Ed Youdell with Fabricators and Manufacturers Association

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

Industrial Talk, manufacturing innovation, FMA leadership, FABTECH event, space inspiration, manufacturing scholarships, technology tours, AI integration, job shop owners, technology plan, manufacturing camps, inclusion camps, advanced manufacturing, career opportunities, peer networking

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

00:21

let's get all right once again, welcome industrial professionals, and thank you very much for joining Industrial Talk and your continued support of this platform that celebrates you. I'm looking at you on the camera. You are bold, brave, you dare greatly, you innovate, you collaborate, you solve problems. You are making this world a much better place. Thank you very much for what you do, and thank you for being a part of this ever expanding ecosystem. As you can tell in the background, the buzz, buzz in the background, we are at Bab tech. It is a must attend event. It is in Orlando. It will be in Chicago next year. And if you are in the world of manufacturing, any any you just need to be here because you get to kick the tires of all of the great innovation that exists, and the people have quite the desire to help you succeed. And that's what FMA is all about, and that's who's in the hot seat. Ed you Dell, you're the president, you're the head honcho, you're the cheese.

01:16

They tell me it's all my fault if it doesn't go well. Yes,

01:21

he's in the hot seat. Let's get cracking. Thank you. I was looking forward to this

01:27

conversation. Oh, good, yeah. That scares me a little. No.

01:29

Need to be fearful. I'm a I'm a warm and fuzzy guy.

01:33

I started my morning staring down an astronaut. I think I'm ready for you.

01:38

Did you?

01:39

Did you? Yeah,

01:40

I'm a big fan of space. What do you mean? So

01:43

our guest speaker this morning, our keynote speaker, was Dr Peggy Whitson, who's done more space flights, more time in space, than any American. Unbelievable, like you read her resume, and then you go sit in a corner for a few minutes and go, I've done nothing with my life. Yeah, I'm just an incredible woman who's now moved on from NASA and is involved in private space flight and running missions, has gone into space in the spring. Again, space 64 years old, with axiom and SpaceX, standing ovation, standing ovation, for her first time I've ever witnessed that for a keynote speaker at FABTECH,

02:26

you got me off my game, because anything that's right, Susie talking about space, he he was talking about somebody who was interviewing, or a keynote speaker that's from Space and, and, and I'm all distracted now, yeah, just watch the I get all giddy about the SpaceX and watching them launch, yeah, and just watch it. And I'm amazed, right? Come on,

02:50

you have to be just dazzled by it. It's incredible, right? It's incredible. We can take a rocket up and now we can bring it back down and capture it and put it right back where we started.

03:01

There's some engineering going on there.

03:03

Yeah, exactly. We figured out how to use reverse find this.

03:07

I guess I digress. I'm sorry. So for the listeners out there, let's give us a little 411 on who Ed is, and then we're going to venture into FMA, the organization.

03:19

05:23

I wish I was younger. Yeah, because you're absolutely spot on. You come to a show like this, and you're looking at what is, what they're what's being displayed, and they bring it in, they roll it in and and gone. In the days of this Ola this incorrect perception of manufacturing Exactly. It's cerebral, whether you like it or not, it's cerebral, and it is fascinating and advanced. And I just encourage anybody, especially the youth come here, pick a gander at it.

05:54

So lasers, you like lasers? If you're listening, yeah. You know, the world's most advanced manufacturing lasers are here. AI Artificial intelligence has been engineering into many of these systems. It's alive. It's being used in practical application today. All of those things that you read about and hear about, it's all in the technology that's on the show floor here at FABTECH. It's what people work with every day in our industry, those opportunities are there for young people, and we need more of them. So

06:31

that's exciting times. Yeah, I like it. I like it a lot. It makes me feel good about the future because it's all here. Tell us a little bit about FMA, just a little overview, and then I'm real intrigued with how FMA is is inspiring the next generation of, you know, manufacturing professionals. So, so

06:53

12:37

How do you address one of the things that that I'm very fortunate to be to experience coming to these shows been, been to FABTECH Three times, is the rapid change in the solutions, the technology, the rapid change in innovation from a training perspective. How do you keep current at FMA.

13:01

15:31

do you how do you measure? Because when I come to a show like this, I'm drinking from a fire hose. It's, it's one of those things where you it's, it's sparkly, it's it's very cool. The technology's spectacular. How do you how do you measure success? How do you in these programs where you're getting these young individuals, inspiring them, getting them engaged? How do you measure success?

