Augmented Podcast: Recent Episodes
Trond Arne Undheim, Tulip.co & MFG.works
Augmented brings industrial conversations that matter, serving up the most relevant conversations on industrial tech. Our vision is a world where technology will restore the agility of frontline workers. We serve an audience of executives, industrial leaders, investors, founders, educators, technologists, academics, process engineers, and shop floor operators across the emerging field of frontline operations.
Augmented reveals the stories behind the new era of industrial operations, where technology will restore the agility of frontline workers.
In episode 17 of the podcast (@AugmentedPod), the topic is: Smart Manufacturing for All. Our guest is John Dyck, CEO at CESMII, the Smart Manufacturing Institute.
After listening to this episode, check out CESMII as well as John Dyck's social profile:
- CESMII: (@CESMII_SM) https://www.cesmii.org/
- John Dyck: https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnsdyck/
In this conversation, we talked about democratizing smart manufacturing, the history and ambition of CESMII (2016-), bridging the skills gap in small and medium enterprises which constitute 98% of manufacturing. We discuss how the integration of advanced sensors, data, platforms and controls to radically impact manufacturing performance. We then have the hard discussion of why the US is (arguably) a laggard? John shares the 7 characteristics of future-proofing (interoperability, openness, sustainability, security, etc.). We hear about two coming initiatives: Smart Manufacturing Executive Council & Smart Manufacturing Innovation Platform. We then turn to the future outlook over the next decade.
Trond's takeaway: US manufacturing is a bit of a conundrum. How can it both be the driver of the international economy and a laggard in terms of productivity and innovation, all at the same time? Can it all be explained by scale--both scale in multinationals and scale in SMEs? Whatever the case may be, future proofing manufacturing, which CESMII is up to, seems like a great idea. The influx of smart manufacturing technologies will, over time, transform industry as a whole, but it will not happen automatically.
Thanks for listening. If you liked the show, subscribe at Augmentedpodcast.co or in your preferred podcast player, and rate us with five stars. If you liked this episode, you might also like episode 8 on Work of the Future, episode 5 Plug-and-play Industrial Tech, or episode 9 The Fourth Industrial Revolution post-COVID-19. Augmented--the industry 4.0 podcast.
Transcript: TROND: Augmented reveals the stories behind a new era of industrial operations where technology will restore the agility of frontline workers. In Episode 17 of the podcast, the topic is Smart Manufacturing for All. Our guest is John Dyck, CEO at CESMII, the Smart Manufacturing Institute. In this conversation, we talked about democratizing smart manufacturing, the history, and ambition of CESMII, bridging the skills gap in small and medium enterprises, which constitute 98% of manufacturing. We discuss how the integration of advanced sensors, data, platforms, and controls radically impact manufacturing performance. We then have the hard discussion of why the U.S. is, arguably, a laggard. John shares the seven characteristics of future-proofing. And we hear about two coming initiatives: Smart Manufacturing Executive Council & Smart Manufacturing Innovation Platform. We then turn to the future outlook over the next decade. Augmented is a podcast for leaders hosted by futurist, Trond Arne Undheim, presented by Tulip.co, the manufacturing app platform and associated with MFG.works, the manufacturing upskilling community launched at the World Economic Forum. Each episode dives deep into a contemporary topic of concern across the industry and airs at 9:00 a.m. U.S. Eastern Time, every Wednesday. Augmented — the Industry 4.0 podcast. John, how are you today? JOHN: I'm well, Trond. How are you? TROND: I'm doing well. I'm looking forward to talking about smart manufacturing. What brought you to this topic, John? We'll get into your background. But I'm just curious. JOHN: This is my favorite topic, as you probably know. So I appreciate the chance to pontificate a little. I've been at this nexus between IT and OT for the last two decades of my career or more and found over these past two decades that this is one of the most complex pieces of manufacturing period, this sort of unique challenge between the world of operations and the world of IT. And the work I did at MESA (Manufacturing Enterprise Solutions Association) on the board and as the chairman of the board exposed me to a lot of the great vendors in this ecosystem. And through that work, I found that most of them struggle with the same things. We're all struggling in different ways. And so the opportunity to take one step back and look at this from a national and a global perspective and try to find ways to address these challenges became a very unique opportunity for me and one that I've enjoyed immensely. And so just the prospect of making a real difference in addressing these challenges as a nation and as an ecosystem has been just a privilege and one that I get really excited about. TROND: So, John, you mentioned your background. So you've worked in both startups...I think you were raising money for a startup called Activplant, but also, you have worked in large manufacturing for GE and Rockwell, so the big guys, I guess, in a U.S. context for sure. When this institution, C-E-S-M-I-I, CESMII, got started, what was its main objective, and what was the reason why this institution got launched? I guess back in 2016, which is not an enormous amount of time back. Give us a little sense of who took this initiative. And what is the core mission of this organization right now? JOHN: So Manufacturing USA is the umbrella organization under which these institutes, CESMII being one of them, were created. There are a total of 15 of these institutes, all funded with the exact same business model and funding model, and each of them having a different lens on the specific manufacturing problem that they're addressing. And ours, as the Smart Manufacturing Institute, is directly focused on creating a more competitive manufacturing environment by addressing innovation and research challenges that inhibit manufacturers from doing what they need to do in this fourth industrial revolution. So our mandate is to cut the cost of implementing smart manufacturing by 50%. Our mandate is to drive energy productivity, energy efficiency. Fundamentally, the agency that funds CESMII is the Department of Energy, which means that our overarching objective is to drive energy productivity as a basic metric. But we also believe that whether that's a direct challenge meaning addressing energy, performance energy efficiency directly, or an indirect outcome from a more efficient process, or a more effective supply chain, whatever that manufacturing initiative is, that we'll create a better product, a better process that will have direct and indirect impact on energy productivity, which is the connection back to our agency and the source of the funding that we have to accomplish these really important goals. TROND: And one of the really big identified gaps, also it seems, is this discrepancy between the big and the small industry players. So small and medium enterprises famously in every country is basically...the most of industry is consisting of these smaller players. They're not necessarily startups. They're not necessarily on this growth track to become unicorns. But they are smaller entities, and they have these resource constraints. Give me a sense of what you're doing to tackle that, to help them out, and to equip them for this new era. And maybe you could also just address...you called smart manufacturing industry 4.0, but I've noticed that that's not a term that one uses much. Smart manufacturing is kind of what you've opted for. So maybe just address that and then get to the small and medium-sized. JOHN: This is, I think, one of the really important observations that we try to make and the connections that we try to make to say that the status quo, the state of the industry today, Trond, is the result of three or four decades of what we did during the third industrial revolution. We began talking about the fourth industrial revolution many years ago. But we can't just turn that light switch on and assume that overnight everything we do now, despite the cultures we've created, the technologies we've created, the ways of doing things we've created, is now all of a sudden just new and exciting and different, and it's going to create that next wave of productivity. So when I talk about smart manufacturing and equating it with the fourth industrial revolution, it's truly the characteristics and the behaviors that we anticipate more so than what we're seeing. Because the critical mass of vendors and systems integrators, application and software products in this marketplace still resemble more of industry 3.0 than they do industry 4.0. And it's part of our vision to characterize those two only in the context of trying to accelerate the movement towards industry 4.0 or the fourth industrial revolution. Because it's that that holds out the promise of the value creation that we've been promised for ten decades but really aren't seeing. So that's the way we see the industry 4.0 versus the other concepts that we talk about. Digital transformation is another important term. All of that happens in the context of some initiative in a manufacturing operation to improve. We've been improving for three or four decades. What's different today? Well, it's not just relabeling [laughs] your portfolio to be industry 4.0 compliant. So anyway, that's a pet topic of ours just to help as a national conversation, as a set of thinking and thought leader organizations and individuals to put the spotlight on that and ensure that we're doing the things that we can to accelerate the adoption, and the behaviors, and the characterizations of what it really means to be industry 4.0. So to your point -- TROND: Yeah, I was just curious. The term revolution anyway is interesting in a U.S. context [laughter] and in any society. So it implies a lot of things, but it also certainly implies a speed that perhaps isn't necessarily happening. So there's all this talk now about how things are speeding up. But as you point out, even if they have some revolutionary characteristics, at the edge, there are some other things that need to happen that aren't necessarily going to happen at the speed of what you might imagine when you use the word revolution. It's not going to turn over like a switch. JOHN: That's exactly right. Well said, Trond. Manufacturing and bleeding edge never come together in the same sentence, and so it takes time for...and more so on the OT side than the IT side. Right out of the IT world, we have industrial IoT platforms. We have augmented reality. We have powerful AI machine learning tools. But what is the true adoption on the plant floor? Well, that's where the behaviors, and the cultures, and the characteristics of how we've always done things and the reluctance to adopt new things really comes in. And it's as much a part of the vendor and systems integration ecosystem as it is on the manufacturing side. And that's, again, this whole thing becomes...to drive (I really don't think it's a revolution to your point.) an evolution or accelerate the evolution towards Industry 4.0 requires the ecosystem to get engaged and to recognize these really important things have to change. Does that make sense? TROND: Yes. A lot of them have to change. And then to these small and medium enterprises, so I've seen a statistic that even in the U.S., it's around 98% of manufacturing. That is an enormous challenge, even for an association like yours. How do you reach that many? JOHN: Here's an interesting epiphany I had shortly after I came to CESMII and was working through exactly this challenge: how does an organization like ours access and understand the challenges they face and then look at the ecosystem that's there and available to serve them? The epiphany I had was that in my entire career with both big global corporations like Rockwell Automation and General Electric and specifically even the startup organization that I helped raise VC for and venture capital funding for and build and ultimately see acquired; I had never been in a small and medium manufacturing plant environment. The entire ecosystem is focused on large brands, recognized brands, and enterprises that have the potential for multisite rollouts, multisite implementation. And so the business models, the marketing models, the sales, the go-to-market, the cost of sales, everything in this ecosystem is designed towards the large enterprises called the Fortune 1000 that represent the types of characteristics that any startup, any Global Fortune 500 organization is going to go pursue. Which then says or leaves us with a really important conversation to say, how can the small and medium manufacturing organizations become part of this dialogue? How can we engage them? What does an ecosystem look like that's there to serve these organizations? And where an implementation organization like a good systems integrator can actually make money engaging in this way. And so that's where the needs of that ecosystem and our specific capabilities come together. The notion that democratization which is going to help the big manufacturers, and the big vendors, and the big integrators, and the big machine builders, the same things that we can do to cut the cost of deploying smart manufacturing for them, will enormously increase the accessibility of smart manufacturing capabilities for the small and medium manufacturers. And so that's where typically -- TROND: John, let's talk specifics. Let's talk specifics. So smart manufacturing, you said, and I'm assuming it's not just a community effort. You're intervening at the level also of providing a certain set of tools also. So if we talk about sensors, and data, and platforms, and control systems, these are all impacting manufacturing performance. To what extent can an association like yours actually get involved at that level? Is it purely on the standardization front, sort of recommending different approaches? Or is it even going deeper into layers of technology and providing more than just recommendations? JOHN: So the short answer is it depends on the domain, and the area of networking, and sensors and controls. Those are areas where longer-term research and investment to drive innovation to reduce the cost of connecting things becomes really important. And that's one of the threads or one of the investment paths that we pursue through what we call roadmap projects where there are longer, larger in terms of financial scope and further out impacts. We're hoping we'll have a dramatic impact on the cost of connecting machines and sensors and variable-frequency drives and motion systems or whatever sort of data source you have in an operation. So that's one track. The other piece which gets to the actual creation of technologies is more on the data contextualization, data collection, data ingestion side. And you mentioned the word standards. Well, standards are important, and where there are standards that we can embrace and advocate for, we're absolutely doing that. Part of the OPC Foundation and the standards that they're driving, MQTT and Sparkplug, becomes a really important area as well. And the work that MTConnect is doing to solve many of the same challenges that we believe we need to solve more broadly for a subset of machine classes more in a CNC machine tool side. But this effort, smart manufacturing, is happening today, and it's accelerating today. And we can't wait for standards to be agreed on, created, and achieve critical mass. So we are investing in a thin but vital layer of technologies that we can drill into if you'd like as a not-for-profit, not to compete in the marketplace but to create a de facto standard for how some of these really important challenges can be addressed, and how as a standard develops and we fund the deployment of these innovations in the marketplace and kind of an innovation environment versus a production environment. Not that they don't turn into production environments, but they start as an innovation project to start and prove out and either fail quickly or scale up into a production environment. So this idea of a de facto standard is a really important idea for us. That's our objective. And that's what we believe we can build and are building is critical mass adoption for really important ideas. And we're getting support from a lot of the great thought leaders in the space but also from a lot of the great organizations and bodies like, as I mentioned, the OPC Foundation, The Industrial Internet Consortium, the German platform industry 4.0 group responsible in Germany for industry 4.0. We're working towards and aligning around the same principles and ideas, again, to help create a harmonized view of these foundational technologies that will allow us to accomplish the dramatic reduction of the cost of connecting and extracting information from and contextualizing that information. And then making it available in ways that are far more consistent and compelling for the application vendor. The bar or the threshold at which an application developer can actually step into the space and do something is in a pretty high space. If you kind of look back, and I know this analogy is probably a little overused, but what it took to build applications for devices and phones, smart devices, and smartphones before Apple and Android became commonplace meant that you had to build the entire stack every single time. And that's where the industry is today. When you sit down in front of a product, you're starting from scratch every time, regardless of the fact that you've created an information model for that paper-converting machine 100 times in 20 different technology stacks. When I start this project, it's a blank slate. It's a blank sheet of paper every single time. Is that value-add? Is that going to help? No. And yet it requires a tremendous amount of domain expertise to build that. So the notion of standardizing these things, abstracting them from any individual to technology stack, standardizing on them, making them available in the marketplace for others to use that's where democratization begins to happen. TROND: So what you are about to create is an innovation platform for smart manufacturing. Will that be available then to everybody in the U.S. marketplace? Or is it actually completely open for all of the industry, wherever they reside? And what are the practical steps that you would have to take as a manufacturer if you even just wanted to look into some of the things you were building and maybe plug in with it? JOHN: So we're not about to build, just a minor detail there. We've been working on this for a couple of years. And we have a growing set of these implementations in the marketplace through the funded projects that we were proud to be able to bring to the marketplace. So the funding, and right now within the scope of what we're doing here as an institute, the funds that we deploy as projects, these grants, essentially mean that we spend these grants, these funds in the U.S. only. So in the context of what we do here, the smart manufacturing innovation platform, the creation of these profiles, the creation of the apps on top of the platform by our vendor ecosystem and domain experts in this ecosystem those are largely here and exclusively here in the U.S, I should say. So from that perspective, deployments that we have control over in terms of funding are uniquely here in the U.S. What happens beyond that in terms of where they're deployed and how they're deployed, we know we live in a global manufacturing environment. And as our members who want to deploy these capabilities outside of the U.S., those are all absolutely acceptable deployments of these technologies. TROND: But, John, so all of these deployments are they funded projects so that they're always within involvement of grant money, or is some part of this platform actually literally plug and play? JOHN: So there are several threads. The projects that we fund are obviously one thread. There's another thread that says any member of ours can use any implementation of our platform or can use our platform and any of the vendors that are here as a proof of concept or pilot, typically lasting 3,4,5,6 months for free of charge. What happens then that leads to the third component is after your pilot, there's one of two things that's going to happen. The system will be decommissioned, and you ideally, well, I shouldn't say ideally...you fail fast, the system is decommissioned, and folks move on. Ideally, the pilot was a success. And that generates a financial transaction for the parties involved in that. And that organization moves towards a production rollout of these capabilities. So CESMII's role then diminishes and steps away. But this notion of a pilot actually came from a conversation with one of our great members here at Procter & Gamble. They talk about innovation triage and the complexity of just innovating within a large corporate environment like Procter & Gamble. The fact that just to stand up the infrastructure to invite a vendor, several vendors in to stand up their systems costs hundreds of thousands of dollars and takes months and months and months just to get started. This notion that we can provision this platform in minutes, bring our vendor partner technologies to bear in minutes allows them to execute what they call innovation triage. And it really accelerates the rate at which they can innovate within their corporation, but it's that same idea that we translate back down to small and medium manufacturing, right? The notion that you don't have to have a server. You don't have to sustain a server. You don't have to buy a server to try smart manufacturing in a small and medium manufacturing environment. If you've got five sensors from amazon.com and lightly industrialized Raspberry Pi, you have the means to begin the smart manufacturing journey. What do you do with that data? Well, there are great partner organizations like Tulip, like Microsoft Excel, even Microsoft Power BI that represent compelling democratized contemporary low-cost solutions that they can actually sustain. Because this isn't just about the cost of acquiring and implementing these systems, as you know. This is also about sustaining them. Do I have the staff, the domain expertise as a small and medium manufacturer to sustain the stuff that somebody else may have given me or implemented here for me? And so that's just as an important requirement for these organizations as the original acquisition and implementation challenges. TROND: It's so important what you're talking about here, John, because there's an additional concept which is not so pleasant called pilot purgatory. And this has been identified in factories worldwide. It's identified in any software development. But with OT, as you pointed out, with more operational technologies, with additional complications, it is so easy to just get started with something and then get stuck and then decide or maybe not decide just sort of it just happens that it never scales up to production value and production operations. And it seems like some of the approaches you're putting on the table here really help that situation. Because, as you mentioned, hundreds of thousands of dollars, that's not a great investment for a smaller company if it leads to a never-ending kind of stop and start experimenting but never really can be implemented on the true production line. JOHN: Yeah. Spot on, Trond. The numbers that we're seeing now...I think McKenzie released a report a couple of months ago talking about, I think, somewhere between 70% and 80% of all projects in this domain not succeeding, which means they either failed or only moderately succeeded. And I think that's where the term pilot purgatory comes in. I talk almost every chance I get about the notion that the first couple of decades of the third industrial revolution resulted in islands of automation. And we began building islands of information as software became a little more commonplace in the late '80s and '90s. And then the OTs here in the last decade, we've been building islands of innovation, this pilot purgatory. The assumption was...and I get back to the journey between where we thought industry 3.0 or the third industrial revolution became the fourth industrial revolution. The idea was that, man, we're just going to implement some of these great new capabilities and prove them out and scale them up. Well, it gets back to the fact that even these pilots, these great innovative tools, were implemented with these old ideas in these closed data siloed ways and characterizations. And so yeah, everybody's excited. The CEO has visibility to this new digital transformation pilot that he just authorized or she just authorized. And a lot of smart people are involved, and a lot of domain experts involved. The vendors throw cash at this thing, and the systems integrators, implementers, throw cash at this thing. And even if they're successful, and broadly, as an individual proof of concept, there are points of light that say, we accomplished some really important things. The success is not there, or the success isn't seeing that scaled out, and those are the really nuanced pieces that we're trying to address through this notion of the innovation platform and profiles. The notion that interoperability and openness is what's going to drive scale, the notion that you don't have the same stovepipe legacy application getting at the same set of data from the same data sources on the shop floor for every unique application, and that there are much more contemporary ways of building standardized data structures that every application can build on and drive interoperability through. TROND: Yeah, you talk about this as the characteristics of future-proofing. So you mentioned interoperability, and I guess openness which is a far wider concept. Like openness can mean several things. And then sustainability and security were some other of your future-proofing characteristics. Can you line up some of those for us just to give some context to what can be done? If you are a factory owner, if you're a small and medium-sized enterprise, and you want to take this advice right now and implement. JOHN: Yeah, we've tried as an association, as a consortia, Trond, it's not just CESMII staff like myself who are paid full-time to be here that are focused on identifying and developing strategies for the challenges that we believe will help manufacturing in the U.S. It's organizations that are members here and thought leaders from across the industry that help us identify these really fundamental challenges and opportunities. And so, as an institute, we've landed on what we call the smart manufacturing first principles. There are seven first principles that we believe characterize the modern contemporary industry 4.0 compliant, if you will, strategy. And just to list them off quickly, because we have definitions and we have content that flushes out these ideas, sort of in order of solve and order of importance for us, interoperability and openness is the first one. Sustainable and energy efficient is the second one, security, scalability, resilient and orchestrated, flat and real-time, and proactive and semi-autonomous. And so these we believe are the characteristics of solutions, technologies, capabilities that will move us from this world of pilot purgatory and where we've come from as an ecosystem in this third industrial revolution and prepare us for a future-proof strategy whether I'm a small and medium manufacturer that just cares about this one instance of this problem I need to solve, or whether I'm a Fortune 10 manufacturing organization that understands that the mess that we've created over the last 25 years has got to make way for a better future. That I'm not going to reinvest in a future...not that I can rip and replace anything I've got, but I've got to invest in capabilities moving forward that represent a better, more sustainable, more interoperable future for my organization. That's the only way we're going to create this next wave of productivity that is held out for us as a promise of this new era. TROND: John, you have alluded to this, and you call it the mess that we've created over the last 25 years. We have talked about the problems of lack of interoperability and other issues. This is not an easy discussion and certainly not in your official capacity. But why is the U.S. a laggard? Because, to be honest, these are not problems that every country has, to a degree, they are but specifically, the U.S. and its manufacturing sector has been lagging. And there is data there, and I think you agree with this. Why is this happening? And are any of these initiatives going to be able to address that short term? JOHN: So this is probably the most important question that we as a nation need to address, and it's a multifaceted, complex question. And I think the answer is a multifaceted, complex response as well. And we probably don't have time to drill into this in detail, but I'll respond at least at a 30,000 foot-level. Even this morning, I saw a friend of mine sent me a link about China being called out today officially as being a leader in this digital transformation initiative globally, as you've just alluded to. So, from our perspective, there are a couple of important...and like I said, really understanding why this is the case is the only way we're going to be able to move forward and accelerate the adoption of this initiative. But there are a number of reasons. The reason I think China is ahead is in part cultural, but it's also in part the fact that they don't have much of the legacy that we've built. Most of their manufacturing operations as they've scaled up over the last decade, two decades, really since the World Trade Organization accepted China's entry in this domain, their growth into manufacturing systems has been much, much more recent than ours. And so they don't have this complex legacy that we do. There are other cultural implications for how the Chinese manufacturing environment adopts technologies. And there's much more of a top-down culture there. Certain leaders drive these activities and invest in these ways. Much of the ecosystem follows. So that's, I'll say, one perspective on how China becomes the leader in this domain very quickly. Europe is also ahead of the U.S. And I think there are some important reasons why that's the case as well. And a part of it is that they have a very strong cultural connection to the way government funds and is integrated with both the learning and academic ecosystem there in most of Europe as well as with the manufacturing companies themselves. It seems to have become part of their DNA to accept that the federal government can bring these initiatives to the marketplace and then funds the education of every part of their ecosystem to drive these capabilities into their manufacturing marketplace. We, on the other hand, are a much more American society. We are individualistic. The notion that the government should tell manufacturers what to do is not a well-accepted, [laughs] well-adopted idea here in the U.S. And that's been a strength for many manufacturers, and for many, many years. The best analogy that I can come up with right now in terms of where we are and where we need to go and CESMII's role in all of this, and the federal government's role in all of this, which I think brings a healthy blend of who we are as a nation and how we work and how we do things here together with a future that's a little more also compatible with these notions of adopting and driving technology forward at scale, is the reality that in 1956, President Eisenhower convinced Congress to fund the U.S. Interstate Highways and Defense Act to build a network of interstate highways, a highway network across this country to facilitate much more efficient flow of people and goods across this country. Apparently, as a soldier, many decades before, he had to travel from San Diego to Virginia in a military convoy that took him 31 days to cross the country [laughs], which is a slight aside. It was apparently the catalyst that drove the passion he had to solve this problem. And that's the role that I think we can play today, creating a digital highway, if you will, a digital catalyst to bring our supply chains together in a much more contemporary and real-time way and to bring our information systems into a modern industry 4.0 compliant environment. And that's setting those, creating those definitions, defining those characteristics, and then providing the means whereby we can accelerate this ecosystem to move forward. I think that's the right balance between our sense of individualism and how we do things here in the U.S. versus adopting these capabilities at scale. TROND: That's such a thoughtful answer to my question, which I was a little afraid of asking because it is a painful question. And it goes to the heart, I guess, of what it means to be an American, to be industrial, and to make changes. And there is something here that is very admirable. But I also do feel that the psychology of this nation also really doesn't deeply recognize that many of the greatest accomplishments that have been happening on U.S. soil have had an infrastructure component and a heavy investment from the government when you think about the creation of the internet, the creation of the highway system. You can go even further back, the railways. All of those things they had components, at least a regulation, where they had massive infrastructure elements to them whether they were privately financed or publicly financed, which is sort of that's sort of not the point. But the point is there were massive investments that couldn't really be justified in an annual budget. JOHN: That's right. TROND: You would have to think much, much wider. So instead of enclosing on that end then, John, if you look to the future, and we have said manufacturing is, of course, a global industry also, what are you seeing over this next decade is going to happen to smart manufacturing? So on U.S. soil, presumably, some amount of infrastructure investment will be made, and part of it will be digital, part of it will be actually equipment or a hybrid thereof that is somewhat smartly connected together. But where's that going to lead us? Is manufacturing now going to pull us into the future? Or will it remain an industry that historically pulls us into the future but will take a backseat to other industries as we move into the next decade? JOHN: Yeah, that's another big question. We've been talking about smart manufacturing 2030, the idea that smart manufacturing is manufacturing by 2030. And a decade seems like a long time, and for most functions, for most areas of innovation, it is, but manufacturing does kind of run at its own pace. And there is a timeline around which both standardization and technologies and cultures move on the plant floor. And so that's a certain reality. And we were on a trajectory to get there. But ironically, it took a pandemic to truly underscore the value of digital transformation, digital operations, and digital workers, I can certainly say in the U.S. but even more broadly. So a couple of important data points to back that up. Gartner just recently announced the outcome of an important survey of, I think, close to 500 manufacturing executives here in the U.S. in terms of their strategic perception of digital transformation, smart manufacturing. And I think they specifically called it smart manufacturing. And it was as close to unanimous as anything they've ever seen; 86% or 87% of manufacturing executives said that now digital transformation, smart manufacturing is the most strategic thing they can invest in. What was it a year ago? It was probably less than half of that. So that speaks to the experience these organizations have gone through. And the reality that as we talk about resilience, some people talk about reshoring, and some of that will happen. As we talk about a future environment, that's...I shouldn't say disruption-proof but much more capable of dealing with disruption not just within the four walls of the plant or an enterprise but in the supply chain. These capabilities are the things that will separate those that can withstand these types of disruptions from those that can't. And that has been recognized. And so, as much as these executives are the same ones that are frustrated by pilot purgatory, it's these executives that are saying, "That's the future. We've got to go there." And we're seeing through this pandemic...we hear CESMII are saying the manufacturing thought leaders understand this and are rallying around these ideas more now than ever before to ensure that what we do in the future is consistent with a more thoughtful, more contemporary, future-proof way of investing in digital transformation or smart manufacturing. TROND: John, these are fascinating times, and you have a very important role. I thank you so much for taking time to appear on my show here today. JOHN: Trond, I appreciate that. I appreciate the privilege of sharing these thoughts with you. These are profound questions, and answering the easy ones is fun. Answering the hard questions is important. And I appreciate the chance to have this conversation with you today. TROND: Thanks. Have a great day. JOHN: You too. TROND: You have just listened to Episode 17 of the Augmented Podcast with host Trond Arne Undheim. The topic was Smart Manufacturing for All. Our guest is John Dyck, CEO at CESMII, the Smart Manufacturing Institute. In this conversation, we talked about democratizing smart manufacturing and the history and ambition of CESMII, bridging the skills gap in small and medium enterprises, which constitute 98% of manufacturing. We discuss how the integration of advanced sensors, data, platforms, and controls radically impact manufacturing performance. We then have the hard discussion of why the U.S. arguably is a laggard. We heard about two coming initiatives: the Smart Manufacturing Executive Council & the Smart Manufacturing Innovation Platform. We then turned to the future outlook over the next decade. My takeaway is that U.S. manufacturing is a bit of a conundrum. How can it both be the driver of the international economy and a laggard in terms of productivity and innovation, all at the same time? Can it all be explained by scale, both scale in multinationals and scale in SMEs? Whatever the case may be, future-proofing manufacturing, which CESMII is up to, seems like a great idea. The influx of smart manufacturing technologies will, over time, transform industry as a whole, but it will not happen automatically. Thanks for listening. If you liked the show, subscribe at augmentedpodcast.co or in your preferred podcast player, and rate us with five stars. If you liked this episode, you might also like Episode 8 on Work of the Future, Episode 5 on Plug-and-play Industrial Tech, or Episode 9 on The Fourth Industrial Revolution post-COVID-19. Augmented — the Industry 4.0 podcast. Special Guest: John Dyck.
Augmented reveals the stories behind the new era of industrial operations, where technology will restore the agility of frontline workers.
In episode 43 of the podcast (@AugmentedPod), the topic is: Digitized Supply Chain. Our guest is Arun Kumar Bhaskara-Baba, Head of Global Manufacturing IT, Johnson & Johnson.
In this conversation, we talk about why J&J puts operators at the center of its strategy, the empowerment effect of frontline operations apps, the evolution of personalized production, and how supply chain becomes an integral part of product development.
After listening to this episode, check out J&J as well as Arun Kumar Bhaskara-Baba's social medial profile:
- J&J (@JNJNews): https://www.jnj.com/
- Arun Kumar Bhaskara-Baba: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bhaskarababa/
Trond's takeaway: "Operators are the key to the next phase of industrial evolution, that which involves the deep digitalization of manufacturing, its supply chain, production capacity, personalization, and with that the reinvention of factory production itself.
Thanks for listening. If you liked the show, subscribe at Augmentedpodcast.co or in your preferred podcast player, and rate us with five stars. If you liked this episode, you might also like episode 21, The Future of Digital in Manufacturing, episode 27, Industry 4.0 Tools or episode 10, A Brief History of Manufacturing Software
Augmented--conversations on industrial tech.
