The Manufacturers' Network

The Manufacturers' Podcast is THE place for manufacturers to connect with and learn from other manufacturers. Not only will listeners get to learn from their manufacturing colleagues, but they will also discover HOW they can help each other as a resource or as a source of help and inspiration. As a manufacturer, it's easy to get pigeon-holed into only focusing on your own industry, whether it be through your industry trade association or your industry colleagues. While trade associations are an excellent source of information for their members, sometimes it's gaining a perspective from someone else in a completely different industry that gives you the solution to your dilemma. Stay tuned for new episodes every week on "Manufacturing Monday's." This drive-time length podcast will give you the information, tips and strategies you need to get your week off to a fantastic start.

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Oct 16, 2023 • 23min

Innovations in Waste Management and Sustainability with Heather Johnson

Connect with Heather: Website: www.pureingenium.comLisa Ryan: Hey, it's Lisa Ryan. Welcome to the Manufacturers Network podcast. I'm excited to introduce our guest today, Heather Johnson. Heather is the CEO of Ingenium and has over 25 years of experience in hazardous waste management. Her innovative sustainability and waste management approach has positioned Ingenium as an industry leader in waste-to-energy programs and zero-waste initiatives.Lisa Ryan: Heather, welcome to the show.Heather Johnson: Thank you, Lisa. I'm excited to be here today.Lisa Ryan: Share a little bit about your background and what led you to do what you're doing.Heather Johnson: You named it over 25 years of experience. Back in my college days, I was answering phones in this industry. Along the way, I started doing some marketing and sales and ultimately ended up 27 years in the industry. I never look back on anything, finding anything in this and carrying it forward.Lisa Ryan: Yeah. Right now, many companies are aspiring to achieve a zero-waste status. What are some of the steps and strategies businesses can take to embark on this journey?Heather Johnson: So zero waste is a journey, as you mentioned, and there are several steps. The first step for a business is to determine that they want to move forward. And in that, the first step is looking at what they're generating in terms of waste, what's going into the trash cans at the cubicle level, what's going into the trash cans in their kitchens or cafeterias throughout the facilities that all end up in a dumpster typically and where we start is at the dumpster level.For lack of a better term, we call it a dumpster dive, but dig in the trash and look at what are these guys producing that might have some value and be removed from the waste world and used elsewhere. From there, we provide data. So it's data collection and then reporting out to the business.Hey, here's what you guys are doing. Are you aware? And most of the time, they are not aware to any significant extent of what types of things are making it into the trash. But it starts with the conversation at that point: okay, here's what's happening. What are you willing to do as a business to reduce the waste going into the trash?From there, we talk about strategies that can be deployed within the business, ways to minimize waste, and ways to reuse materials in lieu of creating waste. And continue to track the progress of the efforts and provide more data to show reduction over time. Ultimately, the objective would be to achieve this zero waste certification, with a certain percentage milestone to remove waste from the landfill.Lisa Ryan: So when it comes to zero waste certification, I think about zero waste, just in my own house, and what goes out into the trash every week. What is that percentage? How much are people reducing their waste to get that certification? What does that look like?Heather Johnson: I believe it's 90 percent on average, which sounds extremely challenging, and it is. Don't get me wrong again. A business has to have a concerted effort. It doesn't just include leadership behind it; everybody in the organization takes pride in reducing waste.Lisa Ryan: Yeah, I know your company is known for its innovative waste-to-energy programs, but how can these green solutions work as a viable option for manufacturers?Heather Johnson: Believe it or not, manufacturers produce a lot of waste. There's a lot of opportunity. Manufacturers use solvents as an example, and we can reuse those materials and repurpose them for another business that can continue the use as opposed to a manufacturer having to send out the material as waste.Many different items are used in manufacturing, resulting in a beneficial reuse opportunity that minimizes what goes into the track. There are a lot of opportunities in manufacturing. In the event we can't do something better with the material, then make it a waste or call it a waste, then waste to energy comes into play as a viable technology that's greener than putting something into a landfill or incinerating it.Lisa Ryan: So when you're reusing, like you said, solvents, would that manufacturer who was using the solvents be able to use them again? Or would another manufacturer or another company buy that? Heather Johnson: Yeah, both. The answer is both. Some manufacturers will continue to use a solvent until it's so dirty. They cannot do anything further with it. Some manufacturers have quality control. These procedures allow using a material only once, and it's still clean enough for someone else to use. They don't allow it in their process.We can pass that along to another manufacturer or company using that material. Additionally, when a solvent gets dirty, we can do something called distillation, which cleans it up and creates a renewable product, the solvent. Without whatever was contaminating it, those manufacturers can rebuy it because it does have a cost associated with it, but it's less expensive than buying a new solvent.Heather Johnson: The ultimate goal is to minimize what is wasted. If you can prolong the use, the longer you do that, instead of using a new product, you're doing the environment a favor every time.Lisa Ryan: Absolutely. Discuss hazardous risk because assessing and managing hazardous waste is crucial in industrial operations. So what can businesses do to mitigate their hazardous waste risks so that they're in compliance and safe?Heather Johnson: Call ingenium? No, calling a company like Ingenium can help them understand both from a compliance standpoint. What are you required to do based on what you're generating? What are your hazardous processes? And then what are the requirements and regulatory risks around what you're doing? It's a whole world that most people don't think about regarding tracking and managing.If you have a chemical, for example, that you're using, only when you say you no longer have a use for it, and there is no longer a use for it, then it's a waste. So once you determine something is a waste, new regulations kick in. And. A lot of businesses don't necessarily understand what the requirements are around managing hazardous waste, so they can bring in a consultant who does understand that, or bigger businesses, often, will have a full-time environmental health and safety manager who is responsible for the hazardous waste and the tracking and management of it.Either way, from a safety standpoint, a lot of training goes into place so that people know what they're handling. And then, from a regulatory requirement standpoint, there are holding time issues. There are manifest paperwork-type issues. There's also something called cradle to grave, which means once you have a waste, it's yours until you know it's been managed to the end.So you must know what's happening to the waste. And you're using a company that's properly disposing of it at the end of the day. And there's a paperwork trail on that. And there's a time requirement for that. So, if you understand all of the needs, you should be good to go, but if you don't, I highly encourage you to have a consultant on board to help you with everything because there is a lot.Lisa Ryan: Yeah, it sounds like it. And I think about this when we're looking at attracting younger people into manufacturing and the industry. Sustainability is a huge topic because they want to protect the planet in whatever they do, or at least not cause additional harm.What are some things businesses are doing to use eco-friendly practices, or are there specific success stories or examples you can share?Heather Johnson: Yeah. And you're right. As it pertains to younger people in any industry, they want to work for a company that is environmentally friendly and conscious and doing something if they can to better protect the environment.Many businesses that can make a difference are pushing back on their suppliers to use greener materials, whether shipping materials or things that can be recycled or reused. That's a big one I'm seeing because many businesses we work with receive chemicals in styrofoam, for example.And the styrofoam is it's voluminous. If you will, it's lightweight. It's got a recycle value, but It's costly to move it unless you can condense it. And so I've seen companies pushing back on people that use styrofoam to take it back and use it again, for example, instead of the stuff going into the landfill because it takes up a lot of space and doesn't break down