Connect with Gil Bar Lev:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gilbar-lev/Website: www.homeroots.coLisa Ryan: Hey, it's Lisa Ryan. Welcome to the Manufacturers' Network Podcast. I'm here today with Gil Bar Lev. Gil is the CEO and founder of HomeRoots. He is a serial entrepreneur. Filled with creativity and a hunger to thrive in the current digital world, Gil founded HomeRoots, combining his passion for furniture e-commerce and technology to disrupt the way selling and buying furniture is done with a novel wholesale platform.So Gil, welcome to the show.Gil Bar Lev: Lisa, it's a pleasure being here.Lisa Ryan: So share a little bit about your background and what led you to do what you're doing.Gil Bar Lev: Sure. So, in a nutshell, I came from the software engineering world specializing in web development. So I started my career as such, and one thing led to another. One day I was leading a project that connected toys R-Us with Amazon when Toys R-Us wanted to explore the.com or the internet, the e-commerce capabilities but didn't want to go all in. So I led it from the toys R-Us side, exposed me to e-commerce and my passion for technology. I found the proper marriage for what I want to do moving forward with my career.After I departed from Toys R-Us, I spent my other time in e-commerce, combining it with technology building and helping different brands sell online. And through the following ten years or so, I spent a lot in the direct-to-consumer world, up to the point where I realized we're doing with Brent and also went back to the manufacturing side of things and we want to do whole.So I realized it's 2015, 2016, and the internet has evolved a lot. We've got a lot of marketplaces. I want to see a wholesale and where do I. I realized I got nowhere to go The traditional ones where you go to a trade show you need to exhibit. I was looking at different verticals and categories and noticed that furniture is very complicated. Very complicated because of the logistics side of things, but also, the trade shows themselves are super expensive because you can't just put in a booth in some show, you got to rent a whole showroom, and that's very expensive.And so, all those issues combined led me to want to tackle the furniture world or the furniture space. And that's what led me eventually to HomeRoots, which is a platform or B2B selling platform that enables manufacturers from all over the world to penetrate and expand their market share in the US.Lisa Ryan: So what are they doing? Is it like an Amazon, but only for furniture where people can go and get all the specs they want without having to go to a furniture showroom?Gil Bar Lev: Pretty much it, that's pretty much the basics of it. It works because manufacturers will upload their product specifications down to our platform and alongside their inventory levels and everything else. Then, we push those and promote those products to various retailers. And we ensure that those retailers will offer those products to the end consumer for purchase, whether online or offline, in their stores.  Lisa Rya: I'm sure the last couple years, or I shouldn't say I'm sure, but it would seem to me that the last couple years were a boom for you, with everybody looking for furniture and doing it online. So tell us about your experience over the last couple of years.Gil Bar-Lev: Yeah. It's been a rollercoaster over the past. I will say two to three years up and down with different things, different challenges. So at first, it was a challenge. If we're looking back in 2019 or pre-COVID, let's look at COVID. Let's put it this way.It was more about proving our capabilities to retailers and manufacturers and getting them to buy into the idea. Then, 2020 came along with COVID, and everybody wanted furniture. Everybody, stores got closed. There was only online, and manufacturers had difficulties promoting their products online.They're very good at manufacturing. They were producing items. How about marketing? That's a different topic, and they needed someone to help them. And that's where we came in. Then 2021 was, everybody wanted furniture. But nobody can get it. There are logistics issues. And then it's becoming, and then from the flip of, from 2020, manufacturers were trying to push inventory because many of their sales channels got blocked. After all, retail store physical brick mortar stores were ordered to shut down.In 2021, that slipped to the outside on the demand side, where there was insufficient inventory. Whether with their physical stores and now they wanted merchandise, everything got caused in the logistical supply chain backlog that took a long time. So they were hungry for merchandise.We came in as a good fit because we have a vast assortment of products we can offer retailers. So that expanded our ability in our market share in 2022. That's a different volume. Now you've got a recession. So now you've got retailers that are overstocked.You've got manufacturers who are still having some logistical issues, and they need some good partners on both sides that can help them navigate this landscape, which is very challenging. And it's not something that you see every. Lisa Ryan: That is quite the roller coaster. And it's interesting because it seems, on the one hand, the pandemic came at the right time from an education standpoint because they had no choice but to go online.Gil Bar Lev: Yeah. And then when everybody was going online, now we have the supply chain to deal with, followed by a recession. So it's yeah, it's a perfect storm. I was not kidding. It's very interesting to see the dynamics between how things are getting pulled between the supply and demand.And every year, it's just a different strength to either side of pulling an influence in the market one way or the other.Lisa Ryan: And I'm sure too. We have a lot of manufacturing in the United States as far as furniture, but I know you're also dealing with a lot of international manufacturers of these products. So what are you seeing regarding some of their concerns with the conditions? How are you working and advising them right now?Gil Bar Lev: Their primary concern is whether they should enter the market in this condition. A condition that maybe has not officially been called a recession but is slowing down the market in demand for potential goods.And my advice to them is that if there's a good time to get into a market, if it's the best time, it's a time where others are retreating. That's the time that you can gain a market share. So, my advice is not to be afraid to step in, yes, there is some slowdown, but if you're in right now, the customer still requires goods.They still require furniture and are looking to partner with manufacturers that can supply them with goods. And if you're not. Recession or not. If you're not here, they're not going to remember you. And now they're going to close in the tide. They're going to tighten up their relationship with their existing suppliers.Now at the time, you want to get rid of the loose ends in business. Relationships are the most crucial in this type of economy. And if you're not here, you'll miss that. So, I advise many manufacturers to step into the market, gain market share, work with us, advertise their products, and promote them.Lisa Ryan: There is an audience for that. People are looking for merchandise. It's not the market has been saturated. It's not. It's just people shopping differently than what we used to shop. A year ago, two years ago, that was it. And we're so used to buying things online. It's almost, I mean, with furniture, there's always this the point where I want to sit on my couch, sit on it, and see how it feels.But. It's almost reaching the point that we need to get over that and realize that even though manufacturers believe that's what the consumers want, the consumers want to be able to go on their phone, look at a couch, look at the dimensions of it and say, cool. Send it to me. Gil Bar Lev: Yeah, listen, the beauty of what we're doing in the HomeRoots is that from a manufacturer standpoint, supply standpoint, you don't know or care, sorry, you don't care from where the orders will come.Now, HomeRoots knows how to work with its retailers to collect the orders, whether they're getting submitted through a brick-and-mortar store or online or through other forms of marketing or sales channels that are out there that are not necessarily related to rebuilding.There might be other ways like designers, stagers, and builders. They still buy furniture, and all those orders get passed on to us faster. This is something that we're focusing on a lot. And this is what we're telling the many factors that listen. Yeah, it might be that e-commerce has slowed down.Not might be, but it has slowed down. We've seen that. However, customers now see a trend of buying more from brick and mortar than last year. So, on the one hand, compared to 2020, sales have gone up with brick-and-mortar stores, and sales have gone down with e-commerce, but it's still the same.Lisa Ryan: It's just a different buying experience. Now people are looking just to return to the way it was. Not that I'm giving up on e-commerce, I will not give up on that. But I'm saying this is just the trend we're seeing. So what are some of the issues that you've seen with manufacturers?Not only in the process itself but converting their way of thinking from strictly brick and mortar to looking at more eCommerce and online offerings. So many of them are looking for when we first reach out to manufacturers. So many are still looking for direct order, direct import business. And what we've been offering them is a way to eliminate the middleman, let them be the importer, let them play domestically, and build directly with the retailers in understanding the consumer better—than relying on someone else, like a middleman.So the challenges we've seen with those manufacturers have been that they don't know how to do it. They don't know how to export their goods overseas. Maybe they have done it for others, but they have not gone all the way with the actual import process. And then they're not sure where the merchandise will get to the store.They're not sure how it's going to get marketed. They have a lot of concerns because they have not done it before. But, on the other hand, they are eager to do it. They want to. Just lacking the experience, right? So we're guiding them through this and giving them our fulfillment centers where they can handle the fulfillment.We're guiding them through the import process. We're taking care of all the marketing. We're taking care of all the back-office operations for them. And by that, we're eliminating many of the risks and their concerns of entering into the. But that's what the major challenge is, moving between changing a little bit, the mindset between someone else on direct import and the direct importer to drive my business, to drive myself forward to a mode I want to play. I want to play directly in the market. So I don't want to rely on someone else that doesn't want to rely on the middleman.I'm taking a specific risk. Yes, but the reward is much bigger, right? Cause of its impact financially. The margins are higher; you get more control over the sales channel. You are just more in control of your own business. If you do it well with our advice and best market information, we can give you the sky is the limit.Lisa Ryan: But just the initial open-minded. Some require that of the leaders in those manufacturing companies. And we've been talking a lot about furniture, but it also seems. A shift in mindset to more eCommerce can help manufacturers in many different products. So talk about that in terms of, maybe other products, various industries as somebody who's not in furniture may be able to relate. So start to think about doing that, what you're doing with.Gil Bar Lev: The beauty of eCommerce is the ability to collect data faster than other forms. At least in my opinion. So when you're putting out there, when you're putting products out there online, and it doesn't have to, as you said, it doesn't have to be just furniture.It can be any category when you're putting products out there and trying to promote them. You're starting to get feedback from the audience. Whether they're visiting the page, whether they like who you're offering, and then whether they convert, if they convert, you know, a lot about your price points and your content and the way you package the product to the consumer.But if they're visiting it, then they're not buying it. Then you may have a problem with the pricing, or just the offering is just not attractive. And you learn a lot from it. So before even you go on a massive distributor manufacturing. You could test a few things online and see and gather feedback from the consumer.What are they going to, what you're going to have to do, what you're offering, whether the price point is the right price point, and also a little bit about the quality, the first couple of iterations, you get a lot of feedback, right? But, whether you have returns or a lot of customer inquiries, I'm not sure how to operate this product or this, and then you get improved.You get iterations. You go through iterations. You're improving the product. The quality of it until you go to a point until you get to the point where you have excellent quality, high-quality product that you feel confident that the consumer wants. And then you're ready to go all in, manufacturing it and promoting it.In the destination market that you're looking for. But that stuff you can relatively do fast with e-commerce with brick-and-mortar stores or other forms. But, on the other hand, it takes significantly longer, and you're limited with the selections of offerings that you can go to if you want to put 50 products out there online or 500.I'm not saying there's no effort, but the step is not huge. It's doable. But you cannot put a product in the store that easily. That's very challenging, and it doesn't mean just furniture. Forget about it. There's no way because there's a space, but now you got to go to other stores, 500 different skews in a store.Lisa Ryan: It is a challenge. It's fascinating from a knowledge standpoint because somebody walks into a furniture store and walks right out. You don't know why they walked out. You don't know if it was the pricing, the furniture quality, and everything. And again, we're so used to leaving our Amazon and our restaurant reviews on Yelp and all this stuff for people to leave reviews for brick and mortar.It is a lot more challenging. Getting that feedback as far as pricing quality reviews from others, all of these different things that speed up that whole marketing and decision process, as far as what you're going to be manufacturing, unless I raise a good point. So because what it is when if you go to for example Google business.You're not rating the furniture or that piece of item that you just explored or were interested in. But you're not, which might be an interesting new business. Can arrive from our conversations here on how to drive reviews for brick-and-mortar stores for their product.But online, you're not just reviewing the seller. You also review the process. That's something that's missing in the physical world. And that's what makes it more challenging to test, do your AB testing, and figure out what actually might sell better. So again, there are different techniques to go about samples, but it's a much longer process.And in our economy, especially in the past three years, I remember that you've got to move as fast as you can. Because anyway, the market will slow you down. So you can't, you, you can't waste your time on those things.Lisa Ryan: Yeah. And it's funny, too, because when you think about your, you just said you are reviewing the business. I can leave a horrible review for somebody because the sales rep or the manager treated me poorly, which takes away from anything I may have. I may have loved the furniture but hated the store. So again, Just different ways of looking at it, even to try it out and say, you know what?Gil Bar Lev: maybe we'll start testing this product and do some AB testing online or do something. Lisa Ryan: So if a manufacturer is thinking about bringing a portion of their business to e-commerce, what's a good way to get started?Gil Bar Lev: First, I advocate for HomeRoots that we're an excellent way to get started. Cause we have put many different eyeballs on a product because of our distribution in the market. So a good way is to work with us and upload the products. And if there are in the furniture for home decor, they will go on to our platform and start their journey there.But if they're not, I recommend going with a particular business-to-business marketplace per se, or any marketplace and even a direct consumer marketplace. And test it. That's trying to put something out there to see whether you can gain page views and get feedback.See, there is a lot of involvement, whether there's some traction or interest. There's time. There's I also want to say that this is I'm mentioning all those points. Still, those points require investment on time, of someone knowledgeable about the product and dedicated to ensuring that selling online will be successful or will do everything they want.To make sure that it's successful. Otherwise, it will not work. And that goes to another point. So I'm sorry that I'm jumping between different things here. You need to. If I weren't a manufacturer and going back to your question to start selling online, I would pick marketplaces.If they're in the furniture business, that's our specialty. So I will pick a specific marketplace but hire someone. That knows how to do it, and they have done it well in the past, but you can try to do it on your own, and that's. And sometimes, you do need to do things on your own, but if you decide to do it on your own, have a mentor or someone to guide you through it.So you're not wasting time on weeks or months and a lot of money on things that don't make. Just avoid all this. You can speed up the learning curve. So my advice is to find someone who can mentor you or mentor someone you delegate that task to, and then try to play with that.And one last thing is to be passionate to have patience. Clicks don't come in immediately. It takes time. You need to test different things. You need to try different keywords. You need to test different. Then, later on, once you do get clicks, you need to test different image areas.You got to know what's more attractive to the consumer. Every consumer likes things differently. So you got to figure it out. It's just a lot of baby testing. And you just got to be patient. Yeah. Yeah. I know. We want things to go viral, and most things, no, they don't. It's just most things don't. It's just getting lucky that something does get viral, but in most cases, it's not.So don't plan for it. Don't plan that you're going to upload some type of product and then the whole world. I...

