Larry Spring and Julia Newman with DigitalThinker

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

maintenance, Hexagon, talk, digital, julia, thinker, customers, larry, capabilities, equipment, industrial, professionals, industry, solutions, focus, building, work, background, company

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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

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right, another day and another industrial talk conversation. Welcome to industrial talk. A platform is dedicated to you industrial professionals all around the world, because you are bold. Yes, you are brave, you dare greatly you problem solve, you innovate, you're making the world a better place. And that's why we celebrate you on this podcast. And we are broadcasting live, semi live and sort of recorded live, Hexagon live here in Las Vegas. It is a collection of professionals who are passionate about solving problems, and just collaborating. And if you don't have this on your calendar for next year, it is my recommendation. It is my five star recommendation that you put this on your calendar for the to attend. So that's it. For now. We've got Larry and Julia, DigitalThinker is the company. Let's get a crack and with the conversation. How are you today? We're

01:17

doing great. Scott, how are you today?

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Well, I also said that to you.

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I wonderful as well.

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There you go. It's not as if I didn't catch that. It is a conversation Most definitely. Good conference,

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outstanding conference. What's standing out for you there, Larry, the community, bringing the community together, seeing the solutions. All of the capabilities, we're still becoming familiar with Hexagon. And we really like what we see as we identify new things for

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our customers write that down and say, hey, they like you Hexagon. So what about you, Julia?

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I mean, it's been wonderful. I'm new to the maintenance space a little bit. I've been with our company about eight months. So seeing kind of the expanse of everything Hexagon has to offer and everything em can help out with,

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are you inundated with the passion? I mean, everybody's like, this is the best this? No, this is better than anything in the whole wide world rocket launchers.

02:15

This is better than that.

02:18

That's a tremendous amount of passion. It's fantastic. All right. For the listeners out there. Let's let's talk a little bit about background Julia. with you first.

02:27

Oh, background. Yeah, um, as far as my background, no. Oh, okay. Well, I had been with you weren't just

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born yesterday.

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background. So I am a DigitalThinker. About eight months now. I'm our Director of Client Success. So I work. Sorry, I do. I'm fast talker. I'm from the north. So

02:46

no, yeah, take a deep breath. It's okay. But I can keep up because I'm that kind of guy. Professional. Go ahead, keep going.

02:56

So eight months with DTI, it's been absolutely fantastic. My background is actually in Marina management. So I worked for a small cruise company for about 10 years. And last August made a huge change to come join the digital sneaker team. And it's been fantastic ever since I'm learning 800 million different things every day.

03:15

That's exactly because of the CEO is just right over there. You have to say that. And now do you Larry to give us a little background.

03:22

Oh, there's a I'll keep it as short as possible than a maintenance professional for 35 years started with the US Navy as a flight deck troubleshooter on the USS Abraham Lincoln.

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I like that one solid,

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solid solid three and maintenance program, you know that it's rough, the duplicate private industry, private sector struggles to this day with duplicating just standardized maintenance. So, you know my goal has always been to get folks to that level and that standard of document that take out the subjectivity, give the technician the best chance of success on the ground. And then to digitize that move from a paper process to digitizing. Throughout my career, I've been focused if I wasn't a mechanic on the ground, I've been in the MRO space as a buyer as an inventory control manager as a as a maintenance lead and a supervisor. So and then also as an EM administrator.

04:15

I'm going to I'm going to go off on a tangent you know, Nancy Reagan. I

04:19

Nancy is the former president's wife myth formula.

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I have massive RCM expert and she had that sort of that naval background to and she's helped design a little bit of the catapult systems. Okay, okay. She landed on a carrier and that was that anything that deals with military I'm just sitting there going, Oh my God.

04:42

I think I'm gonna go look up. Look up Nancy Reagan. You have

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to she's, she's in fact she's here for a poker tournament.

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Anyway, second career.

