Dan Joe Barry with Configit

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

Industrial Talk, Scott MacKenzie, industrial renaissance, Dan Joe Barry, Configit, technology solution, product configuration, manufacturing industry, virtual tabulation, AI integration, ERP integration, CRM integration, product model, customization, supply chain.

00:00

Scott, 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

All right. Welcome to Industrial Talk. Thank you very much for joining the number one, numero uno industrial related podcast in the universe that celebrates you industry professionals all around the world. You are bold, brave, you dare greatly, you innovate, you collaborate, especially now, I think that there's a renaissance happening in industry, and it's exciting. It's, it's frothy, it's, it's staticky, it's got a lot of energy happening out there. That's why we celebrate you, because you're a part of it. I want to be more part of it. That's what I want. That's, that's my goal. All right, on the podcast today, we've got a gentleman by the name of Dan Joe Barry, Configit is the company. And we're talking about their technology, their solution, and how it, it'll make you better. That's that's bottom line. It'll make you better. So let's get cracking with that conversation. Who do do as they fade out? It was a great conversation. We went off on tangents, but it doesn't matter. That's what industry is all about. It's all about the people. It's a people it's a people conversation. Yeah, the technology is the technology, but man, it's the people that solve these incredible challenges. Again, Renaissance, an industrial Renaissance. It's not a revolution. It's a renaissance, because it's always been here. That's, that's, that's my take. You know, put it in the bank, whatever you want to do with it. That's, that's what I'm all about. Okay, a couple of businesses before the business, couple of businesses, couple of business points before we get a correction with that conversation. One, I'm coming out with an e book. Be on the lookout. I'm finalizing it. I'm just doing my, my little bit of edits here and there. And it's a it's a book, an e book. I don't want a book. I mean, with a heart bound, I I've written the book in such a way that I would probably read their book, and that would be very to the point solutions, identify the challenges, things like that and and just, just cut with the fluff. I don't want the fluff, so the book doesn't have any fluff. It just has, it just has a summary, to a certain extent, a high level summary, of the conversations that I've had with many industry leaders and some of the pain points, the strategies around the pain points, and then, of course, the technologies, the solutions to be able to sort of leverage and be able to resolve these, these pain points going forward, make a business that is resilient and and successful. That's what we want. We want you to be successful. Okay? We want you to be there. So anyway, be on the lookout. It'll be out on my website. It'll be also, if you're on the newsletter, you'll get a you'll get a link, you know, read it. Find out what individuals did, these leaders, these industrial leaders, are doing to address and solve the problems there. I like that. Another point of business, Boston, med device, is a conference. The conference is September 30 through October 1. It's in, of course, it's in Boston, right? It's Boston. It's uh, anyway, if you're in the medical industry, if you're in manufacturing, if you're in anything that is dealing with this, this is a must attend. I'll be there. That'll be great. Anyway, that's the Boston. It says, me device, this medical device. So have you heard the medical device? There you go, Boston, me device. And it's brought to you, though, by those wonderful people at MD&M. Yeah, they do a heck of a show in forma. They do, they, they, they deliver the goods with their conferences. Been to one broadcast? No, I've been a couple of them, broadcast from them. Yeah, they're they're exceptional. You get a lot from these events. So put that on your calendar, September 30 to October 1 is the dates of that event. I'll have all of the backlinks associated with that out on Industrial Talk. So make it a point. If you're in that business, got plenty of time make it happen. They do a great job. All right, on to the conversation, config, it is the company Dan Joe, and he wants to go by Dan Joe. It's not Dan it's not just Joe. It's Dan Joe. So make a point at. That, that you're, you know, when you reach out to him on and LinkedIn, that you just refer to him as Dan Joe, and he'll say, thank you very much, because he's that nice of a guy. He's that nice of a guy. Anyway, Dan Joe's in the hot seat. We're going to be talking about the solution, Configit solution. It's, it's spectacular. There you go. It's really a very advanced value added solution that that if you're in the world of manufacturing industry, let's just keep it at industry. You need to look into this particular solution without a doubt. All right, here's Dan Joe. Dan Joe, welcome to Industrial Talk. Thank you very much for finding time in your busy schedule to just share your insights with the best audience in the world. Industrial Talk. How are you doing? I'm

05:53

doing very well. And thanks very much for the opportunity to talk to your audience. It

05:57

took a little while to sort of triangulate schedules. I kept on, yeah,

06:01

yeah, yeah. When you're in demand, you know, things change quickly,

06:08

far more than I am. Let's put it that way, those days are, I don't know I it is what it is. So and Joe Denmark calling all the way from Denmark, which is great Copenhagen, yes, Copenhagen. And we're going to be talking a little bit about their their company, config it, and the solutions that are being provided by that, by that company, Dan's going to expand a little bit. Dan Joe, sorry. Sorry. Joe, I'm gonna get it right anyway, before we get into that conversation. Dan, Joe, please give us a little background on where you come from, a little bit who you are.