Transcript: TROND: Augmented reveals the stories behind a new era of industrial operations, where technology will restore the agility of frontline workers. In Episode 43 of the podcast, the topic is Digitized Supply Chain. Our guest is Arun Kumar Bhaskara-Baba, Head of Global Manufacturing IT at Johnson & Johnson. In this conversation, we talk about why J&J puts operators at the center of its strategy, the empowerment effect of frontline operations apps, the evolution of personalized production, and how supply chain becomes an integral part of product development. Augmented is a podcast for leaders hosted by futurist Trond Arne Undheim, presented by Tulip.co, the frontline operations platform, and associated with MFG.works, the manufacturing upskilling community launched at the World Economic Forum. Each episode dives deep into a contemporary topic of concern across the industry and airs at 9:00 a.m. U.S. Eastern Time, every Wednesday. Augmented — the industry 4.0 podcast. TROND: Arun, how are you? ARUN: I'm doing great. How are you, Trond? TROND: Oh, it's wonderful to see you and hear you. I'm very excited. This is a big interview. You have really big responsibilities, Arun. We're going to get to that in a second. But global manufacturing that is a wide, wide topic. ARUN: Yes, indeed. But the bigger responsibility, but more importantly, what we are privileged is how we are impacting the lives of patients and customers around the world with our products. That comes with the privilege to work in the healthcare environment. TROND: Well, I'm glad you said that because as we're sort of tracing, I want to ask you a little bit about how you got to where you are. And I know from public records, at least, that you have part of your schooling in India. So you grew up in India, my assumption is, and you got your computer degree there. You worked in India for a little while for the Tata system. And then you made your way over to Michigan. You have your MBA from there. And then, from what I understand, you then had a bit of a career in automotive and then moved on to Dell. And this brings us to J&J. How did you end up in the U.S.? And how was that journey for you? You've come quite a bit of ways. ARUN: Yes. It's interesting that you asked how I ended up in U.S. For me, it was a choice of either going to Japan or to U.S., And I'm a vegetarian, so for me, U.S. was a better choice. Growing up when you're a kid, you have two years of experience, the decisions that you make, some priorities. TROND: That's funny, but you told me, Arun, that you came here with a briefcase and a $10 bill. ARUN: Yes. I was going to go -- TROND: That's, I guess, not an unusual immigrant story, but it is still quite striking. ARUN: Absolutely. I grew up in a very small middle-class family. So when I landed, I landed with a briefcase and a $20 bill, actually two $10 bills. And out of that, one $10 bill I still have as a reminder of where I started. TROND: Wow. And I cut your career a little short because you have had the opportunity to work in all of the BRIC countries, essentially. And you now manage teams across, I think, at least 28 countries. And that brings us, I guess, up to present day where I was alluding to this, but you have a very wide responsibility. We're going to talk about some of it. Can you tell me a little bit about your current role? ARUN: So, my team supports all the manufacturing operations for J&J across the globe. So we have 100-plus manufacturing plants in pharmaceutical, consumer, medical devices, and vision products. As I mentioned earlier, I am privileged to be in healthcare to serve our patients and customers. We are in 28 countries; my team is spread across. And it's a very humbling experience to really work in a global team and continue to support our operations across the world. TROND: Well, not only that 28 countries, but I understand you operate about 100 manufacturing sites, some obviously state of the art, very big and sprawling, others actually very small or at least mid-size and have all kinds of other issues. And J&J, you know, what is the breadth of products you make? I mean, you make vaccines. You make knees, artificial knees. What else do you guys make? ARUN: This is amazing. I used to work for Ford Motor Company and Dell. Definitely, they are also very strong in manufacturing. However, the manufacturing processes are very similar. It is either assembly process, marketing and manufacturing at Dell. I come to J&J, and any type of manufacturing, you say we got it. Whether you talk about process manufacturing or discrete manufacturing, we have that. So in the pharmaceutical area, we produce biological products where we actually grow live cells and make medicine out of it, as you mentioned, the vaccines and biological products. We also have big chemical products where we actually use big chemical reactions to produce the drugs. In medical devices, we have artificial knees and hips, which are more like a foundry operation. You take a mold, you put it in an artificial knee, and make it happen. And we have sutures that we produce. And in the consumer side, we have different types of liquids, gels, and tablets that we produce. And finally, in vision care is where we produce our lenses in a very high-velocity manufacturing. So if you look at the breadth of the manufacturing processes and products we support, we support almost every aspect of manufacturing. TROND: Well, this brings us to today's topic because we're going to talk a little bit about digitizing these operations, the supply chains, the whole thing, and think about what digital means to all of it, whether it's in pharma 4.0, or indeed, you know, manufacturing and industry 4.0. Can you maybe just kick us off a little bit and say what does digital mean to your business today? And what is your main take on how to approach it? ARUN: The first thing is really I see digital as a means to an end. So if you think about it, it's really why digital is the first and then why digital. We need to be very clearly understanding why we want to digitize. We are in the journey to transform our supply chain so that we can put our patients, our customers at the center of the supply chain and how we can get our products to our customers in a fast, nimble way and in an affordable way. If you think about healthcare, the key is affordability as well as the ability for us to deliver what they need where they need it. And if you think about even the vaccines that we are producing now, we are manufacturing only in some locations, but we have to distribute them everywhere, whether to sophisticated networks like U.S. or developing areas where we don't even have a lot of transportation like Africa. So how do we put the customer and the patient at the center? And how can we actually serve them in a much more faster way and in an affordable way? So that is the why behind our supply chain journey. And digitization is a very critical component of that transformation. How do we provide that end-to-end connectivity so that we can reach our customers and patients? How do we understand what is happening in the markets and react to those things quickly as well as respond quickly using digital? And then ensure that we are delighting our customers beyond just our products, that we have world-class products. But how do we make sure that we are delivering the same customer experience to our patients and customers? So for us, the work from the digital side is how do we build that end-to-end connectivity so that we can reach our customers and we can sense and respond very quickly? And finally, how do we make sure that we significantly improve your customer experience? TROND: I want to pick up on a couple of things, but let me first ask a basic question. I mean, when I think supply chain, I think back to business school where I was teaching for a while, and I think kind of a fairly dry subject that was a specialty subject. You either cared about it, and then you wanted to become an expert and obviously dominate the field. But now you're speaking of it as if it is a much more integrated part of product development, which I think that was certainly taught as two separate courses, even in the very immediate past. But do you think of the supply chain as completely integrated with what you do, what you produce? ARUN: Absolutely. If you think about where the healthcare is headed, if you think about personalized healthcare, if I'm taking a knee right now, we ship like six or seven knees to the surgeons so that they pick the right knee during the operation. And we are getting to a place where we take the picture of the knee, get it back, and make the product, and then 3D print it and give it to the surgeon. Or if you think about how we are personalizing where we are taking the blood from the patient and making the product that is very specific to the patient and shipping it to them. So this whole flow of here is my R&D, and then it goes to supply chain, and then we deliver it versus it is now becoming a connected world where this all comes together. So it's really a very integrated part of product development and supply chain. So we really look at that end to end. And then digital is the one that is actually accelerating that journey. Because I can now connect all of these things as a digital thread and then really push the envelope forward. TROND: But producing for a batch of one, I mean, it's enormously challenging at scale, no? ARUN: Yeah, absolutely. That is the trick, right? How do I produce that batch of one? And if you think about the future, where we can actually get to that and where we can produce batch of one for almost everything that we do is where we are headed. You're right; there are significant investments in terms of our manufacturing operations and the equipment that we need. And there is that balance between the scale that you need to have versus the personalization that is needed. And the balance is I don't think the pendulum can go either one way or the other. But really, we still have a lot more to move to the personalized level. How do we really become a full supply chain so that we can produce that batch of one wherever possible? And look at that from the customer and patient's angle, right? If you have somebody who has a traumatic surgery going on and they have a bone that we need to fix...and it is not the same from one trauma to another trauma. There you can't come back and say, okay, here is a batch of things that I'm producing, and I'm going to give it to you. So the customer expectations are also changing. As a patient and as a consumer, their expectations are also changing. And so we are moving to that batch of one. And how do you do it for different products? And how do you do it for different manufacturing processes is going to be tailored to that business model and then the product. TROND: So another thing that one might assume when we speak about this, because okay, batch of one, but it has to be an advanced system, and it's covering the globe. I mean, historically, if a factory has machinery or systems and digital technologies, it is a very monolithic, massive system. I understand that you have taken at least some care these days to focus on the operators. Why is that so crucial to you? And what does that mean for the kinds of technologies that you're putting into your factories nowadays? ARUN: So that's a very good question. If you think about where manufacturing is headed so that we can drive that flexibility, that approach so that we can quickly respond, we have to relook at our manufacturing operations. That means they need to be a lot more nimbler and a lot more flexible. And a lot of technologies are emerging, and that's all driving. But for us, at the end of the day, it all comes back to that operator. We are here to serve the operator. We call it #operatorrules. Because think about this, we can do all these flexible things. We can bring in automation. We can bring in robots and all of it. At the end of the day, there is an operator at the line who is making it happen. So how do we make sure that we put the operator at the center and then create the experience for the operator so that it makes it a lot easier? If you take any of our plants, the technology is growing very fast. We used to have an ERP system. The operator has to deal with an MES. The operator then has to look at the equipment interface that the equipment provider has given. Now I'm coming from technology and saying, okay, here is the smart glass. Wear the smart glass, and you can look at everything. Think about the operator, how complex we have made the operator's life. So we are trying to take a step back and say, how do we, first of all, make it simple? Number two is how do we empower them? So far, we all said that, oh, technology is either manufacturing engineering or the OT or IT people. We held the keys for the technology. But how do we really empower the operators so that they can make it flexible and then they can make it nimble? So that gives you the velocity that we need at our manufacturing operations. TROND: It's striking when you think about at least digital technologies now clearly. There have been machines in factories for centuries. I mean, that was sort of the various industrial revolution. So there have, of course, been machines that could be operated by operators to some degree. But the kind of control and the detail-level customization that's now becoming possible doesn't come naturally, does it? It takes a lot of attention to create those kinds of platforms. How do you see that evolving? For example, we said you have over 100 different sites, some of them large, others much smaller; what sort of approaches are you taking to experiment with these solutions? ARUN: So it's purpose-driven experimentation. Because to your point, when we have these large, fully automated factories, the key is how fast I can introduce new capabilities into that operation. Whereas when I go to a middle-tier factory with semi-automated or not as much automated, it is a very target problem-driven. I have an OEE problem. Let me figure out how do I experiment to bring the technology. But at both the spectrums, the key is to make sure that there is a good, robust architecture principles. There is good, robust security, and then there is a good data architecture. But from a solutions point of view, how do we make sure that these are modular? Think about the mainframe days where you need to know all those to run the application to now you have apps on your device. So how do we break these monolithic technologies that are running the operations into smaller apps by bite-sized chunks that we can actually deploy very quickly or pull it out? And that gives me the flexibility to say for a large site; I'm going to deploy all these 100 apps so that they can run it as a suite. Whereas when I go to a smaller site, I might only deploy two of those applications for a specific problem. So it's kind of like really breaking down by, number one, by purpose. Number two, having a good consistent architecture. And number three, really breaking these monolithic things into smaller apps and nimble apps that we can drive. TROND: I know that you've tried some of Tulip's solutions. Tulip is an app system. But clearly, the bar to completely replace any number of advanced technologies that have developed over literally decades is not done overnight. How do you see the journey that app developers on the manufacturing shop floor...what sort of journey are they going to have with you to prove themselves over time to gradually solve many of these very ambitious problems? I mean, you describe them pretty eloquently, but they're different in each factory, like you pointed out. And we're dealing with operators, some of whom are very advanced and have taken all kinds of industry 4.0 courses and others who have not. So this is a bit of a journey. ARUN: Yeah, it is a journey, but there are similarities in this journey. If you think about maintenance of the equipment, it used to be a stronghold of those engineers that are sitting somewhere, and they get to the equipment when there is help needed. Look at where we are now. With operator asset care, we are empowering the operators to own that equipment and drive it. So that is the same journey that we have to go through from the digital side. And the key is, first of all, making sure that we have platforms like Tulip and others that help us to be able to quickly develop those apps, of course, in a very consistent framework. Especially for us when we are in a regulated industry, some of those framework and validation things become extremely critical. How do you set those boundaries? The second thing is educate the operators so that they feel empowered that they own the work that they are doing, and they can shape it in the way they need to do it and to continue to train them. And then the third level is to really train the rest of the organization. The management and then the operations leaders all need to be digitally savvy to drive that and then see the value. So it is a journey, but you need to be very clear about why we are doing it and putting the operators at the center and helping them. The thing that is going to help us is this whole COVID pandemic situation. If you think about the digital savvy of almost the entire world, it has significantly improved. Every operator, whether we like it or not, yeah, they might not have a degree, but they know how to order their Uber Eats. They know how to use an app. So we are seeing digital literacy coming up very fast. So this is a great opportunity for us to drive that transformation. But you're right; it is a journey. TROND: But you also mentioned regulated industry. I mean, to what extent can some of these apps kind of slide in between the cracks and do stuff that was never covered by regulation? And to what extent do you actually need to take very, very good care that you are, I guess, also updating the regulations and knocking on the doors of governments and telling them that "Look, there's an app for this too."? [chuckles] And we need to upgrade the regulatory framework to take that into account. So it seems to be a bit of both. ARUN: Yes, you absolutely hit the nail on the head. You need to do both. One is, first of all, have a good, robust architecture. That's why the platforms like Tulip will need to ensure that the architecture is robust so that it has enough control so that we can drive this validation and qualification, those things, and giving the parameters of the freedom for the operators within those constraints. And let's not forget cybersecurity, which is a huge thing, especially when we come to the OT cybersecurity as well. And on the other side...sorry. TROND: No, no, go ahead. On the other side... ARUN: On the other side, we need to continue with the regulators and work with the regulators to make sure that they understand what we are doing. We are now working with the regulators to educate them on real-time release. How can we actually use the data rather than having to produce these samples and batches as opposed to relying on continuous data that is coming that shows that your process is in compliance? So working on both sides with the framework so that it is robust as well as regulators to make sure that they understand how the technology is transforming. At the same time, the compliance is improving. Think about it, when you're doing samples, one, you're taking one sample from a batch. But when you're doing continuous sampling, you have the whole sample, whole product batch data you have in your hands. So we'll continue to work with them to make sure that the regulators are also coming with us on that journey. TROND: How is pharma 4.0 going? I mean, the acronym is the same as industry 4.0. Is 4.0 actually happening, or are we still in 3.0? ARUN: In pharma-world, I would say we still have 2.0 to 3.12 to 3.33. And there are some great examples where we have the 4.0 when I talk about what we are doing with the personalized solutions when we talk about how we are bringing IoT to the forefront, how we are doing real-time release with digital twins of our whole process. Now we have digital twins, even for bioreactors, which are very difficult to characterize. So yes, the journey is there. The key is to keep in mind why we are doing it to really make sure that we have the patients that are waiting for our products in mind and then really transform around to support them. So the journey is continuing. Yes, there are very good examples for pharma 4.0. But are we there yet? No. But is everybody working together to get there? Yes. TROND: Let's talk a little bit about this operator and the training of an operator because training the workforce is something I ask a lot of the people who come on this podcast about just because technology is one thing but training people on the technology to implement it in a fruitful way is a whole other challenge. What approach are you taking at the whole J&J complex when it comes to training your existing future and even training your ecosystem around you? ARUN: A couple of things there; one is, first of all, making sure that you start with the user experience in mind and design everything from there. So you need to start with the design aspect. The second thing is how do we make it simple? The more simple you make it, the less training. How many people are getting trained on how to use an iPhone? So really, how do we make it simpler? But actually, in the future, I'm thinking...and this I actually got from one of your podcasts, Trond, is, are we going to get to a point where there is no interface? So can we get our apps to a state where there is no interface, then your training becomes a lot more part of the evolution rather than you have to go; oh, now I need to learn this, and I need...no, it should be so intuitive. It's like gesturing with my hands. So how do I get to that state? Hopefully, that state comes in soon, as you've been discussing with some of them. But for me, it is really how do we keep on making it so simple that it becomes intuitive? And it starts with the design, where you put the operator at the center and design around the operator. TROND: Can we talk a little bit more specifically about the digitized supply chain? Because it is such a core to what you're up to. And I know that there are some characteristics that you care about the most one of them I think you mentioned to me was being very responsive. But what are the priorities when you are redesigning a supply chain? What are the kinds of things that are top of mind for you? And where do you start? ARUN: You start with the customer experience. How do we make sure that that is clear on how it is impacting the customer experience? Now to help with the customer experience, how do we drive that responsiveness in your supply chain so that you can respond very quickly to what is happening at the demand side, the customer side, and then link it back? Then the next one is really the resiliency. How do we build that resiliency in supply chain so that we can react very quickly? If there is one thing that COVID taught us is that resiliency in our supply chains actually helped the world in one way to survive this pandemic and continue to survive. So how do we drive that resiliency in the supply chain? TROND: What do you think about these very traditional concepts that have been part of...and, you know, you had the start of your career in automotive. Lean management is something that everybody wanted to copy, and the Toyota processes and a lot from the country you chose not to study in [laughs] essentially because you weren't convinced they were vegetarian enough. But anyway, what do you think about the heritage from lean and mixed in with some of the agile tradition from software? Is that altogether creating a new paradigm? And what does that look like, and who's describing it? If you would maybe describe where some of your influences come from when you are designing such a large organization around these principles. ARUN: At the heart, the lean principles and agile principles are still really valid. Like, if you think about lean, what it is saying is think about the floor, eliminate the waste, and continue to improve and zero defects as possible. So that mindset has to be there for us to even look at digital. What digital is doing is actually helping us to implement lean even faster. How do you get there? Now, from responsiveness, and we talked a lot about the responsiveness, and reacting, and resiliency that requires this agile mindset, this traditional boundaries of I'm going to go from plan, source, make, deliver. This is becoming a network. The only way you can survive in that network is having that agile mindset where we bring people together very quickly, get the problem solved, deliver that MVP, and don't look back and then move on to the next one. So the agile principles around bringing the teams together very quickly to focus on the key priorities and delivering on the MVP aligned with the lean thinking to make sure that there is no waste and we are really getting the floor done actually is a great combination of these two. And these are the two things that need to come together even for us to roll out the digital solutions very quickly in our operations. And COVID has been a great example if you think about how we came together to deliver a product for the instruments in a very quick way across the world in a virtual way. It has been a great example that shows that it can be done. So that's where the lean foundations and then the agile mindset are extremely critical, even for us to drive this digital transformation. TROND: If you think about how this was built, what are some of the best influences that help you along the way? We talked a little bit about startups that bring the app mindset and maybe some of the agile thinking. It doesn't necessarily come from startups, but certainly, it does exist with startups. Where are these industry practices that you are increasingly embodying at J&J? Where do you think they come from? ARUN: Actually, they come from many places. And for startups, really one of the places where we can actually see how their mindset is there in terms of test and learns, and learning from failure, and more. And even I'm looking at some of the journeys like how companies like Tulip are evolving as well. Especially those companies from a startup to accelerating phase, that's where we are seeing a lot of the learnings that we can learn. And one of the big things that we at J&J look at is how can we look at our CEO and saying, "Hey, we need to act like a 135-year-old startup."? So how do we actually look at it? And to your point, where we are looking for, we are looking for everywhere; one is really those startups. But more importantly, those startups that got that first phase and are now accelerating, that's where all the processes need to come together. And then, at the end of the day, we still have to be reliable. And we are in a regulated industry. So how do we make sure that the patient safety, product quality are the top priority and our processes are reliable? That's where the established companies also help us on how we continue to drive that. TROND: Yeah, because that's what I guess I wanted to drive to because there is an established idea in the established industry to look for industry best practices. And in the manufacturing space, there are these lighthouse projects. Companies on their own might have lighthouse projects that are especially good. And the World Economic Forum has lighthouse factories. In fact, they have designated places around the world where they have tracked and figured out that they are of sufficient quality to put up as inspirational lighthouses for others. What is your view on how well that works as a practice? For example, you have 100 sites. Is it possible to tell one site to become more like Site A? Because look at site A how well they're doing. Isn't that also a bit of a challenging message to communicate? ARUN: Yeah. TROND: No one likes to be like, all right, I understand. [laughs] My golf swing is not up to par, I get it. I need to look at my neighbor over here. It's not always a fantastic message. ARUN: [laughs] But speaking of that, actually, we have five sites that are lighthouse sites. And we have one that is going to come up with one of the projects that we're working on as well is in one of the sites with Tulip for the lighthouse site. But the thing is, knowledge grows by sharing. The more you share, the more you're going to grow the knowledge and the faster the adoption is going to be. You're absolutely right. It does not mean that just because this is a lighthouse site, they are at a pedestal, and then everybody else is in another place. I actually look at it the other way around. What did those lighthouse sites do that we can actually copy and paste, so I don't have to reinvent? And then I can focus on something else as well. So the lighthouse sites are helping us to really share that knowledge so that we can learn from one another. We can build on it. And then we eliminate the need for us to redo the things that they have gone through. But you're absolutely right; that doesn't mean that those are the only sites that are doing everything and everybody else is not. But sometimes, the copycats that are coming behind the lighthouse might be the best of things because they can get lighthouse practices and implement and then really show that they can actually transform their manufacturing operations much more faster. TROND: Well, and that's true in the history of manufacturing that you can actually leapfrog. It is still a field where if you do many things right, you definitely make a difference. I wanted to shift tact a little bit, Arun, and move to coming years. What are some of the industry developments that you are the most excited about? So we've talked generally about digital. We've talked about personalization. What are some of the things that are going to be most crucial to get right and even just like in the year ahead? It's been a very...it's been a wild ride in the last 12 to 15 months. What's going to hit us in the next year, and what are you focused on? ARUN: So let me break it into a few different areas. One is purely from the technology side of it. If we look at how 3D printing is going to evolve and how it is going to help us to change significantly, how the digital twin and digital threads that are coming up fast that we can actually connect. And then, more importantly, how the machine learning and AI models that are coming up that help us to be responding very quickly. So I'm very excited about those areas, how 3D printing is transforming our operations, how we are able to bring digital twins, digital thread, and machine learning to really drive that end-to-end thread all the way to the customer. The second area is, from a mindset point of view, is how resiliency and responsiveness has become kind of like a norm. If you think about the COVID pandemic, what it has done is how that resiliency and responsiveness has become a norm. So how do we actually drive that and don't lose that as we come out of the pandemic and then go forward? And the final one is I'm going to go back and harp on the culture side of it. How do we drive that culture where we let operators be empowered and learn from it and let them be the kings? And we also have the operator hashtag #operatorrules. And we support that culture change, the digital change, and which is really going to be accelerated because they are becoming more and more digital savvy. So there is the technology aspect. And there is actually the responsiveness. And finally, how do we drive the digital savvy across the organization? TROND: So my last question, and I don't know how fair that question is in the context that you're in, because I could imagine that given the amount of factors that are moving at any given moment, very long-term thinking seems perhaps a little farther away from your everyday life. Because there are so many things that could go wrong literally every minute. But if you permit yourself and me to think a little bit longer term, towards the next decade, are these things on the digital side, you know, digital twins, and AI, and machine learning, and 3D printing, as this decade moves to a close, are there other things on your horizon as well that will even more drastically transform the landscape? I mean, are digital factories going to be really coming into the scene and really transforming the way? Are we going to recognize a factory even in the next decade? Or am I kind of overblowing this, and things are just fairly complicated, and it's going to take quite a long time to shake out and integrate all these technologies with all of the workforce challenges and cultural challenges that you just pointed out? ARUN: Imagining the future, first of all, I really love the idea of almost no interface, intuitive use of technology. Can we get to that? That's one. The second thing is, yes, there will still be big manufacturing areas. Some of them are tied to the physics and biology, so we cannot change, but everything else can actually significantly change. And if you think about can we actually do a factory in a box very quickly for vaccine production in a developing world that cannot afford and we deploy it very quickly? So will we get to a point where it becomes more of Lego blocks that we can assemble very quickly and get it up and running and everything has an equal and digital model that we really don't have to worry about it? It is not about the digital twin of my operations. But if I take the digital twin of my patient's body and the digital twin of operations, think about how easy it is for me to actually respond to that personalized request or personalized medicine. Since you let me imagine and let my thoughts flow a little bit more broadly, it's really bringing the digital equivalence. So can I actually take my digital equal and to respond to the digital twin to get the personalized product for me either in a batch of 1 or even maybe a batch of 10 if batch of 1 is not possible? So the factories of the future, yes, some of them might not significantly change, but most of them will be that flexible way to bring them together for specific product or specific customer and being able to re-assemble very quickly to do something else. And then the intelligence, can it move to the equipment so that the equipment itself can rearrange itself based on the customer base? But then, what is the implication to the workforce? And what is the implication to the operators? So this way of getting those operators to be a lot more digital savvy and really helping to manage this complexity will be a great foundation. But at the same time, that is something that we all need to watch. Yes, all of this can happen. But we need to watch for how do we bring our people together? TROND: Yeah, and I could just imagine putting myself back in my old government days, scratching my head about self-regulating systems in the medical field, right? [laughs] ARUN: Yes. TROND: That would seem to be a little bit of a challenge as well. So there are so many interesting challenges. But it seems to me that even if you are occupied every minute with operational challenges and even just digitizing a supply chain without fundamentally changing its logic, it's going to take all men and women on deck. It's a cultural challenge. It is not just a technology challenge. ARUN: Absolutely. It is. It is a cultural challenge. TROND: Well, look, it's been fascinating to hear, and I hope I can check back in with you. It seems to me that if we had had this interview just even just 15 months ago, some of these challenges might have looked a little bit less rosy, and we wouldn't have been discussing about the next decade. I'm assuming that a lot of things for you in your business have really, I guess, opened up throughout this pandemic. Is that right? ARUN: Yeah. TROND: Some of these opportunities just weren't there before. ARUN: Absolutely. A lot of the acceleration...first of all, we are privileged to serve our patients. And we have a big part in helping the world get through the pandemic, our vaccine. And even how we have brought in digital twin into our vaccines in a very faster way was enabled by the pandemic situation. The whole digital acceleration of some of our solutions that were sitting on the shelf for almost six to nine months, the demand for them grew up within the first few months of the pandemic. So the digital acceleration of our operations has happened. The third thing, as I said earlier, is the digital savvy of our day-to-day citizen is helping us to bring these much more faster to our patients and customers around the world. TROND: That's a very interesting statement. Because when you cannot innovate faster than your end client, then you're really dealing with the total ecosystem here. You actually depend on your end client to be caught up with all of these technologies. It's a fascinating challenge and probably very important too because there isn't a little bit of an insurance policy there, no Arun. Because if you cannot be more advanced than your end user is, at least you have the time to, or you have to take the time to educate the end user and get their real feedback on what needs to happen. So that leaves me on an optimistic note, and if you have any last statement...I certainly thank you for your time. And if you have a last challenge, you know, there are so many challenges where you could launch, but if you think to your fellow industry executives, what is the one thing maybe you want to leave them with what you think is a shared challenge that people should focus more on in industry these days? ARUN: Keep the operator at the center #operatorrules. Let's make sure that we empower them. We help them to be as digitally savvy as possible. That will actually help us to move these needles much more faster. TROND: Arun, I thank you so much. It's been a pleasure. And I hope I can invite you back someday. ARUN: Definitely. It has been great, Trond. TROND: You have just listened to Episode 43 of the Augmented Podcast with host Trond Arne Undheim. The topic was Digitized Supply Chain. Our guest was Arun Kumar Bhaskara-Baba, Head of Global Manufacturing IT at Johnson & Johnson. In this conversation, we talked about why J&J puts operators at the center of its strategy. My takeaway is that operators are the key to the next phase of industrial evolution that which involves the deep digitalization of manufacturing, its supply chain, the production capacity, personalization, and with that, the reinvention of factory production itself. Thanks for listening. If you liked the show, subscribe at augmentedpodcast.co or in your preferred podcast player, and rate us with five stars. If you liked this episode, you might also like Episode 21: The Future of Digital in Manufacturing, Episode 27: Industry 4.0 Tools, or Episode 10: A Brief History of Manufacturing Software. Augmented — conversations on industrial tech. Special Guest: Arun Kumar Bhaskara-Baba.
Augmented reveals the stories behind the new era of industrial operations, where technology will restore the agility of frontline workers.
In episode 27 of the podcast (@AugmentedPod), the topic is: Industry 4.0 Tools and Analytics. Our guest is Carl B. March, Director, Industry 4.0 at Stanley Black & Decker.
In this conversation, we talk about what industry 4.0 means, the importance of upskilling the entire manufacturing industry, and the lessons from Stanley Black & Decker's digital transformation journey.
After listening to this episode, check out Stanley Black & Decker (@StanleyBlkDeckr): https://www.stanleyblackanddecker.com/ as well as Carl B. March's profile on social media: https://www.linkedin.com/in/carlbmarch/
You may want to also be aware of the 'Israel meets New England' smart manufacturing event on June 9 and its organizers, the Israeli Trade Mission and Amhub New England:
- The New England Advanced Manufacturing Hub (AMHUB NE): https://mfg.works/amhub/amhub-new-england/
- The Government of Israel’s Economic Mission to North America: https://embassies.gov.il/washington/AboutTheEmbassy/Pages/Economic-Mission.aspx#:
- ISRAEL meets NEW ENGLAND: Advanced Manufacturing in Factories and Workplace: https://mfg.works/israel-meets-new-england/
Trond's takeaway: Industry 4.0 requires a mindset shift, not just technology adoption. It's not just about you--whether you in this case is a big company or a top leader--rather, it is about bringing people, partners, SMEs, and the entire ecosystem along. To do so openness to learn, having a strategic roadmap so not chase all shiny objects, and investing in lighthouse factories that can illuminate the possibilities are each important ingredients.
Thanks for listening. If you liked the show, subscribe at Augmentedpodcast.co or in your preferred podcast player, and rate us with five stars. If you liked this episode, you might also like episode 20, The Digitalization of Körber, episode 14, Bottom up and Deep Digitization of Operations, and episode 9, The Fourth Industrial Revolution post-COVID-19.
Augmented--upskilling the workforce for industry 4.0 frontline operations.
Transcript: TROND: Augmented reveals the stories behind a new era of industrial operations, where technology will restore the agility of frontline workers. In Episode 27 of the podcast, the topic is Industry 4.0 Tools and Analytics. Our guest is Carl B. March, Director Industry 4.0 at Stanley Black & Decker. In this conversation, we talk about what industry 4.0 means, the importance of upskilling the entire manufacturing industry, and the lessons from Stanley Black & Decker's digital transformation journey. Augmented is a podcast for leaders hosted by futurist Trond Arne Undheim, presented by Tulip.co, the frontline operations platform, and associated with MFG.works, the manufacturing upskilling community launched at the World Economic Forum. Each episode dives deep into a contemporary topic of concern across the industry and airs at 9:00 a.m. U.S. Eastern Time, every Wednesday. Augmented — the industry 4.0 podcast. Carl, how are you today? CARL: I'm doing great, Trond. Good to see you. TROND: Yeah, this is fantastic. We've spent a lot of time together, Carl. We've gotten to know each other. This industry 4.0 is bringing us together. CARL: Quite a bit. And there's so much going on in this space, especially here in New England. So it's an exciting time. TROND: Yeah, for sure. Carl, I wanted to talk a little bit about you and your background. You're an engineer. And now you're deeply steeped in industry 4.0. Maybe I'll just ask that question, why did you become an engineer? And how did you end up where you are right now? Was it an obvious path for you? Or did you always want to go into manufacturing? CARL: I guess from the beginning, I was always a tinkerer, so just growing up and hanging around mechanical equipment, my desire was always to break and fix. [laughs] So eventually, I got wind of a teacher who, in fact, was my music teacher. And he asked me what did I want to do? I said I wanted to break and fix equipment and all of these things. And he said, "Well, you want to be a mechanical engineer." [laughs] So I kept that with me from maybe nine years old, and that's the path I went. Eventually, I did my first degree in mechanical engineering. And then eventually, I did an automotive systems engineering graduate degree. TROND: Wow. And so then, in the beginning, you were headed for the automotive industry. CARL: Yeah, yeah. It was always a desire around cars. So my father had all the cars that needed to be fixed. And where I'm from, we're in the Caribbean. I'm from Jamaica originally. It was one of those luxuries that you had where you just dispose of your vehicles once they start giving some problems. So we fixed the cars. [laughs] That's what we had to do. TROND: [laughs] So you ended up with a bunch of cars then, not just fixing them, but you ended up with a bunch that are not used. CARL: [laughs] Exactly. And taking parts from one and putting on the other. [laughs] TROND: That's funny. That's funny. Well, so you did that for a while. And you were in automotive, which is an exciting field in and of itself. And then you went into consulting for a bit as well. So you've done a little bit of that. CARL: And so the interesting thing is once I did my first degree, which was mechanical engineering, I had the opportunity to start working in the manufacturing environment. And I actually started off in mining and refining. So I was in alumina refining for a while, and then I went back and did the automotive degree. And then, coming out of that, it was the wonderful time in Detroit where everything was a bit uncertain. So though I started off in automotive there, after that degree, I went back to my roots of reliability engineering, which is more along the lines of operational excellence in the manufacturing environment. TROND: You know, it's kind of fascinating today because automotive has gone full circle. CARL: Yes, it really has. TROND: It's like, nobody...who would have guessed [laughs] that automotive was going to go from glory days to, like, it's all over to a renaissance of mobility? CARL: I've gotten the opportunity to observe that, especially as a consultant, as I eventually went into consulting. More than half of my 20-plus years in manufacturing has been in the consulting space. So, while consulting, that's where I really started to see many sectors, from the very advanced sectors in aerospace and automotive down to what we call base materials, which is going back to the dirt, the mining and refining pieces. And just seeing the range of technology adoption across all fields as it relates to operational excellence was an eye opener for me. And when I think about this topic of industry 4.0 which really it's not an old topic. It really came about in 2011 or so, which was the mid of my consulting career. And that's when I made a pivot in my consulting, where I started to focus a lot more on the technology enablement within these respective spaces. TROND: Well, let's dig deeper into it. Because you're indeed, you know, you're with Stanley Black & Decker. You run a lot of their industry 4.0 activities, especially on the analytics and the value stream side. But let's get into the topic more because, as you said, 2011 is not a long time ago. And I hear industry 4.0, by the way, seems to be more of a European term than an American term. Here it’s like smart manufacturing because manufacturing is the main thing. But at Stanley, you guys somehow chose the international term industry 4.0. Why don't you, for the benefit of all of us, just tell us how you define it? What is -- CARL: So industry 4.0 is this terminology referring to the fourth industrial revolution. So it stems back to the first industrial revolution having to do with mass production and steam being used as a driver. Then eventually, it went into the second, where we started to get some computers in the space and started to be able to take advantage of some of those things. The third having to do more with automation. So we started to put a lot more robots and robotics within the manufacturing space. And interestingly, then we started to do a little bit more sensorization. But in the 2011 or 2010 period of time, that's when we started to make a lot of advances in big data, cyber-physical systems. So that's where those applications started to come into the manufacturing environment, AI, artificial intelligence, anything related to analytics in the manufacturing environment. That's where we're starting to consider the industry 4.0. And one other thing, there are probably three main elements that differentiate the fourth industrial revolution from its predecessors; one is vertical integration. Vertical integration is what we call from the top floor to the shop floor. You're able to pass data back and forth and get information on what's happening at any given time, at whatever level it is in your production process. The second is horizontal integration. And that's where you start to look across your value chain. So you're looking at data coming from your supplier, and data coming from your customer, and data within your own manufacturing environment. And then the third one is integrated product lifecycle. So this is one of the most interesting pieces of industry 4.0 in that you're actually getting feedback, even though the customer doesn't even know you're getting that feedback. And you're getting feedback into your product lifecycle and your product design. And you're designing it to manufacture well, and you're designing it to basically fulfill the purpose of the end consumer, so all of that feedback loop that's taking place there. And what enables it is a part of what we refer to as industry 4.0. TROND: That's super interesting. And can you comment a little bit on how that translates then into Stanley Black & Decker's digital transformation journey? Because, arguably, and I meant to have it here, I have, you know, I have a bunch of tools in my arsenal. [laughs] I might actually run and go get that. But they weren't always digital; mine happens to be battery operated. And hopefully, I can run and get it in a second; I really wanted it in this tape. But it has been a journey for you as well, and I guess it's a continuing journey because sensors and all that stuff take quite a bit to transform an entire kind of suite of products into a set of connected arguably industry 4.0 tools. So I'm curious, where would you say you guys are in that transformation process? And how ready is the world for a fully sensorized reality where everything is connected? I guess the maximal vision of industry 4.0, which is this idea of industrial Internet of Things where everything is starting to connect and yield analytics. Because you took the...these are also difficult things to do, right? The vertical integration, all of these things are difficult. But this full vision, we are a step away from that so far, this full sensorization. CARL: Yeah, it has not all become a reality as yet. And as you can imagine, the maturity is going to be different depending on the sector, the industry that you're dealing with. But if I was to look back for a second on the journey that we've had at Stanley Black & Decker, I joined the company maybe about three years ago when we made a very interesting pivot in the way that we were approaching industry 4.0. I'll speak on that in a second. But prior to that point in time, Stanley Black & Decker has always been an innovator in this space. We do make tools, and we're the number one tools company in the world. But we also serve a lot of our other businesses, automotive and aerospace, in particular, in providing fasteners, et cetera. And as a result of this diversity, it made sense for a company like ours with 100-plus sites to be able to start working in smart manufacturing. And the process was that there were a couple of chosen sites that were given a bit more license to integrate industry 4.0 elements within their four walls, and they were referred to as lighthouse factories. So it was very decentralized, not very organized from the standpoint of having certain standards that would scale well. And this is where we started to see a lot of productivity gains, efficiencies within those sites. Then in 2017, we did a study internally and determined that let's go after this in the right way, which is to organize ourselves to have a program. And as a result of organizing this program, that's where I came in as one of the first few hires within the program to centralize what we're doing. And then, I ended up leading our analytics value stream. We also had value streams related to connected factory, automation, et cetera. And that's where we started to go after it in the right way. And I think as a result of that, the gains that we've had and the learnings that we've had over the past three years have been tremendous. And if you compare this to the typical approach, especially that I've seen in my consulting years, is that there's a term that was coined by either McKinsey or the World Economic Forum, I can't remember now, called the pilot's purgatory. A lot of companies I observed they'll start something. They'll start one use case here, another use case there, nothing linked. And they'll do some form of pilot, but it never scales. It would fizzle out in some way. Somebody would move on from one role to the next. The interest isn't there. So, as a result of that, they will continuously stay in the same place, and there will be no roadmap for movement. TROND: And how do you avoid that destiny of the pilot purgatory? There are many theories on how to do that. And I would say probably every manager of some seniority would say, "Yeah, yeah, I know about that issue, and we don't have that issue here." [laughter] CARL: But if we're honest with ourselves, it's very easy to fall into pilot purgatory because, first of all, it is very easy to move after the first shiny object or the next shiny object that catches our eye. That's just the way human nature is. One of the things that we've learned is the value of having a strategic roadmap and especially related to industry 4.0. So one of the things that I'm currently working on with our small to medium size enterprises, small to medium-sized manufacturers is we're trying to enable them with two things, one is to assess yourselves. And we are currently using a framework from Singapore called SIRI, which is Smart Industry Readiness Index. We're making that available to our small to medium-sized enterprises for us to work with them on assessing where are you with respect to these 16 dimensions of industry 4.0? And you don't need to be at the very top band for any one of these, really. You need to look at where you are with respect to peers, with respect to the best practices, and with respect to where you need to be to meet your business objectives. So once we do the assessment, we are able to filter that out in terms of what should be prioritized on the strategic roadmap. The second thing that we're offering is given what we've done so far; we have a wealth of experience in this space as well as what we've gathered in terms of partners who have been giving us use cases that can apply to these 16 dimensions. We're then able to work with the manufacturer to specify this is what your roadmap should look over the next three to five years if that's your planning horizon. You focus on these elements first, these dimensions first, but more specifically, these specific use cases. And these use cases are foundational. These use cases will provide you with some return that will help to fund the rest of your program, et cetera. So I think those two things between the assessment and having a strategic roadmap are critical enablers to avoiding this pilot purgatory. TROND: That's fantastic. We'll talk a little more about SIRI hopefully later because it relates to the work you and I are doing with the World Economic Forum and our AMHUB network. And we are hoping to bring it in really to play in New England, you know, across the sector. But before we get to that, I wanted to ask you a couple of questions about this physical manufacturing 4.0 facility where I believe you actually work out of sometimes in Hartford, this, I guess, 23,000 square foot center. So it's a physical kind of advanced manufacturing center like its own little kind of demo factory and training center also, I guess, for your smart factory initiatives. How did that get started? Well, it's the middle of a pandemic. But what do you intend to use it for? And what were you using it for before the pandemic? Because I'm assuming you've had a quiet period like all of us. CARL: Yes, we have. We've had quite a quiet period over the past year and some. But in 2019, we opened the space, and what we actually did...I'm referring back to when we started to go about this in a different way in 2017. We had one of our...well, our key leader Sudhi Bangalore was, brought in from the outside to lead this program. And he was named the VP of our industry 4.0. Since then, he's been also named as CTO for global operations. But this was one of Sudhi's visions in that we would not only have the team to do this industry 4.0 enablement in a standardized and centralized way, but we would also have an innovation space that you can physically touch, feel, experience the elements of industry 4.0 all the way from automation. So you'll see the robotics. You'll see the automated mobile robots. You will see the automated conveyors, the machine centers all of these things, as well as data flowing back and forth and analytics being displayed. All these things were intended to be experienced because within our own factory and network; the expectation was that some of what we'll be trying to get to our sights would be new. And we wanted to make sure that individuals, especially plant leaders, would be able to come in and really feel and experience what good looks like. At the same time, it was also a vision of our CEO as well as our CFO to use the space within Hartford, and Hartford was chosen as a location for a specific reason because we wanted to work with the city. We wanted to work with the state around making Hartford some central innovation hub for New England and hopefully the nation. So that's where this space came into being. And we had a grand opening in April of 2019. So it was always intended for us internally, but it was always intended for the public in a measured way to be able to come in and experience it. And then finally, I'd probably say that in terms of what we're thinking going forward, we hope to get back into the space sometime soon. We hope to obviously reopen to manufacturers in the region. But then we also want to be able to utilize more of our partners as well, our technology partners, so that they too can show some of their solutions in the space as well. TROND: It's so important, I think, to emphasize that technology...well, because of the danger in the shiny objects that you just addressed before that, it is precisely for that reason because when you have this experiential sense of what the technology can accomplish, and on the shop floor, there is so much of that right? Robots. It's very visual and tactile. You can clearly much more easily see how you could adopt it. So it sounds quite important to have a demo factory like that. CARL: Absolutely TROND: What do you think is the path forward? So you said you guys are engaging with a bunch of different actors that are not your obvious partners. You're engaging with SMEs in a deeper way than before. You have startup engagements but at a very early stage with the STANLEY+Techstars Accelerator. So you're engaging with organizations that are very different than the mothership. Why do you have such a distributed strategy? CARL: So, I think a lot of this comes from the innovative culture that we live in. We recognize that innovation comes from many places, disparate sources. And we recognize that we won't know everything. We don't know everything. And especially when we're trying to break new ground, we need to be able to tap into all the resources that we can in order to do so and in a relatively efficient but also agile and quick way. So a couple of years, probably also coinciding with the 2017 time period, we started working with a group called Techstars. And as some might know, Techstars is an international organization that basically incubates relatively new startups and helps them along the way. And there's some partial investment, generally, with the program. But our first round of investments in Techstars was companies that were focused on additive manufacturing. The current round, which was just completed maybe a few weeks ago, a couple of weeks ago, had cohorts that were related to artificial intelligence, analytics mostly. And we had a couple of robotics ones in there as well, local robots, which all of this is really to ensure that we're able to keep our pulse on everything that's going on. So to your earlier question about the shiny object, noticing the shiny object is not a bad thing because you have to keep your pulse on what's going on. And as people innovate and as more and more people enter the space and as more things are democratized and commoditized, you want to make sure that you're able to pull in what's needed at any given time. So that's what we've been trying to do in different ways within our industry 4.0 program, specifically within our Techstars program. And then, we also have another group called Stanley Ventures, which also directly invests in some startups as well. So we're doing it on multiple fronts. TROND: That's interesting. I wanted to get into the learning aspect. And maybe the humbling part here is both for you and I, and I'll speak for myself, but we're expected to both be experts on industry developments and then simultaneously be evangelists for the same, which is sort of to intermix roles in industry always. But it's complicated. How do you feel like you are able to stay on top of all these things? Because it's one thing as a company, as Stanley, to have all these investments to have all these things available, theoretically, that you could pull from. But then, now as an individual, I just wanted to address how you, just to take that as an example, how do you engage? Because you and I are both engaged, and we're supposed to be those leaders. And we are building networks that we'll get into in a second that are helping us do that. But how do you reflect around your own ability to cut this balance between looking at all the shiny objects, making sure you don't miss any of them, and then advising not only your company and implementing stuff but then also being an advisor to the general ecosystem about what is worth looking at and where are things in the maturity scale to keep everything kind of calibrated? CARL: Yeah, and it can be difficult. And that's where we have to strike a balance. When we started off our program, we recognized that we couldn't build everything internally. So we had to rely on a robust partner ecosystem, probably having somewhere close to 30-plus different partners doing any one given thing at any one time. And then the learning that we got from that was that as a result of that, we were able to get further quicker. We were able to understand a little bit more about the space and what's truly revolutionary and what isn't. And then we've recognized over time that we still have to have some portion of our time still spent evaluating what's new and coming out. We're able to do that because we are organized in a way to do that, and we have processes around that. And we have individuals who are more focused on innovation versus deployment. And we're probably able to do that because we're a larger company. And this is just how we're set up. Now, the concern that we have for manufacturing, in general, is that the majority of the space is made up of small to medium size enterprises, which don't have this luxury. They have very few individuals. TROND: I mean, it's just not possible. CARL: It's not possible for them to do it, which is why we've made the pivot and said to ourselves if we're trying to uplift the entire system, and as they say, a rising tide lifts all boats, right? If we're to uplift the entire manufacturing sector and manufacturing ecosystem, we need to focus on those who make up the majority of it, which is 95%-plus small to medium-sized enterprise. And we can filter through some of the noise for them. And how we do that is provide a consolidated technology map against a framework so that they don't have to go through the filtering and figuring out what's good, what's not, how much is this going to be worth to me, et cetera. Because we've actually done some of that on our own. And then we just provide to them that based on where you are and your dimensions that you need to focus on, these are the four or five use cases for that specific dimension. Now, let's talk through and filter. Let's cut to the chase here; how much will this be worth to you? What will be the return on your investment based on what this costs and based on what it will give back to you in terms of impact value? And I think being able to assist in that way I think is critical to getting everyone else a bit more involved in industry 4.0. TROND: Yeah, and to that point, you and I are both engaged in...so one of those 30 partners, I'm assuming you would count the World Economic Forum as part of those. And you and I are both engaged in the advanced manufacturing platform there and a bunch of initiatives. CARL: Absolutely. TROND: We're not going to cover all of those, but there's one in particular that you and I are responsible for here in New England, which is the Advanced Manufacturing Hub, which is a global network of organizations which were the forum itself, which also started out with a centralized organization of the largest firms. So the likes of Stanley Black & Decker in all fields have realized a version of the same thing that you were saying that if the entire world of industry is going to really take up industry 4.0, they also need to work in a distributed way. And these networks that we have joined in with...well, maybe you could just give your version. What do you think AMHUB New England is and should be doing? And what are some of the things you are excited about that we are starting to launch here? Because it's very new. It got picked up last year, launched under the worst [laughs] possible conditions during a pandemic. I mean, launch a social network during a pandemic, and you will realize what a tricky task is. But anyway, we're in year two. We're into it. There's still a pandemic, and we're doing some virtual events. What are you excited about? AMHUB New England, what is it to you? CARL: I think the wonderful thing about the network is that we're not the first ones going at this. This is an ever-expanding network within the World Economic Forum. And everyone knows the World Economic Forum like you said, is a collection of all the leaders of the top companies. And then we're focused on the manufacturing space. So we're talking about the top manufacturers in the world coming together and trying to figure this out. And the Advanced Manufacturing Hubs, I think we're probably close to 13 or so now in the network. It changes numbers every now and again, but we're not the first, and we've definitely had the opportunity to learn from some of our predecessors. We've had others in the U.S. that have been at this for a couple of years before we have that we're learning how they've integrated with public organizations, so integrated with the county and the state and non-profit institutions in the region to be able to go after their objectives. So that's one of the things that we're obviously trying to do: bring public organizations and get them involved along with the private. We've also recognized, and I think we've had a passion within our own group here around upskilling. We recognize that this is a critical factor for enabling manufacturing in our region. We need to not only deploy and get new technologies, but we also need to upskill our workforce to meet the demands of these new technologies in our environment. So from my perspective, Trond, we have a lot of work to do. We, fortunately, have a lot of manufacturers, most of them small, within the region who are interested who are enthusiastic about what the path ahead of us looks like. And I think within the next couple of months, or next few months, as we continue to engage that community, we will be able to provide them with more opportunities to upskill and get to where they need to be with respect to their workforce. TROND: Yeah, and it's fascinating. I mean, you said the World Economic Forum has a bunch of related activities. But it's also true, and I just interviewed someone (That's a podcast episode that's actually coming out this morning.) who's on the panel that you are on, Michael Tamasi, as well so about manufacturing in New England. Because clearly, there's an established network and ecosystem here already we're building on. And this happens, I think, in all of the New England states and Connecticut, for sure. You and I have been engaging with some of the actors there. There are trade associations. There are state and federally-funded organizations like the MEP system and various other kinds of manufacturing networks. So from my point of view, it's not substituting for all of this. It's just partnering with all of them and just trying to join the efforts that they're already doing but from the perspective of a global picture. So it's getting, hopefully, if we succeed, the best of breed essentially making sure that all of the activities that we are putting on make local sense here in New England, showcase New England, so there's a showcasing aspect of this, and we have a lot I think to be proud of. I mean, there's Stanley Black & Decker, clearly a behemoth really in industrial tech and in the manufacturing sector worldwide, but there are a lot of other companies also startups contributing and making headway, and then we have a lot to learn. I wanted to maybe just discuss for a second this event that we're putting on in June here on Israel meets New England. What do you think is the attraction of having two regions meet? So, in this case, it's Israeli startups. But in other events, we might bring in, like you said, the SIRI folks from Singapore who you're working with to measure progress and benchmark in the field, or we could collaborate with even with Michigan, which is another major, major U.S. manufacturing hub. Or it could be Italy or Spain and many of the other networks that exist worldwide. What do you think the attraction is to gain that kind of regional cohesion? CARL: I think over time, we've recognized that gone are the days when we think innovation is restricted to a particular country or a region or anything like that. I think we're very much aligned on the fact that technology and innovation in the industry 4.0 space is not restricted. So it makes sense that when we think about sharing of best practices that, we go all over the world, and that's part of the reason why if you think about the World Economic Forum, it has a global network of advanced manufacturing hubs. Each hub may focus a little bit differently on slightly different topics. Some will overlap, but they are also tapping into the expertise and the ideas from their local regions with the intent that we will go across regions and share with each other. So this upcoming event, I think, is a wonderful one sponsored by the Advanced Manufacturing Hub here in that it's allowing us to see a couple of...or have a conversation with a couple of innovators from another region, and in this situation, it's Israel. But in the future, we will use other regions as well to bring them in, hear a little bit more about what they've been working on, what has been important in their region, which might be slightly different from us, and then have a bit of discourse between us around what the future holds for technology and innovation in general. TROND: Well, let me profit from that segue into the future. What is next for you in the digital factory? And what does the next decade look like for you in terms of, I guess, your own business-connected industrial tools, perhaps? You're very, very engaged with the networks and the maker movement. And broadly, your thoughts in industrial tech and where that's heading, and maybe even some comment on this upskilling challenge that you mentioned, I mean, what will happen to all of these things? It's a mixed bag of challenges that they're all somewhat related. You can't have progress in technology without the skilled labor force and all that stuff, and somewhat dependent on technology development. But what do you see happening here? Are we entering at least at the very least a decade where manufacturing will leap forward somewhat faster than it has done before? Will it start to change this impression that manufacturing is hard and difficult and we're dealing with a slow-moving kind of system? Or do you see that that's going to still be the case? CARL: I'm quite optimistic. I think based on what I've seen at least in the past three years, I think, the way that manufacturing has moved, it gives me optimism that there will be a significant leap in what we're doing going forward. It took a little bit of time, as I said, from 2011 till about maybe 2016-2017, for people to start to really gain a certain amount of interest and get past a bit of skepticism. At this point, there are enough proven use cases across the board that individual companies and individuals recognize that this is not just a shiny new object or fly-by-night use case. These are things that are here to stay and will be critical to business going forward. So I think as a result of that, first of all, there will be quite a bit of acceleration of efforts. The second thing is we decry the pandemic and its effects and everything else. But I have to say that there are certain mindsets that have been shifted as a result of the experience. There's more of a need and interest around being able to monitor your remote operations. So now people are more interested in connectivity than there were before. They're more interested in insights and analytics than they were before. Because now they can't necessarily be by the machine, by the production process, by the production line 24/7 or 24 hours a day. But instead, they can benefit from all of these technologies that will allow them to get the most out of their equipment. They also recognize how important the workforce is. We always decry automation has taken away jobs, but I'll say no; in fact, the studies that have been done show that those who lead in innovation actually also have an uptick in workforce of some 50% instead of the opposite, which is what the myth would typically tell you. So all of these things coming together, I think, will help us move forward quicker going forward. And then the third piece that I will mention finally is around upskilling going forward. It's absolutely critical that we upskill our workforce. In the U.S. for many years, and we've seen the charts and the data around the amount of retiring workers in the manufacturing sector, so we have a lot of skills and knowledge that will be leaving manufacturing and have already left. So to replace those individuals, we need individuals of the younger demographic who will, one, come in with knowledge of processes. But the ones that are coming in they're not interested in our grandfather's factory. They're more interested in what can I do differently in this space with the use of technology and innovation to do twice as much work in half as much time? Which is a good thing. We want them to come in with that mindset. And I think with the advancements in technologies; we will be able to do that. But what would be critical is to be able to upskill them, give them the right skill sets around these technologies, around the production processes as well as there's going to be a tremendous amount of marketing and PR to get folks interested in manufacturing. Because manufacturing is a very exciting sector. It's buzzing, and it actually has quite a lot of open jobs, frankly, that need to be filled, but we need to upskill individuals to fill those jobs. TROND: You have just listened to Episode 27 of the Augmented Podcast with host Trond Arne Undheim. The topic was Industry 4.0 Tools and Analytics. Our guest is Carl B. March, Director of Industry 4.0 at Stanley Black & Decker. In this conversation, we talked about what industry 4.0 means, the importance of upskilling the entire manufacturing industry, and the lessons from Stanley Black & Decker's digital transformation journey. My takeaway is that industry 4.0 requires a mindset shift, not just technology adoption. It's not just about you, whether you, in this case, is a big company or a top leader; rather, it is about bringing people, partners, SMEs, and the entire ecosystem along. To do so, openness to learn, having a strategic roadmap so not chase all shiny objects and investing in lighthouse factories that can illuminate the possibilities are each important ingredients. Thanks for listening. If you liked the show, subscribe at augmentedpodcast.co or in your preferred podcast player, and rate us with five stars. If you liked this episode, you might also like Episode 20: The Digitalization of Körber, Episode 14: Bottom-up and Deep Digitization of Operations, and Episode 9: The Fourth Industrial Revolution post-COVID-19. Augmented — upskilling the workforce for industry 4.0 frontline operations. Special Guest: Carl B. March.