Connect with Todd DrouillardWebsite: https://www.hed.design/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/todd-drouillard-aia-b9a7a629/Lisa Ryan:  Hey, it's Lisa Ryan. Welcome to the Manufacturers' Network Podcast. Our guest today is Todd Drouillard. Todd is the section leader of the manufacturing and product development sector within the national architecture and engineering design firm, H E D. As a member of the state of Michigan construction code commission board of directors, Todd focuses on design innovation and improving speed to market in manufacturing, supply chain, and design for automotive and battery technology.Todd, welcome to the show.Todd Drouillard: Thank you. Thank you again for having me on. We're happy to be here.Lisa Ryan:  Todd, please share a little about your background and what led you to do what you're doing.Todd Drouillard: Sure. It all started when I was ten years old, which is crazy to think that you knew what you wanted to do when you were 10. I wanted to be an architect. I had a brief period just because I grew up in the Metro Detroit lake area and was highly influenced by the shows we would have. So a short time, I wanted to design vehicles. That kind of squashed a little bit when I discovered that my artistic talents weren't as great as they should have been.So I did go ahead and received a degree in architecture in the area that made sense to work in automotive. So that's where I've been spending most of my time, probably two-thirds of my 20, 21 years of doing this.And the work has been focused strictly on the manufacturing side. So my role at H E D is precise in that I look for ways that we can design buildings to build better products.Lisa Ryan:  Okay. So what was it about architecture? That's so fascinating that you were captivated at age 10.Todd Drouillard: Yeah. I just loved to look at blueprints and drawings, and when my folks had a cottage built a few years before I was born. They still had the old blueprints, and I'd love to roll them out, study them, look at them, and sometimes try to recreate them. I was just amazed that these drawings turned into something tangible. So from there on out, it was just like a passion of mine.Lisa Ryan:  Wow. Wow. That's just fascinating. I had no idea what I was going to do at age 10.Todd Drouillard: My children are just beyond those ages, and I asked them, and they don't know. So maybe it was just a strange thing that happened to me.Lisa Ryan:  So when it comes to design, I know we talk a lot on this show about the workforce we're going through now with the great resignation and all that stuff that's going on. How do you feel that good facility design can be used to create and retain workforce talent and reduce staff turnover?Todd Drouillard: Yeah. There are a couple of things that we do. My firm has a workplace side too. We often collaborate because what happens in offices and lab environments can quickly move into manufacturing. Many of our clients are coming to us and saying we must differentiate ourselves from our competitors.We need to make the space better than it used to be. So the dark, dreary manufacturing plants are not working. It's strange; we've gone back in time a little bit. If you think back to some of the greatest factories built, they were open-aired skylights and the use of natural ventilation.And then we went back into this box. And we took out the windows, and we just used enough lighting to save money or whatnot. And we found out that you get some fresh air when you bring in light. You make it a more workable space. The employees stay. They enjoy what they see. A lot of times, too, we try to open up areas that may not have been visible to even the offices to show the employees what they're building. So they have this idea that they're part of something greater than before.So we found out that, and the other spaces are making great more, I want to say a better area to have lunch a. A better opening to have a communal teaming room, and those bases have made it much better. The other part about it is just going through the exterior design.When you drive by these newer manufacturing spaces, they tend to have more of a brand. Then the old white box that we've seen in the past. So our clients have been asking that we want people to drive down the freeway and know that it's an Amazon warehouse.They want to know that it's just not a big white box, that it has a branding that something's going on there. And something's excellent.  Lisa Ryan:  Is it something that you're primarily starting? I'm sure it's easier to start with new construction, but do you have many of your clients? I'm in Cleveland, which I'm sure is a lot like Detroit when it comes to manufacturing. There are a lot of old plants around, so how would you go about retrofitting and doing some of these things to bring back those dark, dreary places and make them more user-friendly and workforce friendly?Todd Drouillard: Yeah, I think it's just going through and looking at what, what's available, and what's there. It's trying to bring like I've noted in, in some of the older, like manufacturing here, like in Detroit, But a lot of times what they would do is I guess to hide the old brick, the old look we've, torn those down, to expose it, to kind show how the building's built.So even in the simplicity of trying not to hide the way the building's built because sometimes, the architecture of the building can speak to how cool it can be. So try not to hide that, but a simple way to do it is to lighten it up.Does paint everything white I know it sounds right. But, like a simple thing, installing new lighting, efficient lighting to bring some light into the space helps. You can create a bright room with those two things. The other thing is to do your best to get some natural daylight, even though, at times, Detroit, Cleveland, and some of the Midwest can be dreary.Lisa Ryan:  We do have some beautiful days. And that does seem to help the morale quite, quite a bit. And like you said, even a fresh coat of paint. There are so many places where you go into the office or where the customer-facing parts of the things or the office facing, and everything's nice, clean, beautiful, and up to date.And then you go into the plant or the warehouse, and it's just dirty and everything. So even a coat of paint of a clean coat of paint can make a huge difference for sure.Todd Drouillard: And it's just that, it's just the going through it, what an looking at it has, what I want to work here, what I want, people that I know wanna work here and to embrace the space for what it is.Try not to make it something that's not it. And I think one of the biggest things is to expose and get down to why that building's there once you're trying to build. It's enjoyable.Lisa Ryan:  I think about, I was just in Savannah speaking last week, and there's so much history in that it seemed that every restaurant and hotel that I went into, they welcomed that exposed brick, and you can feel the history. And I think that's such an important point. With these older buildings, there's so much history, and employees want to feel that they are part of something bigger than they are.And if they're in this one of these historic buildings, they are, and then it's up to the company to clean it up. And like you said, they can do the natural light or other things. So what are some of the other things that you're seeing? We talked about natural light. We talked about a paint job. What else are companies doing to bring that up to date and make it where they want to work?Todd Drouillard: Yeah. The other thing that I've seen a lot of times, too, is when a what, like when they start to introduce them because most of these manufacturing plants have an office slick area exposing the office area into the manufacturing area. So there's not that hierarchy of having the office up above. And everybody's looking down on the like on the workers. So, it's becoming more of an impressionable thing to introduce those, and sometimes you know what, like even blend them.So there's no clear line between what's in an office and what's a workspace. Or like a manufacturer or manufacturing space. The same thing is happening in the warehouse, with the warehousing also trying to expose that. So it's not so hidden away and lost a lot of our clients want open spaces with as few barriers as possible, fewer columns, fewer walls. Let's open up the room, make it bright, and we want to be able to see what's going on. And if there's a problem, we can address it. The other part of that is trying to make a very efficient space. Both leading manufacturers, you have an office. You have the manufacturing bees like inbound processing, outbound, nice and linear streak. Sometimes that doesn't like always happening. So our clients look to us to create more efficiency within their floor plans.Lisa Ryan:  Then a lot of times that that's achieved by just good planning. Good overall planning of the building. And so, how involved do you get the employees in the process? Because it would seem that, nobody likes change. So you're going in, and all the workers know is that you will change their space.So what are some of the ways you get the buy-in from them? For example, are you meeting with different committees? Are you finding out from the workers there about workflow, or how does that process work?Todd Drouillard: Yeah, it's a little bit of both. We've seen it happen both ways, where some groups were created to be the voice of the people on the floor.And then other ones have been where we've gone through and done. The companies we've worked for have conducted surveys like their top parts. And it almost always comes across as for people to stay. They want to be treated well and all those things, but down to the buildings, it comes down to the amenities. We've seen many employers offer gyms, even smaller ones. They'll provide like a fitness clean light-locker rooms cleaner just. You know what it seems like when you make it simple and don't overdo it.And you create a space for people to be that's important. So it's like that third space between their vehicle, where they may park the car to their workspace. So it's that third space that's important: lunch rooms, fitness areas, break rooms, and team rooms.Lisa Ryan:  Those are probably the top things I've seen in the manufacturing-like environments. So what's been your favorite project to work with? You talked about gyms and breaks and break rooms and lunchrooms and stuff. So what was something you worked on that you thought was super cool that this client wanted?Todd Drouillard: In one of our projects, this particular light manufacturer makes safety components for like vehicles. So one of the cool things we were likable to do as they had these templates. So that they press out of metal, so in certain worker-areas, we put those up like a ceiling kind of design.So you can imagine all these wheels and cogs and things they use to make the parts. We painted them flashy and placed them up so people could see what they were building. I thought that, just down, and that's a straightforward thing.In the other areas we've done, we've created some green spaces, courtyards, and exterior spots. So if people wanted to do what they had to, they would break outside. So use of landscape taking it like outside a little bit, getting some fresh air.We found that the employees love that stuff. It's something that can be like a differentiator. I love the idea of using the pieces and parts they make in the design.Lisa Ryan:  I know a couple of years ago, when I spoke for the spring manufacturers, they would have a part of the week where the person would take one of the parts they were making, make a poster of it, and show where the particular piece went. So again, you're looking at employees who are doing the same thing on the line every day by just valuing what they do and even making art out of it.Todd Drouillard: Yeah. That seems that it would put a sense of pride into the workplace. It certainly does. And they've done these companies do follow-ups too.And one of the few employees even said, it's almost like we're making art. The manufacturing side can be an art because it's essential to have that piece. And that may go to a seatbelt assembly or something and, and, and it's the graphics of like you're saving lives, not only are you making parts, you're saving people's lives.Lisa Ryan:  So it has that holistic approach of, of, it has all the good feels for the company and the employees to create a message that comes across very well. The other thing you mentioned is incorporating the office and the plant environment to eliminate that "us versus them," but how would you do that from a noise control standpoint?Todd Drouillard: Yeah, that isn't easy. Products have gotten much better. And Glass has gained higher what's called STC ratings to develop that. So instead of being open, per se, it has a glass wall that you have to be careful with the design of what areas you integrate. You can often put a fraction of maybe the conferencing rooms, things that may not have to be so loud. And then you create the private phone booths you want to keep away. For many loud noisesLisa Ryan:  We talked about kind of optimization of the processes. What are some of the trends you're seeing that are being applied? Facility design. Yeah. Where the, where lately I've been seeing the most like optimization is in the warehousing side bits that whole concept to have that last mile shipment, the idea that you and I can go on our complex computer in a day or so we have a product at our porch or even like the same day. So what's been happening? Are there automatic retrieval parts? And so the warehouse-like of the future is not just a big warehouse with rack storage. It's a multi-floor, multi-piece that is all automated.Todd Drouillard: I've seen a lot of leg innovation there. It but the same with any product, especially one that creates any level of waste or scrap or recycling. That's been a big piece too. So in a, let's say, a parts stamping plant where they're stamping out parts, there's an underground system of tunnels that you don't see what's taking all that metal.To a specific space that can then be recycled to make more parts, so significantly less wasteful, it's cleaner. It keeps all the noise, dirt, dust, and oils below. So it keeps the plant floor clean and safe as well. So that's, and then the other major innovation.Lisa Ryan:  Mostly, come on the safe side. One of the top priorities of any company I have ever worked for is always safety. So they are keeping the workers safe. And that helps with the lighting and with all kinds of things. But you know what, again, there have been a lot of changes to how safe the buildings are.And employees are getting back to the workplace and helping people to feel valued. Suppose they think their employer cares enough about them to create a safe environment, not just to protect them from getting fined by OSHA, but because they care about the workers' safety. In that case, they can implement that into the design, making a massive difference in their retention.Todd Drouillard: Oh, yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. I think everybody would probably agree that everybody wants to go home, be safe, and not have a problem. So if the employee was to step beyond the band, a boundary machine shuts down, with all these checks and balances in a blaze. Even though humans were intuitive, don't put your hand there. Don't touch that. There's the idea that sometimes you're doing something and you don't; you do something and don't have to think about it.So these are there to check and to make sure that the worker is safe throughout the process. Yeah.Lisa Ryan:  So somebody listening to this show today, if they were thinking about the fact that, what it would be nice to upgrade our space, what would be an excellent way to start, or how would they begin to figure out their priority list of what would make the most sense?Todd Drouillard: Yeah, I would appreciate the advice that we usually get his, for them to look at their project holistically though, the entire piece of it, not just one, like little like area if they came back, but by and said we want to upgrade our team rooms, but we're like, then what about the office space spaces?What about the cafeteria? Like again, you don't have to do it all haul at once, but you can think about it and plan. So when you do the next phase of your project, What it's planned out? So it's coming across as a master plan for the space and seeing where the priorities are.It hit their due for lighting, like a like upgrade. It's a great time to do it. You are trying to sell like leadership on the benefits of being able to save money in the long. So that's another piece of it too, is by doing these projects and making the building better, more efficient, new air, like HVAC to help cool the building or these can be made as more of a longer-term saving money. So talk rather than just a quick, immediate fix.Lisa Ryan:  Okay. And if you were to say your number one tip or the best idea for facility design, for everything we talked about, workforce and optimization and cost savings.Todd Drouillard: Sure. What would that be? Sure. Hire us earlier than you higher us, like earlier than you think you should bring us in as soon as possible. But, again, let's plan and start slow. Let's front-load the project with some time during construction or building. Or the renovation cost, you'll save money been the long run. So getting in there as early as possible and thinking about these things is probably the biggest.And then taking a survey of your employers would be another excellent opportunity to see what's on their minds. Absolutely. Okay. And Todd, if people did want to continue the conversation with you, what's the best way to get ahold of you? The best way is through my email address Attard HD.design, or to check out our website, which is hed. Design.Lisa Ryan:  Okay. Todd, thank you so much for everything you shared with us today. It was great having you on the show.Todd Drouillard: Excellent. Thank you again, Lisa.I'm Lisa Ryan, and this is the Manufacturers' Network Podcast. We'll see you next time.

Connect with Dave Evans:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/evansda11/Lisa Ryan: Hey, it's Lisa Ryan. Welcome to the Manufacturers' Network Podcast. I'm here today with Dave Evans. Dave is the co-founder and CEO of the digital manufacturing ecosystem company, Fictiv. Since its founding in 2013, Fictiv has manufactured more than 19 million parts for early-stage companies and large enterprises, driving innovation with agility, from prototype to production and ensuring supply chain predictability and success for customers in industries from automotive and robotics to healthcare and aerospace. Dave, welcome to the show.Dave Evans: Hey, thanks much for having me. I'm excited to be here.Lisa Ryan: Please share your background and what made you start Fictive.Dave Evans: Yeah, for sure. I'm your classic engineer who likes to solve problems—I studied mechanical engineering, mechatronics, and mechanical electrical systems. And I'm an auto guy. I started my career at Ford, building infotainment systems or dashboards of cars. What we were trying to do there was put consumer electronics into vehicles. So you put your iPhone or iPad these things into the dashboard of a car. And the challenge we ran into at Ford, which is still a problem today, is around development cycles.A vehicle can take four to six years to build a new platform. Meanwhile, you'll get a new consumer device every six to nine months. And you'll get 12 iterations of a consumer device and the time it takes to launch one vehicle when you get in your plane, land, and rent that Mustang. As you're driving around the one in California, winds blow in your hair, and you go to use the touchscreen, and it's horrible, or it feels ten years old. It's because it is. And from my experience at Ford, how do you increase the speed of building new products?And what are the barriers to developing that and the thesis developed at Florida, which we've worked on for almost ten years? First, Fictiv was that if you could speed up the development cycle, you could reduce the risk of getting new products to market, and you unlock innovation for many companies to do that.And we built the company based on how you make hardware, physical goods, and products at the speed of software. We're based in Silicon Valley, don't let all the software folks like Facebook, Amazon, or Dropbox have all the fun. We wanted to build tools for mechanical engineers and physical product companies to build products faster.So if you fast forward to today, That's what we've built. We've built a system to simplify sourcing and build this operating system. This digital operating system probably makes custom mechanical parts. And we find factories with machines which are idle or have extra capacity all over the world.And we're allowing engineers and supply chain teams to order custom mechanical components from all these idle machines all over the place. We don't own a factory. I don't have an injection molding machine. I don't have a sheet metal press. I don't have a CNC machine, but we are allowing an engineer at Honeywell to order parts.From these, it machines through all this digital software we have done. And like you said, Lisa, it's 20 million parts now. So, since we've published that it's up, we built 20 million parts through this network. So, it's not our first rodeo, and I think we are changing how companies think about bringing products to market and driving agility into their supply chain. And I like to believe we are just on day one of that journey because it feels like the work we could do like we just started.Lisa Ryan: At the beginning, you were talking about driving that car and the wind flying in your hair. Sorry, I'm still there. And then going to that touch screen, that's ten years so. So, what would it look like working with Fictive in that kind of example? Who would you be working with, and how would you get that technology into that?Dave Evans: Let's talk about classic supply chain products. When I was at Ford, you had three options for how you would make this product. I'm an engineer working on this dashboard, and I designed something up in CAD, and now I want to get it physically made. I have a new way to mount an iPhone 11 into the car. And I want to design or prototype this.So your options are threefold. First, I could use my internal resource . we had an interior machine shop, a prototyping lab, and some equipment at Ford. The second option is to go to my tier one supply base-people that build components for production and do that, and there are trade-offs there.And the third option, which many people do, is you build a network yourself. So you have a leased machine shop in Detroit, Jennifer's machine shop in Wisconsin, or I have a shop in Vietnam or China. And I have all these relationships, and you build this network.And traditionally, I'd go out. I'd get RQs. I'd wait for those RQs to come back. Then, I'd award the work to a supplier. The supplier would make it, and they would ship it to me. And typically, that took eight, maybe ten weeks to go through that process—every time I wanted to build one of these new dashboards.And to me, that was way too slow because I knew it only took two hours to make my part on the machine. So what happened to the seven-week, six days, and 22 hours between the two hours of making it? And it's a whole bunch of latency that happens. So it's time to say, Hey Lisa, I need a quote. And you're busy, running this machine shop in Detroit, building parts on the factory floor, dealing with something.So that quote takes a week or two to get back to me. So I award you the work, and I get put in a queue because you have all these orders ahead of mine. After all, you want to keep your machine running all the time. So it's like this artificial cue to be on. And then the part comes off, waiting for a quality inspector to look at it.And then now it has to get shipped to me. All of this is kind of do time. If you fast forward and say, how do we do this eff active? That quote happens in a minute. You use our online software. You're uploading that CAD file and getting instant pricing and DFM designed for manufacturing feedback. You can then collaborate with your purchasing manager teams using our software on any needed changes within a minute. Finally, you can purchase that just like you would buy on Amazon, like an eCommerce experience for buying.Custom mechanical component. From there, the part gets scheduled to an idle machine. So that's going to make it like the same day. I know that Lisa's machines are entirely at capacity, but Jennifer's machines in Wisconsin are open and available today. And that park gets routed to Jennifer, and it goes on, the machine gets made, comes off the machine tomorrow, gets inspected by our digital QMS quality management system. So we have physical, effective people looking at those parts digitally and sometimes in the factory. And then it gets shipped back to you in a matter of, say, two, three days. So you take a process that was eight weeks at four, and we've compressed that down to 2, 3, 4 days.Think about how many cycles you can go through in that iteration, all to let your hair flow better using the dashboard, driving down the one.Lisa Ryan: And to put it in terms that I can understand, and the simpler term is that, if I have a project that I need some market research done or something, and I go to Upwork, and I put on a job of precisely what I'm looking for data mining for this list of people, and then within three to four minutes, usually within the first hour I have about 40 people that have subscribed to that. And then I can check them out. I can read their reviews, then narrow it down and pick the one I'm going to work with. So it sounds that from a product basis, that's pretty similar. You're putting it out there. And then people are saying, Hey, pick me. I have the capacity, and this is what I can do. And then you can check them out.Dave Evans: it's that's very close. Your other analogy people use it's like Uber. You get out of the airport. You could stand at the taxi line and are there taxis? Maybe there aren't taxis because they're busy.Maybe the queue is a hundred people long, and you're going to wait, and you just got to IMTS, or you just got the CES, and you're going to wait in that line forever. But in Uber, you get off the plane, connect your phone and say, give me a car. It shows up in five. And Uber is doing all the quality for you.Oh, do you want a black car? Okay. You can do that. Oh, do you want an Uber X? You can do that. It's a five-star rating. They kick people off and manage all those networks of drivers. All that's done for you. You have a better riding experience than getting in a taxi, and there's no accountability.You don't know how long you're going to wait. It's this Uberization or Upwork. If people have used that. For the manufacturing world, what we know is like Lisa's machine shop, Jennifer's, or whoever it's out there like there's enough capacity in the world. What's more, how do you find it?Vet it, manage it and digitally do that. And let's get away from email. Let's get away from PowerPoint. Let's get away from the Excel docs required to launch products. Instead, we want to build better digital tools to reimagine how manufacturing is done.Lisa Ryan: One and just looking at manufacturing utterly different because we're in this realm of that, of course, it's going to take eight to 12 weeks to get a part because of everything you explained before. But you're also giving people opportunities. As you said, it goes in a queue. Number one, you don't know if that purchasing agent is on vacation. And if they're ever going to get the quote and get back to you in a couple of weeks, it brings you that immediate