15:57

Well, that's number one. It's difficult to do. I often say, if we didn't do our camp programs, I can't promise, through our camp and scholarship programs, I can't promise that every student who comes into those programs and participates ends up in manufacturing, but I can promise you, if we didn't do any of that, none of them would end up in manufacturing. So measuring that success is difficult. We're continuing to try to evolve and that, and we've done some user case studies that shows that we're impacting a awareness of manufacturing. That's where we're working on that all the time. I think over the years, manufacturers, in general, associations like us, haven't done the best job yet of competing for the best and brightest. To calling out are the opportunities our industries represent, how good the jobs are. And you know, we've got to beat those old perceptions of manufacturing as being dark, dangerous and dirty. Yeah. And if you came to FABTECH, you can you're amazed at the Advanced Manufacturing Technology. It's world class. Their safety is so paramount. It's at the forefront of all the equipment, how it's used. And you would see that if you were here. So it's, it's, it's very cerebral. So hurry. We got one more day. Yeah,

17:19

still open, still ready to go. I remember as a boy going through elementary school, and we would have the film, oh, sure. And the films would always, that's right.

17:32

Film strips, I can still hear it, coronet films, presents, rubber, but

17:39

it's there it is to this day. I still remember those. Just one was like in the day of the life of a bakery. Here it is, baking, trucks getting into the shelf, everything that's in motion. I remember as a kid just just eating that stuff up. Yeah,

17:58

every kid who was the star of the film was named Jimmy, for whatever reason. Always seemed like Jimmy,

18:04

that's right. So where do you see sort of trends happening now?

18:12

Ai certainly is on everybody's mind. I think, for our industry, if you're a job shop owner, the thought of artificial intelligence, and how would you put that into use in a practical way? Is a very daunting and big task where I think our industry is going to benefit from, AI will really be from the advanced manufacturing equipment side of the industry, because their engineers are developing that technology into their machines to perform better. The software side of our industry will help our manufacturers perform better. So I think as a job shop owner, you can lean on those people to lead us through where AI is going to take our industry.

18:56

If I was a member of FMA, would I be able to find these, these skilled Sherpas, to be able to help me along with that journey.

19:06

So our editors on our products, we've written about AI, I think we can give some insight through our magazines and websites, and it's a subject matter we're covering all the time in different ways. So I think we're, we do it enough. We're not the experts by far. We'll lean on those experts through our different programs as we move forward. But yeah, we could help people along the way. We're smart enough to know if we don't know ourselves. We can point people in a good direction,

19:35

because I if I just put on my manufacturing hat, I've got a lot of, lot of things moving around. I'm pretty busy right now and and the thought of having to sort of take on something else, and to be able to to to personalize that and saying this is going to benefit us, I don't have the bandwidth to do it right. So I don't want to waste my time trying to figure out a way of being able to do it, because I know. That there's gold in the data, and I need, I need the data, I need the AI to analyze the data so that I can be more tactical in my decision making. That's really the gold standard, right?

20:11

Yeah, it's a lot of times some of the stuff just tends to be more practical than Yeah, imagine when we approach it, right? But I how you described it is quite good. I don't know that. I have anything else to add to You're welcome.

20:30

I rarely get that. But anyway, hey, how does somebody get a hold of you there? They're saying, hey, I really like what Ed has to say. I think FMA is really a great organization. What's the best way to be able to sort of do that?

20:43

Www, dot FMA, mfg.org. Couldn't

20:49

get FMA.org.

20:53

No. All right,

20:55

we're gonna have all the time. You were great, by the way. Hey, are you out on LinkedIn?

20:59

Yes.

20:59

Better say yes, I'm

21:01

on LinkedIn. I'm out there. Come get me. There you go. Glad to help you.

21:05

All right, listeners. His name is Ed. FMA is the organization you need to you need to find out more. You need to be successful. That's what they're all there, that that is their driving purpose would make you successful. Please figure that out. Reach out to them. All right, we're broadcasting from FABTECH. This is in Orlando, Florida. It is a great event. It is a must attend event. If you're not here, you have one more day, as Ed was saying. But if you're not here, and you can't be here next tomorrow, then you need to be there in Chicago,

21:35

right? Yes, sir. All right,

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we're gonna wrap it up on the other side. We're gonna have all the contact information for Ed out there as well as FMA. So stay tuned. We will be right back. You're

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listening to the Industrial Talk Podcast Network.

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