Augmented reveals the stories behind the new era of industrial operations, where technology will restore the agility of frontline workers.
In episode 24 of the podcast (@AugmentedPod), the topic is: Emerging Interfaces for Human Augmentation. Our guest is Pattie Maes, Professor at the MIT Media Lab.
In this conversation, we talk about augmenting people instead of using or making smart machines, AI summers and AI winters, parallels between AI and expert systems and why we didn't learn our lessons, enabling people to perform better through fluid, interactive, immersive and wearable systems that are easy to use, how lab thinks about developing new form factors, and much more.
After listening to this episode, check out MIT Media Lab as well as Pattie Maes's social profile:
- MIT Media Lab: @medialab (twitter) https://www.media.mit.edu/ (web)
- Pattie Maes: https://www.media.mit.edu/overview
Trond's takeaway: Augmenting people is far more complex than developing a technology or even experimenting with form factors. Instead, there's a whole process to exploring what humans are all about, discovering opportunities for augmentation and tweaking it in dialogue with users. The Media Lab's approach is work intensive, but when new products make it out of there, they tend to extend a human function as opposed to becoming just a new gadget.
Thanks for listening. If you liked the show, subscribe at Augmentedpodcast.co or in your preferred podcast player, and rate us with five stars. If you liked this episode, you might also like episode 19, Machine Learning in Manufacturing, episode 7, Work of the Future, or episode 13, Get Manufacturing Superpowers.
Augmented--industrial conversations.
Transcript: TROND: Augmented reveals the stories behind a new era of industrial operations where technology will restore the agility of frontline workers. In Episode 24 of the podcast, the topic is Emerging Interfaces for Human Augmentation. Our guest is Pattie Maes, Professor at the MIT Media Lab. In this conversation, we talk about augmenting people instead of using or making smart machines. We discuss AI summers and AI winters, the parallels between AI and expert systems and why we didn't learn our lessons, enabling people to perform better through fluid, interactive, immersive, and wearable systems that are easy to use, and how the lab thinks about developing new form factors, and much more. Augmented is a podcast for industry leaders and operators hosted by futurist Trond Arne Undheim, presented by Tulip.co, the frontline operations platform, and associated with MFG.works, the industrial upskilling community launched at the World Economic Forum. Each episode dives deep into a contemporary topic of concern across the industry and airs at 9:00 a.m. U.S. Eastern Time, every Wednesday. Augmented — the industry 4.0 podcast. Pattie, how are you today? PATTIE: Hi. I'm doing great. Thank you. Thanks for having me. TROND: Oh, sure. I'm very excited to have you. And in fact, I just feel like the audience should get to know you. I know a lot of them do because you have become an innovator that has a stage on TED. And obviously, a lot of people at MIT know you. But I wanted to just recognize that you were one of the early PhDs in AI, right? 1987 is not a time when -- PATTIE: Yeah. [laughs] TROND: Is that what we call the second wave of AI? It's certainly not the -- [laughs] PATTIE: The grandmother of AI, yeah. [laughs] TROND: You're not a recent convert to this topic. That's for sure. PATTIE: So yes, I actually studied artificial intelligence long before it was such a big deal or the big deal that it is right now. But actually, soon after doing my Ph.D. in AI, I became more and more interested in a related problem, the problem of not artificial intelligence but intelligence augmentation, or how can we make people more intelligent, more productive, support them in making better decisions? So soon after my Ph.D., I veered more in that direction. TROND: Well, and that's what we will talk about because you have indeed been on the MIT faculty for 30 years exploring these topics in various kinds of bifurcations. And you have been the advisor to scores of startup founders also. And, of course, people might think that goes through the territory at MIT, but the numbers are really still staggering, and also the performance of some of those startups, including Tulip, which we'll talk about, but also many other startups and many other innovation projects that didn't quite make it to startups. But they still created a lot of attention around the world for the promising demos or the things they suggested about what the future of technology might look like. So I would like first to just recognize that you've achieved, I guess, the amazing feat of not just innovating a lot yourself, but you must be an amazing innovation mentor. And you certainly have inspired a lot of people that I personally know in AI, and in human augmentation, and beyond. And I wanted, first of all, just to see if I could have you reflect a little bit on your journey, which I imagine...well, first of all, it's a nice wordplay from Belgium to Boston. PATTIE: Yeah, so I came here after my Ph.D. actually, and of course, wanted to be in the place in the world where the most exciting research was going on in my area. [laughs] And so initially, I ended up at the AI Lab, but I soon after actually accepted a job at the Media Lab. And what really attracted me there was that the lab is very application-driven. We're very interested in really working towards things that can be deployed in the real world, that can make a difference in the real world, that can be through for-profit startups. But sometimes that is actually in other ways by just freely giving away tools and technologies or maybe starting a not-for-profit to really disseminate something and make something accessible to larger groups of people. So I've always been very attracted to the practical aspect and trying to make a difference really with the work that we do. And as a result, several companies have been created out of my research group. TROND: Was this something you set out to do? When you were in Belgium, getting your degree at the Vrije Universiteit in Brussels, were you thinking I am going to go to America and become an innovator? Was that in your mind? PATTIE: No, I think a lot of that sort of happened accidentally, actually. And one reason I think why I'm interested in practical applications and real-world deployment is that I was never really interested in the technology for the sake of the technology. I'm not one of these people who gets really excited about purely just the technology, the algorithms, and so on. I want to make my life easier and other people's lives easier. And that has always been what motivates me and my work. TROND: And that gets us to intelligence augmentation. Because I guess in some sense, the Media Lab is all about that topic to some extent. And I wanted to also address the fact that not only are you doing the work in your lab, but I think at least for the last few years, you've had the academic responsibility across the lab, and you have shepherded the lab, arguably, through one of its more difficult times. So surely, you have also experienced innovation and the tricky things that show up with innovation across a plethora of fields. But generally, people at the Media Lab are hired, I guess because they think about application. What is it that is so different when you...so let's just start with that. When you start with a human in mind from the get-go, what is the difference that makes? PATTIE: So I think; indeed, our philosophy is always to be, like I said, application-driven. And what that means is that we take a closer look at the ultimate target users and their place or where they live or work, and how the technology could make a difference there and could change things there. So rather than starting from the technology and trying to maybe optimize some algorithm that does X, we actually work closely with target users. We really study their lives today to understand what the pain points are, what the opportunities are for technologies to make a difference and support them in being more effective, more productive. TROND: But you have experienced both sort of AI summers and winters. Is one of the reasons that AI [laughs] tends to get into trouble that it always is very myopic about the technology focus, or is it a more complicated reason why there are these summers and winters? [laughs] PATTIE: Well, I think that that is indeed a primary problem. So yes, there have been several AI summers and winters. Probably a lot of your listeners are young enough that they don't realize that there was another hype cycle for AI that happened sort of in the '80s and '90s with the emergence of expert systems, so-called expert systems. These were not based on machine learning and neural network techniques but instead were typically based on rule-based systems. But they were very sophisticated. They had typically a lot of knowledge built in about a particular problem like, say, making a certain diagnosis, or doing some planning, or what have you. So the systems in laboratory settings were very impressive and were often outperforming experts at doing some scheduling problem, or planning problem, or diagnosis, or recognition problem. But what happened when they were put into the workplace or when people tried to integrate them into the real world was that they basically encountered all sorts of obstacles. One of the obstacles was that people wouldn't necessarily trust the machine, the expert system. They didn't quite know how to work with it or where to fit it into their workflow. They weren't always able to get explanations for why the machine was making a certain decision. It was very hard to correct the knowledge of the system and give it new information or to update its information if it wasn't correct. So there wasn't really a lot of transparency, a lot of controllability, interpretability. And that ultimately was the downfall of expert systems. And so yeah, at that time, just like now, there were many startups, millions of dollars pumped into all of this. The conferences and exhibits were extremely popular, and all of that died down. And we entered an AI winter where suddenly there was very little interest from the real-world businesses in AI. Now, of course, we are in another summer, in another hype cycle. And I am actually very worried that we are making exactly the same mistakes because most of the AI systems that are being developed are being developed very much not in the context of where they ultimately will be used or not with the collaboration of the people who ultimately will use these tools. And so we will encounter exactly the same problems of trust and transparency, and controllability, and interpretability. So, in my work, I've always been emphasizing a different approach. And I like to not call it artificial intelligence but rather maybe augmented human, or augmented intelligence, or maybe human-centric AI because our approach is one where we start out by studying what people are already doing in a certain work environment, whether that is a manufacturing floor or a doctor in the hospital, and so on. And we actually work together with them or think about how we can support the people that are there to do their work better, to be more effective at their work. And so it's a totally different way of looking at a problem. We try to optimize for the person and the technology together to perform better. We don't try to optimize for the algorithm or the system to become better without thinking about how that system will be integrated into our real lives and real-world scenario. TROND: Well, this is super interesting. I want to go into a couple of examples of things that you have done with your students and otherwise in a second. But first, why have we not learned collectively this lesson? I mean, what is it? I mean, is this something you think is happening across the board with technology? Or is it even just specific to this machine learning AI environment that we...are we so tempted by the potential impact of the use cases that we’re just getting carried away into the algorithms'depth and then forget the user? Or why haven't people said this is not good enough? PATTIE: I think that it is actually a broader problem with development of digital technologies. All of the technologies that we use today whether it is maybe AI systems or whether it is social networking services and so on, they mostly have been designed and built by engineers, by teams that just consist of engineers and not people that come from very different backgrounds, for example, more social humanities backgrounds, et cetera. One of the reasons that I was very excited to join the Media Lab as opposed to a computer science department is that it is very interdisciplinary. And we really recognize and try to emphasize that interdisciplinarity is extremely important in innovation, in creating things that ultimately will be successful and will be able to make a positive difference basically and a positive impact. So that means involving not just engineers but also designers, people who can really think about making things fluid, seamless about how it integrates into workflow, and so on. But also people from humanities backgrounds, and social scientists, and so on. So I think it's important to have that broader perspective to make or to create technologies that ultimately are desirable and ultimately really improve our lives. TROND: But, Pattie, take me inside of a week in the Media Lab. Because when you describe it this way, it sounds almost so intuitive and simple that I'm wondering why people need to travel to the Media Lab to learn this. Because if it was just simple to just hire a team with different skills, and it will happen, there surely is some other type of magic ingredient. What does a week look like in your lab? How do you draw out the kind of creative energy...maybe it's helpful if you take Arnav Kapur's AlterEgo, which most people know as just that video that went viral. And they're like, imagining the future of computing with just this device where he's not even speaking, but he's kind of just basically controlling, it would seem, the computer with his jaw. Now, fantastic video; how does something like this come out of your lab? PATTIE: So we are a very open laboratory. So, in addition to attracting creative, entrepreneurial people and really cultivating a very interdisciplinary team, we engage a lot in conversations, in discussions with others, with the outside world, which is actually pretty rare still for people in universities. [laughs] So, for example, we have member companies. We have a consortium of companies that fund the Media Lab, and they, pre-COVID at least, come and visit on a daily basis. Every day we have at least ten different companies visiting to see the work, to engage in discussions, to give us feedback. They don't direct the work, but they can be critical. They can see opportunities for where to take it, and so on. And we engage in a very iterative type of style of work, where we quickly prototype something. Like in the case of AlterEgo, it looked pretty ridiculous the way it was glued together with some cardboard and other things that we could find in the lab. [laughs] But we create these very early prototypes that are very clunky, don't work very well. But those make a certain future more visible. They envision what is possible or make it more concrete. And then we invite a lot of feedback from all of these visitors, from all of these people with different backgrounds. And they see opportunities for oh, maybe I would use it this way. Or maybe it's really exciting in that application domain, or I see this or that problem with the technology. So that's really the technique that we pursue, attract a very diverse team of highly creative entrepreneurial people but from very different backgrounds, and engage in a lot of team innovation, and do very iterative types of design, making prototyping, and then getting feedback from really everyone, not just these companies that come and visit but our own families, and of course, the target users of the technologies that we build. So that's the secret sauce, so to speak, [laughs] or the secret to how Media Lab innovation works. TROND: Take us back maybe to 2012 or something. And in the lab, you have two bright people; one is Rony Kubat, who also had a background from the Computer Science and AI Lab at MIT, but then had already come over to study with you. And then you had Natan Linder, who had industry background and had been already head of a Samsung lab in Israel. Now the two of them show up during their masters, I guess, and then ultimately PhDs but masters, I guess, in this context, and they start developing something. Can you tell me a little bit about those early days, early conversations you had with them about what each of them were doing, and your reflections on to what extent some of the early work they did with you how that transpired into what now, 2014 I believe, turned into Tulip Interfaces? And now, in 2021 went on the Gartner calendar, essentially, as a manufacturing execution system. And more broadly, aspirationally, it's a frontline operations platform that can transform the way that workers are working at the frontlines, augmenting them and really changing manufacturing as we know it today with a kind of a no-code system. So this was like fast forward 2012 to 2021. Where were they back then? What was it that you taught them specifically? What were they working on? And how did you work together? PATTIE: What motivated this work initially was this whole realization, in 2012, that we were living in these two parallel worlds, and it's still very much the case. [laughs] We live in the physical world, and then there's this whole digital world with information about all the things around us in the physical world that we are engaged in and so on, the people we're meeting with, and so on. And we realized that or we were frustrated really that these two types of experiences were not connected. For example, if I pick up a book, I can look at the pages, the beautiful pictures in the book, read the back cover to see what people have to say about it. But ideally, at that moment, I will also have access to the rating on Amazon and what others have said about that book or not because that's extremely relevant at that moment when I'm considering whether that book may be an interesting book for me to read. So we were very interested in creating experiences that are more integrated, where our physical lives are more integrated with the digital information that exists about everything around us and all of our actions and experiences. So we experimented with different types of augmented reality systems to bridge that gap and to make the digital information and services available in the physical world. So that's really where the work that Natan and Rony did and what led to Tulip where that started. They were experimenting with building systems that have an integrated camera and projector so that the machine can see what is happening and can project relevant information onto whatever it is looking at. So that people can get, for example, relevant reviews when they're looking at a product that they want to buy. So we actually developed all sorts of prototypes to illustrate this vision of this integrated augmented reality. For example, at that time, together with Intel, we built up an example of a store that has the two integrated, that has physical products; I believe it was cameras. And then there was a projector system that would recognize what camera you were looking at or picking up, and it would give you additional information about it. So it would point out the features by actually pointing at the different buttons on the camera and what was so special about them, et cetera. We also built an augmented desk for a learning context, for an educational context. And in all of these cases, we worked with partners, for example, for the education context to think about how this augmented reality could be used in the context of schools. We worked with Pearson, who's the leading developer of course books and school books, and so on. We then also worked with Steelcase on how this augmented reality technology could be used on the manufacturing floor. How could it help people in real-time by giving them feedback about what they were doing, maybe giving them real-time instructions projected onto their workspace, or maybe alerting them that something wasn't done right or a step was forgotten, and so on? And that work with Steelcase ultimately and with some other sponsors as well like GSK, for example, which does drug development, all of that led to the spin-off to Tulip being created as a company that can really realize that whole vision of an augmented manufacturing place where you can have real-time information provided. But you can also track the whole manufacturing floor in real-time and have very detailed data, and analytics, and intelligence about which steps may cause more errors or which steps in the process, say, take a lot of time, and so on. So you have this real-time insight also into the manufacturing floor that we've never had before. TROND: It's fascinating that you picked this...that they picked this example and that you are kind of explaining it now. Because I want to give people the right sense of what it takes to produce an innovation that turns into a commercial, true product because I saw a version of the product you were explaining now in 2014, in the fall when I was at the Startup Exchange. And I was one of the first in their then Tulip lab with seven employees. But that demo of something that had a camera and a sensor only this spring turned into what Tulip called their vision product. And it's only now coming to market. So here is arguably some of the brightest people working with you, a very experienced mentor, working from 2012 to a demo in 2014. But then they had to take all kinds of other things to market first, and only now, in 2021, is this coming out. I find that an incredible timeline and path. PATTIE: Yeah, it's surprising to me as well, although I have seen it happen multiple times. We think that technology moves really fast. But then, in practice, for an invention like this to ultimately make a difference in the real world typically takes ten years or more. I have had that experience with other technologies that we've invented in the past. Actually, an earlier technology that we invented in our lab was recommendation systems that recommend a book to you because you also liked these other books or because people who also liked the books that you buy also bought this book that is being recommended to you. We invented that technology in '94 [laughs] when browsers were just available. And we were talking a lot to Media Lab member companies about how exciting this would be and how it would personalize the whole online experience if you could get these recommendations from other people like you. And there was excitement among the member companies, but they were at that time saying, "Well, we're not sure that people are ultimately going to feel comfortable giving their credit cards over the internet to buy something. So it seems very exciting, and it's a great vision, but we don't see this happening." [laughter] That was companies like Blockbuster [laughs] and other companies that now are bankrupt, maybe because they didn't take this seriously enough. [laughs] But so because these larger companies were a little bit skeptical about this whole vision that we were portraying of online commerce and recommendations and so on, we started a company ourselves called Firefly in '94 and ultimately sold it to Microsoft actually in '98. But we were just way too far ahead. We were too early. And most people weren't ready to buy things online. Most companies weren't ready to partner with us. And we actually sold a company in '98 at a time when briefly, everybody thought that internet commerce was dead, was not going to take off. A year later, [laughs] our company would have been ten times as much or worth ten times as much as what we sold it for. So, unfortunately, we sold it at the wrong time when there was a lot of pessimism about...and it's hard to believe that now, [laughs], especially now during COVID, that everybody pretty much buys everything online. But yeah, back then in '98, that was not at all clear. And we were too early, basically. So in my experience, it always takes at least 10 to 15 years, even for a technology that seems ready to be deployed to ultimately make a difference in the real world. TROND: Well, the digitalization of physical infrastructure like you started with is a different thing, though, and even more complicated than the trust to buy something online, which I guess is vaguely related to you have to trust that something abstract is actually going to have a consequence. But Rony and Natan told me that they even basically slept over in factories and studied these workers for days and weeks on end, and I guess Tulip is still studying workers. It's not immediately obvious what is the contribution on the factory floor, is it? I mean, it's not as easy as to say, "We have this fancy digital thing that we're going to give you." But why is it so much more complicated? PATTIE: Yeah, I think it's always complicated. [chuckles] And it is important to really understand the context, the actual context of where some technology is going to have to fit in. I remember very well when Rony and Natan were visiting the factories, and they would come back with amazing stories, to our minds, very primitive ways in which everything [laughs] was being done at that time, still a lot of use of paper records, for example, for collecting information. So it was a big gap that had to be bridged [chuckles] really between the vision that we had of this totally connected manufacturing place with all of this real-time data, real-time instructions and advice, being able to also modify things and edit this whole digital layer or digital support system in real-time by the people on the floor, and the managers, and so on. There was really a big gap from that reality of paper-based systems in a very low-tech context to that vision that we had of this smart manufacturing floor. TROND: And how far are we getting with this, and how quickly will it go now? Would you say that this has been a decade of exploration and a lot of these things have been sorted out? Or would you say some quick wins happened, and then some of the slower things they are just slow? Any kind of technology will take the time it takes to fully understand how you can contribute. I guess I'm asking this in the context of another technology that a lot of people are putting a lot of hope in these days, especially perhaps during COVID, you know, robotics on the manufacturing floor and maybe the merging of AI or machine learning and robotics. How do you see these things? How disruptive will any kind of digital device, or software system, or augmented system that should benefit workers how disruptive can these devices and systems become? And have we hit some sort of momentum, or is this still going to be kind of case-by-case basis, and the hype is just not going to be true in this domain? PATTIE: I think we have to accept that progress necessarily is slow. [laughs] I mean, I think the potential is there. But in my experience, really reaching that potential involves learning a lot of hard lessons along the way, but progress is being made. It's just not as quick as we would like it to be. And I think the same will be true for this vision of smart manufacturing, including the use of robotics, which is even more challenging because you have moving parts, [laughs] which means that things break down quicker and that there are also more safety constraints and so on as well. But yeah, progress will continue to be made. And I think it's very important for companies to engage with all of these new technologies, and to do experiments, and to start integrating some of these new technologies in their workplace, or you end up like the Blockbuster [laughs]example that I gave earlier where they said, "We'll deal with this later or when it becomes more important," and then they were bankrupt. TROND: Well, it strikes me that you're not going to give me timelines because it depends on so many things. But if you look at the future of, I guess, cognitive enhancement more generally or certainly these immersive and sometimes wearable systems that you have been building for 30 years, you have an interesting role because you are, of course, inspiring a lot of hype just because the products you build are so fascinating, and they seem so simple. But you are also combining this with being very careful about the predictions that are surrounding it. So tell me a little bit about what the future holds for these things. I mean, are we to expect more of these fascinating devices coming on market, or are you exploring a lot more of those in your lab right now? PATTIE: Oh yeah. TROND: Where is it at the moment on the experimental stage? PATTIE: There's never a shortage of interesting new ideas for us to work on. I always have way too many or more than I have students to work on them. [laughs] But one area that we are exploring in the lab right now is we want to go beyond systems that help people with providing information. The focus on digital technologies, whether it is laptops, or watches, or smartphones, has been primarily on communication and also the system giving you information. And with the work that we talked about so far today, the focus was on giving them that information integrated into whatever they are doing so that they don't have to try to juggle between the physical and then the digital information that may be relevant to whatever physical stuff somebody is doing. But we're trying now to go beyond systems that give you information and are interested in looking at how digital devices can help people with issues such as attention, motivation, memory, learning, grit even, creativity. We think that given that all of us are now sort of forever after cyborgs, we always have technology with us. We have our smartphones never far [laughs] away from our body. Many of us wear a smartwatch as well. And so we have this opportunity now to use these systems to help people with a lot more than just giving them access to information. The systems increasingly have sensors integrated that can sense what the person is doing, where they are, maybe even what their heart rate is, and whether they are maybe a little bit anxious at the moment or not, or maybe the opposite. Maybe they're too sleepy; they're not engaged. So increasingly, systems will have a better sense like that of the state of a person, the cognitive state of a person, and will help the person with being in the state that they want to be in. For example, we've been building glasses that have built-in sensors for sensing brainwave activity as well as for sensing eye movements. And that pair of glasses it's called the AttentivU project. It can actually give you feedback about your own attention level. Are you being highly attentive right now? Or are you being distracted? Are you fatigued? And so on. And we use that information to help a person to be aware of the fact maybe that a driver of a truck should be taking a break because they're too fatigued, or it can help a person who's listening to a lecture be more attentive because the system can tell them when their attention is waning. So we think that this is an exciting new direction to really go beyond just giving a person information about whatever job they're doing, or whatever they're working on, or are thinking about, or doing, but going beyond that and helping them with those skills that are really important for being successful in life that all of us struggle with, and that all of us keep having to work on. TROND: Fascinating. That's fascinating. I want to ask you what is your goal with all of these activities? Because you are an innovator, but innovators are always motivated. Good innovators are always motivated by something. What is it ultimately that you have been trying to achieve over these years? PATTIE: I really want to help people. [laughs] I did study computer science and artificial intelligence. But my goal is not to create smarter, more capable machines or algorithms. I ultimately want to help people with machines, with AI. I want to enable them to live their best lives and to grow and learn and ultimately become the person that they would like to be. TROND: So you have a very optimistic view on a future that a lot of people are scared about right now. Some people might be scared about AI. They might be scared about what they're seeing around them. How do you maintain this very optimistic vision? Is it because you feel like you have agency? You get clever students come in and work on your ideas. I guess I'm just trying to say that usually, I would ask people what is the best way to stay up to date and kind of model what you're doing? And the obvious thing would be they should try and come and apply and come to your lab. Now, some people will achieve that, not very many, right? It's a small space, so there are limits. PATTIE: [laughs] [crosstalk 43:43] TROND: The other advice would be to pay to get to the Media Lab and become a corporate sponsor; that seems to be another avenue. But do you have any other less obvious ways that people can emanate some of this spirit that I think you...because you're sharing an entire approach to how to understand technology, how to develop technology, but also a vision of what technology should be doing for us. You kind of have a philosophy. You told me a philosophy with a small p about technology. How should people try to learn more about it, engage with that kind of philosophy? PATTIE: Yeah, I do think it is the role of the Media Lab to be optimistic really and to see the potential of emerging technologies in improving people's lives. That is really sort of our unique focus among all university research laboratories. We look at emerging technologies, and we try to be positive thinkers or optimistic thinkers in terms of how those technologies can ultimately empower people to improve their own lives, their communities, and their environment, the natural world around them as well. We try not to be naive, [laughs] in that quest at the same time. And we are very much aware that all of the powerful technologies that we work on can be abused, can be used in very negative ways as well. But I think that that is ultimately not a reason not to engage in these endeavors. Basically, we try to invent the future that we want to live in, [laughs] or that's really what we are working on. And we try to be inclusive in that process by, again, not just involving the students and researchers in the lab but really the target communities like people on a manufacturing floor and how do they want to work with AI, and robotics, and augmented reality, et cetera? So we basically involve the target users, companies that are involved in a particular sector, and so on as well. And so yeah, I think that there are many opportunities really for people to be involved. I would also like to say that, especially now with COVID, all laboratories have become much more open and, for example, lecture series, showcases, virtual open houses, and so on. There are no limits to how many people can attend because it's all [laughs] online anyway these days. So it's actually nice that that has opened up the laboratory more and makes it possible for more people to get involved, to be part of conversations, to listen to talks, see demonstrations, and so on. TROND: That's fascinating. And I think just in closing, you mentioned this acronym that's typically used in psychological studies, the WEIRD acronym, Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic. And it seems to me that that is a very, very specific user group, but it is far from the only one. So maybe in closing, my last question would be, how does one, you know, because others might be developing technology on other continents or other places. How do you avoid this bias of jumping into a lane that other people have created that is this lane? It's maybe demos from Western labs. It's use cases in highly industrialized factories or whatever it is or created for the New York Fifth Avenue consumer market. Those are not the only technologies we should be building. So how do we do it otherwise? PATTIE: Yes, I fully agree. And meanwhile, today, I talked about my work. And my work is indeed mostly focused on the Western developed world and technologies that might be available here. There's a lot of work happening at the Media Lab with other communities, both within the United States, less fortunate communities, maybe than the ones that many of my technologies are designed for. There's a lot of work, for example, with people in Africa on use of different technologies. So we try to...maybe we cannot develop technologies for everyone, [laughs] but we try to be explicit about who some technologies are designed for and not assume that they would generally be usable. And we try to work with the target communities that they are designed for. And definitely, we're not exclusively working with or designing technologies for the Western, richer world. TROND: Well, thank you so much, Pattie. This has been very enlightening. It turns out that advanced technology is complicated and slower, but perhaps more sustainable when it's developed that way. And that's an interesting lesson. Thank you so much. PATTIE: Thank you. It was a pleasure. TROND: You have just listened to Episode 24 of the Augmented Podcast with host Trond Arne Undheim. The topic was Emerging Interfaces for Human Augmentation. And our guest was Pattie Maes, Professor at the MIT Media Lab. In this conversation, we talked about augmenting people instead of using or making smarter machines and enabling people to perform better through fluid, interactive, immersive, and wearable systems that are easy to use, developing new form factors, and much more. My takeaway is that augmenting people is far more complex than developing a technology or even experimenting with form factors. Instead, there's a whole process to exploring what humans are all about, discovering opportunities for augmentation, and tweaking it in dialogue with users. The Media Lab's approach is work intensive, but when new products make it out of there, they tend to extend a human function as opposed to becoming just a new gadget. Thanks for listening. If you liked the show, subscribe at augmentedpodcast.co or in your preferred podcast player, and rate us with five stars. If you liked this episode, you might also like Episode 19: Machine Learning in Manufacturing, Episode 7: Work of the Future, or Episode 13: Get Manufacturing Superpowers. Augmented — industrial conversations. Special Guest: Pattie Maes.
Augmented reveals the stories behind the new era of industrial operations, where technology will restore the agility of frontline workers. In episode 3 of the podcast, the topic is: Re-imagining workforce training. Our guest is Sarah Boisvert, Founder and CEO Fab Lab Hub, LLC and the non-profit New Collar Network.
In this conversation, we talk about re-imagining workforce training, industry 4.0., what do you mean by “New Collar” jobs? We discuss the mushrooming of Fab Labs. What skills are needed? How can they be taught? How can the credentials be recognized? .What has the impact been? Where do we go from here.
After listening to this episode, check out Sarah Boisvert's online profile as well as the New Collar Network:
- Sarah Boisvert https://www.linkedin.com/in/sarah-boisvert-3a965031/
- The New Collar Network (@NewCollarNetwrk): http://newcollarnetwork.com/
- Fab Lab Hub (@FabLabHub): http://fablabhub.org/
Augmented is a podcast for leaders in the manufacturing industry hosted by futurist Trond Arne Undheim, presented by Tulip.co, the manufacturing app platform, and associated with MFG.works, the open learning community launched at the World Economic Forum. Our intro and outro music is The Arrival by Evgeny Bardyuzha (@evgenybardyuzha), licensed by @Art_list_io.
Thanks for listening. If you liked the show, subscribe at Augmentedpodcast.co or in your preferred podcast player, and rate us with five stars on Apple Podcasts. To nominate guests, to suggest exciting episode topics or give feedback, follow us on LinkedIn, looking out for live episodes, message us on Twitter @augmentedpod or our website's contact form. If you liked this episode, you might also like episode 3: How to Train Augmented Workers. Augmented--the industry 4.0 podcast.