Gratification that you have people jumping on that.So how do you build the relationships with those manufacturers to deliver these 18 million parts? What's the process that you go through for that?Dave Evans: I want you to think that we are your bolt-on supply chain team. Just as your supply chain team has global supply chain managers, quality engineers, and project managers, I have that same structure here. It's just my people aren't using PowerPoints and emails and spreadsheets. They're using Silicon valley software tools to manage all the relationships. So, for example, we inspect the factory, not once a year or once a quarter, as we did at Ford or most places. Still, every day, we have data from our 250 manufacturing partners on their quality, their acceptance rating of any defects that happen, and all that's happening through our digital QM.Then on top of that, we have supply quality engineers in China, India, and the US that are physically inspecting these factories or you. This is all to give you confidence when ordering something. So we have the highest quality, not just managed through a system like software, but managed through world-class experts.I call them our SWAT team. That's like diving in and inspecting it for you. And what that does is it gives you leverage. Because imagine if you're a small product company, you have an idea. You don't have supply quality engineers, TPMS, or project managers. You don't have any of that stuff. Or maybe you're a big company, and you do, but your network's too large.We act as that bolt-on supply chain for you. So you have peace of mind that you'll always get the highest quality product. And that's how we've produced these 20 million parts by building this combination of software plus humans to drive best-in-cost automation.Lisa Ryan: And the other thing that comes to mind, though, again, you're working with manufacturing that is slow to change. I'm thinking about people listening to the podcast who may be stuck in that and just having the conversation when you are approaching different people to get into the fictive supplier chain that can be included in those quotes.And in that field of people. So how do you explain it to them? And the benefits that open up again, completely changing that mindset of how they've worked before through the whole quote process and everything.Dave Evans: Yeah. Generally, this will probably resonate with everybody listening here if you run a factory, a service bureau, or a CNC machine shop. Most owners or operators didn't start the business because they love generating quotes, PDFs, and discussing design permits. Most of them did it because they love making physical parts. They love running the factory, working with machines, and doing all that creative work.But what happens is to run a successful service bureau or business. There's all this upfront administrative work that you have to do. Talk to any machine shop owner and say, how much do you like chasing down past due invoices? So how many hands raise? This many? Zero. How many times, what's your percentage of things that you quote versus you win most is about 20%. Meaning for every ten quotes you send out, only two of them will you going o get awarded? What about those other eight that are lost productivity for you? When you work effectively, what we're doing is all that front office work for you. And we're basically like money on a tree. That's just you can pull down as much as you want.So you have this guaranteed revenue stream for your factory. Theft is prevented. Standardized work orders, standardized payment terms, and improved cash flow. And you have consistent revenue. If you work with a customer, they'll make a product, and then they go away because they're shipping it and selling it. We will always be making products because we're consolidating all this demand from many industries.And what we see is that we are a strategic partner, not just a customer, but a partner for these manufacturing part plants, service bureaus, machine shops, and that it's a kind of those values of, it's predictable revenue, it's a strategic partner and software development. And then it's all around payment terms.Lisa Ryan: Are some industries better for this, or what areas do you specialize in and find that you're hitting these home runs with?Dave Evans: I think that complex mechanical components are where we win the most. If you're ordering a block with four holes, You probably don't need a lot of sourcing expertise to get a block with four holes.You don't need a lot of people. A lot of people can make a block with four holes. Some avenues do that. But suppose you have tight tolerance and complex mechanical parts. In that case, there's a lot of back, and forth in how you quote it, design for manufacturing feedback, the invoicing around it, how you do reorders, like all this complexity.And that's where our digital systems shine both for the customer. Someone at Ford or Honeywell, but also for the manufacturing partner, the guy or gal producing, and that's where, I think that in the ecosystem of custom mechanical manufacturing, the complex parts is where we shine.Lisa Ryan: I think about product prototypes and then the complex parts. Do you do anything, or do your suppliers do anything with like 3d printing and that type of development? Or is it more machining?Dave Evans: We do pretty much all custom mechanicals. Machining is a big portion of it. 3d printing and additive are another huge portion of it. Injection molding is probably the fastest growing highest utilization for us because of all the constraints in that market today.So I'd say those are probably the three big ones, but then there's a long tail of other services.Lisa Ryan: And again, when we're starting to change the conversation and look at how manufacturing is just different today, and evolving with all of this new technology, what are some of the biggest mistakes that you're still seeing manufacturers make, and what are, some ways that they can take a look at those mistakes and maybe improve their process.Dave Evans: Listen, we are in the most challenging period for the supply chain in the last 20 years, 50 years. How far do you want to go back? When you take global trade wars between us and China, with an ongoing pandemic, a war in Europe, and the Suez canal. And now we're talking about different diseases that are coming up even beyond Covid. So all these are causing disruptions in the supply chain, and everybody's hurting on the demand side and the supply.And we see the common pitfalls that I see when I talk about simplifying sourcing, it's this whole process of how do you plan what you need? How do you source it? How do you make it? How do you deliver it? And how do you ensure the quality of it? These kinds of five things. That's what sourcing is.And then we see two people get. We see folks get hung up on this idea of agility and resiliency. Get out your notepad now as you're listening. Agility is the ability o sense and respond. Like in your supply chain, if you have agility, you can see that something will mess up and react quickly.That is, I would ask you to rate your supply chain on how good your agility and ability to sense something are. And when that happens, respond to it. Resiliency then is the ability to adapt to change. So you can have a very agile supply chain, meaning you can sense things will happen, but if you don't have resiliency, meaning once you've sensed it, are you going to make a change?So Hey, I know a global trade war will happen with China. Okay. That would mean you got agility. But do you have a backup plan that would be your resiliency to move things out of China? If that's the case, I'll take another one. We know hurricane season is coming up in the Florida region, which is great. I have the agility that I can sense and respond, but you have a resiliency that you can move production out of the Southeast of the US when that happens. So what's your resiliency plan? And this is why we're talking with many companies today, both factories and the companies, the demand side, and OEMs. Say, how much agility and resiliency do you have in your factory?If you're a factory listening to this and run that, let's talk about a labor shortage. That's a big one. We always hear, what are your indicators of how much agility you have around your hiring plans around retention and how you find talent? But if that doesn't work out, what are your resiliency plans?How are you going to adopt and change to a new hiring strategy? s it around training? Is it culture? Is it wage increases? Is it labor practices? These are all plans that I would implore everybody to listen to. What's your agility? And what's your resiliency plan in your supply chain today?And I would bolster those if you're not already.Lisa Ryan: Awesome. If you had, we talked about that agility and resiliency. Any other tips that you find helpful, or have you worked with your clients within manufacturing?Dave Evans: Yeah. We'll probably get to this because whenever we connect with Lisa, we talk about culture a lot....

Lisa Ryan: Hey, it's Lisa Ryan. Welcome to the Manufacturers' Network Podcast. I'm here today with Wendy Covey. Wendy is a CEO technical marketing leader, author of content marketing engineered one of the wall street journals, and ten most innovative entrepreneurs in America.And she holds a Texas fishing record over the past 24 years. Wendy and her team at Trew marketing have helped hundreds of highly technical companies build trust and fill their pipelines through inbound marketing. Wendy, welcome to the show.Wendy Covey: I am thrilled to be here. Thank you.Lisa Ryan: First, share a little about your background and what led you to do what you're doing at Trew marketing.Wendy Covey: I'll tell you, it's not an easy marketing gig working with engineers at technical buyers. Sometimes I think I'm crazy. But I started my career at National Instruments, now known as NI. And they manufacture hardware and software products for manufacturing. And during that time, I held many positions within the organization, from marketing communications to product marketing.And then, after a while, a colleague and I decided to leave, put up our shingle, and start our agency. And we did so because we saw a significant need amongst the smaller companies. So say small to mid-size companies that were working within the NI ecosystem. And at the time, they didn't have websites, or they had websites, but they were pitiful.They had very shallow and content. They weren't doing well in search and didn't have a differentiation—story about what they offered. And so, knowing what we did from our time in marketing, we knew we could help these companies. And so that was the beginning, and that was back in 2008, and we all know what happened around 2009, which wasn't a pretty economic time.And so for us as an agency going from, okay, we'll work with whoever we know engineers, but we'll work with whoever. So we need to get serious about who we are as an agency. And so it was around that time that we decided, you know what, we're going to only work with engineering companies or companies targeting highly technical buyers, something we know inside and out.And once we narrowed that focus, that's when our agency took off. And you mentioned that wall street journal award, which was based on the reality that the business strategy of saying no is to grow our business. Lisa Ryan: So when it comes to marketing, because marketing and manufacturing are marketing and engineering, they aren't generally two words that you find in the same sentence. Why do you find that critical for these types of companies to do?Wendy Covey: Yeah, and it's a funny thing. Because often these manufacturing companies are doing cutting edge things, right? They're solving problems in new and unique ways, yet when it comes to marketing, they can be woefully behind in their adoption of new technology and strategies.And so when it comes to marketing and manufacturing, Boy, if you think about these buyers, let's put ourselves in the shoes of the technical buyer. They have a severe problem they're trying to solve and need lots of education. They might be innovating, solving something that's never been done before.And so when they go to education, where do you think they go? They go to Google. They do searches. And they're trying to find information from trusted sources. And that's naturally what marketing should be doing - creating content on behalf of that company to help that engineer, that technical buyer.Find answers, build trust and start to build credibility so they can be on that shortlist. We believe strongly that this content-driven marketing approach methodology is perfect for the technical buyer.And from a customer standpoint, marketing is fantastic because you have to get your product knowledge and the cutting-edge technology you're using.Lisa Ryan: But marketing is also critical from a workforce basis because, with today's labor shortage, you and I discussed how critical marketing is to sell the products and bring in the right people. So talk a little bit about that.Wendy Covey: Yeah, I'm so glad you brought that up. Often we'll work with companies on their brand messaging, which gets into how they position themselves.What do they use to define their culture and core values? That shouldn't just be focused on attracting new buyers. It should also be how we live and breathe as a company, how we want our staff to engage with each other, with our customers, and who we want to attract as new employees come in.And so, there are a lot of different stakeholders that should be considered when creating that message. And then it. Stop there. You can make wonderful words, but you fall flat if you're not living and breathing those words within your operations and how you act as a culture. So it takes it.It might be great for marketing to come in and do lead a messaging exercise and create this remarkable messaging and put it on the website. But, still, it takes the entire organization to adopt that messaging and live and breathe it over time.Lisa Ryan: Yeah. There are so many instances when a company will hire a consulting or marketing firm to come in with something that they think will look good, chiseled on the wall.But every time the employees walk by, they're like. Yeah. So how do you get that buy-in with employees, so they know down to the core of their being? So that the words on the wall are, is the company they are working for or represents the company they're working for.Wendy Covey: Yeah. Yeah. So, it may start at the executive level, where you have a team. Think of it as a branding committee, right?You have your executive sponsor. You have HR at the table. You have marketing at the table, maybe sales as well. And that message, those core values, all those things are crafted. But then, how does that translate into downstream operations? So a great example is if one of your core values is honesty or trustworthiness, then maybe that should be in a performance review, right?Maybe those core values should be reflected in those conversations that managers have every year, every six months, with an employee to check how things are going. So now it has become not just a sign on the wall or something nice on a website, but something that we expect our employees to live up to.Lisa Ryan: Wow. And also, when it comes to recruiting employees, what are some of the methods that some of your clients are using to use that marketing method and get the word out as far as their culture and what they've built? Why would these employees want to join their organization versus competitors down the street?Wendy Covey: I find a lot of manufacturing companies. I don't have a good definition of their culture. So one is, it is just looking inward and trying to put the words around what their culture is. So, for example, with Trew marketing, we call the way we work laid-back excellence. We want to be approachable.We want to have this Austin style of we're laid back. We're not very formal, but when it comes to details, those matter, and excellence matters. And so when we recruit someone, we explain laid-back excellence, which will appeal to someone or maybe repel someone else. And that's a good thing because we want someone that fits in our culture and in.Not uncomfortable there. And I think that's no different than manufacturing companies, whether at a job fair or on your website, just trying to put those words around what culture means for that company.Lisa Ryan: So what do you think are some of the biggest mistakes people make in marketing?Wendy Covey: Wow. There are lots out there. The first is having a very outdated website, and Google changes its algorithms every few years. They punish you. It's very punishing if you don't keep up with the latest technology trends on your website. So that's one end of it: ensuring your website's secure. For example, it loads quickly. Those are all sort of table stakes. Still, then the other side of it is having accurate information about what you offer, how your company operates, and speaking about things using a buyer's language. And or a recruiting person's language instead of your own internal language.So think, if I'm just promoting my products and using lots of acronyms, that's not very friendly language compared to speaking to a buyer in their terms and helping offer content along each stage of the buyer's journey. So it's that combination of fresh content that's thoughtful towards the buyer or the recruit, whoever that person you're writing for is combined with a website house that functions as it should.Lisa Ryan: Yeah. And so often, I know there's a difference between the written and spoken words. And doing some combination where you are speaking into some kind of dictation, so it comes out as you said, that relaxed, casual type of language where it's very conversational versus sounding like a fifth grade English teacher wrote it.Wendy Covey: That's great you bring that up. And usually, during a brand positioning and messaging project, we talk about the tone of voice. You'd be surprised that not every company would agree with the statement that you should be conversational and approachable.There are different styles, and it goes back to that culture. One might be that we want to be informative and commanding. And the next one might be. I'll give you an example—Vertech, a control integration company, calls themselves control freaks.And that's very casual language compared to some of their peers in the industry. So it all is a mashup of how your tone, voice, and culture fit together.That would also represent who you're attracting, especially in engineering. I think of that as more detail-oriented and more formal, and maybe in another type of a small manufacturer where you're looking for somebody who's that good cultural fit to consider, as you said, who the audience is and gearing the language towards that.So you could see where some companies jump into content development without first taking a step back to say, what tone do we have? What voice, key messages, what does our company stand for, and what key phrases and messages should be woven downstream to every case study, white paper, and every page on a website? Top-down is very important when putting together a content strategy.And what about from the recruiting standpoint? We talked to ensure you don't have an old website so that Google doesn't punish you. But what about photos of your current employees or videos of what a day in the life looks like or those types of things to attract people to your organization?Lisa Ryan: What are some things that manufacturers can get started with, or at least keep an eye out for when they go through their website and decide what to do?Wendy Covey: I love that you jump to a perfect assumption: we should tell those stories of those employees. And I think some companies are afraid to do that.They're afraid to give employees the autonomy or the independent voice that's not controlled, or they're afraid that they'll be poached if that employee is out there on too many things, but that's an outdated view. So these days, recruits and prospective customers expect to look at LinkedIn profiles, see stories about employees, and understand what they're doing.And again, it builds credibility for that recruit, thinking about working at the company and in some authenticity of what's happening firsthand from that employee. But it also helps think for a prospective customer, are they real? Are they the real deal? And you. Who are, do they have technical experts who have their voices, and are there sales people authentic, technical people that I can trust to help advise me through this purchase?So there are all kinds of reasons to get those employees involved. And then, as for the tools, I know Lisa, you, and I talked about going where that person is. And that can be a little challenging. On the marketing side, when we're trying to attract new customers, we publish an annual survey.It's called the state of marketing to engineers. And we do this alongside global spec. That's a partner. And every year, we study how engineers seek and consume information to make a purchase decision. And in the report, we ask, where do you go? Do you use social media? What do you rely on the most?Do you watch video? Do you watch podcasts? And so that's a great resource to get a pulse on the engineering side. And as far as the recruits. You're seeing more social media utilized by companies to tell their culture story. And so, while engineers, when looking to make a purchase, aren't necessarily going to places like Facebook or Instagram, they may be going there in their personal lives.And when they come across culture posts that might be more attractive or more engaging to them using that side of the brain, like recruiting. I want to work for them. It's personal side versus. I'm researching an RF product to put into this thing I'm designing.Lisa Ryan: And you also made an interesting point with the information for recruiters. It's easy for them to go to LinkedIn and see where that potential candidate's working and start wooing them. But if they're. Boss, if their company was posting them for Joe's, the employee of the month, or Maryanne just won this fantastic award, and they're giving their people kudos almost to the point of they are the face of that organization.It certainly makes it much more difficult for them to leave; versus that, here's the LinkedIn profile of this person. So we talked earlier about being. Poaching people, but by promoting them more and their role within your organization, it seems that would be cementing their relationship even stronger.Wendy Covey: Agree.Lisa Ryan: So what are some of the other things you see working in manufacturing? Again, what are some of the best things they can do if somebody is listening to the show today and just looking to pick up some marketing tips to get started?Wendy Covey: Yeah. Our research shows that 96% of engineers watch video for work every week, 96%, but manufacturing companies feel intimidated by video.And I, I get why, when. Sometimes when we think of video, we think of that very polished corporate overview that an expensive production company comes in and does, but that's not really what they're seeking. A lot of it is how-to information. It's videos that show a demo of a.Product and so those can be done cheap, as long as your lighting. Good lighting is good, and your sound is good. You can use a very basic setup. You can also use webinar technology to do on-demand software demos, things like that. That one big tip is if you've been putting off video, this needs to be your video year.And then we're on a podcast right now, and podcasts have jumped hugely in popularity this past year; 73% of engineers listen to podcasts for work every week. And that was up from 40-something a year ago. So I think the adoption is for a few reasons. I think.There are more shows out there than there used to be. And as you have more opportunities to find something that matches your need, that's a good thing. And then also, it might be that we were craving more of that spoken word material during COVID and coming out to sheltering in place.It was one of those where we can't go to an event, but I still want a personal connection. So videos, podcasts, maybe that speaks to some of the spikes.Lisa Ryan: And it's funny because I think about my podcast and how it was a COVID-inspired podcast to come out because I fought it for years because I was so intimidated by it.And I'm sure many people listening to the show think it will take a lot of time and money. So we're recording the on zoom, we're stripping out the audio, and I'm going to upload it to my podcast site after being edited. And it's simple, but those, and. I'm not concerned about the downloads because it's not the information it's meeting new people. It's having conversations.So what you just said about inviting companies to consider, maybe it's a once a month, once every couple weeks, or even once a week podcast where you're talking to different people in your organization or interviewing your customers or vendors. There can be so much that goes on.That we don't have to wear because it's one of those things you get struck by lightning where you get millions and millions of downloads because there are so many shows out there. But if you think about how you can have some fun with it, get the word out and, hopefully, attract some people that like what you have to say. That's what a podcast is all about.Wendy Covey: Yeah, it brings a voice and a personality to your brand. And as does video, that's harder to do on that flat page, right? I will say on the podcast front that what we recommend our clients do is start with being on the other. People's podcast to develop, who is that spokesperson?Who's going to be the face of that initiative? And then, when starting your podcast, if it's technical, some of our clients have been running into some challenges with bringing on guests whose companies allow them to come on and talk about their projects. So it's no different than asking permission for a case study in legal blocks. It's because of IP issues. Sometimes podcasts can run into the same issue.So there are some strategy things to consider depending on the subject matter. But like you said, there are a lot of benefits to doing it. So I'm with you. I have. I'll second that encouraging voice, and I also think that the podcast isn't necessarily the venue for talking a lot of straight technical because that's better in the written word where you can go through and take your marker and underline and everything but conveying the personality of the company and the passion.Lisa Ryan: That's why I like talking to manufacturers. I love being around passionate people who make things and conveying that excitement. As we start to change the conversation into the younger generations and more so into their parents and guidance counselors and stuff to welcome and introduce more people into manufacturing and podcasting would be a great way to do so because it's so accessible these days.Wendy Covey: All about having that strategy and goal and then making sure your editorial calendar supports it. That's great.Lisa Ryan: So if you think of all the things, all the ways that you help manufacturers with their marketing, again, if somebody was listening today, what would be your number one tip for them to get started?Wendy Covey: If they're starting from, if they're starting from ground zero, and if they already have some marketing, that's like just. Okay. All right. So starting from ground zero, really understanding who you are as a company and putting that into words, right? So we call that brand positioning and messaging.Suppose you're just starting. The most important thing to do is understand who you are as a company and how to articulate that. And that is through brand positioning and messaging. And it's that...

