all the stuff you do upfront. Quality control is the reactive things, meaning after the part comes out. How do you actually make sure it's conforming to requirements, it's all the checks here. And so what I'd say is like, Scott, we nerd out on this. So when I say we do quality, I promise you we are deeper than probably any supplier you've ever because like we've had to think through this, because we've built an ecosystem. We're not running a machine in a factory. We're trying to build processes, QA upfront, plus, you know, technology to do quality control at a global scale at 10s of millions of parts. And so the result of it is like I I'm with you, Scott, like I was at Ford, building dashboards of cars. And I'm, I'm up at 1am with a supplier on on Skype, trying to make sure that like, you know that my steering wheel is done, right. And then like, I don't trust it enough. So I have to get on a plane and fly and my my family's at home. Like, I don't want to do that. I want to stay at home. I want to hang out with my kids. I want to you know, I want to I want to do I want to make products. I don't want to fly to a supplier, you know, and so all those things are I think the reason why you're having trouble poking holes is like, like, this isn't our first rodeo. Yeah, like we've been doing it for almost a decade. Then on top of that, like we live the pain like like we're built by engineers for engineers kind of right now. But just in the case of supply chain when if you're manufacturing something in China, Asia, whatever and you've had all of that the the interruptions as a result of the pandemic, you recognize the fragility of the supply chain, something just burped snarled and fart and, and and it's just a problem. What does Fictiv How can Fictiv sort of navigate those those challenging waters? It's a great question. So I love examples. I'm an engineer, so I need tangible things. So let's take some of that recently happened in q1 of this year. So like in February of 2020, Shinzen, overnight went on lockdown. 17 and a half million people. China government said you're not going to leave your apartment, sorry, like this happening in Shanghai right now. But let's use something that was you know, a little bit in the past few months ago. So we woke up on a Sunday. And it was basically like 17 and a half million people can't leave their homes. And like we're like, okay, we pull out the playbook because we have this from 2020. And it's like, here's what we run. We had 249 Work Orders in flight in that region turn 49 in 24 hours, we moved all 249 to other regions that weren't affected with near zero impact on lead time or cost to our customers. Just like right move this move this move this Think of it like an air traffic controller diverting planes to an airport that is shut down. And because it's a digital ecosystem, we spent

30:00

But but but, and like near zero impact to the entire customers. If we were running in a manual way, Scott Yeah, like what would happen to those 249 orders, you would have been like, Sorry, bud, like, we're just going to wait for the Chinese government to say you can go back to work. And you'd be sitting here like, I'm trying to ship my products, my customers are mad. And you're and you just sit there with your hands tied. And so I think of this as like, the air traffic controllers are really good one, which most people can relate to. The other one is like, this is what cloud computing has done for the industry. It used to be like, Hey, your your on prem server racks went down. So hey, your website's just down. Sorry, too much traffic, you know, we just, we can't handle the load. That doesn't happen anymore. You're just like, hey, I'm on AWS, I'm on as your Hey, the Northeast region just went down because of a blizzard, they just moved the stuff to the south east. And like, your servers are still up and running and, and crunch. And so I always ask folks like spacing in industrial, you're so used to supply chain disruptions, like a pandemic, a trade war with China, a global conflict going on in Europe with a devastating war right now. And so you're kind of like, man, but I would say like, does it have to be that way, because in cloud and it, they found a way to have resiliency, they have all these different regions, you know, in other industries, you know, taxis want to go on strike, hey, Lyft and Uber are pretty much immune to that, you know, and so, I just, I think that you got to be creative and supply chain to say, there's another way to do this, there's another way to build resiliency, and, and, and you've got the product development down pat. And then you do handle, let's say, scalability, and packaging, and all the other stuff. Uh, you know, I got to load up a container, and you just go through all of that the total, I would say, there's kind of three major solutions where we like work really well with customers, there's what's called an NPD. So new product development, we just talked, talked about all that, hey, I got an idea. I want to build a new microphone, we're going to help you get through that new product development. The second area where we really help it's what's called eto engineer to order. So think of this as like one off products that I am

32:35

building, you know, maybe some very custom stage equipment for a Beyonce, you know, tour or for Led Zeppelin going back out, or ZZ Top, or whoever, and like you're building, you know, a flame machine. But one time that eto, we do a lot of these one off products, you know, that are custom. And then the third,

32:59

you know, solution where we do a lot of is what's called an MRO, which is maintenance, repair and overhaul. I like to tell folks especially in the industrial this is like aftermarket for your car, hey, you have a 1970s Mustang and you need a new fender for this and like they don't make anymore, we make a lot of that aftermarket product or you know, aerospace and their, you know, engines are getting refurbished, you know, we do a lot of MRO as well, so it tends to be a new product development, these customer customer engineer to order or in this like aftermarket MRO that's a that's our sweet spots god it's where this solution that we've built really, you know, really kicks butt. You know, I believe we take that MRO component for granted. For example, I'll go out there and I'll find some obscure product just an obscure product in fact, I just for our neighbor, I just bought the trolley for their old that broke on their garage door opener. There it is plastic. Boom. Like it's not it's it's what you need. What literally lat last week came back from a long trip. Put my luggage you know, on the plane, like it like a dummy. I didn't put it overhead I checked it. I come off. What have they done? They've snapped all the wheels broke on it. How do these wheels

34:25

so normally what would you do? You just you toss out toss it right and another one? You want to know what I do? I go to Fictiv and make a little wheel. I upload the wheel. Oh it's 40 bucks. Cool. It's gonna be in carbon fiber. Awesome. Just hit Buy literally came back last week, put the new wheels on the luggage and I'm like, Hey, honey, like our luggage is fixed and she looks at me like Oh god, what am I gonna do on it's pretty dead sexy story, right? No.

34:55

I'm not throwing out this luggage. This is a nice piece of luggage. The whole thing's good. It's just

35:00

wheels busted. And unlike they probably didn't have, you know, you know, carbon fiber wheels on it. I just printed it, you know, on a on a high end 3d printer made, you know, two, two wheels that I needed. And it was simple, it was great. See, and again, I think that we take that for granted. I just it's just the other thing that unfortunately Amazon has done is, is created my expectations that are so high, I better have a better be looking for that Amazon truck. I just ordered it an hour ago. Where is it where

35:34

like, think about this example of the suitcase. It's a silly example where it's like it's not, but like, normally, you would just throw it out or if you didn't have Fictiv and if I had to design it, I had this call up Scott's you know, 3d printing service bureau and the email back and forth. I wouldn't go through that hassle. But for me, it was like it was a 10 minute exercise. It was like Amazon is like, here's the wheel for me. I can design really quickly circle extruded. Put a few things. Okay, great. Upload it. Oh, that's 50 bucks as too much. Just okay. $40 that material hit by it was like, you know, it was it. It was a little bit longer than Amazon. But it wasn't matter. It wasn't that much more so doggone cool. Now what? What's the pushback? I've been trying but what's the pushback? I'm impatient. I want things yesterday. I know. And I have grand visions for whatever. And I have ideas that are spewing out of my ears. What's the pushback? Why is why are people I think jumping on board. status quo is really hard Scott to change often. I'm sure all the listeners on here. You're like, come on. I I've known Scott's machine shop for 20 years. Yeah, Scott's never done me wrong. And he just he takes care of me. Why do I need this digital system data? And I'm like, trust me once when you try it. Like once when you try it, there is a there's a better way to do this. Right? And it's like, I remember my my in laws, they didn't have Amazon Prime. And then they'd always be like, Dave, why do I like why do you buy everything on Amazon. And I'm like, because I don't want to go to Walmart. And when I show up, it's not there. And they're like, God, it's always there at Walmart. And then all of a sudden, you it's like, you drip on them, you drip on them, you drip on them. And I'm like, Lisa, like, you should just try prime just like just try to. And so finally it was like around Christmas or something. She tries it out. And now every time we come over Christmas, my father in law, you know, he's sitting there and he's just like, man, it's another Amazon boxes come in and like, it's just it's too easy. You know? It's grumpy guy. He's like, whatever. Swipe right. Yeah. So he's just like, what, this is so much better than going to Walmart and standing in that goddang line. And, and so what I'd say is like, what's the what's the barrier here? It's like, man, Fictiv sounds too magical. How do they do this? It's, it's too modern for me. But what I'd say is, like, just try it. You know, it's like, if you try it out, you know, I think that like, I think that you'll really see that there is a better

38:13

there's a better way of of doing this.

38:17

And like, and that's what I would would really push for I don't think you can be build a build a business of resilience, if you're not in the business of trying to figure this out and be more efficient and and be, have greater responsiveness to market pressures demands, whatever it might be, and the needs of the market, funneling. And I think that, you know, for businesses that aren't deciding to build geographic resiliency, or agility into their supply chain, you're spot on, they're gonna be left behind, like, what the world has shown us is like, it's not if another trade war is going to happen. It's not if another pandemic or force majeure situation. It's not if there's going to be another, you know,

39:04

weather delay, you know, on there, it's when. And so then the question is, if you're not thinking about how to reimagine your supply chain, reimagine the way that you build things like somebody else is, and so I'd say it's not so much of like, of like, is this good for business? Should I do it? It's kind of like, if you don't do it, like your competitors are. And we're, we're seeing that shift today. We're totally seeing that. You have to, and you have to have a sense of urgency for one eye, and everybody through this pandemic, all of a sudden, everybody became a supply chain expert. Do you know why? Because they went to the Walmart, and then Walmart didn't have the product that they had on the shelf that they had before, but it was all stuck someplace.

39:50

That's the real pain. That's the customer component. And it ticked me off. Well, I know I'll go I'll go one step further. That ticked you off because he couldn't buy

40:00

Like during the pandemic toilet paper, we couldn't find him you couldn't find that with a wheel for your, your neighbor's garage door opener. But what I'd tell you is like, what if the world was perfect, like, like, you know, stay with me here for a second, we're in this utopia, supply chains run everywhere, and there's no delays. But like, Scott, you have to buy everything that's mass produced today. Like we talked about the microphone that you have here, how awesome, you know, the this, this thing is from plug ear trumpet labs, check it out, whatever. But labs ear trumpet labs go to the website. But like, what if you could buy things which were customized for what you wanted? Like, what if there was this world where you didn't have to buy that garage door, that like, you know, is just the generic one that you could get the special one that was for folks that, you know, were six foot five, and like, you know, really tall and it had, you know, all the bells and whistles for tall people or something like if that product could get to market because it was easier to design and develop it. Like, that's a pretty cool place. Like that's a now we live in an industrial world where you have more customization, it almost is like the software apps that you use is like you can find the the like, as a podcast, you know, creator yourself, you have all these little tools for your business. Imagine if you could do that in the physical world. Like, that's a cool place to live. And so when I dream and I think about like what could Fictiv actually help we help enable product innovators to create, meaning that whether that product innovator is a company or an individual, we are enabling them to create, and like, I think that all human beings are creative in some form or another. And we need more help enabling that creation to happen. And like, I get pretty excited by it. Yeah, and you bring up a good point, just think about all the ideas that get stifled just because they have no avenue to go. Like, Hey, I got this great idea. And I think it's work but I have no, I don't know how to do it. And then just let it die and it moves on. The benefits to society have been, you know, impacted. Let's figure out how we remove those, that friction. And so if you bring this bar if you if you lower the bar of entry to creation, what type of innovation would you unlock, and I'll give you like, an example that's out there. We went to the moon, what, like 60 years ago, and it took the entire US government to go push it. You know, fast forward six years later, technology's amazing. Look how far out we are. Who's getting the space today. It's a private company. It's like, when, when I was watching the first images of the war going on in Ukraine, it was from satellites of customers that we built those satellites Capella space, one example of it, and they're taking low Earth orbit images of this global conflict going on giving you like, like an API call. That's what Capella space does with an API call. You can take a photo of anywhere in the world. And I'm like, dang, that's cool. So like, like, they lowered the barriers to like, satellite images. Whoa, you know, and I'm like, but like, if you didn't make it easier for them to build all the hardware to do that would Capella ever be able to do it? Probably not. You know. And, and I think about this as an all of these ways of like, there's all this innovation that gets stifled because it's only the large, massive companies that have budgets and resources to do this. But if you can bring those barriers down, you'll see some really cool innovation that happens. There's some smart people out there, big dreams, we've just got to help enable that that dream become come to pass. Well, and that's that's excellent. How does somebody get a hold of you? Yeah, I think best way is, you know, you can websites, the easiest way is to go to Fictiv.com. You can check it out. I think the best thing that we have here is we produce a lot of really nerdy content. And I'd say like, we help teach people how to do this. And so go check out victor.com There's an entire what we call hardware guide. It's a guide to help you build physical products, whether you're a Stanford mechanical engineer that knows thermodynamics and you want to get super deep or you're like your Bob or Sarah, and you're like just trying to figure out you know how to make this thing like there's different levels of of information. So definitely check that out. I know we worked with the Scott thank you that we built a code so you can get a discount. industrial use the code industrial to get 10% off your first order.

45:00

So we'll make sure that's in the show notes. But you could test drive. Yeah. What do you got to lose?

45:07

Amen. So we just we want to show people, there's a better way to do this and just like, try it out, you know, like, don't don't take my word for it. We're not trying to blow smoke here. It's like, but we know change is hard. So, you know, use that code. Get out there. Sign up, literally, like, whether it's a suitcase wheel that we talked about. Yeah. Are you building a satellite Park? You know, for Capella? You know, go go check it out. Yeah. That's pretty doggone cool stuff. All right. Thank you. Big time, Dave. Big Dave. Wave. Big Wave. Dave, whatever you want to call it, man. Thank you for being on industrial talk. Man. You were awesome. It has been super fun Scott and looking forward to seeing what people create. It's cool. It's cool. See, that's cool. All right, listeners. We're gonna you know, we're gonna wrap it up on the other side, all the contact information for Dave and Fictiv will be there. So stay tuned, we will be right back. You're listening to the industrial talk Podcast Network.

46:11

All right, Dave Evans is his name. Fictiv is the company

46:17

and after that conversation, you should just be an absolute Gomer for the company and what they are doing anything to remove friction. In your work, your day to day work, is a big plus for me. And I'm sure a big plus for you think of is really worked out the kinks. And they've they've done it successfully. Why would you want to do that? Trust them, reach out to them? Ask them some questions. Bottom line, they are an open book there to help you in a big way. Remember, we're gonna be going to IoT solutions World Congress. We will be at distributech. We will be at manufacturing,

46:58

digital manufacturing

47:01

symposium, and many others. You got to look for us. We're going to be on the floor. We're going to be talking to you. Yes. Because you have a story. All right. Hang out with people like Dave Evans. Be bold, be brave, daring greatly. You're gonna change the world. We're gonna have another great conversation shortly. So stick around

The post Dave Evans with Fictiv appeared first on Industrial Talk.