04:52

Let's let's talk a little bit about DigitalThinker. What's that all about? Now, there's a lot of companies out there what does that what does DigitalThinker

04:59

so DigitalThinker is a boutique e a and Hexagon EAM consulting firm started 20 years ago by our CEO, Tony and founder Tony Bolin. He was a data stream, work for data stream and then spun off and created this firm with with the intent of of being customer focused. Tony is a relationships, man, it is all about relationships, maintenance is all about relationships,

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are you Tony? Yep.

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And so now again, celebrating 20 years in business, we have and he's growing the company as as, as the industry changes, he's realized that the company also has to change. And part of that, you know, what that customer focus in those relationships is, we have to be of value to the customer, and to get customers out of the industry 2.0 Where there's the maintenance 2.0. And that's defined, as you know, kind of broadly, whenever you see slide decks or anybody referencing that they're kind of in the just the pm only space, we're only going to stick with preventive maintenance in our task plans and do the things per you know, what's prescribed in that form? Not necessarily, and I think that's the end all be all and it's not so we are moving our customers forward by educating them and introducing them to industry 3.0 methodologies and processes and thoughts and that gets into the RCM space and the reliability space and hey, Hexagon, em has all the capabilities in the world to integrate with a SCADA system or some other system that start bringing sensors in you know, it's known throughout maintenance that heat and vibration are two are the major enemies of all equipment, and they're struggling with one do I put a person to capture that? How do I capture that? And is that really the best way to do that? Can we just go ahead, let's put a sensor on a piece of equipment, let's integrate it with the aim and whenever it trips, a threshold let's just trigger a work order in and you know so and get get folks dispatched and dispersed to the equipment and it's only when they need to. So it's all about efficiency as well.

07:03

The term maintenance to Dotto versus three Dotto and then you also mentioned in our pre conversation for Dotto are these well defined parameters when we start talking about if somebody said hey, and this is the Larry, I'm getting to you? Well, sort of defined parameters name itself.

07:25

Yeah, they are industry standards. They are throughout its maintenance. It's it's synonymous well, you'll hear either industry dot O or maintenance Dotto. But they all have the same column, the same stack the same definitions of what they are, I'm still

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shocked that people are still are companies that are you finding that companies reluctant to go to that more expanded version of maintenance? I mean,

07:50

no. So that is the interesting thing. So it's that and that's what we what, what really has helped us gain our focus is it's a lack of awareness. So this is where we're out there as educators and we're presenting the new solution in the new future where they're struggling going, you're stuck here, you're probably doing the best you can in the 2.0 space. Now let's start talking about three point out where you can start closing those gaps and getting more OEE out of your equipment. Utilizing your resources better. I have to interrupt you said more what? Oh, you Oh, II so it's operational equipment effectiveness. Thank you, or overall equipment effectiveness.

08:28

Julia, take note.

08:30

No acronyms. Yeah. So it's increased uptime of the equipment.

08:36

Very good. Yes. And what? No, I'm going to, I'm going to hold on to that question. Now Julio, you're with your with the organization, you're in the world of services, and support. Explain to us what that is.

08:51

So service and support is anything em, we do implementations, integrations, migrations, custom reporting, kind of any modification you're looking for within the product. So I am kind of the face person, I figure out what you're looking for what you need. And I'll line you up with Larry spring or VP of consulting, and he gets you set up with the consultant and we fix your problems.

09:12

So if I had some, if I'm looking, I am searching, and I am out there, trying to figure out a way of being able to manage my assets better and and II am has come to my in my radar, and I contact DigitalThinker. I'd be talking to you and then you would be sort of peppering me with certain questions that you would have sort of given an evaluation price. But you've been with the company for eight months. So do you have a tape? Have they taught you all of that stuff?

09:43

Yes, I did. It's drinking from a firehose. I'm learning new things.