easily.Additionally, they should look at more environmentally friendly products they can use in their processes instead of highly toxic chemicals if there's a way that they can introduce something more environmentally friendly. They're doing that and then ultimately downstream on the wayside. How can they reduce or reuse materials before they become a waste, prolonging the use of something?Lisa Ryan: Yeah, one of the arguments you hear from people is that the more environmentally friendly products don't. They don't believe they work as well. As the horrifically hazardous materials that they've been using forever. What are you seeing as far as the advances in technology, or is that still true?Heather Johnson: Yes. And no, I totally know what you're talking about. I know. We also work with a lot of research and development. And they use mercury thermometers. And I remember when they made a play to use cause mercury is highly toxic.And so, what else can we use in lieu of that? And it took a long time, but they've come out now with a good alternative to the mercury. But there are several products that people will argue are nothing better than radiation isotopes in some cases. However, it's become more challenging to manage that stuff, so people have almost been forced to move away in many situations, but over the last 25 years, I've seen a lot of movement in that area.Lisa Ryan: Yeah, that's a good thing. Then, we also look at things like community service and corporate responsibility, which you are big on in your organization. How do you tie in what you're doing with sustainability goals regarding focusing on the corporate responsibility efforts of the companies you work with?Heather Johnson: We have a big push in innovation. On top of what exists today, we're always looking for what is coming in the future that we can leverage and introduce to people. We are the experts in the technology as it presents itself. We don't own any technology, nor do we create any technology. Still, we understand what other people are doing and how it can benefit our customers - from manufacturing businesses to pharma and any industry that uses chemicals and produces hazardous waste. There's more and more technology that's greener to manage this stuff in the future. Historically, it's gone for landfill or incineration, and we want to minimize what goes to the landfill.More and more, there are conversations about that. But if it's not going to landfill, where is it going? What can we do? And so, more and more, you're seeing new technologies present themselves that minimize the need to send things to the landfill.Lisa Ryan: What are you seeing regarding some of those new technologies that you've been the most impressed with, or have changed the game in waste management or your zero waste initiatives?Heather Johnson: I've seen more people figuring out how to prolong the life of things. If you have to dispose of it, there's something called fuel blending, where you can use hazardous waste as a secondary fuel in a cement kiln. So, a lot of hazardous waste qualifies instead of using natural resources.To make cement as an example, I'm also seeing people clean up waste reuse. It can't say clean up waste because once it's waste, you have a different right to prolong the use of a chemical. We have something called an orphan chemical program. For example, a large manufacturer with quality controls can't use products past their shelf life, but that doesn't mean that a smaller business with fewer funds can't use those chemicals in their research.We can take them from the large manufacturer to the small startup, and they can continue using them without buying new chemicals. It may end up as waste in the future as well.Lisa Ryan: How did they find out about you? I mean you because you're, we talked earlier about the companies reusing themselves, or it goes to other companies.How does that whole process work? How would somebody even find out what you have in the list of products that you have that you can make available to people?Heather Johnson: Right now, that program is Largely amongst our current customer base because we haven't figured out how to leverage AI, which I think would be our next play.But right now, we have a list of all our customers who are interested in being potential recipients of chemicals. So when a customer wants to donate, there's the donor and the recipient. Let's call it: the big manufacturer has a list of chemicals they no longer need, but there are still good chemicals, right?They're not crystallizing around the caps or inherently waistline. They will go out as waste unless we find a home for them. So we'll take their inventory of chemicals, and we'll send it to our customer base of recipients. And then those guys will look at it and say, okay, I'd like to have the following chemicals, and then we will arrange.The transportation from point A to point B of those materials and the way they find us when they find us is frequently a Google search for hazardous waste recycling because more and more people want to be sustainable. And so it's more complex than hazardous waste disposal, which we'd still come up with in a search for that, but it's word of mouth or Google search.Lisa Ryan: How does a company know they need to talk to somebody like you? What is the first clue that making the call to Ingenium is a good option?Heather Johnson: If they're generating hazardous waste and they understand they can't throw it in the trash, that's the first clue.And then, what type of business do they want to work with? I would say the majority of business. Businesses today have gotten on board with sustainability. When we started Ingenium 17 years ago, sustainability was not a big deal to people. It was. I don't even know if it was a word used in our industry.And then, when the markets crashed in 08. We saw a huge influx of chemicals that had to go for disposal because businesses were shutting down. These would be chemicals that had never been opened, but the business is closing, and part of the closure process is that all of the chemicals have to go out as hazardous waste.And it was crazy for us to see just how much good material was being wasted. So, we started to promote sustainability back in 2008. However, it comes at a cost, so traditional disposal is less expensive than some screener opportunities. And early on, businesses weren't willing to take on additional costs to do that today.Fast forward 15 years later, and it's a big initiative at the leadership level for many of these businesses. In addition to just having hazardous waste and saying, Hey, I need to dispose of this, many people managing it know they also want to try something greener. So they'll be looking for companies who have these innovations.Lisa Ryan: So what's the process? They call you for the first time because they have some waste or want to look at more sustainability. What happens next?Heather Johnson: We send somebody out to their facility and talk to them about what they're doing. We want to understand what they're doing and why they're doing it because if there are things they can change upstream, and we can help consult with them on that to reduce the amount of waste or use less toxic materials, all kinds of those things that I spoke to earlier.And then, in that conversation, what are their goals? Again, most companies will tell you that they have some sustainability goals. Some will say we want the lowest cost. Based on what they're trying to accomplish, we will tailor a program for them that meets those needs.Lisa Ryan: And are you cleaning up the chemicals and stuff? Do you have a pro, so you have a whole processing facility?Heather Johnson: We don't have a processing facility, but we have the trucks and the people. So, we will go to the manufacturer and ensure everything's properly labeled and packaged so that it can go on a truck for safe transport to the disposal facility or wherever the material will ultimately end up.Lisa Ryan: Is there anything I haven't asked you about that you think is important for people listening to? No,Heather Johnson: I think you touched on it, but ultimately, what I believe is the most important for people to know if they are not aware and understand is the cradle-to-the-grave element of the waste generation that they, it's crucial that they're working with a dependable company like Ingenium, because, again, if you're working with somebody you're getting a cheap price or, these people aren't on the up and up.If your waste ends up somewhere it shouldn't, you're going to pay for cleanup a second time, and possibly, if other companies have waste in that area and are out of business, you're going to be paying for other people's waste as well. So it's most crucial that. You know that you're working with a reliable vendor.Lisa Ryan: If somebody wanted to continue the conversation or learn more about how Ingenium can help them and you, what would be the best way to contact you?Heather Johnson: The best way to contact me and learn about Ingenium services is to visit our website, www.pureingenium.com, and that's P U R E I N G E N I U M dot com slash podcast. This podcast will be listed there with others, and they'll be able to get all of our other information on the website from there.Lisa Ryan: Heather, having you on the show has been a pleasure today. Thank you so much for joining me.Heather Johnson: Thank you for having me, Lisa.Lisa Ryan: I'm Lisa Ryan, and this is the Manufacturers' Network Podcast. We'll see you next time.