On this week's Industrial Talk we're talking to Jerry Good, Regional Manager at Amazon about “Leading the way through innovation and technology”.  Get the answers to your “Supply Chain Innovation” questions along with Jerry's unique insight on the “How” on this Industrial Talk interview!

Finally, get your exclusive free access to the Industrial Academy and a series on “Why You Need To Podcast” for Greater Success in 2022. All links designed for keeping you current in this rapidly changing Industrial Market. Learn! Grow! Enjoy!

JERRY GOOD'S CONTACT INFORMATION:

Personal LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jerry-good-2a38bab/

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

Company Website: https://www.aboutamazon.com/

SPONSORS:

Accruent:  https://www.accruent.com/

Fluke Reliability:  https://www.fluke.com/en-us/products/connected-reliability

PODCAST VIDEO:

THE STRATEGIC REASON “WHY YOU NEED TO PODCAST”:

OTHER GREAT INDUSTRIAL RESOURCES:

NEOM:  https://www.neom.com/en-us

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/

We the 15: https://www.wethe15.org/

YOUR INDUSTRIAL DIGITAL TOOLBOX:

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

Active Campaign: Active Campaign 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

amazon, package, equipment, 29th annual, product, site, fluke, industrial, magnets, basics, redundancy, conference, fulfillment center, maintenance, understand, technology, talk, data, facilities, performs

00:00

On this episode of industrial talk, we were on site at the 29th annual s MRP conference. And if you weren't there, you missed a lot. So put it on your calendar for the 30th annual SMRP conference. Well already be this year. And you know, we were talking about in this interview, we're talking about innovation, we're talking about the deployment of technology, when it impacts supply chain from one of the leading companies in the world. Let's get cracking.

00:33

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 hardhat, grab your work boots, and let's go

00:51

right welcome to industrial talk. Thank you very much for joining the number one industrial related podcasts in the universe. And I don't think I'm overselling that one bit. We are once again broadcasting from the 29th annual SMRP conference. We're trying to get our, I guess world back in order. And this is sort of a collection of the best maintenance and reliability professionals around the world. It is that important. And it's a great venue here in St. Louis. And we get to talk to some of the best that I mean, I'm just it's, it's, I'm all giddy because of it. That's what it's all about. And, and we couldn't make this happen. If it wasn't for Accruent. And Fluke Reliability. You got to go out to Accruent. I'm looking at their website right now. And it says solutions, real estate facilities and asset management. It's right there. I'm looking at it right now, gaining insights to transform how your organization manages its physical resources. You can't argue with that. And then of course, I go out to fluke, and you know, the color Fluke has got the big app there. And it's got that classic, gold yellow fluke, and this is what's interesting. You go out there, they break down the barriers between data systems, data systems, and teams by aggregating everything into one place. Yeah, that's dead sexy. I'm all into it. Absolutely. Wonderful. Okay, we're gonna be talking to Amazon. We're gonna be talking with a gentleman by the name of Jeremy. Good, and he is good. But you never heard that before. No,

02:19

never great. Only good.

02:23

Jeremy spectacular. All right, Jeremy. Welcome. How you doing, man?

02:29

Good, good.

02:31

Well, I like that. I like that. Good. Good. All right, double. So anyway, you're here, in at the conference, give us a little background on who you are, and why you're such an incredible professional. And then we're going to venture into what you talked about here at this conference. All right.

02:45

Well, I've got a lot of years of experience. I started off with Chrysler. Actually Chrysler back then,

02:55

I was gonna say in the new saw the acquisition of Fiat, right.

02:59

I saw lots of acquisitions, the merger of equals with Daimler. Oh, yeah. And then then we went to Chrysler Group and then a private equity had us for a little bit we almost went bankrupt. I remember that merger with fiyat. And now the merger with KSA with Atlantis. A lot of and I know after a while we were doing the merger was still Lanta so

03:21

it was funny, because there's just a lot of drama there. Remember that? It was just like, oh, another thing? Oh, another challenge? Oh, yes. Yeah,

03:28

Yeah. Look it. And we had good products. I mean, Jeep Dodge.

03:33

Oh, yeah. No, nobody's gonna debate that. I mean, it was just a lot of drama going on over there was, but look at you. You got a smile on your face. You. You survived. That's right now you're with Amazon.

03:42

Now I am. What do you do? So I am a maintenance Summit, regional manager for maintenance and reliability. So I have a the southwest region right now. And this week, it's gonna be announced that I get a little bit broader responsibility. When I'll have a third of North America for the large fulfillment, the ARS the Yeah, Amazon robotics centers near the large fulfillment.

04:11

Yeah, he's doing robotics. And of course, that's, that's cool, right?

04:16

Well imagine a site with eight to 10,000 robots. And really, yeah, that moves anywhere from 600,000 up to a little over a million packages per day.

04:28

And all the facilities are one facet. What and each one of those is that the type of commerce that is taking place? It's amazing. It's a hell of a stat.

04:37

Yes, it is. And so you think of cell towers is very similar to that. So you as a customer, so their goal is to give you a package in two hours or less. That's where we want to be okay. And in order to do that, you have multiple fulfillment centers strategically located To where if one site is down, another one can then do the fulfillment for that package, roughly.

05:06

And again, you're throwing out a lot of stuff here. But you're saying two hours, two hours or less that I'm on, I'm on your side, I order a home, you know, whatever widget, right? Whatever it might be. When that that process starts, you're trying to fulfill it in, in and in two hours.

05:27

Correct. So if you when you push that button, within the first 12 hours, say within the first five minutes, Amazon already knows what fulfillment center is the least expensive for them to bring that package to you. within that time frame that you have, if you have Amazon Prime, if you're on the coast right now, there, I think there are six sites that can guarantee within six hours of when you order, the little trivia see is the fastest is 12 minutes. From the time somebody pushed the button and was delivered,

06:05

you know, you understand the problem here. You guys are establishing a an expectation. And you're constantly pushing that from, from a consumer perspective, I have an expectation that I'm going to get that product. And I'm going to get that product relatively quick. And I'm not going to wait. And and that is a heck of an expectation. And I think you're disrupting logistics as a whole.

06:35

It's not a bad thing that's meeting the customers.

06:39

And I'm telling you, I love it. Don't get me wrong, man. I'm I'm all big into. Yeah, I need that. I need that. And you make it easy. That's right, you make it easy to get that widget, I don't have to sit there and struggle to find a widget that's there I go there Heck of a business model.

06:57

And that's because we're focused on the customer.

07:02

Yeah, no, no, note that because that is a very important component associated with any business, right? It is, you got it, you gotta focus on the customer, don't focus on yourself, provide what the customer needs solution, right? Solve that problem. Right? Now, all of a sudden, you're just screwing up everything just because my expectations are off through the roof. Now, let's talk a little bit about why you're here the SMRP. Tell us a little bit about the topic that you were discussing, so that you can share with the individuals.

07:29

Yeah, so we talked about challenging the norms. So we have so much technology now that we're losing sight of some of the basics. And without the basics to build upon. The technology starts to unravel.

07:48

Okay, you're gonna have to expand, what are the basics,

07:51

so the basics being knowing and understanding your equipment, seeing how it's the essentials, what we call within Amazon, essential skills, crafts. So knowing that how a bearing performs, knowing what the wear characteristics of different components of, of the equipment, how a motor runs, how, how the equipment at a, at a basic level, whether it's rollers, whether it's pulley shafts, gear ratios, whether it's a gearbox, how those things all work together, and no, no, that not have data just being fed to you saying, hey, the problems over here, and you need to go fix it. If you don't understand the why behind it, then when things change, you end up getting into more more problems. And we're talking about letting, letting software now software and technology have its place, there are tools, but there are tools that need to be grown upon, off of the basics and off of knowing and understanding those basics

09:03

is a part of the basics. The the human element. I mean,

09:10

I mean it is it is and it's it's so probably one of the best tools that break things down to the basic is a filmmaker failure mode with the criticality on how you how you do the maintenance to maintain that the empowerment, so but it is it there there the skills of of what the individual has, when you walk by a motor and you it's using your senses, smell, hearing, even taste is one of the senses. So how is that piece of equipment performing? And I'll tell you one of the examples when you look at a good site to a great site, so you want to go to something where you're running 99% 99.9999% uptime yeah The sites that are different, and that differentiate them are the ones that have those skill sets and do things like critical walks, where they're walking through the critical piece of equipment and seeing the different components and where they're at. And from a health standpoint, and then doing things proactively before they fail.

10:22

Yeah, because yeah, it does. Because your obligation, your fundamental driver is fulfilling that order in two hours or less. That's it correct. And that does not leave room for any, you know, reactive situation where something was breaking broke down, right?

10:38

Correct. On critical equipment there is there are redundancies built in sites.

10:43

If you notice my note down here, I get a little word that says redundancy and might not spell it right. But it does say redundancy, I was gonna ask that question. So when you start talking about critical critical equipment, do you from a criticality perspective? Do you create a redundancy? inventory that looks like you're here? No.

11:02

So Amazon does not build whip in different areas work in process or inventory, right? To help cushion that that those are ways? So right,

11:14

right? Because they are, don't get me wrong. I

11:16

mean, and when you're moving that much product, you've got to look at the equipment and say, okay, the things that are critical to our operation, need to be well known and understood. And the maintenance plan for that, including a lot of machine learning. And a lot of data points are average, I mean, we're five to 10,000 data points in one site coming in feeding information to us on the health of that piece of equipment and how it's performing. And are there other things that we need to be looking at from it, whether it's heat vibration,

11:52

so that's a that's a Iot, right? That's an IoT solution, data collection going someplace. And then there's this the analytics behind that that says, hey, this is just garbage. This is noisy data and noisy data, whatever data you don't worry about that data. But here in this little swim lane here, these this is the these are the data's that that data's is can I say data's there's a gentleman out there that I know real well, and he's a good guy. And I'm sorry, because we're alive. I see how No, don't even don't point way does take time. Anyway. So yeah, and then if you're saying, hey, something's out of parameter or whatever, in this, whatever, analytics, this algorithm, then it notifies

12:40

and notifies and let you know that there's something wrong. Yeah. The thing is, you have to go back and look at the why behind it. Because if you do act on that, and you don't see a result, or you don't see an effect of that, and you need to understand the why behind it.

12:57

But why have the failure? The why of the problem? Why? What would like what, what's that? Why?

13:01

Yes, it is, it's, it's all inclusive, right? You want to know why it failed. So so because

13:09

you don't use for example, with just pencil whipping and then and then just sort of sit there and, and, okay, it's fixed now, but you never understood the why. And it could happen again,

13:17

well, we understand we know enough of the equipment, and how it performs. That it's not the exception, it's not the normal things for the equipment that that catches us off guard. It's the human intervention beforehand, bringing product in that, for example, a bunch of magnets, and they break loose, because they're not box properly. And I got magnets on a conveyor that's going 400 feet per minute, or feet per second. And with diverters, and all kinds of stuff on it, and it just doesn't perform because it's got magnets stuck everywhere. So it's those things like that, that create the, the event that you need to understand. Okay, so now, we need to package this differently. We need to do this differently to make sure that it doesn't happen again.

14:09

Walk us through that process. So you sit there and you clearly you're you're trying to understand the why. Fantastic, that's really important. Where does that go? I mean, that's, that's a human conversation. So

14:22

that goes back into the systems on the inputs. So and we have, there's a term that they use on a product description that shows this product can be packaged only this way, this way or this way. And it needs to be have this much density around it or whatever to protect, really, and then it goes through. So you may not realize there's a lot of those things from the lessons learned. So, we know we have this failure. So now the product cannot be packaged this way the way it was that it failed. Now it can only be package this way and this way.

15:02

So let's say let's say on packaging, I'm the packaging person I'm trying to fulfill this order, then it comes, it comes in on a screen, right? And and I look at and it's magnets will just keep on running with that analogy. So it's magnets. And then I get from from, from whatever interface direction on

15:23

only package in this box, but this material packing material with this tape, and I mean, it lights up for them. So that tells you intuitively exactly what you do and what sequence and

15:37

so so what if it's a new product, whether it's like, okay, Amazon, your process a lot, don't get me wrong, I don't know, if you've, it's like trying to find a domain name. Does it even exist out there? Like all domain names? It? What if it's a new product? So then

15:54

it's tested? In different variations on Bob, really everything else? Yeah, there are some standards that it'll come in at just because of package, right. And there's less expensive packaging, to more expensive packaging as well. So you start with the less expensive, try to make it as reliable as you can, and you work your way up to the more expensive if you need it. So there is a there is a method and a science to everything.

16:22

Yeah, a guy that likes process. Me, I love that I always I was always process something out. This is exciting and giddy. For me. I just think it's, it's the coolest thing since sliced bread. Eventually, I would imagine that Amazon's gonna have put a some sort of monitor in my head. And I don't even have to go to the website. I could just sort of say, I need potato chips. And there it is. And it's like, Oh, it's right there.

16:50

Yeah, we look at your buying habits. So we can have it show up exactly when you do it. But he chips every Sunday afternoon.

16:59

But you do. Yeah. Yeah. Because I do. Yes. And it's it's very effective. Very, very effective. I didn't know I needed those things. But at that particular time, I did. And thank goodness that was right there for me to Yeah. Hey, consider these. Yes. All right. The the last final question I have is where do you see all this going? I mean, that's pretty doggone you're, you're constantly. I mean, every day, every day, every day, you're you're making it more efficient. You're always trying to figure out more better, faster, the Steve Austin approach, right? Where do you see it going? I mean, is there a point of diminishing returns? Or is just sort of That's it. That's life. Well, Amazon's

17:47

extremely innovative. So you will see new markets being developed. So right now we're delivering packages. Pretty soon it's going to be delivering food, fresh food. It could be technology in the home. I mean, it's gonna go go go.

18:14

For somebody that's just founded on impatience. That's me. I am impatient. Amazon is absolutely. Yeah, it's for me. Oh, my gosh, I'm so glad that you. I mean, this is a this is a great conversation. It's pretty cool. Yeah, I didn't mean it. I just I had there's so much more I, I want on my bucket list. I want to just tour one of those facilities just to say it. Absolutely. Look at I know somebody. That's right. And as I stare at you, creepy, but stare at you, nonetheless. How do people get a hold of you? They're saying, Hey, I like what he's talking about. Jeremy is a great guy. He's good. But he's really fantastic. How do I get ahold of

18:54

my email is probably the best good jr@amazon.com All right.