09:47

That's why it's so interesting because of your background. And I'm thinking oh my gosh, she's actually talking to me about what my needs are, because I'm, I might be somewhat ambivalent, like, yeah, you know, I know that I need to have this To this asset and it's causing me problems, and sometimes I don't even know how to put words together. But so but that's your responsibility. It's focusing,

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hiring, hiring, highlighting those pain points that all organizations have with how they structured their reactive maintenance, not preventative maintenance, not proactive maintenance. So it's, you know, finding those areas that can be fixed with the aim.

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I can, I can actually lend to that a little bit. We are only as good as our people. And we are extremely fortunate to have Julia come in with the skill set, and she came in she's an absolute natural, and a sponge. And just she just jumped on it and and has just run with it and, and turning and burning customers. The question building those relationships is unique.

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What motivates you

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motivates me, the passion of the people I work with,

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see, there it is. It's infectious I didn't came

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in has to be a bunch of a bunch of nerds I was gonna work with in the IT field of software fields, and they get so excited about em, it makes me excited. I don't know what I'm talking about all the time. But it's just exciting to be a part of it.

11:09

For sure. Now, one of the points that you brought up, Larry, and that's changes, what are the changes that you're seeing in the marketplace?

11:19

Well, I'm gonna I'm gonna go ahead and go back to that industry focus, right, so the industry and the dots and the maintenance dots and and it's the landscape is changing, AI is coming into play, digital winning the digital landscape, right? That is the end all be all that we want to get to, that we all want to get to in this maintenance journey. Because maintenance is a journey, we grow into it in business changes, industry changes, technology changes. And those each of those columns that are the dot whatever's they each represent the solution stack within that. So just recently in the last year, they've coined the 5.0 or industry five oh, came I

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saw that I had a conversation about six Dotto. Yes,

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yeah, so I'm still trying to get my head around that and how do we get the customers to get to that, and it's like, you know, what, it's a while away, you know, let's be realistic, let's let's level set some expectations. If it was that easy, it would it we'd already be doing it, nothing is going to happen overnight, there is a journey, there is a path maintenance, em as well. Any product that you're using as asset management, you grow into it, you're on a path, you have to lay, it's like building a house course one is 1.0. Course two on the foundation is is 2.0. Course three is 3.0. You're just building the house on a strong foundation to get better and better every day. And it doesn't happen overnight. One of the

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things that has piqued my interest, and this is something that I always struggle with is is that I always preach

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ever so lightly. But education, collaboration and then innovation. And I don't think that you can truly innovate without a robust education approach, as well as a collaboration approach because I don't have all the answers and you should do if you're educating, but you still need a an ecosystem of some sort to be able to pull in. Exactly. And we actually have that with digital thicker. So we've identified that as for education sources for us, ourselves and our customers, we partner with other firms that specialize in those areas and introduce them to our customers, so they can bolster us because we were very good at what we do with the aim, we have a great understanding of what our partners do as well. But they're the experts at it. They're effective, they bring the most value. So we bring them in as a team. And then we collaborate with the customer to give them the most value.

13:49

There you go. So with that, we're here at Hexagon. And I was a part of the the or wasn't part of I was sitting in the audience. I wasn't a part of it. I was Sunni i and it was the keynote speaker that happened. And what was something that jumped out at me is the multiple solutions or innovation or technology that exists within the Hexagon family. Now beforehand, you had the EM robust, well architected platform. Now you have access to various types of solutions. What do you want to throw this out to your children, and you're gonna handle it. All right. So when you're looking at Hexagon, you see all of these solutions. What does that mean for DigitalThinker?

14:40

So I mean, we are in em pa m is our passion. We're fantastic at it. But looking at just a wide range of products, that Hexagon has J five ECOSYS ways that we can integrate kind of across the board, to bring in even more capabilities to em, is something we're looking at pretty intensely, just it's a to great family in

15:02

winter, I mean, gosh, what was it you get a J five? And what was the five and ECOSYS? Tell me about ECOSYS?

15:11

That's not a question I can answer.