Sep 18, 2023 • 29min

The Battle Against Cybercrime: James Fair Reveals Common Threats Faced by Manufacturers

Connect with James FairWebsite: executech.comLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jamesmfair/Lisa Ryan: Welcome to the Manufacturer's Network podcast. Our guest today is James Fair. James is an IT and cybersecurity veteran with 35 years of experience. He's held every role from entry-level tech to senior VP, and now he's working in cybersecurity. James, welcome to the show.James Fair: Thanks, Lisa. It's an honor to be here. I'm very excited.Lisa Ryan: Great. Please share a little about your background and what led you to do what you're doing in those 35-plus years.James Fair: Yeah. I've been doing this since computers were around; I'm an old-school guy. What started for me was a passion for technology. At age 13, I got my first real PC. At age 16, I would deep dive into that, and no one would see me for two years. When I came out, I would know everything about it. It's always been a passion of mine to dive into technology. I've been doing technology for a long time, but part of that has always been cybersecurity because back when I was doing it, there was no separate role for cybersecurity. Now you did everything.No one realized there was a separate need for that, and there wasn't because there wasn't much going on out there, or at least we weren't aware of it anyway. Over time, I have developed a passion for helping organizations stay protected, prevent attacks, or deal with them when and hopefully if they ever happen. Hopefully, they never happen to anybody; if they do, I want everyone to be prepared.We do not wait until the cyber stuff hits the fan before deciding to take action. Now, we'll make a plan. They're like, Ooh, what? What do we do in this situation? Let's get ahead of that. That's what I'm after. Let's help organizations be protected and respond better when something does happen.Lisa Ryan: Yeah, and it's scary stuff with all the ransomware and everything else that you're, I've had friends that have gone through that and without proper backup or thankfully they had outside backup, it didn't cost them as much time or money as it could have, but it was a pain to deal with. So, what are some common cybersecurity threats you see in manufacturing?James Fair: We see some similarities across all industries, but mainly manufacturing is, first of all, the common one, ransomware, right? As you mentioned, I want to caution your listeners for organizations and home users; please have backups. You can recover from about anything: fire, flood, theft, ransomware if you have good backups. And I've had tough conversations with people to say, Hey, this lady called me up, just, it was awful. She said, my grandmother passed away last month, and I have all the pictures of her, and they're on my computer, and now there's this ransom note on my computer.What should I do? And that is not a conversation I ever want to have with anybody. Please make sure you're backing up. I don't care what product you use; I'm not selling anything, but please ensure you're backing up your home machines and organizations. Okay, back to your original question.Lisa Ryan: Since we're talking about that, what do you think of cloud backup? I've been using Carbonite for years, but is there something about it going into the cloud, like a product like Carbonite, or should it be a physical backup as well? Or is there? It doesn't matter. Like, where does that fall for? Yeah, home and business.James Fair: The cloud is perfectly acceptable for home and always works. Business may be different in that you may need to recover the data quickly or a lot of data very quickly. And if it's all in the cloud, you have to download it.What's your internet speed like? Because now the rate at which you can recover is based on your internet speeds. We want to have that conversation with each business or organization to see how long they can deal with an outage; let's say ransomware hits, and everything's cleaned up.Now, we're doing the recovery process. How long can they take? Can we prioritize files first? It depends; it is not a great answer. But it depends on the organization that we're working with. Whether they can do both in many cases for larger organizations, we certainly encourage both.Have a copy locally that you can recover quickly. Have a copy on the cloud in case someone gets ahold attackers get ahold of that backup. We worked with one organization that got hit by ransomware, and the attackers had gone in and formatted the hard drives they used for backups. Like they wanted to make sure they could not recover from them.Remember, when attackers are going after organizations, particularly larger ones, they're going to do everything they can to ensure that you cannot recover from that, including one thing we haven't mentioned yet: an exfiltration of data. Nowadays, we're seeing a lot of this: I'm also going to steal your HR data or intellectual property.So, when I come to you and say, Hey, will you pay this ransom? And you say, Nope, I got good backups. I'll go okay, but I have this information. You don't; you do not want to release it to the public. Now, that's being held over people's heads as well.Lisa Ryan: What is X infiltration? What? What is that term?James Fair: I'm sorry—x filtration of data, meaning, okay. I'm going to take information on your servers that you don't want out there in the public, and I will grab that first. Then I will say, Hey, I will sell this unless you pay me.Lisa Ryan: Oh, wow. Yeah. Is there honor among thieves? When you pay the ransomware, will you get your data back, and then you're going to fix it, or will they keep coming after you? That's why it's such a crooked business.James Fair: It is. Yeah. And how do you have any trust in here? To give it a no, I don't want to put a positive spin on this. There is nothing positive about this, however. The attackers want credibility because if, for any reason, you believed that they would not come through on their side of it, people would stop paying.So, they have a vested interest in proving that they will recover your files. Now, I've only done this twice, but in my experience, two times at least. Yes, they got almost all the files back. A couple of corrupted ones couldn't be recovered, but in general, yes. If you pay, you get the files back. Statistically, I've heard something closer to 80% of the time. But in my experience, I'm two for two. Yeah, because the attackers have a vested interest in ensuring their reputation stays good; otherwise, no one would pay these ransoms, and they would no longer be in business.Lisa Ryan: When I also think about phishing, when the CEO is going out of town, and supposedly that person calls the secretary or sends them an email, Hey, I need this kind of cash. And they don't even think, because it's oh no, the CEO's calling me. How would you educate your staff? Because the phishing emails are getting better than Holy cow. I always check the return address and email address to ensure it's something instead of XYZ@GmT@yahoo.com or something.James Fair: Yeah. That is, that is a great question. The most effective technique we see is doing an internal phishing campaign. Some organizations like that feel "big brother" to attack our own people. But I have a different perspective. It's meant to raise awareness. It's intended to get people to look at the reply email because we are humans first. We make mistakes.We get busy. We respond emotionally before we respond logically. If you've ever been cut off in traffic, you may have experienced this. That's what the attackers are leveraging. All these great tools that we put in place, the anti-ransomware, the antivirus, firewalls, everything else, are programmatic, and they're much more challenging to get what you want.But humans, conversely, can manipulate them to some degree. Internal phishing campaigns to raise awareness are probably the most effective tool. And again, it's not meant to get someone; it's meant to look like, hey, here's a quick training for you. In five minutes, you'll know how to quickly check to ensure you're not clicking on something you don't want to.And you'd rather have us, the white hat folks, doing it than find out that someone sent credentials out that they shouldn't have via phishing email.Lisa Ryan: So do they know if management hires a company like you to white hats to send the phishing emails, or do employees know that they may be coming, or do they have training before and then, afterward, to see how much they learn? How, what does that look like?James Fair: Some organizations will dictate what that is for us. Our engagement looks like a very, and yes, they will come to us saying, hey, we have been phished before. We don't want it to happen again. What should we do? And we proffer this suggestion, and they buy off on it.Then we'll do a very easy-to-catch one. Very few people may get caught in that first one to create a baseline that we can do more difficult ones to see how we're improving, where we're, maybe there's a particular group or a few members who need more training than others.And then maybe we come in and do an hour-long security awareness training. I do a lot of those. I'll go into an organization and spend an hour talking about what we're seeing out in the wild. Best practices for security, those kinds of things. These days, you need all those great security and IT tools in place, but you've also had to train the users because we are humans, make mistakes, and are busy.Lisa Ryan: Yeah. On your list of topics here, ransomware was one of them, but you also said breaches through third parties. Is that the same as ransomware, or what would that mean?James Fair: If you consider, I don't know if you recall the target breach from long ago. Target wasn't directly attacked. Someone got in through their HVAC system. The H V A C folks had put a computer in their network that they could connect to do work on the system, which unfortunately had been connected to the rest of the network's backbone. The attackers could break into that H V A C system and then into the rest of the network.So, was that a direct attack on Target? No, not necessarily. It was through a third party. We want to ensure we're careful about engaging with third parties and that they have the proper security tools in place. Because you may have all the best ones in the world, but if the person you're working with doesn't, that can be a challenge.So it's not about us having them; it's also about the people we work with, having those in place.Lisa Ryan: You think about how interconnected everything in manufacturing is with the H V A sys C systems, the production lines, accounting, HR, finance, and everything woven together. So yeah, that would be quite the danger.James Fair: Yeah, it's a challenge. Best practices, and I don't want to get too technical here, is to segment those pieces off that you can't talk to each other except by. Pre-designed paths that any new path can't suddenly show up and start connecting through there.But I want to touch on something because if there's a relevant story, that applies here quite a bit. It was a manufacturing company. They were working with a large vendor of theirs, and there was an email exchange going back and forth between someone in finance and on both sides. And no one knew that the vendor side's email had been infiltrated.Now, many times, we think, all right, someone gets ahold of my credentials, they're going to jump in and start doing stuff immediately. But we've found that's not the case. Often, we see it hanging out; maybe we'll call it. They're watching, seeing what's going on. They're learning; they see who you talk to, who speaks to you, who you report to, and who reports to you.Who are you doing business with? What kind of language do you use? What's your signature? They're learning as we go. They stayed in the system for, we do not know how long because it was into somebody else's organization. This email transaction went back and forth, and they finally agreed to a $150,000 invoice.Immediately, the attackers jumped in and did a reply to all. They had all the previous email transactions in the email, and they said, Here's the link to pay the $150,000 and the email domain, as they got even trickier. You caught that. It was not the actual domain it was coming from. They got tricky.They bought a domain; they figured it was worth trying. The company had a W in the name. They bought a domain with two Vs. Right next to each other. It looked like a W if your brain wasn't paying attention, and unfortunately, someone clicked the link and paid $150,000; that company was out 150,000 and still owed the vendor $150,000.Wow. Phishing is a big deal, and account compromises are a big deal these days; we must watch out. I cannot stress enough the value, and it's not a hundred percent; it's not a silver bullet. Nothing is, but the value of multifactor authentication or two-factor authentication or MFA or, however, you want to call it, having some additional level besides your login and password that you have to enter, that's a huge difference in security for a very minimal impact in efficiency for people.Lisa Ryan: Wow. And I think about two, and this isn't totally with manufacturing because you do have to be at the plant, obviously, but there's still a lot of people working from home. My husband works for a manufacturer but is in accounting; he gets to work from home a couple of days a week. When you look at that rise in remote work and all the interconnected supply chains, What are some things that manufacturers can do to ensure that the remote work isn't potentially causing any problems?James Fair: Yeah, the organization is mature enough. We can start looking at some sophisticated tools. For instance, internally, we use a product from Microsoft called Intune. Intune is designed for a remote workforce, allowing us to set the same parameters. On devices that we would if they were in the office.So it has to have a screen timeout, and it has to have these specific password parameters, and it has to, it has to have antivirus. We can list a whole series of things a computer must adhere to before being allowed to connect and access company data. I encourage people to look at ways to lock down those devices only to have access if certain criteria are being met.Lisa Ryan: And then we're also looking at things like, you want to be efficient, but you also want to be safe. How would manufacturers balance the productivity they need to make money and the cybersecurity that keeps all their efforts safe?James Fair: That is a great question, and as much as it pains me to say it, security and ease of use tend to be at opposite ends of the spectrum.The most secure computer in the world is the one unplugged, sitting in the middle of the room. It's not very effective that way. And the easiest one to use is the one that doesn't require a password, but we want to be somewhere in between, right? It is about finding a good balancing act.The idea is for a security team to come in and say, you have to do this and this and make your work difficult. That's not the idea. That's never what, certainly what we want to present, right? We want to come in and add some security that works with the business model and the businesspeople.And yeah, we'll add a little bit of MFA, right? We will add a bit of overhead to what we're doing in return for a lot of return insecurity nowadays. We want to base everything on risk. A lot of organizations are playing whack-a-mole, whatever's in the news.That's what they're working on that day to try to block it from happening. They're playing whack-a-mole all the time. And while what they're doing is busy working, it's progressing, and they're making the environment more secure. We want to encourage people to consider the most significant risk to the organization.So, let's make a spreadsheet. We call it a risk register. Let's make a spreadsheet and list all the things we can think of. Other people can think of imaginary scenarios. Who knew we were going to have a nationwide epidemic, right? But list all these things that could occur, their likelihood, and how significant the impact is if it does happen. And then, based on that, let's give it a risk factor. Then let's sort by the risk. And we start working on the things that are the highest risk to the organization first. And we're not playing that whack-a-mole with our time.Lisa Ryan: Wow. That's something. It's funny when you talked about passwords; I don't think a day goes by that I do not utter the sentence. I hate passwords because I forget them all the time. I use one of those password keepers, but it only has some. Yeah. Right, there is that. That maintains that security and does not frustrate your employees.James Fair: Better solutions are coming, and better tech is coming. If you think of it on your laptop, the windows, hello. You open it up; it recognizes your face and logs you in. You didn't have to touch a thing, didn't have to our password, right? Phones are the same thing. Passwordless tech is coming more and more. Hopefully, that's a pain that will soon be a thing of the past for you.Lisa Ryan: And the funny thing is because I like crime shows, I think about the number of where they have the criminal, and they're trying to get into his phone, and they hold the phone up to his face and unlock it.James Fair: Exactly. I thought the same thing. Why do you put a ping on it? Otherwise, put our finger on it, right? Cut your finger off. In the worst case, this is horrible. That's a possibility.Lisa Ryan: Exactly. And it wouldn't be on television if it didn't happen at some point. Yeah. I know that you've worked with a lot of these different cases; what would be, and of course, you're not going into the minute details of it, but what would be a real-world case where you worked with a manufacturer and maybe this is a tale to warn what, what could happen if they're not careful?James Fair: Yeah. We worked with 500 users. The organization here in Utah that had been hit by ransomware multiple times. And they brought us on, unfortunately, before we could get everything solidified. They got hit one more time. It was through one of...

Sep 4, 2023 • 30min

Maximizing ROI in Manufacturing: The Hidden Opportunity of R&D Tax Credits with Casey Barka

Aug 21, 2023 • 28min

Felt Marketing for Manufacturers: Uncomplicating Success in the Manufacturing World with Allison DeFord