18:59

Once again, I just want to say thank you very much for being on the industrial talk podcast because you were absolutely wonderful. All right, listeners. We're broadcasting from the 29th annual SMRP conference here in St. Louis. It's fantastic. It's got a collection of the best maintenance reliability professionals known to man or woman or people, whatever. And we're brought to you by Accruent and Fluke Reliability, you got to go out to their website because their specialty, they've got great people, great solutions, great company, so don't hesitate. And then finally, just finally, you're saying I gotta get a hold Jeremy. Fear not. We're gonna wrap it up on the OSI, all the contact information that you need to be aware of. So stay tuned. And thank you very much for joining industrial talk.

19:44

You're listening to the industrial talk Podcast Network.

19:54

All right. That is Jeremy. Good. He goes by Jerry. I didn't mention it in the interview. Why? We're at the 29th annual SMRP conference. But you could call him Jerry. I have his email address out and industrial talk.com. They're doing fantastic things as you could tell by the interview, that they're doing incredible things at Amazon big time. It's an exciting time. Now. As we wrap up, I'm reminded of a quote that I just recently heard again, confused minds say, No, don't be confused. We've got to in this in this industrial age, this this innovation industry for Dotto, we've got to educate. That means we've got to do everything we can to consume that content. Because we depend on you each and every day. Because you're bold, brave you dare greatly Jerry is and many of the great people who have been on industrial talk are all bold, brave and daring greatly. Let's change the world industries changing the world because you guys are our people. So another great interview right around the corner so stay tuned.

The post Jerry Good with Amazon appeared first on Industrial Talk.

In this week's Industrial Talk Podcast we're talking to Dean Bushey, Transportation and Mobility Expert at Hitachi America about “The Power behind a Connected Transportation System”. Get the answers to your “Connected Mobility” questions along with Dean's unique insight on the “How” on this Industrial Talk interview!

You can find out more about Dean and the wonderful team at Hitachi America on innovative solutions for the Transportation 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!

DEAN BUSHEY'S CONTACT INFORMATION:

Personal LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dean-bushey/

Company LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/hitachi-global-social-innovation-business/

Company Website: https://social-innovation.hitachi.com/

Company YouTube:  https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC2qrro8UvaknhG3fsoNxHLg

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

hitachi, dean, transportation, transportation system, people, optimize, airplane, talk, vehicles, industrial, mobility, solution, collaborate, connected, innovation, world, customer, company, goods, exciting

SPEAKERS

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 get right Welcome to the industrial talk podcast absolute honor that you have joined this platform that celebrates you, you industrial hero, you're bold, you're brave, you dare greatly. You solve problems, you innovate, because you're innovation issed. And you're changing lives and you're changing the world. That's why we celebrate you on this particular podcast.

00:42

You know, what?

Scott MacKenzie 00:43

industry has changed so rapidly? It's an exciting time. And if you're thinking about getting into a career into something that is exciting, yeah. Industry, is it because we are talking innovation like nobody's business? Now in the hot seat, gentlemen, that by the name of Dean bushi, he is with Hitachi America, he is the transportation mobility shmi, or subject matter expert there. And I got to tell you, if there's a topic that needs to be discussed, it is definitely that one, let's get cracking. So, so what's great about this? So what's cool is that Dean massive skills, massive skills, stack card is just dripping with skills. And he we talk about connected transportation systems. Now, you're saying to yourself, Scott, why would we want to do that? And it's everything moves by some form of transportation? And can we improve upon that? Oh, yeah. Oh, absolutely. We can, people like Dean, Hitachi America, and others, they're really exploring the innovation that is needed for that particular next generation, that ability to be able to focus on a customer 100% in their transportation, in their logistics in their supply chain solution. And it just gets down to that connected capability to be able to see exactly what's going on. It's exciting, and it can't be done. This is not pie in the sky stuff. This is not something that you're gonna say that it's just not gonna happen, we're gonna still deal with it, no, this this, whatever we call this next normal, has really created a sort of a focus on some of the challenges that take place within our transportation system and the need to be able to bring in electrification, the need to be able to think about autonomous vehicles. Just in the last mile, there are so many subjects, and and topics to discuss in this particular, you know, if you look at a transportation, supply chain, you know, logistics, it's all there and connected. Before we get into it. Just FYI, I want to be able to just sort of once again, plant your seed, the industrial talk is all about education. Got it. Dean's right here, educating, it's important, you got to stay ahead of that. You got to collaborate, you don't have Dean and company, they collaborate with a number of other companies to be able to come up with solutions that truly meet customer's needs. And then definitely innovate. The future is truly an innovation as type of platform it it really pushes the envelope, and it's an exciting time. The industrial talk platform is sort of going through a an upgrade, shall we say an industry industrial talk to Dotto, that means we want to be able to facilitate that education and get the greatest and latest information on whatever you want to talk about that innovation that's out there that will make you a better company that will make you a better professional, and to be able to collaborate with these individuals that will say, Hey, we want to do it with you. We want to be able to create and change the world by collaborating and then finally, deploy an innovation, deploying innovation that truly transforms the world. That's what industrial talk is all about. That's what the two dot o focus is going to be on. There's a lot of great stuff out there a lot of wonderful conversations to have. And I'm telling you right now, this guy right here on this side of the microphone is absolutely jacked. All right, deep transportation, mobility, subject matter expert. And I mean, we just scratched the surface in this conversation. And he's the go out to a stat guide. It's it's deemed dash bushing. That's bu sh e y. Find them reach out to him. He wants to connect. And he is an absolute wealth of knowledge. And I'm telling you, once again, we're just scratching the surface because when we start talking about connected capabilities, we're talking about utilities. We're talking about the necessity for cybersecurity. It just never stops. Alright, let's get cracking. Enjoy the conversation with Dean bushi. Dean, welcome to the industrial talk podcast. Thank you very much for finding time in your schedule to talk to the listeners. How are you doing today?

Dean Bushey 05:13

I'm doing fantastic. Thank you for having me on the show.

Scott MacKenzie 05:16

I love it. And he's with Hitachi America. He is a subject matter expert when we start talking about transportation and mobility, but I'm not going to talk about it you're going to talk about, give us a little 411 on who Dean is, and where do you come from and why you're such an incredible professional.

Dean Bushey 05:31

Sure, I've got a military background, I spent 25 years in the military as a pilot and manner leader.

Scott MacKenzie 05:40

Hola, Hola. Hola. Hola. You just can't gloss over that. I'm looking at your stat card out on LinkedIn. And I'm still trying to find pilot. And that would have been just really great to include there because I would be just all geeked out now. Now I'm geeked out now You caught me off guard because I'd rather talk about that.

Dean Bushey 05:58

Well, if you want to talk about flying airplanes, I love flying airplanes. I went to the Air Force Academy and I went down to pilot training in Arizona, I spent three different tours overseas, flew seven different airplanes, got some combat time, flew unmanned aircraft. So we did a lot of different things in the military, which prepared me for long range transportation, a lot of the time I spent was in C fives the biggest airplane we have. So we were we were talking about how to optimize the flow of goods and services and people. introduction into my own transportation, mobility. And then I got a PhD in computer science, went back to the Air Force Academy, taught back there a little bit. But then they put me out in unmanned aircraft where we were trying to have the aircraft deployed overseas, and the pilots back in Dallas, or in Las Vegas, or in Washington, wherever the pilots may be. So we were trying to optimize the flow of information back and forth. The video and the command links via satellite to airplanes that were long range a bunch of different places. So

Scott MacKenzie 07:07

I have to was there ever a delay? Like I mean, if you've got that distance, if you're, you're flying over, you know seas, and you've got your command here and in North America, that was there ever, like an information delay?

Dean Bushey 07:19

Yeah, there's three quarters of a second delay each way. So when I move this way, with the stick three quarters of a second later, the airplane will do that. But it takes three quarters of a second to come back for me to realize the airplane did that. So it's about a second and a half delay via satellite, which makes it really tough to land via satellite. That's usually why you have a local unit that captures the airplane and lands, the airplane locally.

Scott MacKenzie 07:49

That's a whole nother conversation that I would love to have. I think that's just but we can't because this is industrial talk. And we got to talk about transportation and mobility and the challenges associated with it as I push that whole other subject to the side, and I'm not very happy with that. Thank you very much, Dean, appreciate you catching me off guard with that. Sure. Anyway. A lot of conversations with a lot of professionals that have been on the on the the industrial talk podcast, talk a little bit about that, that the challenge is going forward mobility wise. In the transportation, the challenge is this whole conversation about automated vehicles and autonomous autonomous vehicles, all of that is just this big soup of interest. But how do you how do you make? Oh, how do you make sense of it? Where do you go? What do you start first, Dean?

Dean Bushey 08:42

Yeah, that's an interesting discussion. So I view transportation as going back to the old movie planes, trains, and automobiles. And it's really moving people and goods across all of those spectrums. So if you get focused just on making a car drive itself, or making a train super efficient, and on schedule, I think you're missing the boat really for, for me, it's about getting you or a package from its warehouse to its final destination. And then if that involves a lot of different modes of transportation, whether it's the delivery guy, which is last mile, whether it's putting it on a train, putting on a ship, putting it on one of my airplanes, and I'm going global, all of that comes into factor. So you as the customer and we talked about a little bit of yo care where the package started, you just want it tomorrow. Well, that's a whole transportation system. That's got to be integrated, optimized, examined, and then from a company like Hitachi, we're really into optimizing the flow of information and goods and services. That's where we can come in and make a big difference. But it's it is an information question, right? It really is.

Scott MacKenzie 09:58

I mean, I think the The The, the, the infrastructure and sure it could be optimized, but it's really a collection of data and that that ability to be able to decide on what that data means, right?

Dean Bushey 10:12

You are correct. And you would actually maybe, or maybe not be surprised that how a lot of this information does not flow smoothly. There are different API. So if I'm trying to get information from a cell phone, and an autonomous vehicle and a train, and maybe a traffic stoplight, all of those have sensors, they're all information providers. But those those if that information doesn't actually talk to each other real smoothly. So the key to make a connected transportation system, and that's really where my that's it, that's

Scott MacKenzie 10:43

the that's the term Go ahead.

Dean Bushey 10:45

That's, that's the secret sauce. So connected transportation system, making a smart, which is what you were hinting at, is getting all those various data sources to one communicate. And then when you need and then to, you need to adjust them at three, you need to make smart decisions for you. If you're the customer, I need to be able to answer questions you may have like, how do I optimize the flow of this traffic through this neighborhood? Or how do I optimize the flow of my palette from beginning to end and its journey?

Scott MacKenzie 11:17

See, this is where it seems like a huge challenge. I mean, it's massive, because if you just go out to the the Interstate, you see trucks, you know, you go to the rail yard, you see a bunch of I mean, it's just full of stuff, and we move stuff all over the world. Right. And, and in that network, there's there's inefficiencies. Where do you Where do you just sort of, from your perspective, where do you just start like, with that incremental approach? Yes, we got this. Yes, we're talking about this, but let's just start here. Greatest bang for the buck? How do you answer that? I don't know how you start? I mean, who brought up? You brought up street lamps? And I'm like, yeah, you could, you could do that, too. You know, I mean, please?

Dean Bushey 12:04

Well, I really think you need to, from a business perspective, you need to focus on a customer. So if if my customer, for instance, we have a customer in Florida, just outside of Orlando, I was there a couple weeks ago, and they've got a private community. And they're we're really interested in the smooth, seamless flow of people through their community. Well, that brings up one use case. Now we've defined this whole transportation system gets really I don't say simplified, but it gets focused on how do we integrate their micro transit, micro transportation, which is the shuttles and the scooters, and small bikes to their collective transportation, they have autonomous vehicles that are going to the community. That is their bailiwick. So I focus on that and we get into a use case problem, then we talk to you as a customer and say, What are your pain points? What are you not doing? Well, nothing talks to one another. And then we started exploring, okay, well, that's a pain point. And maybe Hitachi can help you do all of it, but most likely Hitachi will not. And we found that it's better for us to say, all right, if we can define the pain point, we can start to evolve solutions with you, we co create solutions with the customer, and then say, well, maybe we need to bring Intel them. Or maybe we need to bring Amazon Web Services with their cloud storage devices. And now we have the power of Hitachi, Intel and Amazon Web Services, jointly coming with a solution to a problem that you as a customer, once you get a solution, then we have a joint solution. That's probably from our perspective, business wise, repeatable. Now we have a solution that maybe Las Vegas will want, and Miami will want and San Francisco will want.

Scott MacKenzie 13:51

Yeah, you bring up a good point about the necessity to collaborate, I don't think and it's not a slam on on Hitachi or any other company. I think the use cases are that complex. And you end up in and and for a company to be able to say, yeah, we could do it soup to nuts, I don't think so it requires, you know, that collaborative desire and mindset. I just think it is. And that's the right way to do it.

Dean Bushey 14:22

Another one we're trying to tackle another use case, for example, examining is multimodal at a freight level. So if you think of a ship going across the ocean, it's got all these pallets on it. It's got all these cargo bins on it. It has a bill of lading. Well, when it gets to the port, there's a separate system that gets it off of the boat and puts it on a train. It needs a new bill of lading because those systems don't talk to one another. But when it gets to the trucking yard where you're trying to truck it, it's got a different bill of lading. So this multi modal, smooth flow of goods and services. requires, it sounds really simple. But it's not. You need sensors that tell you where the packages are, you need to optimize scheduling routes, you need companies that have great sensors, companies that have cloud based storage. And no one company can do that. So now we start to collaborate and come up with some solutions, Interim solutions as

Scott MacKenzie 15:20

we're moving towards an optimized solution, these the necessity to generate new bill of ladings is there a solution or a use case that says, hey, from from overseas manufacturing, all the way to destination, whatever it might be, whatever, whatever that that is there a way of being able to consolidate that, that solution that technology, the bill of lading, or just,

Dean Bushey 15:50

I love its legacy, obviously, a lot of it is has been in place. And once we start digitizing, and making everything less manual and less paperwork wise, you're going to start seeing a lot of solutions. And I really enjoy Amazon, I like working with them. They're they're coming up with solutions based on commerce. So money is driving them to optimize their solutions. They're getting supplies from all over the world. And you may or may not like, like the size and scope of their business model, but their business model is driving innovation based on money. And the flow of goods. So

Scott MacKenzie 16:31

it's, it's quite successful. And we had this conversation prior to the podcast, and I called it the Amazon effect. And it really because they focus on that commerce. And definitely the the customer because they know that the customer's impatient, I want my like, go out there. That's, that's, that's an interesting challenge. And they deliver. You know, now all of a sudden, you get the little vans out there, the Amazon vans, they're doing the last mile they're doing whatever that is. And I I mean, I can't help but like it.