Connect with Rish Gupta: rish@spotai.coLInkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/profilerish/overlay/contact-info/Hey, it's Lisa Ryan. Welcome to the Manufacturers' Network Podcast. I'm excited to introduce our guest today, Rish Gupta. Rish is co-founder and head of product at Spot AI, a groundbreaking video intelligent company built to answer a simple question, "Why is it so difficult for people at work to access video off their cameras?"Rish, welcome to the show. Rish Gupta: Thanks, Lisa. Excited to be here. Thanks for having me. Lisa Ryan: So share a little about your background and what led you to focus on video. Rish Gupta: Yeah, it's been a circuitous route to videos that always want to build technologies. So when I graduated college at about 22, 23. I started a company that was a pure software company. I knew nothing about running a business. I ran it for five years, grew to a few million users, and sold it. Again, though, I didn't know anything about running a business. The thing that helped the timing was it was just a couple of years after the event of smartphones.So the new behaviors and the influx of new people coming onto the internet because of smartphones led to that growth as a business for us. So as I was looking through new ideas and things to think about, one of the things that became constant was the number of mobile phones in the world.91% of the people already have mobile phones, and the number of PCs has stayed constant at 2 billion for the last decade and sells approximately 300 million units a year. So it's okay. These computing devices are not growing. They're everywhere, but they're already there.But everywhere around us, if you see, look at your home, small internet chips are being inserted into your fridges, cars, and these Alexa, the baby cams, and the pet cams. And that seemed like a computing paradigm is changing where everything around us will get digitized.And the same thing was happening in, in the business arena. And then, when you double click on the business arena, you see that 80% if you're trying to get visibility into your physical operations. So basically, through the internet of things or any of these new technologies, 80% of how we consume the world is through our eyes.And 85% of the data on the internet is videos. So we thought, wow, would it be any different in the business arena? And that's why video seems like a really exciting place to focus on concerning enterprises. And then, as we dove into it, we realized that the existing state of videos is people had sold them IP cameras over the last 15 years. So every business, from a gas station to a manufacturing house to any part of an industrial chain, has a security camera.But then they're not able to access it. So they still use a USB thumb drive. It's an old-school VHS-like recorder somewhere in the back room. One person may be in the organization who knows where the video is and knows how to access it. And so, all these pain points in getting this data into the hands of users.And so that, that's what kind of drives us towards solving this problem. Lisa Ryan: That's interesting because I think about what you just said about computers, that that, that hasn't grown and that, but the mobile technology has, and it's that's probably because five-year-olds don't have laptops yet, but they do have iPhones. So, why are they so far behind with so much mobile technology in the security camera industry? Rish Gupta: Yeah, that's a good question. When we started building this technology, what baffled us the most was how far behind these cameras were.And the reason for that is if you think about what most people would remember is as children, we used Panasonic, Sony, neon, Canon one of these cameras to capture our memories, our holidays with our family. And today, these brands don't exist, right? Like they exist, or they exist in a much-diminished capacity than they did 15 years ago. And today, if I ask you on your iPhone, what camera do you have? You don't know it's so the software has completely disrupted the hardware experience. So what we saw in the consumer world is the hardware companies, which are building the actual camera, lenses, and technologies.They were not software companies, and they didn't build Instagram. They didn't make a way to share these photos. They didn't build a way to create beautiful videos out of these photos to share with your friends or software companies. And something similar is happening in the enterprise space. The traditional camera vendors who built the cameras sell tens of billions of dollars yearly to these two American companies.They are hardware companies with little to no software experience. So they have focused on making the cameras have more resolution. Have a beautiful-looking chassis. So it looks good on a brochure, but they haven't looked at what happens once the videos are recorded. They don't have the expertise for that.So you end up with this old-school software. If you went online and searched just some of this software on this, it's like windows 95 and in today's world. Wow. You still, if you need to share a video. Like a cube clip. You can just send it to me right now with a link. You'll just paste it on this in the email, and I'll have it in a second.But with videos in businesses, they have to use a USB thumb drive, do a specific V video recorder somewhere in the back room, transfer it to their desktop, put it on a Dropbox folder, secure that link, and then send it on email. So there are six steps to get to that video. Wow. So that's the state of the industry, and it's purely because you have competence in hardware without competence in software.And one thing that we are all learning about technologies is software is eating the world, and we have to think about how consumers consume the end product. And now, as you know, the data is being built. Lisa Ryan: You just brought me back to this vision. When I first started dating my husband. He was one with a television-sized video camera. My dad had one that he never left home without.And what a pain that was between the full-size VHS tapes and then the micro tapes and all of that kind of stuff, which are now just sitting in boxes somewhere versus the, I don't know, 800 videos that I have on my phone that are higher quality than that. Rish Gupta: That's so funny. Yeah. One, one of my funniest memes on how the world has changed in the last 15 years from a hardware perspective is you, somebody showed a kid a floppy disc, and the person's oh, you treaty printed the save icon because they had never seen a floppy disc in their life.Lisa Ryan: Wow. That's yeah, it's we've come a long way. So what are some of the solutions? To begin with, we think of the video in business and manufacturing that we know that we are on camera most of our lives anyway. It seems a bit big brotherish, but if we were bringing that into technology, that would be in manufacturing and empowering employees. What does that look like? Rish Gupta: Yeah, the first thing, when you speak about a video being a big brother and a lot of this comes with the China surveillance kind of news we have fed, okay. If the cameras are there, somebody's watching us; somebody's recording us.Somebody has oversight on us. Then there's a piece of vast information, symmetry asymmetry in that kind of thing where. Yes, the camera's everywhere, but only a few select people control the access. And the difference is in traditional systems. It's tough to give access to multiple people.They have to individually set port forwarding and VPNs and complicate technology so that your computer sitting at home can access this remote VHS. Recorder sitting on a different computer network in a factory, somewhere in another state. And even though you might be the owner of this company, you have to be given special permissions.And if your vice president of operations needs this access, they need to be given special permission. So it's really difficult to set up these users. So what we have allowed doing is we integrate with your, Whatever email system that you use, whether it's Microsoft or Google or whatever else, and give access to every employee in the company.So video, it's not just the videos everywhere. The videos were available to everyone. So what is being recorded, you have access to it. You know how it is impacting. So your day-to-day operations. So if you want to know, did this shipping vehicle come yesterday or not? Was there a delay?You have access to that data yourself. You're not like somebody above me, or just the C-suite has access to it. And they're watching me. This is for people to improve. So one of the things we work closely with our customers is onboarding many of their different departments and users onto the platform.And then we hold training in the first couple of weeks with those people to ensure they know they have logins to this. So they have access to the cameras that need to do their work. And this video is more of a productivity enhancement tool than somebody trying to watch them do their job.So it's the question they're trying to answer in the day-to-day business. So if you are FA manager for a specific facility, rather than having to walk across to every part of the facility during the day to figure out what's happening in every different conveyor belt and different manufacturing area, are you able to sit at your desk and pull up videos and see, okay, quickly what's happening and then go to the area where you feel there's something, going amiss and you can help those.Lisa Ryan: Wow. Yeah, I think about the security cameras. People only needed access to them when something went wrong. And if you watch enough crime shows, when the people tried to get to the security camera, they were either broken, or there was no film in there.It sounds like a much more proactive approach. And like you said, just being able to keep an eye on things, not in a big brother way, but a more productive way because you know exactly what's going on in those particular areas in the plant and making it much more helpful daily instead of just when something got broke, broken into or stolen or anything else that we the traditional. Rish Gupta: Yeah. And think of it as, if you're browsing the internet and on Facebook or Instagram, you always have this sense of how much data these companies are taking from me.Versus if you had your own ACC and access to what exactly data was going through your laptop to these remote servers, you have more visibility. It'll not feel that big brother. You might then decide on certain activities you don't or specific activities you do because you know precisely the access, what is being seen, and what is not.You can push back on management. I believe giving access to the end users is the key. If you keep the access limited to a few people in the security team or the C-suite, that's not the solution to empower your people to make better decisions. Lisa Ryan: But what about when it comes to like privacy issues?Rish Gupta: Yeah, because when you're talking about physical and data security and all of that, getting into the wrong hands, what are you seeing that owners and operators are doing to ensure that they keep the video data secure? Yeah. There, there are a few. Things that we think about deeply over there.One is as a company. We take a stand. There is what we call it a personal identifiable information of PII. We don't store that. So, even though we have other artificial intelligence in our product, we don't do facial recognition, and that's by design. Okay. Which is saying that the idea is not to track specific people.The idea is to understand what's happening as trends in your factories and manufacturing facilities and your businesses and physical operations. So as a technology tool, don't surface a lot of PII. Don't. Individual data on people. So that means nobody should feel that tomorrow they can just search video footage of just me.No, they're looking at what's happening at a shipping bay or manufacturing floor. Nobody's tracking a specific person. The second thing we do interestingly is we don't take the video to the cloud, and there are a couple of other reasons. But that fundamentally allows the video to be on the premise behind the company's firewall. So the company's not taking these videos and storing them on some remote cloud server, somewhere outside their network. It's within their network on their premises. And we have just built a technology where we can securely punch in a hole in our appliance, stream that particular video, and authenticate user requests for it.The third aspect is that we go through third-party audits, like HIPAA for healthcare businesses and stuff, to ensure that our security standards are meeting the best in class. We have engineers from top companies like Microsoft SKU, Meraki, and others who have dealt with these problems at scale.And so we are making sure at all three levels, don't take private data about people. Don't store that at all. Don't build technologies that allow for that second. Let's keep the video with the people who own the video, which are our customers. And then third is from a technology perspective - since that's the part we understand the best is build an infrastructure, which is highly secure - is audited by third parties with top certifications, to make sure that our customers feel very secure, that this data is not leaking.And the last bit, we are returning to the non-big brother stuff. We provide an audit log in the dashboard to our customers. This means our customers can pull and see who was looking at what video at what time. So if there's any misuse happening, they can track it.Like they have a complete audit log of every click on their videos, which traditional systems don't provide. So that's another thing. It's about surfacing the data with the users and letting them see how these videos are consumed. Who's watching? What is somebody sharing a video externally to a third-party stakeholder you shouldn't want to? You can see all of that and then take control of that and build policies or restrict controls as you see fit for your business.Lisa Ryan: So take us to the very beginning. You're just about to start working with a company, and you need to train the employees. Yeah. And you need to get them back, through that fear of technology, the fear of big brother, and also share with them the benefits and why you're doing that. So what does that first meeting do with the leaders and employees? How does that sound? What does that look like?Rish Gupta: Yeah, the good thing has been the concern about being big-Brotherly. It doesn't come much from our customers because most customers come with insight into their journey where they've realized that the existing video system is not up to demand.Like they're not able to access it. They have people asking for access because there was a manufacturing delay, and somebody wants to know why it is. Can I go and see the video of when the manufacturing line stopped? And they were like, oh, we don't know if it's easy to access, et cetera. So typically, there is an internal operational plan for these videos in the organization, which brings customers to say, " Okay, we need a more modern solution. And that's when they start talking to us. So often, they're like, Hey, we want to give access to our people. So they begin at that point, and they're like, can your system take care of that?Will you charge us more for more users? And we're like, no, we have unlimited users added at no extra cost. So you want to add your entire organization. You want to add some external stakeholders. So feel free to use it. This is your video, your security, like footage. You do it with it. So that's one premise that they come with.So that's helpful. The second thing they ask is, okay, there are three kinds of use cases they typically want to understand. One is, can I have multiple locations? So usually, most of our customers have more than one location because that's when remote viewing and being able to. So seeing something without being there really starts being helpful.So they'll be like, can I get all these locations in one dashboard? And that's a nontrivial problem because the way most and your customers might resonate with this might resonate with them. The way they bought these security cameras is in piecemeal 2007. They're like, oh, let us build these facilities. So we purchased ten cameras there, and then, in 2012, we added this other part. And so we all bought five cameras. And they end up smattering six, seven different camera brands across three or four other locations. And they're like, how do I even access these different camera brands in one platform?And we make that easy. We work with every brand of camera out there in the enterprise segment. So can I access it? Can my people watch all the videos without jumping from one system to another? Can it be all in one system second? Do you have good filters for me to find something quickly?If something happened yesterday, I don't want to spend hours looking for it. Can you make it happen in a minute? So that's the second thing we get them on. The third part is. They talk about either the artificial intelligence part of it or the collaboration. Can I comment on the videos? Can I annotate on top of videos?Can I share this internally? Can I get insights? How many what was the first time a person showed up during this day in this room? When was the last time a person left, and again, not a specific person? These are just. What is the total number of people counted? So then they can understand when the shifts are starting, when the shifts are ending, what is the maximum number of people in, at any point, sometimes they use it for OSHA guidelines saying these things should not be blocked.These entry pathways or exit pathways should be empty. So then they're like, wow, this system can not only help me find something which happened in the past or help me look into my business as it's operating now. But it's also generating some data, which helps me understand overall trends in my industry - days, weeks, months, and so forth. So those are the three pillars we will generally talk about. And then, some customers will talk about security to us, and we'll talk about the certifications we have and how we have the right people, but that's typically a customer journey. So they're coming in with some internal need for a modern system.And then they're checking boxes and realizing a few more things. Okay. So now that makes sense and that they have videos already. So it's not like you're suddenly coming in and putting in cameras, but because the videos are so piecemealed all over the place, there's no access from location to location.What you're doing is taking everything they have, putting a nice little package with a bow on it so that they can access it as needed from wherever. They want customers. So yeah, exactly what you said most. If you look at most...