Connect with Allison DeFord:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/allisondeford/Email: allison@feltmarketing.comLisa Ryan: Hey, it's Lisa Ryan. Welcome to the Manufacturer's Network podcast. I'm excited to introduce our guest today, Allison DeFord. Allison is the founder and trailblazer at felt marketing for manufacturers, and also an expert on the manufacturing MA Masters platform and the overly caffeinated host of the Manufacturing Masters podcast.She lives to rid the manufacturing world of the web. We syndrome and guide manufacturers to being seen, heard, and felt by their ideal customers. Allison, welcome to the show.Allison DeFord is Excited to be here. Thank you for having me.Lisa Ryan: Share a little about your background and what led you to do what you're doing with manufacturers.Allison DeFord, it's mostly the fact that they are makers, and that's always fascinated me. They make something from nothing. And for me, it's the people, the stories. Many companies we work with, granddad or grandma, bootstrapped had two nickels rubbed together, but they solved a problem.They created something that didn't exist to solve a problem. And I think the coolest thing about manufacturing is making something from nothing again. And I love its technology side and its evolution over the years. It used to be considered blue-collar, grungy, dark, whatever. It's the complete opposite today. And I just find that very exciting, watching the transformation, and yeah, I live to help people communicate better, and that's the reason that we are called Felt. The most beloved and successful manufacturers are not just seen and heard.But they're felt and connected to the heart of their customers, and that's not an easy task. And we're good at helping them do that, especially small to mid-size manufacturers. That's just my absolute favorite to work with.Lisa Ryan: Yeah. Awesome. And it reminds me of when I was in the welding industry, and it was literally at that time it was everything your mother ever warned you about the same thing, dark, dirty, dangerous.You'd walk in; everything was gross. Now I walk into these plants, and they're bright, shiny, and automated, and as you said, the technology is just amazing, and you start bringing in robots. It's also a recruiting tool because a candidate is walking in. They're like, that's the coolest thing ever. I want to work on that.Allison DeFord And good point, too, because there's all that talk of the robots taking our jobs. No. They're there to take over the repetitive stuff so that you can elevate the talented people that work with you.Yeah. Yeah. And when I've had people on the line on the show talking about automation, a good place to start I've found they have found is, what is the task your employees hate doing the most?And automate that because, again, you're showing them that you're listening to them and you're giving them other things to do that is a better use of their talent than whatever that manual labor task that a robot could do easier and cheaper and not call in sick. .if you could be marketing for any industry, why did you, why else did you choose manufacturing?Lisa Ryan: Why do you specialize in that?Allison DeFord We looked at this model years ago with our own business. We're the test dummy; I don't serve you something I haven't tried myself. And we figured out that distributors, for example, are looking to the manufacturer. For the marketing literature and the support and training, the dealers are looking to the manufacturer, and we thought, why would we want to work with anybody else?But the main, the maker everybody's looking to for the marketing support, that help, and that training. It just made sense to support them; the manufacturer is like that foundational person or foundational component, and it's the backbone of this country. I get excited about that.Lisa Ryan: Oh yeah. If you just look around, you. Somebody has made everything that we're looking at. Yep. Oh. I always joke with my friends that if I'm speaking at a weird, if there's a weird association, chances are I'm speaking to it because there are associations for everything. It is the coolest thing to be around makers passionate about things nobody else thinks about.Allison DeFord: Yes. Until they have to replace them or they break. Lisa Ryan: So I have to ask you, what is the We Syndrome, and how is it hurting manufacturers?Allison DeFord: If you look at most manufacturers' websites, let's say you do the five-second speed test. How many times do they use the word we?Look at their social media posts. How many times are they talking about themselves? And what I have had great success doing is helping manufacturers overcome this. And again, you and I have discussed here some things you can do to help yourself that don't cost any money or a lot of money.This is one of them. Flip the script and address. The viewer address, the prospective customer, or the customer who's coming back to your website or looking at your social media feed, you need to lead with them, not you. And I have this little story that I've shared a million times, and people are probably tired of hearing about it, but I found this image years ago a stock photo. It's this little boy, and he's staring at his navel, and he's like squeezing it together, like making it talk. And he's just fascinated with his navel. And to me, that's the Wewe syndrome. I grew up with cousins. I grew up in Indiana, and many boy cousins ran around with their shirts off, and I couldn't; I was a little jealous.Because it was humid as you know what, And they were just fascinated. They were just fascinated with their own navel and thought I was hilarious. And I, that's what I see companies doing. I've been guilty of it myself. Again, I'm not pointing fingers; three are always pointing back at you.It's to flip the script once and for all and show your prospective buyer or your current customer. This is what's in it for you. This is why you should buy this, and this is why you should buy it from us. This is how it will transform some part of your life or business. Flipping the script on the wee is, yeah, it's imperative, and it doesn't take a lot of effort.Lisa Ryan: No. Just switching those to use. And make a huge difference. It reminds me of my own marketing material that I, it's the same kind of thing, but I called it doing eye surgery, and that you go through and remove every time, I say I love that eye. Are you doing we surgery? Yes. But it's important.When it comes to marketing, it's not something that, You think a lot about when you are a manufacturer that you know, I make this stuff, people are going to come to me. How are you? What are the areas that you focus on when it comes to working with your clients in their marketing efforts?Allison DeFord: The brand foundation is number one. I always say marketing happens from the inside out, right? Or from the top. We talk about shit rolls downhill. Yeah. I find that most small to mid-size manufacturers I encounter don't have a compelling, unique value proposition.They're not leading with what's the promise? What's the thing that makes you different? Why should I care? What's in it for me? They're missing that the unique value proposition is key. How do you get to that? I take a look at who are your audience personas. Who, what do they look like?We don't have that. We have it here, but we don't have it in A P D F, or we've never put it on paper. It's imperative to understand who you're marketing for and on behalf of, not at. The major way we are different is that we're not trained to help you interrupt. We convince.It's connecting to the heart of your ideal customer. Because people don't make decisions rationally. 90% of the time, they make decisions based on emotion. Why not connect on an emotional level that's imperative? It's that brand foundation stuff that's usually missing.Also, they are usually missing a brand personality and a brand voice. I use Target as an example, even though they're a retailer. We can learn a lot from B2C. You see a commercial come on. Or maybe a radio spot or whatever; it's targeted before they even show you the bullseye logo at the end because there's a voice, there's a tone - same thing with brands like Yeti Gerber Knives. I could go on forever. But those are the ones that are memorable because they have, they're distinct, and they mean something to you. And then a strategy. Most manufacturers are missing a cohesive and not like some 80-page document that they're never going to follow, but create a holistic system as I think of the Hoberman sphere, and when you open it up, it's, and it's all connected.So how is your messaging connected? How is it connecting? Is it consistent? Is it relevant? And are you leading with what's in it for them? You have to help people self-serve because they're what, 80, excuse me, percent through the buying cycle before they ever pick up the phone to call you. And if they're millennials or younger, they don't want to pick up the phone, right?They don't want a salesperson to call them ever. They want to do it all digitally, and they want it to feel. Easy. Helping people overcome a lack of content, like we don't know what to talk about, is what we help you figure out. How often should we do it? Where should we do it? Do we have to be on every social media platform?No, you do not, but be where your people are. That's the whole ticket. It's breaking it down and dispelling the myths. Most manufacturers feel overwhelmed with marketing at this point, and I can see why. It's easy. It's easy to do, right? There's much more, and it's changing quickly.So it's like, where do I start? What do I don't know what to do? Guiding them. And what you're guiding, what appeared to me is that it is bringing back the passion for why you started your business. As far as what is that, you talked a couple of times about the promise in your unique value proposition, but why did you even start your company in your garage 20 years ago?What is it that you knew you could do better than anyone else? What is it that you are passionate about? How are you different? And I think if we just even go back to the very foundation. Of, the, of why we even started our business because it wasn't to make cheap stuff that well, we're a penny cheaper than anybody else, and that's why I started my business.There's no passion in that. And we can start to build our branding, or you can also help them build their branding by taking them back to the essence of what makes them unique from every other maker out there. Yes, and I find that most manufacturers make the mistake of talking about what they do, and what they make instead of why they do it, which is what you just said, right?And that's people don't buy from you because of what you make. They buy from you because of why you do it. And what's in it for them? How does it? How does it empower them? How does it make their life easier? Nobody wants to buy a drill, but they do want to make a three-quarter hole, make a hole.Yep. Most manufacturers have such a unique story. Nobody else has, but they've bought into this idea that we need to tell people how long we've been in business, how many square feet of manufacturing floor space we have, our history the more we tell you about ourselves and the, the products that we make, the more compelling it's going to be.And it's not. But when you start from a place of difference, for example, one of our clients is a custom circuit board manufacturer. And when you look at his competitors, everybody's saying the same thing, right? There's a lot of; there's a lot of me too. There's a lot of wee. And we looked at their operation, their business. They have 20 employees.They're not doing gazillions of dollars a year yet, but they've been around for a long time. And I said, you know what you guys do better than anybody else. You uncomplicate something complicated. You uncomplicate circuit board assembly, and your team is down to earth, and there's just this human element with this technological, Piece that I said, that's what makes you guys different.And as soon as we flipped that, and we led with that on their website, I, he's had people ring him up, and we rebranded, changed their logo, and made it a lot more relevant today. And he's gotten many compliments. People are like, oh my gosh, I love what you're saying. I love this.It's speaking to people. Sometimes it's something as simple as you uncomplicate something. Another manufacturer we work with, your natural gift is that you guys make this part of the construction process easy. Your competitors are all big corporate; they're doing many other things.They make it hard. You guys make it easy at every turn, and they said is that unique enough? And they said it is. No one else is talking about it. It doesn't have to be complicated. That's the thing, it's usually right under your nose, and you're just too close to it to see it yourself.Lisa Ryan: And it can be something that everybody else is doing. Several years ago, one of the beer companies came out with a label that turned blue. If the beer was super cold, I'm sorry. Everybody's beer will be the same amount of cold.But because they thought ahead, to make theirs blue. Everybody started thinking that theirs must be colder, but that was because they had something different that nobody else was talking about. You find that one thing you just summed up beautifully that you can own.Speaking of providing services and benefits to manufacturers, I have been an expert on manufacturing masters. I know that is your baby and your passion. Why don't you tell us a little bit about what the Manufacturing Masters platform is and why it's valuable for manufacturers and reps?Allison DeFord: Great question. It's the baby of Darren Mitchell; I give him all the credit. Yeah, he's awesome. He is an entrepreneur; I call him Midas. Everything he touches turns to gold, and he's very down-to-earth. And he created this Netflix for manufacturers because of what he likes to call it.But instead of entertainment, it's education and best practices. And me and my company had the great pleasure of helping him name it and develop a brand, and we came up with the tagline, everything they never taught you in school. That's what you're going to find on this platform. And the cool thing about it, Is you're not being educated by just willy-nilly random people, right?These are up to 130 vetted, battle-tested, and trusted experts. I'm on there talking about marketing. You're on there as well. It's every possible subject that you can think of. And one of my favorite stories, Is Darren was in a room with a bunch of manufacturers, and he was, they were talking about this platform, and the one guy just he'd been real quiet, and he raised his hand.Darren said, yeah, what's up? He said I've been doing my job for 26 years, and until I watched the best practices about, I can't remember what the exact topic was until I watched those on this on manufacturing masters. I had no idea what best practices even looked like for my job, and now I do. He's God; I wish I would've had this years ago.And it was just; it's that kind of transformation that happens. And the cool thing is I also have the gift of working with MEPs and associations to bring this to their entire audience. And Darren has priced it in such a way because he fully. NPS and associations and their value is that when they bring this into their program and offer it to their people, not just one person gets to subscribe.Every person in that manufacturing company gets to subscribe for the same. It's all covered. It's incredible. He keeps opening it up. And I keep saying, wow, when I think you're being too generous, you get more generous. And he said that's the point I wanted to bring this to people like me.He owned a business for 26 years, 25 maybe. And he said A lot of times you feel alone. Yeah. You don't know all the stuff that you need to know. And if you can have this support system at your fingertips, It's on demand; it's short. He purposely made, and you know this, every video is like anywhere from two minutes to, some of mine were 20 minutes because I was one of the ones at the beginning, and he's we have to shorten this up.We have to make it the right size and easy to consume on your time. You can grab this nugget and put it into action.Lisa Ryan: Yeah. Most of mine are in the five to seven-minute range. But the interesting thing about the platform that you alluded to is that regarding people being vetted, it's like any sponsors do not pay Darren to be who I want to be, and I have my own channel on manufacturing masters.Allison DeFord: I felt very blessed that he found me because of my work and invited me to participate. But if I would've just found him and started prospecting and trying to sell him on why I would be such a great expert, there's no way he would've had me unless he did the full background.So that's what I like about it, is that it's real people. Real plants. It's not you don't have. I'm a professional speaker, but I am the exception versus the rule. And you're just getting real people sharing their stories about what they do. And as you said, you've seen people learning in those little snippets of information many times.You must have access to something that I could sit down with, I could watch a five-minute or a 10-minute video, get some great ideas that I can put into practice, and you know what? And if it's not right for me, maybe it's not right this time, and I go on to another expert because I have 139 more people I can watch.And when you were on the Manufacturing Masters podcast, you brought up an excellent point, and I think it segues beautifully with this or ties in, I should say. You said it's not 2019 anymore. We can never return, so this platform is incredibly important and relevant today.Number one, everybody's zoomed out at this point, right? And we're working differently than before, consuming much information, news, and social media feeds. It's overwhelming to me, frankly. It's a.when you have many options. It has to be. Our attention spans are, have shortened tremendously.So that's why I think it was brilliant on his part to make these all very short to the point; he had zero fluff. Nobody's trying to sell you anything, right? It's, let's jump into this topic and

Aug 7, 2023 • 26min

Breaking the Stigma: Why Autistic Workers Make Great Employees in Manufacturing with Peter Mann