Transcript: TROND: Augmented reveals the stories behind the new era of industrial operations, where technology will restore the agility of frontline workers. Technology is changing rapidly. What's next in the digital factory? Who's leading the change, and what are the key skills to learn? How to stay up to date on manufacturing and industry 4.0. Augmented is a podcast for leaders in the manufacturing industry, hosted by futurist Trond Arne Undheim, presented by Tulip.co, the manufacturing app platform, and associated with MFG.works, that is M-F-G.works, the open learning community launched at the World Economic Forum. Each episode dives deep into a contemporary topic of concern across the industry and airs at 9:00 a.m. U.S. Eastern, every Wednesday. Augmented — the industry 4.0 podcast. In episode 3 of the podcast, the topic is Reimagining Workforce Training. Our guest is Sarah Boisvert, Founder and CEO of Fab Lab Hub and the non-profit New Collar Network. In this conversation, we talk about reimagining workforce training, industry 4.0, and what do you mean by new collar jobs? Fab Labs, what skills are needed? How can they be taught? How can the credentials be recognized? What has the impact been, and where do we go from here? Sarah, how are you doing today? SARAH: I'm doing well. How are you? TROND: I'm doing fine. I'm excited to talk about reimagining workforce training, which seems to be an issue on your mind, Sarah. You are a founder yourself. You have been actively involved in advanced manufacturing. I understand part of your story is that your company manufactured and sold the Lasik eye surgery back in 1999. So you've been involved in manufacturing for a while. We're here to talk about something very exciting. You say new-collar jobs is the big focus. I know you didn't invent the term. Can you give me a sense of what new-collar jobs refers to, first of all? SARAH: Sure. It is a term that was coined by Ginni Rometty, who was then the CEO of IBM. She's now the executive chair. And it refers to blue-collar jobs that have now become digital. And so many of our jobs...if you just think about your UPS man who now everything's not on paper, it's all in a handheld tool that he takes around on his deliveries. And all jobs are becoming digital. And so I thought that Ginny's term encapsulated exactly what's happening, and the technologies that we used to use just in manufacturing are now ubiquitous across industries. TROND: You have also been instrumental in the MIT spinout project called Fab Labs. Just give us a quick sense, Sarah; what are Fab Labs? Not everybody is aware of this. SARAH: Fab Labs are workshops and studios that incorporate many different kinds of digital fabrication. So we are taking the ones and zeros, the bits of CAD designs, and turning them into things that you can hold in your hand. And it covers topics like 3D printing, and laser cutting, and CNC machining. But Neil Gershenfeld, who founded the international Fab Lab Network, likes to say the power of digital fabrication is social, not technical. TROND: You know, this brings me to my next question, what skills are needed? So when we talk about new-collar jobs and the skills and the workforce training, what exact skills is it that we need to now be more aware of? So you talked about some of them. I guess digital fabrication, broadly, is another. Can you go a little bit more into what kind of skills you have been involved in training people for? SARAH: Well, when I first started this project, I had always been interested in workforce training, obviously, because I had a manufacturing company, and I needed to hire people. And we had worked with the community college near our factory to develop a two-year curriculum for digital manufacturing. But I had in mind exactly what I needed for my own company and the kinds of skills that I was looking for. And so a lot of Fab Labs, because we have about 2,000 Fab Labs around the world, heard about this program and started asking me, "Could you make a curriculum for us?" And there were so many of them that I thought I needed to come up with something that is going to fit most of the Fab Labs. And so I interviewed 200 manufacturers in all kinds of industries and from startups to Fortune 10 and so companies like GE, and Boeing, and Apple, and Ford, as well as companies in the medical device space. What they all told me they wanted was...the number one skill they were looking for was problem-solving. And that's even more important today because we're getting all these new technologies, and you haven't got some guy in the back of the machine shop who has done this before. And we're getting machines that are being built that have never been built before. And it's a whole new space. And the second thing they were looking for was hands-on skills. And I was particularly looking at operators and technicians. They were also looking for technical skills like CAD design, AI. Predictive analytics was probably the number one skill that the international manufacturers' CEOs were looking for. And I got done, and I thought, well, this is all the stuff we do in Fab Labs. This is exactly what we do. We teach people how to solve problems. And so many of our labs, particularly in places like Asia or Africa where there was tremendous need and not enough resources, necessity is the mother of invention. And so many of our Fab Labs invent amazing things to help their communities. And I thought, well, we don't need a two-year curriculum because the need for the employers was so extreme. I thought we need something more like what we do in Fab Labs. TROND: And how can these skills be taught? What are the methodologies that you're using to teach these skills that aren't necessarily, you know, you don't need to go to university, as you pointed out, for them? But they have to be taught somehow. What are the methods you're using? SARAH: Well, I did a lot of research trying to nail that down when I got done figuring out what it was people needed in the factories. And it seemed like digital badges were the fastest, easiest, most affordable way to certify the ability of a badge earner to work with a particular skill set. And they were developed by IBM and Mozilla probably decades ago now and are used by many organizations to verify skills. And it's a credential that is portable and that you can put on your digital resume and verify. There is an underlying standard that you have to adhere to; an international standards body monitors it. And there's a certain level of certainty that the person who says they have the skill actually has it. TROND: That's a good point because, in this modern day and age, a lot of people can say that they have gone through some sort of training, and it's hard to verify. So these things are also called micro certifications. How recent is this idea to certify a skill in that digital way? SARAH: I think that these particular badges have been around for decades, and people like Cisco, and IBM, and Autodesk have been using them for quite a long time, as well as many colleges, including Michigan State, is one that comes to mind that has a big program. And they can be stacked into a credential or into a higher-level course. So we stack our badges, for example, into a master badge. And that combines a number of skills into something that allows someone to have a job description kind of certification. So, for example, our badges will combine into a master badge for an operator. And so it's not just someone who knows CAD. They know CAD. They know how to run a machine. They know how to troubleshoot a machine. TROND: So we touched a little bit on how these things can be taught. But is this a very practical type of teaching that you are engaged in? I mean, Fab Labs, so they are physically present, or was that kind of in the old, pre-COVID era? SARAH: Well, yes, we were typically physically present with COVID. This past summer, I spent a lot of time piloting more online programs. And so, for our design classes, we can still have people online. And our interns 3D-print their designs, and then they can look at them via photography or video, if it's a functional design, and see how the design needs to be iterated to the next step. Because, as you know, it never comes out right the first time; it takes a number of iterations before it works. And we just recently, this week, actually completed an agreement with MatterHackers, who are a distributor of tabletop 3D printers, to bundle their 3D printers with our badges. And so someone can then have a printer at home. And so, if you have a family and you're trying to educate a number of children, it's actually a pretty economical proposition. And they offer two printers that are under $1,000 for people who are, for example, wanting to upskill and change careers. They also offer the Ultimaker 3D printer that we use pretty heavily in our lab. And it's a higher level with added expense. But if you're looking at a career change, it's certainly cheaper than going back to college [laughs] instead. TROND: So I'm curious about the impact. I know that you started out this endeavor interviewing some 200 U.S. manufacturers to see that there was...I think you told me there was like a paradigm shift needed really to bring back well-paying, engaging manufacturing careers back to middle-class Americans. And that's again, I guess, pointing to this new-collar workforce. What has the impact been? I mean, I'm sitting here, and I see you have the book, too, but you generously gave me this. So I've been browsing some of the impacts and some of the description of what you have been achieving over the past few years. What has the impact been? How many people have you been able to train? And what happened to the people who were trained? SARAH: We've only been doing it a couple of years. And in our pilot, we probably have trained 2,3,400 people, something on that. And it's been a mix of people who come to us. Because we teach project-based learning, we can have classes that have varying levels of experience. So we have people who are PhDs from the Los Alamos National Lab who drive the 45 minutes over to us, and they're typically upskilling. They're typically engineers who went to school before 3D printing was in the curriculum. And they are adding that to their existing work. But we get such a wide range of people from artists. We're an artist colony here. And we get jewelers, and sculptors, and a wide range of people who have never done anything technical but are looking to automate their processes. And so my necklace is the Taos Pueblo. And it was designed by a woman...and her story is in the book. So I should add that the book you're referring to has augmented reality links to the stories of people. And she just was determined. She, I think, has never graduated from high school and is an immigrant to the United States. And she just was determined to learn this. And she worked with us, and now she designs in CAD, and we 3D-print the molds. And her husband has a casting company, and then he has it cast in sterling. TROND: I find that fascinating, Sarah because you said...so it goes from people who haven't completed high school to kind of not so recent PhDs. That is a fascinating range. And it brings, I guess, this idea of the difficulty level of contemporary technologies isn't necessarily what it was years ago. It's not like these technologies take years to learn, necessarily at the level where you can actually apply them in your hobbies or in the workplace. Why is that, do you think? Have we gotten better at developing technologies? Or have companies gotten better to tweak them, or have we gotten faster at learning them? Or is the discrepancy...like, this could be surprising for a lot of people that it's not that hard to take a course and apply it right afterwards. SARAH: Learning anything comes down to are you interested? It comes down to your level of motivation and determination. A couple of things, I think the programs, the technical programs, and the machines have become much easier. When I started in the laser business, every time that I wanted to make a hole, I would have to redesign the optical train. And so I'd have to do all the math, so I'd have to do all the advanced math. I would have to put it together on my bench, and hopefully, it worked, and tweak it until I got the size hole I needed in the material I needed. Today, there's autofocus. It's just like your camera. You press a button; you dial in the size hole you want, and away you go. And it's interesting because many of the newer employees at our company Potomac Photonics really don't have the technical understanding that I developed because they just press the button. But it moves much faster, and we have more throughput; we have a greater consistency. So the machines have definitely improved tremendously in recent years. But I also think that people are more used to dealing with technology. It's very rare to run into somebody who doesn't have email or somebody who isn't surfing the web to find information. And for the young people, they're digital natives. So they don't even know what it's like not to have a digital option. I think that a number of things have come together to make that feasible. TROND: Sarah, let me ask you then this hard question. I mean, it's a big promise to say that you can save the middle class essentially. Is it that easy? Is it just taking one or two courses with this kind of Fab Lab-type approach, and you're all set? Can you literally take someone who feels...or maybe are laid off or feels at least not skilled really for the jobs they had, the jobs they want, and you can really turn them into highly employable in a matter of one course? Has that really happened? SARAH: In one course or one digital badge, it is possible to get some jobs, but it probably takes a combination of courses in order to have the right skill set because it's typically not one skill you need. It's typically a combination of skills. So to run the 3D printers, for example, you need CAD design. You need to understand design for 3D printing. And then you have to understand how to run the machines and fix them when they break. So it's probably still a more focused and condensed process. So you could do our master badge, which comprises five or six badges, and get a job in six months for about $2,000. With one class, you could get a job part-time and continue the other badges and be paying for school while you're working in a field that is paying a substantial increase over working at McDonald's. TROND: So give me a sense. So this is happening, in your case, in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Where do we go from here? Is this going on anywhere else? What are the numbers? How many people are being trained this way? How many people could be trained this way? How easy is the approach you're taking to integrate and scale up? And is it happening anywhere else? SARAH: Our non-profit, which is the organization that issues the badges, has, right now, I think, 12 or 13 members, and they were part of our pilot, and they are all over the country. So in my team, Lemelson, the Fab Lab in El Paso, the Fab Lab in Tulsa, MakerspaceCT in Hartford, Connecticut. And so we have a group that just started this year was when I started the scaling after, I was really pretty confident that it was going to work. If it worked in Santa Fe, which is a small town and in a very rural, very poor state, I really thought if I could make it work here, we could make it work anywhere because there are a lot of challenges in our state. So we started scaling this year, and each of our pilot sites is probably putting through their first cohort of 4, 5, or 6 badges, and they each have about 10 in that first cohort. We have a lot of requests for people to join our group and start issuing the badges. I've really come to see the success of our online program. And so, our online program is instructor-led at this point. And I'm working to create a self-directed program that people could do online with a tabletop printer at home. But we will still continue to scale the New Collar Network that actually disseminates the badges. And I really see enormous interest. As you know, college enrollment has been declining for the last ten years. There has been an 11% decline in college enrollment. And people are looking for alternatives. And I think that I've had requests from school systems. I had a request from a school system back East that has 45,000 students that they want to get badges. We have had a request from a school system in the Midwest where they get a lot of teachers who are getting 3D printers, and they don't know what to do with them. And they'd like for us to train the teachers. So I really see a huge opportunity. And these tools that we're using are not just being used in manufacturing. One of the people that we worked with on the HR side in research was Walmart. And their big worry is now they're putting in these janitorial robots. And their big dilemma is who's going to program them, and who is going to fix the robots when they're not working? And it's everywhere. It's not just am I going to get a job at that manufacturing company? It's also your local retail store. TROND: Fantastic. This is very inspiring. I thank you so much for sharing this with us. And I hope that others are listening to this and either join a course like that or get engaged in the Fab Lab type Network and start training others. So thanks again for sharing this. SARAH: Oh, it's a pleasure. It's a real mission, I think. [laughs] TROND: Sounds like it. Have a wonderful rest of your day. SARAH: Thank you. TROND: You have just listened to Episode 3 of the Augmented Podcast with host Trond Arne Undheim. The topic was Reimagining Workforce Training. Our guest was Sarah Boisvert, Founder, and CEO of Fab Lab Hub and the non-profit New Collar Network. In this conversation, we talked about reimagining workforce training, industry 4.0, and what you mean by new-collar jobs and Fab Labs; what skills are needed? How can they be taught, and how can the credentials be recognized? What has the impact been, and where do we go from here? My takeaway is that reimagining workforce training is more needed than ever before. The good news is that training new generations of workers might be simpler than it seems. Practical skills in robotics, 3D scanning, digital fabrication, even AR and VR can be taught through experiential learning in weeks and months, not in years. Micro certifications can be given out electronically, and the impact on workers' lives can be profound. Thanks for listening. If you liked the show, subscribe at augmentedpodcast.co or in your preferred podcast player, and rate us with five stars. Augmented — the industry 4.0 podcast. Special Guest: Sarah Boisvert.
Augmented reveals the stories behind the new era of industrial operations, where technology will restore the agility of frontline workers. In episode #4 of the podcast, the topic is: A Renaissance of Manufacturing. Our guest is Enno De Boer, Partner, Digital Manufacturing Lead, McKinsey.
Augmented is a podcast for leaders, hosted by futurist Trond Arne Undheim, presented by Tulip.co, the manufacturing app platform, and associated with MFG.works, the manufacturing upskilling community launched at the World Economic Forum. Each episode dives deep into a contemporary topic of concern across the industry and airs at 9 am US Eastern Time every Wednesday. Augmented--the industry 4.0 podcast.
In this conversation, we talk about **What is digital manufacturing? How to transform operations strategy, best practices, specifically the World Economic Forum Global Lighthouse Factories. We also tackle future developments: How to stay up to date in this fast moving field? What’s next?
Trond's takeaway: is that manufacturing is indeed undergoing a renaissance. There should be a tremendous amount of excitement among policy makers, industry professionals, and frontline workers about the changes in play. Technologies are maturing. The digital factory is becoming a reality. For those who already took on board the lessons of lean manufacturing and are exploring the latest opportunities, automation has become augmentation. Yet, there's still a lot to learn. The World Economic Forum's Lighthouse factories is one place to seek inspiration.**
After listening to this episode, check out the World Economic Forum Global Lighthouse Network, McKinsey's Operations practice, well as Enno De Boer's social profile.
- World Economic Forum Global Lighthouse Network: https://www.weforum.org/projects/global_lighthouse_network
- Enno De Boer (bio): https://www.mckinsey.com/our-people/enno-de-boer
- McKinsey Manufacturing & Supply Chain practice area (@mckinsey_mfg): https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/operations/how-we-help-clients
Augmented is a podcast for leaders in the manufacturing industry hosted by futurist Trond Arne Undheim, presented by Tulip.co, the manufacturing app platform, and associated with MFG.works, the open learning community launched at the World Economic Forum. Our intro and outro music is The Arrival by Evgeny Bardyuzha (@evgenybardyuzha), licensed by @Art_list_io. The show can be found at http://www.augmentedpodcast.co/
Thanks for listening. If you liked the show, subscribe at Augmentedpodcast.co or in your preferred podcast player, and rate us with five stars. If you liked this episode, you might also like episode #1 on From Automation to Augmentation or Episode #2 on How to Train Augmented Workers. Augmented--the industry 4.0 podcast.
Transcript: TROND: Augmented reveals the stories behind the new era of industrial operations, where technology will restore the agility of frontline workers. Augmented is a podcast for leaders, hosted by futurist Trond Arne Undheim, presented by Tulip.co, the manufacturing app platform, and associated with MFG.works, the manufacturing upskilling community launched at the World Economic Forum. Each episode dives deep into a contemporary topic of concern across the industry and airs at 9:00 a.m. U.S. Eastern Time every Wednesday. Augmented — the industry 4.0 podcast. In Episode 4 of the podcast, the topic is A Renaissance of Manufacturing. Our guest is Enno De Boer, Partner and Digital Manufacturing Lead at McKinsey & Company. In this conversation, we talk about what is digital manufacturing? How to transform operations strategy, best practices, specifically the World Economic Forum Global Lighthouse Factories. We also tackle future developments: How to stay up to date in this fast-moving field, and what’s next? TROND: Enno, how are you doing today? ENNO: Very good. TROND: I'm excited to have our conversation. First off, Enno, you're an interesting guy. You obviously have a tremendous amount of experience working with a lot of manufacturing factories through your work at McKinsey and also now directly at the World Economic Forum. But what got you into manufacturing? What sparked this interest? ENNO: I had always kind of a passion for real things, for products and everything. And my dad was an engineer. He was a researcher in the steel industry, and he wanted to get me into steel, but I thought I wanted to have something a little bit more sophisticated. So I got initially into automotive, got really excited about it. And then when you're in automotive, you need to go to the shop floor; that's where the real music is. So that's how I got into it. And then, from there, it took its toll, and I went into any industry, and I'm always passionate about manufacturing. TROND: Wow, that's where the real music is. Well, you ended up getting your master's and your doctorate in mechanical engineering. I think they're all from Dresden and from Aachen. So you've been around the academic side and now very much on the combination, I guess, of consulting and advising, but you enjoy getting into these factories and hearing the music, basically. ENNO: Yes, totally. I started my career at BMW, and it was amazing to see what product they are building, et cetera. And then, I moved to McKinsey, and it was always about the products and how can we make the products better? How can we get them better to the consumer, and also, how can we make literally the shop floor a better environment? And I think that's so exciting about what we're seeing at the moment with this digital revolution, and we're getting to that in a moment. But it's all about augmenting the operator and figuring out how do we take the dull, dirty, and dangerous work out of manufacturing and make it very exciting? I think it's one of the most exciting spots to be. For all the young people, I just say go into manufacturing. That's where all the fun technologies come to bear. Is it augmented reality, virtual reality? Is it digital twins? Is it AI? Is it digitization? Is it 3D printing? All of that is coming there. Tell me any other industry where that's happening. TROND: You know, I echo what you're saying. And it's almost incredible how long it has...well, how long it has taken, but how long it's taking for the wider world to realize how many things are actually coming to the fore in manufacturing right now. Give us a sense of what this environment looks like. Well, there are many buzzwords, but what is digital manufacturing? Let's start sort of simple here. ENNO: Yeah, digital manufacturing, actually, it's interesting. It's an interesting term. So when we worked with the World Economic Forum, we defined digital manufacturing as 110 use cases that are spread across...roughly half of them within the factory walls. And then something like predictive maintenance, very apparent, but then half of them also outside of the four walls. So how do you connect to product development, get your products faster developed? Most likely with virtual reality, with digital twins. How do you connect to the customer? How do you get customer orders in and immediately propagate them down to the shop floor and all the way back to the customer where the product lands? And you want to have this in one digital thread, how we call that. So that's very exciting. So that's digital manufacturing. It's very much about augmenting the operator. As I said before, it's not so much about this idea that was out there in the '80s and '90s about the lighthouse factory and full automation. Nobody is talking about this. This is really a concert of how we are bringing technologies to allow the operator to bring out better products in higher quality, in higher agility, and more sustainable. TROND: I know industry 4.0 is a big term. But at the forum, there's also this notion of this fourth industrial revolution, so very specifically calling it a revolution. How do you feel about those things? Are they even sort of perhaps wider terms than just focusing on the worker? ENNO: I think it's interesting. I think it's partly we have an evolution because the manufacturing sector you cannot change overnight. It's very complex to manufacture products, and you need many technologies. So it feels not like this is happening overnight. Though I would say now, with what we have gone through with this terrible pandemic over the last year, it has almost switched, and it totally accelerated the digital transformation. So I feel now it's becoming much more of a revolution because I'm seeing examples where innovation is not stopping anywhere. Like we have one lighthouse that we got new on the lighthouse platform from Alibaba. They took an entirely new stand on how do you do apparel manufacture? How do you produce jeans? Now, that sounds very simple and sounds very labor intense. They took a stand at this and fully connected it to the customer to get their ideas on how that would work, but then fully digitized it. And that allows them to create products, new apparel in only 30% of the time and also bringing it to the customer 70% faster than anything we have seen before. So there's a real revolution going on and a renaissance, I would say, of manufacturing and the art of the possible. I would say the limit is the sky. TROND: But you said lighthouse. When you say lighthouse, to me, I'm thinking of a navigational tower created out there in the ocean with lights and signals to navigate against. Give me a sense of what this metaphor means and what you have used when you built out this Lighthouse Network at the forum. What does it mean, and what's the purpose? And why this metaphor? ENNO: Yeah, and I think it's great that you're asking because I got a lot of questions at the beginning. "Is lighthouse the right word, Enno? Lighthouse is where we are driving on rocks. Is that not negative?" And I said, "No." It's like the light. We need always role models. We need examples that we can latch on. We need things that we can learn from, that are lighthouses. Lighthouses are a towering example. They are high. They are shining out, and they're shining the way. And I'm a sailor, so I love lighthouses. So when I'm coming to the coast and the first thing I see is this light. And it's going up, and it's leading me the way, and then I'm coming nearer. I get the contours. And that's a lighthouse. So what is the lighthouse? The lighthouse is, we said it's not a shiny object. Stop with these shiny objects. It's not about technology forward; that's wrong. It's not about building an ivory tower, and everyone is looking in very different. Three things we're looking for with WEF Lighthouse; first of all, we want to see impact at scale. Secondly, we want to see that unleashed by several use cases, several technologies that enable that, like really innovation there. And then, we want to see that this is sustainable, that there are the measures and the enablers below that is not only sustainable but also scalable. That is, for us, a lighthouse, and that's something that is exciting people. And they say, "Well, I want to..." I get every week a call "I want to have a lighthouse in my organization. How do I do this?" And that's exactly what we wanted to create. We wanted to create that everyone gets a feeling of what really is industry 4.0. TROND: Well, so then here's my question. How did this project get started, and how do you select lighthouses? And what exactly do you collect once you have selected lighthouses, and how is it that then it becomes helpful? Is it kind of a collection of videos from the sites? Is it interviews with the people who have designed the work processes there? What is it exactly? ENNO: Yeah, it started...as always, the first try is not working. [laughs] So when we started it, the first idea I had I said look, we need these lighthouses. We need examples. It's like in the old lean terms where we had Japan; we had Toyota, we had Honda, as ways to go for the manufacturing community to learn. I said, "We need to create the Japan of digital manufacturing." And the first answer that I got from a couple of executives where I was on an executive committee, they said, "Hell no. We'll not share our secret sauce. We're ahead, and we don't want that others learn from it." And I said, "I think that's wrong. You need open innovation. You need to share," Because this is such a dynamic environment where you can only stay ahead if you fully open collaborate, and learn from the best, and then stay ahead." And it turned out to be true. And then I found the World Economic Forum. They loved the idea. We started to build this app jointly. And it's now something that everyone in the manufacturing industry aspires. So that's how it started. It was a lot of work. So we started almost three years ago to build this with the World Economic Forum. And we still feel we're only at the very beginning. We have now 54 lighthouses and more than a dozen, actually, to be announced soon that are coming out. But if you put this into perspective, this is 50 out of 10 million factories, so a lot of work to be done. TROND: How many lighthouses should there be? ENNO: I think there should be many, many more. And I think every organization should have at least a handful or a dozen lighthouses. Because what we find is you need different lighthouses in an organization. You need maybe a lighthouse that shows you how you connect your product development to manufacturing. You maybe need a lighthouse on how do you connect to the customer? You need a really sustainable lighthouse. So there are already three. And then you need to start to use this lighthouse. A lighthouse is not a mean by itself. I think then you need to start that you get the entire organization to kind of moving to transform the entire value chain, the entire production network. So you could almost see that. And that's how I see it. I think we're very blessed with these lighthouses because, for me, they are a little bit of the window into the future. That should be the standard in three, four years for any manufacturer. So if you ask me, maybe 10 million so all the factories should become lighthouses. Now, every lighthouse will be a little bit different and needs to be built within its context. TROND: But are you saying that in order to qualify to be a lighthouse, there is an aspect that is better than the average? Because otherwise, you shouldn't be looking at it. Now I'm just trying to figure out, well, one, you how you select it, and on what features you select these things. And on the aspirational side, if I'm a factory owner or an organization and I think I'm inspired by what you're saying, how do I interact with this project? And how do I learn from the lighthouse? How do I build my own lighthouse? What is this thing? ENNO: So I think you're spot on. We said we wanted to create the Japan of digital manufacturing, that was a vision, and that is still to be true. So what we want to have on the platform is lighthouses that bring learnings to others, that are willing to share those, and that are towering, and these learnings are important and interesting enough that everyone can learn from it. So yes, it should be over the average. It should be better than anything. It should be a best practice. Yes, of course. We are not looking for someone who has invested a ton of money into technology and has not gotten any returns out of it. There are a lot of examples of that. We are looking for the ones who have smartly invested into technology, also driven the people transformation, also have driven a business transformation with technology and with that created impact at scale. That's the number one we're looking for: impact at scale. Number two is, is it driven through real technology innovation? And are these use cases there? And then is this sustainable? Is this just kind of a quick blip of a performance? Or is this something where we feel that this company is taking this lighthouse really to fully transform themselves and literally the cluster they are working in? TROND: Can you give me some concrete examples so some of these lighthouses? There are 54 that have been announced. I mean, that's too much to cover in one quick talk, but give me a sense of what kinds of things you already have in the portfolio. ENNO: Yeah, so we started initially with factory lighthouses, so the ones that are very factory. We had initially 16, and then we scaled this up. One example is, for example, Procter & Gamble, the Rakona site, really interesting, was about to be closed. They had one last chance, and the factory team was amazing. They said, "We go all in. If you let us do it, we will go in. We take the challenge." And they turned around the site with digital, with fully digitizing it. It was really on the bottom of the P&G manufacturing sites. It was a brownfield; I think 100 years old, very, very traditional. And they transformed it fully. And they are now one of the top performing sites in the Procter & Gamble network, which says something and which says that anyone who has the ambition and has the leadership and is going full in can do it. It's not a question of whether you're a greenfield; this is a brownfield. It's not a question of whether you're a new site or an old site. That's one example. Another good example, because we have quite a breadth there, I talked about Alibaba, a digital native company that fully went into apparel manufacturing to innovate apparel manufacturing. Another example is Henkel. They had very ambitious sustainability goals from the very get-go. They said, "We can only achieve that through digital transformation." They connected over 30 sites with a digital twin. They get really deep into the energy management, into predictive actions. And they were able to reduce their energy consumption by 38% and their water consumption by 25%, very sustainable example. Another one is Schneider Electric, and I could go on, who reduced their carbon footprint by 78%. So we're not talking about let's do another 10%. If someone comes to me and says, "Look, let's do another 10% of this," I say, "Okay, you most likely don't need [inaudible 18:08]. Think harder. How do you want to hit customer breakpoints? How do you want to do something really spectacular? And then let's build the full stack of digital together to innovate that." TROND: Well, you've already given out some secrets, I guess, around transforming operations strategy these days. Is a lighthouse strategy the first thing you recommend when you go into a company these days, or what is your approach? Because you are an operation strategy expert in manufacturing. Is that the first thing you suggest, or is it kind of to look inward? Or what is the first thing one should do today? ENNO: The first question I have is, what business impact do you need to drive? Because that determines everything because a lighthouse is not a lighthouse. So, first of all, I need to know whether you want to drive growth, whether you want to drive agility, mass customization, sustainability, productivity, or speed to market. Let me know that. And that's already a hard question because a lot of CXOs, CEOs, COOs say, "Well, I haven't thought about it. I thought I'm coming to you, and we're building a lighthouse." I say, "No, we're not building a lighthouse just for the lighthouse sakes." So let's figure out what is really the business impact you need, then let's go from there backwards and say, out of the 110 use cases that we have seen in the lighthouses, what are the ones that will really help you? Typically, it's 20 to 30, maybe 40 use cases that immediately will drive fundamental value. Let's take them. And then the most important thing is let's figure out how do we scale this? Because that's what has been the biggest challenge, and I would say that is what differentiates the 1% of the lighthouses, or less than 1% of the lighthouses, and the rest of the 99%. It's called pilot purgatory. We've seen thousands of flowers bloom approaches, pilots, over pilots, and they are not scaling. TROND: Why is there such a purgatory? Why is it so hard? And what did those 1% do that the others don't? ENNO: I think we are looking at this question for quite long. And I think it's partly; I would say, cultural in the manufacturing sector. The manufacturing sector in the past was the one that would...as a CEO, you're asked, okay, give me another 5% cost reduction and don't interrupt the production. There was no question of, okay, look at this strategically. Tell me about how manufacturing can be a competitive advantage. So really, the thinking and being strategic about manufacturing, I think that's one part. The other part that I think is cultural is lean has learned us...and lean is really a fundamental and important part of the digital transformation. But lean has learned us to disaggregate, to democratize, and to spread literally everything across all our production network and let everyone do a little bit of something. Now the problem is that we'll be coming back in the future, and this is great. Democratizing technology is the right thing to do. But at the beginning, to get this started and getting out of pilot purgatory, you need to have some kind of a guided approach that is strategic, that is focused, and that is building certain capabilities that most likely these companies have not in their networks. TROND: So are there really distillable, small nuggets of best practices in this field of manufacturing? Or is it so complicated that everybody has to....yes, they can look for paragons in the lighthouses. But you have also said one of the reasons you're so fascinated with this is you have to just hear the music. So what is the balance of, I guess, listening to your own music, really just figuring out what is happening in my own work process versus looking at other people's work process? What is the balance between the internal, the external, the inspiration versus the perspiration, I guess? ENNO: I think it's, like always, you need to start from where you are. And I think I'm glad that you asked this question. This is not about taking the lighthouse, and then that's my blueprint, and then let's just do it and copy it. No, it won't work. You need to start from where you are. So it starts with a diagnostic. It starts with, as I said earlier, it starts with what business goals. Everyone has different business goals. Then it starts with where's your situation? So how do you manufacture? There are thousands of different types of manufacturing. So what's your starting situation? What's your maturity? What's your capabilities? What's your tech capability? All of that and then build on that. I think there's for anyone a tailored journey on how do you then mobilize your people? How do you build the right capabilities in-house to be then really able to scale something? And there are a lot of learnings from the lighthouses how they have gone about it, how they have mastered to excite the shop floor. All of these lighthouses the people love it, so they get them excited. But you need to get the middle management also excited because they are sometimes I call them the clay layer or something. They're maybe not so excited about all this change. So you need to get them on board that it's really helping them to do their job better. So that's something you need to figure out. And then you need to figure out...that's another thing that is big is, in the past in manufacturing, we have already said, okay, the IT guys leave the IT guys where they are, and we're only calling them when we really need them. But you need to closely work with IT because otherwise, you cannot scale it. And then, you will need to work with OT like the operations technology so connecting the sensor. So there's a lot to do. And I think you need to find your own way, and the puzzle pieces are in the Lighthouse Network. You can find them there. And then, you need to put your puzzle together. TROND: I know you've worked with this for a long time. What are some of the surprises along the way that have shown up in your work? In your experience, what are some of the good and bad surprises that you have learned along the way, things that you didn't expect either when you built out the Lighthouse Network or as you have been spending time listening to this factory music? ENNO: Yeah, I saw a couple of surprises. So one biggest surprise for me is...so I'm German, but I came over to New York 10 years ago. And so I'm pretty now in the U.S. I'm rooting for the US. I'm also rooting for German engineering. But guess what? The U.S. is behind on adopting these technologies. And it's not behind on developing; it has fabulous startups. It has fabulous technology companies. But the digital transformation is not happening in the U.S., not as much as in China, and also not as much as in Europe. And we should ask all ourselves, why is that? How do we mobilize the U.S. manufacturing? That's for me, one, and I can tell you I have turned every stone in the U.S. and looked under every stone to find lighthouses here. But the fact is we have many, many more lighthouses in China. And the fact is also, if you look at them, they are freaking exciting. So we can learn from China. Is that a surprise? Yes, that is a surprise. That surprised me. TROND: Does this make you popular walking around in America when you point this out? ENNO: No, most likely not. But I want to help U.S. manufacturing. I'm totally excited about U.S. manufacturing. And I think there is all the capabilities. We have the technology here. We have the leadership. We just need to do it, just do it. And as you said, it's about getting the inspiration. I think we should very quickly look at what's out there, and then figure out a way, and then put real effort behind it. And the U.S. has shown that over and over again, once we rally around something, we can really achieve big things. TROND: But what is the problem here? Is it a technology fix or maybe an overconfidence in, you know, the U.S. has always been innovative, and we're leading everywhere and not looking at the human aspects? Or is it specifically a training challenge? Is it a misunderstanding of how some of these things work? Is it just the old outsourcing thing that people have just said, "Well, all of that stuff is going to happen in foreign factories anyway? It's not important here anymore"? Or how did it start, and how do you think we can get out of it here in the U.S.? ENNO: I think we have neglected manufacturing. We have neglected manufacturing in the entire Western world. We found an easy way to offshore and bring it to low-cost countries. A couple of decades ago, we have written off manufacturing and have said, okay, there will be a constant decline in manufacturing. Now, I did a study in Germany, I think ten years ago. And honestly, the result of the study was sobering because there was no digital and there were no ideas. We couldn't bring ideas together to innovate manufacturing. Now, I must say what I've seen now and what is possible is, well, you can be really competitive in the U.S. with manufacturing because the labor differential is not the core thing. But what you need to do is you need to invest, and you need to invest in the people. You need to build and rescale. And you need to augment with the technology, your people, and make sure that they get more productive. That's what you need to do, and then you can be productive. So I think there's something happening now, and I can see that it's really taking off. The conversations I had over the last six months, I would say, are fundamentally different from what I've seen before. So I'm very optimistic. TROND: That's great to hear. Next for me in my mind is you spend all of your time presumably on this. Where do you go to get your insight? How do you sharpen your teeth? Are there influencers to look at, or are there particular lighthouses? Or do you use yourself a lighthouse strategy? Or how do you digest all of the evolving manufacturing insight that's floating around? I'm just curious. ENNO: That's a great question. So first of all, I sometimes sneak into some of these factory visits, and I just do a real go see and see what they are doing. And I'm at the source [laughs], so I have the benefit. We have a big team, and they have walked all their shop floors. And I can let them walk first, and then they tell me, "Enno, this is the factory really," or "This is a supply chain that you should really see," and then I can do that. So that's one inspiration. I think another inspiration is we have an amazing industry 4.0 expert panel that we have created with the WEF that is literally selecting these lighthouses. And it's very independent, so I'm not on there to make this also very independent. But it's a power source. There are 30 individuals around the globe that I would say are the most experienced in industry 4.0, and it's some academics. I think the right portion of academics is important. But then it's also a lot of practitioners. And that's where I'm getting my inspiration. And then, I get my inspiration typically from client work. I'm spending time with CEOs with COOs. And we are at the moment building something truly amazing in the biotech sector, where we're literally bringing all the best of digital manufacturing to this client. And that's for me always an innovation with young teams, with people who really want to make a difference, and then with people who have really a lot of domain expertise. So I think also these teams of bringing the young, aggressive, technology-minded, and then bring the ones in manufacturing who have the domain expertise, who have seen this for 20-30 years, bringing this together in teams is a true inspiration. TROND: What about the future? Where are we heading? We've talked a little bit about it. You think it's a very exciting situation. Things are coming together. But we've also spoken about how long things take. Is there a danger now that the story has become one of revolution? And indeed, there are so many exciting things happening, yet they have taken a while. How do you see this? What's next? And how fast is the next going to evolve? We have talked a little bit about the U.S. being somewhat behind, at least from this lighthouse context, other places. How quickly is this entire thing kind of coming together? And what's the outlook really for manufacturing? ENNO: [laughs] I will give you not a timing answer because I built my first digital manufacturing startup in '99. And it was just 20 years too early, and it failed miserably. Because all the ideas were right and if I would have built it now, it would be maybe very successful but 20 years...so I will not give you an answer on timing. But I would say that we have audacious goals in the world. So number one, I think we really need to do something in terms of sustainability. The carbon footprint of manufacturing sector is 20%, 54% of the energy consumption worldwide comes out of the factory and out of manufacturing. And we've seen the lighthouse examples. We have maybe a dozen of lighthouses that make truly an impact on how we go to carbon neutral. So how do we scale this up? That's for me, one. And I would say we have the toolset. We have the examples. We have the role models. We need to grab it by the horns and do it. That's number one. I think number two is with this pandemic which is really bad, is there's a need for rethinking, and there's a need for growth. And there's a need on how do we master through a looming recession? And one thing we're seeing with the lighthouses is they're a true inspiration for growth. So how do you grow with best digital capabilities? So I think the good news is we have the toolbox. It's ready. We have a real momentum here. Now we need to get everyone on board and everyone doing their work because a lot of work is for the next years ahead of us. [laughs] But there will be also great outcomes out of that. So it's always worthwhile the journey. [laughs] TROND: So do I take it that for you, there is a true renaissance of manufacturing? I mean, the last Renaissance came after a plague, arguably, right? I mean, if you look at a very long historical perspective, the Renaissance came out of the Black Death; at least that's one version of the story. Without making that entire comparison, taking it too far, the Renaissance of manufacturing, it can happen, you think? ENNO: It is happening, and not can happen. It is happening. What I've seen is when it hit us in New York in March, my practice, we were doing usually physical shop floor visits, and we switch within the day to virtual. It was possible. We couldn't believe it before that it's possible. We went 100% virtual. I talked to CEOs that entirely managed their shop floor network from the couch in a way that they had their digital tools to really know what's going on because they couldn't go to the factory. So I think it's really happening. And if this pandemic has one positive, I think it gave us the pause and also the need to really rethink, and that's what is happening now. So, I see Renaissance, yes. And we have also seen how important some products are that we need those products. They are important for not only the well-being, but they are like life critical in part. So having that seen, it was a good wake-up call. And this will foster a lot of innovation in the coming years. TROND: Fascinating. Enno, thank you so much for this talk. I hope we can stay in touch. ENNO: Trond, it was a pleasure. Thank you so much. TROND: You have just listened to Episode 4 of the Augmented podcast with host Trond Arne Undheim. The topic was A Renaissance of Manufacturing. Our guest was Enno de Boer, Partner and Digital Manufacturing Lead at McKinsey & Company. In this conversation, we talk about what is digital manufacturing? How to transform operations strategy, best practices, specifically the World Economic Forum Global Lighthouse Factories. We also tackle future developments: how to stay up to date in this fast-moving field, and what’s next? My takeaway is that manufacturing is indeed undergoing a renaissance. There should be a tremendous amount of excitement among policymakers, industry professionals, and frontline workers about the changes in play. Technologies are maturing. The digital factory is becoming a reality. For those who already took on board the lessons of lean manufacturing and are exploring the latest opportunities, automation has become augmentation. Yet, there's still a lot to learn. The World Economic Forum's Lighthouse factories is one place to seek inspiration. Thanks for listening. If you liked the show, subscribe at augmentedpodcast.co or in your preferred podcast player, and rate us with five stars. If you liked this episode, you might also like Episode 1 on From Automation to Augmentation or Episode 2 on How to Train Augmented Workers. Augmented — the industry 4.0 podcast. Special Guest: Enno de Boer.
Augmented reveals the stories behind the new era of industrial operations, where technology will restore the agility of frontline workers.