06:53

Yeah, I think if anyone's being observant, they'll know I'm not speaking with a Danish accent. That's why a little bit more Western here i i grew up in Ireland, so I moved to Denmark a long time ago, 91 actually. So So yeah, I'm in a beautiful Danish woman, and I'm with her ever since. So that's why the successes of my life, I would say, quite rare these days to So, got a nice family, two daughters that are now in their 20s. So you know, it's a new chapters of life are opening up at this point,

07:31

a new grandparent. How's that? Well done? There you go. Well, when you become a granddad. Shoot, yeah.

07:41

Looking forward to it. Learners, like you can take your time. Girls, it's fine. Yeah,

07:45

I just shifted gears real quick when you said that. But it's great,

07:50

because you get to play with them and then give them back when they get when they get difficult.

07:57

I've already played that game anyway. I digress, yeah, so

08:03

anyway, that's, that's, that's so I'm, I'm, you know, got a great life here. Denmark is a great country, if anyone's wondering, yes, we have high taxes, but it's a great, it's a great life that you can have here the family. How do

08:16

you deal with Guinness? Is Guinness, as delicious as it is in Ireland, I tell

08:26

you what um, there's a bar here. I'll give him a plug. It's Kennedy's bar, my friend Tony. Kennedy's bar here in Copenhagen. That's as good a Guinness you get anywhere. Oh, that's great. So Guinness did a in the 90s, Guinness actually made a big effort to make sure that every bar around the world that was selling Guinness, you know, understood how to do it properly. And thankfully, they have paid attention. So it is, it is good to get a Guinness in Copenhagen, at very least, you know. So, yeah, I

08:56

had a terminal in Dublin, and I would always get the Guinness, and I thought, Oh, this is just this next level. I can't get it in the United States, okay, you can, but it's just, it's not the same. It's just Oh, yeah, true, yeah. It's just like, there is a noticeable difference when I'm there, yeah? And I was like, yeah, yeah, yeah.

09:26

I'll tell you anecdote. This has got nothing to do with manufacturing, but I'll tell you a little anecdote about Carlsberg, which is a Danish brewery, obviously. And anyone who's living in England or Ireland knows that the Carlsberg there does not taste the same as Carlsberg here in Denmark. It just tastes better here. And I knew a guy from England who was working here for a short time, and I asked him, it's like, why can't you take the recipe back and do it properly? And his response was, you know, 70% of the taste is the water, right? And so where you brew, it makes a difference. The water actually makes a difference. So that might be the explanation. You know, there

10:05

you have it. I'll run with it. Yeah, I'll run, you know, what? If

10:08

you want to talk about supply chain shocks, that's something that manufacturing people talk about. We had a little crisis of not being able to get Guinness over here, there's this whole campaign that went on with spinning the G I don't know if you heard about that. Oh, that became a that became a kind of a tick tock thing in the UK at least, which brought a lot of women into drinking Guinness. So the demand for it went up, but there. But then Guinness took off in China, and then suddenly places like Copenhagen got de prioritize a couple of months we couldn't get Guinness here.

10:46

That was supply chain. I'll tell you, I didn't think about it. But, yeah, you're absolutely right that that'll take, that'll take the inventory out of the market. Real fat.

10:59

It's a luxury problem for them. And, I mean, the regular supply is re established, so they must have figured out how to do it. So there you go.

11:07

There you go, yeah, we're going to talk about Configit I hope so

11:12

we basically get around to it.