Connect with Peter MannLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/peter-mann/Lisa Ryan: Hey, it's Lisa Ryan. Welcome to the Manufacturer's Network podcast. I'm excited to introduce our guest today, Peter Mann. Peter Mann is the CEO & Founder of Virginia-based Oransi, a leading air purification company known for its efficient, intuitive, and reliable products for consumers, schools, organizations, and businesses. He is the Chair of the Association of Home Appliance Manufacturers' Air Cleaner Council. Peter is late diagnosed autistic and now advocates for autism awareness in the workplace. Peter, welcome to the show.Peter Mann: Yeah, thanks, Lisa. I am excited to be here.Lisa Ryan: share a little about your background and what led you to do what you're doing with Oransi.Peter Mann: Sure. Yeah. I grew up in Syracuse, New York, and attended college in Rochester nearby. I didn't know what I wanted to do. So I took a Navy ROTC scholarship which effectively paid for my college. Then I was in the Navy for four years, which was interesting and unexpected since the first Gulf War started. We got sent over to the Middle East and didn't anticipate that.After four years, I got out; I got a job at a company called Tech Data in Clearwater, Florida. They're a large computer distributor. I was there for seven years. It was exciting because this was in the nineties, was the computer industry started to take off. We went from Fortune 500 to Fortune 100, and I moved up from an individual contributor to director of Marketing Operations.In 2000, Dell recruited me. I moved to Austin, Texas, and did some development work for dell.com, and then I moved to a marketing role where I was a marketing leader with the Dell printer launch, managed pricing strategy, and a few other things. That's when the.com bubble burst.I was at Dell for about three years, which pushed me to start something on my own. So I co-founded an e-commerce business with another guy in Austin. I sold my part in 2009 and used those proceeds to create Oransi, focusing on indoor air quality and, specifically, air purifiers. My interest in that was because my son suffered from asthma as a child. It was rough, especially in my younger years in elementary and middle school. So I've always been interested in trying to help him and others like him who suffered from respiratory issues.Lisa Ryan: It seems you do one thing, and suddenly, you join the military, and you're in the Gulf War. You go into the dot com industry, and the bubble bursts. You're on all these trends; air purification hits and a pandemic.Peter Mann: Yeah. Who knew? The pandemic was incredible because there was more demand in supply. What's been interesting is that many brands entered the market. It was more of a niche market before Covid; now, the market's gone back to more or less pre covid levels. But now there are two or three times as many brands as before. So it's going to be interesting. I would add that, during Covid, we merged with an electric motor company in Virginia that has a proprietary motor technology, which will allow us to restore manufacturing; that's where our focus is now.What's exciting about that is we can latch onto the next trend, electrification and moving away from fossil fuels now that we have this electric motor base. We're starting with air purifiers since that's what we know, but we could make anything with an electric motor in our facility. For me, that's pretty exciting since the air purifier market, as much as it is, it's painful to say, it's become more of a commodity since there are too many brands in the space for the market size currently.Lisa Ryan: You mentioned before the show that you were actively bringing this reshoring back from China to the United States because you can do that almost as cheaply as it was before with China. Talk a little about why that is happening and what restoring a business is like.Peter Mann: Yeah, I have to keep relearning this lesson because it always takes longer and costs more than you, you would think. From a cost standpoint, though, on the product, what we've realized is if you're buying components or raw materials, the cost is similar here versus in China; the difference is in labor. So we've been focused on how to take labor out of the manufacturing assembly of the products. Because if you can take the labor out and make it much more efficient, you can close the gap from a cost standpoint and may make it lower cost than you can from China.The other thing that's happening is these tariffs have been coming on, coming off. They're 25%, which is more significant than ocean freight. We got crazy expensive during Covid. So it's back to where it was pre covid. But that's another variable risk regarding sourcing from China in the longer term. We've talked to several companies, and there's interest in wanting to restore and not rely on manufacturing anything in China.Lisa Ryan: It sounds too that you're focusing on going from fossil fu fuels to more electricity and with that clean energy mission. Talk a little bit about that. Why is that important to you?Peter Mann: It's the right thing to do. It's the moment in time. I remember the nineties, and the computer industry was like that's all the momentum was. If you look at the government and where they're putting the funds in terms of chips, batteries, investments, several other efforts, and import tariffs. The focus is on how we make stuff here and how we make it here competitively. And you can fight it. But that's where all the momentum and the market's future are. Clean energy will be similar to what the computer industry was like in the nineties and early two-thousands.Lisa Ryan: I'd like to spend some time talking about your journey with autism. First, finding out, you said that you were late-stage diagnosed; what were some of the signs, first of all? Then I'd like to lead the conversation regarding potentially hiring workers with autism. We look at the fact that in the labor market, we need more people, particularly in manufacturing. We have a lot of people that can do a great job, but maybe due to fear or myths, or not knowing or not being educated as far as this group of people who may make great employees if you can share from diagnosis to what you've discovered and what you're sharing now.Peter Mann: This was something that figured out during Covid. My wife was watching a C B S morning show, and they did a profile on a woman that maybe worked for NASA, and she was describing her traits. It was a profile of her as an autistic person being successful in the workplace. When she told me her traits, it was exactly how I was. My wife watched it. She's, oh my gosh, you need to watch this. If I had gone back a couple of weeks before that, we would have had a conversation where she was upset about something that poured out her heart to me. I wasn't feeling great, and I had no response.It went from her being upset to What was wrong with you? You don't have human emotions. I have no words, as I had, my brain was empty, and you know, when she saw the C B S Morning show, you're like, oh, that explains a lot, okay. Yeah. I watched it, and I'm like, holy cow. That's right, I went online and took an online screening tool. What's pretty interesting is that one of the leading authorities in doing these kinds of assessments or research into autism is the disguise, Simon Baron Cohen. He's a cousin to Sasha Baron Cohen. He's a Cambridge professor anyways; he has these 50 questions, and in the assessment, you get a score from zero to 50. Most people score a 16, in the 18 kinds of range; autistic folks tend to score above 30. I took it, and I scored 43 out of 50. Then I took several others, and they were all consistent. I'm like, holy cow, I want to. Get an official diagnosis. I didn't want to be like, feel like a poser, like I was then. I didn't know I was autistic, and I didn't even know a lot about autism.I started calling the local autistic clinics or centers in this area. They're all geared towards children; then there's one. I live right by Virginia Tech, and there's one that is part of the campus, and they could do it, but they wouldn't be able to see me for a year and a half. I eventually found someone that did it via telehealth, and she's in Oregon. She did it because her husband was autistic, and she wanted to provide the service to other autistic folks, particularly underdiagnosed women. I worked with her for some months and officially got the diagnosis. Since then, I've been reading a lot and educating myself on what autism is. Even if it's not what most people think, it's a different way of thinking, perceiving, and communicating.Some co-occurring conditions may or may not be present, such as speech, cognition, A D H D, and a whole slew of other things. So there's essential autism, and then there are co-occurring conditions, which most people think of a lot of co-occurring conditions when they think of autism. That's not the core of what autism is. But you may have those conditions as well.Lisa Ryan: For somebody unfamiliar with it, what would be a good definition or examples or something they may need to know a little bit more about, be comfortable with what it is. Because we all have our ideas of what we think it is, but according to you, it's probably a lot different than what we believe.Peter Mann: A lot of it is having awareness for what's going on with the autistic person. It's that our brains are wired differently. I don't view it as it's been stigmatized as a defective person. It's more like a