Lisa Ryan: Hey, it's Lisa Ryan. Welcome to the Manufacturers' Network Podcast. Our guest today is Emily Wilkens. Emily helps job shops make bigger profits and an even bigger impact by building them a radical brand and marketing machine and empowering them to use it in a few days. Emily, welcome to the show.Emily Wilkins: Well, thank you so much for having me, Lisa.Lisa Ryan: Please share a little about your background, what led you to do what you're doing, and particularly in working with manufacturers.Emily Wilkins: I grew up near Detroit, and most of my family worked for GM or in the auto industry, in some way, shape, or form. I have always been around manufacturing and mechanics and how things work. My dad had three daughters. I was the first of three girls, so I was his son. My dad did a great thing and got me involved in all that. Mom also worked for GM. They met at GM. She worked in product development, returned to school, and became a calculus professor.She's at Kettering University, which used to be GMI, in Flint. I had one choice when it came to college. It was Kettering. It's a unique school because it has a Co-op program that starts from your freshman year. I had a full-time job in the automotive industry before I started school for three months, so you switch from school to full-time work every other term. I had friends that were in management positions. I had friends that worked building or designing roller coasters or Disney like crazy cool opportunities as college students.I started in mechanical engineering, worked in the automotive industry, and found myself hanging out in the design studio. I was pretty bored with all of the mechanical engineering tests they gave me, which were mostly like busy work on spreadsheets and getting bored with being in a meeting with 20 people arguing over half an inch and bored. That's not the experience for all engineers, but that was my experience. I thought about attending art school, and then I switched to business. I stayed at Kettering as an associate company. My focus was in marketing.I liked my classes; I had always been entrepreneurial. I was the one with the lemonade stand and going around selling things to my neighbors, much to my parents' embarrassment. I've worked in product development and small job shops for most of my career. I've been the one-woman marketing show inside a couple of small job shops, so I have an inside look at what they need, what they don't need, what their budgets are, what their capacity is—internally handling marketing projects and working on things like that. When I started my business a couple of years ago, when I was working, I was the marketing director at a broad view product development.I started my business a little bit as part of a broad view and then branched out and started doing my own thing, and then, in the beginning, I didn't have well. I shouldn't say that I began to market metal with manufacturers in mind, and then, when the pandemic hit, I had all these friends like, hey, will you build me a website I'm going to start my business? So I broadened, but then last summer, I doubled back down into manufacturing, and that's where I have the most experience and, I think, where I can help the most. I developed this process that differs from other marketing agencies' approaches. It works well for manufacturing companies like small to medium shops that are doing custom work like RFP-based or FAQ-based projects not. I don't do E-commerce; I don't work with manufacturers who are developing and trying to market their products. I work with specifically service-based manufacturing companies.Lisa Ryan: Give us an example when you're talking about, because when you think about manufacturing, you don't necessarily think about marketing in the same sentence. So what would a job shop want to do to differentiate itself in the market? What are some of the things they do to do that?Emily Wilkins: Yeah, um, so a lot of job shops grow organically like most of them, they grow to a point organically because they become known in their community for being good at whatever their whatever it is they're doing. Word gets around, and then they end up with customers, and not many of them do much marketing. But then I think they get to a point where they realize that maybe they're not super profitable. On some of their projects, they end up with customers who are a pain in the ass that they don't want to work with or like their business. They want to, they want it to grow, and they want to impact their community. Hence, a lot of the shops that I work with they're small businesses, and they care about their community, and I think that's amazing, and so that's what I like about working with those types of shops that they want to provide a good place for people to work and grow. So they can have a more significant impact on their community.Lisa Ryan: So when somebody is looking at creating a new brand message, or you call it a radical brand message. I know you have a blueprint for that. Without going into all of the steps, what are some simple strategies? If somebody is starting to think they want to focus more on marketing and get the word out about their excellent work, what would be some steps for them to get started?Emily Wilkins: The first thing is to ensure they have something exciting to say. We make anything, or we make parts out of metal. So it is not like you're not saying anything. You're what all of the shops like you do. What is it about you that makes you different? In the end, it can be, it can be anything. It doesn't have to be this super profound message. It has to be memorable and get people excited and interested.Lisa Ryan: So, like no, it would be if we're a metal shop and they made things, and they're like I have no idea what's exciting because we make everything so. What would be some ways to get them to think differently? What are some of your favorite ones that you've worked with people having conversations or exploring with people that it's like, oh my God, I didn't realize that's exciting, instead of the traditional marketing blah blah blah that everybody else is putting out there?Emily Wilkins: I did a website and brand for a company called Onex Inc in Erie, Pennsylvania. Their mission was when I did my setup process with them. They talked a lot about wanting to revitalize the American dream, and they were big on revitalizing their communities. Erie, Pennsylvania, was hit hard by offshoring. The 60s manufacturing was in Erie in the 60s, which was the peak of economic progress. They were manufacturing, and then offshoring happened, and the community took a hit from that, and the recession, 2008 10 whatever hit them even harder.They were big on revitalizing the community and bringing people together. They sold their company back to their employees a couple of years ago, so they're people-centered. When we built their brand, I changed the one word from revitalized to reignite because this company makes industrial furnaces like they that's the thing they are in forge and heat treat furnaces and so, so one little word change to from revitalize to reignite lit them up and love it. So they ran with it, and throughout their site, we use a lot of like heat words, keep your phone, keep your forge high and keep your friend is hot, and like exciting and using words like that to make it more interesting and fun.They are working on a project right now where they're going to increase their customers' production by 50%, and this customer has a production-based bonus for their team, so increasing their bonus by 50% is a pretty big deal. So that's an awesome story. We're trying to get the word out there in different industry publications. We want to talk about that and how that will affect their communities. We are interviewing some of the people that work there to find out what that means for them and what that's going to do for their life and things like that so.Lisa Ryan: On LinkedIn, I see manufacturers talking about what they do. We have this new product, and they show a picture of the new product, it's like okay. It's the story behind it and having some fun with it, doing the play on words like the eye-rolling dad joke say that, but it makes people smile at me. It gives them a reaction versus yet another dull campaign. It also sounds like getting the word out there, so I know you do stuff with blogs that, again, when I don't think it when I think about manufacturers, I don't think a whole lot about blogging because it's more like technical articles and technical things.Talking specifically about product features, it sounds like you're focusing on the benefits and the fun and the culture and everything else, so talk about getting that job shop's history out there in a fun and unique way.Emily Wilkins: A lot of these shops, as I said, there are 100 million fab shops that all do the same thing like it's not how are you going to make that different and exciting and the way you do that is by making it human it's all about those human connections, and you have a new product or a new service that you want to showcase put one of your humans on camera and have them talk about it and show it and talk about the process of how they come up with this idea or what problem they're solving or whatever it's it's more than personality like people. You're selling to a company like you're selling your stuff to other manufacturing companies. Still, your buyer is a human - a person buying from you as a human takes care of human things whenever you post anything online. If there's a human face in it, it will do a million times better than something that doesn't have a face in it. The more human you can make it, the better. The more they bring out that personality is a great way to engage your team, which is a huge thing right now because talent attraction and retention is like most manufacturers' number one problem right now, so I'm leveraging your marketing efforts also to engage your team and get them involved that's a win, win for everyone right.Lisa Ryan: We think of marketing as getting new customers, but yeah, if employees have heard of you. Because of your marketing efforts and you're showing humans in your marketing. You're getting the word out as far as some of the different things you're doing, the mission that you are helping to support as far as the organization and in the community, you are going to attract people to you that you probably wouldn't have found otherwise.Emily Wilkins: yeah, and you're going to attract a higher caliber of people who care about others. People who care about people will care about their job more and what they're doing and helping their team and all that.Lisa Ryan: So when it comes to blogging, I know one of the other things you have is your stupid simple blog system. They're a little overwhelmed by blogging. I don't have time to blog. I don't know what to write. I sat there and looked at the computer screen and the keyboard for 10 minutes.What are some of the tips that you can share that might ease that nervousness and get them started?Emily Wilkins: A couple of things. Number one, engage your team. The machinists are not known for their writing skills. Still, you don't know unless you ask. Maybe your machine likes to write, or perhaps your welding guy is a comedian and loves to get on camera and be funny or whatever. Find out what those talents are from your team, give them reasons to use them, and show them that you value them.For that, blogging is excellent for search engine optimization because the more you add to your website, the more Google sees that you're making changes and keeping things relevant. So the more it'll send you traffic, the more search terms you'll come up for. With blogs, the key is to think about who you're and who you're trying to talk to. Who's the ideal audience that you're trying to talk to? One stupid simple hack I use is to have a conversation with someone and record it. I use its otter.ai to recreate the program. I use it to record all of my meetings, and it transcribes your audio and sinks that with the audio so you can search through the transcripts for things you have to go back and edit if you don't know.You record that conversation, and then you can copy and paste the text into a blog and then go through and add it and make it more of a blog post, and that's one stupid simple hack that will make blogging a million times easier.Lisa Ryan: And I also think something like asking the question what is keeping my customers up at night or another thing that may be fun is you have your receptionist or customer service people have had maybe having them write down things like the, what are the what are your customers asking, and then you can put that information out there, so again it's real it's relevant. You're getting your people involved because now they feel that the blog post this week was my customer that I talked to last week. Sometimes we overthink it, don't we?Emily Wilkins: Totally, yes. Don't make it dull and stuffy. People don't want to read like the way that we're taught how to write in school like that's not how we don't talk that way so don't write that way like right like you're talking to somebody. You don't have to be perfect.Lisa Ryan: Right exactly.Emily Wilkins: It can that's more likely to turn people off anyway if it's too dull.Lisa Ryan: I also use the otter Ai, and there are so many other programs like that. Something easy to do, and maybe you post it as an interview with Joe, the machinist, Sally the welder, or whatever you want to do in those short snippets.Emily Wilkins: A lot of fat, and if you want to stretch that ship is what I call. Record somebody, like your machinist, explaining something or whatever, record somebody saying it on video. Use otter to transcribe it, then you can post the video and turn the transcripts into a blog post, so you created two pieces of content with one video.Lisa Ryan: There are so many programs out there. I use happyscribe. You're doing all of the above when it comes to putting the subtitles on them that way. It's like I've got the video that people can see a natural person, you have the subtitles, and then for the people who hate videos and, taking the time to watch a two-minute video. They can then read what's below it. You never do anything one time. Purpose repurpose, repurpose.Emily Wilkins: You can repost things. You can recycle your posts in a couple of months like people will forget, or you have new people following you now, or different people will catch other people like you at different times. Can you post the same thing for the month?Lisa Ryan: I do that with the manufacturer's network. I keep going and reposting the other, the other episodes. I don't know how often they're listened to, but the content is out there, you tag the people that are in it, they can share it and, like you said, maybe you're having new people, because the life of something on social media is a couple of seconds some. I'm scrolling through, and I don't see it. I'm not going to see it.Emily Wilkins: With video content, if you have on your website or YouTube that that's going to be there forever, and people can search that one until the Internet crashes and probably won't ever happen, but.Lisa Ryan: yeah, who knows who would have a pandemic that took out the last two years of business to write directly. When somebody is considering doing more marketing outreach for the reasons you said, either their customer list is getting stale, or they want to up the quality of the customers they're attracting, what's the number one way to get started? What is the number one thing to create? First, I guess, with your prioritizing it.Emily Wilkins: The messaging is the most critical part of you. You want to ensure your message is clear, consistent, and memorable. It doesn't have to be profound, but it has to be memorable and short and sweet. You have different levels and different layers of messaging, right, so you have a short and sweet tagline. You might have an elevator pitch a little bit longer. You have some messaging on your homepage on your website or topics that you care about or unique viewpoints on things, maybe there's something that you've always hated about your industry, and you're doing things differently.Maybe you have a unique perspective on a specific topic or think about everything and try to brain dump that's always the first. The first step is developing that messaging and brain-dumping ideas because you have that list forever to pull from.Lisa Ryan: Right, and So what about it so I'm we know the website is essential because that's the first place, people are going to go in and learn about you so having real people they're getting humans involved having the blog live there, what about social media when it comes to manufacturing Where are you finding that customers and other manufacturers are hanging out.Emily Wilkins: The most LinkedIn has been massive for me. It can depend a little bit on your market. Still, LinkedIn is important, and every social network is different, too, so you want to know who your audiences are on those other networks. Facebook is a little more for employee-type posts than human interest things. Still, TikTok is up and coming.There are not as many companies that are using it for that, like leveraging it for that, but that makes it easier for you to get your stuff seen, and there are a ton of people on it and new people joining every day. So hence, its growth is a fast-growing platform. I'm going to contradict my earlier statement. Some people will sit there and watch manufacturing processes on tech talk for hours like they'll walk and hashtag satisfying is one easy a lot of like watching like a manufacturing process happen, like, I found this awesome account that I posted about this on LinkedIn the other day, but is it's stamping press of some sort. Still, they started putting all these colorful things under the under press and stamping them to see what it would do.So they're like making this vast, colorful mess out of their machinery, and it's fun to watch and cool to watch so, and I don't know if it will necessarily get customers from that we get your name out there and get people to pay attention to.Lisa Ryan: If we bring the sexy back to manufacturing, it's like that's where future generations are coming in. If they can see something cool that looks fun, that's hashtag satisfying. That may be because it's like I do. my sister always sends me TikTok stuff. I don't get it. I spend most of my time on LinkedIn and a little bit on Facebook. That's so true because if we're looking for ways to bring new people into the market, allow your customers may not be on TikTok. Still, your future employees certainly are right now, so that's a great tip, and again, we get out of our comfort zones and do something, and if you don't want to do TikTok, I'm sure there's somebody in your organization that loves it. So with a more than a happy question, her young people like who's on...