11:16

Speaking of that, give us a little road map on on what Configit is, what was the brainchild behind that company? Yeah,

11:24

so it's a company's been around for 25 years, actually, and being focused on the same problem from the beginning. You see, one of the things we don't often think about when it comes to products or manufacturing is the fact that, you know, in many, many cases, people don't buy a product anymore, and they're buying a configuration of a product, yeah, a product variant, or it's something customized that they're looking for, but increasingly, something that's they configure, right? So, if think about this way, you know, if you're buying a car now, it's very, you know, you're quite used to going into a car configurator where you go in and say, I want these wheels, I want that color, I want this upholstery. You know, I think we're all as as consumers getting very used to having that possibility to kind of say, Yeah, I want to make the car my way, or whatever it is that you're buying. And that's not just a business to consumer thing. It's a business to business thing too, right? So you're seeing more of these, what's called configure to order, type of business models, where I will let the will, will give a bunch of choices to the customer, let them choose what they want, and we'll put it together, right? So that was that's been around for quite a while, and there's a lot of companies, and we might get into this in a moment. A lot of companies like to go in that direction because it's got a lot of advantages. Um, so the Configit guys, which all come out of the IT University, or here in Copenhagen, there's two professors that started it, along with a few bright students. Um, they kind of saw this early that, you know, when you're when you when you need to support configuring complex products, like an automobile, a car, or you are, like a, let's just say, a pump or a valve, or, you know, all sorts of things that are very, very very complex, right? When there's lots and lots of options, it gets very, very complicated very, very quickly. And even to this day, many people are trying to manage this with Excel sheets, you know, but anyone who works with Excel knows that you run out of roles fairly. It's a lot of roles, but you still a lot of roles quickly. And what you got to think about is, for every option that you're adding that people can choose, it's the number of potential configurations. The number of potential combinations of those options starts to go up asymptotically. It's, you know, it's, it's, it's, you know, you go from, it's a squared problem, right? You know, so, even so, let me give an example. We probably get back to. You could have maybe 100,000 features in in an automobile or one of these products, yeah, but 100,000 features, features would be options as well, right? Here's where I can choose something, right? Like 100,000 places where you can choose something that will quickly turn into, like, you know, let's take an example. There's, you know, Jaguar Land Rover. That one we worked out at one point that that would that that would require 5.8 by 10 to the 21 valid configurations. So that's 5.8 by 10 to 21 ways you could configure a Jaguar or Land Rover, and it would be valid right? Now, try to try to imagine managing that in an Excel sheet. Yeah, it's impossible, right? It, yeah, but it also kind of gets you, it gets you thinking about it, right? Because these are all things you want to offer, right? There's technical options that you're doing in the engineering phase. There's commercial options that you're doing in the in the sales and marketing phase. There's manufacturing options about which factory and which vendor, which source Am I using, and then there's servicing options that you have on top of that. So throughout the entire cycle, you're making choices, and you're offering choices, and people are making those and configuring things together, and then it's the culmination of all these choices that turns out to be what the person is buying, getting delivered and getting serviced, and that that's the that's the complexity challenge that you have so and for the most part, we in the manufacturing space, we kind of don't acknowledge this issue, right? We kind of try to manage this in engineering, you know? We'll try to define them, some variants that we'll cover. And if we get a new if we get a new option coming in, we'll try to make a new variant and clone and own, you know, take something we've already done and change it. So that's one way of dealing with customization, but that quickly becomes a complexity problem as well, because suddenly

16:19

collapses on itself. It's sort of the weight that and the market me, you others demand that bespoke, bespoke type of mindset. I do. I anyway, I'm sorry. I was just Yeah,