Dean Bushey 17:12

And, and as much as it sounds like it's you ordered on Amazon Amazon's website, it's an Amazon product delivered by Amazon fulfillment centers to your house, you bought it from a bunch of different companies. You had a shipping company, you had to have the ports, maybe you had the government involved as far as clearing those islands that come in, you have local communities you had have roads that were able to deliver to your house, maybe you had connected communications amongst the communities. So all of that happened, even though it looked like Amazon to you all of that happened because you have collaborative systems

Scott MacKenzie 17:48

where Yeah, and and now. And now if I don't, if I don't get a notification that my drivers 10 stops away, I'm frustrated.

Dean Bushey 17:59

I'm ready to cancel my order.

Scott MacKenzie 18:01

Like, what's going on? What kind of service is this? So with that said, I mean, there's just, it sounds like there's a lot of great and wonderful opportunities to truly great bottom line value, great customer service, great. All of the stuff that that you do so desire. Where do you see it going? Because it's not going to stop? Right? It's just not nobody's going to say, All right. We tried this whole supply chain thing that we're done. We're going to go back to the old way. Where do you see going there?

Dean Bushey 18:37

Yeah, I really see a big I wouldn't I'm some people would say it's a disrupter. I'd say it's an enhancer, when you start talking about the electrification of vehicles. Ah, I'm gonna I'm gonna leave alone, airplanes and maybe electric in the future, but cars transportation systems, when when you talk about the electric infrastructure that's going to be required to support large scale fleets that become electrical. I mean, you start at the automobile, OEM manufacturers, those plants all are producing internal combustion engines. Those plants need to be modified and optimized to produce Evie vehicles. Is the battery going to be separate from the vehicle? You can have battery manufacturers and vehicle or is for get a pretty spot? Then how do you charge these vehicles? Where do you charge these vehicles? And what is the impact on the grid? Are we going to have an issue where everybody plugs in at five o'clock and all of a sudden, the energy grid gets a hit? Probably? Yeah. What are you gonna do with all the gas stations when you start earning an electric vehicle? You may you in California or New Orleans or me in North Carolina, we may be able to find a charge station. What happens to all those old gas stations they have to be converted? And then how do you get those systems to talk to one another right now nothing talks to one another. I think That's why I say it's an enhancer. It's disruptive. But when you go to electric vehicles and electric charging stations, there's a great opportunity to optimize based on the communication among those stations and communication among vehicles.

Scott MacKenzie 20:14

The and correct me if I'm wrong, the dean, the electrification of these vehicles is key for the autonomous, right. It's it sort of, it just sort of goes hand in hand. So I've got these automated vehicles out there, I might not have the resources to be able to deliver the truck. But is that is that it has to be electrification.

Dean Bushey 20:38

Correct. I spent a year with voyage on autonomous vehicle company. And they did. They had a hybrid. They had a Chrysler Pacifica, which was a hybrid vehicle. But everything about the vehicle had to be electrified, because you had a massive computer in the back, right? You had the brains were in the back of the computer, or the car that were making split second decisions based on sensors, which were all electric. So there had to be a very large electrical source of power. Wow. Yeah. Yeah, if you start making more than more than autonomous, autonomous is fun, but autonomous and then connected, where it actually could transmit and receive data via Wi Fi or LTE or 5g as it comes out. Now you're making now you get me really excited. It's where the future is here. See,

Scott MacKenzie 21:32

that's, that's right in line with your statement of connected transportation systems. That's it. It's people like you and others who who think about this, you know, night and day, which is pretty cool. Thank you for doing that. Because, but for people like me and others, it's it's a, it's a pretty cool food future. But we as consumers, yeah, we take it for granted. I take it for granted that I'm going to get my package out there, I don't see the nuts and bolts into how that sausage is made to get that package to my front store. And now now somebody takes a picture of it, it says this is where it's at. It's like, yeah, there. There it is. I mean, it just keeps going up. And it's just little things like that.

Dean Bushey 22:13

When you Yeah, well, this is almost for soccer, because you asked me how I was doing at the beginning of the podcast, and how do I like to talk to you, America, I love it. Because Beverly said, Dean, we want you to stay on top of the transportation industry, we want you to stay on top of mobility, which means that my job is to make sure I'm on the cutting edge of all the innovations. And it's it's huge and it affects every phase of life. I think it's one of the biggest enablers or disruptors, whatever you want to call it, transportation is going to affect everything. Obviously CODEL shot a lot down, and it's going to change transportation. But if we can enable people to be able to move about cities, and we enable the movement of goods and services, and we connect all of this, that's just really exciting to me, because you're making a difference in people's lives. You're not, you're not just doing something to deliver whatever you're making a difference.

Scott MacKenzie 23:06

Here's a question that I don't know if there's an answer to it. But let's say Amazon's Amazon, Amazon is going to have the capital to be able to do whatever it really wants to do and to be able to innovate the way they want to innovate, to benefit themselves, the shareholders, whatever it might be, whatever that driver is, but what about, what about the mid to small companies that price point? How do they How do they participate in this this brave new world?

Dean Bushey 23:35

I think there's lots of opportunities. I do a little teaching on the side to computer science students. And we talk about several facets on how you can get into this, whether it's the passenger experience in the vehicle, maybe you're designing a new infotainment system or a connected system where that if you're driving by a coffee shop, you get a pop up of a coupon on your phone saying, Hey, I recognize that you're virtually in front of a coffee shop. Maybe it's the Eevee design or designing batteries, and you're doing a computer design of what we would call a digital twin, a simulation. Maybe you're helping with the mobility phase of it. There's just there's just so many avenues for people to get in this game. And yes, digital companies tend to expand and they can tract and then merge very quickly. But so do computer science technicians they they they spent a year at a company and they're going to a next company and they're doing amazing thing. So it's really exciting time to be a technologist in this Evie changing world because there are so many paths and the small companies

Scott MacKenzie 24:49

is where it is the AI and yeah, no I agree with you 100% on that that's true and it's the it appears that though it's true Blue Ocean opportunity. And it's it's not even bound by your imagination you can, if you can think it, you could probably execute upon it, you might might be able to find somebody to help you work through it. That's pretty good. But you know what you just said it's sort of Minority Report ish, the movie, where, where are you driving by? It's like, hey, look at that this coffee shop has something on for sale. Hey, hey, you need a shirt. You were talking about the shirt? Here's a shirt for sale right next to you. Yeah,

Dean Bushey 25:31

it's, you know, it's you. We even haven't even touched on cybersecurity.

Scott MacKenzie 25:38

That's a whole nother thing. Transportation Systems.

Dean Bushey 25:42

Somebody's got to be smart enough. And hopefully, it's the kids that I'm teaching. They're smart enough to start developing systems that are secure, robust and reliable, and have backup systems. Because when you connect to things, there's a sort of intrusion. There could be

Scott MacKenzie 26:01

sort of intrusion. that's a that's a whole nother conversation. I like the conversation about cybersecurity, because I think that it's, it's one of those topics that nobody wants to have, but everybody has to have it.

Dean Bushey 26:15

When it's working fine. I

Dean Bushey 26:16

just don't want to know when to do

Scott MacKenzie 26:18

Right. Exactly. I don't come to me and let me hear my dirty laundry and and say that, no, it's it. That's a whole nother conversation. And yes, if you know somebody within Hitachi America that wants to talk about cybersecurity. I'm all ears. We're all headphones. We're all my

Dean Bushey 26:35

Yeah, I definitely have some

Scott MacKenzie 26:36

people that would love to talk to you because it is a great topic. And it's like you said and I think that we just there's that human element, the gravity of it is so it's it's like overwhelming. And and the same thing in the world of cyber in those same thing with the this whole digital journey. It's from me, simple mind. It's overwhelming, but it's it's exciting at the same time.

Dean Bushey 27:06

One, one particular use case that's a little bit outside of mobility. But I've tended to become a utility infield player for Beverley just whatever she needs help on I I plugged myself into. We were designing some advanced energy management systems for a town outside of Orlando. And basically it's grid, a grid load balancing, if you think about what happened in Dallas have a demand and peak demand cycles. So connecting buildings, what are the the energy source, the grid sources traditional grid, or its solar or floating voltaic cells, or whatever, you want to put Eb charging stations, connecting buildings and parking garages so that they manage the load much better? Building says, hey, I've got a real high load and the feeder from the Orlando utility company says, hey, that's a pretty high spike. Some of the other buildings can come in and go Okay, well, we have excess capacity. Yeah. Well, so that introduced a connected system, we immediately had to go to our cybersecurity people and say, all right, we need to have you part of this project to say, Hey, there could be intrusion since we're communicating wires.

Scott MacKenzie 28:20

I love it. It's exciting. And it just seems like the the speed at which all of this is happening is is lightning. It because you guys just sort of sit around, I don't know, hang around the water cooler. And you know, chirp about how we can digitally transform everything in the world.

Dean Bushey 28:40

I really wish I was 20 years old to get it because I think the next 20 years is going to be amazing.

Scott MacKenzie 28:46

That's exciting. Well, let's put it this way. We're gonna have to wrap it up. However, how do how does somebody get ahold of the dean

Dean Bushey 28:54

told me at Hitachi, so I will provide you a my email address. It's not pushy.hs. Guy calm. I'm out on the web. I've got several different places where you can see my writings on Hitachi data, LinkedIn, you can find me on LinkedIn, but usually great way to get a hold of me.

Scott MacKenzie 29:16

Which is pretty cool. Because you've got Dean dash bushing, which is very, you were an early adopter to LinkedIn and must be because because I'm sure there's other Dean Bushey.

Scott MacKenzie 29:27

I live in the digital world.

Scott MacKenzie 29:30

It's it's dead sexy. I'm telling you. It is and I, I geek out. I'll be the first to do that. But Thank you, Dean for finding time in your busy schedule. And, and sharing with us a slew of information and insights. I'm overwhelmed. Now. You're a disrupter. That's what you are doing. Alright, thank you, Scott. Appreciate it. All right. Thank you listeners. Hey, hey, we're gonna be wrapping up on the other side. All of the contact information for Dean will be available And really appreciate you joining the industrial talk podcast where we celebrate you industry professionals. Stay tuned. You're listening to the industrial talk Podcast Network.

Scott MacKenzie 30:16

All right, a big, big kudos to Dean Bushey. That's b u s h e y madstad card out there on LinkedIn, told you the information in the content would be just absolutely to die for. Man, I'm telling you. I'm just taking the innovation. And where's it going?

Scott MacKenzie 30:35

What does it look like? What

Scott MacKenzie 30:36

did we can look like in 10 years? Not a clue. Like guarantee it's going to be different. And it's because of people like Dean Petacci, America and others, pushing the envelope, wanting to collaborate. Definitely want to innovate. All there. All right, reminder. It does real talk to Dotto and that is where you're going to go. That's where you're going to go to educate. That's where you're going to go to collaborate. And that's where you're going to go to innovate. And you're going to find people like Dean bushi out there, and you're going to reach out to that guy, because you need to because he sees the future and others on the industrial talk podcast. Absolutely true. So do not hesitate. Go out to industrial talk.com find out more. All right, be bold, be brave, dare greatly hang out with people that are bold, brave and daring greatly and you will change the world. We will be back with another great interview shortly.

The post Mr. Dean Bushey with Hitachi America Talks about The Connected Transportation System appeared first on Industrial Talk.

In this week's Industrial Talk Podcast we're talking to Dan Anderson, Manager at Life Cycle Engineering about “Real Strategies and Solutions for an Effective on-line training program”. Get the answers to your “Virtual Training” questions along with Dan's unique insight on the “How” on this Industrial Talk interview!

You can find out more about Dan and the wonderful team at Life Cycle Engineering on upping your online virtual training platform 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!

DAN ANDERSON'S CONTACT INFORMATION:

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

Company LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/life-cycle-engineering/

Company Website: https://www.lce.com/

Company Twitter: https://twitter.com/LCE_Today

Company Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/LifeCycleEngineering

Company YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/LifeCycleEngineering

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:

The post Mr. Larry Olson with Picavi Talks about the power behind wearables in logistics appeared first on Industrial Talk.

In this week's Industrial Talk Podcast we're talking to David Cahn, Product Marketing Manager with BlueRidge Global about “The Need for Supply Chain to Invest in Resiliency”. Get the answers to your “Supply Chain Resiliency” questions along with David's unique insight on the “How” on this Industrial Talk interview!

You can find out more about David and the wonderful team at BlueRidge Global on creating a resilient Supply Chain 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!

DAVID CAHN'S CONTACT INFORMATION:

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

Company LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/blue-ridge-global/

Company Website: https://blueridgeglobal.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

supply chain, demand, pandemic, optimize, people, inventory, blue ridge, systems, problems, industrial, industry, supply, drive, managing, david, collaborate, talk, planning, technology, selling

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. All right, again, welcome to the industrial talk podcast. That's right. It's about you, you industry here on if you're out there on video, I'm pointing right at your face right now. This platform celebrates you, you are bold, you are brave, you dare greatly. you innovate. You're changing lives and you're changing the world each and every day. And if you're not, you know, think, come talk to me because you are. Thank you very much for joining. Thank you for joining this particular celebration. All right. in the hot seat, we have a gentleman by the name of David Kahn, that ca h n. Blue Ridge global is the company and this is a timely topic because of this squiffy, whatever this market we call post pandemic, pandemic, whatever it is. Supply Chain must invest in resiliency. How about that one? Yeah, let's get cracking.

01:16

Come on. That's a cool topic.