Lisa Ryan: Hey, it's Lisa Ryan. Welcome to the Manufacturers' Network Podcast. I'm excited to introduce our guest today, Robin Ritz. Robin is a creative visionary and owner of Record, a women-owned small business providing safety netting. Robin, welcome to the show.Robin Ritz: Thank you, Lisa. Thank you so much for having me here.Lisa Ryan: Please share your background and what led you to do what you're doing with Record.Robin Ritz: I started in the office environment back in the 90s. My first job was cleaning offices. I used to role-play in an office when I was a child. I like signing checks and enjoy doing office things, so it's a natural fit. In the late 90s, I started working for a safety netting manufacturer. In 1995, Incord was started by my father and his partner, Bob Martin, and Mary Martin. I was able to come on and do some office management and get my get into the admin part of things on the side.  I was always interested in art and creativity. About 13 years ago, I became certified as a kaizen creativity coach. I found that balance between evoking creativity and honoring processes in the workplace and being in a manufacturing position. Combining that with the business and admin, I am a creative visionary today. I can incorporate all that love for honoring process but being creative and doing it in manufacturing.Lisa Ryan: That's not something that you think a lot about his creativity in the work environment in manufacturing. You think of it as a much more gritty, get-the-job-done environment. That has helped you create a workplace that draws and keeps people. What are some of the things you are doing that differentiate you from what you hear about in manufacturing?Robin Ritz: One of our guiding principles is that we're trying to be an exemplary employer. We focus on the employee experience. We focus on our corporate culture. We're focused on being the type of workplace somebody would want to work in so that manufacturing becomes secondary to that environment. First and foremost, working with people who are creative beings. Manufacturing gives us something to do at work.But the environment we're trying to create is about empowering people to be creative, be forward-thinking, and show up as a whole person in the workplace.Lisa Ryan: Well, returning to creativity, you're doing safety netting and custom solutions. What are some examples of your employees using their creativity and building those relationships with each other and the customers?Robin Ritz: Every individual has their expression of their creativity so being able to empower employees, to say we want you to use your creative talents in the ways that come naturally to you. Some people might be naturally organized. Some people might be naturally outgoing. Other people are more in an observant role. Hence, by honoring the ways that creativity shows up for each individual, they can contribute in a way that is unique to them. Therefore, making systems process improvements, based on a suggestion, because somebody already organized and sees a better way that it can be approached or bringing a tool that they have from experience outside the workplace. So they're able to say, hey, we could use this or apply this technique to this process because I've seen it work in other ways, so I think it's more about the openness for the input. Then the creativity takes on a life of its own. It's not necessarily painting on a canvas or art supplies. Instead, it becomes creative, and you're creating the environment that you want to work in. You're creating the changes that you want to see. You're creating your career path. You're building relationships with customers or vendors. So it embraces creativity in a way that says you can be creative in different ways, and, yes, we can apply that in a mean factoring or administrative role.Lisa Ryan: And it sounds individualized. It also sounds like a lot of work. So how do you bring that to figure out your people's strengths when it comes to creativity and creating a safe environment for them to go for it like you're like you do.Robin Ritz: So intentionally being mindful of the processes we have in place and trying to communicate to employees our values and our strategy so that they feel their input is at least in alignment with that. Look at things like your onboarding, your orientation, your initial performance review, and then your annual performance reviews. Those give us the formalized opportunities to discuss career goals, professional development, or ideas they might have to improve their workplace. Some of the questions on that review are what you would do if you were the owner for a day. So it gives people the opportunity to present their ideas in a way that is a little bit whimsical, but we get some great feedback from that. So the formal, very practical way of approaching it is to ensure you create those conversations within your reviews within that formalized process. Then there are the opportunities for it to come up in between. But, still, you're at least not missing those opportunities within your performance reviews or professional development conversation so that you're at least creating the opportunity for them.Lisa Ryan: So let's start with onboarding. When that brand new employee joins Incord, how does the day look? Do you start before they come on board building relationships with them? What are you doing for the first day of the first week to set the tone for their experience in Incord?Robin Ritz: So I would say, particularly over the past two years, and now we're in 2022, so over the past two years, it's evolved because we had to get to a place where we could do it virtually we had to come up with an effective model, both in person and not in person. So we created employee portals where we can provide all of our policies, our Frequently Asked Questions, our health care benefits, and all of our portfolios, if you will, for employees. We created an internal website with all that information that's immediately and continuously available to employees to a manager supervisor because the first day is so inundated you're overloaded with all this information. You don't need it until you need it right.We do the typical go-around and try introducing you to as many people as possible. But, still, we know that is super overwhelming as well, so breaking it into little segments with different departments and making sure that there's like a buddy system for that new employee are some of the ways that we try to make it as comfortable as possible. But, honestly, we're constantly revisiting that just because there's always that opportunity to make that impression. It means so much that employees' first day first.Lisa Ryan: So talk about the buddy system. How do you choose the person to buddy them up with, and what does that buddy do.Robin Ritz: So what I have seen is that it's pretty informal that because we have a community of employees that have a long history working here are average ten years probably over 15 years, so what I've seen most typically is that the supervisor will provide a formalized training, but the community itself within the workforce can recognize who's the best fit to start to help this person make them feel comfortable bringing them into the community that we have, so it really what I've seen is that it happens organically because you're allowing it to develop naturally tremendous, so it's not as formal as we're going to assign this person to this person it's more like the flock knows how to take care of the new little chicks. And there are mama hands that will do it naturally. And you'll find that there are ways that personalities start to reveal themselves, and you'll see it just happening organically. I think part of it is that Law of reciprocity, where somebody who's been working here long enough remembers what it was like when they were coming in, and they are going to be that change that they wanted to see or they're going to make sure that that person's feeling comfortable. Much of that comes back to when you said it seems like a lot of work.It's not a lot of work when you're empowering at the lowest levels when you're empowering across the board, so the managers aren't responsible for it. Employees are responsible for it, and coworkers are responsible for it, so it doesn't have to be heavily managed. It's not micromanaging. It's organic relationship building. It's not work; it's very fluid, and I think that's the other piece where it's like when you're not trying too hard, it comes together in a very natural way that is a forest, and so it, it has more integrity, it has more authenticity, and it has more lasting power.Lisa Ryan: I think the most interesting thing you said in that whole mix was that your average tenure is 15 years and more, and yet they are so welcoming to the new people. Instead of having that attitude of these new people, they're not going to be here for very long anyway, why should I make friends with them? Why should I take them under the wings where it sounds like, with Incord, you've created the type of workplace where those tenured employees have a stake in building the relationships with the new people so that it does keep them on board and so those people to can grow into those same tenured employees.Robin Ritz: There's like almost like a parental pride, when you are helping somebody becomes successful you are helping somebody acclimate you're helping somebody feel comfortable in part of something bigger than them, and there's a pride in the workplace, when your job, and you can show somebody else how to do it, I think there is a lot of energetic exchange there where it's not ownership or afraid of sharing it because somebody is going to replace you or somebody is going to outshine you it's more like hey I've done so well here, I want to share that experience with you so, and I think that again it's almost an individual thing where we're fortunate enough that we're attracting heart-centered individuals that they care about their work Community they care about the success of their coworkers and by helping somebody else be successful, they know they're going to be successful, so it is collaboration on its best.Lisa Ryan: Talk about the collaboration and communication and the feedback loops you have there because it sounds open. Talk about that. How does the feedback work aRobin Ritz: So, again, it's incredibly intentional we're constantly checking in and making sure do employees feel like senior managers know what's going on do employees know what supervisors know what's going on, so we'll do it through like survey services where it's a text or an email so that people can answer a quick question it's formal and informal so within the review process within timed at certain times throughout your career you're checking in with that, so it's some formal some informal.But the biggest thing is that it's consistent with the communications. So you've got a newsletter that's coming out that's consistently going out, you've got the surveys that are always asking for that feedback, and then the highs and part of it is that the feedback loop has to be saying yes or no we're going to implement that because of this relationship or strategy or this misalignment with our strategy or we're going to push it out, because of the timeline. But that feedback loop is critical for employees to know your suggestion has been heard, and here's the response. Yes, no, or indifferent, here's why we're doing what we're doing, and that then creates a feedback loop of Okay, well, I feel comfortable presenting another idea because, yes, it was hard, it was acknowledged. Even if it was a no, I know why it was no. And that's the most critical piece: people will stop giving suggestions when they think they're not being heard or implemented, so even if it's not being implemented, if it's being acknowledged and explained, you'll get more suggestions.Lisa Ryan: The other thing you mentioned is that you attract a lot of heart-centered individuals to join your organization. In a market where it's an employee market and Labor is hard to find, what are some of the ways that you are attracting people how? Where are you finding them?Robin Ritz: One of the things that we participate with every year in Connecticut is Hartford's current top workplace. We're 11 years. I believe 11 years in a row that it's an employee vote that was voted as a top workplace in Connecticut, so that is something that keeps us in an attractive position for employees looking for employers in Connecticut. So we have some bragging rights to say our employees voted for us.With your words, I am a huge fan of impact ability, so we're constantly claiming that we attract high-caliber, very talented individuals. Again it's intentional that we want alignment with highly motivated, highly intelligent, highly engaged individuals, and so it's like attraction. But it has to be something you are intentional and mindful about so that it is when you're presented with it right. I think that's something that we want to be an exemplary workplace because we're putting the workers and the work before the workplace. It's something that we keep revisiting as our values and that It continues to get itself right.Lisa Ryan: yeah, what are some fun things that you? Celebrations are a big part of your company culture. So what are some of the things you celebrate, and how do you do that.Robin Ritz: Okay yeah, so thank you. One of our values is any time for celebration. We are a family business; we have a lot of family members that are working amongst employees that are working. So I would say almost every Friday, we have a birthday party, a baby shower, or some personal celebration we're making time for. We have an events committee. They're planning their events around the survey responses from our employees, so rather than creating an event that we think might be enjoyable, we've asked the employees, well, what are the important holidays for you to celebrate and how do you want to celebrate them and are we doing them collectively an entiregroup of employees are you doing them by departments, or by facilities and things like that so. So every year, all your major holidays, I would say that we try to take time out and celebrate. But we will also do things like bring in an ice cream truck and do ice cream socials, or our events committee lines up things like Zumba classes and hula hooping, and we like playing with parachutes, and so I mean it we try to have fun in ways that are engaging for everybody. And it's always based on employee feedback, so it's mostly like, Can we eat.Lisa Ryan: How many employees do you have there, and are they all on-site, or do you also have a virtual team.Robin Ritz: So we're over 130 employees, and we have multiple facilities within Colchester, Connecticut, and Oakdale Connecticut, that we're operating out of so all of our production is on-site. We did have a virtual work capacity in the past couple of years just out of necessity, but otherwise we've brought everybody back. Everybody works from the office, except for our outside sales team, so we have an outside sales team under sales managers and they're all home base nail homes.Lisa Ryan: And as far as like the hours because, and I wanted to get the number, because hundred 30 employees is not 15 or 20 where you can really super ultra-personalized, but it sounds like with everything that you're doing you're getting to know your employees you're listening to them so even with a larger team all of that is possible. What about hours and scheduling you brought everybody back, who are remote, is there any flexibility there or how do you work with people to give them some of their time back.Robin Ritz: Thank you for asking, so we did we shifted, we have to do two shifts are in 2020 just to keep our numbers small enough so when we did bring everybody back in production, we gave the production crew, the availability of saying what hours , do you want to work, and we also have a second shift so we've got I believe it's 737 30 to 333 30 that's our first shift and then we've got a second shift that comes in for production.And for our admin staff because we're a sales driven organization, we want to make sure that we're available when our customers need us to be available, we had been an eight to five business but we put it out to our entire sales team and came back that were eight 830 to five. So, and it was really about responsiveness to make sure that we're available for our customers and When are they most needed. As far as the employees working from home have there is a lot of VPN or a virtual tool in place, so if somebody can still work from home if they need to.: But we also added two new I guess some people come FLEX days or personal days, so we increase the personal days. I think, as of two days from now, so there'll be using the realism, but that gives people more time for the appointments that they need to schedule, or some of the offsite type of activities that it just didn't feel like they had enough time to do, and so we built a little bit more flexibility for employees to be able to schedule around those work hours.But we have we are manufacturing there's a huge value to people being in person, so really, really, really, really embrace that as much as we can.Lisa Ryan: And as we're getting to the end of our time together one other quote that from a previous conversation that you said was there, your commitment to a sensory rich environment Making a workplace that's more than just the work, so what are some of the things that you do that maybe we didn't talk about so far that would help that to happen.Robin Ritz: So sensory-rich, it is really because you are in that manufacturing environment. One of the things that's important to us is that we do have natural lighting, there are really good sound systems in all of our factories, so that there's music that's going on there is bright and colorful artwork on all the walls, so that there is something nice to look up at. There is an empowerment within the employees' workstations to the degree that it's available where they can personalize it and they can have things that are meaningful to them, and they want to look up and see so it's everything from. it's everything sensory, so we've got Tara diffusers going that are making it smell good you've got natural lighting coming in you've got music you've got artwork we've got plants we've got things to create creature comforts around the environment that just give it a richer, more texture yeah. One itself, like everything that you're.Lisa Ryan: doing there is really leading to that consistency of being on the best places to work list, because it really does come down to culture and even with everything that you're doing it sounds like your business is super strong and you're getting a lot done.Robin Ritz: yeah we do we get a lot of work done, we work hard, we play hard or but we're Doers and I think that's it you got to be doing the work anyway. We do see work...

Connect with Christopher NguyenWebsite: www.aitomatic.com. Lisa Ryan: Hey, it's Lisa Ryan. Welcome to the Manufacturers' Network Podcast. I'm excited to introduce our guest today, Christopher Nguyen. With a decades-long career, Christopher's tech bona fides are second to none. Since fleeing Vietnam in 1978, this multiple-time tech founder has played key roles and everything from building the first flash memory transistors at Intel to spearheading the development of Google Apps as its first engineering director. Today he's become an outspoken proponent of the emerging field of Ai engineering and a thought leader in the space of ethical human-centric Ai. With his latest company Aitomatic, he's hoping to redefine how companies approach Ai in the context of life-critical industrial applications. Christopher, welcome to the show.Christopher Nguyen: Hi, Lisa thanks for having me.Lisa Ryan: Share with us a little bit about your background and what led you to do what you're doing now with Ai.Christopher Nguyen: The most relevant thing about what I'm doing now can be considered a failure, starting after my previous company's acquisition by a company called Panasonic. We all know Panasonic as a global engine. However, many people don't realize that Panasonic is less of a consumer company than an industrial company in manufacturing, avionics, and automotive. The acquisition of my previous company was the apply Ai machine learning to that global engine. Very quickly, we found that a lot of our, let me call it Silicon Valley techniques of digital-first companies like Google and Facebook, and Twitter run into apparent limitations when it comes to dealing with the physical world. The discussion or debate between atoms versus bits, and we've had to develop a whole bunch of techniques that involve leveraging a lot of human knowledge and expertise. We are automating all of that with machine learning to solve these industrial problems. That's the thesis of Aitomatic, the company.Lisa Ryan: So how do you do that when you talk about taking that human knowledge? How are you taking what we do almost automatically as human beings and turning that into machine learning?Christopher Nguyen: Maybe I can share why we do that because too many of us today, that is counterintuitive. We thought the future is only data-driven, and we only collect enough data with sensors on machines, and then we feed them and do these machine learning algorithms, and they'll know and don't predict they'll do everything for us.It turns out that doesn't apply not today and enough for a very long time to the physical industry. Take the problem of looking at sensors on a machine by refrigeration system and then trying to predict in advance. Is this likely to fail over the next two weeks? Is a compressor going to conk out or something like that? To do that, we still rely on human expertise because it's not in the data we're collecting. It's in their life experience. 30-40 years of seeing various refrigeration systems, models, operating conditions, and so on and building up instead of intuitions in their minds over time. We failed trying to do it the other way. We succeeded in incorporating human knowledge. That's the reason we do that. I can talk about how we do that.Lisa Ryan: That's interesting because when you have somebody that's been in the job for 20 or 30 years and, as you said, that's that feeling that intuition and being able to take a human feeling and turn it into data, that's just fascinating. If there's an easy way to describe how that happens, that would be great.Christopher Nguyen: If we learn like humans, we're building learning machines. We can either learn from examples, or we could learn from instructions. Data-driven machine learning is essentially learning. For example, learning by example requires lots and lots of examples before you start to build up some experience around it. But learning from instruction, you could say if the temperature is too high, but the pressure is too low, then signal something that may be problematic soon. So the basics of clarifying or encoding human knowledge are about capturing some of these rules from the past. Their so-called expert system where people tried to do these things. But advances in technology in terms of machine learning itself are enabling us to do this. We can take the natural language you, and I can speak like this, and then it can be translated into something that a machine can understand. Then we can sit down with a domain expert, a manufacturing assembly person who knows machines well. They can say if the sound that comes off sounds like the knock-knock of an engine, then I know to take that offline. We can take the sentence as is, and now our machine learning algorithm can understand it and translate it into code. That code becomes automated and part of the automated system's knowledge set.Lisa Ryan: One of the surprising about automation is that it's so widely used, and yet according to your information, only 9% of manufacturers are currently leveraging it. So what are some of the challenges you've seen that have stopped that from expanding wider?Christopher Nguyen: One of the challenges or surprises that I've learned in the last five years, being part of Panasonic before launching this company, is how the meme or the fear is that robots are coming to replace us. Replace thousands of people, and we just put a bunch of robots doing that; it turns out, the lab we use the word profit with most profitable, the most promising applications are not that right. So it is more about solving the problem of not having enough students than not having enough expertise.In one example, because it's Panasonic, we also operate in Japan. There are these supermarket chains that run refrigeration systems. There are 10,000 supermarkets in one chain and hundreds of thousands of refrigeration equipment. And three experts in the entire country are qualified to diagnose this. It's very much a human expertise constraint. The solution is to quantify what they know and their lifetime of experience, then try to replicate the scale here in the US, where we're facing the same crisis. We've all come on software in the last 30-40 years. We've outsourced our manufacturing - all the tooling or the physical stuff. Now we're finding that it's not just a like economic risk but geopolitical risk.Lisa Ryan: Especially with the labor shortage we're facing right now, there are two sides to that equation. Number one, it's great to have automation to do the jobs that nobody else wants. So we can start making people's lives easier while requiring fewer people. But, on the other hand, if you're talking about three people in an entire country that has that knowledge, there's gotta be some fear around, "Well, if I communicate everything I know to the machines, then I'm going to communicate myself, out of a job." So how do we balance that where we can get away from the fear of where we're not that we can work in harmony between man and machine.Christopher Nguyen: I'll give you an example. Here in the US, you may have heard of a company called Huntsman. They make refrigeration equipment. They are a Panasonic subsidiary, a very large operator. They sell in supermarkets. If you go into the freezer section, you'll see the huntsman logo. To build, run and operate such a network, you need a  very large force of service personnel who understand this equipment, have experience and can go out and repair them. Unfortunately, there's a massive shortage of people willing to take these jobs. So what does Huntsman do? Believe it or not, they set up universities, but for schools to try and teach these people, they've been paid very well. So this is a general example where we were short on people willing to take these jobs or right because everybody goes to college and gets a computer science degree. Ai machine learning will try to help those solve those problems first rather than working people out of a job.Lisa Ryan: Right, exactly, and we certainly need both. I know I was talking to my mother today and her air conditioner went out while she's in Atlanta, Georgia, where it's 100 degrees today, and she's in her late 70s. And nobody can come out. They have nobody to come out until Monday. So the labor shortage is real regarding not only people's health, like my mother's what air conditioning, but also at you just said with 10s of thousands of air conditioning units, how do we get the people to do that.Christopher Nguyen: That's an important example of when you share it. There's a field called predictive maintenance. You're in manufacturing and instrumentation. Where we try to prevent right failure is better than predictive maintenance is better than even preventive because preventive maintenance, you go out and replace everything every six months. Maybe there's a bit of waste, but predictive means you can try to predict that something is likely to fail.The value of being able to do so is far more than the cost of that piece of that compressor or the labor to go out; it's a life and death situation. It's not like a Google or where you click on the wrong ad. What he stands for is that you are trying to essentially build intrusion detection system cybersecurity for automotive because soon, cars are computers on wheels and will be hacked. If you get that wrong, someone dies, so I think this is a crucial combination: applying Ai machine learning to the essential processes in our lives. We're still physical people. We still drive