Milan Kocic with Hexagon Sixth Sense

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

Hexagon, cohort, company, gel, startup, innovation, milan, build, people, good, parts, cool, sixth sense, put, industrial, scott, robots, advanced manufacturing, cut, called

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

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alright once again thank you very much for joining Industrial Talk a platform dedicated to industrial professionals all around the world you are bold brave you dare greatly you solve problems you can elaborate and you are making the world a better place in Milan This is the number one industrial related podcast in the universe and it's all backed up by data Mart's you're gonna have a comment on them. And that's it. That was

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that was that was you didn't make a mistake is just crazy to

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see. There you go, man. And we're broadcasting from Hexagon live here in Las Vegas. It is a great event. It is a spectacular event. It is a five-star review from my humble position to attend next year. So look forward to it and find out more. It's all out there. Please do. Milan he is he's a legend. He's leading an an effort called six cents, six cents, outside of the fact that it's hard to say all the time. But that's what he's all about. Let's get cracking with the conversation.

01:21

Sounds good? Yeah,

01:22

I ran into him just out of the blue just out of the blue. I always kept on running into you, which is pretty doggone Cool.

01:29

Well, that you can never miss Scott in the corridor. So that's how it works.

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loudmouth Scott, running around is a good, it's a good conference for you.

01:41

It's been pretty good. We, you know, just for people who don't know, sixth sense is a program that helps bring startups to Hexagon. And I happen to be lucky at five of the cohort, two startups sitting here. And one of them called gel side has had the parade of people from Paulo, our CEO and Mercado CTO. And so lots of interest for some of the startups that are sitting.

02:07

Can we get how come? I'm talking to you? And I'm not talking to them?

02:11

I'm much nicer.

02:12

Yeah, I'll get out of here. You're saying they're certainly they're not surly. In fact, I nanotechnology is the one that you brought at IMTS.

02:22

That's right, in interesting things. Like all things in the startup world, they're going through transition, and I'm not sure whether we're they'll survive or not. But every company, you know, if it's a startup, what is it a 90% chance that you might make it or temporary, you know, and then those kinds of seconds. So there's technology is still super interesting. There being a couple of other companies that pop up that do similar things, when out of Israel, they do it and they insert it into raw materials. So there's a, the idea that smart parts started is still super valid. I hope they can find a way forward and to kind of get that stuff going.

02:58

I want them to get the guy's a nice guy.

03:01

What a funny story is that the guy you interviewed Cody, yeah, he now works for Hexagon. So. So yeah. So, we get all those guys, we get all the nice guys. It wasn't. It was a time for him to make a change. And he had the opportunity to join us. So he joined us.

03:17

I just like saying nanotechnology. That's right. That's right. Why wouldn't you want to say, Well, if you like nanotechnology,

03:21

the winner of Cohort Two is company called gel site. And what they do is they have this enlist American Joe, that then has a camera behind it. So, say that again. Now it's going to be finalist. It's a basically gel that's very pliable, so and to have the gel, and then they have a camera and some light. So it's a basically that they get 3d image of the indentations in the gel. But they can measure something as as smallest point two microns. So, an example of that is take apart that is essentially sorry, my phone is ringing.

04:00

And that's okay. It's not a problem, because it's blinking at

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me. Exactly. So what it is, is the gel essentially bends it's an it's a Socrates point two microns, which means they can essentially like take a metal finish or something that was cut in the CNC machine. And you take this detector and you essentially take an image, you can actually see cutting pattern on the part. Okay, oh, yeah, they can do like skin measurement. It's most today. It's mostly used in rivets, inspection, scratches and dents, inspection and those kinds of things. But they're now working on new things, which is paint checks, that can do a surface roughness in one shot. So rather than using a little needle and then you scratch one of the part, they take one shot and they do surface roughness by doing that, okay,

04:48

see, this is how it always rolls. So give us a background Milan real quick into who you are. And then tell us about six minutes and then we can start talking in a formal way. The stuff that's key plays into that Just go right into those like, Oh, that's cool, too.