01:19

I mean, I've had a number of conversations about supply chain and why it's important and it is important, don't get me wrong, it is important. But I think one thing that this particular COVID world we live in, we need some level of resiliency within that supply chain, because I think it caught us off guard. But you know what people like David, Blue Ridge, and others, they have answers because you know what we're all about here on the industrial talk podcast, right? You know, we're all about educating. But we want to educate in a entertaining way. That's right. And we want to be collaborating, and we don't just want to collaborate and chirping each other. We want to collaborate to come up and solve problems, because industry, you solve problems. And we have to collaborate to do that. We don't have all the answers. But when we get together in a collaborative way,

02:12

answers happen. I love it, you're solving problems. And then of course, we got to really think about innovation, we do. And they're not gonna happen if you're not educated. And if you're not collaborating, and you know, innovation is a result of that type of stuff. You got to dream, you got to think big, you got to work with people. The industrial talk podcast, the industrial talk platform, is a network of networks, where we're doing an industry talk, industrial talk. 2.0, how about that, because we want to be able to take you, industry professional, you, whoever you are, you know who it doesn't really matter, and be able to highlight your skills because you solve problems. Industrial talk.com is where it's at. Be on the lookout because it's pretty duck gun. Cool. I'd telling you right now, um, for me, I get, you know, I'm always excited. I am I do, I'm pointing at myself, right now, Scott does get pretty amped up about things. But this one I was I'm really amped up about because you could go out to industrial talk, you can then go to industry heroes, we're going down that road, you go to that industry heroes, right? And then you're gonna say, Well, I want to know somebody that's in, let's say, oil and gas. I want to know somebody that's in a, you know, IoT industry for data, whatever might be, and you can filter and find those individuals and their companies and reach out, and then find out everything that is damn cool about every single one. And then you're gonna say, I want to educate some more. I want to collaborate with them, because I want to innovate. How about that? I'm all tingling now. That's pretty doggone Cool. All right. Let's get cracking. Again, I gotta tell you, man, this was a pretty cool doggone interview. I really enjoyed it. David, just, he's got a lot of energy too. You'll notice if you go out there and a video if you go to YouTube channel, my youtube channel industrial talk, and you find this particular video, or you can just go to industrial talk and then find his where his podcast is located. You'll see the video there too.

04:24

He's, he's, he is infectious when it comes to this supply chain stuff. I'm telling you right now. It makes it fun. And I mean, it is entertaining. I'm new without a doubt. I'm thinking about changing my career to be more simple. No, I'm not. I'm sorry. That's, that's just me just putting myself way out there jumping the Shark Tank right now. But anyway, we're gonna be talking a lot about supply chain resiliency, and we do need it and what do we do? What are the strategies? David is out there.

04:56

He's got a badass stat card on LinkedIn.

05:00

Yeah, but you could find it on industrial talk and you're saying, Scott, Okay, I'm gonna do that. Yeah. David Kahn, he's bringing the lumber. Enjoy the interview. David, welcome to the industrial talk podcast. I'm excited about this conversation. How are you doing? I'm doing mighty fine. You know, living the dream, living the dream. And that dream is what?

05:22

solving problems on this solving, you know, the problems on industrial talk today. Yeah, that's exactly right. And I hear you, because that is important. And that's what people want to hear. problem solving. With a with a sparkly attitude.

05:39

All right, let's give the listeners a little background, a little 411 on who David Kahn is and Blue Ridge global and then we're going to venture into I like this resiliency in your supply chain and why we need to do that. Give us a little background. So David Kahn, been around the AARP supply chain CRM space for too long.

06:03

You know, Ben worked in manufacturing b2b distribution retail had my own e commerce companies for a while, built them grow them sold them

06:15

and, and driving really driving product marketing activities and content for Blue Ridge and and Blue Ridge. Global is isn't actually a supply chain planning provider. They're kind of a leading space in the

06:29

wine and spirits in the food service. Oh, really? distributing

06:35

automotive aftermarket? Yeah, I was you had me on line and spirits? Yeah, yes, they do.

06:44

Dramatically these days. So yeah. So they're doing very well. And they do pricing and planning and price optimization and planning optimization.

06:54

Well, the industry see it like that. And I mean, it was funny because the pre pandemic, right? If you can remember back then, because I certainly can't apparently, that was such a long time ago. But but apparently they were saying, but anyway, pre pandemic, we didn't realize how important the supply chain was right? Just like it you just took it for granted. You know, that product was on the shelf. Yeah, there it is. It's right there. It's ready to go. And then the pandemic hits, and then all of a sudden, Where the hell is that product? It's not on this. Then everybody all of a sudden said, Doggone it, where is it? And then they realize supply chains. pretty important. Yeah. As we go scramble for, you know, sanitary clothing and toilet paper and hand sanitizers and can't find them and empty shelves. And yeah, pretty cool stuff all sudden, it was but then that segues into what we're going to be talking about, I realized how

07:48

how, to a certain extent, how fragile that supply chain was, we just sort of took it for granted. And it was like, doing its thing. And then all of a sudden, there's a burp in the old thing. And then all of a sudden, boom, everybody's all pissed off. Tell us a little bit about investing in the resiliency. What does that mean? I don't know what that means. What are we really talking about here is that the pandemic and there's gonna be other crisis's, you know, that occur every, you know, every day, every year, you know, and that caused basically the supply chain disruptions that you talked about. And they're requiring really better visibility to supply and demand fluctuations. And that's really what, what we're talking about resiliency, and then how can I respond quicker. So you see, like, for example, unforeseen weather events, and seasonality. You know, we have spoilage on fresh fruits and vegetables, we have people hoarding items, we have demand for other items, you know, that comes to come almost to a complete standstill, you know, you got all these different changing business models, you know, you have foodservice distributors that were selling a lot to restaurants and that kind of distribution channel and now selling to grocery stores. And so whole different shifts and models are occurring. You know, same is true with, you know, the wine and spirits in a manufacturer starting to ship their business models and making hand sanitizers, you know, and selling that to totally different markets. And at the same time, you know, how do I get these products to the market, because of this, you know, there's labor shortages on drivers. And so, you know, so not only even if I was able to react, I got delivery and fulfillment issues. And as people come in, you know, people want to get this stuff faster, better, quicker, you know, they want to get used to ordering today and getting it tomorrow and getting into an hour. And so that puts unbelievable demand pressures on how I support and how I can respond to changes in demand a lot faster.

09:55

I'll tell you it

09:58

it highlighted just

10:00

That complexity that exists today in the supply chain and how, you know, that chain itself, there's some weak spots within those links. And, and once that one, one link begins to falter a little bit, then everything else starts to there's a rippling effect. And so, so the question I have to you recognizing that if you haven't taken this whole pandemic thing seriously, and made some adjustments, and making your supply chain more resilient, what do we need to do today to, to, to achieve that?

10:33

So it is a couple things. One is really, we have to fine tune how we drive our planning, and pricing, you know, and, and the amount of data that we're that we're coming into the supply chain, and how do I absorb that. So for example, Blue Ridge is using a lot of artificial intelligence and machine learning, based on that data that's coming in, I mean, this phenomenal amount of data is coming into the supply chain. And so at the same time, they you have to maximize or optimize the 1000s and 1000s of stock keeping units that you're delivering to the market, and through different channels. So you may have a, what they call a multi Echelon network where you're selling food, distributors, you're selling those distributors and selling to wholesalers. And then you're you're selling

11:24

to retailers. And so managing the inventory and the price point and the geography by category by assortment, you know, how do I effectively do that without using some level of machine learning or artificial intelligence to help me drive that analytics, you know, much more effectively, and optimize my levels of assortment inventory, optimize my revenue, you know, slashed my inventory, carrying costs, but really one of the unique things about

11:57

it, it all comes back to our, you know, knowledge of supply and demand, you know, traditionally managing that supply and demand. And one of the unique things is we started out historically with supply, you know, supply chain planning. And that was really managing the supply side.

12:16

And then we started to wake up one day, and we said, you know, we need to start managing our demand better, we need to get better visibility to the math. And so up came this house sales and operations planning, and we were marrying demand management systems with supply chain with supply chain planning systems. And so the next evolution really came with integrated business planning.

12:41

And really what we're talking about there is integrating some financial modeling into the system. So I can find to my revenue streams, fine tune my margins, optimize and even tune that demand that selling the products that I want to sell versus reacting. And that's really where the pricing optimization comes into the equation. So yeah.

13:03

David, it's interesting, you're, you're talking talk, you're walking the walk, you're doing all this stuff, that's really pretty cool. I just think that people because of the pandemic got caught off guard, I think what you're talking about is a very sophisticated level of thinking associated with their supply chain that supply side demand side, using AI analytics data, pulling it in and, and and being able to identify those nuggets of insights to make better decisions. I think, because of the pandemic, everybody's like, Oh, my God.

13:37

It's out there. But I mean, you're, you're a sophisticated type of guy. So think about it, you know, simplistically, let's kind of take it back level. So simplistically, no one wants to hold the inventory. Nobody want it

13:53

doesn't want it, the distributors don't want it and the retailers want to keep their inventory, you know, as fast moving as possible. Everybody wants that inventory to move as fast as possible. So we implemented all of these different tools to manage that inventory, as fast as good as well as we can. And so we want to know, as fast as possible, from the demand of when we buy it, how to replenish it, we want to we want to react really fast. We want to know which stock keeping units are moving faster. How do I want, I want to optimize the fast flowing, I want to do something with the slow moving, but at the same time, how do I balance that? And since no one wants the inventory, you know, everyone's running lean, so you get a disruption or get a spike in demand. And the supply chain is not ready for that. We no longer have that luxury of huge buffer stocks and huge safety stocks.

14:56

You know, everyone is, you know, we're delivering right today.

15:00

The consumer, we're deliberately cutting out the middleman in a lot of industries, no one wants the inventory. Everyone wants to accelerate that whole supply and fulfillment equation. And what's funny is, I've been at a lot of industrial sites, and they have this hush hush conversation about their bone yard. And it's, it's a special locations where nobody wants to carry inventory, but they have a bone yard. So when that whole problem happens, they have a bone yard, that they have this buffer stock.

15:36

And so the buffer stocks, you know, is really what they call safety stocks. And it is, you know, how do I optimize that safety stock, because I really don't want it if I can, if, I mean, the safety stock is like your insurance policy, it is. And so, if but if I had better forecasting, and better demand visibility, and I was much more integrated throughout the supply chain, that bought the stock was safety stock could be lower, and lower and lower, and it would reduce everyone's carrying costs here, here's my, here's my question is, is I get it, I see what you're doing. That's fantastic stuff, great thinking, great innovation in that mindset. But what if the, if I'm a, a vendor, and I'm just, I'm old school guy, right? I do it this way, I've been doing it this way forever. I'm gonna have my I'm gonna have a disconnect between my innovative thinking like what you're doing, and having that conversation with old school guy, and and see how I can optimize it. How do you deal with that sort of disconnect?

16:41

lexicon disconnect, I don't know. So I think really, you know, the, the problem is,

16:48

is that that person that was doing it manually, or spreadsheet wise,

16:53

can't do it that way anymore. He just can't. The reason is, is that we are now delivering, and fulfilling our customer customer demands, in so many different ways you can order on one place and have it shipped to another, you can order online and pick it up in the store, you can, you know, managing all of those echelons of quality of inventory, where do I put the inventory to optimize my demand signals? Where should I have? How much should I have? What? which items? Should I have that in it? You know, how do I how do I price those items more both effectively to drive revenues, wherever is the ones that have the least carry. And at the same time, people are driving more customized, personalized type of products. So the number of stock keeping units is going is growing phenomenally. You know, it typically in a high tech market, the average product life cycle is about 14 months. So there's new products coming out every day. So you know,

18:01

how do you

18:03

use and you should aspects without a system? I i what i hear you saying, David is that you if you're listening to this podcast, and you do it on a spreadsheet, I highly recommend that you sort of get into the 21st century, and begin to invest in some innovation, to manage that demand and supply all of the stuff or somebody who's just gonna go ride around you and satisfy their need to be able to not hold stock but have greater real time capabilities. So don't don't be left out in the cold. Right. Yeah, exactly. It's just not that. Come on. It's not that difficult. It seems to me it would be far more difficult to manage these doggone spreadsheets, then

18:56

not to allow the technology the innovation to do it for you. Right. It just seems I mean, we're there now. I mean, is so, you know, we've always kind of managed the supply side, and that, you know, we're getting better handle on the demand side. But what are the things that really can shape the demand and drive ultimate clean a forecast is that pricing optimization tool? So you're really bringing in financial metrics for the company that, you know, what is the target margins that they want to achieve? What is it? What is the high selling products that they want to move forward? How do they remove How do they move the slow moving items, or end of life items that we just talked about? How do I how do I optimize what I have and drive the revenue and shape my demand instead of being reactive? I want to be proactive. And if I can be proactive in shaping the demand that I want to sell at the price points I want to sell then I can supply that

20:00

more effectively and more efficiently. And I can lower my inventory, optimize my carrying costs, optimize my inventory delivery systems, optimize my fulfillment, for what the truck loads, and I need to deliver out to out to the channels. And

20:15

can I incrementally approach this problem? Because you know, as well as I do, everybody gets into that business mode, we're just doing this, we're just grinding it out. And, and and

20:26

we're not optimized by any stretch of the imagination, I'm just sort of to, in general, is your way of being able to sort of incrementally proceed down this road to do that?

20:37

So yeah, there is I mean, you know, you're going to start using a lot of start using, you know, before you start planning, you're going to start executing, you know, I got a react, I got a new customer, he wants this, and he wants this product, and I need to get it to that person. So you're going to react, you're going to use what we would call supply chain execution, you're going to optimize your transactions to fulfill that order, prioritize that order, get it on some truck and deliver it, you know, and so you're going to use different warehousing systems, different transportation management systems, that really drive execution of, of your supply chain, where you start getting the next level up is loud, let me stop that and do better planning of that. Ah, yes, let me plan better. You know, let me get a forecast that's more accurate. And traditionally, you know, your forecast

21:31

is going to gonna be off, you know, I didn't rock it, it was it was so mature over here, I could forecast I could sort of deal with it over here pre pandemic, but now the pandemic is good. I'm having a hell of a time trying to forecast this, like, because I have no idea what that that demand side equation looks like, because I so squiffy out there. How do I deal with that? So there's a lot of different technologies, a lot of different methods in which you can start getting real time signals of the demand, you know, think of integration from a retail or, you know, the point of sale system, you know, if I can react, you know, there was one example of a leading

22:14

perfume manufacturer, okay. And they, you know, they put out something like 1500 new products a year. And some of them, some of them are successful, and some of them aren't. Okay, but they gotta be react real fast to the ones that are successful in the ones at the same time, which ones aren't? Yeah, so there was a story where there were

22:37

a leading actress was on Good Morning, America. And she talked about this new mascara that she was using, right? And immediately, within like an hour, it's like that demand. And so that that manufacturer, and those resellers and wholesalers had to, you know, jump up their replenishment. So those demand signals are real time. Yeah. So getting closer to the demand signal, yeah, allows me to be punished better. Yeah, you need to integrate, you need to be able to, you need to connect, it's an integrated, it's a data thing, and you can pull it all in. But this is all great conversation. It's all wonderful. And I got my help. I'm shaking my head, you had me at Wine and Spirits at the very beginning. I was like, super homed in on this conversation. What are the roadblocks so