cars. We do eat fish, and so on. So the impact of failure can be quite consequential.Lisa Ryan: Well, the interesting thing you just said about the predictive is that Carrier reached out to my mother yesterday via email to let her know that they sensed something wrong with her system. Still, unfortunately, AT&T was putting in fiber, and somebody cut her line, and she didn't have Internet, so it's a perfect storm. But that predictive maintenance is such an interesting concept because if they can let you know. Hey, there's a good chance we're seeing something that's not working. Then, you can send those people we have so few to fix or do preventative maintenance because they know. That there's a good chance that it's going to fail.Christopher Nguyen: On a typical factory floor, one failure can easily shut down the line and costs $20,000 an hour. The cost of that screw or compressor you're trying to replace can prevent that from happening. So it has a very, very meaningful economic and human life value.Lisa Ryan: Well, you also brought up an interesting point that ties in with Ai and automation. That is cyber security. The more that we outsource, automate, and take it out of the human control and put it into the machine control, there are a couple of people out there - one or two - who are the bad guys. So what are some of the things you've learned about the risks? Also, you talk about putting that human intelligence back into the driver's seat when dealing with cyber security.Christopher Nguyen: You may be familiar with SPYCAR legislation. In the US, SPYCAR stands for safety and privacy in your car. The US Senate likes to have these clever acronyms. But essentially, by a specific year, it was initially envisioned to be 2023 but maybe push that a little more. All cars on the road must have an intrusion detection system. Because vehicles are becoming computers on wheels, they are subject to attack. The way technology has been built is that when people first computerized the car. There's something on the vehicle called the canvas, which you think of as this network. So you have all these sensors and actuators and the processors talking to each other security when that was first built was not top of mind.Because the cars are moving, they think, who will connect to them and hack them? Now cars are getting connected. There have been demonstrations as far back as 2015. That was when a Jeep Cherokee was controlled and was driven off the road. Because it is life and limb, it is human life at stake. It's not just again clicking on the wrong ad. Congress is trying to get ahead of all this and requiring that manufacturers put these intrusion detection systems into cars. My company provides some of the intelligence that goes into that. These things have to be a knowledge infection. We can see car communication patterns that have not occurred before. So that may indicate a kind of a cyber-attack going on and then being alerted to alert the driver and perhaps shut down the systems before it goes too fast and cost somebody death.Lisa Ryan: So, as the hackers get more imaginative and innovative and out with that, is that something that you're just continually monitoring and looking at and patching. How does that work? You're getting better, but the chances are that they're getting better too. So how do you continue to protect these devices, these cars, and trucks?Christopher Nguyen: It is an escalating ever-escalating battle, and the hope, wish, and the promise is that machine learning or learning machines can be better than machines that are not learning. Computers are pretty dumb. All of the intelligence in a computer comes from humans. We tell them exactly what to do. We tell them, step one, do this step. They're very inflexible, but when you apply Ai and machine learning, the hope is because those machines are now learning. They can adapt. They can adapt sufficiently so that they can see new patterns faster than we expect to have a sort of human response. They essentially can begin to pass themselves, which affords us not perfection, but an additional layer of defenses before things get terrible.Lisa Ryan: So what is it exactly that you do at Aitomatic? Tell us a little about your services and how you work with your companies?Christopher Nguyen: Some use cases I mentioned include refrigeration predictive maintenance, identifying and counting the number of fish under the ocean using sonar echograms. This is for keeping fish for something called fixed net fishing off the coast of Japan, as well as cybersecurity, automotive cybersecurity, and avionics. So these are the various use cases. We don't implement directly what our customers do, so these customers have teams called engineers. So you have computer engineers, software engineers, and now you have these emerging people skills called Ai engineers. They use automatic tools, so we have tools, and we have a cloud service that enables them to build these systems. We offer the capabilities that I just mentioned here. They integrate them in specific ways to fit their particular use cases.Lisa Ryan: We talked a lot about Ai and some of what's happening. We also covered the small percentage of manufacturers that are currently leveraging that. Then there are the automotive cyber security issues. What would be your best tip for somebody looking at taking their manufacturing to the next level of using that human intelligence along with automation? Whether it be the Labor shortage or the technology, what would be some of your best tips for somebody listening today.Christopher Nguyen: What our expertise is and what we believe in. There are lots of tools and techniques to force someone to get into machine learning to develop Ai solutions. If they think that they have an asset that is human expertise right from years of experience and so on, and they want to apply that to their Ai system, they should seek out tools and techniques companies like ours that specialize in something I call knowledge first Ai.Lisa Ryan: And so, and this year tool, you mentioned earlier about just being able to talk to it in everyday conversation, it sounds like a knock-knock when it does that or how do you how would you even know what to say to the machine.Christopher Nguyen: Communicating an international language is the first step on the journey. That starts the knowledge encoding. Once that knowledge is encoded, we then automatically generate what's called the machine learning model. Then the whole thing gets deployed into production, and once it's in production, data is still coming in, and incidents happen. New events occur. All of that is then looped back into rebuilding or refreshing the system, so essentially the whole thing is an operating system learned from human instruction. So as well as more data comes in, it will also learn about what's happening in real-time.Lisa Ryan: And are some industries better than others when it comes to using Ai, or is it across the board in manufacturing that everybody can benefit.Christopher Nguyen: There's nothing that is best for everything. The difference between the digital and physical industries is that I used to be part of the digital industry right now at Google and so on. Some tools and techniques work with big data that move quickly in and out, and the process itself is also digital. That works very well for certain classes of companies, I think, for manufacturers for automotive companies, for a bionic company, anything that has a physical dimension, we find that those tools and techniques don't work.We need to have this human expertise, and so I think, for you know, an Ai company like Automatic that focuses on what's called knowledge first Ai is much more suitable for the physical industry.Lisa Ryan: On the other thing that just popped into my mind as we look at the graying of America in manufacturing, we have all these people walking out the door and taking that knowledge with them. It also gives them a chance to leave a legacy. So all of those decades of information feel relevant because they're contributing to the company's future and truly leave a legacy with the knowledge they've built up in their career.Christopher Nguyen: yeah, for us, they're not just relevant. They're essential, literally. Sometimes, this knowledge is lost forever and then has to be somehow built up from raw data. That isn't easy to do essentially like eventually, 50 years from now, machines will learn everything, but what we do the in the intervening 50 years.Lisa Ryan: Right. We speak a lot on the show about workplace culture and helping employees feel that they're valued, appreciated, and part of a bigger mission. In this case, with that human intelligence, that human factor, you can work it into your conversations. Let the managers say. This is your legacy. We value you, and that's why we're doing it. We're not trying to take people out of the equation. We want to bring your knowledge into the equation.Christopher Nguyen: Machines, when used correctly, will always augment us rather than replace us.Lisa Ryan: Exactly. Christopher, it has been a pleasure having you on the show today. If somebody does...

Lisa Ryan: Hey, it's Lisa Ryan. Welcome to the Manufacturers' Network Podcast. I'm excited to introduce our guest today, Nitin Govila. Nitin is a management leader, entrepreneur, engineer, and meditation trainer. He is the Senior Vice President, air Pacific and MEA for the French manufacturing group Serge Ferrari, a flexible composite material sector leader. So, Nitin, welcome to the show.Nitin Govila: Thank you, Lisa. I'm glad to be here and delighted to be speaking with you.Lisa Ryan: Share with us a bit about your background and what led you ultimately to do what you're doing with composite materials.Nitin Govila: I was in the initial years of my life. I was born and brought up in India. I studied there and worked there for six to seven years. I started my career with paints after a few years in the dairy and food sectors. Building materials and paints were the first building materials I started with. I needed to kind of update or upgraded myself, so I felt a need for an international management degree.I came to Paris to do my MBA at HTC Paris, which opened me up to work in an international environment. I started working with another French company, which was in home automation. Then in early 2007 and eight, I felt the need that this part of the world was growing. At that time, I was working in France also, and then I felt the market that this part of the world was growing, and I wanted to be back in Asia. So that brought me to Singapore.I've now been in Singapore for 14 plus years. For the first seven years, I worked for a French company, also in roofing. I moved to a very niche product category in roofing. Then this opportunity came, which was unique and different. I did not know about the sector. We used to see some shade structures, blinds, and awnings, but they were in detail in the industry. When I was with the home automation, we used to supply moderation systems for the blinds and awnings. So I was exposed to that, but beyond that, not so much. It was an interesting journey for me to enter this business category. That's been six and a half years now. In this industry, as you mentioned, I've been handling the role of Vice president of Asia Pacific, Middle East, and Africa.That's nearly a more significant part of the world regarding geography. It's also a growing part of the business for the company. I'm based in Singapore, but most of the time travel across all the countries and regions I am responsible for.Lisa Ryan: What has changed as far as these composite materials? Why are people moving towards them? And what are some of the benefits of using that in architecture and outdoor equipment applications?Nitin Govila: Great question. When I joined, it's already been six and a half years, as I mentioned. I also ask this question regarding what has been evolving in our company. It's touching 50 years next year, and what I've seen when I look back at history, I think the main thing has been technology and innovation. If you look at composite materials, how it starts may start with a pellet. If you're using polyester, you begin with those pellets. You crush them you. You make yarn.We process the yarn through our process and then quote them what drives the product's innovation and quality. More and more companies that have invested in innovation have always been able to lead the market, continuously bringing out new products. Based on the market's needs, if I look at significant structures now, I'm talking about stadiums, airports, and large shading structures when we talk about great architecture. Earlier, nobody thought it was a guy maybe 15-20 years back. You might call it a kind of a tarpaulin or a canvas, depending on which country you are from and what words are used. Over the years, companies have leaped to make some innovations. Serge Ferrari is one of the leading companies with innovation. We put nearly four to 5% of our turnover into R&D and innovation. What happened was slowly, the minds of the architects and the designers and consultants also changed and evolved.There was also a field of study that evolved in engineering, called ten cyl or the fabric or ten cell membrane engineering. Many colleges came up with a couple of them, offering specialization in Germany. These courses became a field of study. When those people came out to start their professional careers with architect or design firms, they also began experimenting. As time went along, when you see those structures, there are still structures that were done 20-25 years back and are still there. That also created more and more openness for the architects, designers, and the final client to look at it. Over time, they also realized that one of the unique ways for every architect or designer is always to have a signature structure made. A unique one and composite materials being free-flowing have been able to give that to feed into their imagination.It boils down to what kind of yards are used. Are you using glass yarns are using. They have a proven history of projects which have lasted 20, 30, and 40 years and are still standing. That's why now it's moving in the lines. It's the fifth element of construction, other than the classical ones. The concrete and other elements we talk about are moving as a fifth element. It looks like a prominent open structure or a close structure. Even in close structures, people use membranes and fabrics because they can roll up the building. They can make a façade. They can create a perforated facade or single-skin facades can, depending on their needs.The structure you see behind me as my backdrop is made of a facade material. It's in a public park in Queensland. I visited this place last week to see the project because that also gives a lovely perspective. It's a public space. You can walk and be underneath it. It adds to the aesthetics and creates that iconic structure, which goes in very hand in hand with the city's identity. For that matter, the countries and entities, so if you asked me briefly, it's a long answer, but I would say innovation. Being able to show a proven history, that you've done it, you've done it successfully, and being able to go and meet the right influencers and tell them what the product can bring. Then you have all the test labs and the reports to complement to prove that these are three-four elements that are leading plus the flexibility of it. Even non-combustibility or sustainability in companies like us have taken the lead in that direction. So that building norms or the local norms of a city or a country are also filled in that direction, whether you're going to greener way, whether you're going the noncombustible way, or you want to have more fire-resistant buildings or structures in that sense.Lisa Ryan: Because this is audio-only, people don't see the structure behind you, but I can verify that it is super cool, so just from the sustainability aspect, that's great. But the creativity, because you have the opportunity to work with those flowing materials and create something unique. You have a lot more flexibility. Let's talk about its sustainability of it. Using glass and polyester and those different fibers, from a sustainability standpoint, is that, like recycled materials, we can incorporate our, I don't want to call it, our waste, but our waste into these types of projects? We'll talk a little bit about the sustainability aspect of that.Nitin Govila: Certain companies are working on it again here. We are taking the lead. We have been leaders in developing PVC-free products. In that sense, which is mainly for interior applications, so instead of somebody wanting a polyester coated PVC polyester yarns and PVC coated product if they wish to a PVC free, that's a trend which is going. Because sustainability also has very different meanings in different countries in certain countries. They want to understand the entire back end of the process in the value chain of the whole manufacturing. We consider the terms of how the raw materials are sourced. The raw material supplier companies are doing in terms of their processes. In Australia, you have a concept called PVC best practice, which means that vinyl and PVC are not bad, but it's more important to see what the processes follow to make a product.We also have a second development we had in the past, and now we are doing it uniquely also is to create, how do we recycle these membranes and then recycle to what is it recycle to a bad waste in a way that okay. It's recycled, but still, it's not such a usable way. Maybe you can still make some applications not related to structures. But some other things or are you able to create even the yarns and pallets which are of good quality so that you can use them to make another fabric, which will be a good quality. The company is working on the second step earlier, we had the recyclability that it created pallets, and you could use them for various things. Maybe low-end usage now, we've gone one step ahead to develop a technology where we are working on it. We should have it launched at the end of this year or early next year.If you're also able to show that the pallets you create are of high quality, then when the yards you create and through that, the fabric you make will also have better quality. Then other elements are what coating process use what environment are you using to, then and classify production in that direction. So there is a very, very strong effort towards that. We are aligned with the overall objectives of Europe or other parts of the world. We have allocated a specific part to ensure we are moving in that direction. The world is moving or as expected of companies like us.Lisa Ryan: The other thing I find interesting about what you're doing with your materials is the difference between sound and noise. What are you doing with those internally, as far as helping workers to be more focused on what they're doing because you're able to reduce or eliminate some of the day-to-day noise? Talk about it from that standpoint? How are your products and your technology helping today's manufacturing workers?Nitin Govila: It's not only the manufacturing workers that's important. But it's also overall. I would say workspace so whether it's manufacturing, whether it's an office, whether it's a restaurant or a public space interest public space or, for that matter, include swimming pool or a sports gym or whatever. What happens is that acoustics is, and I'll prefer to use the word acoustics here because acoustics is misunderstood or misconstrued. When you talk about acoustic, people first understand this sound reduction of soundproof. That's where I have learned it. Before joining the company, I did not understand that sound and bad noise are different.What is essential is to have a good sound or up and reduce the effect of bad now is not bad noise means that you are an area, you have a lot of people. There's a reverberation of sound, which affects that even when you go to a restaurant. It's packed on a Friday evening or Saturday. You're not even able to hear the person across your table for which you've come for dinner. Suppose you have an environment that ensures that those sound reverberations are what the coefficient NRC or the Alpha. We say the noise reduction coefficient is measured in terms of the material. In that case, you're not saying you're making a soundproof. It's not like a recording room. But what you're recording also insulates you. You don't feel much of anything in a recording room. Here it's different. You remove the bad noise effects and have a good sound. You're able to sit comfortably and be in a good space. You can also hear the other person, whatever the other person is saying, and communicate comfortably even if people are around now. What's happening is over the years and still happens. There's a lot of effort put towards in an office, not only the aesthetics, or how do we manage the heat, the terminal part the glare, part all those elements are being looked at more seriously.Even though there is an element of exterior protection outside the window or inside, that has its pluses and minuses. The acoustic part is never looked at, and when you look at it now, try to get people back to the office after the covert. You become pertinent to creating a good space that people would want to return to; otherwise, they were happy in their homes. They have created a space of working for the last one and a half years doing these calls like zoom calls or teams calls, and then, when they come to the office, they see it's an open space.You may feel heavy or not so comfortable, so I think that's an element I see sometimes gaining but not so much a part of it is also lack of information and knowledge available. Maybe there are not so many acousticians who can share the difference between all those elements. Part of it is also design and awareness. The moment all that comes together, we are playing a part, when we try to show at different exhibitions or displays or even presentations to architects to discuss this. Because the free-flowing fabric word that it ensures it can fit into your design environment. You can envelop it with the lights, so if you have a light, you can cover the lights. Instead of glass, you can do fabric. Nobody will ever realize that you can do ceiling baffles. You can do panels.You can even do the walls and print on them; nobody will even realize there is fabric. It provides the acoustic effect that if you take swimming pools, you can do the ceiling underneath any roof. It could be a membrane roof. It could be a steel roof. The sound does not get reflected. That improves the whole acoustics of the place. Many times when we see stadiums being designed, they are always double-skinned. Part of it is also because of that; our product is included in the Qatar World Cup, which has five stadiums. There's one stadium, designed like a Bedouin, a Middle East tent where the outside surface is a membrane. The inside part is done on the ceiling. The design of what the intent in the Middle East inside will look like. We designed it from the yards. We did not color it. The yarns are of that red-brown whitish color to give that look from the inside. That's an acoustic fabric that was put inside the top membrane, which is also to show that effect but also provide comfort for the spectators who will be there to watch the game. So it's evolving, but I think it will take some time to get that across.Lisa Ryan: It sounds like it's quite an education process because when you were talking about a noisy restaurant on a Friday or Saturday night, that makes sense because it detracts from the experience when you can't hear the person across from you. But if you go into a manufacturing plant or an office where sound is not something we even think about, what would be some signs to look for? How would somebody know this could be an issue that could be helped by looking at their acoustics?Nitin Govila: The first point, as you just mentioned, is the element of education. If we are taking the lead, there are not so many companies that can manufacture fabrics that can give these acoustic properties. We have a couple of products in a range, so we have to take the lead in educating, so when we talk to architects or consultants, we do our presentations in public forums or at different events. We ensure that we try to bring that element to education. We cover it in our catalogs and other communication. We have also changed the way. Sometimes we communicate so when we do big events or even exhibition booths. We try to create an experience room.In that exhibition where people sit inside that space, they will feel the difference, so that's also what we are trying to do, and then obviously. We sometimes tell people okay, let's start with one of your rooms. Let's not start with the whole office. Let's take a meeting room, for that matter. Can we do a different way of a meeting room, and we are happy to support you on that or work with you on that, so maybe once they see the difference there, they'll come back to us, okay, let's look at the design of the whole office. It's a long effort, so it's all about communication and talking about it. Using case study methods, where we've done a lot of projects like this, to show that it could be a church and a restaurant. That's why sometimes more specific, very targeted audience-specific events started happening. If we decide to participate in that, we also try to bring in those elements.Lisa Ryan: I also see in your background that you're a meditation trainer. So that mental health of workers falls right into that category, so talk a little bit about that because it sounds like you're doing a lot with the architects. Who would then have to sell the concept to the end-user? Whatever the benefits of mental health for that end-user, whatever that building is? How does that work, and what are some success stories that you have experienced?Nitin Govila: So I would say it's still very nascent where people look at mental health from the office environment. The design environment is still a different category to look at. One thing that has happened over the last few years is magnified, so you have bigger companies with specific HR and specific people-focused departments that are being created for workplace wellbeing and wellness. That's real positive development. Mental health is being talked about. Also, stress is being talked about. Breakdowns are being talked about in companies. But it's still connected to an element that's related to people. Somehow I am not yet able to see a connection that the office environment also could play a part, I think it will happen, but I suppose it's too early for that. At least we are talking about this subject. It's a very positive direction because many years back, it was not even talked about, or it was not even considered good to talk about. At least now we are open about it; companies are taking specific actions to help their employees to understand supporting them. I do a lot of weekly meditation sessions with certain companies in Singapore virtually. They made it a practice that they gave their employees a half an hour option, not forcing them but they have a choice.Those kinds of things companies are doing. They are also doing other things to help them maintain that. Ideally, it would be nice that the whole thing becomes holistic and that even when you design your space, you're already thinking of what colors I use and what kind of protection. I'm doing outside my glass, how I manage the heat, how I manage the air conditioning load, how I manage the aesthetics, or the glare or whatever when I'm looking at my screen. The sound or whatever, am I, creating space where I can have an opening for myself when I can connect with myself either meditate either pre or whatever I do that maybe you know. I worked with some companies that are creating meditation boards, or they've completed separate rooms called introspection rooms, where people can walk in whenever they wish to sit quietly for whatever time they want to and then come back. Part of it is happening now, the overall integration to combine all those elements. Maybe a little bit away, but it will take some time.Lisa Ryan: Well, I think it's funny because there's probably a certain percentage of people listening or who have been in manufacturing thinking there's no way my people...