In episode 9 of the podcast (@AugmentedPod), the topic is: The Fourth Industrial Revolution post-COVID-19. Our guest is Francisco, Betti, Head of Advanced Manufacturing and Production, World Economic Forum.
In this conversation, we talk about why he got into manufacturing and how the World Economic Forum works. We discuss how the Forum has changed over these past 5 years and how manufacturing has become the lead topic among the global elite. The manufacturing platform is now, arguably, the primary among 17 flagship initiatives at the World Economic Forum. We go deeply into the changing business models of manufacturing and what the next decade holds.
After listening to this episode, check out World Economic Forum as well as Francisco, Betti's social profile.
- World Economic Forum: https://www.weforum.org/
- Francisco, Betti: https://www.linkedin.com/in/francisco-betti-10074342/?originalSubdomain=ch
Trond's takeaway: Manufacturing has escalated in prominence during COVID-19, and for good reason. What we can produce decides what we can become. The deep digitalization gains society has made over the past few years had to quickly be implemented on the factory floor. Surprisingly, a large part of the industry was ready. But the process now needs to complete and the results will likely be an entirely new production platform for the world.
Thanks for listening. If you liked the show, subscribe at Augmentedpodcast.co or in your preferred podcast player, and rate us with five stars. If you liked this episode, you might also like episode 4: A Renaissance of Manufacturing or episode 6: Work of the Future. Augmented--the industry 4.0 podcast.
Transcript: TROND: Augmented reveals the stories behind a new era of industrial operations where technology will restore the agility of frontline workers. In Episode 9 of the podcast, the topic is The Fourth Industrial Revolution post-COVID-19. Our guest is Francisco Betti, Head of Advanced Manufacturing and Production, The World Economic Forum. In this conversation, we talk about why he got into manufacturing and how The World Economic Forum works. We discuss how the forum has changed over these past five years and how manufacturing has become the lead topic among the global elite. The manufacturing platform is now arguably the primary among 17 flagship initiatives at The World Economic Forum. We go deeply into the changing business models of manufacturing and what the next decade holds. Augmented is a podcast for leaders hosted by futurist, Trond Arne Undheim, presented by Tulip.co, the manufacturing app platform, and associated with MFG.works, the manufacturing upskilling community launched at The World Economic Forum. Each episode dives deep into a contemporary topic of concern across the industry and airs at 9:00 a.m. U.S. Eastern Time every Wednesday. Augmented - the industry 4.0 podcast. Francisco, it's great to have you here. FRANCISCO: Excellent. Well, thank you for hosting me, Trond. TROND: Well, Francisco, you are an international development professional. You are now working for The World Economic Forum. And I meet you regularly because you support an enormous amount of activity there in manufacturing. But I wanted to bring us back a little bit to your origin. I know you went to The Sapienza University in Rome, studied international relations, and then worked a little bit in consulting. What was it that got you interested in manufacturing? Because it's a path that I always have to ask people about. It's not the obvious path today. But perhaps it would be the obvious path tomorrow, which we'll get to. But I'm curious about your way. FRANCISCO: It's a great question, Trond. And indeed, I have a background in international development relations, economic development as well. And I had a past career in consulting. How did I start focusing in manufacturing? It was at The World Economic Forum back in 2015. Actually, when I joined the forum, I realized there was a need to launch a new piece of work, a new conversation on the future of production on the future of manufacturing. And we started at the time working on a very small concept that was pretty much oriented towards...it was the policy angle, which is why there you get the connection with the international development space. At that time, we were in conversations with a few governments who were not yet aware of this concept of The Fourth Industrial Revolution but who started to see coming a wave of transformations that they knew were going to disrupt their manufacturing base and have an impact on their manufacturing base. And therefore, we started the conversation with prime ministers, with minister of industry, that then led to put together a product concept that evolved over time. And today, it's one of the 17 global platforms and initiatives that The World Economic Forum is running that I lead on the future of advanced manufacturing and production. At the very beginning, we started focusing pretty much on the policy angle. Today it's a real public-private platform where both companies and governments advocate for the actions that need to be taken to shape the future of production that works for all. TROND: Francisco, it's a fascinating journey for you. But it's also an incredibly fascinating journey for the field of manufacturing. And I wanted to address a little bit how manufacturing as a platform became one of the 17 flagship initiatives, and by that, how The World Economic Forum itself has changed over these past few years. And then lastly, the last year has meant enormous change with preparation around COVID. And again, manufacturing has been escalated into this enormous importance. And I would imagine that your development background has come in handy because the kinds of issues that suddenly became foreground were a little unusual, I guess, for manufacturing as well. So firstly, what has happened at The World Economic Forum over these years that has catapulted manufacturing into this prominence? FRANCISCO: What I think is that in the conversations with our private sector community but also with the public sector, we realize that there was an urgent need for a public-private dialogue to be brought back on top of the agenda. We all know what happened with COVID. The disruptions that we saw in manufacturing, I think, made us realize that when things go wrong in manufacturing, you run out of essential products, not even talking about the protective equipment, ventilators, and all the things that were most needed because of the public crisis. But even basic supplies such as food or toilet paper became an issue, and people started talking about those. So let's say that there was a realization that manufacturing still plays a major role in our global economies and society. And that's something that is quite exciting and interesting, but you need to look a couple of years back. And I think if you look at the pre-COVID war, and you start thinking about how different megatrends were shaping the war, you also realize why manufacturing came back and became an important issue on top of the global agenda for both private and public sector communities. And what I'm talking about is the combination of mainly probably three or four megatrends, but it's The Fourth Industrial Revolution, which is a concept that our Executive Chairman launched back in 2017, mainly referring to the blurring lines in between the OT and IT war that are transforming not just how our companies operate but probably who we are and what we do as human beings. So it was the concept of The Fourth Industrial Revolution together with climate change, the imperative for sustainability, with the geopolitical trends and tensions that we saw over the past four to five years. And, of course, all things that relate to the geo-economic evolution in which you can add elements such as aging population or the slowing of the global economy. But it's all those trends and combinations that made people realize the importance of manufacturing, and that brought it back onto the global agenda. So it's been a fascinating journey. There have been plenty of discussions which would trend from the technology angle, and how technology can transform manufacturing for the good, and what's the positive impact it would have in society. And most recently, about the role that manufacturing can play in the context of this concept of stakeholder capitalism and the need to create value, a new value that is delivered not just to shareholders but to shareholders, workers, society, and the environment overall. TROND: It's fascinating because many of these concepts to some of us are fairly abstract still because like stakeholder capitalism unless you truly are in this battle, or you either were fighting for it to even emerge, or you are at the C-level, and you're basically being tasked with figuring out what this concept is going to translate into... But it seems to me that what you're saying is that with manufacturing becoming such a forefront of many battles in society, this is not theoretical anymore. And it's something that all people can relate to whether you are on the factory floor implementing your OT, as you said, your operational technology or you are at the leadership level and trying to strategize about what this means for the organization as a whole. FRANCISCO: And, Trond, you're absolutely right. Manufacturing needs exactly what change is happening today. We are hearing on a daily basis global companies making commitments towards the SDGs. There was the concept of stakeholder capitalists setting very ambitious targets by 2025-2030 getting CO2 emissions. The only place in which we are seeing that happening now it's in manufacturing. Manufacturing is changing the speed. When you double-click on how digital technologies, digital solutions advance manufacturing, industry for control, it's transforming the world of operations, driving massive efficiencies, productivity revolutions, driving growth, and at the same time, augmenting workers, contributing towards the sustainability targets by cutting energy consumption, water consumption, material consumption, optimizing waste management. I think that's when you realize that it's probably in the real economy space, in the manufacturing space, where all those commitments are starting to come to life, and that we are seeing real change and real action. It's extremely exciting. TROND: Yeah, and it's also an interesting time because without getting into the politics of this, there clearly is a bit of an outcry because of the success of technology in other fields. Social platforms and other digital advances that we have made have created both an enormous opportunity, which of course, explains why so many things can be achieved in manufacturing. But they were about to run awry a little bit in the sense that they weren't or aren't still contributing to the global good in the direct sense that the manufacturing industry, of course, is primed to do but for so many years was not. It still boggles my mind, though, that we are having these conversations at the forum. These conversations are happening. But I don't think that everybody is fully aware of how far manufacturing is about to change and emerge on the world stage. Give us a little bit of a sense before we get into the meat. And I want to talk about business model changes in the industry. But what do you think is needed for the greater public? And by that, I mean young people, older people to realize that manufacturing is actually where things are happening today. What does it take to see it? FRANCISCO: Well, I think that it's a great question, Trond. And I think that one of the...we probably need to start by asking what can manufacturers do to get closer to the general public? And things like open up facilities so that people can see what both a factory, you know, not of the future but the factory of today looks like and how shopfloor operators are interacting with new software technologies, new interfaces, the world of advanced robotics. We are even seeing drones flying within facilities with inspection, right? The level of technological transformation and the pace in which it's happening within manufacturing facilities it's amazing. And if you link that to the jobs conversation and how that connects with new generations, I think that...I'm sure that you know younger generations will get very excited if they have a chance to see. So I think manufacturing has been traditionally, and because that's the role that it used to play, always behind the scenes. I think that we do have an opportunity for manufacturers to start showing to the general public what it is, and what it really looks like, and how exciting it is, and also the contribution it makes. A lot of the things that we enjoy today in life could not be enjoyed if there wasn't a factory, if there wasn't a facility, if there wasn't an entire supply chain behind it. So yes, I think that there's something that the manufacturing community can do better, which is to talk more about the things that are happening in manufacturing in a very transparent, open way. And that's one of the things that we are looking at the forum, providing that platform to interact with the general public. TROND: I just wanted to point out that, again, these are sensitive things, but the forum for a long time was just the way it was set up was a conversation between leaders. But I have seen over the last few years that more and more you realize, or maybe explain it to me, that it's more than a conversation between leaders. Clearly, this conversation is more important than ever. But in addition to a conversation between leaders, you and the industry need to foster a conversation with small and medium-sized enterprises and, as you pointed out, actually, with the greater public because the battle here is kind of a battle of interpretation. Is this an interesting space to be in? And if so, we all need to innovate within this space. That must be challenging for a network that was basically mostly set up to dialogue with leaders. I wanted you to talk a little and begin this discussion because I know you have written a paper on changing business models. But at the same time, as you're writing this paper, the forum is almost having to change its own business model. So I want you to address that just because business models is such an abstract thing. So I wanted you to personalize it a little bit as you're explaining what business models mean in manufacturing these days. FRANCISCO: Absolutely. And I think that we are all transforming our self-set speed within the current context. It's either transform, innovate, or die nowadays. And that happened to every organization regarding this space in which they operate. Maybe on the first part of your question, I think that 50 years ago or 51, when the forum was founded by the Executive Chairman, Professor Klaus Schwab, of course, the main role was to convene leaders. But then, over time, we evolved and became an international organization for public-private cooperation in which dialogue is just an important component of what we do. What really happens at the forum is the formation of communities that are able to drive action and impact over time. Now, of course, in the context of the current pandemic, it’s how do you bring leaders together? And how you orchestrate and incubate those sections that will deliver impact became a challenge. But it forced us to adopt digital technologies at a pace that we didn't think we could. We were doing that before, but COVID played a major accelerator role. And I'll give you an example to make it tangible. You hear about our initiative, which we call The Global Lighthouse Network, that we are deploying together with McKinsey and other colleagues. And what was fascinating is that we had a process in place through which we were physically assessing the facilities. As soon as the COVID crisis started, we were now forced to change the approach. And we ended up coming up with the process to run virtual remote visits, and we realized that the technology was ready. By shipping a simple kit in which you have a phone stabilizer, a headset with a canceling noise effect, and a few other very basic technologies, you could almost get to the same product that you could get when visiting the facilities in person. So we reorganized ourselves. And what I'm very proud of is that if you look at how we have been running some of our key gatherings but also some of the initiatives that are having a real impact on the ground, we were able to triple the pace in which we were operating. And we have seen the same happening in the manufacturing space to connect that with your second part of the question, which is how are business models and operating models evolving? I think that during the crisis, because of the shortages from the supply disruptions on the demand side, every company in the operations, in the manufacturing space was facing new challenges, which forced them to take innovations to new and unprecedented levels. Now what we saw is, in a very short period of time, new ways of generating and delivering value coming up. When I say generating, I'm referring to the operating model, the operating model in the way in which we defined it together with the professors who wrote for that position paper you referred to. The operating model is a way in which your company generates, creates value. Now the business model is a way in which that value is taken to the customers. It's delivered and then converted into revenues. And someone could say that the innovations that we started to see accelerating at speed probably were of three or four main types. The first one is that we saw companies finding new innovative ways to make the products they were making before, so a lot of innovations in the way in which they were operating, finding new sources of supply, but also adopting technology to take those products to a new level, and very often finding that those products could be made even better because of the innovations that were injected. The second relating to that was the emergence of new products. So companies started to repurpose and reposition manufacturing to be able to deliver new goods that were in high demand. The most obvious example there is the companies who started to make masks and any type of protective equipment or ventilator, or hand sanitizer. But what that shows and proves is that quite rapidly, with the right level of technology innovation, you can repurpose, and you can turn into a manufacturer of something different, which can generate new value linking that to the business model. Now, the third type is this idea of topping up products with services. So this is providing a digital thread across your entire value chain to be able to generate new value and deliver new value to the customers not just by the hardware or the physical products that companies were selling but by setting them up with new services, being able to get data all the way from the customers to continue to improve performance and augment the experience that customers were getting. And then the fourth one that is a very exciting one is the as a service concept. We have seen many manufacturing companies that were able to rapidly sort out operational and business issues for themselves and became services providers. Now, if you look at those four things, what I believe is exciting is that someone could argue that manufacturing it's again at the age of becoming a new engine of economic growth. I mean, there is a lot of growth that is going to come from all these innovations that we're seeing accelerating and who are, let's say, experts, emerging from manufacturing. And at the same time, because of what we discussed before, we have the opportunity to make that grow more sustainable, inclusive and make sure it works for a larger number of stakeholders. So that's what makes it very, very exciting. And maybe the final thought on that is that because of the connection with business models, because of the ability to enable growth, manufacturing today is seeing CEO compensation. We are seeing more and more CEOs getting closer to the operation. Or the other way to look at it, we are seeing more and more chief operating or chief supply chain officers who are either stepping into the CEO role who will likely become the next generation of CEO for their companies. TROND: Francisco, this is fascinating because it almost brings us historically back to the heydays of manufacturing. And manufacturing has always been at the heart of every Industrial Revolution. And I think when Klaus Schwab first wrote about The Fourth Industrial Revolution, I don't know that everyone really accepted it because it sounds nice, right? And it would be nice if it was happening. And arguably, you're looking at these technologies. You're saying there has to be a revolution. But back in the day when that was written and the precursors of this discussion, in all honesty, there was perhaps no revolution yet. Because there were platform technologies that were available, but you would still have to implement them. But what you're talking about now is how it is basically over the last very few years becoming implemented into not just large but also smaller organizations and then creating new ones. But to address the first part of what you were saying about these larger firms, so these kinds of superstar firms, I believe you call them in your report, there is a value there as well in an economy to have superstar firms that are actually creating value. There's, of course, less value to a society to have superstar firms that are only creating value for themselves. So that's an important distinction to make. But I wanted to bring this a little bit into the discussion on education. I was reading the other day about, you know, in the olden days when Prussia basically recreated the modern education system, it was largely factory owners who were supporting that even economically and in terms of the pedagogical models. And I was reminded that it is almost a similar challenge we're facing today because it's quite an education challenge on all levels. I wanted to ask you how do you see this happening? How is this shift truly going to take place? Because now the technologies are starting to be put in place. How is the world's worker base going to benefit from this fast enough? How are we going to reshape the education system? Surely we can't put them in four-year colleges. And if we start to reframe the gymnasium, which was the strategy back 250 years ago, that, again, is a nice strategy if you're talking in decades. But this industrial revolution isn't happening over decades; it's happening over years and months. FRANCISCO: I think it's a very important piece of the bigger puzzle. And you cannot talk about the future of manufacturing without talking about the future of skills and pretty much skills revolution that is needed because we know that today there is a skill shortage in manufacturing. Wherever you go in the world, that is happening and not because there are probably not enough hands available but because the people who are coming out of universities do not have the required skills, or out of college, do not have the required skills that are needed on the shop floor or across your engineering base. And maybe to break it down, I could share three different avenues that companies and governments are exploring. The first one is rethinking the way in which companies, universities, and colleges, and governments interact. I think that the concept of you get a college degree or a university degree and then you are all set for life is outdated. If you look at the pace at which technology is evolving and which factories and supply chains are being transformed, we will need to find new mechanisms in which people who work in manufacturing will and should be able to continuously go back and forth in between formation, training, technology updates, and the shop floor and the supply chain. I think that's the very first thing that companies are starting to think about. And there are interesting pilots that are being deployed in many places with new partnerships forming between a specific university and a specific company in a specific location, or people who are or companies who are investing in training students in a specific college by giving them the chance at the very early stages to get an experience on the shop floor. So that's probably the first basket of change that we need to see happening. The second one is maybe around the skills needs. I mean, if technology is growing and developing exponentially, and I'm talking about technology not in general, but technology applied to address very specific production or business issues in the manufacturing space and to be able to develop new use cases. But if that is changing and continuously changing at the pace at which it is changing, we will need to find mechanisms to constantly monitor and identify the skills in which we train people on and how often a college curriculum or university curriculum gets updated; I mean, not often enough. So which should create a new dialogue between those who provide the training and those who are able to identify these key needs to go into a continuous, let's say, update and upgrade process there as well. And the third one, which is the most exciting, is that we probably need to think about how we democratize training in manufacturing. And the best analogy there, you know, how much training did you get to learn how to use the apps that you have on your mobile phone? None, right? You get a new app. You just download the new application that you need, whether it's for navigating a city or learning a new language, or whatever. And after half an hour, you are ready to go. So I think that there's a lot that can be democratized when it comes to training in manufacturing is we leverage technology, not just to transform production but also to transform the way in which people interact in a factory. So this concept of new interfaces and also the fact that we need to think about technology not as a given but as something that we can influence, and that we could tailor, and that we can put...the concept of the series that you are running is, you know, the augmented. You used the word augmented. I think that we can leverage technology today, and we weren't able to do that a few years ago. But we can leverage to augment workers' capabilities. I think that's the secret, and that's the path forward to democratize training in manufacturing and learning. And if we can top up with open source, and we can get companies and in the manufacturing.works platform that you guys are driving; it's amazing how there are more and more companies getting exciting and willing to make their training modules available. So I think that that's going to be probably the fastest way to reach the millions of people who work in manufacturing today. TROND: It's fascinating. As you're speaking, I'm reminded that there obviously has to be a link back to business models with training because if this was simply a case of saying, we're going to outsource these to existing universities, or we're going to outsource the training to these new online training providers, and then the problem is solved, first of all, the incentive wouldn't be there for industry to completely do that. But also, the value created would be isolated to these other institutions. But I think what you're speaking of is some sort of a new dialogue. And there's a combination, though, because open sourcing and democratizing learning, I guess you're not saying that it necessarily forever has to be free. There's a business model, or there are multiple business models that have to be formed around training where there obviously must be incentives for those who create that kind of training. Speak to me a little bit more about the new emerging platforms in manufacturing. And I was fascinated by what you said about technology and interfaces needing to be more intuitive. Historically, that, of course, hasn't been the case (Well, I'm arguing. Let's see what you think.) in manufacturing. If you think about manufacturing technologies, they have been fairly complex, or at least they have been perceived as complex. What is needed, in your mind, to structurally change that aspect? Is it almost like mandating that any technology on the shop floor should be that easy? Or is it just a mindset change among those who buy the technology? Or is it the technology providers that need to themselves take this more seriously? How can this change happen? FRANCISCO: It's a great question, Trond, and we may be at the very beginning of another little revolution within the manufacturing space itself with this concept of new platform or platform tools that are emerging. And for me, the reason is that when you look at some of the data we have when we consulted about why companies failed when it comes to the deployment of new pilots...or to put it in a different way, many companies have been developing great pilots and were able to develop a lot of new use cases. But they failed in the implementation phase because there was pushback from the shop proprietor because they were not developing the right way, or they were not easy to adopt, or not easy enough to adopt. So I think that whichever type of platforms and interfaces that can help create that connection between the technological solution that is going to be deployed on the shop floor and the way in which it will be operationalized and managed on a day-to-day basis can bring huge, huge, huge benefits to the workers, to the shop floor. And I think that something that we keep hearing from companies is that whenever you give shop floor operations a technology that makes their life easier, there is no way that you can get that technology back. There's no way that you can get that use case out of their hands. So I think that it's all about...and it links back with the concept of democratizing the access to training, democratizing the access to tools. But there are some challenges. I think there are things that we need to overcome to take it to the next level so that it connects back to the concept of open source. So, for example, there are many interfaces or tools that can be powered by AI or at least by big data and analytics. The only way to train those algorithms and make them super performant is by having a large volume of data sources. That's something that is not happening yet because you still have companies who are not willing to share their data with the service provider of a specific platform. But they will reach that level in which everyone is comfortable sharing data in a certain way. These tools will be taken to a new and unprecedented level, and I think that is going to be a must-have. I think that workers, when you will be hiring or trying to attract talent if you don't have these types of solutions, they may just not be interested in getting the job or may prefer to go to another manufacturing company who does have them. I think that it's a fascinating topic. And we're at the stage in which we have seen those solutions being deployed for the first time at scale. So I think that very soon we'll see the results of that, and it's going to be very exciting. TROND: Francisco, these are fascinating developments. I hope that I can tap into your expertise several times and on a regular basis on this podcast. This has been a fascinating discussion. And it seems like the gains even in just a short year during...or I guess we cannot say post-COVID, but it is during COVID that a lot of these changes have been enacted. And you have had a central place in coordinating the global response, I must say. Fascinating developments, thank you so much. FRANCISCO: My pleasure. And I think, Trond, the next challenge for the manufacturing community, for the overall manufacturing community, is to see how we can keep the high pace of innovation that was great over the past couple of months. I think that's going to be the greatest next challenge. But thank you very much for hosting me; a real pleasure. TROND: You're welcome. You have just listened to Episode 9 of the Augmented Podcast with host Trond Arne Undheim. The topic was The Fourth Industrial Revolution post-COVID-19. Our guest was Francisco Betti, Head of Advanced Manufacturing and Production at The World Economic Forum. In this conversation, we talked about why he got into manufacturing and how The World Economic Forum works. We discussed how the forum has changed over these past years and how manufacturing has become the lead topic among the global elite. The manufacturing platform is now, arguably, the primary among 17 flagship initiatives at The World Economic Forum. We go deeply into the changing business models of manufacturing and what the next decade holds. My takeaway is that manufacturing has escalated in prominence during COVID-19, and for good reason. What we can produce decides what we can become. The deep digitalization gains that society has made over the past few years had to quickly be implemented on the factory floor. Surprisingly, a large part of the industry was ready. But the process now needs to complete, and the results will likely be an entirely new production platform for the world. Thanks for listening. If you liked the show, subscribe at augmentedpodcast.co or in your preferred podcast player, and rate us with five stars. If you liked this episode, you might also like Episode 4: A Renaissance in Manufacturing or Episode 6: Work of the Future. Augmented - the industry 4.0 podcast. Special Guest: Francisco Betti.
Augmented reveals the stories behind the new era of industrial operations, where technology will restore the agility of frontline workers. In episode 21 of the podcast @AugmentedPod, the topic is: "The Future of Digital in Manufacturing." Our guest is Çağlayan Arkan, VP of Manufacturing Industry at Microsoft (@Caglayan_Arkan).
In this conversation, we talk about where manufacturing has been in the past, why manufacturing has been lacking a sense of urgency in the sense of industry 4.0 but how everything we know about manufacturing has changed. We also discuss workforce transformation, democratizing operational technology, and the future of industrial innovation.
After listening to this episode, check out Microsoft's manufacturing approach as well as Çağlayan Arkan's social media profile:
- Microsoft Cloud for Manufacturing: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/industry/manufacturing/microsoft-cloud-for-manufacturing
- Çağlayan Arkan: LinkedIn,
- Blog: https://aka.ms/CaglayanArkanBlog
Trond's takeaway: The future of digital in manufacturing is enormously impactful. Yet, even deep digitalization will not make workers obsolete. Rather, the challenge seems to be achieving a dramatic workforce transformation which also entails empowerment, upskilling, and autonomy through augmentation of frontline operations.
Thanks for listening. If you liked the show, subscribe at Augmentedpodcast.co or in your preferred podcast player, and rate us with five stars. If you liked this episode, you might also like episode 9, The Fourth Industrial Revolution post-COVID-19, episode 4, A Renaissance in Manufacturing or Episode 20, The Digitalization of Körber.
Augmented--industrial conversations.
Transcript: Augmented reveals the stories behind a new era of industrial operations, where technology will restore the agility of frontline workers. In Episode 21 of the podcast, the topic is The Future of Digital in Manufacturing. Our guest is Çağlayan Arkan, VP of Manufacturing Industry at Microsoft. In this conversation, we talk about where manufacturing has been in the past, why manufacturing has been lacking a sense of urgency in the sense of industry 4.0, but how everything we know about manufacturing has changed. We also discuss workforce transformation, democratizing operational technology, and the future of industrial innovation. Augmented is a podcast for leaders hosted by futurist, Trond Arne Undheim, presented by Tulip.co, the frontline operations platform, and associated with MFG.works, the manufacturing upskilling community launched at the World Economic Forum. Each episode dives deep into a contemporary topic of concern across the industry and airs at 9:00 a.m. U.S. Eastern Time every Wednesday. Augmented - the industry 4.0 podcast. Çağlayan, how are you today? ÇAĞLAYAN: I am very well. Great to be here. Thank you. TROND: So I am alerted to the fact that you're an outdoor person. And I wanted to cover that just because a technology discussion in manufacturing is not complete without a little bit of personality. And I think you said you are a backcountry skier. I was curious about this. ÇAĞLAYAN: I am. Skiing is my passion, one of them, but probably the one that makes me happiest, the one that I love the most. I like ski touring, and I like skiing the backcountry, the off-piste. I like climbing. I'm a very physical person. And on a similar note, I also am a cyclist. I'm a sailor, a windsurfer. I just love being out, and I love the wind on my face. TROND: So at some point in the future, when the pandemic is over and behind us, I think my next podcast with you we will simply go for a hike. ÇAĞLAYAN: Well, let's do it. But doing it with me has the following potential downside for you. The other piece of my outdoors work, or kind of world, if you will, is that I love miserable weather. I'm a winter person. I love my rain, my cold, my wind. [laughs] And people typically, even if they categorize themselves as outsiders, like outdoor people, they will just love fair weather, I don't. I'm not that person. I don't like the sun on my face. I don't like a lot of people out. I like trails to myself. I like mountains to myself. [laughs] If you're up for it, we'll do it together. TROND: Well, this is probably something you didn't realize. But I grew up in Norway, and there are no people. And we have plenty of bad weather. So admittedly, I don't live in Norway, so that could give you a clue. [laughter] But there is something there. ÇAĞLAYAN: All right, we're on. We're on. TROND: Yeah, we're on. Okay, so having settled that, I wanted to ask you this question. So we're going to talk about, I guess, the future and the current state, present state of manufacturing. But where has manufacturing been in the past? And by the way, when you think past, how far do you go back? I mean, is this just pre-COVID? Because I've heard you talk a little bit about manufacturing traditionally, and I want you to just give us a quick sense of where you think the industry was just a few moments ago. ÇAĞLAYAN: You started personally. Let me personalize manufacturing for me. I'm an industrial engineer with an MBA. And so, my whole education was in plants in the manufacturing environment. And I studied from operations research to metallurgical engineering, to electrical engineering, to construction, to electrical. You just name it. And so that has been something that I really really liked, the system's thinking, the optimization. I've done a lot in OR back in the day, linear and multiple. So maybe too much detail for now. But where is manufacturing? Manufacturing has been mostly manual siloed with a separation between information technology and the data estate that that brings to the table and operations technology that that brings to the table. Technology has never really been, particularly from an IT standpoint, top of mind. Digital transformation has not really been a sense of urgency in manufacturing because things worked. Yet people at the shop floor and things were working until the pandemic hit. So pandemic question, slap on the face for manufacturers. Business continuity none. You can't send people to the shop floor. You cannot operate. You don't see your inventory. You can't see your suppliers. You don't even know whether they're surviving or not, financially or otherwise. So it was a huge, huge, huge problem. But the silver lining of all of this is now there's acceleration into the transformation of manufacturing. Look, why is manufacturing important? Let's spend a minute on that. Manufacturing, unlike many other industries (And I kind of make fun of my peer industry leaders at Microsoft as well.), manufacturing is very real. Manufacturing creates employment. Manufacturing creates growth, builds the economy, builds capacity. Manufacturing is about innovation. Manufacturing is about competitiveness. So it is core to populations, countries. It's core to politicians, to business leaders, and it's just phenomenal. And so if you do things right in manufacturing, things work, including climate change, and sustainability, and a lot of other stuff. And if you do things wrong, you could see a lot of damage done. It collapses economies. It collapses, grids and stops, and creates a lot of disruption. So it is very real. And so I'm sorry I'm providing a long answer, but you can tell I'm passionate about it. It's very personal for me. But by and large, I'm actually excited about where we are. We are at an inflection point. And we'll see a lot of acceleration coming out of the pandemic, the crisis. And stuff we're working on is actually to ensure business continuity and resiliency. Those are the things that are the conversations going forward. TROND: Çağlayan, you took me in an interesting direction. I was just thinking as you were speaking, right before we go to the inflection, it's actually not just a little bit surprising but actually quite surprising that there haven't been any reported massive disruptions due to the pandemic. If you think about all of these mission-critical systems that we have around the world, in every manufacturing-related industry, how do you explain because, as you were saying, historically...and some of these silos are sort of still there, although obviously, we are at this inflection point so somehow already transitioned. But how do you explain that we haven't had more horror stories? And by horror stories, I guess I mean operations completely collapsing, or I guess grids falling apart, or that one manual worker couldn't go in. So X happened that they had never, never thought about. Why haven't we heard anything like that? Are those stories going to come out, do you think, or did nothing seriously happen? ÇAĞLAYAN: Well, it happened. I know for a fact because once this started, I started calling down on my customers, like, "How are you doing? What do you need?" For one, I think that from a table stakes standpoint, we've seen massive teams deployment because people wanted to communicate. They wanted continuity in terms of being able to talk to one another, being able to work, and then work from home, of course, because they couldn't go to their plants or to their offices. So there was a lot of pain. There was a lot of disruption. I talked to some of my customers, and they were like, billions of dollars are tied in inventory, and we have no idea where that sits. Again, they're disconnected from suppliers as well as their customers, and so there was disruption. But luckily, we've had some leaders actually having foreseen what is to come, or they were disruptors or at least early adopters. And they have taken pre-COVID pre-crisis steps for digital transformation. And I love my examples and partnerships where Erickson had started work pre-COVID in terms of digital manufacturing, Outokumpu, a leader in steel manufacturing, significant progress including during the pandemic, Airbus, Unilever. I mean, those are leading examples, only some of them. But you look at the World Economic Forum Global Lighthouse Network; there are so many lighthouse factories that are just like literally lighthouses for people to look at and look up to. That work started years ago. So there are some extremely encouraging examples. There are some very, very dark stories in terms of complete stoppage and horror stories. But by large, we are at a good place in terms of we understand the issues and we understand how to deal with them. And I think most importantly, that notion of time to value is accelerated in manufacturing. And we're coming from prohibitively expensive, I mean, we're talking hundreds of millions of dollars of IT projects that never end to now negligible cost and like 10-12 weeks, a couple of months, and then you stand up a digital factory capability. You have visibility into your supply chain by standing up a control tower. And then, in the case of Airbus or Alstom, you can have your 2,000 engineers still keep doing design and engineering work from home; examples go on. But we understand the issues. We have a very quick ability to build capability, to show that stuff works and you can operate remotely, et cetera, et cetera. TROND: But would you say that this is the definite end to, I guess what you were alluding to is kind of this pilot purgatory? Is COVID the definite end to pilot purgatory? Or is it just that this particular situation was so serious that everybody kind of scrambled, and most of them got it right? Or would you say that...I guess possibly because once you have made this transition, that is the hard work. Do you think that these pilots that everyone was waiting for will that problem disappear because people have learned that this is not the way to introduce technology? You sort of learned it the hard way. ÇAĞLAYAN: Oh, well, my view is if you take a step back, Trond, here's how I see it. One hundred years ago, we were by and large an agricultural society, and we had like 50% of the workforce in agriculture. Today we are by and large an industrial society. And we have like 2% of the workforce in agriculture, and we brought everyone along in terms of The Industrial Age. Today we are at the next junction; some call it industry 4.0, some call it other names. But we as a society assume...like humanity, we're moving from industrial to digital. So that's the higher order. Now, what's the role of the pandemic in this? I think it's that of acceleration. So in any major shift, there are behaviors and categories of actors or players. There are the disruptors. There are those who go and make a market, build a trend. And we have seen those, and we're still seeing them. They are the early adopters. We talked about some of them as well. And then there's going to be the slower adopters and the laggards. And then some of the laggards will not see the light of day or will not maybe exist after we transition to the new reality, new realm, or that notion of digital society. So what I'm saying is it was going to happen, those pilots or people's way, like, slow adopters' way of touching it, putting their toes in the water. For some, it's proving value and acceleration. Pandemic, again, that kind of disruption is going to accelerate and bring more to the table. But it certainly has a role to play. But the higher-level order is we are moving to a very, very different reality for manufacturers and supply chains and even as a society. TROND: Super interesting. Çağlayan, I've heard you talk earlier. And I guess we talked a little bit in the prep about whether this is a different wave of technology because I know you have some views on the democratization of basically operational technology because there are different waves of technology in manufacturing. And traditionally, like you said, the industry has been siloed. But one of the reasons the industry was siloed is that the technology then also turned into silos, arguably. And what is it about the technology these days? Is it getting simpler? Are you, for instance, in Microsoft spending more time on user interfaces than you were before? Or I guess even the introduction of your company so deeply into manufacturing is in and of itself a bit of a novelty. The tech players that weren't specialists are now going deep, deep into industry segments. Give me a sense of why this is happening. And what exactly is this democratization? Gartner calls it citizen developers. ÇAĞLAYAN: Yeah, that's one aspect of it. The way I see it is, very shortly, technology now works. TROND: [laughs] ÇAĞLAYAN: Honestly, I don't know, like five years ago, it just didn't. It was so hard for implementations, for integration, et cetera. It now works. There's virtually nothing technology cannot deliver today. It's up to the leader's vision, leader's ability to execute, and magic happens. There's so much at play right now, that's one. Secondly, technology is the business right now. I mean, technology was isolated. Trond, you will remember those days not too distant past. We had our own language. The CIO, it's like they were from Mars in the organization. [laughter] And they were not mainstream as an executive in the company. Company did their work, and CIO did stuff that nobody really understood. Now, technology is the business. I mean, if you look at any research, you will see that the mainstream business leader, whether it's the CMO, the Chief, Marketing Officer, Chief Digital Officer, Chief Financial Officer, whatever those may be, they're making more technology decisions and have bigger technology budgets than the technology people themselves. So that's the other piece that business is technology. Technology is business. The third piece is that the siloed nature of not only manufacturing, so many different industries, was because it was an application-led view into enterprises or into business. Now, it's data-driven work. And so data dictates everything, and data is actually end to end. So to the extent that you have a data architecture, enterprise-level data architecture, and a system-level approach to things, it's a completely different world. And to bring those three together as a business, you have to forget more than you remember. And then you have to reinvent yourself. And if you do that, everybody knows cliché examples here, but then you find yourself as a completely different company or services company or actually at the risk of being disrupted by competition in ways that were not thought of or unprecedented. So that's what's happening. So what we like to approach this whole kind of...I like to call this opportunity. It's a major opportunity. It's a huge inflection point. It's all about reinventing your business. None of that is about technology. Technology is a tool. It's a powerful tool. It's a tool that works. It's very capable. But it's about the business outcomes. Because we said, you have to reinvent your entire enterprise, starting from your culture, how you operate, your value proposition, all of that. It is where you start should be dictated by which outcome is most important for you, or the highest value for you, or the most burning for you. Whatever your drivers are, focus on the outcome. Go back to work to find the relevant data for it and get to that in weeks, literally seriously in weeks and get to the next outcome, the next outcome. And don't forget the people and culture. It's all about the people piece, and we can talk about that later. I think we should. But those are the things that I will say to your technology question. TROND: That's great. ÇAĞLAYAN: Focus on data, lead with culture, and always major prioritizations on the outcomes you want to drive. TROND: You said lead with culture, but it's not just company culture, I guess. It's the whole nature of the skills that are now needed in this new workplace. A lot of people are saying that that is changing and that the workforce needs are changing. So you initially said well, technology now works. So that's true, but what are the skills that then are needed? So okay, technology is easier. But what are some of the tasks that are, I guess, less relevant because of this influx of call it industry 4.0 type technologies? And what are some of the skills that are more relevant? And the frontline worker of the future, what should they be focused on? And your clients, what are they starting to teach their workforce? ÇAĞLAYAN: Great question. I will say at the highest level, Trond, it is a data-driven culture. I mean, in manufacturing, maybe other businesses and industries as well, we operate on the basis of past successes, habits. This has been delivering for me. This has been working for me, et cetera, or experience. You kind of listen to stuff. You kind of watch stuff. You anticipate stuff. And you're like, I've been doing this for 25 years. None of this has anything to do with data because, again, we established we were using less than 1% of our data, at least in manufacturing. Now the biggest cultural change is data-driven. And then once you go to data telling you what to do, data giving you predictions, data giving you systems of intelligence like the insights in terms of what to do, and when to do it, and how to do it, et cetera, then that dictates actually two things. Again, I'm trying to come down to it in terms of a hierarchy. Manufacturing had a skills gap, has a bigger skills gap in the face of digital. And we're not an attractive industry. The young generation does not see career opportunities in manufacturing. Actually, manufacturing is fantastic. It's real; it's innovative. So we have to change that, and so we're working on it. And secondly, the existing jobs, even if they may still be the most important jobs in manufacturing, those people have to learn new skills in terms of doing their jobs using technology. Let's see now a couple of examples. You talked about the frontline workers, first-line workers, or just shopfloor, the very people who get the job done. They typically did not use any technology. They were all mostly manual, what we called HMI, like Human-Machine interfaces, old, very, very, antique equipment, if you will, blue screens. I think anyone who's close to manufacturing will know that we used a lot of paper, et cetera. Today's frontline worker is actually acting on data, acting on predictions, double-clicking under the modern interface, and responding to traffic lights, responding to alerts. You got to be able to do those, wearing augmented or virtual reality devices. We call it mixed reality with the unique technology that we have in terms of HoloLens in our entire mixed reality platform. But you come to a job, and then you don't need to learn to do the job. You just wear your HoloLens. And the mixed reality platform will actually teach you how to do it with your two hands-free. If you're in the field service, someone at the back office, remote connections, or remote assist capabilities can actually guide you through as to how to deal with that; I don't know, grid asset, extruder, or packaging line because they know how to and you don't need to. And then this is the way you learn how to do stuff. So I guess the gist of it is some jobs will no longer exist. Most of the repetitive low-value-added jobs can be automated, robots, artificial intelligence, and other means in terms of process automation, et cetera. Most of the jobs, if not all of the jobs, will be rescaled in terms of technology. And at the highest level, probably 75 million jobs will go away. Again, this is a World Economic Forum study. One hundred thirty-five million new jobs will be created. What are those jobs? Data jobs, software jobs. And then how you do your design and engineering, you have to be able to understand AI-led generative design, additive manufacturing, 3D printing to be able to be successful. And so, all of that is a call to action for universities, policymakers, corporate learning officers, for all of us, and calls for partnerships to lean in. And again, I used agricultural example. Bring everyone along from the Industrial Age to the digital age. TROND: It's a fascinating challenge, and it's a big one. I was just curious; there's a lot of talk about middle jobs meaning jobs that are somewhere between more than high school but less than traditional college. But then you also have an echelon above that, of course, which traditionally certainly Microsoft was hiring into, which is more high-level cognitive jobs which required bachelors, and masters, and PhDs traditionally in computer programming. But I'm guessing now certainly in your field in sort of hybrid engineering studies where engineering plus IT. The middle jobs is a big challenge, even just from an operational point of view. It's hard to educate a billion people worldwide or whatever it is that we have to do continuously to keep the lights up. How is all that going to happen? And what sort of effort does this require? Can we use the existing institutions we have to do this? Or do you foresee that it's going to be a lot more on-the-job type of training in digital training? ÇAĞLAYAN: I'll say all of the above in the following ways; for one, we're already working with Purdue, University of Wisconsin, and many, many universities and education institutions. So for one, manufacturing-related jobs were kind of graduate jobs. We're trying to bring the curriculum to undergrad, if not high school, so there's that. So vocational training, et cetera, all of this is important. Secondly, we partner with the National Association of Manufacturers, MxD, Sesame, obviously Tulip, and many others in terms of call to action and doing institutionalizing, programatize, very, very important for all of that. Thirdly, I deliberately talked about corporate learning officers because a lot of people, tens if not hundreds of thousands of people in large corporations, actually had to learn new skills. And it is happening as we speak in multiple ways in many, many, many, many leading enterprises. But it's a huge part of the whole equation. And then, I talked about the World Economic Forum and the Global Lighthouse Network. Programs like that actually bring it to everyone's attention in terms of what is possible, and how it works, and how some leading institutions deal with it, which brings me to this notion of what I like to call art of possible. I think leadership at large, political leaders, enterprise leaders, any institution, education, leadership at large has to understand what I call the art of possible, and that is how technology has already transformed everyone's lives. And what is that leaders need to do differently? Starting from communication, setting new standards, to building the new curriculum, to encouraging everyone, bringing everyone along, and all the rest of it from cultural change to change management and defining the new normal. But by and large, just bringing everyone along. And so that is really, really important that we start that education and understanding with the leadership because it's all about leadership. It's all about them having the right vision and being able to execute to that. TROND: What is the role of actors such as startups? You mentioned Tulip. What are startups' role in the emerging manufacturing and frontline operations ecosystem? Tulip thinks of itself a little wider than manufacturing. But what is it that startups can do? Because clearly, this is a game, technology overall, and also industries. It's an industrial game. Industrial companies are massive traditionally. So the juxtaposition traditionally in the old world would be between the industrial conglomerates and then the SMEs. And the game was to get the SMEs to be useful providers and suppliers into the supply chain ecosystem was an educational challenge. But you now have startups somewhere in this picture as well. Can you address how you think these startups function in the ecosystem going forward? ÇAĞLAYAN: Yeah, I think the example that I would use is startups are like Tesla for automotive, Airbnb for hospitality. They're the disruptors. They have zero legacy. And so we're talking major change, major transformation. What happens in change? Lots of the legacy will drag their feet. They will want to protect status quo. They'll be slower. What startups do is they teach you the new normal. They teach you the art of possible, and they go on and do it. This is how you carry from years of implementation time to weeks. This is how you go from hundreds of millions of dollars to pennies and cents. And so Tulip and many, many others that I'm so excited to work together with, define the new normal. They make it happen. They go and make stuff. And actually, they are the ones who bring what I call art of possible to life. Let's take Tulip's example. Again, they go into the shop floor. And they look at that low-code/no-code citizen developers, a term that you used in this very conversation. And then they bring it to life in the context of manufacturing operations. And so suddenly, the human-machine interfaces are modernized. The legacy-heavy applications that do not necessarily connect the enterprise have changed, and there's a new workflow in place. And people just act on data and intelligence. The job is much easier to do, et cetera, and then you can build on it. And so what they do is just extremely important, actually much bigger than their sizes or the number of people that they employ. The role that they play is actually what's going to change economies. And this is one reason why we embrace and work very, very closely with the likes of Tulip at Microsoft through multiple, multiple tools and investments that we have from Microsoft for Startups to M12 and to many others. TROND: Yes, I understand. That's fantastic. However, it does remain the case that right now, you are a gorilla in the big space, and you do have a privileged position to analyze what you think is happening. So if you use that futurist hat that you have from your vantage point of a large player that does work with everyone, I guess, where is this now heading? You said it's a disruptive time. It's an inflection point. You were using big, revolutionary words. We're talking about industry revolutions. There's also some uncertainty, and we have been dealing with resilience issues. But you pointed out simplicity has improved. Where is all this taking us, all of these bits and pieces altogether? Where is the manufacturing industry heading? ÇAĞLAYAN: Manufacturing is very complex, and it's actually not one industry. So many industries are manufacturers. So let's kind of break it down and simplify to maybe customer-facing systems, sales, services, et cetera, design, and engineering making stuff which is really manufacturing, supply chains, and then maybe you look at people. In the customer systems, particularly the pandemic, taught us that online sales and delivery, omnichannel strategies, profit optimization, pricing, contact lifecycle management, all of that is here to stay. Connected field services or field services at large is going to be changed forever. Again, we talked about mixed reality, remote assistant, remote capabilities, all of that. So that is where that is headed. In terms of the design and engineering piece, we talked about AI-led generative design, where AI engines actually design stuff like mother nature. They don't have corners. They're not straight lines. So the existing manufacturing paradigms like welding, and bending, and et cetera, can go away, and 3D printing actually is very revolutionary in that it's the only way to actually make the stuff that is designed by AI engines which is faster, stronger, lighter, cheaper, et cetera. But again, you can only build them with the new 3D or additive paradigms, and so there's that. And obviously, from design and engineering, that whole design supply chain is moving to a virtual environment so that you do not have to send designs in paper when it comes to like...You look at Boeing, and they have like six million suppliers. You look at Rolls Royce, the same deal. And then what they do now is they send electronic drawings. You can validate. You can verify the source is correct. You can just keep building in the virtual environment, and you can run simulations and tests. I can go on and on, but that is completely disrupted and changed forever. Manufacturing as we know it is moving to...some call it lights-out manufacturing. But this whole remote capability being able to...business continuity, people at the shop floor being able to remotely operate, manage and monitor your assets, get predictions on them, actually have predictions visibility into your suppliers and be connected to their environment. Digital twins and digital threads are actually huge enablers from that perspective. So this whole kind of lights-out manufacturing conversation can happen. Again, technology is capable of delivering it. You have to optimize or rationalize for your own enterprise. Supply chains, completely moving to an autonomous and sustainable fashion. And then finally, at the highest level, what we're seeing perhaps the largest opportunity is go from your...even your own enterprise was siloed. Let alone your enterprise, go and reinvent the whole value chain that you operate in. We tend to think about industries, but actually, value chains are made up of multiple adjacent industries. Look at food; it starts with perhaps the farmer, but the farm equipment manufacturer, the likes of John Deere, Mahindra, et cetera, do play a huge role. There's a lot of data there. Then you look at warehouses, then you look at mills, and processors, and packagers, and shippers, and then you go all the way to retail. I've talked about seven different industries. The notion of I call it lead with opportunity as opposed to leading with risks. Share your data for the greater good. New value creation at the value chain level we haven't even begun starting that journey, really. And so, just some of the examples of how everything we know is already disrupted. Again, do all the leaders know, the world leaders know how to deal with it or where to take their enterprises, their people, their cultures, their businesses? And so that's kind of the conversation. TROND: Indeed it is. Disruption at the value chain level that seems to be at the core. And then I guess my last question for you really is to take this back to the human being because I know you think that fundamentally, this is not really about the technologies or even just the various industries at the center, and maintaining and constructing is the human being. The augmented human capabilities that these new structures and technologies enable, what does that look like? I mean, if you think augmented reality and mixed reality, HoloLens is like a beginning of that vision. But it seems like we're arguably going from a day where the idea was automate, but you have a vision of more augmenting, meaning you're supplementing the human as opposed to replacing them. How do you see the human being in this picture? What is going to be the role of the human worker? ÇAĞLAYAN: Well, it's going to be a combination of vision and maybe aspiration. But I'll say augmented society first because of diversity and inclusion. Let's start there. Let's bring everyone along. Let's not leave one person behind, wherever they may be, whatever background. Let's bring everyone along. And as a society, let's elevate everyone. Let's make everything accessible, technology, and data, and education, and health, and water, and safe food, all of that accessible to everyone. The new set of paradigms actually might create value at such a level in which we can give people more free time, more fulfillment, provide better work-life balance, provide other means of seeking reason and purpose in life and communicate and work together at very, very different levels. And so all of that is just, again, I think this whole kind of leader, art of possible, and what technology is capable of today. If we put the people in the center and go from there, I think we can remember these days as some of the best kind of inflection points in history. TROND: Wow, that's a great way to end. I thank you so much. This was a whirlwind of observations. [laughs] Thank you very much. ÇAĞLAYAN: Thank you. TROND: You have just listened to Episode 21 of the Augmented Podcast with host Trond Arne Undheim. The topic was The Future of Digital in Manufacturing, and our guest was Çağlayan Arkan, VP of Manufacturing Industry at Microsoft. In this conversation, we talked about where manufacturing has been in the past, workforce transformation, democratizing operational technology, and the future of industrial innovation. My takeaway is that the future of digital in manufacturing is enormously impactful, yet even deep digitalization will not make workers obsolete. Rather, the challenge seems to be achieving a dramatic workforce transformation which also entails empowerment, upskilling, and autonomy through augmentation of frontline operations. Thanks for listening. If you liked the show, subscribe at augmentedpodcast.co or in your preferred podcast player. View our YouTube channel and rate us with five stars. If you liked this episode, you might also like Episode 9: The Fourth Industrial Revolution, post-COVID-19, Episode 4: A Renaissance in Manufacturing, or Episode 20: The Digitalization of Körber. Augmented - upskilling the workforce for industry 4.0 frontline operations. Special Guest: Çağlayan Arkan.