05:02

Well, thank you, Scott. So I'm Milan Kocic, I've been at Hexagon for a long time doesn't matter how many years we call it just give away my years. But I've probably spent 15 years in innovation, I have a couple of dozen button patents to my name. So I've built some products that Hexagon. But the last two years, I spent essentially building a program that helps bring those kinds of startups that we just mentioned, both smart parts and gel side. And trying to kind of make one plus one equal three, like they do stuff that we don't know, we do stuff that they don't know, let's combine the knowledge and try to build something cooler and better as a sum of both kind of parts.

05:40

So with that, what, what are some of the exciting things give us an update on where we stand with sixth sense of what's going on? And how many cohorts have we had so far, so

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we just announced cohort three yesterday. So now it's a good, you know, what a better place than Industrial Talk

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to talk about the number one industrial related podcast covers backed up by data. So if you

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happen to be a startup in advanced manufacturing, and you're listening to Scott, we just announced a cohort three, just go to the sixthsense.Hexagon.com website. And we have two challenges. One is around sustainability and green manufacturing. And the other one is about collaborative manufacturing. So the ability to share data and do those kinds of things. The applications are open until early September, and we hope to run the cohort from 20th of September to December 6. So basically, in the latter half of the year,

06:31

When you open up a cohort, any new define, do you define the certain requirements? Do they differ from let's say two and one? Like?

06:40

No, I mean, it's mostly different themes. So we tried to encroach on, you know, last time, it was digital reality and a couple other things. So I mean, they're, you know, there's not like 900 themes in advanced manufacturing. So we tried to be good, because you can't be too narrow, if you're too narrow, like three companies will apply. So we try to be rather broad in our approach. And we don't stick like 100%. Like, it's not like, if you're not sustainability, then we don't pick you if it's something that's interesting to us. And it's maybe a little bit outside of the scope, we're still bringing those companies in, so we don't necessarily limited. So anything that's exciting and cool in between, technically Jelsa didn't fit in cohort to where we still recruited them, and then ended up they did an amazing job as a company to build whatever building

07:24

so when you're determining who will be part of the cohort? One, how do you make that determination, you guys have a body of individuals that are sort of bantering back and forth, or what is

07:37

correct, we have a we have a criteria, we probably had a, let's say, about a dozen people from the business units. So people who develop products and some business people, what we do is actually, on average, very corporate, we get about 100 applications, so 100 companies apply, then my team cuts it down to about 20. And then we take those 20. And then we present those 20 to the 12 people who are deciding. And we were tasked to cut it down to about 12 to 15. This year, we might tried a different format, rather than doing a pitch day like we did in the past where they'll come and pitch because it takes a long time, we might just individually interview every company and then make a decision with the same committee as to what we're going to do and how many companies usually we cut it down to about seven or eight companies for the actual cohort. But essentially, the whole body within manufacturing intelligence tends to participate in picking things and allows us to make sure that we're picking the right stuff. Because if I'm something that I think may be cool, rest of the business unit might not think so. So it doesn't really so we do you know, talk about it and figure out what's the best for the business? Is there an opportunity to fit in in some sort of thing?

08:44

What's the benefit for a company that says yes, I'm interested in doing that? Yes, I go through the whole process. And yes, I'm selected to be a part of the cohort, what What benefits does that bring for me?

08:59

My experience with a lot of startups, to be honest with you is, especially in our state in advanced manufacturing, is that it seems that a lot of them were they've been able to make a business they may be lacks some skills in pitching, honing a message of what they actually do. And then they also lack connections to companies like Hexagon or Hexagons customers. So if they get chosen for the program, those are the kinds of things we tend to do. We look at their tech, we see how it fits, we look at their business process, how does it fit and then we look at their pitches and try to hone them to make it even better than then there were before. And what we hope is that exposure, there's a company here called augment here, they do workforce optimization. And they were just talking to me and were thanking me for being here, primarily because they were able to just walk around and meet all kinds of people. They met bunch of customers, which then translates into opportunities, which is there's no other way then like hex live doesn't provide something else Neil and it will take so much more effort and so much more work for them to get an equal exposure to what they do other than basically working with Hexagon or sitting in Hexing a lie, what happens?

10:09

Does a company have to have some type of revenue to participate?