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Ecosystems is a great product. I'm still learning the product myself. But high level from what I understand is as you can you have data in em staged on it as part of planning and budgeting. And you can push that out to J five and run what if scenarios, so you can make well informed risk based decisions and understand the consequences of, hey, we're going to do this maintenance this way? Or we're going to do it this way. Or maybe, maybe we're going to throw a CapEx project in there, let it run. Okay, do we push it off? We lower it forward, it's, you know, it's so God, I

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love the simulation capabilities. Yes. And, you know, I can waste a lot of time when I would build these models, but they're just access models, and they're pretty extensive, right? And what if I change this, look at that? What if I change this? So if I did this? What if I changed in exactly? You could get sort of pulled into that, that world of doing doing the what if world,

16:12

but it's necessary, it's actually from the from, from from, you know, from the business world, and maybe any any world, right? We need the capability to do that we have not had the capability in the EM sphere to do that. Now, with being part of the Hexagon product family, we now have that capability with that particular product. And I shouldn't say we, I should say, our customers, the Hexagon, customer base, and anybody who wants to become a Hexagon, customer now has that

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capability. Yes. That's pretty exciting stuff. And I'm excited about it. Why are you excited about the future?

16:49

Oh, that's such a good question.

16:50

It is a good answer for that.

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I mean, definitely the future within DigitalThinker. We're growing our customer base and growing our capabilities as well. So I mean, we have the streamlined Conference, which I have to name drop for us. It's the asset management user conference. So really rebuilding kind of that em community, there's a lot during COVID, we weren't gathering as much sharing ideas, things like that. So kind of seeing that get build back up. And just the constant ideas, innovation and Hexagon has been great, send

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me a link to that 100%. And it'll be out on industrial targets, industrial talk.com. Larry, what gets you excited?

17:34

Well, I'm an optimist by faults. And, you know, from it spans the whole spectrum. So especially in the maintenance space, we can do better. And I know we can do better, I've seen better, I've witnessed it, I've been a grateful to have been a part of being better. And you know, going through that that hole of collaboration and education, that the guy with the boots on the ground as people process and value, let's make it meaningful and valuable for the person on the with the boots on the ground. So the folks, the C suite can make all the right decisions about

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Julia, how do they if they say, Hey, I want to talk to Julia, how do they get a DigitalThinker.com?

18:14

That's the number one place. My name is right on the bottom of the screen. And email, there it

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is. Very, how did they get home?

18:23

Same thing, it's DigitalThinker.com. They can go ahead and select the profile and I'm right there.

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Check it out. Easy peasy. But you guys are out on LinkedIn. We are also because I have to have a backlink of some sort. So no backlink your company and don't get me wrong. You guys were absolutely wonderful. Thank you very much for finding time in your schedule. Wasn't on out here and all that stuff. Scott. Thank you. All right. All right, listeners. We're gonna wrap it up on the other side. Don't have all the contact information for both Larry and Julia out on industrial talk.com. Do not reach out again, you will not be disappointed. Once again, Hexagon live. Put that on your bucket list to attend for next year because you get great people like Julia and Larry. Then you get to have great conversations because it's all about that Godiva. raishin All right, we're gonna wrap it up. Stay tuned, we will be right back.

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You're listening to the industrial talk Podcast Network.

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Again, thank you very much for joining industrial talk. That is Larry and Julia. Company is DigitalThinker, DigitalThinker. All the contact information and we'll be out on industrial talk reach out to these two incredible professionals find out more. I love how they were just talking about customer education because I always say it's about education, collaboration, collaborate with them. And then of course, innovate. A lot going on out there in the old marketplace when it when it pertains to maintenance and asset management and asset performance. You just have to educate Hey, reach out to those two professionals at DigitalThinker with nope, of course, all the link it will be out there. All right, we're building a platform that celebrates industry professionals like you. Go out to industrial talk support what we are doing and if you want to be on the podcast, you just let me know. Because I will be the one doing it. Be bold, be brave. We are greatly hanging out with Larry and Julia and you're gonna change the world. We're gonna have another great conversation coming from Hexagon live shortly.