In episode 10 of the podcast (@AugmentedPod (https://twitter.com/AugmentedPod)), the topic is “A Brief History of Manufacturing Software.” Our guest is Rick Bullotta, Partner, TwinThread, and co-founder, ThingWorx. In this conversation, we talk about how Rick has shaped manufacturing software history and the lessons learned from being an early employee of Wonderware, the famous precursor to manufacturing automation, back in 1993, a company first sold to British engineering giant Siebe in 1998, which merged with BTR to form Invensys, which, in turn, merged with French multinational Schneider Electric, and later the CTO. Rick Bullotta was also the co-founder of Lighthammer Software which was later acquired by SAP, then in 2009 founding ThingWorx, the first complete, end-to-end technology platform designed for the industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) which was acquired by PTC in 2003. We also touch on his current advice to founders in the industrial space, his board role at Tulip, and what he sees lie ahead for the industry. After listening to this episode, check out Thingworx as well as Rick Bullotta's social profile. * Thingworx (https://www.ptc.com/en/resources/iiot/product-brief/thingworx-platform) * Rick Bullotta (https://www.linkedin.com/in/rickbullotta/) Trond's takeaway: Wonderware, Lighthammer, and ThingWorx are prominent parts of manufacturing software history, and there's a chance that the 4th company he now is involved with, Tulip, also will be. I do things with things is Rick Bullotta's motto. The things he does, he does them well, and it is an internet of things, more than anything else. I, for one, am eagerly listening to what he predicts will happen next. Thanks for listening. If you liked the show, subscribe at Augmentedpodcast.co or in your preferred podcast player, and rate us with five stars. If you liked this episode, you might also like episode 4: A Renaissance of Manufacturing or episode 5: Plug-and-Play Industrial Tech. Augmented--the industry 4.0 podcast. Transcript: Augmented reveals the stories behind a new era of industrial operations where technology will restore the agility of frontline workers. In Episode 10 of the podcast, the topic is a Brief History of Manufacturing Software. Our guest is Rick Bullotta, Partner at TwinThread and Co-Founder of ThingWorx. In this conversation, we talk about how Rick has shaped manufacturing software history and the lessons learned from being an early employee with Wonderware, the famous precursor to manufacturing automation, back in 1993, a company first sold to British engineering giant Siebe in 1998, which then merged with BTR to form Invensys, which in turn merged with French and multinational Schneider Electric and later the CTO. Rick Bullotta was also the Co-Founder of Lighthammer Software which was later acquired by SAP. Then in 2009, founding ThingWorx, the first complete end-to-end technology platform designed for the industrial internet of things, which was acquired by PTC in 2003. We also touch on his current advice to founders in the industrial space, his board role at Tulip, and what he sees lie ahead for the industry. Augmented is a podcast for leaders hosted by futurist, Trond Arne Undheim, presented by Tulip.co, the manufacturing app platform, and associated with MFG Works, the manufacturing upskilling community launched at the World Economic Forum. Each episode dives deep into a contemporary topic of concern across the industry and airs at 9:00 a.m. U.S. Eastern Time every Wednesday. Augmented - the industry 4.0 podcast. TROND: Rick, how are you today? RICK: Good morning. TROND: Well, it's a nice morning. I wanted to talk to you about some history. RICK: Sure. TROND: Well, you are a bit of a legend in this field, Rick. You've been basically part of almost every development in this field for several years. I wanted us to spend a little time today, not just going into your history of background as the founder of several startups that have had very significant impact on the industry but also just bring people in a little bit to the environment and how it has changed, and how based on your perspective, you see it evolving. You had a degree from Cornell, and then you went on to fund several companies. Can you bring us back to those days when you were studying industrial engineering at Cornell? What was the environment then for manufacturing? And what was it that brought you into the thought that you would start engaging sort of entrepreneurial software development in manufacturing of all fields? RICK: Just to be clear, I barely graduated. [laughter] So I had a fantastic time in college. But that was when I think we thought of engineers as mechanical engineers, or chemical engineers, the physical aspects of making things, building things, vending product as opposed to...I think software and technology was kind of a nascent concept there, at least certainly in manufacturing. But I actually switched degrees from mechanical engineering to operations research mid-stride there, realizing that looking at pieces of broken metal under a microscope wasn't for me. So I graduated. My degree was in operations research, and actually, my first position was at a very progressive steel company called Lukens Steel, doing essentially industrial engineering work. However, this was what? 1985, dawn of the PC, dawn of a new gen of computing. And some opportunities opened up there to kind of take on some additional responsibilities that involved applying computing to simulations and optimization models, all the stuff that I studied but never thought I'd actually practice. So I'd spend a lot of time in the local library checking out software, take the disc home, teach myself to code. An opportunity then opened up to go into steel plant operation. So I used to run a heat-treating process. And that's one thing that a university degree won't prepare you for, having 15 steelworkers working for you. That's where you get a real education. You also quickly realize that the exception is the rule on the manufacturing floor. And we'll talk later about how it gave me a great appreciation of the importance of the role of people in this whole process and not just technology. But yeah, I spent a few years in that role and then moved back over to an industrial computing group. And we were applying at the time very advanced technology, mini computers, very innovative user interfaces, high levels of automation to some of these processes back at the very site that I worked. And the very operations that I worked at was one of the first places for that. So that's kind of where I got into the technology side of things. But I like to say I was blessed and lucky, right? This crusty, old steel company happened to be very, very committed to investing in technology. And it was a learning opportunity for me. And then, across the years, I moved into systems integration. I did some stuff in discrete manufacturing. I had the opportunity; again, luck sometimes happens here, to work for arguably the first well-known company in the industrial software space company called Wonderware, first IPO in the space. And I joined very early, which is kind of cool. TROND: The Wonderware story is somewhat famous for people inside of manufacturing, but just in case, there are some listeners here who don't really appreciate how early Wonderware was. What was the situation when you created your first product? And why, in your account, has it become so emblematic of that early-early era? And what year are we talking about exactly when that entered the stage with Wonderware? RICK: So late '80s, early '90s Wonderware came on the scene. I joined in; I believe it was '93. And my role there was actually in sales. So you'll find that a lot of my life experiences are all the elements that help build a successful business: sales, marketing, technology. So the founding team there...and there'll be a circle of life moment here in a little bit when we talk about how ThingWorx came to be. The two key co-founders there, Dennis Morin and Phil Huber, recognized the value. And they harnessed the PC revolution and Microsoft Windows. So we're talking Wayback Machine when Windows looked like the Mac user interface. There wasn't a lot of PC application on the plant floor. There were some very interesting companies that I had worked with, competitors to Wonderware but a bit earlier companies like [inaudible 7:28] But we were just kind of at that inflection point where people were comfortable with the role of the personal computer as this kind of human interface to all the automation systems that we had. What Dennis and Phil did was really twofold. And this, I think, ties into a lot of the innovation we're seeing today is they democratized the ability to build applications. They made it easy and fun. So the whole experience wasn't coding; it was very visual. It leveraged kind of a drag and drop experience. You didn't need to understand software to apply it. You could build these incredible applications literally in minutes or hours, connect them to the physical world. I don't know if you've ever seen some of the classic applications they've built. But they're those process mimics, very dynamic graphics that represent the physical world. And I learned a lot during that period about the importance of two things: one is ease of use and empowering others to build applications, particularly in the manufacturer domain. Second was, ironically, the importance of marketing. If there's one thing, that company did extraordinarily well in addition to having a great product was getting the message out there, maintaining a larger-than-life image. And the company grew rapidly to 5 million, 10 million, 15, 20, and on and on, and then IPOed. But there wasn't anybody in history that didn't know the name. Go to a trade show...this is a company that kind of put some perspective. I think the first year I was there; we did about 20 million in revenues. We spent about a million-five on a party. That's kind of the priorities were well balanced there. But what an extraordinary group of people to learn from; I developed lifelong mentors and friends at that company that fast forward to my last company, some of those same people came and joined my team. So it was a complete honor to work with them again, so yeah. TROND: So back in those days, what was it that Wonderware apart from the marketing side, and like you said, the menus and things...first of all, who was the target audience at this point? Was this still process engineers that were doing this, or was it still the IT department managing? RICK: Typically process engineers, and that was the democratization, taking it out of that...let's go back to my time in the steel industry. We were writing Fortran code, PL/M code. We were writing code. We were creating database schema, all the kinds of classic development processes. And it was part of a corporate IT function. Now, this shifted to empowering two main groups, process engineers inside these manufacturing companies and, secondly, a new breed of systems integrators that were very, very focused on this automation domain. So historically, they may have done the physical automation, the PLCs, the actuators, sensing distributed control systems. Now they were able to take on this role. Two other things happened. Just prior to the advent of things like [inaudible 10:42] and Wonderware, that user experience was physical gauges, and push buttons, and things like that, and sliders. Now, it became digital. In a way, this was almost like magic at the time. It's virtual reality. It's like a lot of people the first time...I'll never forget my mother the first time she played solitaire on a PC and that virtual card dragging. It was just utter magic. Well, similar experience here, right? People were able to reproduce these and rapidly reconfigure. But to your point, I would say, yeah, it was those in-house process engineers and the systems integrators that helped implement these systems. TROND: Were you all aware of how innovative you were? I mean, clearly, the marketing department thought you were something special. But did you realize at the time how timeless and etched into manufacturing history Wonderware would become later? Were you aware of how far ahead this was? Or were the customers telling you that clearly? RICK: That's a great question. I think it was a combination of both. We had an almost cult-like customer following that was pretty unique, and it created a lot of energy. They knew we were doing something interesting. But we had very legitimate competitors who were also doing super cool stuff. I think another life lesson here was a lot of companies create great products. To bring great products to market at scale is a whole nother task. It's a whole nother challenge. And I think what we had going for us was an absolutely extraordinary distribution channel, global distribution channels, and very energetic, bright people, independent businesses that could sell, support, implement this technology. That allowed us to achieve scale pretty quickly. But the customers were the primary feedback loop. We won all kinds of awards from the trade rags, all that kind of stuff. I definitely think it was the kinds of applications that the customers were building. That always gives you energy when you see that. TROND: Rick, give me another sense of as we're sort of moving to your next company, just bring us back to that time with the early years of Wonderware. What were some of the things that were challenging to you on the application side then that today we would laugh off and it would just be like a line item? What were some of the things that were really complicated that you were so proud of having accomplished? RICK: Well, let's just take the obvious, which is sort of the inverse of Moore's law. If we turn the clock back that many years, we have half as much compute power every year. And to have a very graphical dynamic user experience, it had to be reliable. I would not underestimate the incredible work that that development team did to take not only a new product in what we built with InTouch, which was the product at the time but also Windows itself. It wasn't evolved. It wasn't mature. It certainly wasn't targeted at these kinds of mission-critical applications. So those were the kinds of things you had to work with. You had to make it robust, reliable, and take advantage of very, very limited compute and visualization capability at the time. It changed the modalities by way...people typically, you know, we were all used to keyboards at the time. Now it's touch; it's a mouse. It's a different means of interaction. And then how do you bring that? Some interesting challenges. Like, I'm a task worker down on the floor in protective equipment and gloves, and how do I interact with that? So all kinds of creative stuff to try and bring a whole new modality of human interaction to a pretty demanding segment. TROND: So what then happened to you? What happened around you leaving Wonderware and moving on to the next challenges? Because you've also had a foray in larger companies, but then you immediately went back to the startup world. Give me a sense of what was your thinking then? RICK: Sure. So there was a little detour as there are often in our careers. [laughs] I left and experimented. I actually came back to Wonderware a second time prior to my first startup in a product management role. I got to see M&A. So we got involved in a couple of key acquisitions that I was intimately involved in. So that was another learning experience for me. Then I saw this opportunity at a level above the Wonderwares of the world, of the OSIsofts of the world, of all these kinds of operational systems that we had. They were islands. No one had that holistic view, a supervisor, an operator. No one was sharing information. And so the light bulb went off. This is actually about when the web technologies were starting to get a little traction, the browser, the Netscape effect, ubiquitous TCP/IP connectivity, Ethernet, and the plants. So that's when the light bulb went off. Let's see if we could do something not dissimilar from the way a Wonderware product will connect all your centers and controllers. Why not provide a unified way to see all the systems that you have? So basically, that's what became Lighthammer, and that was in 1998, we started that company. But the intent was, again, to provide that unified view of first...it was called the Plant Information Portal. That was another cool word at the time, right? Portals. And so that was the objective, it's kind of unified visibility. I started the company with some colleagues that I knew from Wonderware. And we built, I think, something pretty groundbreaking there. TROND: And the situation then was there was this need for almost like an information service to kind of...it was almost like an early portal for the industry in a sense. RICK: I think what we found...the unique thing about the industrial space I like to say that everything's a legacy the moment it gets put in. Everything has proprietary APIs, interfaces, and protocols. My approach has always been solve hard problems because you're going to have fewer competitors, and the value is there. So we tried to solve a pretty hard problem, all these like debubblizing all these different crazy systems that were scattered around. Yeah, so that's really what the objective was initially, unified visibility. But then we realized if people can see that information, why can't other systems? So it rapidly progressed from just being empowering people with information to empowering other lines of business systems. So your supply chain systems, warehouse systems, ERP systems can now be informed with real information in a timely manner. And that was what got us on SAP's radar. TROND: Well, because the point was there that you started discovering the importance of standards. And there were standards at that time, but they were very basic web standards. And you started realizing that even in the side of the industrial field, you had to start depending on that. Is that also what got you involved in the intersection of interoperability and also open sourcing certain types of software? RICK: Yeah. In fact, we were actively involved in a lot of open-source projects. I think that was also early in the open-source world. So if something was broken, no one was going to fix it for you; you fix it, right? TROND: [chuckles] RICK: So yeah, if you want to leverage and get value out of open source, you better be prepared to give back. So as a company, we definitely gave back to a lot of interesting projects that became part of the Lighthammer stack. The other thing that I think is important to understand is, and this pattern repeats itself in my career, is building tools, not applications. My goal was always to empower people to build interesting stuff. They've got the ideas. They've got the innovations living inside them. But if it's hard, if there's friction at every point in the process, cost, time, whatever, they're not going to undertake it, so whether it was Wonderware stuff we were implementing, Lighthammer, ThingWorx. And nowadays, with solutions like Tulip, it really was all about that takedown friction, empower non-technical people to be innovators and do it fast. TROND: So, Rick, then you got on SAP's radar. Tell me a little bit about not necessarily your experience there per se but just the difference for you in having straddled a startup that gets on the radar of a large company, and now you're working in a large company. What's the situation there? What is their understanding of the shop floor, and how does that all work? Because it gets more complicated when you're that kind of a software environment. RICK: Well, I think SAP was a very good place to be for a number of reasons. SAP was dominant in the manufacturing vertical in terms of cost manufacturing. Customers, the vast majority of them ran SAP for their back-office systems. SAP had kind of light solutions for the manufacturing domain but a desire to go deeper. Secondly, they were launching a partner ecosystem at the time. We wanted to prove that, in fact, partners are an integral part to their offerings. So we were able to kind of get that visibility, but also, we started stealing some revenue. So when you start taking customer spend instead of upgrading that module in my ERP system, I'm going to spend a couple hundred thousand dollars on my plant floor. That gets you on the radar too. Interesting sidenote, so after SAP, the salespeople told us something fascinating. If you think about in a typical manufacturing company, there's arguably four to seven times more blue-collar...I hate the term blue-collar, task worker, you know, frontline workers, so to speak. But that's got a new meaning nowadays as opposed to back office. Secondly, we had something that not only had a user license for each manufacturing worker but also manufacturing site costs. So think about comparing selling something to the CFO’s office that will run in a data center. The scale and size of the deals were pretty substantial, and there was real value being created. So I think in the first year, our sales grew like 800%, 900% from a pretty good base, having that ready base of manufacturing customers to sell into a global company with global sales and support presence. It's pretty easy to get traction there. TROND: But then you had a stint back at Wonderware before you went on to found a new company. What was that like? So you came back and now kind of almost running the show at Wonderware for a little bit. RICK: No, not really because I think the company...this was an interesting dynamic. The company had grown substantially by that point, so from 60 people in my first experience to probably 800 at that point. I was a remote CTO. This was long before remote work was a thing. It was extremely challenging. And I just think those dynamics kind of made it probably not as effective as I could be. That said, some work that I had done in SAP research is what kind of led to the ideas behind ThingWorx. And I actually think, to be blunt, I think Wonderware at the time could have realized those pretty well. Collectively, we could have brought that product to market probably faster of what became ThingWorx. But it just for a variety of reasons, it wasn't the right time, fit, location, all those kinds of things. So dove back into it again, got the band back together, so to speak. TROND: How did that happen? Because at this point, you're not new to startups, and you have had a taste of the corporate world, in fact, in two leading positions, I guess. What is it that then motivates you to go back into that grind, and then you found a groundbreaking company? [laughs] RICK: Part of it is you feel like you cheated on the test. You've got the scars. You've had the lessons learned. I think we had a pretty well-rounded idea on what the new product was going to be, how we were going to take it to market. So I think we actually went in with a pretty solid plan rather than just A; we're going to do some R&D. Secondly, my business partners at Lighthammer were my business partners at ThingWorx, common investors. And some new folks that I worked with at Wonderware joined the team. It was sort of...I'm not going to say we couldn't fail. There were a lot of things we could have done wrong. But we had an incredible team of people with a lot of experience building companies like this, selling software like this. I had a pretty good feeling that we were on the right track there. TROND: And what exactly was ThingWorx in the early days? Because you read things like machine to machine, and those are terms that only much later...today we call internet of things. But you guys were very, very early, honestly, in that domain to produce products in that space when most people were just starting. Machine to machine didn't mean anything to people back then. RICK: And I think where we did well was going a little bit beyond that. And you'll see, once again, it's a pattern that repeats itself, the importance of people, the machines, and the other systems and processes that people have in their companies. Synthesizing all those together is actually where the value nexus is just massive. Any one of those taken in isolation or the connections between them, yeah, there's value to be done. But so we went in kind of with a broad...rather than just machine to machine. And there were some companies doing cool stuff just for getting updates down to an MRI machine or whatever. But we tried to go beyond that. We also realized early on the classic issue; it's good to know what you don't know. And remote access over unreliable links and all that stuff was something...My team had primarily lived in what we would jokingly call the internets of things. Everything's on the local network. You have different considerations. So we acquired a company, a super team, a small company that had a lot of expertise in the kind of internet of things and that remote connectivity, remote management, and that was this the second wave of rocket fuel to get things going. TROND: That's interesting you say that because I think that temptation for many would be you're so far ahead, and you start building things, and you're building things in the future. But I mean, surely, the reality is the shop floor and other things, and you're dealing with poor internet connections. Forget skills. I mean, you're actually dealing with a network that doesn't scale to your idea. RICK: Exactly right. And it was a very interesting balance between...I oversimplify kind of that industrial IoT is smart, connected operations and things like that, so factories, power plants, and then connected fleets of stuff, trucks, MRI machines, light towers, and cities, radically different requirements. One's 98% on-prem, one's 99.9% cloud, one's intermittent, unreliable, expensive connectivity, one's reliable, isolated. So we built a platform to serve both of those tests. In retrospect, we probably made compromises along the way to accommodate that. But still, today, I think PTC’s revenue with ThingWorx is fairly well split between those two domains. But that was an interesting challenge on its own because the requirements were dramatically different. TROND: But again, you got acquired. So is this a pattern in your companies? Or is it more a pattern in the field that, at a certain point...because, I mean, I'm making this up here. But is there something about the industry itself that lends itself very easily to just in order to get that scale, you have to be acquired, and it's very desirable? Or is it more a choice that you each time made to say we've built it to a certain scale? RICK: I think in our segment, there are the rare few that an IPO track makes sense, and it's achievable. I think, for the most part, companies in our domain are...they're talking acquisitions to technology companies, cloud companies, enterprise app companies, industrial automation companies. So they have the luxury of we can be the innovation engine. It doesn't have to come off... If you think about a BigCo that wants to build something organically, every dollar they submit...first of all, they're typically 10 to 20 times, and it's just reality, less efficient in developing software for a variety of reasons. And that money comes off the bottom line. So it's actually an interesting dynamic that it's almost more attractive for them as well. But the ThingWorx story is super interesting in the sense that I told someone the other day...so Jim Heppelmann super visionary right there. He had this concept of the digital twin and IoT connected with products way back. And he actually took some of his best and brightest people, his CTO, a number of other people, moved them out of their office, put them in the Cambridge Innovation Center, and said, "Go create something." Well, along the way, we got introduced to that team. And they came to the conclusion that, hey, it's going to be faster, cheaper. We can get to market capture mindshare quicker through acquisition. And if you think about it, that's a very...immature is not the right word. I don't even know what the word I'm looking for here, but it's you've just been given an opportunity to intrapreneur. You've got a clean sheet of paper, all the fun stuff after grinding out your day job for years. And you make that decision to well; we're not going to do that. We're going to go buy a company. I have huge respect for that. And it turned out to be a very good decision for everyone involved. So that's actually how that happened. We were an intrapreneurial effort at a relatively large company, decided to go and become acquisitive instead. And that's worked out quite well. TROND: So we haven't talked so much about the surrounding companies throughout these years. But were there other companies doing innovative things? I'm not so familiar with the history of all of the kind of less successful or less visible manufacturing IT companies throughout the early '90s. What was wrong with some of those, and why don't we talk about them? I mean, are they also still part of the picture? Were there smaller acquisitions that go into this history? RICK: Yeah, there's actually a lot that we were doing right. It was a big enough pie that the gorilla, you know, in the segment might only have a 20-something percent market share. So it was still fairly fragmented. It's partially because of geography, partially because of different segments, and partially just because it was such a big opportunity. The companion market to a lot of what I was doing, for example, at Wonderware and Lighthammer, was the data side of it. So that's the historian companies. Greatest example of that recently is the acquisition of OSIsoft by AVEVA for $5 billion, biggest little company you never heard of. I mean, just a fantastic success story. They stuck to what they did very well and built essentially a dominant market position. They had competitors with good products as well. But I think they're one of those success stories in that space that's only visible to most people now. We had competitors in almost every company I've ever worked at that had great solutions. But this is, again, where I think the X factor stuff comes into play. Your go-to-market machine, the passion that your team and people have that's contagious. If people really believe and they interact with customers and partners, it's just magic. The second thing was, again, where you're really doing useful stuff for customers. Some companies were software companies. Some companies were really just integration companies masquerading as software companies. But, Trond, you know this. There's no shortage of bright people on this planet, and it's -- TROND: Well, sure, there's no shortage of bright people. But I guess this is the third segment that I wanted us to get into. You kind of have a third career now, which is this portfolio life, I guess. [laughs] You can characterize it yourself, but I don't know how to explain it otherwise where you're seeing, first of all, a number of companies and the maturity, I guess, in the space, that's a little different. But you are in a different stage in your career. And I want to eventually get to Tulip and discuss why you got involved with that. But first, maybe you can address some of these portfolio things that you're doing right now. RICK: Sure. TROND: Obviously, mentoring a lot more and getting involved on the board side. How do you see even just the last five years? What's happening right now? Where are we right now with manufacturing software? RICK: So generically, I would say I'm doing manufacturing and adjacent stuff, kind of IoT industrial. I am so excited that it's cool again, right? Because it was for two decades. It was like -- TROND: Well, you were never concerned about that, surely. [laughs] RICK: But, you know, what's the old...in the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king. So if you were cool within your segment, you didn't have to be that great. And you could have done underselling what we achieved at the different companies. But I think it really has visibility now. There's investment money flowing into it. I think the increasing importance of...we kind of hit that little productivity inflection point where it started to flatten out. People are investing in technology. The challenges around people there's just not a lot of know-how, or there's much less know-how about everything from manufacturing operations to the different tasks that get performed to the technologies. So, how do we offset that? So technology is starting to fill an increasingly important role of focused VCs, and focused investors, and focused incubators around this kind of stuff. I think that's probably the biggest change. And then, like any technology segment, the building blocks, the Lego blocks that we build from, just get better and better and better. Someone that wants to add AI capabilities to their solution today, it's never been easier. I want to add Vision. Now, what you do with it can be very differentiating. But my point is that the building blocks we have today are just better than ever. I think the challenge...what's changed maybe in a negative, I think the way you get to customers, get to market has changed and become more challenging. An example, if you think about a venture-funded or otherwise funded startup, turn the clock back 10 or 15 years. We primarily sold perpetual licenses plus maintenance. So you get a big chunk of revenue upfront. Today in the SaaS and subscription world, in essence, we're all in the financing business. We're financing our cost of sales, our R&D., So the capital requirements for companies in our segment are bigger than they ever have been. And we see that with some of the raises, but that's just a reality. That dynamic perhaps even gets ignored sometimes, but it is a big change. Yeah, and then, you know, just to -- TROND: And what got you to Tulip? RICK: So I think it was actually indirectly through Wonderware, if I recall. So Natan and team and Rony and team were looking around at comparables. What are some companies that have been successful growing a business in this space? And he kind of had the hit list of Wonderware folks that he wanted to talk to. And somewhere, somehow, I don't recall the exact moment, but we connected up, and I got it. When he explained what they were doing. The light bulb went off, and I said, "I'd love to be part of this." So I'm both an investor and advisor in the company. And also, I love smart people, like innovative people. TROND: [laughs] RICK: And there's no shortage of those in Natan’s team. So first visit there, seeing what they were doing, meeting the team, it was like, all right, there's something going on here. TROND: So tell me what it is that you saw because I was also...I was at MIT at the time when Natan created the company. And I remember vividly going into the lab or whatever you want to describe his early workspace. Because that's what it was, right? It felt like a lab. RICK: Sure. TROND: But the stuff that was coming out was incredible. What do you think? Was it the product vision, or was it just a capability of the people that you saw early on? And now that you're looking at Tulip and its environment, what is being accomplished right now, would you say with this new app reality? RICK: I think it was the aggregate of all the above. Because great example, if you recall the first demo scenario with the mixed reality projecting instructions onto the work –- TROND: That was crazy. That demo was for me, the demo of all demos in the -- [laughs] RICK: Absolutely. TROND: It was crazy. RICK: And I said, wow, you're taking a very fresh look at a problem here. And obviously, with their collective backgrounds, really interesting mix of skill sets, they're going to do cool stuff. And I think Natan and team would be the first to admit they were coming in with not a lot of domain knowledge. They had been involved in companies that made stuff, but there was a learning curve for sure. And that's what a lot of...not just myself, but they had a lot of advisors, customer feedback, brought in some folks into the team, and then just learned on the job training, engaging with customers, engaging in pilots. So I think it took a year or two to kind of get grounded in what are some of the realities of the shop floor, not that they didn't have a good idea. But once that kind of confluence of smart people, customers starting to do cool stuff with it, and the end the product itself evolving, then that's kind of when the rocket took off. TROND: Well, this is interesting what you're saying here because as I'm interviewing a lot of people who have innovated in this space, time and again, what comes back is this is not just your average software innovation garage. A lab is not a garage. Literally, you can be as smart as you are. You can have a big team of smart people. But unless you get coupled up with that manufacturing shop floor experience, you don't stand a chance, or you just can't build. You can't get past the demo. Tell me more about that one because you have had it ingrained. We talked about this a few minutes ago. You started out that way. But there are so many more innovators these days that they can't; well, maybe they can start out, but they haven't started out on the shop floor, so many of them. RICK: I wish they would...everybody who wants to get in this space needs to do...the equivalent of in law enforcement would be a ride-along. You go and spend a couple of nights working the streets. You realize how things really work. It's not like TV. It's not like you read in your textbooks. So there's no substitute for it, even if it's like super-concentrated real-world experience actually going out and spending some time with customers, real-world experience. But I also think it's the third leg of the stool, which is important. It's the technology expertise and creating products. It's manufacturing domain knowledge and then figuring out how to get it in front of customers and sell it. We can never underestimate the importance of that. So that's another thing that I think Tulip took a lot of very iterative and A/B style testing approaches to go-to-market models and continue to innovate and experiment. It's a challenging space to do low-touch, but they've found a niche with that, particularly as a means to plant seeds of customers that can take a first taste of the technology like, wow, that's pretty awesome. The holy grail, I think, for a lot of companies in our space to try to figure out how to do that. No one's really completely cracked the code yet. So it's a kind of combination model. But the domain expertise, a couple of key hires, for example, a great example is the hires they made in the pharmaceutical industry. So life sciences now has become a really, really powerful vertical for Tulip as a result of bringing in civilian expertise plus the evolution of the product from a platform and tooling and some hardware to application, so the app marketplace that they launched. Now when I'm a buyer, you can approach not only that developer buyer, that integrator buyer, but now you can approach a business buyer and say, "I've got all these apps you can assemble together or just use as is." That was also a maturity thing. So it took the domain knowledge, interaction with customers, and then you can progressively build more into the software itself and less that the customer has to configure. That maturation has been pretty exciting to see. TROND: Rick, we've been through a history here that's very, very exciting to me and, I think to listeners. What's next for the digital factory, for the manufacturing, execution systems, all these acronyms? I tried to shy away from them a little bit because we had so many, many other interesting things to talk about today. But if you're looking to the next decade, the holy grail you mentioned, or this final integration project that would marry software, hardware, shop floor, and considering all the challenges that just the past year has brought us, and let's not even bring into it all of the other challenges of this decade and of this century, if you're going to go into the big words. Where are we headed? RICK: I'll maybe focus on where I hope we head, which looks perhaps a little bit different. I started the discussion with one of the things that I learned in my first job working in the plant flow is the importance of people, the knowledge that they have, the experience that they have. People in a lot of our processes are still the sensor, the algorithm, and the actuator. Like it or not, we haven't yet reproduced the human hand. We haven't yet reproduced the human brain. There are some really unique things about humans. And in that context, I hope that the next decade or so is about collaborative technology and how we use robotics, and AI, and information, and mixed reality to help people be better at what they do. And there's always a risk of dehumanization in something like that where people become interchangeable and they don their Iron Man assembly suit. But I'll maybe take a more optimistic view that it's really...we're going to continue to increase productivity output. But there are so many roles like that that could benefit from the synthesis of all these cool technologies that we have. I maintain that there's no such thing as an AI market. There's no such thing as an IoT market; that they're all just building blocks, right? It's what we assemble to solve some actual problem that is interesting. I'm hoping, and I'm confident, that the bar to implement these things becomes increasingly lower. AR is a great example today. It's hard. Building content is time-consuming and difficult. So maybe that's the next one that needs to bring the content creation to mixed reality, next-gen robotics, codebots, and some really interesting stuff happening there. The democratization of machine vision, and audio, and meta sensing that's happening. TROND: But it's interesting you're saying they're still our building blocks, and they're still our collaboration challenges. And maybe those collaboration challenges are going to have to last longer than a decade, and maybe we need more building blocks. But what comes after that once a critical mass of building blocks get assembled? And you have watched this decade by decade that there's a certain coalescence of building blocks, and then a new platform is formed. But still, in this industry, as you have said, so far, most of the time, these new platforms merge into the more traditional platform players, or they merge into more established. Is that a pattern that you see also in this decade? Or will we see the first mega conglomerates come out of completely new manufacturing combination platforms that are integrating all of these technologies and doing something truly new and can sustain their own new creation, whatever iteration of the manufacturing industry that would become? RICK: And I don't know if it's going to be necessarily the suppliers that become the mega innovators. What may well happen is that the manufacturers themselves start to become because the tools have become so powerful that they become the mega. If you actually take a deep dive into a lot of really innovative manufacturing companies, it's the machines that they built to make the product. It's the processes they use to make the product. That's where some of the real breakthroughs happen. That doesn't come from outside. Now, sometimes suppliers can provide some of that equipment. So maybe this is just an amplifier for that. And the second thing is I know is coming is this massive disintermediation of manufacturing. So we already have companies where the brand owner contracts the design of the product. It contracts people to make the products. It contracts people to service the product and sell the product. So they're literally just the brand name on top of it. Now you matrix that, right? Where you have companies with very, very flexible manufacturing capacity that's additive or traditional. Who knows, right? But I think a manufacturing supply chain 10-20 years from now is going to look radically different. Fewer companies will be making stuff on their own. But the companies that are making stuff will be really applying some innovative technology to be flexible, versatile. That's never going to happen for grunt commodity stuff where the cost to produce matter; you do purpose-built. But increasingly, look at the proliferation rate on new product introductions and electronic products and so many different things in our lives, clothing, right? There are so many things that we could innovate faster if the manufacturing systems themselves could adapt faster. Maybe that's an outcome. TROND: Well, I mean, whichever of these scenarios pan out, it seems to me that at least segments of this industry, if it remains, you know if you can talk about it as one industry anymore, is going to be super exciting. So that brings me, I guess, to just my closing question. If you were to advise a young person today who is maybe thinking about college, or they're thinking about should I follow my passion, which happens to be actually going and making and building things? Or should I get a theoretical education, or is that a false choice? Where should they go today? There's this dichotomy between getting a four-year education versus just going and getting some skills like we have been talking about, so you have some inkling of where you actually need to be to understand in order to produce the innovations. RICK: I think all the above, and let me elaborate on that a little bit. When I was in university, I created my own co-ops in the summer. So I worked...I sought them out. My son's at Drexel University now, and a co-op program is an integral part of his education there. For a lot of folks, getting kids particularly exposed to co-ops and those kinds of internships give you two things. It might tell you what you don't want to do just as much as you want to do, which is I think a lot of people in their career would wish they knew that earlier. It helps you get that real-world experience and just interacting with people. So I think that aspect of in your university education doing a diverse and interesting set of co-ops would be very valuable. Having a liberal arts aspect to any technical education or focus skills education is still valid. You have to know how to read, write, speak, those kinds of things. Design is ever increasingly important. The polymath is going to be a great skill to have. Secondly, learning has never been easier. You've got so many online resources as well. If you need a technical skill, I mean, I could probably learn neurosurgery on YouTube if I really needed to if there was no other option, you know, 60% chance that patient would live. TROND: [laughs] RICK: But we have so many different resources. I'm a believer in lifelong learning. So it's not a static thing. Certainly, a highly specialized skill if you're going to be geneticists doing CRISPR whatever, you need to spend 8-10 years of true rigorous study to master a lot of that kind of stuff. Maybe not; maybe that's even getting easier. TROND: Ricky, you just brought me back to eighth grade and my one-week internship at the National Geological Lab, where I was sorting through minerals. And it's incredible how one week is etched into my mind. I don't think about it every time, and I haven't thought about it for years. But while you were just describing with seeking out these internships, you brought it all back to me. And I can almost remember how the Monday was different from the Tuesday rotation when I went through that institute. There is just no comparison to that kind of real-life experience. RICK: And the other advice that I give any person is versatile set of skills. Do a sales role sometime in your life. You might hate it, you might despise it, but you're going to learn what the salespeople in your company go through. You might love it, and it becomes a career. Communications, what your marketing folks have. Having a diverse set of skills and getting exposure...maybe it happened accidentally for me. Those were the opportunities that presented themselves, but I think having that diverse skill set and toolbox is extremely valuable, particularly if you want to start a company. TROND: Rick, I thank you so much. We have gone way over what I had promised and even my promise to our listeners to be very succinct. But this has been, for me, at least a fascinating roller coaster through your career and throughout manufacturing, both history and future. I thank you very, very much. RICK: My pleasure. TROND: You have just listened to Episode 10 of The Augmented Podcast with host Trond Arne Undheim. And the topic was A Brief History of Manufacturing Software. Our guest was Rick Bullotta, Partner at TwinThread and Co-Founder of ThingWorx. In this conversation, we talk about how Rick has shaped manufacturing software history and the lessons learned from being an early employee at Wonderware, the famous precursor to manufacturing automation, back in 1993, a company first sold to British engineering giant Siebe in 1998, which merged with BTR to form Invensys, which in turn merged with French multinational Schneider Electric and later the CTO. Rick Bullotta was also the Co-Founder of Lighthammer Software, which was later acquired by SAP. Then in 2009, founding ThingWorx, the first complete end-to-end technology platform designed for the industrial internet of things, which was acquired by PTC in 2003. We also touch on his current advice to founders in the industrial space, his board role at Tulip, and what he sees lie ahead for the industry. My take is that Wonderware, Lighthammer, and ThingWorx are prominent parts of manufacturing software history, and there's a chance that the 4th company he now is involved with, Tulip, also will be. I do things with things is Rick Bullotta's motto. The things he does, he does them well, and it is an internet of things, more than anything else. I, for one, am eagerly listening to what he predicts will happen next. Thanks for listening. If you liked the show, subscribe at Augmentedpodcast.co or in your preferred podcast player, and rate us with five stars. If you liked this episode, you might also like Episode 4: A Renaissance of Manufacturing or Episode 5: Plug-and-Play Industrial Tech. Augmented- the industry 4.0 podcast. Special Guest: Rick Bullota.