23:34

just like any other technology, it's, you know, people process and technology. So, you know, I have, you know, the ability, how effective Can I do change management, you know, and another thing is, hey, I've got all these other conflicting projects going on, at the same time, I don't have time for you need help. And, you know, I'm too busy putting out fires, fires, then, you know, try to get things you know, predictive. Yeah. So, I think, you know, moving from putting out emergencies and fires during the pandemic, to actually moving towards something that's more proactive, and planning in the new weld is, is gonna really help it. But you know, you you know, right now people are trying to get back to work, you know, are they trying to survive and trying to figure out how to rebuild and what do I how do I prosper going forward? Or is this just, like, digging a ditch and and filling it back in and there's no real progress being made. But But to your point, and, and for your listeners out there, it's always a human element and the technologies the technology, and you're gonna have great people talk about their innovation and, and how they're constantly adding to it. But unless you get people to really embrace it and recognize that this is important, and be able to prioritize their, their workload, for lack of a better term, it's it's always going to be something of

25:00

Have a challenge. It's always a human element. It's always that culture that keeps succeed or fails it is. So it's like, and boy, especially today, I find, David that the pandemic itself has created

25:17

a greater focus on things that are important right? Before it before pandemic, it was like, yeah, there's a lot of fluff a lot of crap out there. But now, people don't have that luxury of just sort of,

25:32

I want to focus on what is important, and executing it as fast as I possibly can, and adjusting and so on and so forth. Do you get that same sense? Yeah, you know, I, yes, I'm gonna say yes. And the way that I see people responding to that is,

25:49

tell me what I need to work on, you know, managed by exceptions. I know, you know, if, if I if I got all these different, you know, orders out there, you know, I tell me, the ones that I'm in danger of Tell me was the ones that are going to be late? Don't I don't, you know, I don't care about the 95 of them that are on time. Right now, I just let me deal with the five exceptions, you know, and so how do I, how do I get that material? To me faster? How do I fulfill that order quicker? You know, it's, it's management by exceptions, you know, but yeah, we're gonna let the data and the decisions to help drive those decisions on how I'll correct that action, or correct that exception, I'm going to leverage technology to do that I can use machine learning, I can use artificial intelligence to say, how did that I had a similar problem to like that, you know, two months ago, or a year ago, you know, how did we handle it, then, and let the system make recommendations, not only be kind of predictive, but let it be prescriptive. And so a lot of analytics are really much, hey, here's a dashboard of your problems. Some of them will recommend, you know,

27:03

you know, be you know, based on based on past performance, this is going to be late. But if if you can actually start saying I'm going to be prescriptive, and here's how you resolve that issue, then you've got, you know, some true value and with the, you know, with, with the newer generation of people coming on board into supply chain, let them leverage that experience, you know, and knowledge workers kind of technology, you know, brain trust that existed in the company, to how they solved that problems in the past and let them let the machine Help Help the new generation. See, it's cool. I like I like what you're talking about, right? Because I think that

27:48

right off the bat that the genies out of the bottle, if you think you're gonna be doing business the same old way. I mean, a, you just got another thing coming in, um, and, and you can't, you can't expect to survive or have some sort of legacy, if you're thinking that you're not going to have to innovate your business and leverage technology like yours. He just, it's just, I mean, either way, I'll put it. Yeah. And you know, and, you know, a lot of a lot of folks will say, Hey, you know, I have systems that do that already. You know, I already have an ER p system, and it does some supply chain stuff. And I already have that stuff. Yeah. And in reality, that's, that's like you said earlier, like, Where do I begin? So some of those supply chain systems within, you know, most of the MRP systems, they're really not focused on sophisticated pricing, they're not supposed to, they're really an execution system, or, you know, with for the enterprise. And what we're really talking about here is outside the four walls. Yeah, you know, we're talking the supply chain. It's not, you know, most of the EMP systems are going to hit you, you know, throw the production over the finished goods into the warehouse, and you may, you know, support the at an aggregate level, but it's not going to kind of fine tune, how much inventory do you need this distribution center, versus this wholesaler versus this e commerce warehouse?

29:16

That's not what it was designed for? No, not at all. So we complement so bluebridge complements the GRP systems that people are using today. Let let it be the transactional backbone that's running your manufacturing facility and let fluids be kind of the era of your supply chain. There you go. Dead sexy, my friend. All right. David Kahn has his name Blue Ridge, global is the company supply chain and how you create some sort of resiliency was the topic. I enjoyed this conversation and it's a we got to wrap it up. I'm sorry to hear that. Thank you very much for joining the industrial talk cop podcast, David Kahn. Thank you very much. All right.

29:58

Well, yeah, hello.

30:00

Hell yeah. All right listeners. We're gonna wrap it up on the other side all the contact information by the way, are you active out there on LinkedIn? How do people get ahold of you? So I am active on LinkedIn.

30:12

I'm on you just spell my name David cod ch n. Help. Yeah. Bingo. Easy peasy. All of his links will be out there. And do not go away. We will be right back.

30:26

You're listening to the industrial talk Podcast Network.

30:35

All right, what did I tell you, man, he is passionate about supply chain and being frickin Bob problems. That's what he's all about. You needed to reach out to this jet. Blue Ridge global David Kahn, you will not be disappointed one day, not one bet. If you're looking out in the video, I'm holding up one, not one bit. All right, we're gonna wrap it up pretty quick on this one, we don't really have time to waste. Remember, industrial talk. 2.0 is coming your way. This is a place where you you need to get a get on a podcast, you need to start developing that content about you, your company, and then be able to collaborate because we're building a market. And we're really a network of networks. Because we need for you to constantly educate. Constantly collaborate, to innovate, because we need you for the future. Industry.

31:28

I'm a big fan as you can tell. All right. Be bold, be brave. Dare greatly hang out with people who are bold and brave and dare grant me change the world. That's what we're talking about. Thank you very much. We're gonna have a great interview right around the corner.

The post Mr. David Cahn with Blueridge Global Talks about the need for Supply Chain Resiliency appeared first on Industrial Talk.

In this week's Industrial Talk Podcast we're talking to Rebecca Kersting, President of CAP Logistics and Uptime Logistics about “The Impact of COVID19 on Logistics and Supply Chain and solutions for Success”.  Get the answers to your “Logistics and Supply Chain” questions along with Rebecca's unique insight on the “How” on this Industrial Talk interview!

You can find out more about Rebecca and the wonderful team at CAP Logistics 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!

REBECCA'S CONTACT INFORMATION:

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

Company LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/cap-logistics/

Company Website: https://www.caplogistics.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

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

logistics, industry, solutions, business, people, supply chain, uptime, manufacturing, strategy, sourcing, products, part, customers, industrial, day, transportation, important, agile

SPEAKERS

Rebecca Kersting, 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

Rebecca Kersting  00:22

Hey, welcome to the industrial talk podcast, absolute honor that you have joined the number one industrial and manufacturing related podcast in the universe. I'm not I'm not over selling that, am I over selling that? But it does, however, celebrate the women and men of manufacturing and industry. We celebrate you because you are bold, you are brave, you dare greatly. You're changing lives and you're changing the world. Why not celebrate you each and every day on this particular podcast? And I'm gonna tell you, again, you're gonna say, Scott, you always have great interviews. Damn right. I have good interviews. This one is no. I mean, she's amazing. Let's just put it this way. She brings definite logistik street cred. Her name is Rebecca Kersting. That's ke r s t. i n g, CAP logistics, and uptime logistics are the companies and she just happens to be the president. Let's get cracking with the interview. All right. Another great interview? Again, I'm not I'm not tired of having great interviews. That's exactly correct. Yeah. Take that one to the bank. All right. Now, you know, I've been talking a lot about collaboration, innovation, and education, with a sense of speed, purpose, focus each and every day. And I think you're going to have to get through this next normal with those components in mind. Okay, you can sit there and say, well, Scott, what about this? What about this? You know, I'm not the sharpest tool in the shed. So I tried to say, collaboration, innovation and education are keys. And they are, and you got to do it with a sense of speed. Now here is, you know, from, from my perspective, one of the biggest industries that got impacted, hammered, if, you know, drop kicked, was the logistics supply chain, sourcing, you know, industry as a whole. And they just got hammered. And with all of the changes that are taking place within this country on how to effectively and efficiently bring in products from outside sources, move it efficiently, and with a great competence, and has just been a real absolute challenge. And so, on the industrial talk podcast, I've been really focused in on solutions, strategies, specifically to the supply chain logistics, and sourcing, you know, opportunities now, because I not a professional, all I know is that this is important stuff. And you know, how I know it's important stuff. Well, outside of the fact that I've been in business for a lot of time, many years, is when I went to the Walmart, to pick up some groceries and realize that that product wasn't there, I realized how important the supply chain world is some to me to make my life better to make my life easy. And you know what? It just happened? pre virus, it just happened, didn't know anything about it, go to the store. There it is. I don't have to think through it. That's what it was all about. Now, with this next normal, what does that mean? Where are we going? What are the challenges? And And honestly, I don't have the answers. That's why collaboration is so important. That's why innovation is so important. Because people like Rebecca, her team at CAP logistics, that's what they they just, they excel at, they excel at solving problems. They excel at the opportunity to collaborate with companies who have really problems on solving important supply chain issues. And then they're always innovative, because it's because it's so fluid, because it has just, it's just constantly changes. You need a company, you need solutions that are innovative, and they never stop educating to see how it rolled out all in collaboration, innovation and education. And you know what? Yes, they do. They do it with a sense of frickin speed. And they're there to help you because they understand that their service is needed. So that you can maintain your uptime, you know, business, whatever that looks like manufacturing with uptime, and they're going to also also make sure that they do it as efficiently and as rapidly as possible. Yep. They embody CAP logistics Rebecca's team at CAP logistics. They embody that collaboration spirit of class. The spirit of innovation and definitely the spirit of education because I'm telling you right now, I can't keep up with it. All right, about that. All right, let's get on with the interview. Once again, Rebecca Kersting KRSTING, President of CAP Logistics, as well as Uptime, and she talks about a little bit of the Uptime Logistics and why that's important to different business models to different focus, all geared toward success. Oh, that. Alright. Here's the interview. Enjoy. Rebecca, welcome to the industrial talk podcast. absolute honor, it is an honor. I'm telling you right now, it's an honor that you in your busy schedule, found time to get on the industrial talk podcast. How are you doing? I am doing great. You're so fun. This is gonna be a good time.

Scott MacKenzie  05:48

And I'm ugly. And on bald? Yes, I'm a complete package Most definitely. Hey, listeners, we I've been very fortunate to be able to work with CAP logistics on a number of initiatives. And and Rebecca is the president of CAP logistics. And we're going to be talking a little bit about COVID, we're going to be talking about the impact of the logistics, supply chain sourcing, and everything in between. and Rebecca, Rebecca brings a tremendous amount of well, street cred to this particular conversation. Before we get into that now, Rebecca, give us a little 411 on who you are, and why you're such an incredible professional

Rebecca Kersting  06:27

in the logistics world. Well, I am humbled by you saying that I have grown up in logistics. My father started our company when I was a year old. I've been in trucks, picking up freight moving it all over the country, I still remember going to the Denver International Airport. With him when I was little to pick up freights been out to mind sites in Wyoming. And so the business was started in our basement. The story goes that my mom would help answer the phones with me on my lap, and she would hang up and we would both cry. I've officially been with the company for 17 years and had a number of different roles. But I love what we do. It's exciting. And it's great to help companies be able to keep their operations running every day.

Scott MacKenzie  07:30

Yeah, I gotta tell you, man, especially now, one of the biggest topics and I mean, I've interviewed a ton of people. And one of the biggest topics is that happened, pre virus, everything, all the supply chain, everything was just happening and just rolling and going and having a fantastic time. pandemic hits, two finger death punch COVID pops you in the head. Now all of a sudden that that supply chain gets disrupted, yet companies are still dependent on it. sort of give us a little background on, you know, the positives and negatives. Of course, we want the positives. But we got to touch on the negatives on where you know, the impact of COVID to your business happen going forward?

Rebecca Kersting  08:11

Well, I think initially, the impact was just a slowdown of the economy. And and these key industries in the country. No one knew what a single day looked like. And so initially, I think the strategy for companies was to address their slowing of business while trying to protect their workers. There was already some tension with us trade. There was some things happening in oil and gas and mining. So there there was a culmination of complicating factors, where we saw a dive in our customers’ business and therefore our business. A lot of companies took the approach of of shutting things down or slowing them down. They looked for opportunities to save costs. So they stopped purchasing inventory. They stopped doing a lot of things that they would normally do to try to save costs, and things just slow down.

Scott MacKenzie  09:23

Yeah, it was overnight. It was it was a flip of a switch, man. It's like, yeah, we're rocking What the hell? I know. I know.

Rebecca Kersting  09:34

And everybody thought that it was this temporary thing. And if we all hunker down for three weeks, then we'll we'll all be free and it just didn't pan out in that way.

Scott MacKenzie  09:46

No, and you know, what's interesting too, is in these conversations and it it's amazing how in being a manufacturer and being an industry, how resilient and flex Some of these companies were like, like, it hit. They had this morning time, like, Oh my gosh, what are we gonna do and then all of a sudden you just boom, and they were able to hit hate using the word pivot. I gotta use a pivot word, pivot, and and be able to try to succeed in this sort of this new normal, whatever it might look like. Where do you see how it's impacting your business? Where do you see this sort of new normal impacting your business in a positive way, not in a negative, we already understand the negative so?

Rebecca Kersting  10:31

Well, there's, there were just so many changes that we didn't see coming. So obviously, there's this whole new gamut of product that people are trying to move in pp. So initially, we saw a lot of that, and you just never would have thought like, there was this business of masks and hand sanitizer, and all of these things that we just never thought of as, as key critical items that people were going to be desperate to move. And then as things began to normalize, we we saw some other industries come back online, and a lot of demand on you know, paper products, or in edrick, salutely.

Scott MacKenzie  11:17

forgot about that. You're right. I did forgot about the paper product one. And I remember, just FYI, I'm leaving Walmart, whatever it might be. And I'm seeing people just stacking up on paper products. And, and I'm telling you, I'm sitting there going, what am I missing? What news? Am I missing that I've got? I do I have to run back and get it? There's no paper products, and I never could understand it. I survived. I'm still old and ugly. So

Rebecca Kersting  11:42

we all do. And I'm bet there's a lot of people who have an insane amount of toilet paper, hoard it away somewhere. Know how long it's gonna take for them to get rid of. Yeah,

Scott MacKenzie  11:54

I know, I hear you. And boy, I'll tell you this. It was really an interesting, the other item, or the observation that I I've seen is that the pre virus, we just took things for granted. And I'm when I'd go to the store, boom, it's on the shelf. I know it's on the shelf, and they had it all nailed down. Right? And and this is just me, humble little guy going to the store, and then all of a sudden, the the virus hits and then bam, I'm thinking to myself, why isn't that on the shelf? And then I realized that the the supply chain is disrupted, it might this one right here might work just fine. But then this one broke down. And then this one, can't you it just I didn't realize how sensitive the supply chain is.