16:40

but I mean, you're right. I mean, you're just kind of giving me a segue into the other option of doing things, which is just to do customization, and say, I'll do it to spec, you know? So if you've got a cruise liner and you're buying an engine, you want an engine that will fit the exact cruise line you're designing, right? And no two are going to be the same. So, you know, if you're a man energy solutions or whatever are, you know, you making these, these, these engines, then, then, basically, you're just going to wait for the spec and say, right, I'll make what you ask for, but then you're not reusing what you've already done. You might have made something very similar, but it's like, no, I gotta start from scratch. They're going to make it specially for this customer, right? And it's going to take engineers and time and resources, and you're going to go back and forth, and, you know, it's hard, yeah, so that's, that's an expensive way of doing it. So, so the idea would configure to water is you kind of try and find the best middle ground between these options, right? In the sense of, let's, let's build a bunch of reusable components that we can assemble and that people can choose them, right? So we'll give them options, but we're controlling what options they can have and what they can choose. So maybe you're not addressing 100% of everybody's customized needs, but you might be addressing 80% of it, right? So it's like, this isn't this is so this is one way to approach it. In reality, it's very few products or manufacturers that can go 100% Configit to order, they will still like to have a little bit of engineering or something like that. So you just have to be able to accommodate that. And you know, a lot of our customers are kind of in that hybrid space where it's like, yeah, we've got some Configit to order that makes things more efficient and costly, cost effective and but then we want to have the ability to kind of customize it for that customer when they need it, right? And I'm the leader. I just had a comment from from one of our customers there, who said, you know, if, if we just have 30% right, that would be good enough. 30% CTO would be fine, like that would actually have a big impact, right? So, I mean, sometimes people talk about this configuration order thing, and they start to think about, oh, it's going to be so complicated. I got to figure out all the potential options of what people would want and what have you. But it's not as complicated as you would think, and you can combine this with approaches like product line engineering, where you can do some sort of configuration in the engineering part to figure out what kind of modules am I going to have and going to offer and stuff like that. But actually, it's not more straightforward than than you could think,

19:17

but, but Dan Joe, I have a, let's say I'm a manufacturer. I have a technology stack, I have my ERP, I have my CRM, I have my engineering platform. I have all of these this technology. And is it safe to say and that the Configure model allows me to pull in the relevant information from this technology stack and put it into a comprehensive view, so that I'm pulling in all the relevant information. Is that?

19:51

Yeah, that's absolutely correct. Yeah. I mean, so we coined the phrase, or an approach called configuration, lifecycle map. Management about 10 years ago, and the basic idea behind that is we recognize the fact that you're going to be defining options and rules in every one of these systems. There'll be some in the PLM, there'll be some in ERP, there'll be some in your CRM, maybe even your CPQ will have some pricing information. So there's all these different systems where you're doing it, and it's because the process is some somewhat siloed in a way, right? You've got the engineers doing their thing, and everyone else and like, you don't want to mess with that too much, right? They're, they're kind of, that's finely tuned, but that information is there, but it's, it's been, it's been created in a silo, so it's not exactly aligned, right? So that what happens today is you have this issue where you're tossing this stuff over the wall, and then you're highly dependent on some experienced guy or lady who's going to kind of pull this together somehow they're going to say, Oh, I know what he means by that, and that means this in our world. And actually, this won't work. I'll go back and talk to them and but that's someone who's got experience and knowledge can interpret what comes over the wall, you know? And we don't realize how much manufacturing organizations are reliant on these little silent heroes. Because the thing is, when things work, nobody asks why. It's only when that person is no longer there and things fall apart, then it's like, what happened? Everything was great last week. What happened?

21:23

Right? White Horse, yeah, well, they retired.

21:26

That was it, right? So what we're talking about here with this approach is to say, look, it's all about product configurations now, right? So you got to manage what you're exactly delivering and selling to that customer, right? Because they didn't buy your product, they bought a configuration of it, right? So you got to manage that, right? So let us so what we do is we were able to import all that information, all those rules and options, from the different systems, bring them together in a product model. This is a model based approach. It's a product model where we can have more nuanced context and we can we can build upon those rules. We can create system level rules on top of those. We can add more information and properties and other things. So it's a bit richer, the kind of information that we can put into that, but we're gathering it together, and at the very heart of our approach is this idea of with a technology we use called virtual tabulation, which I talked before about, the fact that you know, a lot of people using Excel acts for Excel sheets for these configurations, right? Virtual tabulation, you can think about it as being a gigantic one of these. So we basically go through and say, Okay, here's your model, here's all your options, or features, as we call them, and here are all the rules about when you can use it and when you can't. So we'll go through that and and, you know, pretty much calculate that. We'll we'll compile it and say, right? We'll make we will compile all of the valid configurations, like 5.8 by 10 to 21 we'll calculate all those right up front, and we'll save that in a file which is about three megabytes large, right? And that's a lookup file. Now, it's like a Excel sheet just enormous. And basically, if you want to validate and say, Is this configuration valid? Can will this work? You just have to do a quick look up, and it's fine. If it's there it is. If it isn't, it isn't, and it can be partial or whatever, but if it says it's in there, you're good to go, right? But the advantage of that is you have a full overview then of what you're offering. You know exactly what you're offering. You know how it's connected to other things. So when people are going through that sales configuration process now, we can guarantee there'll be no errors, because we're only offering stuff that you can deliver, that you can sell, that is engineering. The engineering tenant is there, so we've checked it against all the rules from all the different places. And basically, you know then that whatever the customer is going to choose is something that you can manufacture and deliver and service, right? So, so that's the idea. And because it's just a quick look up file, it's super quick, and you can give a guided experience with it. So if I'm using the configurator, I might choose some things that that, you know as I'm choosing stuff, it's, it's, it's not doing any calculations at this point. It's, it might just check I was still good to go. I was still good to go. Is this in there? Is this combination in there? Every time I make an option, is it still in there? It's just a quick look up. It's like, yeah, you're still good to go. But if you pick something, then that just breaks a rule somewhere. It's like, no, that's not going to work. We can. We can go back in the file and say, Okay, this is actually a number of conflicts you have here. Maybe there's three or four things that don't fit here, but that's no problem, right? We if you just change these things, 123, then you're back, you're back to where you need to be. And this is all Intro. Active. So alternative ways of doing this. There's alternative technologies out there. I mean, you could be waiting two minutes. You could be waiting. The worst I've seen is 10 minutes for every time you make a selection before it kind of figures out, okay, this is what you can do now, because they're trying to calculate this stuff in real time, pruning away what's what's, what's possible on this? So it's unique, yeah, it went down a rabbit hole there.