left-handed versus right-handed person. Your brain works differently. It's not that it's a bad thing. It's different than the way 98% of the people are wired. You're in the; you're in the 2% group. That routine is essential. But you have a routine because it helps you manage anxiety. People need to stick to routines to be simple. It's a way of being your best self.Another one that is widely prevalent with not understood is sensory sensitivity. We can discover disabling if you think of the senses, which most people find annoying. It's a level of intensity. If I go into a loud restaurant, I can hear all and none of the conversations. They're all like, if you think of Charlie Brown's teacher went to the wah wah wah. It's like they turned the volume up what allowed restaurants like me, and it becomes exhausting over a while of trying to hear conversations.It's like when you plug all the appliances in and blow the circuit breaker, and nothing's working, then why isn't Peter joining in the conversation? And you have no idea how hard this is in this situation. The environment drives a lot of it. When I talk to other people, they're like, nobody likes that. We speak louder it's because I don't have that natural ability. There are certain filters that people have that you could filter out, like other tables that are talking and listening to the person at your table.I don't have all those filters. I'm hearing our table's conversation two tables over, and they're all; it's like having people talking over each other is what it's like. It's exhausting. Do you tend not to put yourself in those situations to cope? That's another difference.The other thing I have, which is helpful in the workplace, is hyper-focus; they call it a state of flow. I can, get focused on something, block out everything around me, and have all these positive chemicals going. That's served me well in the workplace because I can sit for hours on something. I know sitting for that long is not healthy, but I can get completely lost in something and shift to a higher gear that I intuitively know most people don't have.Lisa Ryan: When you're in a loud restaurant, all the words are there, and you hear everything. But when you're in flow, you hear nothing because you're focused. Is that something that you can turn on and turn off? How do you get to flow at work and not in a restaurant?Peter Mann: Because at work, it's something, it's a singular thing that I'm interested in. I can focus on it and then, naturally, block everything out. The problem is if somebody comes and knocks on my door and says something, it's jarring. To come out of that state is a sleep state, but it's like you're being startled.When that happens and you can't, like in a restaurant, I can't get in a state of flow. Because I walk in, and it's woah. I can see the volume going up, and it's overwhelming. I've talked to people, and they're like, can't you get used to it? Or can't you and I'm like, to me, it's like touching a hot stove. It doesn't matter how often you feel it; it will burn. It's like there's no way around that. There's nothing anyone can do to help me in that situation other than not get into that situation. Don't touch the hot stove. My hand's not ever going to get used to it.Lisa Ryan: From a manufacturing standpoint, because on one side, some manufacturing plants are loud, and things are going on, you could get in that routine. Where are good jobs? If you're thinking of a manufacturer, in your experience in manufacturing, where would be some good places for manufacturers to consider hiring people with your skillset?Peter Mann: I guess what I would add is, I'm one person, and I described my experience, but it's like when they say autism, there's a massive spectrum of abilities. Some people have ADHD that I find are super creative in design—coming up with new things. Others have hyperfocus, but they can get distracted a little bit. Like me, I don't have a d c at all. I'm like all in on focus. So for me, it's like a process. If you look at Silicon Valley, they have a high percentage of autistic folks because computer programming is, you dialed in on the computer coding, and you get lost in that.You can have someone on the assembly line that's doing specific tasks. You can get focused. I can do things other people find boring if I'm interested. That's the key. It is an engineering, but if you look at the arts, creative people like David Byrne from Talking Heads are pretty open about being autistic.And it's different from the engineering computer traditional guy like I'm a math person. I'm like an autistic person. But other folks have different talents. It spans almost any job accounting. There isn't a limit to what folks can do. The challenge is most autistic people can't get through the interview process because if you come in, you don't make eye contact. It's like, this person's not trustworthy, or you get asked a question you have yet to think of. So we tend to be more bottom-up thinkers versus most people being top-down thinkers.When you ask a question, if it's something we haven't thought of before, we're going through all these options and details, then it's there can be like, I do this myself with some people, like an awkward pause because I'm thinking through like, how do I best answer that? And the other people, are you there?I get inward and have a lot going on internally, but my face shows nothing, and in an interview, it does. It could translate better. You're like, this guy's or girl is weird. I can't see them being part of our team, and it's unfortunate because these are some of the most like, hardworking, loyal people desperate to work. It's like the Ph.D. that's working at minimum wage. The unemployment numbers are crazy high, up to 80%. I don't know what the actual number is, but most autistic folks are average to above-average intelligence. The other thing is, I'm Gen X and grew up in the seventies and eighties.When I was in elementary school, one in 2,500 was diagnosed as being autistic. Now it's more than 2% more than as high as one in 36. It's not like autistic people didn't exist before; we weren't diagnosed. Unless you have very high support needs, anyone that is a later millennial will be late diagnosed autistic. Almost none of us were diagnosed. You think of how many hundreds of millions have gone through the public school system, trying to get jobs or being diagnosed with other things and not understanding that you're autistic. I don't think there's anything wrong with anyone that's autistic or different. It's, it's when you have most people one way, and it's this is the right way to be, and then you have a small group of people who are a different way. It's, oh no, you're. Yeah, you guys are wrong.Lisa Ryan: When it comes to workplace culture because again, there are many interesting points because we want people to get along, and we have this, this friendship, this relationship building, which is difficult for people who are on the spectrum because of what you said about not knowing how to get to those emotions or asking the question, having to spend more time processing questions that you've ever that you haven't heard before.One of my side hustles is teaching HR law on virtual programs about the ADA; in the interview process, it's not like you can have that conversation; do you have a disability? Because, of course, that would go against ADA. How could a manufacturer craft an interview? Is it sending out the questions before time? Is it give some ideas because, as you said, if I have somebody come in and I'm interviewing, and I don't know about autism, and you're not making eye contact, and you're staring off into space when I'm asking questions, I'm going to do that.Hey, this guy's going to be a bad fit. But if I have an awareness of that. He may, he or me, she may be an excellent employee and can do exactly what I want them to do. So we have to not only have an awareness from my standpoint but to share this with the rest of the people so that we can make those I don't even want to use the word accommodations, but that level of understanding that because this person is different doesn't mean that he's any less than anybody else on there.Peter Mann: Yeah, I would say, you know this, I don't know who said this, but I agree with it, is that autistic folks are more like the canary and the coal mine, and changes that you make to the benefit of the autistic person helps everyone if you're doing an interview what I've seen, which when I've talked with autistic people, they're blown away by, this is It's about setting expectations and having an understanding for what to expect.If there's an interview, give someone a document saying this is where you go. This is what time, this is who you're meeting, this is who they are, this is what you wear. These are the questions we're going to ask you. This is how your day will go for two hours. So someone can mentally prepare for that and see the questions relevant to the job they can think through, like, how do I best answer this? Because the person doing the interview wants to do the best job, but it's, The interview process is primarily set up for social extroverts, which is traditional, right?There's this invisible hierarchy. Autistic folks tend to be at the bottom of the social order. This levels the playing field. If you go to a meeting or something and you're like, this is the agenda or a meeting, and this is what to expect.For me, elementary school was a nightmare. Then when I got to sixth grade, I had a schedule. I knew where...