Connect with Andrew:Email: crowe@the-mfg.comWebsite: the-mfg.comLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/expertandrewcrowe/Lisa Ryan: Hey, it's Lisa Ryan. Welcome to the Manufacturers' Network Podcast. I'm excited to introduce our guest today, Andrew Crowe. Andrew is the leader of the new American manufacturing Renaissance and host of tv's project MFG. Andrew, welcome to the show.Andrew Crowe: Thank you so much for having me.Lisa Ryan: Share with us about your background and what led to your passion for changing the face of manufacturing.Andrew Crowe: I would love to. My name is Andrew Crowe. I grew up in inner-city St Louis. The area I grew up in was violent, and there weren't a lot of opportunities. In the school district or the radius of where I was, I didn't have a lot of options or platforms to see what I was good at outside of sports and entertainment.Seeing many people around me with jobs that weren't paying enough to survive on it led me into crime - to do something to lift my family out of poverty. Unfortunately, the only examples I had around me were people doing badly and illegal things. Before I was 18, I was a two-time felon and a teenage father. I didn't have a lot of focus, and I didn't know what I was going to do with my life. I didn't have much opportunity to express what I could be.Fast forward to jobs not working out because of felonies and getting into more trouble. I finally had enough. I put the word out that I was looking for a job and a young lady introduced me to a place where she was working. It was a manufacturing plant, and I walked in and took a machinist test and failed horribly. I had never seen micrometers or calibers or anything like that. But on the back side, there was a math test with fractions and decimals, which is what we measured. I did well on that side, so I got hired to run the saw on the third shift, cut material, and drop it off at the CNC machines and the manual machines. I took this job in that factory, and my mind exploded with all the opportunities for the first time. I felt like I was the guy that got left in the museum or the kid in the candy shop.I walked into this new world and had never considered how things were made. I didn't know anything about manufacturing. It lit a fire under me that I had never felt before. I wasn't passionate about the other things I had done in life. I didn't know what that felt like to have a passion. So I stayed in that environment as long as I could. I would work my eight hours, clock out, and then I would stay for four hours and watch the machines. Finally, I would stand and take notes.I bought a lot of coffee and donuts, and I tried to find some teachers and mentors that would teach me more about this field. At the same time, this thing kept me from the streets and making bad decisions because all I could think about was how important my job was. We were making things that went into the fighter jets, the tanks, the cars, and stuff like that, then that moves America and protects America. I didn't feel like a felon, and I didn't feel like a teenage father. I felt like I was an American, and I felt like the things I was doing contributed to America. I was important here, so I would come to work early and stay late. I would study and at the same time.I understood that the culture wasn't conducive to people who look like me, and frankly, not people who look like you. So, as I fell in love with this industry, I realized that this place isn't a great place for people of color and women. Because women raised me, and I am a person of color, I felt there were some things we could do to change that.I watched how manufacturing could uplift my life and brought me from feeling like I didn't have a place in America and wasn't important. I wanted to ensure that people who came from could have that same feeling. At the same time, my career started rising because I put as much as possible into it, so I went from the saw to running the manuals. Then from the manuals to running some CNC machines. At that time, I just started, just diving in.I looked on YouTube there weren't; there was no titan at the time. There was nobody that was teaching that looked like me and represented my community. So I made that my mission - to return to the community and teach them skills as much as possible. I will work with the youth. I organized the youth offenders and organizations working with the boys and girls club. My sister works at a place called the Wyman group, where she runs programs for teenage mothers and single mothers, and battered women, and I would teach these skills, so people could get these jobs that are paying high. So they can work around their schedules and keep pushing the industry forward.At the same time, my name started rising in the industry because I became a conduit between the open jobs and the job list in these communities. I would go into some major brands and give them the skill set and the tool set to start communicating with these pockets of society that have been overlooked by our industry and build that bridge. I was making that connection because the workforce, the face of the workforce, and the workers are changing. How our industry has been recruiting workers isn't going to work if we want to continue to thrive.A gentleman said something on one of my LinkedIn posts, saying that manufacturing is a global heavyweight division. So we need everybody on our American spectrum, everybody in that boiling pot. We need the opinions and creativity in our minds to have a manufacturing sector that will compete globally, and this is how we do it.I'm noticing that we had a significant void in hiring, recruiting, and retaining the next generation of American manufacturers and leaders. So I decided to get out on the road, and I started with friends of mine. Master cam has been a great partner. Edge factory is also helping me get on the road and put American manufacturing at the forefront. Getting in front of communities and showing them awareness and access to these careers, training for them, and showing them local opportunities around them that they can get in front of right now to change their lives and become whatever they want to be in manufacturing. Whether that's the saw guy, the CNC operator, the machine is, the programmer, or the engineer, this is the new American dream and is accessible.I also go to companies and teach them how to recruit and retrain. Then, when I'm done, they use the programs there to find and educate the people on their own. It's a beautiful thing.Lisa Ryan: I love the energy and passion and everything that you have coming through. People listening to this show think, "Man if I had 100 of him, it would be great." There are a couple of things that immediately come to mind.With almost 3 million manufacturing jobs going unfilled by 2030, we must look at nontraditional sources. Being a felon, you look at that population, and we're afraid or don't think they will work. You turn that on its head because somebody gave you a chance. Now you're coming in with a whole new world that you had never been exposed to, and with jobs pay great. You are contributing to a bigger mission because, as you said, you're not just making pieces-parts, you're contributing to aircraft carriers, and you can feel a part of something. It seems that manufacturing is not where you see many people of color and women, so that needs to change. What are some of the things you're doing? We know that we need bodies to fill these jobs, but why should manufacturing look at more ways of bringing in diversity and changing the face of their workforce?Andrew Crowe: When looking at underserved populations in nontraditional populations, especially felons, you get an 85% recidivism rate drop when you introduce fellas manufacturing careers. People who get paid high amounts, not high amounts but good enough amount to be able to survive. They are less likely to supplement those incomes with the street in illegal activities, so number one, our reentry population, I like to call it, needs society's validation. They need to say you're more than the mistake you made now. Let's help you reenter society.In a way, you can pay your restitution, your parole officer, whatever that may be, and you can still have life and food and take care of your kids, and that's all people want. At the same time, you're looking at numbers in a manufacturing environment. If people can work hard for you, you're looking past some of those things they may have done in the past. There's an avenue to go to school and get different labels. There's a real opportunity.Another thing that I'll say is a lot of the companies that I talked to in the beginning think that they must make a significant investment, or they think that they must drastically change some of the things they're doing. It doesn't have to work like that. There are happening around you and in your community that you are going to call them. Some of those fears you have, especially felon based, are things like bonding insurance you can get for that felon trying to reenter. That will protect him from anything you think will happen while they're on the job and insure you.At the same time, there are a lot of programs that do background checks that work on soft skills. The Urban League has a lot of beautiful ones that will help work on all the things. They provide transportation to these jobs so that all you have to work on is the hard skills and train them on the job. Another thing, why do we have to diversify. We've got to diversify because we've only traditionally, have given a seat at the table and mouths to speak and consideration of the opinion of one type of person, and that's been an older white male. Our industry is full of it, and that's great. There's nowhere that that they need to go, but our table is big now because we're still a global competition.Our tables are even bigger, and more seats need to be here. But they're going unfilled because we're only replacing the seats there. So we need to look at this table as hey let's introduce more cuisine, whether you like it or not. Whether it's something that you're used to eating, it's still an option. Let's introduce more people at the table who have an opportunity to speak and put in their opinion. At the same time, you don't have to go anywhere. We're not pushing you out. We're just adding seats to this bigger table that we've created.The more that we can say, hey, I like a little bit of this type of food that type of food. It all works in harmony. This is the balance that we found. These things go together with the best.Then we're humming, and we're able to put ourselves in a place where we're the top global manufacturer again. But, again, we're going against on a global scale with countries that don't traditionally cut out parts of their population. So we're not even given ourselves a good chance to say we've all this traditional old manufacturing knowledge. Plus, we've got all this new knowledge, angles, opinions, and experiences that we can add to that that will make us even more robust.Lisa Ryan: When it comes to it, it all sounds like a great idea. What would be a practice instead of just looking at it from the standpoint of Okay, we need some more people of color? We need some more women in the organization. What can manufacturers do to start building their diversity and their diversity programs in the right way and the way for the long term? Where you have not only diversity but also belonging and inclusion.Andrew Crowe: 100%. That is a great question, and I think that going along with looking at other industries. Almost every other sector has adapted things like this. So we've got an advantage in that. In that event, we can look at industries like the IT industry, which started and was typically for nerds. Whatever that definition was, then, and then there was an explosion of computing, and everything the Internet, made everything more digital were digitizing. So now there are more jobs than the stereotypical nerd can feel.So we started looking at things like coding boot camps. And coding boot camps are now. So if you're a peg-leg unicorn that identifies as a pirate, there's a coding camp for you. They've rebranded the industry to something easy to get into, no matter who you are. You can upscale quickly. You can learn from, and with people that look in, whatever like you and in you have that comfortability. Plus, you matter. If we can adapt some of those things, like coding camps in pockets of communities and empowering those communities to have the resources to teach these camps.We can change what it looks like and change, the the the culture of manufacturing as well. But, at the same time, the industry is in a weird place where most of the knowledge is with the people enforcing the toxic culture. So if you're a manufacturer, you have to make the hard decision to say, this guy's got a lot of knowledge and is making us a lot of money and parts. He's got a lot of power around here because he's been here for a long time. But he's not a good culture fit for what we need going forward. So do I get rid of him, change the culture now, and lose all that knowledge and machining stuff or do I not take the stand and change the culture and do the right thing. It's tough. It's tough to decide for many companies, especially when they don't see the replaceable talent already clearly on the horizon, if that makes sense.Lisa Ryan: Part of that is having mentor-mentee relationships, where you're putting that older ten-year-old worker together with that new person and giving them the opportunities. We're seeing a lot of mentoring and reverse mentoring because those new and diverse employees see the world differently from exposure to tech, life, and what they've had.So again, companies can start the conversation if they are open. What success stories or things have you seen in the industry supporting those types of workforce development programs? What are you seeing?Andrew Crowe: So I'm seeing a lot of success with companies that tie in with official apprenticeship programs or local tech schools via shared technology. Some of those machines are sitting empty that have work available. They're using those and maybe donating to those Community organizations that have the time to train people from the community. They can then give them workers who are already trained and precisely what they need. Companies with apprenticeship programs put the young with the seasoned, allowing those conversations to occur. Not only that, they're incentivizing those things so that other people within the company see that there is value in those relationships. They're making that the culture.I also see national brands like Master Cam happening out here and taking a stand and trying to make their software and things more accessible and affordable. So hence, programs that couldn't traditionally afford them are around the pockets of the population that needs them. So laying those seeds and then tying them back to the companies that use Master Cam.They can start to build those bridges and build those bonds. Other companies are thinking outside the box, and it's working. For example, there's a city where we help initiate a live-work program where the local manufacturers are on board. The regional economic development Council is involved so that if you work at one of these manufacturing plants and satisfy a certain amount of KPIs, they will match your down payment and your closing costs on a home. The Economic Development Board will match the other half. So you've got a taxpaying worker committed to that job and city for at least the next 15 to 30 years. You're helping break generational curses by assisting people in getting real estate and owning homes quicker through working. Those situations include relationships and collaboration with industry and government, tying it into the community working in the cities I've been to. I've been consulting with you for sure.Lisa Ryan: Well, and it's a win, win because not only are you helping individuals to get off the street, to get a good job with good benefits, and like you just said, the potential for homeownership that makes them more stable and committed to the organization. It's a win for the company because they are again getting loyal workers coming in. They're showing they care and can feel good that they're making a difference. I believe, is there some tax credits too.Andrew Crowe: So hiring felons and hiring disadvantaged people there 100% are tax credits that the government will give you that you can again put back into a recruiting and retaining programs and make it stronger and apprenticeship program. So all these different things will benefit you in a karmic way or help the industry because we're bringing more people in, but there's a financial aspect to that as well.We also know from studies that a happy worker is a more loyal worker is a more productive worker. So if you go into a company, this company allows you not to gamble with your life and your family's life and be a good productive member of society. They helped you become a homeowner when when when other opportunities arise, there's an aspect of that that sending you that you're not going to jump ship. When companies reach out to me, it's either hey, we've got this population we can't reach it all, or we can call them, but they won't stay here right once we get them in. These are some of the tools that you can have to build that loyalty to your company and build it up to keep people here. No matter if they find somewhere that will pay them a little bit more, they won't consider that as much.Lisa Ryan: Well, and I know that when you're looking at that person that's been there for 30-40 years, they're bringing in all these young kids, and they start to feel irrelevant. If you begin to put together these relationships, you have to force them at the beginning to happen. But then you put together people who wouldn't necessarily gravitate towards each other, and then those relationships, and we come to a different level of understanding. Because now people have a different story where they can understand where people are coming from, they're a little bit better at developing those types of relationships.Andrew Crowe: 100%. I'll even take it a step further. It gives you data you can then use to build an actual manual. Then, you can build out actions to continue fostering those relationships in the future once you force them or naturally let them happen. You can start to build a program and a culture that says this is how we work with these two gaps. This is the pathway that they go through to achieve ultimate cooperation and ultimate collaboration.Then you can start measuring these things. When you bring in new or older people, you can say, hey, are they hitting these standards? Are they moving through this process? Let's put them through it. Or if they were underperforming, their culture isn't what we needed. Here's a process that we develop from doing it less reenacted. I mean re-engaging and putting everybody through it again, which improves the company.Lisa Ryan: Well, and the other thing manufacturers got this reputation and not only among the underserved communities but every parent on the planet, that has...