25:27

No, no, no, I can think of is data, yeah, how do you do? How do you want to two, two things. Dan Joe, one, we're going to, we're going to, we're going to talk about implementation of the solution like, you know, everybody's saying, 18 months, whatever, whatever they're not but more importantly, does do you go back in history to try to create these rules based off of historical data and historical solutions, so that, you know, you start to build that history, that those rules, what do you do with the historical components? Like, like, I'm Greenfield, I'm I'm just, I'm a manufacturer. I like, what configure does. Let's get going

26:15

well, I mean, just, well, the Greenfield is easy, right? Because then you just, you know, you start building your models in the modeling environment, and off you go right there in the existing environment is an interesting one, right? Because it's not so much the history as such, but it's more the case of there will be product models and rules and stuff that are already well defined, like SAP is a good example. SAP is very model driven, so there'll be a lot of models and pricing models and cost models, all these things in SAP, and we're particularly good at extracting that information. We've worked with SAP for many, many years, so we know how to do that. So we're focused on getting the latest information out right, so all of the options and rules that are valid in their system, like are still alive for products that might have been delivered 50 years ago or whatever, we'll bring it all in, right? And of course, it's the, it's the it's our customers who will be doing the work, in a sense, right? Because they're the ones who are trying to figure out what's relevant and what's not relevant, right? So we're giving them the tools, we've got the modeling environment. We're giving them the import tools, the integrations that they would need in order to do this. But that's about establishing that product model which would have as much relevant options and rules as is necessary in there to cover existing and maybe even previous products.

27:39

In the world of manufacturing, there's a lot of costs, a lot of dynamic pricing that exists with, let's just say, feedstock, you know, I use, I use this type of plastic, I use this type of metal, whatever. And it's, it's dynamic, but that's, but that's where these, these legacy systems, do a good job at saying, Hey, I'm procured, you know, whatever this channel, whatever it might be, but be able to feed that, that, that price point, into your, your model, right? Sure, sure.

28:16

So, I mean, from an implementation point of view, we'd often suggest just getting started with an import, right? So you could just import the information in. But what you can do is start to build these integrations where you can synchronize. So going further down the road, you're doing synchronization where there's a two way update, yeah, something changes here. It changes here as well. So we have a whole consulting arm of people who actually go in and do these projects and help customers. And we also have a bunch of partners that help us with these implementations as well. So we've got a, it's a SaaS based solution with Open Web API. So we've, we've definitely the technology wise, we've made it as open as possible to do this. But you know, as well as well as I do that integrations aren't plug and play, right? So there's a, there's a lot of work involved there. But I

29:07

just want to, I want to take my ERP, Dan Joe, and I just take it off the shelf. I don't want any customization, because customization makes it more expensive. Well, ERP is a