May 22, 2023 • 29min

Sustainability and Manufacturing: How New Technologies Can Help Save the Planet with Renan Devillieres

Connect with Renan DevillieresWebsite: https://www.oss.ventures/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/renan-devillieres/Lisa Ryan: Hey, it's Lisa Ryan. Welcome to the Manufacturer's Network Podcast. Our guest today is Renan Devillieres. Renan is the visionary Founder and CEO of OSS Ventures, who is dedicated to shaping the future of the manufacturing sector through startups and innovative solutions. With substantial operations, SaaS, and venture capital background, Renan is an inspiring leader committed to driving sustainability and fostering adaptability in the ever-evolving industrial landscape. Renan, welcome to the show.Renan Devillieres: Thank you for having me.Lisa Ryan: Please share your background and what led you to do what you're doing with OSS Ventures.Renan Devillieres: Sure. I'm 36, and I started my career as an operations guy. I was working in factories. I was a factory director and supply chain director. Then, I became the assistant director of Richmond Co., a luxury company. And I got to see the incredible world that produces physical things, and I loved it. And then, as I was always a geek, I started coding something in my bedroom and ended up creating a good tech company, leaving my job and ending up in San Francisco, setting my startup to Google, and having a lot of traction there.I discovered the world of tech. And when I sold my company and my shares in the company, I told myself the World of Tech is just incredible. I love operations. Let's bring those two worlds together. And as I had a bit of money, I chose the investor slash venture builder path.What we do at O US Ventures has been three years and a half. We either create or invest in startups technological startups that are exclusively helping the physical world, operations, retail, and those kinds of things. So we've been doing that for three years and a half. We are based in Paris, but we are all around the world. We created 15 companies. We live in a little over 1000 factories worldwide, and 350 people are working for all those awesome tech solutions for the manufacturing world.Lisa Ryan: You started by saying that you were 36 years old, and I know that in manufacturing, changing the conversation to attract younger people to it. What originally made you consider manufacturing an option and something you became passionate about?Renan Devillieres: It's a funny story. I come from a background where people need to learn what even a company is. And I was good at math. So I did the math, then opened Google, and I put a company most well-known for being good at doing business, and the number one result was McKinsey Company. So I applied to McKinsey Company, not knowing what it was, and I was recruited there. I'm very grateful because they taught me a lot about business. On my first day, they told us to choose orientations, and I ended up selecting operations because it sounded cool, and I wanted to do things with the physical world.I did not know what a factory was. I was just a fresh graduate knowing nothing, and I learned my job there. So the first time I went to a factory, I saw that incredibly complex web of people working and incredible speed-changing matter, and I said, okay, this is the dream. This is where I want to work for a lot of time because when you're a geek like me, and you like systems, and you're interested in those kinds of things, It's paradise to me.The two most interesting things you can think of, and work on are either a tech company or a factory because those two systems are incredibly complex, beautiful, and interesting.Lisa Ryan: It's nice to see with such an emphasis on tech, and I know we're going to be talking about AI and all of the new things that are coming into manufacturing, but just to be able to marry those two worlds. Because, again, it's changing that conversation to find people passionate about the physical world and the intricacies that go on with that. In your life, how do you see the future of manufacturing evolving? Particularly when looking at integrating new technologies and increasing automation in factories.Renan Devillieres: It's very interesting to see. I think manufacturing is just the result of two basic passes. First, what do people want, and what does society want? And the second is which technologies are available. And to those two questions, I answer very simply. People want a different social model. People do not want their products to be made by slaves in Bangladesh or China anymore. That has changed, and people would like to leave. Unbelievable planet. People want local things that are more respectful of the environment. Energy prices are high, everything. That's the forces.What is new in technology is that the steam engine and the electrical power automated everything manually and moving beats around. Now, we will automate everything repetitive and intellectual with computers and AI. And what I think is going to happen is that our production model, our factories will be different. They're going to be more local, more green, and more respect for the workers and more automation. So that's a big part of what operations are going to be. And there will be all new infrastructures, giga factories such as massive infrastructure models with billions and billions of capital.It's going to be taking all over manufacturing. And let me take two examples. When I was in California, I went to visit Tesla Freeman. In Tesla Freeman, you have nerds younger than me running around wearing t-shirts and programming machines with their Macintosh laptops. That is the future.Another glimpse of the future of manufacturing operations is a company that stopped sourcing in China. What they do is, as a customer, you pay every month, and you get clothes for your baby. And when your baby has grown, you give back the clothes, and they give you clothes of the right size. What they do is they repair all kinds of clothes, and it is very automated. It is very different. And they don't use materials anymore. They just repaired it. And it's very different as a system, but it's very green and profitable.Lisa Ryan: Wow, I never even heard of that. And we're going to talk a lot about startups and helping them scale, but if you have a legacy manufacturing plant doing things and all of this, you're speaking a foreign language to them; what do you mean? Mail ordering clothes, repairing them, and walking around in t-shirts and programming machines. So is there hope for legacy manufacturers, or is it best to start with a clean slate and have a startup?Renan Devillieres: Yes, there is hope, and I like to take an example, a very simple one: 30, 40 years ago, a little Japanese car company named Toyota invented a new way of organizing factories. They invented Lin, which was ridiculously different from everything everyone did then. Radically different, but it was 20 to 30 points better. And everybody started doing Lin. When you look at a high-level picture of what happens, it took 20 years. 25% of all the factories died because they were not competitive and could not transform themselves. But 75% made it on the other end. And with varying degrees of success, you can only go to a factory with a continuous improvement arm.And they do things, and they do daily meetings. It's going to be the same with tech. Tesla F is the new Toyota. That's the new blueprint, but there are 20 years in the future, and there is to, there is going to be a catch-up movement. It's going to take time. Some companies will die, but some will make it, and it will take time, not because of the tech but because of the people in the future.Lisa Ryan: Such a good point of just realizing that everything is changing and looking at asking questions that you may have never had to ask yourself before. Because business is changing, and as you said, there's going to be a certain percentage of those businesses that, if they don't change, will die.If they want to keep up that, then to explore when you're talking about your approach to identifying and supporting innovative manufacturing startups, you have the small company. So how do you help them scale?Renan Devillieres: We have a very particular method of doing that. First, you need to address a widely available pain point to scale. So I have a 20% team each week. My team visits three and four factories all over Europe, and they ask people like, what are your pain points? What needs to be sold? How much money do you have to solve it? Is it in your top three? And we only work on what we call a burning platform.Like burning hair issues, nice-to-haves are not candidates. That's the first part of the answer. The second part of the answer is that we don't invest in startups or create startups where implementation time is more than two weeks per factory. This rules out 90% of the startups that we are seeing.Of course, you can create a company with six-month or 12 months implementation cycles. Yes, can you scale That? It seems too hard for me. And we only invest in startups that are doing that. So the third thing that we do to help them scale is very simple. We created a platform, and that platform shares technical components to be able to connect to the top 15 ERPs in factories instantly.And that platform shares the contacts of all the innovation-friendly European factories and us. And when you enter the USS community as a startup, you get access to roughly 250 companies—accounting for 1000 factories already deployed on the SS network. And by combining those three factors, our startups achieve consistent 300-person growth year, the average in Repository.Lisa Ryan: I think the lesson that anybody listening to this show can take from you is going around and asking employees about their pain points and acting. On the most critical, those burning issues because there are many times that we think we know what the employees are doing, where they know their job better than we know their job.And when employees see that you're listening to them, there's a much better chance that they will be engaged and committed and help in the process. So true. You mentioned this several times regarding the importance of caring for the planet. What are some of the key strategies that companies can implement to become more environmentally responsible?Renan Devillieres: I can tell you what I've seen starting to get a lot of traction. It's an ongoing issue. Everybody's speaking about it. We'll see. It's a continuous development, but we've seen first improving processes and improving your footprints on the planet. A consistent thing we have seen is that leaders in being positive for the planet are leaders in performance. There is no anti-correlation. That's the first. The second thing that we have seen is that focusing on the value that you can bring to your customer and then trying to perform that value in a very lean way in terms of the effort and the materials, and the footprint that you have on the planet can lead to incredible results.Let me take an example. One of our customers is Michelin, the tire maker; I love it. I love them. I love all my clients, Michelin. They have a factory producing 40% fewer tires and making 40% more money. And they do that by putting a chip in the tire and selling kilometers or miles for you, us people, to their clients.And they say, I, this is a price per mile. You only pay for the miles that you do. By doing that, they can start improving the lifetime of the tire. They're incentivized. To do less and fewer tires, and they'll get more and more money by producing fewer and fewer tires. And their engineers started working not on improving processes to do more tires per hour, but more kilometers per euro, which is different because you're not optimizing for the same thing.It can help you optimize for the right thing, which is the value, not the object. And what we see a lot of shifts from optimizing for the objects you're producing, which is sub-efficient. You stop doing that, and you optimize the value you create for your clients. And you can reduce the items, increase the value, and take more money.Lisa Ryan: Yeah, that gets into that quality versus quantity conversation. And it's also; you're making fewer tires, you're going to have less waste because you're getting more kilometers/miles for each product sold. So what an interesting way of looking at the things we know are the right thing to do, but when you put dollars behind it, it makes a little bit easier conversation.Renan Devillieres: Of course. Let me take another example. We are working with some of the suppliers of Apple. Apple created the machine. The machine's name is Julia, and what is the machine doing? You can take any iPhone and put it in the machine, and the machine can take any iPhone apart, change components, and put them in little boxes. You can reuse those components for the next generation of iPhones. Their goal for the next generation of iPhones is to have at least 50% of all the value reused in the following phones. When you do that, you reuse the stress on the planets per iPhone and increase the dollars per iPhone.Lisa Ryan: Wow. And people feel better about buying iPhones because they know they are getting products made of 50% recycled material and have less of a negative impact on the planet.Renan Devillieres: Precisely. And for the listeners, if you want to put on YouTube, you put on YouTube Apple Machine, iPhones, and you'll get a video of the machine. It's incredible.Lisa Ryan: We spoke about a little bit, but what do you think about artificial intelligence and machine learning regarding the future of manufacturing? And if you still need to get there, how can companies prepare for these advancements in both?Renan Devillieres: artificial intelligence is both over-hyped and under-hyped. We are overhyping what it will do in the short term and under hyping what it'll do five to 10 years from now. Five to 10 years from now, I'm a former artificial intelligence researcher, and 30 to 40% of all intellectual jobs we're doing will be automated.By AI, if it's intellectual and it's repetitive, it can be automated that will happen. And for example, in manufacturing, and designing new parts, there is already a lot of generative AI and putting a new program in a robot. It's very repetitive. And there is already there is a Stanford startup that is coming from you. Just type a sentence, take the red thing, do a quarter rotation, and put it in the box, and the robot does it.This is going to happen for sure. And it'll take time. And you ask the question, as a manufacturer, what can I do for it? In the artificial intelligence age, your edge is your data and ability to implement fast. With the new technologies on those two fronts, manufacturers are historically bad. 70% of all the data in ERPs and systems are not usable for artificial intelligence because of the data structure, bad data, and because they need more data. As a manufacturer, having good data hygiene and having some nodes and data scientists is an excellent first step. And then the second, when you look, Tesla or SpaceX, or B Y D be your dream is the number one car, an electric car manufacturer in the world. It's a Chinese company. They have data scientists who change the production process every three or six months. Having agility helps you as a manufacturer use the new technologies because if you change your process every six years, then at best, you'll be three years outdated. When technology paces of change go from five to 10 years to one to two years, your frequency of changing your processes has to go down. You have to be more agile, and this is something that manufacturers have historically been bad ads. Let me take basics as an example.SpaceX is launching a new rocket every three to four months. And each rocket is a new version. Building upon the learnings of the last rocket today, no space company could have the path. The best space company's path was one to two years between each launch; they're bringing that down to freaking four months. The versioning of the cars is once every six months. And increasing the pace of change to embed those learnings and those new technologies is essential to surviving that next normal.Lisa Ryan: That is undoubtedly one of the significant challenges that are facing manufacturing today. What would you say would be other significant challenges that manufacturers are dealing with, and how do you think startups can help address these issues?Renan Devillieres: Number one, talent for sure, like number one. If you look at another vertical, another market, retail. Retail. When Amazon came, they were bad at the internet. They were bad at marketplaces. They were terrible at all—that new stuff. And there was a first wave where they said, ah, it's not going to happen. Denial manufacturers a lot of manufacturers are in denial right now. Still, in retail, after that, Amazon became dominant, and when Amazon became dominant, they morphed, and they had to hire talents from startups from the tech world.From those new companies to increase the pace of change, change the culture, and modify the systems. And in manufacturing today, for example, decathlon, an excellent sportswear brand, they are new. C e o comes from Google. Wow, it's a freaking manufacturing textile company. Steel is from that new layer of talent, bringing a new set of crypto technology processes; the pace will change the manufacturing world. But the challenge is getting them on board, retaining them, and giving them the keys to change the crypto. But that's going to happen out of all of this.Lisa Ryan: As we end our time together, what would be your best tip to a manufacturer listening today? And let's say that they are not necessarily a startup but want to make some of these changes. What would you advise?Renan Devillieres: A very simple thing. Get your hands dirty in one big issue that you have at your factory, and be open and say, okay, what if I could solve this with tech and start small, have big ambitions and scale fast for that problem, and then do one another, and then do another, and then do another and exponential change comes from rapid scaling of good local solutions, gone global.Lisa Ryan: And how do you work with your clients? How would somebody listening today know they should schedule a conversation with you? How can you help?Renan Devillieres: Two things that we do. The first thing is if any manufacturer in the world has an issue or something they want to talk about, they can book a call with someone from my team, and they will say either, look, we have our database, 100 manufacturers like you. They all had the same issue, and here is how they dealt with it.That's the first type, the second type of answer; we have more than thousands of...

May 15, 2023 • 28min

The Human Connection in Manufacturing: Bridging the Gap between Operations and Supply Chain Management with Tom Pierce