10:13

Yeah, typical profile of a company is post seed seed a seed a plus. So we'd like to have something that's in a half 1,000,002 million plus range as a revenue, because they need to be somewhat self sustainable. Because, as of yet, as of today, Hexagon does not provide minority investments into companies as part of the success program. And the idea there is that they have a relatively good product market fit, which makes my job easier, which means that I know where I can fit into in order to kind of create one plus one equal three, in our first cohort, smart parts was an early stage, and they needed funding, which we couldn't provide, which potentially, you know, risk some of the issues that they ran into. So those are the kinds of issues that we realized that we cannot necessarily provide help. So if you're like a super early stage, and you need funding, six hands right now may not be the best option for you. So those are the kind of the, you know, the selections that we tried to do. Why is

11:08

Why is Hexagon so invested in promoting this? What what, what does Hexagon get out of it outside of the fact that there's, you get to engage with some smart people with some brilliant ideas and see how that fits? Well, besides

11:21

making me look cool. Outside of outside of that. Exactly. I think the biggest issue is, you have to look at where does the inspiration for innovation come from. And if you look at the broader scope of things is, while we are a very innovative company and do things, the real breakthrough, innovation usually comes from the outside, you know, the these guys that were. So if you look at gel sight, then examples, and it's two guys out of MIT that have now spent eight years building these devices, they're super hyper focused just on that thing, you know, they don't have to do 16, other stuff, other things. And when you have the dedication to your innovation, usually you get there faster than we would otherwise get. And, but they lack resources, exposure to customers, other things that typical startup runs in. So for us, it's a, I see it, or we see it as a mutually beneficial relationship, it's kind of you know, we benefit from learning from them. They benefit from getting an additional exposure from us, I mean, even like this, but like this podcast, I mentioned, bunch of companies, they get the name out and left goes on for their

12:27

from Cohort One. What were some of the successes that have happened as a result of that,

12:33

I think Cohort One was a learning experience is the best way to put it. One of the companies is the one we're doing is which was Rico, which is that they do a scanning of factories into factory planning and do automatic segmentation. They're still working hard at a partnership at Nvidia. We're trying to fill out some of the stuff because Hexagon is a little bit more interested in getting the factory planning space. So we're going to reconnect, but they've been a great advocate for our program, because they felt like they learned a lot and you know, benefited from what we were doing. Primo, which was one of the AI companies, they actually got sold to another startup called stream systems. And then as I said, smartcards is kind of in between, we have another company from Cohort One called AI flow, which is working with us on a couple of automotive projects. So everybody's still hanging out. But I would say Cohort One was definitely a learning experience for us. So we I would say the outcomes are less tangible. But it was a good experience for everybody involved, the best I can tell from from what we got as a feedback.

13:35

See, and I am very much in support of what you guys are doing just because and I know that maybe you could have been done better, or whatever it is, but it doesn't matter. You moved forward to put you move that ball forward. And I think personally, in the world of innovation in a world of what we live in today, I think you're absolutely correct that that a smaller company tends to be more nimble, more focused on on whatever that solution might be. versus maybe something big. But the value of that that innovative thinking is, it could be just amazing.

14:11

Well, it's you know, you know, I always say it's, it's always really hard for people to walk into a room and say, I don't know, right? Yeah. Because you know, somehow it reflects on you and everything else. I think where can we start ups makes you realize you don't know a lot of things. Because you get to work with super smart people who think of things that you could have never thought of him in your life. And not only to get him to think of those things. They also have dedication and passion to implement it. And usually they're not distracted. You know, it's a small company 1020 People they typically don't think about, you know, other things that are happening in a company because there's not enough room for that politics and other things that they have to think about money obviously. So they all either raising all the time or trying to make money. But the pressure and the lack of resources, in my opinion, makes you do extraordinary things right if you don't have enough money tend to do amazing things.

15:02

It's a it's a painful process. But you're absolutely right, it brings about some interesting fruit. So, Cohort Two, what type of success stories can you share with us?