Welcome to episode #86 of the Augmented Podcast (@AugmentedPod (https://twitter.com/AugmentedPod)). Today's episode will be a reflection on Season 2. Join host and futurist Trond Arne Undheim (@trondau (https://twitter.com/trondau)) as he reflects on season 2 of the Augmented podcast, diving into a few highlights from the season. Augmented reveals the stories behind the new era of industrial operations, where technology will restore the agility of frontline workers. Technology is changing rapidly. What’s next in the digital factory? Who is leading the change? What are the key skills to learn and how to stay up to date on manufacturing and industry 4.0? Augmented is a podcast for industrial leaders, process engineers, and shop floor operators, hosted by futurist Trond Arne Undheim (@trondau (https://twitter.com/trondau)), and presented by Tulip Interfaces (@tulipinterfaces (https://twitter.com/tulipinterfaces)), the frontline operations platform. In Season 2 we honed in, covering a specific topics relevant to manufacturing, such as marketing, frontline operations, reshoring, digital lean, startups, supply chains, pricing strategies, the manufacturing software market workers, the low code/no- code issue, diagnostic manufacturing, operational data, life science manufacturing systems, the industrial tech transformation outlook, the future factory, the evolution of lean, and industrial interoperability. As you can see, these ranged from technical topics to HR to investing to management principles--all of which go into operating and innovating in manufacturing and industrial tech. Guests featured in this episode: Joe Sullivan (@sullivan_joe (https://twitter.com/sullivan_joe)), host of The Manufacturing Executive podcast and founder of Gorilla 76 (@gorilla76 (https://twitter.com/gorilla76)) Lydia M. Di Liello (@LydiaDiLiello (https://twitter.com/LydiaDiLiello)), CEO and founder of Capital Pricing Consultants, and co-host of The WAM Podcast: Empowering Women in Manufacturing and Business. (@wam_podcast (https://twitter.com/wam_podcast)) Yossi Sheffi (@YossiSheffi (https://twitter.com/YossiSheffi)), Director, MIT Center for Transporation and Logistics (@MITSupplyChain (https://twitter.com/MITSupplyChain)) Harry C. Moser (@reshorenow (https://twitter.com/reshorenow)) founder and President of the Reshoring Initiative Dr. Gunter Beitinger (@beitgugb (https://twitter.com/beitgug)) (@Siemens (https://twitter.com/Siemens)) SVP of Manufacturing at Siemens AG, Head of Factory Digitalization and Head of Product Carbon Footprint/SiGreen Thanks for listening. If you like the show subscribe to augmentedpodcast. co or on your preferred podcast player. And rate us with 5 stars. If so, let us know by messaging us your thoughts. Hopefully, you'll find something awesome in this show or in other episodes. Please, if you do, let us know by messaging us. We would love to share your thoughts with other listeners. The Augmented podcast is created in association with Tulip, the connected frontline operations platform that connects the people, machines, devices, and the systems used in a production or logistics process in a physical location. Tulip is democratizing technology and empowering those closest to operations to solve problems. Tulip is also hiring. You can find Tulip at Tulip.co (https://tulip.co/) Please share this show with colleagues who care about where industrial tech is heading. To find us on social media is easy, we are Augmented Pod on LinkedIn and Twitter, and Augmented Podcast on Facebook and YouTube: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/augmentedpod Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AugmentedPodcast/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/AugmentedPod YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5Y1gz66LxYvjJAMnN_f6PQ See you next time. Augmented--industrial conversations that matter. Special Guests: Dr. Gunter Beitinger, Harry C. Moser, Joe Sullivan, Lydia M. Di Liello, and Yossi Sheffi.
This week on the podcast, (@AugmentedPod (https://twitter.com/AugmentedPod)) we have Leon Kuperman, CTO of CAST.AI (@cast_ai (https://twitter.com/cast_ai)) Futurist Trond Undheim hosts (@trondau (https://twitter.com/trondau)), this is episode #85 of Season 2 and the topic is: Industrial Cloud Interoperability. In this conversation, we talk about cloud interoperability, whether it exists, why it's needed and what it could accomplish. We also get into the technical underpinnings, such as Carita, containerization and the outlook for public private and hybrid clouds as well as the vendors that supply advanced infrastructures. Augmented reveals the stories behind the new era of industrial operations, where technology will restore the agility of frontline workers. Technology is changing rapidly. What’s next in the digital factory? Who is leading the change? What are the key skills to learn and how to stay up to date on manufacturing and industry 4.0? Augmented is a podcast for industrial leaders, process engineers, and shop floor operators, hosted by futurist Trond Arne Undheim, and presented by Tulip, the frontline operations platform. Trond's takeaway: A.I. is a silent enabler of collaboration between systems, which by the same token affects collaboration between people and organizations, its technical complexity often limits the debate about the subject in non-specialist circles, which is a shame given the pivotal importance of cloud infrastructure in today's computing environment, the relative progress made on interoperability will determine the course of products, flexibility, security, and productivity. Thanks for listening. If you liked the show, subscribe at Augmented podcast.co or in your preferred podcast player and rate us with five stars. If you liked this episode, you might also like episode #17 Smart Manufacturing for All (https://www.augmentedpodcast.co/17). Hopefully you'll find something awesome in these or in other episodes. And if so, do let us know by messaging us, we would love to share your thoughts with other listeners. The Augmented podcast is created in association with Tulip, the connected frontline operations platform that connects the people, machines, devices, and the systems used in a production or logistics process in a physical location. Tulip is democratizing technology and empowering those closest to operations to solve problems. Tulip is also hiring. You can find Tulip at Tulip.co. Please share this show with colleagues who care about where industrial tech is heading. To find us on social media is easy, we are Augmented Pod on LinkedIn and Twitter, and Augmented Podcast on Facebook and YouTube: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/augmentedpod Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AugmentedPodcast/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/AugmentedPod YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5Y1gz66LxYvjJAMnN_f6PQ See you next time. Augmented--industrial conversations that matter. Special Guest: Leon Kuperman.
This week on the podcast, (@AugmentedPod (https://twitter.com/AugmentedPod)) we have Michelle Segrest, journalist, content creator, and owner of Navigate Content, Inc. (@michellesegrest (https://twitter.com/michellesegrest)) Futurist Trond Undheim hosts (@trondau (https://twitter.com/trondau)), this is episode #83 of Season 2 and the topic is: Factory Journalism. Augmented reveals the stories behind the new era of industrial operations, where technology will restore the agility of frontline workers. Technology is changing rapidly. What’s next in the digital factory? Who is leading the change? What are the key skills to learn and how to stay up to date on manufacturing and industry 4.0? Augmented is a podcast for industrial leaders, process engineers, and shop floor operators, hosted by futurist Trond Arne Undheim, and presented by Tulip, the frontline operations platform. Trond's takeaway: Factories are enormously diverse depending on industry country, region, and they also change over time. More importantly, they are thriving in a way that the public doesn't always appreciate. So getting inside a few factories from time to time might be the best service you could do yourself or for your kids to reorient yourself toward the importance of manufacturing or the important activity of making things, which has not gone away just because of the digital revolution. Thanks for listening. If you liked the show, subscribe at Augmented podcast.co or in your preferred podcast player and rate us with five stars. If you liked this episode, you might also like episode #79 The Future Factory (https://www.augmentedpodcast.co/79). Hopefully you'll find something awesome in these or in other episodes. And if so, do let us know by messaging us, we would love to share your thoughts with other listeners. The Augmented podcast is created in association with Tulip, the connected frontline operations platform that connects the people, machines, devices, and the systems used in a production or logistics process in a physical location. Tulip is democratizing technology and empowering those closest to operations to solve problems. Tulip is also hiring. You can find Tulip at Tulip.co. Please share this show with colleagues who care about where industrial tech is heading. To find us on social media is easy, we are Augmented Pod on LinkedIn and Twitter, and Augmented Podcast on Facebook and YouTube: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/augmentedpod Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AugmentedPodcast/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/AugmentedPod YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5Y1gz66LxYvjJAMnN_f6PQ See you next time. Augmented--industrial conversations that matter. Special Guest: Michelle Segrest .
This week on the podcast, (@AugmentedPod (https://twitter.com/AugmentedPod)) we have Torbjørn Netland, Chair of Production, Operations Management at the top Swiss university, ETH Zürich, and co-founder of Ethon AI (@tnetland (https://twitter.com/tnetland)) (@eth (https://twitter.com/eth)) (@ethon_AI (https://twitter.come/@ethon_AI)). Futurist Trond Undheim hosts (@trondau (https://twitter.com/trondau)), this is episode #84 of Season 2 and the topic is: The Evoltion of Lean. Augmented reveals the stories behind the new era of industrial operations, where technology will restore the agility of frontline workers. Technology is changing rapidly. What’s next in the digital factory? Who is leading the change? What are the key skills to learn and how to stay up to date on manufacturing and industry 4.0? Augmented is a podcast for industrial leaders, process engineers, and shop floor operators, hosted by futurist Trond Arne Undheim, and presented by Tulip, the frontline operations platform. Trond's takeaway: Lean might be an ever-evolving concept centered around how to best improve industrial performance. The orthodoxy around what it means is not helpful yet clarity about clear objectives and tactics is important. The role of technology in Lean is controversial. But one thing is for certain, Lean is primary to technology. Thanks for listening. If you liked the show, subscribe at Augmented podcast.co or in your preferred podcast player and rate us with five stars. If you liked this episode, you might also like Episode #21: Lean Manufacturing in the USA (https://augmented.fireside.fm/49) with guest Karl Wadensten, who is the CEO of VIBCO. Hopefully, you'll find something awesome in these or other episodes. If you like what you hear, let us know by messaging us, we would love to share your thoughts with other listeners. The Augmented podcast is created in association with Tulip, the connected frontline operations platform that connects the people, machines, devices, and the systems used in a production or logistics process in a physical location. Tulip is democratizing technology and empowering those closest to operations to solve problems. Tulip is also hiring. You can find Tulip at Tulip.co. Please share this show with colleagues who care about where industrial tech is heading. To find us on social media is easy, we are Augmented Pod on LinkedIn and Twitter, and Augmented Podcast on Facebook and YouTube: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/augmentedpod Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AugmentedPodcast/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/AugmentedPod YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5Y1gz66LxYvjJAMnN_f6PQ See you next time. Augmented--industrial conversations that matter. Special Guest: Torbjørn Netland.
This week on the podcast, (@AugmentedPod (https://twitter.com/AugmentedPod)) we have Dr. Gunter Beitinger, SVP of Manufacturing at Siemens AG joining us for a conversation about the digital transformation of the factory floor. Dr. Gunter is also the Head of Factory Digitalization and Head of Product Carbon Footprint/SiGreen (@beitgugb (https://twitter.com/beitgug)) (@Siemens (https://twitter.com/Siemens)). Futurist Trond Undheim hosts (@trondau (https://twitter.com/trondau)), this is episode #79 of Season 2 and the topic is: The Future Factory. Augmented reveals the stories behind the new era of industrial operations, where technology will restore the agility of frontline workers. Technology is changing rapidly. What’s next in the digital factory? Who is leading the change? What are the key skills to learn and how to stay up to date on manufacturing and industry 4.0? Augmented is a podcast for industrial leaders, process engineers, and shop floor operators, hosted by futurist Trond Arne Undheim, and presented by Tulip, the frontline operations platform. Trond's takeaway: It is pretty clear that the factory of the future will look different from that of the past but what's less clear is the path to get there and what role digitalization will play in getting us there. What does seem clear is that we still need creative heads. We need people to produce the needed innovations and machines to hum, along with to the human beat, as opposed to the other way around. Thanks for listening. If you like the show, subscribe at augmentedpodcast.co or your preferred podcast, and rate us with five stars. If you liked this episode, you might also like Episode #21: The Future of Digital in Manufacturing (https://augmented.fireside.fm/21). Hopefully, you'll find something awesome in this show or in other episodes. Please, if you do let us know by messaging us. We would love to share your thoughts with other listeners. The Augmented podcast is created in association with Tulip, the connected frontline operations platform that connects the people, machines, devices, and the systems used in a production or logistics process in a physical location. Tulip is democratizing technology and empowering those closest to operations to solve problems. Tulip is also hiring. You can find Tulip at Tulip.co. Please share this show with colleagues who care about where industrial tech is heading. To find us on social media is easy, we are Augmented Pod on LinkedIn and Twitter, and Augmented Podcast on Facebook and YouTube: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/augmentedpod Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AugmentedPodcast/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/AugmentedPod YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5Y1gz66LxYvjJAMnN_f6PQ See you next time. Augmented--industrial conversations that matter. Special Guest: Dr. Gunter Beitinger.
This week on the podcast, (@AugmentedPod (https://twitter.com/AugmentedPod)) we have Marty Guay, Vice President of Business Development at Stanley Black & Decker (@StanleyBlkDeckr (https://twitter.com/@StanleyBlkDeckr)). In this conversation, futurist Trond Undheim (@trondau (https://twitter.com/trondau)) and Marty talk about the Connecticut state initiative designed to enable technology adoption and workforce creation. This is Episode #82 of Season 2 and the topic is Innovation Corridor in Connecticut. Augmented reveals the stories behind the new era of industrial operations, where technology will restore the agility of frontline workers. Technology is changing rapidly. What’s next in the digital factory? Who is leading the change? What are the key skills to learn and how to stay up to date on manufacturing and industry 4.0? Augmented is a podcast for industrial leaders, process engineers, and shop floor operators, hosted by futurist Trond Arne Undheim, and presented by Tulip, the frontline operations platform. Trond's takeaway: It has long been the thinking that government-sponsored workforce development is the only way to stimulate, learning, and training at scale. However, that may in fact not be the case and may at times have the adverse consequence that businesses don't invest themselves. But focused funding and initiatives do help and the CT innovation corridor seems well thought out and will presumably revitalize an important area around Hartford, which is much needed. Thanks for listening. If you like the show, subscribe at Augmented podcast.com or your preferred podcast, and rate us with five stars. If you liked this episode, you might also like Episode #62: Manufacturing Excellence in Michigan (https://augmented.fireside.fm/21). Hopefully, you'll find something awesome in this show or in other episodes. Please, if you do let us know by messaging us. We would love to share your thoughts with other listeners. The Augmented podcast is created in association with Tulip, the connected frontline operations platform that connects the people, machines, devices, and the systems used in a production or logistics process in a physical location. Tulip is democratizing technology and empowering those closest to operations to solve problems. Tulip is also hiring. You can find Tulip at Tulip.co. Please share this show with colleagues who care about where industrial tech is heading. To find us on social media is easy, we are Augmented Pod on LinkedIn and Twitter, and Augmented Podcast on Facebook and YouTube: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/augmentedpod Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AugmentedPodcast/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/AugmentedPod YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5Y1gz66LxYvjJAMnN_f6PQ See you next time. Augmented--industrial conversations that matter. Special Guest: Marty Guay.
This week on the podcast, (@AugmentedPod (https://twitter.com/AugmentedPod)) we have Andrew Obin, the Managing Director with Bank of America Securities Equity Research. In this conversation, futurist Trond Undheim (@trondau (https://twitter.com/trondau)) and his guest, Andrew discuss Wall Street's track record for digital transformation, where investments are made, and finally, Wall Street's tech trajectory. This is Episode #77 of Season 2 and the topic is: Industrial Tech Transformation Outlook. Augmented reveals the stories behind the new era of industrial operations, where technology will restore the agility of frontline workers. Technology is changing rapidly. What’s next in the digital factory? Who is leading the change? What are the key skills to learn and how to stay up to date on manufacturing and industry 4.0? Augmented is a podcast for industrial leaders, process engineers, and shop floor operators, hosted by futurist Trond Arne Undheim, and presented by Tulip, the frontline operations platform. Trond's takeaway: Wall Street's track record for digital transformation isn't necessarily good because these processes are complex. But on the other hand, firms that exceed can command a premium and can forge ahead. The tech trajectory is interesting to watch as digital progress. Isn't a property of only tech companies anymore as that truth sinks in it will change by your actions as well. Thanks for listening. If you like the show, subscribe at Augmented podcast.com or your preferred podcast, and rate us with five stars. If you liked this episode, you might also like Episode #21: The Future of Digital in Manufacturing (https://augmented.fireside.fm/21). Hopefully, you'll find something awesome in this show or in other episodes. Please, if you do let us know by messaging us. We would love to share your thoughts with other listeners. The Augmented podcast is created in association with Tulip, the connected frontline operations platform that connects the people, machines, devices, and the systems used in a production or logistics process in a physical location. Tulip is democratizing technology and empowering those closest to operations to solve problems. Tulip is also hiring. You can find Tulip at Tulip.co. Please share this show with colleagues who care about where industrial tech is heading. To find us on social media is easy, we are Augmented Pod on LinkedIn and Twitter, and Augmented Podcast on Facebook and YouTube: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/augmentedpod Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AugmentedPodcast/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/AugmentedPod YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5Y1gz66LxYvjJAMnN_f6PQ See you next time. Augmented--industrial conversations that matter. Special Guest: Andrew Obin.
This week on Season 2 of the Augmented Podcast (@AugmentedPod (https://twitter.com/AugmentedPod)), Rony Kubat, CTO, and Cofounder of Tulip Interfaces (@tulipinterfaces (https://twitter.com/tulipinterfaces)) (@kubat (https://twitter.com/kubat)), joins futurist Trond Undheim (@trondau (https://twitter.com/trondau)) in a conversation about how operational data can be augmented using machine intelligence coupled with human interpretation. Augmented reveals the stories behind the new era of industrial operations, where technology will restore the agility of frontline workers. Technology is changing rapidly. What’s next in the digital factory? Who is leading the change? What are the key skills to learn and how to stay up to date on manufacturing and industry 4.0? Augmented is a podcast for industrial leaders, process engineers, and shop floor operators, hosted by futurist Trond Arne Undheim (@trondau (https://twitter.com/trondau)), and presented by Tulip, the frontline operations platform. Trond's takeaway: The power of capturing both manual and machine processes in manufacturing comes when you start to be able to connect silos of shop data and shop floor data, to get a time series of the data attached to the product. It is not necessarily easy but when you achieve it, you have a great starting point for a true understanding of the manufacturing process. Thanks for listening. If you liked the show, subscribe at Augmented podcast.co or in your preferred podcast player and rate us with five stars. If you liked this episode, you might also like episode 81 Predictive to Diagnostic Manufacturing Augmentation which you can find at Augmented podcast.co/81. Hopefully, you'll find something awesome in these or in other episodes. Please, if you do let us know by messaging us, we would love to share your thoughts with other listeners. The Augmented podcast is created in association with. The frontline operations platform connects the people, machines, devices, and the systems used in a production or logistics process in a physical location. The Augmented podcast is created in association with Tulip, the connected frontline operations platform that connects the people, machines, devices, and the systems used in a production or logistics process in a physical location. Tulip is democratizing technology and empowering those closest to operations to solve problems. Tulip is also hiring. You can find Tulip at Tulip.co. Please share this show with colleagues who care about where industrial tech is heading. To find us on social media is easy, we are Augmented Pod on LinkedIn and Twitter, and Augmented Podcast on Facebook and YouTube: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/augmentedpod Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AugmentedPodcast/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/AugmentedPod YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5Y1gz66LxYvjJAMnN_f6PQ See you next time. Augmented--industrial conversations that matter. Special Guest: Rony Kubat.
Incoming! This week's episode of the Augmented Podcast (@AugmentedPod (https://twitter.com/AugmentedPod)) features a conversation with futurist Trond Undheim (@trondau (https://twitter.com/trondau)) and Dr. Gilad Langer, Manufacturing Practice Lead at Tulip (@tulipinterfaces (https://twitter.com/tulipinterfaces)). In this conversation, we talk about the evolution, the experiences, the challenges, and the future opportunities of life science manufacturing systems. This is episode 78 of Season Two and the topic is: "Life Science Manufacturing Systems." Augmented reveals the stories behind the new era of industrial operations, where technology will restore the agility of frontline workers. Technology is changing rapidly. What’s next in the digital factory? Who is leading the change? What are the key skills to learn and how to stay up to date on manufacturing and industry 4.0? Augmented is a podcast for industrial leaders, process engineers, and shop floor operators, hosted by futurist Trond Arne Undheim (@trondau (https://twitter.com/trondau)), and presented by Tulip, the frontline operations platform. Trond's takeaway: Life sciences are challenging: the traditional paradigm of industrial techniques. Bio-manufacturing in particular poses challenges to many existing systems. As such, the industry's work with ISP's pharma 4.0 initiative is bearing fruit. However, the dialogue with regulatory authorities still seems to be one the industry is trying to educate governments on. Nevertheless, once governments get it and are willing to adapt regulations, we might see even more rapid advances given the importance and scope of the new manufacturing techniques that are opening up and await regulatory approval. Thanks for listening. If you liked the show, subscribe at Augmented podcast.co or in your preferred podcast app and rate us with five stars. If you liked this episode, you might also like episode 31 Pharma 4.0 (https://www.augmentedpodcast.co/pharma-40/) with Michelle Vuolo, who is a quality practice leader. The Augmented podcast is created in association with Tulip, the connected frontline operations platform that connects the people, machines, devices, and the systems used in a production or logistics process in a physical location. Tulip is democratizing technology and empowering those closest to operations to solve problems. Tulip is also hiring. You can find Tulip at Tulip.co. Please share this show with colleagues who care about where industrial tech is heading. To find us on social media is easy, we are Augmented Pod on LinkedIn and Twitter, and Augmented Podcast on Facebook and YouTube: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/augmentedpod Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AugmentedPodcast/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/AugmentedPod YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5Y1gz66LxYvjJAMnN_f6PQ See you next time. Augmented--industrial conversations that matter. Special Guest: Dr. Gilad Langer.
This week on the podcast (@AugmentedPod (https://twitter.com/AugmentedPod)), Trond is in conversation with returning guest and colleague, Roy Shilkrot, the Lead Scientist at Tulip (@tulipinterfaces (https://twitter.com/tulipinterfaces)). In episode 81 of Season 2 of the Augmented podcast, the topic is "From Predictive to Diagnostic Manufacturing Augmentation." In this conversation, we're diving further into machine learning in manufacturing and emerging applications. Augmented reveals the stories behind the new era of industrial operations, where technology will restore the agility of frontline workers. Technology is changing rapidly. What’s next in the digital factory? Who is leading the change? What are the key skills to learn and how to stay up to date on manufacturing and industry 4.0? Augmented is a podcast for industrial leaders, process engineers, and shop floor operators, hosted by futurist Trond Arne Undheim (@trondau (https://twitter.com/trondau)), and presented by Tulip, the frontline operations platform. My takeaway: Industrial tech is not what it used to be and will never again be a bulky inflexible instrument because we are entering an age with immediate feedback and rapid adjustments and a combination of human and machine. Diagnostic manufacturing is, in fact, quite different from a time when we had to wait until the product was onerous to see what could be wrong with it. Thanks for listening. If you liked the show, subscribe at Augmented podcast.co or in your preferred podcast player and rate us with five stars. If you liked this episode, you might also like episode 29 The Automated Micro-Factory, episode 22 Friedman's Factory: What is No-Code, or episode 19 Machine Learning in Manufacturing. You can listen to all of these episodes simply by pasting in the episode number after the URL. The Augmented podcast is created in association with Tulip, the frontline operations platform that connects the people, machines, devices, and systems used in a production or logistics process in a physical location. Tulip is democratizing technology and empowering those closest to operations to solve problems. Tulip is also hiring. You can find Tulip at Tulip.co Please share this show with colleagues who care about where industrial tech is heading. To find us on social media is easy, we are Augmented Pod on LinkedIn and Twitter, and Augmented Podcast on Facebook and YouTube: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/augmentedpod Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AugmentedPodcast/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/AugmentedPod YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5Y1gz66LxYvjJAMnN_f6PQ See you next time. Augmented--industrial conversations that matter. Special Guest: Roy Shilkrot.
Joining us this week on the podcast (@AugmentedPod (https://twitter.com/AugmentedPod)) is CEO and Founder of Pyze, Inc. (@PyzeInc (https://twitter.com/PyzeInc)) Prabhjot Singh (@psinghSF (https://twitter.com/psinghSF)) Here with futurist Trond Undheim to talk all about business process intelligence, the workflows in manufacturing and logistics, and the future outlook for low-code in industrial applications, the episode is 76 and the topic is: "Low on Code, High on Process." Augmented reveals the stories behind the new era of industrial operations, where technology will restore the agility of frontline workers. Technology is changing rapidly. What’s next in the digital factory? Who is leading the change? What are the key skills to learn? How to stay up to date on manufacturing and industry 4.0? Augmented is a podcast for industrial leaders, process engineers, and shop floor operators, hosted by futurist Trond Arne Undheim (@trondau (https://twitter.com/trondau)), and presented by Tulip, the frontline operations platform (@tulipinterfaces (https://twitter.com/tulipinterfaces)). Trond's takeaway: Business process intelligence is the "why" of technology. Because smoother operations are where the value of technology is realized. The future outlook for low code in industrial operations is bright because it has the potential to streamline workflows in manufacturing and logistics. However, it is important to keep in mind that to leverage automation to do better decisions, and not just to squeeze out more with less--that starts with keeping in mind what the real problem is and steering with that in mind. If you don't know, figure out the problem and then invest in the process and if technology gets you there, invest. Thanks for listening. If you liked the show, subscribe at Augmented podcast.co or in your preferred podcast player and rate us with five stars. And if you liked this episode, you might also like episode 73 The Challenge of Front Line Operations. Hopefully, you'll find something awesome in these or in other episodes. And if so, do let us know by messaging us because we would love to share your thoughts with other listeners. The Augmented podcast is created in association with Tulip, the connected frontline operations platform that connects the people, machines, devices, and the systems used in a production or logistics process in a physical location. Tulip is democratizing technology and empowering those closest to operations to solve problems. Tulip is also hiring. You can find Tulip at Tulip.co. Please share this show with colleagues who care about where industrial tech is heading. To find us on social media is easy, we are Augmented Pod on LinkedIn and Twitter, and Augmented Podcast on Facebook and YouTube: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/augmentedpod Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AugmentedPodcast/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/AugmentedPod YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5Y1gz66LxYvjJAMnN_f6PQ See you next time. Augmented--industrial conversations that matter. Special Guest: Prabhjot Singh.
This week on the podcast (@AugmentedPod (https://twitter.com/AugmentedPod)), futurist Trond Undheim interviews Erik Mirandette, Head of Product and Ecosystem at Tulip Interfaces (@tulipinterfaces (https://twitter.com/tulipinterfaces)). This is episode 75 of Season 2: "Designing a Worker Friendly Industrial System." In this conversation, we talk about what designing and redesigning a worker-friendly industrial system might entail, how to build capabilities and not point solutions that simply fix existing use cases to empower operators and workers along the way. Trond's takeaway: It is unusual to hear the case for manufacturing efficiency, coupled with worker empowerment, and then expressed so clearly as a systems dynamics problem that needs to have an overall fix instead of just attacking. Thanks for listening. If you liked the show, subscribe at Augmented podcast.co or in your preferred podcast player and rate us with five stars. If you liked this episode, you might also like episode 73 The Challenge of Frontline Operations. Augmented reveals the stories behind the new era of industrial operations, where technology will restore the agility of frontline workers. Technology is changing rapidly. What’s next in the digital factory? Who is leading the change? What are the key skills to learn and how to stay up to date on manufacturing and industry 4.0? Augmented is a podcast for industrial leaders, process engineers, and shop floor operators, hosted by futurist Trond Arne Undheim (@trondau (https://twitter.com/trondau)) and presented by Tulip, the frontline operations platform. The Augmented podcast is created in association with Tulip, the frontline operations platform that connects the people, machines, devices, and systems used in a production or logistics process in a physical location. Tulip is democratizing technology and empowering those closest to operations to solve problems. Tulip is also hiring. You can find Tulip at Tulip.co Please share this show with colleagues who care about where industrial tech is heading. To find us on social media is easy, we are Augmented Pod on LinkedIn and Twitter, and Augmented Podcast on Facebook and YouTube: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/augmentedpod Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AugmentedPodcast/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/AugmentedPod YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5Y1gz66LxYvjJAMnN_f6PQ See you next time. Augmented--industrial conversations that matter. Special Guest: Erik Mirandette.
This week on the podcast (@AugmentedPod (https://twitter.com/AugmentedPod)), futurist Trond Undheim interviews Kathryn Kelley, Executive Director of the Ohio Manufacturing Institute at Ohio State University (@omiosumfg (https://twitter.com/omiosumfg)). This is episode 67 of Season 2, "Manufacturing 5.0" Augmented reveals the stories behind the new era of industrial operations, where technology will restore the agility of frontline workers. Technology is changing rapidly. What’s next in the digital factory? Who is leading the change? What are the key skills to learn and how to stay up to date on manufacturing and industry 4.0? Augmented is a podcast for industrial leaders, process engineers, and shop floor operators, hosted by futurist Trond Arne Undheim (@trondau (https://twitter.com/trondau)), and presented by Tulip, the frontline operations platform (@tulipinterfaces (https://twitter.com/tulipinterfaces)). Trond's takeaway: In this conversation, we talked about industrial trends in Ohio, across the US. Ohio, along with Michigan, California, and Texas, is where the bulk of US manufacturing habits are formed. That's why tracking their thinking is important. To think that it would take decades to roll out industry 4.0 in Ohio is mind-boggling. Can it be true? This is why we need a new approach to industrial tech and one where training needs are drastically reduced and technology can be implemented in days and weeks instead of months and years. I believe that the opportunity exists now. Now let's roll it out, test it and see if it can happen. Training is key, and government and state-sponsored programs are an important component. The Augmented podcast is created in association with Tulip, the frontline operations platform that connects the people, machines, devices, and systems used in a production or logistics process in a physical location. Tulip is democratizing technology and empowering those closest to operations to solve problems. Tulip is also hiring. You can find Tulip at Tulip.co If you liked this episode, you might also like episode 49 Lean Manufacturing in the USA, episode 46 Manufacturing Training in Massachusetts, or episode 30 Rethinking Workforce Learning. Please share this show with colleagues who care about where industrial tech is heading. To find us on social media is easy, we are Augmented Pod on LinkedIn and Twitter, and Augmented Podcast on Facebook and YouTube: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/augmentedpod Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AugmentedPodcast/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/AugmentedPod YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5Y1gz66LxYvjJAMnN_f6PQ See you next time. Augmented--industrial conversations that matter. Special Guest: Kathryn Kelley.