Connect with Tom Pierce:Email: Tom@i2s.usWebsite: https://i2s.us/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tom-pierce-6799b356/Lisa Ryan: Hey, it's Lisa Ryan. Welcome to the Manufacturer's Network podcast. I'm excited to introduce today's guest, Tom Pierce. Tom is the President of Integrated Information Systems with decades of experience; Tom brings a unique perspective to solving complex problems in integrated business planning, cost and schedule analysis, and cross-functional collaboration.His ability to combine human intelligence with innovative software solutions makes him an invaluable resource for those in the manufacturing sector seeking to improve efficiency, streamline operations, and drive sustainable growth. So Tom, welcome to the show.Tom Pierce: Thank you so much, Lisa. It's a pleasure to be with you.Lisa Ryan: Share a little about your background and what led you to do what you're doing now with integrated information systems.Tom Pierce: Certainly. I'll cover the mountain peaks. I took my one and only one computer course in seventh grade. That would've been about 1972. After that, I never took another course. I was self-taught and was fascinated with how computers and technology can help solve problems. It was a side interest for a very long time. Then, I went to college on an Army ROTC scholarship. On my first day of reporting for duty, they plucked me out, seeing my math major, knowing that I loved computers.I was on an analysis team and did simulation modeling for the Army missile maintenance, ammunition, and logistics. After I left the Army, I started working for a defense contractor, developing logistics models for the Army. From there, they put me in with a defense manufacturing facility in Louisville, where I help install an MRP system.That was over 30 years ago, and I'm still helping maintain that MRP system through all its variations and improvements. Seven years in, I quit working for the defense contractor and went out on my own Because I didn't like how my employer treated my people or clients. So I hung my shingle, and we've been in business and will have our 30th anniversary this summer. We have loved supporting everything about the manufacturing and finance piece within the defense industry and a significant client, a major defense contractor. I've been blessed to fall in with many subject matter experts that have guided my career. I was a programmer/analyst. I live on the slash. I am naturally an analyst who knows how to program, so I got bilingual that way. It is a huge opportunity to be embedded with the people who use the software I've written and some of the software I analyze and critique.Lisa Ryan: Right off the bat, you brought up an interesting point. You left one employer because of how they treated you and your people. You don't have to go into immense detail, but what were some of the biggest mistakes they made that caused you to leave? And then how are you turning that around for your employees to create a workplace culture that keeps them?Tom Pierce: Thank you for asking that. That's one of the most important things about what it means to be in business for me. Anecdotally, during one of the most critical demonstrations we had been developing for two years, we fried a computer getting ready to do a demonstration for a room full of 300 Army generals.One of my newest employees came to work for me from Toys-R-US. He was brilliant but could have made a better impression. He volunteered his brand new 486. Another one of my employees drove it down for five hours so we could use it, and we could use it, but we fried his monitor.The employer refused to reimburse him for the monitor we fried. Later on, I was denied a request to give my employees raises. I was denied permission to throw them a Christmas party; a stellar recommendation would produce a 2% raise that the bonuses were in the range of, maybe enough to buy a new suit. The words and deeds didn't match. The final straw was when it was time to renew the contract with our Navy customer. They raised their rates tremendously because they knew the Navy had become dependent on us in that area, creating a tremendous amount of stress, budget, personnel, all that kind of stress that I didn't need to deal with.So I undercut them by 40% and won that contract away from them. As a result, I retained many critical people, and employee retention, family, and team building have been a massive part of our success.Lisa Ryan: It sounds like they were, picking up pennies and leaping over dollars because a little bit bigger raises the price of replacing that monitor or the monitor. It's not like they even had to give 20% raises. But how much money did they lose to make employees feel valued because they didn't do these little things well? And in a market where it's so important to find people and then treat them well enough so that they stay. People need to realize that it's not all about the money. Money plays a part in it, and sometimes you've got to spend a little money to save a lot.Tom Pierce: One of the most authentic expressions of appreciation; put your money where your mouth is. But there are undoubtedly many ways; they need to be consistent. The money, words, and behavior must match your value to the people doing the work.Lisa Ryan: You and I were talking a before the show. Not only do you have military experience, but you talked about, but you have a pastoral ministry, then you have the application software. How have these experiences shaped your approach to solving complex problems that the manufacturing industry is dealing with?Tom Pierce: I used to think I suffered from a dissociative identity disorder or something like that. I have a hat rack with many different hats, but in recent years, they've emerged more. I've started to see how even the seminary education, I'm only half joking when I tell people that what I learned in seminary is more applicable to business than it ever was to church ministry. The problems are not dissimilar. The difficulties of trying to get people to work together well, whether they're volunteer or paid, whether they're clients or employees - the human dynamics. I understand you have a bit of background or emotional intelligence yourself.There's a full range of human experience, whether you are talking about a military commander leading men into battle, men and women into battle, or a manufacturing facility, trying to go cross-functional skill sets and make sure everybody's collaborating or building a small business and keeping the team together, the human dynamics of understanding the value that each person brings to the table and how to pair them up. There's even a little bit of musical background. I was also a choir director, so getting the tenors, the basses, the sopranos, the altos, the drummers, and the guitars to all come in at the right time, and it's not unison, right?It's the harmony that you're seeking. That's been a huge part of my experience. And lo and behold, it turns out computers have the same problem. Getting computers to communicate well with each other and to feed helpful information, manufacturing is an incredibly complex endeavor. Even the most straightforward small firms get all the functions, even speaking the same language. Here's a small anecdote. While I was pastoring at one time, I was pastoring three different churches simultaneously, three different denominations. The old saying of trying to get everybody singing out of the same hymnal was a real logistical challenge for me. It's not the dark red one; it's the right one, red today.The human and computers, that true integration of shared information, shared intelligence and shared understanding applies to humans and computers equally well.Lisa Ryan: It gives you the background because I often don't want to make a broad statement in IT and to work with computers, but it's not a position that screams human connection. Bring that combination of realizing that using your pastoral background to connect with people. See them as human beings and acknowledge their excellent work, making them want to work harder for you.Tom Pierce: Absolutely. There's a surprising amount of overlap between counseling and consulting. You're advising people, seeking truth, and sharing wisdom in every way possible. It's a very similar field.Lisa Ryan: Absolutely. In your experience, what are some of the most common challenges faced by operations and supply chain managers in the manufacturing sector?Tom Pierce: I hate to oversimplify it, but to start with, I'll use the simple word gap. There are enormous gaps that are naturally forming, like an entropy thing. People are incentivized to make their bosses happy. If you're in a stove pipe organization, your supply chain people will be focused on what the vice president of the supply chain wants. Your operations people are going to be, and if there are good relationships or good collaboration at the highest levels, you end up with an entirely cohesive organizational structure. Sometimes they lean too heavily on software to solve other problems. We can get everybody to use the same software system. That'll solve all our problems. It doesn't be because they don't understand each other's language.They don't develop trust, and the digital insertion in communication between humans makes trust more difficult to establish. It's harder to develop a trusting relationship with somebody you know only through email, Twitter, Facebook, or whatever than it is to sit in a room, talk, and collaborate. Some of the most valuable conversations in a business happen in the parking lots and in the hallways when people are reading body language, expressing full life implications of decisions, and collaborating holistically with each other. So you've got massive gaps between finance and production.There's even a war between what you used in the introduction, the integrated business planning. Wait a minute, is that the same thing as sales and operations planning, or one led by finance? One led by production. Oh, do we need both? And supply and operations often fight with each other. Why don't we have the parts we need? Because you needed to order them sooner. You didn't give the specs. Quality lives on its island many times, so trying to get functional people incentivized to collaborate. People don't typically get bonuses. The results show good relationships with the other functions at the team level.Lisa Ryan: If a person listening to this realizes that their communication strategies aren't that good and they need to integrate more collaboration between departments or people, what would be an excellent way to get the conversation started?Tom Pierce: One of the simplest things that my son, who's worked for me for 15 years, Alex, added an innovation that I undervalued first and came to appreciate later. He started putting collaboration notes in every report. So if somebody from the supply chain gets a report, they can comment on it and save it. And that same note gets replicated to anybody looking for information about that appeal in line.And he has expanded the use of collaboration notes, which has, in turn, sparked more phone calls and more text messages. We'll be in conference room settings and workshops, not reporting the status of an issue. But seeing what somebody has written in the notes, picking up the phone, writing an email, or setting up a side meeting immediately solves the problem before it has to be reported on getting that rhythm.Most organizations are not set up to solve problems; they're set up to report them. And if you can get the momentum moving in the other direction where the purpose of the meeting is to solve problems, then you don't have to worry about the plan of action and milestones and whether the due date was met; solve it so that genuine working relationship.Lisa Ryan: Are these collaboration notes a part of the software? Like when you were talking, I was thinking like people using Google Docs where everybody can go in and do the same, see the same notes when people are editing it.Tom Pierce: That's the same basic idea, but Alex incorporated that, and pretty much every report and Excel is very commonly used, even for the people that hate Excel. He figured out the technology and the techniques to embed the collaboration notes in the Excel report. So you may be reading a report, but you can go in and type in save the note. The following person who opens the report sees the note saved in a shared database, but all the reports are integrated. You know the name of the company. We integrate the information systems so that the information is shared, and it's not meant to replace human face-to-face voice sharing. It's intended to facilitate it. I see here that you made this note. Can you tell me more?Lisa Ryan: What are some other best practices for successfully implementing ERP systems in manufacturing businesses to help them to streamline their operations and improve efficiency?Tom Pierce: Similar answer but a completely different angle on it. I've been a part of multiple ERP implementations, one at the beginning of my career and several SAP implementations. The classic approach is, by nature, fragmented. Let's get all the supply chain people over here. Let's get all the production control people over here, all the finance people over here. And to try to speed up the process, they think what they're doing is dividing and conquering. But in any organization, some essential lynchpin kinds of people function as translators between those functional areas, and those people can't be in both meetings. So you need to add your schedules to allow the people focused on a particular functional area to talk to each other. Have somebody from procurement in there. When talking to quality people, have somebody from protection in there. When you're talking to the finance people because they, the fragmentation of large organizations is one of the biggest rings. It is a sink of efficiency, motivation, and morale. It's a communication breakdown from the GetGo to the implementation process itself. They tend to fragment people. So try to get everybody involved at the same time. It might slow your schedule, but it pays off in the long term.There are no surprises when everybody brings out their little separate hymnals. They're talking to each other, and they're pro potentially building relationships, which leads to friendships, which leads to them not leaving the organization willingly. One of the astounding, I can't quote the exact number, but there's an astounding number of people that leave the company; I remember I was like 30%. In a typical ERP implementation, 30% of the people will leave. Wow. Because the implementation process itself is so exhausting and straining on relationships, time and budget pressure, and everything else. And the people who leave first are the people that find the next job easiest, which tend to be your best people.Lisa Ryan: Especially in the last three years, we've seen that people are making different choices with the pandemic. If they are miserable at their job, they're like, you know what it is? Life is way too short to stay somewhere I'm miserable. So that's how we start losing, keep losing our people.Tom Pierce: Exactly. And the work-from-home phenomenon opened that door. I can sit here at my desk, and I've got a client in Mississippi that I'll be supporting for the next three weeks. I don't have to go; I used to drive to Mississippi once every month for ten years. I don't have to drive anymore. I can do everything from here that I could do Then, which opens the door for employees. It's more of an employee's market now.Lisa Ryan. That leads us to the role of technology evolving in the manufacturing industry. How do you see that working in automation, data analysis, and integration with legacy systems?Tom Pierce: Absolutely. I love the way you asked that because when I first started my business and chose the name, the problem was this new thing that appeared called a pc. Everybody wanted to use their PC, Windows, and Word Perfect document to create work instructions, but their PC couldn't talk to the MRP system's mainframe. One of the first innovations we built was the communication between the PC and the mainframe. The legacy system, integrating with the new technology, was the reason I called my company what I did 30 years ago. I thought it was temporary until Windows took over; I was wrong. Getting the computers to talk to each other has an equal emphasis on the people working together.They go hand in hand. I've been fascinated with this latest surge of interest in AI, the chat GBT and everything. I see instructions advising people how to talk to your AI here. Here's a set of prompts you can use, and it reminds me of what it's like I've got six grandchildren, and so they're all four and under. You learn how to talk to your grandchild, and your grandchild learns how to communicate with you in two different ways. Dynamic, and it's funny. My four-year-old Christopher did not speak at a very young age, but he managed to express himself and communicate with body language and to point, and the first word he used commonly when we were out for a walk was way, yeah, I want to go that way, and he would point.We teach each other how to communicate. We've got the same problem with people when Google was new. People had to learn how to talk to Google. How do I ask my questions to get the answers I want? That will continue to happen, but it will explode if you don't know how to talk to, communicate with, and convey what you want to this automated device. I joke with people that I'll believe AI is here for good when Alexa knows I'm mad at her. And she doesn't; she annoys me sometimes and doesn't pick up on the signal that I'm annoyed. But what I'm worried about is what happens when Alexa gets mad at me. That's a different problem, but emotional intelligence will find its way into our relationship with technology. You probably need to be older to remember, but it wasn't long after the PC boom that people threw their computers out the window in sheer frustration. It was the blue screens of death from the old days. They keep changing what happens when the computer freezes. But all of us get frustrated in working with technology. Technology is great when it works. We're going to have to interact with it more and more.We're going to have to develop the soft skills of interacting. And if you are okay with me elaborating, one more stretch on that. I used to think of it as a humorous point; I'm not treating it more seriously. I'm a huge fan of automation. I hate asking people to do tedious work that the computer can do. So you'd come up with this whole flow chart of how this process feeds that process while you're asleep, and then people started saying, wait a...

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The Manufacturers' Network

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