15:13

So Cohort Two, we talked about gel side. So just that's in the middle of working with us to produce product that we will release in, hopefully in q1 of next year, which is an attachment of their sensor to a portable arm. The second one we can probably talk about a little bit more is a company called augmented ear where their workforce optimization and they actually have a relationship with PDQ and have sold their joint product to I think two or three customers don't quote me on this, but several customers joint and they're thinking about additional amount of opportunities for augment here and at Q. So a couple of basic examples of some stuff that's resulted into, you know, things that are making money for the companies themselves.

16:03

It's gel sight. Exactly. I was trying to look at that. I'm on the website. So I'm looking at it as we speak real time. Yeah, pretty cool. Yeah,

16:16

they do some. So the cool thing about gel side, forget about just ability to detect, they also get built and the factors for robots that can basically tell you the difference between different grades of sandpaper, so you can just pick it up and sorted automatically because they feel they feel so, so they do

16:35

wonder where you're going with that? Well,

16:36

there's another dog guide, cool. When we finish, you should jump on and find a TED talk about gel sight. Because what they also can tell what the robots can do is they can detect the edge or the corner edge. So they have this QR robot to your robots. They're folding a towel. Now, so so there's a lot of this technology is really, really cool for many, many different things. So what's your point? You know, we were talking like, these are the stuff you find when you go out there and you you know, you know, throw a hook and help you catch something. So

17:06

see, it's just it's every time I talk to you, I always feel like, Man, I just don't know what I don't know. And, and it's like, yeah, wow, a robot can do it. I can't even do it. foldup dog? Do

17:18

you want to get your mind blown? Yeah, I do want it now. Just say, Yeah, told us and this is fact. You know, how many you know how many touch inspectors there are in the world? What I mean by that, you know, how many paint usually paint and finish and how gets inspected? And most plants know somebody with a finger? It goes like on touches? No way. There's 3 million touch inspectors in the world. And so what you have is, and how do you repeat, so what you have is you have somebody who over 30 years built an experience of what it feels that something is right, and something is wrong, that person retires, who's going to replace them. So you have to build tools that are able to replicate those kinds of things.

17:57

Let's see, I didn't know there were touch inspectors. Let's say misremembered.

17:59

with smart parts. We learned that half a million aircraft parts are fake. So which was a scary fact. Yeah. And now you'll learn there's 3 million inspectors that touch

18:08

these touch inspectors now playing the guitar, you know, none of

18:11

that stuff.

18:14

Alright, we gotta wrap it up, my friend. How do they get a hold of you what you need to give me that link? Which one? The one to cohort three. So

18:21

well, let's do this. I'll tell you go to six cents, dad Hexagon.com. And about halfway down the page. It says cohort three and check it out.

18:30

There it is. I like that. I'm still going to get that last link and I'm still going to put it out on Industrial Talk, because Industrial Talk has the best podcast. You were absolutely wonderful. I was looking forward to it. I was so excited seeing you, man. I was like there is. love talking to you, man. Thank you all good. All right, we're going to have all the contact information for Melania. He's out there. He's the dude. Hexagon. All right, put the Hexagon live on your bucket list for next year. It was it's a great, great event to get to meet people like Milan and others. It's awesome. All right. We're gonna wrap it up on the other side. Stay tuned, we will be right back.

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You're listening to the Industrial Talk Podcast Network.

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How about that conversation, another great chat with Milan sixth sense. Love what they're doing over there. You got to check them out. Go out to Industrial Talk, all the contact, all the links, everything that you need to connect with Milan to understand what they're doing at six cents. Exceptional. Nothing short of exceptional. Now Hexagon live when we were there. Innovation was everywhere. innovation technology, how to use that to truly help the world and companies succeed. It is just a phenomenal event. Now outside of the fact that it was over. I don't think I'm exaggerating five football fields, but nonetheless US. Excellent, excellent event, put that on your calendar. Make that a priority for next year. If you're if you're a user of Hexagon, you need to be there. If you are contemplating using technology to better your organization, you need to be there. If you're just sort of just searching to try to gain greater understanding, you need to be there. Put that out there on your calendar for next year. Put that in your budget Most definitely. All right. Be bold, be brave, dare greatly. We say that all the time. Hanging out with people like Milan and you will be changing the world. We're going to have another great conversation coming from Hexagon live shortly. So, stay tuned.