29:19

31:20

Does it. You know, I hate to say this, but I will, AI, does it continue? Does it learn? Does it? Does it, you know, become a sentient being after a while, or whatever. But I would imagine me that if I'm the the consumer, and I have this conversation with the manufacturer, and that manufacturer is using the Configure solution, and I have a greater confidence that what we talk about will be delivered as per the specifications I lay out. There's a good quality level there,

32:02

yeah, yeah, yeah. Now, it's interesting. You brought it up because, I mean, everyone talks about Gen AI right now, and we are as well, so I can certainly do it in a moment. But, but the funny thing is, this technology was originally, you know, originally worked on 25 years ago, right? Yeah, at that 10 time, AI was not a buzzword. If you wanted to get funding for a project and said AI, you could forget about it, right? That's like, you know, that was science fiction stuff. So actually, the virtual tabulation technology I was talking about is a type of AI. It's a neuro symbolic AI. So it's a rule based AI engine, which, as opposed to Gen AI, it's actually designed to be predictable. It's designed to give you an accurate answer every time, right? So, so that's what you're alluding to, like when we're ensuring that you'll only be offered valid stuff. There is nothing that you cannot have invalid things in there, right? If you design your model, right, if you made your options or rules correctly, and during the compilation process, will will catch any inconsistencies or gaps or where things don't make sense. It won't it just won't compile. We'll say, hey, there's something up with this. These things don't match, right? So that's one of the values we have. You can actually validate a lot of stuff, and you can see misalignments between data from different systems already under that compilation phase. So before any gets anywhere near a customer, you're catching errors, right? And, you know, so, so that's one of the interesting things about this technology. And so we just call it virtual tabulation at the time, because, you know, it would never have flown calling it something AI, yeah,

33:44

yeah. Now

33:46

the world has turned. The world has turned now, right? So now Jenny is, like, really hot, yeah. And Jenny is wonderful. I mean, we're, I think we all use it, and we can see a lot of stuff in it, but I think we all realize now, everyone who has used it, that Gen AI is different. It's, it's a probabilistic engine, right? It's, it's working off tokens and numbers. It doesn't really understand what it's saying, right? So, which admits it even more wonderful that it actually works most of the time. It looks like it knows what it's doing. But that's also where you can fall into the trap. It can tell you something that's wrong with the same confidence as something that's right, you know. So this idea of hallucinatory Gen AI is a thing now, as time goes on, that will get less and less and less, because there's lots of research papers out here about combining that Gen AI with other AI which would compensate for it. And one of the solutions is actually to combine Gen AI with neuro symbolic AI, the same AI we use, because then you have the creativeness and the spontaneity of that Gen AI and the flexibility too, to be honest, but then you have the rule based of the needed that. Goes, Yeah, I know you came up with that solution, but not you can't do that, right? That breaks all the rules. So sorry, go back, right? So what we're using it for right now is in something we call our ASCO pilot, is it's, it's helping people to build product models quickly. So basically, you can give it a text prompt, you can give it an image, you can give it a brochure, and it will create a product model based on that. So we have a few different demos on our website, and we've done a few tech talks and webinars on this, but it's really cool, and we were doing last year, we're going around to show us showing how you could get from an idea to a configurator in 10 minutes by using this approach. It's amazing. It's amazing. So, so we're walking away on that, and we know where we're we've got some more enhancements in that coming out in a few weeks time, or, actually, yeah, two or three weeks time, actually. But that's kind of amazing to me, because you're really helping, like our customers, our modelers, like our even people who wouldn't normally make a model, they can come in now and suggest edits and stuff like that. They can take an existing model and say, like, if you're a product manager or someone like to say, I'd really like it if we could also offer, you know, topaz, right? So you just go and say, Can you please add Topaz to the product model, right? And it'll do it right? So it's as simple as that. So I think we're kind of touching ground here on new ways of interfacing with technology, and maybe this idea of point and click in on GUIs and stuff like that, that's probably not where we're going to be going in the future, not at all. Yeah, so that's kind of

36:45

exciting. That's exciting times. I wish I was younger, I wouldn't know where to go. I mean, I would. I'm so, you know, distracted by the shiny objects, there's a lot of shiny objects out there that capture your attention. That's for doggone, sure. It's exciting. But

37:02

you remember back in the early days of the internet? I mean, back in, you know, the turn of the century, or whatever, yeah, I mean, everyone was like, the internet's going to solve everything, right? The thing, the same thing about AI now. And if you remember, you had the Petco and all these other companies that just rushed into the space and made huge investments and and every and they talk about disestablishment or the disintermediation, sorry, you know, and all the things they predicted around that time actually came to pass, but just didn't happen, maybe as quickly as they thought it would. The timing, yeah, that kind of shake out here as well. But you, if you went back, you'd still kind of go all in on internet, right? You'd be like, you know, I mean, you just, it's not an option. I think we're in the same space with with AI, Gen, AI, all these things. It's like, we're going to figure this stuff out. You just don't want to get left behind on it, right? Yeah, I see.