Rebecca Kersting  12:42

Yeah, it is. It is.

Scott MacKenzie  12:46

So let's, let's talk a look. Where do you see it going? I mean, come on. Let's let's put on a little future hat here. Where do you see it going? Okay, we've been past the paper push. And we've been past all the other stuff. And I think I think you're better at this. I think industry is starting to come back up. They're starting to just get a little bit more on out there a little bit more understanding the demands of the market understanding it what this next normal, do you see that in your business?

Rebecca Kersting  13:15

So I am very hesitant to try to predict anything, because Could you be wrong, because I will be wrong. But I have my hopes. And I am seeing some trends that I that I think are in a positive direction. So during the initial part of the pandemic, we really saw a lot of customers and a lot of industries start to look at where they could control cost. And inventories were big item that that people began to cut in with that the transportation of these components, key supplies, things that they were able to put off. So if it was a manufacturing line, or a refinery, they the backups for key components. They put those those orders by the wayside. Now that things are picking up, and they don't have those industries, we are seeing an influx in in the critical need of these parts that are necessary to keep these companies up and running.

Scott MacKenzie  14:28

Yeah, I think you bring up a good point. And I think that as these assets were idle, as you mentioned that I'm going to save money. And I think that everybody's sort of in that beginning saving money mode, and now they've got to figure out how to make money. And a key component to making money is being able to get your products, either from where their manufacturing to destination or their feedstock, into their manufacturing process, and wherever that might be. And I think That I see a shift, I think, I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna be. Don't bet on me anybody out there, please don't. But I think that there, it's starting to ease up a little bit. And I think that people are starting to recognize this next normal, but a key component, you will never ever, ever get away from that logistics that supply chain component. And that's where CAP shines just shines, because you're able to do that in a way that that makes sense. Because for me, if I was a company got my company hat on, I have different needs, I have different demands, I have different insights into what my market needs, and what my business needs, and therefore my sourcing requirements. The other company, Acme, whatever, has completely different, it might be somewhat similar, but completely different. And that's what brings us to this point of being able to sort of customize those solutions. That's what you guys do.

Rebecca Kersting  15:59

That is, and I think that's where we've really been able to help our customers through this time is we're very responsive, we're very agile, and the media are made of problem solvers. Our team is hired, trained, retained, evaluated based on their ability to, to solve problems, to be committed to the customers and their solutions to have a positive attitude and show up. Every time our phones ring or we get a request through our portal, or a text message or however our customer chooses to engage with us. We're there with our problem solving hat on ready to help them through their challenges.

Scott MacKenzie  16:54

See, this is interesting, because especially now in this next normal next opportunity, whatever. I think the the need for solutions like that solving problems within your supply chain within your logistics is even more paramount. Because if you're going to survive, and a key component of that is of course, being able to, you know, manufacturer and get into destinies, and so on and so forth. Today, those challenges are even greater, just because pre virus pre pandemic, okay, it's sort of ran, it was all good. all bets are off, especially when we're starting to talk about new regulations that are taking place globally. I mean, you gotta stay on top of that. I can't meet company. I can't I need somebody to help me.

Rebecca Kersting  17:40

Yeah, yeah, it is. There are just so many complexities right now. And I don't know what tomorrow is gonna look like. So being agile is is so paramount. Yeah. In industry right now.

Scott MacKenzie  17:55

No, yeah, I think that that, that that is a great term and being agile. And so I've always just sort of predicted that to to be collaborative, innovative, and then educate as fast as possible, this ability to be agile and innovative and solutions within logistics, supply chain, whatever. Because some of these, I guarantee, I bet I bet. I'm going to be bowling, I'm going to step out on this limb. I bet you're somebody who's come to you and said, Hey, Rebecca, I don't know how to handle this. This is sort of what we're trying to do. But I don't know what to, I guarantee you that you've got new challenges. And you're going to have to take your team and say, All right, here we go, we got to figure this one out, too.

Rebecca Kersting  18:35

That's that's what our team loves. They don't have any prewritten solution that's templated out for them. Yeah, they come up with the solutions. And not just one in most cases, we're able to come up with three price time options, depending on the strategy that our customer has. So if if they have a part that they know, they don't need immediately aligns not down yet, but they wanted in their inventory, they can look at a mode of transportation that is lower in that is is going to be less expensive.

Scott MacKenzie  19:14

Yeah, you need that. You need these options. You just do you can it's like, you know, one site is size does not fit all, especially in the world of logistics. Now. One of the confusions that I have. And I want you to clarify that. You've got CAP logistics, great company been around forever. Little little younger than your dad. And then you have this other initiative called uptime. Can you explain a little bit about uptime, and what does that mean?

Rebecca Kersting  19:39

So, uptime is is a term that is used very frequently in reliability and maintenance. And so that audience really understands the importance of keeping a line up and running. Because that's how you generate profit. That's how you generate revenue. And so our uptime logistics is really focused on those reliability and maintenance professionals who in the past haven't had logistics in their purview. But to have a complete reliability strategy, they need to have a logistics partner in their back pocket for when their reliability fails. And forbid, yeah.

Scott MacKenzie  20:29

fails, you'd brought up the F word definitely. And but in the real world, it does happen on and reliability professionals, no matter how many PMS they do, or whatever the tools that they're trying to diagnostically, ask, evaluate that asset. Sometimes there's those. Damn, I missed that one moment. So

Rebecca Kersting  20:53

yeah, if we see them, we see them every single day, multiple times a day, some situations are more dire than others. But even even in a situation where a reliability manager has has a part a replacement part for when that part fails. We've seen it where that replacement part goes in, and it fails to. And then what do you do? You

Scott MacKenzie  21:23

panic, and then you move forward.

Rebecca Kersting  21:25

Exactly. And you don't want your crews standing by waiting. For Gosh, knows how long for that replacement part comes in. And you don't necessarily want to rely on the supplier to be responsible for getting you that part. You want to take an active role and have visibility and control in getting your line back up and running.

Scott MacKenzie  21:49

So what I hear you saying and I'll put my manufacturing hat on, I have a damn I missed that moment in my life. And all I have to do is just call you guys. That's it. Like, by here it is this. This thing failed and I am and it's costing me a million dollar an hour whatever it might be. I need a part. yesterday. That's true. No parts too big for you guys.

Rebecca Kersting  22:15

No, no, no parts too little. It's funny. A little does end up being just as important. That's correct. The box the Boltzmann you think that one could live without a box of bolts but we've we've had to do hand carries a box of bolts across the country before

Scott MacKenzie  22:36

but anyway, you guys can handle international and all the way down to local whatever box a bolted. Yep, We sure can and and be able to do it because i what i hear you saying there Rebecca it's, it's a sense of urgency, especially with uptime, uptime, logistics, you recognize the role you play within the world of reliability. And it's all about urgency, getting that asset back up and running, getting that asset, churning out whatever widgets are supposed to be churning out as quickly as possible, or to become attached to as well.

Rebecca Kersting  23:09

Right, right. Now well in our whole business is set up with with that in mind and to stream like line mat and make it very, very easy for a customer who is in a bad situation to get in touch with the right person.

Scott MacKenzie  23:26

24 seven, whoa, whoa, what do you say? Are you saying the fact that these Oh, damn, I missed this moment happened at 2am. You saying I can get a hold of the right person at the right time at 2am?

Rebecca Kersting  23:37

Yep. You will be directed to the person who can help you that person answers the phone, there is no automated phone system. And the person who answers the phone is a transportation expert, who can work with you on price time options and get you what you need anytime.

Scott MacKenzie  24:00

Roll out a beji as schlepp start answering my questions now. It's panic Time Baby focused?

Rebecca Kersting  24:08

Yeah, that's what we do.

Scott MacKenzie  24:11

I love it. And it's exactly what i what i and I, I'm gonna throw this out too. So you, you've been involved in the manufacturing all the spaces Don't get me wrong. I'm just sort of focusing in on manufacturing. So you, you focus in on the manufacturing, you're providing these uptime, logistics solutions. But I would imagine that, like you said, these manufacturers cut back so, so much to try to figure out what's going to happen, what the market is going to look like all of the all of the components that they got to balance. Now they're trying to start their, you know, their lines up again or they let let things just sort of slide are you seeing a sort of a, an increase in the necessity to be able to provide these uptimes logistics solutions?

Rebecca Kersting  24:57

We are we are in There has been some changes to to the, to transportation in our country and in the world, where we've had even change the way we could move those those critical parts to so we have customers who are coming back online, and they're realizing the maintenance that they put off for their part that they decided not to order they need those. And so we are seeing every week more and more companies come back online, more and more companies needing to get back to that bad output that that they were at.

Scott MacKenzie  25:40

Yeah, yeah. And they're looking at data. They're saying, hey, maybe you know, the economy's turning around, maybe some more or greater demand for the price or whatever they're, they're looking at, they're analyzing it. What if I, what if I, do you guys do some warehousing? Or do you work with companies that I don't want to I don't want to buy this motor? Or I see that's the motor over there. But I don't want to bring it in. I want to just keep it over there. You work with people on solutions like that?

Rebecca Kersting  26:09

We do? Yeah, we we're able to help consults on a variety of supply chain issues, including, including warehousing. And

Scott MacKenzie  26:21

because that's all a part of it. It is I mean, if you're if you're if you're uptime, logistics, solutions, CAP logistics solutions, or strategies that encompass that massive industry, and if you're able to do provide solutions quickly, cost effectively. Other strategies. I mean, there's, it's, it's a portfolio, it's like, when we start talking about onshoring, reshoring, and nearshoring, right, there's a there's a focus on trying to figure out sort of a portfolio of sourcing solutions. And it could be, okay, we're gonna keep some over here in Asia, we're gonna put some down here and in Mexico, and then we're gonna put some over here in the United States, and to be able to sort of do that efficiently. You guys do something like that?

Rebecca Kersting  27:10

Yeah, well, I think having a logistics partner who intimately knows your business and can help you develop that strategy is absolutely paramount. Because you may be looking at purchasing and warehousing materials, that it really just doesn't make sense for you to to have that overhead of that inventory, some components that it does, but

Scott MacKenzie  27:36

you're absolutely spot on. I'm not joking,

Rebecca Kersting  27:39

right. But if you have a partner where you're able to have that dialog, and where you know that, if I don't have this in inventory, how quickly can I get it to me? How can I leave it at my supplier? Where I don't have to buy it from the supplier until it makes sense. But I know that I'll be able to get it in a very quick timeframe. Love it. That's a strategy and not a bad one.

Scott MacKenzie  28:07

No, no, not at all. And especially, especially today, you know, I think that we can't be fat, and inefficient with the way we address our logistics supply chain and sourcing strategy. You've got to be efficient, you got to be nimble, you gotta gotta be agile. And I don't, honestly, I'm trying to figure out and I'm trying to poke holes in why I shouldn't engage CAP logistics I am, but I'm failing miserably.

Rebecca Kersting  28:37

Thank you, we'd love to have the conversation with where we fit in. Different companies have have different strategies. I think a lot of companies look at transportation as an expense. And when they're trying to control that expense, they might be going with a lower cost provider. And that is the strategy but but that that low cost provider does come with with other costs that may be

Scott MacKenzie  29:10

I couldn't do it, I couldn't do it. If I'm over here, and I'm, you know, the big wig at Acme manufacturing, there's no way I would be able to take all of the fluid parts within my you know, supply chain logistics sourcing, and be able to do it myself or within a team that is not engaged in it all the time. Because it is a dynamic environment that requires people who are absolutely engaged each and every day.

Rebecca Kersting  29:39

Yeah, and and also that they're with the right carriers. Yes, the right assets to to move. To move the phrase, you want to be working with a trucking company, an airline who isn't going to damage your product, who isn't going to violate yourself safety procedures, who isn't going to cause you more headache at the end of the day?

Scott MacKenzie  30:05

Absolutely. Yeah. See, I mean it's a no brainer for me by the way, we're gonna have to wrap this up because I can talk about this all day long and I'm looking at your stat card on LinkedIn and and you're not very engaged out there on LinkedIn.

Rebecca Kersting  30:21

No, I, I prefer people relationships. And you are, you are virtual relationships.

Scott MacKenzie  30:31

Well, anyway, hey, how does somebody get a hold of you? Because you might have just said, That's who I want to talk to? What do I get a hold of you?

Rebecca Kersting  30:37

Well, you can get a hold of us 20 473 65 one call solves all at 800-227-2471 or you can visit us at Apple logistics comm or you can also shoot us an email at info at CAP logistics calm.

Scott MacKenzie  31:01

Easy peasy. So So listeners out there if you've if you think what she's talking about is important to you reach out, go to CAP logistics, definitely CAP logistics calm and the 800 I'll be out there on industrial talk.com. So there's no excuse. And there's no excuse to sit there and wallow in your your supply chain pain. There she is. a mega Scott and there's CAP Logistics. They've got your back. So there you go. Alright, listeners. Hey, Rebecca, this was fun. Thank you very much. Super fun. Thank you, Scott. Very cool. And listeners do not. And I mean, do not go away. We will be right back. You're listening to the industrial talk Podcast Network. Alright, what did I tell you? Rebecca Kersting ke RS T. img. Now she has a great stat card out on LinkedIn. But however, she doesn't use it. She only has a few followers. You know, you can get ahold of her. That's right. CAP logistics.com. And that's where you're gonna go. Right. And I'll have all the other contact information out on industrial talk. COMM. Right. So again, I'm going to challenge you. You need to collaborate, innovate and educate each and every day you got to do with a sense of speed. But I challenge you to hang out with people that are pro collaboration, pro innovation, pro education, and I'm telling you right now, your life will be changing. Your outlook on life will be changed. This whole whatever we're going through right now, will look differently. Because you're hanging out with people who want to solve problems. CAP logistics is a great example of that. All right, be bold, be brave, dare greatly change the world. That's what we're all about. So we'll talk later with another incredible interview on the industrial talk podcast.

The post Ms. Rebecca Kersting President of CAP Logistics talking about the impact of COVID19 to logistics and supply chain appeared first on Industrial Talk.

The post Mr. Brian Miller CEO of Easy China Warehouse talking about warehousing, supply chain and COVID impact to China appeared first on Industrial Talk.

The post Mr. Alvaro Espinosa with CAP Logistics talks about Manufacturing Leadership and New Sourcing Strategies appeared first on Industrial Talk.