37:56

And I I'm bullish on data. Now, all of a sudden, I can collect data. I can collect mass quantities of data. I don't have me personally, Scott, I don't have the bandwidth to be able to analyze all this tsunami of data, but I have a tool to be able to do it, which then gives me and unearths and flips over insights and tactical directions and all. It's exciting. Oh, definitely,

38:23

definitely. Oh, yeah, no question of it, yeah. So it's, it's so, I think it's, we've all got to explore this and see with limits of what it can do and where it can help. And yeah, so far, we're quite kind of happy what we're doing. I think it's going to be very, very good for,

38:42

yeah, wrap this conversation up. It's already,

38:44

oh my god.

38:52

It's just we've got, we've got a plan for another one. Just because I think you guys are really leading the way in this. I remember we were when we first started talking offline. I was talking about the challenges I had when I was with Price Waterhouse and taking systems and trying to have these systems talk to talk with each other, because everybody's recognized the necessity to have that, but the ability to be able to do it was not very well. It was very cumbersome and very yucky. And apparently that still exists today. Well,

39:33

the actual integration part still kicks work, but I think it's the kind of the approach, the idea that say, look, let's just focus on a particular thing, like comprehend options, right? That we're focused on. It's not everything. It's just like, look, we're going to do that. There's some solved problems that we solve cross functionally, right? We'll take this piece and we'll look after that, and we'll manage the life cycle of that. And, you know. So, so you can, so we'll take that, and you can continue to do what you do in the silos in your existing systems, and you can still master the data there and all this sort of thing. But this is helping with a specific problem. How do I make sure that this stuff is all aligned and correct and it's not going to come back and bite me later? You know, this is what we're that's this is what we're doing.

40:20

I like it. I like it. That's a heck of a solution, both on guys. I like it. Dan Joe, how do people get a hold of you? Let's say I want to go out to LinkedIn, because that's where I want to get a hold well,

40:32

I'm around LinkedIn. Config has got a profile there, and I'm on LinkedIn as well. You'll find me on the Daniel Joseph Barry, I don't think there's many of us out there. And then our website, obviously, www.com, yeah. And you can definitely, and then, yeah, I encourage people to go there. This is a different approach. So it's not going to be immediately obvious to people what this is. So go to our website, figure it out there. There's a lot of information you can get

41:00

draw a picture. Draw a picture. That's what I would do. I would draw a picture, little boxes and lines and dates. Oh, believe me, there's plenty of boxes and lines pictures. Yeah, I would, I would in a jet second. You are absolutely wonderful, Dan Joe. Thank you. Thank you very much. Yeah, thanks for the opportunity. All right, listeners, we're gonna have all the contact information for Dan Joe out on Industrial Talk. So please reach out to this guy, find out more. Config it is the company, fantastic solution. Love it. All right, we're gonna wrap it up on the other side. Stay tuned. We will be right back.

41:40

You're listening to the Industrial Talk Podcast Network.

41:50

Dan Joe Berry config. It is the company. How about that? See it, I told you, I told you. When you listen to it, you're saying, Oh, that's a robust solution. That's what you said. You said it in your heart, robust solution, anyway it is, and it adds value. So check it out. Everything is out on Industrial Talk. Back. Linked to, sorry, Joe, did. Dan Joe, I was getting ready to call by I was going to make the cardinal mistake. Dan Joe, as well as Configit. It's all out there on Industrial Talk. All right. Again, look out for that ebook, that ebook that solves problems, that solves the challenges that I've been listening to for the past seven years of individuals that have these, these great insights. Share it with you. There you go. Just share it with you. All right, people, be brave. There greatly. Hang out with Dan Joee. You will change the world. We're gonna have another great conversation shortly. So stay tuned.