In this week's Industrial Talk Podcast we're talking to Phillip Diao, Supply Chain Solutions Consultant at Infor about “How to build a robust, intelligent supply chain in a COVID world”. Get the answers to your Supply Chain questions along with Phillip's unique insight on the “How” on this Industrial Talk interview!

You can find out more about Phillip at 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!

PHILLIP DIAO'S CONTACT INFORMATION:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/psdiao/

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

Company Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/infor/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/infor

Company Website: https://www.infor.com/

PODCAST VIDEO:

Industrial Academy (One Month Free Access and One Free Licence for Future Industrial Leader):

THE STRATEGIC REASON “WHY YOU NEED TO PODCAST”:

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

The post Mr. Phillip Diao with Infor Supply Chain talks about how to build a robust, intelligent Supply Chain Solution appeared first on Industrial Talk.

On this week's Industrial Talk Podcast we're talking to Bonnie Shields, Director of Global Supply Chain at CAP Logistics about The Current Trends and Prediction Hitting the International Freight Market.

On this Podcast episode, Bonnie talks about the 4-key areas that industrial companies need to understand in this transitioning supply chain world:

1. Recent experience with importing medical supplies and other items for US companies.
2. The changing and evolving regulations between the US and China
3. 2020 predictions for global freight: volatility increasing the need for AI
4. US perception of China and how this may shape logistics moving forward

Learn more about Bonnie and the wonderful team at CAP Logistics and how to succeed in this dynamic Supply Chain market by the links below and on this podcast:

Company Website: https://www.caplogistics.com/

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

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

PODCAST VIDEO:

THE STRATEGIC REASON “WHY YOU NEED TO PODCAST”:

OTHER GREAT INDUSTRIAL RESOURCES:

Safeopedia: https://www.safeopedia.com/

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 Licence 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

The post Ms. Bonnie Shields with CAP Logistics talks about trends and predictions hitting International freight! appeared first on Industrial Talk.

The post Stratum Radio Series on Last Mile Configuration of InforEAM by Michael Snyder (3 of 3) appeared first on Industrial Talk.

In this week's Stratum Radio, we begin a 3-part series on The Last Mile Configuration and End User Adoption of InforEAM.

In this episode, we address the steps necessary for proper “Front-End Configuration For Usability“. A successful system deployment is completely dependent on your teams interaction with the end users to ensure all business processes are properly documented and reflected in your Front-End configuration! Not doing so, significantly impacts User Adoption. Listen to the “How” on this episode of Stratum Radio!

PODCAST TRANSCRIPT:

00:07                                   All right, you listeners out there. Thank you very much for joining stratum radio. We're going to begin a series with a gentleman by the name of Michael Snyder. He is with Stratum Consulting and we're talking about the last mile configuration and user adoption. Let's get going.

00:25                                   Okay. We decided that we needed to do this series because there's a lot of people who aren't deploying systems out there, right? And, and uh, if you've ever been a part of a, uh, a system deployment, you know that there are challenges and really the, the biggest and probably the best part of being able to deploy these things is try to figure out how to do it efficiently and effectively. So that's why we created the series with stratum consulting with Michael Snyder and it's that, you know, everybody just recognize everybody just gives this big bang, boom, get it out there, deploy the system. But it's really that last mile configuration and user adoption. So this is a, a one into three series and we're going to be talking about in this episode front end configuration for usability. The next one is back in configuration of off corporate business rules, which are very important.

01:21                                   And then finally the integration with legacy systems. How to do that effectively so that when you do get it done, that's this last mile, it's effective and people have that greater adoption. So welcome Michael Snyder. He's going to be, it's pen and paper time. Everybody pen and paper time. Let's get ready. These are 10 minute segments. Pop, get going. Let's get moving. So here's Michael Schneider. All right, welcome to Stratum radio. We're going to be talking a little bit in this series. We're going to be talking about the last mile configuration and support of the end user adoption, which is very important. This is one of probably three, four, you know, topics that are really designed about supporting that end user adoption. Now we've got a gentleman by the name of Michael Snyder. He's with Stratum, he's a senior pro and all that stuff. He's got a stack card out there on LinkedIn. That's a pretty incredible, so I highly recommend that you go on out to LinkedIn, find Michael Schneider, stratum consulting. Reach out to that gentleman. Now, Michael, we're going to be talking a little bit about front end configuration for usability and, and for me, I just want to let you know I've been a lot of part of a lot of implementation and usability and end user adoption is just absolutely vital to the success of any implementation. Can you give the listeners of stratum radio just sort of that, why is front end configuration for usability so important?

02:57                                    The reason that the front end

03:00                                    is so important and the configuration of front end important is that's where the users interface with the application. If they don't like that application, they aren't going to use it. And if they don't use it, then the uh, organization is not going to benefit from all the great data that you've collected to be able to do the analytics and all the backend analysis that you need to do to improve your business. But if the users aren't using it, you know, you're, you're out of luck.

03:28                                    Yeah. And that's a real, a good point. If, if, if I don't like the look, feel, and it is, it's, it's sort of vanity in a sense. If I don't like the look and feel of my interface and if I'm not able to quickly access and get information out that is relevant to my success, to my business, to my job, whatever it might be, I'm not gonna use it. I'm going to, I'm going to find the easiest way to circumvent that problem. What do you do to ensure that you are configuring the system with usability in mind?

04:04                                    Um, it's more a matter of, of of talking to the end users getting their, their input. You know, when they work with the screens, you need to find out if there's a faster way that they can actually do that. Uh, do we need to fill in some more default values? Do we need to be able to validate data based on other pieces of information? Are there, and we need to highlight the important things that you want them to be able to enter and we need to give them messages about what's happening, you know, when the top of the screen rather than it to get caught up in a window that they have to click on. If we can minimize the number of clicks for them to get their job done, they'll do their job in the system rather than some other way.

04:46                                    But that requires a lot of, okay, upfront it's detail and you've got to get everybody into the room and you've got to flow that stuff out on a map and say, okay, a why and have that debate of why that information's important and be able to remove multiple clicks. So, and, and I would imagine, correct me if I'm wrong, Michael, that that ability to be able to do that, to get everybody in the room and hash that out creates greater ownership. And, and of course our end user adoption is positively impacted, right?

05:27                                    That, that, that's exactly right. I mean, you need to, you need to build that ownership. You need to, uh, to get them involved in the, in the, in the system, uh, from the start. Um, you're going to be able to bring on a plain vanilla application that does everything that the organization wants to be able to do that. That's where, uh, the strength of in for EAM is, is it's a powerful tool that's built directly to a specific industry. But then when you start working with the specific company that you're doing, they've got different business rules that are um, that need to be modified. You know, everybody's organization structure is not the same. Their cost code structure's not the same. The information that's most important to them is not necessarily the same. So this is where stratum can come in and help them to configure that front end to meet the needs of the organization above and beyond what the industry, the structure of that

06:25                                    I would imagine. And, and, and you listeners out there, I that is a non negotiable. If you're entering and you're going down the road of implementing a system, uh, you've got to evaluate the system one and say is it flexible, configurable, does it have a good user experience? Those are all key to your business success. And I mean that's, that's a non negotiable. It has to happen that way. Or your or your end users are going to, for lack of a better term, pencil whip data. And it's going to be useless to you if you don't do it upfront. And I would imagine Michael doing it up front, having that pinpoint focus on me and able to lay those processes out, remove, you know, the, the not the inefficiencies [inaudible] vitally from a cost perspective. You don't want to head down that implementation and then you find yourself at the last whatever, 5% and you got to reconfigure, you got to do it up front cost-wise.

07:33                                    But there are some advantages that Infour EAM gives you. They allow you to be able to do some of those configurations at the tail end of the, of the system to be able to uh, yeah, to be able to make it, um, look and feel a little bit different to be able to support these, these, these, these needs. And when we build a system, you know, we focus on getting the system implemented and then we go and we can, we can tweak the, the, the, the look and feel, you know, what, what are the important things that you've run into now that you've actually started demo in the system? We're using the system, um, uh, based on how it's been configured for you as an organization. So we can actually use some of that last mile configuration work towards the end and we interact the customer support group, we do a lot of that even post-implementation to be able to help them to be able to get better adoption if they aren't getting the type of use of the system that they're expecting.

08:35                                    That's pretty doggone powerful. And it, cause I, I've always been of the opinion or I've experienced it, let's just, let's just lay it out there. I've experienced the, the joy of missing something and then try to figure it out at the end of a, of an implementation. It happens. And, and you, what you're telling me the product for EAM has a level of flexibility. How the a configurability capability, there's a lot of abilities in there, um, to be able to sort of minimize or, or, or, you know, sort of work around that if we're, if for any reason you had a situation where it's like, Oh gosh, I forgot.

09:15                                    Yeah, I mean that, yeah, that's, I mean that's the power of, of in for EAM is they give you these configuration tools that are, are built into the product suite so that you can make these configuration changes on the front end and they are fully upgradeable. So when you move from one version to the next version, if you're running in the cloud and they're going to hit you with an upgrade, you're pretty much guaranteed that these configurations that you're putting in there are gonna continue to work and they're going to continue to meet the needs of your, uh, of your end users.

09:50                                    Wow. See that? That's a, that's pretty powerful. So you listeners out there want to make sure paper and pencil, we talk about front end configuration and usability. It is key to end user adoption. Without a doubt. Pinpoint focus on that. I need for you guys to reach out to Michael Schneider if you're just like, Hey, that makes sense to me. Uh, stratum consulting is the company. The system is of course in four. EAM powerful, configurable. And you know what? We're going to be coming back with the, the, the next in this series and we're going to be talking a little bit about backend configurations for one off corporate business rules. Because not every business is the same as all the other businesses. They're going to have some rules that are going to be somewhat different. How do we handle those? Because they are also important. So stay tuned for the next, in the series of how we configure the last mile for end user adoption. So stay tuned. We will be right back.

PODCAST VIDEO:

STRATUM CONSULTING CONTACT INFORMATION:

Company LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/stratum-consulting-partners/about/

Company Website https://www.stratumcp.com/

Download Stratum Consulting Overview of Solutions: DOWNLOAD

Infor EAM: All you need to know about InforEAM

YOUR INFOR EAM TOOLKIT:

Click on the InforEAM Toolkit picture above and receive the following “Must Have” EAM reports:

1. 7 Steps for implementing reliability-based maintenance
2. 10 steps toward a paperless operation with mobile EAM checklist
3. Asset intensive industries, finding the straightest path to the cloud
4. EAM vs CMMS, don't get fooled
5. Infor EAM Brochure
6. Infor EAM Overview
7. 9 fleet management challenges and how to resolve

OTHER GREAT INDUSTRIAL RESOURCES:

Safeopedia: https://www.safeopedia.com/

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 Licence 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

The post Stratum Radio Series on Last Mile Configuration of InforEAM by Michael Snyder (1 of 3) appeared first on Industrial Talk.

Live from IoT Solutions World Congress, IIC Voice Podcast interviews Burak Savak, Vice President of IoT, Cloud and Automotive at Vestel. In this episode, Burak is talking about creating a connected device ecosystem that works in harmony with your home and business. Today, the world around us is far more connected and this trend will continue to expand on into the future. Burak and the team at Vestal are at the cutting-edge of this connected world in both thought and action. Get the answers to your Why questions about the Connected World along with Burak's unique insight on where it's all headed on this IIC Voice Podcast interview!

You can find out more about Burak and the wonderful team at Vestel from this interview and the links below. Finally, get your exclusive free access to the Industrial Academy and webinar access to “Building a Better Industrial Sales and Marketing Platform for Greater Success in 2020”. All links designed for keeping you current in this rapidly changing Industrial Market. Learn! Grow! Enjoy!

BURAK SAVAK CONTACT INFORMATION:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/buraksavak/

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

Company Website: https://vestelinternational.com/en/

IIC Twitter: https://twitter.com/IIConsortium

IIC Company Website https://www.iiconsortium.org/

Podcast Video:

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

Industrial Talk Free Webinars:

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

The post Live From IoT World Congress: Mr. Burak Savak with Vestel Is talking about the Connected World appeared first on Industrial Talk.

Live from IoT Solutions World Congress, IIC Voice Podcast interviews Alex Smolensky, Co-Founder at Zyfra Company. In this episode, Alex discusses leveraging and investing in industrial digitization solutions to improve production and insights into asset optimization. The ability to leverage technology is vital to the future success of any production company – Alex and Zyfra are at the cutting-edge of this market. Get the answers to your Why questions about Industrial Digitization along with Alex's unique insight on where it's all headed on this IIC Voice Podcast interview!

You can find out more about Alex and the wonderful team at Zyfra from this interview and the links below. Finally, get your exclusive free access to the Industrial Academy and webinar access to “Building a Better Industrial Sales and Marketing Platform for Greater Success in 2020”. All links designed for keeping you current in this rapidly changing Industrial Market. Learn! Grow! Enjoy!

ALEX SMOLENSKY CONTACT INFORMATION:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexander-smolensky-78227b1/

Company LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/zyfra-company/

Company Website: https://zyfra.com/en/

Zyfra's Free Download: DOWN LOAD HERE

IIC Twitter: https://twitter.com/IIConsortium

IIC Company Website https://www.iiconsortium.org/

Podcast Video:

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

Industrial Talk Free Webinars:

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

The post Live From IoT World Congress: Mr. Alex Smolensky with Zyfra Is Industrial Digitization and Improved Production appeared first on Industrial Talk.

In this week's Industrial Talk Podcast, we discuss the positive impact that technology is having on the Industrial supply Chain. Guy Courtin brings a wealth of Supply Chain knowledge and vision into the exciting future of Supply Chain. Want to know more about Guy head to the following links:

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

Personal Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/gfncourtin

Personal Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/gcourtin/

Personal Twitter: https://twitter.com/gcourtin

OTHER INDUSTRIAL RESOURCES:

Safeopedia: https://www.safeopedia.com/

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

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

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

YOUR INDUSTRIAL DIGITAL TOOLBOX:

Bliss Drive: https://www.blissdrive.com/

Active Campaign: Active Campaign Link

BombBomb: BombBomb Link

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

YOUTUBE VIDEO OF INTERVIEW:

RELATED PODCASTS:

Industrial Marketing: Standing Out In The Crowd.

Industrial Sales – Industrial Market Segmentation!

The post Industrial Operations: The Positive Impact of Technology on the Supply Chain with Guy Courtin appeared first on The Industrial Talk Podcast with Scott MacKenzie.

The post Industrial Operations: The Positive Impact of Technology on the Supply Chain with Guy Courtin appeared first on Industrial Talk.