This week on the podcast (@AugmentedPod (https://twitter.com/AugmentedPod)), futurist Trond Undheim interviews John Klaess, Head of Product Education at Tulip Interfaces (@tulipinterfaces (https://twitter.com/tulipinterfaces)). This is episode 72 of Season 2, "What is Tulip University." Augmented reveals the stories behind the new era of industrial operations, where technology will restore the agility of frontline workers. Technology is changing rapidly. What’s next in the digital factory? Who is leading the change? What are the key skills to learn and how to stay up to date on manufacturing and industry 4.0? Augmented is a podcast for industrial leaders, process engineers, and shop floor operators, hosted by futurist Trond Arne Undheim (@trondau (https://twitter.com/trondau)), and presented by Tulip, the frontline operations platform. Trond's takeaway: Training is crucial to contemporary manufacturing, though not in the way we usually think. Employees must train people all the time, which brings us to question, what if the technologies and the user interfaces were simplified. The Augmented podcast is created in association with Tulip, the frontline operations platform that connects the people, machines, devices, and systems used in a production or logistics process in a physical location. Tulip is democratizing technology and empowering those closest to operations to solve problems. Tulip is also hiring. You can find Tulip at Tulip.co If you liked this episode, you might also like episode 3 Reimagine Training, episode 46 Manufacturing Training in Massachusetts, or episode 2 How to Train Augmented Workers. Please share this show with colleagues who care about where industrial tech is heading. To find us on social media is easy, we are Augmented Pod on LinkedIn and Twitter, and Augmented Podcast on Facebook and YouTube: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/augmentedpod Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AugmentedPodcast/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/AugmentedPod YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5Y1gz66LxYvjJAMnN_f6PQ See you next time. Augmented--industrial conversations that matter. Special Guest: Dr. John Klaess.
This week on episode 71 of Augmented Season 2 (@AugmentedPod (https://twitter.com/AugmentedPod)), Trond is in conversation with Ralph Verrilli, the Managing Director of Madison Park Group. The topic is: "Trends in the Manufacturing Software Market." Augmented reveals the stories behind the new era of industrial operations, where technology will restore the agility of frontline workers. Technology is changing rapidly. What’s next in the digital factory? Who is leading the change? What are the key skills to learn and how to stay up to date on manufacturing and industry 4.0? Augmented is a podcast for industrial leaders, process engineers, and shop floor operators, hosted by futurist Trond Arne Undheim (@trondau (https://twitter.com/trondau)), presented by Tulip Interfaces (@tulipinterfaces (https://twitter.com/tulipinterfaces)), the frontline operations platform. Trond's takeaway: The manufacturing software market is rapidly evolving. Is there hope that we can get the industry weaned off legacy technology with poor interoperability, horrible user interfaces? Which as a result, requires hours and hours of training only not to work very well at all. The Augmented podcast is created in association with Tulip, the frontline operations platform that connects the people, machines, devices, and the systems used in a production or logistics process in a physical location. Tulip is democratizing technology and empowering those closest to operations to solve problems. Tulip is also hiring. You can find Tulip at Tulip.co. Please share this show with colleagues who care about where industrial tech is heading. To find us on social media is easy, we are Augmented Pod on LinkedIn and Twitter, and Augmented Podcast on Facebook and YouTube: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/augmentedpod Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AugmentedPodcast/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/AugmentedPod YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5Y1gz66LxYvjJAMnN_f6PQ See you next time. Augmented--industrial conversations that matter. Special Guest: Ralph Verrilli.
Joining us this week on episode 54 of Augmented Season Two (@AugmentedPod (https://twitter.com/AugmentedPod)), is Lydia M. Di Liello (@LydiaDiLiello (https://twitter.com/LydiaDiLiello)), CEO and Founder of Capital Pricing Consultants, as well as the host of The WAM Podcast: Empowering Women in Manufacturing and Business. (@wam_podcast (https://twitter.com/wam_podcast)) The topic is: "Industrial Pricing Strategies." Augmented reveals the stories behind the new era of industrial operations, where technology will restore the agility of frontline workers. Technology is changing rapidly. What’s next in the digital factory? Who is leading the change? What are the key skills to learn and how to stay up to date on manufacturing and industry 4.0? Augmented is a podcast for industrial leaders, process engineers, and shop floor operators, hosted by futurist Trond Arne Undheim (@trondau (https://twitter.com/trondau)), and presented by Tulip Interfaces (@tulipinterfaces (https://twitter.com/tulipinterfaces)), the frontline operations platform. Trond's takeaway: I can admit to often underestimating the strategic role of pricing in determining industrial developments, new entrance, exciting business models, and testing and or scaling the products. I am not surprised that there are pricing consultants because the area is complex and you need both data and experience to play it right. The future of pricing is undoubtedly influenced by ever-evolving analytics about the purchasing habits of people in business. But is also shaped by the x-factors of the emerging future. At the end of the day, pricing is a high-priority leadership topic, but also, one that will be shaped by specialists. Thanks for listening. If you like the show subscribe to augmentedpodcast. co or on your preferred podcast player. And rate us with 5 stars. If you liked this episode, you might also like episode 41 Scaling Software Movements, episode 50, The Last Mile of Productivity, or episode 49 Lean Manufacturing in the USA. Hopefully you'll find something awesome in these or other episodes. If so, let us know by messaging us your thoughts. We would love to share your thoughts with other listeners. The Augmented podcast is created in association with Tulip, the connected frontline operations platform that connects the people, machines, devices, and the systems used in a production or logistics process in a physical location. Tulip is democratizing technology and empowering those closest to operations to solve problems. Tulip is also hiring. You can find Tulip at Tulip.co. Please share this show with colleagues who care about where industrial tech is heading. To find us on social media is easy, we are Augmented Pod on LinkedIn and Twitter, and Augmented Podcast on Facebook and YouTube: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/augmentedpod Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AugmentedPodcast/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/AugmentedPod YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5Y1gz66LxYvjJAMnN_f6PQ See you next time. Augmented--industrial conversations that matter. Special Guest: Lydia M. Di Liello.
This week on the podcast, we are in conversation with Yossi Sheffi (@YossiSheffi), Director, MIT Center for Transporation and Logistics (@MITSupplyChain) He joins us for episode 68 of Season Two of Augmented Podcast. The topic is: Industrial Supply Chain Optimization. Augmented reveals the stories behind the new era of industrial operations, where technology will restore the agility of frontline workers. Technology is changing rapidly. What’s next in the digital factory? Who is leading the change? What are the key skills to learn? How to stay up to date on manufacturing and industry 4.0? Augmented is a podcast for industrial leaders, process engineers, and shop floor operators, hosted by futurist Trond Arne Undheim (@trondau), presented by Tulip, the frontline operations platform.
The Augmented podcast is created in association with Tulip, the connected frontline operations platform that connects the people, machines, devices, and the systems used in a production or logistics process in a physical location. Tulip is democratizing technology and empowering those closest to operations to solve problems. Tulip is also hiring. You can find Tulip at Tulip.co.
Please share this show with colleagues who care about where industrial tech is heading.
To find us on social media is easy, we are Augmented Pod on LinkedIn and Twitter, and Augmented Podcast on Facebook and YouTube:
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/augmentedpod
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AugmentedPodcast/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/AugmentedPod
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5Y1gz66LxYvjJAMnN_f6PQ
See you next time. Augmented--industrial conversations that matter.
Special Guest: Yossi Sheffi.
This week on Augmented Podcast, Laila Partridge (@techstarsLaila), Managing Director of STANLEY + Techstars Accelerator (@StanleyBlkDeckr) (@Techstars) joins us for episode 59. The topic is: Early Startups Meet Industry 4.0. Augmented reveals the stories behind the new era of industrial operations, where technology will restore the agility of frontline workers. Technology is changing rapidly. What’s next in the digital factory? Who is leading the change? What are the key skills to learn? How to stay up to date on manufacturing and industry 4.0? Augmented is a podcast for industrial leaders, process engineers and shop floor operators, hosted by futurist Trond Arne Undheim (@trondau), presented by Tulip, the frontline operations platform.
The Augmented podcast is created in association with Tulip, the connected frontline operations platform that connects the people, machines, devices, and the systems used in a production or logistics process in a physical location. Tulip is democratizing technology and empowering those closest to operations to solve problems. Tulip is also hiring. You can find Tulip at Tulip.co.
Please share this show with colleagues who care about where industrial tech is heading.
To find us on social media is easy, we are Augmented Pod on LinkedIn and Twitter, and Augmented Podcast on Facebook and YouTube:
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/augmentedpod
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AugmentedPodcast/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/AugmentedPod
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5Y1gz66LxYvjJAMnN_f6PQ
See you next time. Augmented--industrial conversations that matter.
Special Guest: Laila Partridge.
Today’s guest is Jon Sobel, CEO and Co-Founder of Sight Machine (@sightmachine), for episode 62 of Augmented Podcast (@augmentedpod). The topic is: Manufacturing Excellence in Michigan. Augmented reveals the stories behind the new era of industrial operations, where technology will restore the agility of frontline workers. Technology is changing rapidly. What’s next in the digital factory? Who is leading the change? What are the key skills to learn? How to stay up to date on manufacturing and industry 4.0? Augmented is a podcast for industrial leaders, process engineers and shop floor operators, hosted by futurist Trond Arne Undheim (@trondau), presented by Tulip, the frontline operations platform.
The Augmented podcast is created in association with Tulip, the connected frontline operations platform that connects the people, machines, devices, and the systems used in a production or logistics process in a physical location. Tulip is democratizing technology and empowering those closest to operations to solve problems. Tulip is also hiring. You can find Tulip at Tulip.co.
Please share this show with colleagues who care about where industrial tech is heading.
To find us on social media is easy, we are Augmented Pod on LinkedIn and Twitter, and Augmented Podcast on Facebook and YouTube:
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/augmentedpod
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AugmentedPodcast/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/AugmentedPod
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5Y1gz66LxYvjJAMnN_f6PQ
See you next time. Augmented--industrial conversations that matter.
Special Guest: Jon Sobel.
Today’s guest is Chandra Brown, CEO, MxD for episode 58 of Augmented Podcast (@AugmentedPod (https://twitter.com/AugmentedPod)). The topic is: Manufacturing x Digital. Augmented reveals the stories behind the new era of industrial operations, where technology will restore the agility of frontline workers. Technology is changing rapidly. What’s next in the digital factory? Who is leading the change? What are the key skills to learn? How to stay up to date on manufacturing and industry 4.0? Augmented is a podcast for industrial leaders, process engineers and shop floor operators, hosted by futurist Trond Arne Undheim (@trondau (https://twitter.com/trondau)), and presented by Tulip (@tulipinterfaces (https://twitter.com/tulipinterfaces)), the frontline operations platform. In this conversation, we talked about manufacturing leadership, how to achieve digital manufacturing success, and fighting the skills and perception gap. We also touched on the activities of Chicago-based manufacturing institute MxD, and the future outlook of the industry. Trond's takeaway: Manufacturing leadership is in good hands with Chicago-based manufacturing institute MxD. Digital manufacturing success takes constant R&D, experimentation, and learning from failure and success. If MxD’s approach took hold, the skills and perception gaps that persist would start to dissipate. As long as idea exchange continues to accelerate, the future outlook of the industry is bright. Thanks for listening. If you liked the show, subscribe at Augmentedpodcast.co or in your preferred podcast player, and rate us with five stars. If you liked this episode, you might also like episode 30, Rethinking Workforce Learning, 17, Smart Manufacturing for All, or 7, Work of the Future. Hopefully, you'll find something awesome in these or other episodes. If so, do let us know by messaging us, we would love to share your thoughts with other listeners. The Augmented podcast is created in association with Tulip, the connected frontline operations platform that connects the people, machines, devices, and the systems used in a production or logistics process in a physical location. Tulip is democratizing technology and empowering those closest to operations to solve problems. Tulip is also hiring. You can find Tulip at Tulip.co. Please share this show with colleagues who care about where industrial tech is heading. To find us on social media is easy, we are Augmented Pod on LinkedIn and Twitter, and Augmented Podcast on Facebook and YouTube: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/augmentedpod Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AugmentedPodcast/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/AugmentedPod YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5Y1gz66LxYvjJAMnN_f6PQ See you next time. Augmented--industrial conversations that matter. Special Guest: Chandra Brown.
Today's guest is Harry C. Moser, Founder and President, Reshoring Initiative (@reshorenow (https://twitter.com/reshorenow)) on episode 60 of Augmented Podcast (@AugmentedPod (https://twitter.com/AugmentedPod)). Augmented reveals the stories behind the new era of industrial operations, where technology will restore the agility of frontline workers. Technology is changing rapidly. What’s next in the digital factory? Who is leading the change? What are the key skills to learn? How to stay up to date on manufacturing and industry 4.0? Augmented is a podcast for industrial leaders, process engineers and shop floor operators, hosted by futurist Trond Arne Undheim (@trondau (https://twitter.com/trondau)), presented by Tulip (@tulipinterfaces (https://twitter.com/tulipinterfaces)), the frontline operations platform. In this conversation, we talked about what reshoring is, why it is important now, what data there is on it, what the Reshoring Initiative is, and what the future holds for manufacturing. Trond's takeaway: Reshoring remains a controversial topic. While the effects may be positive initially what does it mean for the cost and quality of existing supply chains? Is it even realistic to reshore big chunks of a globalized value chain? Which aspects are strategic and which are not? There are many questions, but the projections are alluring and domestically, in most traditional mass manufacturing states, it remains a popular topic and one would think the sustainability effects of more localized production would be a good thing. What's clear is that every nation, and particularly the US, depends on an educated workforce to be competitive. The real question might be: what does it take to create a more competitive world where opportunity exists on every shore? Thanks for listening. If you liked the show, subscribe at Augmentedpodcast.co or in your preferred podcast player, and rate us with five stars. If you liked this episode, you might also like episode 50, The Last Mile of Productivity, episode 49, Lean manufacturing in the USA, or episode 18, Transforming Foundational Industries. Hopefully, you'll find something awesome in these or other episodes. If so, do let us know by messaging us, we would love to share your thoughts with other listeners. The Augmented podcast is created in association with Tulip (@tulipinterfaces (https://twitter.com/tulipinterfaces)), the frontline operations platform that connects the people, machines, devices, and the systems used in a production or logistics process in a physical location. Tulip is democratizing technology and empowering those closest to operations to solve problems. Tulip is also hiring. You can find Tulip at Tulip.co. Please share this show with colleagues who care about where industry and especially industrial tech is heading. To find us on social media is easy, we are Augmented Pod on LinkedIn and Twitter, and Augmented Podcast on Facebook and YouTube: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/augmentedpod Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AugmentedPodcast/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/AugmentedPod YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5Y1gz66LxYvjJAMnN_f6PQ See you next time. Augmented--industrial conversations that matter. Special Guest: Harry C. Moser.
Our guest is Marius Schmiedt, Head of Operational Excellence, DMG MORI (@dmgmorieu (https://twitter.com/dmgmorieu)) for this episode of Augmented Podcast (@AugmentedPod (https://twitter.com/AugmentedPod)). Augmented reveals the stories behind the new era of industrial operations, where technology will restore the agility of frontline workers. Technology is changing rapidly. What’s next in the digital factory? Who is leading the change? What are the key skills to learn? How to stay up to date on manufacturing and industry 4.0? Augmented is a podcast for industrial leaders, process engineers and shop floor operators, hosted by futurist Trond Arne Undheim (@trondau (https://twitter.com/trondau)), presented by Tulip (@tulipinterfaces (https://twitter.com/tulipinterfaces)), the frontline operations platform. In this conversation, they talk about the operational aspects of industrial manufacturer DMG Mori's pathbreaking digital transformation. [Please note that this episode was recorded in November of 2021.] Trond's takeaway: Deep industrial transformation is not just a digital challenge but requires a fundamentally different operational mindset, beyond Lean Management, one that more fully embraces the potential of the human, industrial frontline worker. That shift is a journey, not a switch. On the other hand, the impact over time, measured in months not in years, is not only an immense return on investment but also a transition from dirty, dangerous and dull jobs to ever cleaner, safer and more exciting jobs. Thanks for listening. If you liked the show, subscribe at Augmentedpodcast.co or in your preferred podcast player, and rate us with five stars. If you liked this episode, you might also like episode 20, The Digitalization of Körber, episode 23, Digital Manufacturing in the Cloud, or episode 27, Industry 4.0 Tools. Hopefully, you'll find something awesome in these or other episodes. If so, do let us know by messaging us, we would love to share your thoughts with other listeners. The Augmented podcast is created in association with Tulip (@tulipinterfaces (https://twitter.com/tulipinterfaces)), connected frontline operations platform that connects the people, machines, devices, and the systems used in a production or logistics process in a physical location. Tulip is democratizing technology and empowering those closest to operations to solve problems. Tulip is also hiring. You can find Tulip at Tulip.co. Please share this show with colleagues who care about where industry and especially industrial tech is heading. To find us on social media is easy, we are Augmented Pod on LinkedIn and Twitter, and Augmented Podcast on Facebook and YouTube: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/augmentedpod Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AugmentedPodcast/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/AugmentedPod YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5Y1gz66LxYvjJAMnN_f6PQ Augmented--industrial conversations that matter. See you next time. Special Guest: Marius Schmiedt.
Today our guest is Jason Dietrich, Head of Commercial Operations, Tulip (@tulipinterfaces (https://twitter.com/tulipinterfaces)), for episode 73 on Augmented Podcast (@AugmentedPod (https://twitter.com/AugmentedPod)). Augmented reveals the stories behind the new era of industrial operations, where technology will restore the agility of frontline workers. Technology is changing rapidly. What’s next in the digital factory? Who is leading the change? What are the key skills to learn? How to stay up to date on manufacturing and industry 4.0? Augmented is a podcast for industrial leaders, process engineers and shop floor operators, hosted by futurist Trond Arne Undheim (@trondau (https://twitter.com/trondau)), presented by Tulip, the frontline operations platform. In this conversation, we talk about the following: What is frontline operations? What are the specific needs industrial companies have when they want to digitize their operations? What are some key Tulip use cases? What will industrial operations look like over the next decade? Trond's takeaway: Frontline operations is an increasingly crucial business function whereby a function that previously was considered back office or lower priority, that of the industrial worker, receives increased attention. When the frontline gets digitally augmented and managerially supported, workers feel empowered just like white collar knowledge workers with desks. Connecting machines to serve people, simplifying technology implementation, operators can carry the key task of uniting industrial production with consumption needs. Over time, this might eradicate inefficiencies in the supply chain. This development will not only shape industrial operations over the next decade, in some companies, it is already in place. Thanks for listening. If you liked the show, subscribe at Augmentedpodcast.co or in your preferred podcast player, and rate us with five stars. If you liked this episode, you might also like episode 50, The Last Mile of Productivity, episode 49, Lean manufacturing in the USA, and episode 41, Scaling Software Movements. Hopefully, you'll find something awesome in these or other episodes. If so, do let us know by messaging us, we would love to share your thoughts with other listeners. The Augmented podcast is created in association with Tulip, connected frontline operations platform that connects the people, machines, devices, and the systems used in a production or logistics process in a physical location. Tulip is democratizing technology and empowering those closest to operations to solve problems. Tulip is also hiring. You can find Tulip at Tulip.co. Please share this show with colleagues who care about where industry and especially industrial tech is heading. To find us on social media is easy, we are Augmented Pod on LinkedIn and Twitter, and Augmented Podcast on Facebook and YouTube: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/augmentedpod Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AugmentedPodcast/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/AugmentedPod YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5Y1gz66LxYvjJAMnN_f6PQ Augmented--industrial conversations that matter. See you next time. Special Guest: Jason Dietrich.
Our guest is Joe Sullivan (@sullivan_joe (https://twitter.com/sullivan_joe)), host of The Manufacturing Executive podcast and Founder, Gorilla 76 (@gorilla76 (https://twitter.com/gorilla76)). This is episode 64 of the Augmented Podcast (@AugmentedPod (https://twitter.com/AugmentedPod)), the topic is: Marketing Mindset in Manufacturing. In this conversation, we talked about marketing tips for manufacturers, best practices from foundations to demand generation, distinguishing yourself by consistency. Augmented reveals the stories behind the new era of industrial operations, where technology will restore the agility of frontline workers. Technology is changing rapidly. What’s next in the digital factory? Who is leading the change? What are the key skills to learn? How to stay up to date on manufacturing and industry 4.0? Augmented is a podcast for industrial leaders, process engineers and shop floor operators, hosted by futurist Trond Arne Undheim (@trondau (https://twitter.com/trondau)), presented by Tulip (@tulipinterfaces (https://twitter.com/tulipinterfaces)), the frontline operations platform. Trond's takeaway: The challenge of developing a credible yet effective marketing mindset is not unique to manufacturing, but it may be unusually underutilized in this sector. Industrial products and services are notoriously lagging behind the consumer market in terms of the sophistication of its communication, messaging, and use of social media. As industry seeks increasing relevance in people's life, or even seeks to recruit new talent from younger generations, that needs to change. Luckily, there are tools and practices to learn from and they are not rocket science, but take a willingness to commit. Thanks for listening. If you liked the show, subscribe at Augmentedpodcast.co or in your preferred podcast player, and rate us with five stars. If you liked this episode, you might also like episode 18, Transforming Foundational Industries, episode 46, Manufacturing Training in Massachusetts, or episode 53, Manufacturing Millennials . Hopefully, you'll find something awesome in these or other episodes. If so, do let us know by messaging us, we would love to share your thoughts with other listeners. The Augmented podcast is created in association with Tulip, connected frontline operations platform that connects the people, machines, devices, and the systems used in a production or logistics process in a physical location. Tulip is democratizing technology and empowering those closest to operations to solve problems. Tulip is also hiring. You can find Tulip at Tulip.co. Please share this show with colleagues who care about where industry and especially industrial tech is heading. To find us on social media is easy, we are Augmented Pod on LinkedIn and Twitter, and Augmented Podcast on Facebook and YouTube: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/augmentedpod Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AugmentedPodcast/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/AugmentedPod YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5Y1gz66LxYvjJAMnN_f6PQ Augmented--industrial conversations that matter. See you next time. Special Guest: Joe Sullivan.
Today's guest on episode 61 is Andy Burton, Managing Director at Double H Nurseries Ltd (@DoubleHUK). In this conversation, we talk about the experience implementing the Tulip digital app in the midst of COVID-19 lockdown in the busiest flower season to try to save his flowers and turn on e-commerce without spending a fortune in time and resources and without deep digital skills in his workforce.
Augmented reveals the stories behind the new era of industrial operations, where technology will restore the agility of frontline workers. Technology is changing rapidly. What’s next in the digital factory? Who is leading the change? What are the key skills to learn? How to stay up to date on manufacturing and industry 4.0? Augmented is a podcast for industrial leaders, process engineers and shop floor operators, hosted by futurist Trond Arne Undheim (@trondau), presented by Tulip, the frontline operations platform.
Trond's takeaway:
Frontline operations is about so much more than technology, but getting technology right is often about picking the right technology for the skillset of your workforce. Implementing tech must be followed up by a complete tie-in with all your business processes, otherwise you enable speed in one part of the process and backlog in another. No-code apps make this easier, but not self evident.
The Augmented podcast is created in association with Tulip, connected frontline operations platform that connects the people, machines, devices, and the systems used in a production or logistics process in a physical location. Tulip is democratizing technology and empowering those closest to operations to solve problems. Tulip is also hiring. You can find Tulip at Tulip.co.
Please share this show with colleagues who care about where industry and especially industrial tech is heading. To find us on social media is easy, we are Augmented Pod on LinkedIn and Twitter, and Augmented Podcast on Facebook and YouTube:
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/augmentedpod
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AugmentedPodcast/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/AugmentedPod
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5Y1gz66LxYvjJAMnN_f6PQ
Augmented--industrial conversations that matter. See you next time.
Special Guest: Andy Burton.
In episode 70 of the Augmented podcast (@AugmentedPod), our guest is Marc Nash, Vice President of Manufacturing at Outset Medical, Inc. (@OutsetMedical). In this conversation, we talked about how Outset Medical is disrupting the dialysis industry by adopting industry 4.0 technologies.
Augmented reveals the stories behind the new era of industrial operations, where technology will restore the agility of frontline workers. Technology is changing rapidly. What’s next in the digital factory? Who is leading the change? What are the key skills to learn? How to stay up to date on manufacturing and industry 4.0? Augmented is a podcast for industrial leaders, process engineers and shop floor operators, hosted by futurist Trond Arne Undheim (@trondau), presented by Tulip, the frontline operations platform.
Trond's takeaway:
The Medical Device Industry is not the easiest industry to innovate within. Regulatory constraints, the complexity of managing software and hardware together, and staying on top of the logistical intricacies of the health care market, all of that complicates things. No Digital Lean journey is easy, but the fact that Outset Medical managed to build a greenfield factory in Tijuana, Mexico, with a bottom-up approach to process improvement through no-code apps that empower their workers, is an inspiring story.
Thanks for listening. If you liked the show, subscribe at Augmentedpodcast.co or in your preferred podcast player, and rate us with five stars. If you liked this episode, you might also like episode 50, The Last Mile of Productivity, episode 33, Sustainable Manufacturing at Scale, or episode 63, Digitizing Medical Device Operations. Hopefully, you'll find something awesome in these or other episodes. If so, do let us know by messaging us, we would love to share your thoughts with other listeners.
The Augmented podcast is created in association with Tulip, connected frontline operations platform that connects the people, machines, devices, and the systems used in a production or logistics process in a physical location. Tulip is democratizing technology and empowering those closest to operations to solve problems. Tulip is also hiring. You can find Tulip at Tulip.co.
Please share this show with colleagues who care about where industry and especially industrial tech is heading. To find us on social media is easy, we are Augmented Pod on LinkedIn and Twitter, and Augmented Podcast on Facebook and YouTube:
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/augmentedpod
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AugmentedPodcast/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/AugmentedPod
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5Y1gz66LxYvjJAMnN_f6PQ
Augmented--industrial conversations that matter. See you next time.
Special Guest: Marc Nash.
In episode 63 of the podcast, the topic is: Digitizing Medical Device Operations . Our guest is Dan Ron, Lead Engineer at Dentsply (@DentsplySirona)). Augmented is a podcast for industrial leaders, process engineers and shop floor operators, hosted by futurist Trond Arne Undheim [(@trondau), presented by Tulip.
In this conversation, we talk about Implementing tulip and i4.0 concepts into a fast pace highly customized med device manufacturing. Digitizing work instructions. Simplification. Personalizing medical device product operations. The future of the industrial frontline worker.
Trond's takeaway: So much of what determines success with the rollout of technology in manufacturing has to do with simplification. You aim to simplify, you make the process simple, and you choose simple apps to start with. The end result is a simpler work process which makes you more efficient. If any of those steps are complex, you risk adding further complexity to an already messy reality of complicated supply chains, work processes, and workforce challenges. That's why customization of industry 4.0 approaches heavily depends on people who lead with clarity.
Thanks for listening. If you liked the show, subscribe at Augmentedpodcast.co or in your preferred podcast player, and rate us with five stars. If you liked this episode, you might also like episode 36, Digital Lean, episode 29, The Automated Microfactory or episode 8, Productizing Quality. Hopefully, you'll find something awesome in these or other episodes. If so, do let us know by messaging us, we would love to share your thoughts with other listeners.
The Augmented podcast is created in association with Tulip, connected frontline operations platform that connects the people, machines, devices, and the systems used in a production or logistics process i n a physical location. Tulip is democratizing technology and empowering those closest to operations to solve problems. Tulip is also hiring. You can find Tulip at Tulip.co.
Please share this show with colleagues who care about where industry and especially industrial tech is heading. To find us on social media is easy, we are Augmented Pod on LinkedIn and Twitter, and Augmented Podcast on Facebook and YouTube:
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/augmentedpod
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AugmentedPodcast/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/AugmentedPod
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5Y1gz66LxYvjJAMnN_f6PQ
See you next time.
Special Guest: Dan Ron.
In episode 66 of the podcast, the topic is: Bridging the Physical-Digital Divide in Industrial Tech. Our guest is Rony Kubat (@kubat), CTO and co-founder, Tulip
In this conversation, we talk about the complexity of the shop floor and programming a physical-digital environment. What does Digital Lean mean to you? What is augmentation? What's next in industrial tech?
Augmented is a podcast for industrial leaders, process engineers and shop floor operators, hosted by futurist Trond Arne Undheim (@trondau), presented by Tulip (@tulipinterfaces), the frontline operations platform.
Trond's takeaway:
The physical-digital environment is no joke. When you speak with a real technologist who not only has imagined what the future would look like, but who is involved in building it, integrating software and hardware on the factory floor, you realize how difficult it will be to transform industrial work. It is not just about industrial tech, it is about people. It is not just about neat software, or fancy hardware. It all has to work together. And, more importantly, it has to fit into the overall context of what people are already doing.
Thanks for listening. If you liked the show, subscribe at Augmentedpodcast.co or in your preferred podcast player, and rate us with five stars. If you liked this episode, you might also like episode 44, No-code for IoT in the Cloud, episode 47, Industrial Machine Learning or episode 29, The Automated Microfactory.
The Augmented podcast is created in association with Tulip, connected frontline operations platform that connects the people, machines, devices, and the systems used in a production or logistics process in a physical location. Tulip is democratizing technology and empowering those closest to operations to solve problems. Tulip is also hiring. You can find Tulip at Tulip.co.
Please share this show with colleagues who care about where industry and especially industrial tech is heading. To find us on social media is easy, we are Augmented Pod on LinkedIn and Twitter, and Augmented Podcast on Facebook and YouTube:
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/augmentedpod
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AugmentedPodcast/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/AugmentedPod
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5Y1gz66LxYvjJAMnN_f6PQ
Augmented--industrial conversations that matter. See you next time.
Special Guest: Rony Kubat.
In episode 65 of the Augmented podcast, the topic is: The 10 Best Manufacturing Podcasts for 2021. Today, we we are reviewing manufacturing podcasts. We talk about why you should listen to manufacturing podcasts, what characterizes the best ones, what the top ten manufacturing podcasts are, in our opinion, and what makes a podcast great. The show is based on Tulip's blog post, The 10 Best Manufacturing Podcasts for 2021.
Augmented is a podcast for industrial leaders, process engineers and shop floor operators, hosted by futurist Trond Arne Undheim (@trondau). The Augmented podcast is created in association with Tulip, a connected frontline operations platform that connects the people, machines, devices, and the systems used in a production or logistics process in a physical location. Tulip is democratizing technology and empowering those closest to operations. Tulip is also hiring. You can find Tulip at Tulip.co.
Trond's takeaway:
Manufacturing industry podcasts are emerging as a practical way to stay up to date, because you can listen on the fly: on your commute, while driving, when on a break, on your run, or even on the shop floor (if allowed). This is particularly useful in manufacturing, where a lot of the work consists of running around, standing up and being away from your desk (many workers don’t even have desks). At Tulip, where we are supporting the next generation of frontline operations, sharing knowledge and experience right when you need it, in a simple and accessible way, is a high priority. We currently have two podcasts of our own, Augmented, featuring industrial thought leaders, and Behind the Ops, talking to engineers and operators, which we have not included in this ranking (although we think they are great, too, but others can judge). If you have suggestions for podcasts that deserve a place among top manufacturing podcasts, please let us know.
Thanks for listening. If you liked the show, subscribe at Augmentedpodcast.co or in your preferred podcast player, and rate us with five stars. If you liked this episode, you might also like episode 82, Making Industry Sexy with podcaster Scott MacKenzie host of the Industrial Talk podcast, or episode 53, Manufacturing Millennials with video podcaster Jake Hall, or the upcoming episode 64, Marketing Mindset in Manufacturing with podcaster Joe Sullivan, host of The Manufacturing Executive podcast. Hopefully, you'll find something awesome in these or other episodes. If so, do let us know by messaging us, we would love to share your thoughts with other listeners.
Please share this show with colleagues who care about where industry and especially industrial tech is heading. To find us on social media is easy, we are Augmented Pod on LinkedIn and Twitter, and Augmented Podcast on Facebook and YouTube:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/augmentedpod
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AugmentedPodcast/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/AugmentedPod
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5Y1gz66LxYvjJAMnN_f6PQ
Augmented--industrial conversations that matter.
In episode 69 of the podcast, the topic is: How 5G Enables Manufacturing. Our guests are Rowan Högman, Head of 5G Industry Collaboration, Ericsson and Jeff Travers, Customer Success Lead - Dedicated Networks, Ericsson.
In this conversation, we talk about a new Ericsson report on how 5G Enables Manufacturing (Ericsson Industry Lab). We explore some surprising findings, discuss industry trends, as well as the current and future use cases as wireless networks take another step towards being trusted on the shop floor and they muse on the ultimate impact of 5G.
Augmented is a podcast for industrial leaders, process engineers and shop floor operators, hosted by futurist Trond Arne Undheim (@trondau), presented by Tulip (@tulipinterfaces), the frontline operations platform.
Trond's takeaway:
5G isn't just another generation wireless networks, it is a game changer for trust, reliability, and industrial performance at the edge, that last mile which fixed broadband has struggled with. What remains to be seen is how widespread the rollout will be and, of course, how innovative industry will be in making use of the new network.
Thanks for listening. If you liked the show, subscribe at Augmentedpodcast.co or in your preferred podcast player, and rate us with five stars. If you liked this episode, you might also like episode 44, No-code for IoT in the Cloud, episode 21, The Future of Digital in Manufacturing or episode 25, Industrial Tracking: Drones, Warehouses and Theme Parks. Hopefully, you'll find something awesome in these or other episodes. If so, do let us know by messaging us, we would love to share your thoughts with other listeners.
The Augmented podcast is created in association with Tulip, connected frontline operations platform that connects the people, machines, devices, and the systems used in a production or logistics process in a physical location. Tulip is democratizing technology and empowering those closest to operations to solve problems. Tulip is also hiring. You can find Tulip at Tulip.co.
Please share this show with colleagues who care about where industry and especially industrial tech is heading. To find us on social media is easy, we are Augmented Pod on LinkedIn and Twitter, and Augmented Podcast on Facebook and YouTube:
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/augmentedpod
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AugmentedPodcast/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/AugmentedPod
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5Y1gz66LxYvjJAMnN_f6PQ
Augmented--industrial conversations that matter. See you next time.
Special Guests: Jeff Travers and Rowan Högman.
In episode 34 of the podcast, the topic is: Factories in Space. Our guest is William Bruey (@WillBruey), CEO and co-founder at Varda Space Industries.
- William Bruey (@WillBruey): https://www.linkedin.com/in/will-bruey-8a2b5040/
- Varda Space Industries (@Vardaspace): https://varda.com/
In this conversation, we talk about: Why build a factory in space? How R&D from the International Space Station facilitated this new development. What space manufacturing will entail in the short term. What the benefits are likely to be in terms of manipulating the terrestrial physical constraints of crystallization and sedimentation. We discuss what the near immediate use cases are, such as better semiconductors and fiber optics. We cover the futuristic use cases including 3D printing human organs without scaffolding.
Augmented (@Augmentedpod) is a podcast for industrial leaders, process engineers and shop floor operators, hosted by futurist Trond Arne Undheim (@trondau), presented by Tulip, the frontline operations platform, and associated with MFG.works, the industrial upskilling community launched at the World Economic Forum.
Trond's takeaway: Factories in space are closer than we think, and the reason is that NASA and others have spent 20 years doing R&D at the International Space Station. All that work can now come to fruition, but not as within the constraints of that remote vessel, but autonomously by deriving the results and building an independent rocket, lab and reentry capability. How exciting is that? Will it expand industrial performance on earth in this decade? What will it mean for further space exploration in the next? Change is afoot, but science, and space, are still endless frontiers. That might be a good thing, or we might get cocky.
Thanks for listening. If you liked the show, subscribe at Augmentedpodcast.co or in your preferred podcast player, and rate us with five stars. If you liked this episode, you might also like episode 29, The Automated Microfactory, episode 33, Sustainable Manufacturing at Scale, or episode 13, Get Manufacturing Superpowers. Hopefully, you'll find something awesome in these or other episodes.
The Augmented podcast is created in association with Tulip, connected frontline operations platform that connects the people, machines, devices, and the systems used in a production or logistics process in a physical location. Tulip is democratizing technology and empowering those closest to operations to solve problems. Tulip is also hiring. You can find Tulip at Tulip.co.
To find us on social media is easy, we are Augmented Pod on LinkedIn and Twitter, and Augmented Podcast on Facebook and YouTube:
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/augmentedpod
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AugmentedPodcast/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/AugmentedPod
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5Y1gz66LxYvjJAMnN_f6PQ
Augmented--industrial conversations that matter.
Special Guest: William Bruey.
In episode 52 of the podcast (@AugmentedPod), the topic is: Unplanned Downtime. Our guest is Simon Kampa, CEO & co-founder, Senseye (@senseyeIO).
In this conversation, we talk about Senseye's report, The True Cost of Downtime, investigating the impact of machine failure and unplanned downtime at the world’s largest manufacturers. We also discuss the coming consolidation of the industry due to technology maturity and customer preference for simplicity, quality, and scale. We briefly discuss the need for industrial interoperability in order to achieve the impact the industry desires.
Augmented is a podcast for industrial leaders, process engineers and shop floor operators, hosted by futurist Trond Arne Undheim (@trondau), presented by Tulip, the frontline operations platform, and associated with MFG.works, the industrial upskilling community launched at the World Economic Forum. Augmented--the industry 4.0 podcast.
Trond's takeaway: The True Cost of Downtime in manufacturing is enormous. Interrupting factory production is the last thing you want, yet it's the most common response to anomalies in the production process. Does it have to be that way? Realtime analytics carries the promise of predictive maintenance which can be carried out in downcycles or certainly more opportunistically.
Thanks for listening. If you liked the show, subscribe at Augmentedpodcast.co or in your preferred podcast player, and rate us with five stars. If you liked this episode, you might also like episode 8, Productizing Quality, episode 42, Business Beyond Buzzwords, and episode 19, Machine Learning in Manufacturing. Hopefully, you'll find something awesome in these or other episodes. If so, do let us know by messaging us, we would love to share your thoughts with other listeners.
The Augmented podcast is created in association with Tulip, connected frontline operations platform that connects the people, machines, devices, and the systems used in a production or logistics process in a physical location. Tulip is democratizing technology and empowering those closest to operations to solve problems. Tulip is also hiring. You can find Tulip at Tulip.co.
Please share this show with colleagues who care about where industry and especially industrial tech is heading. To find us on social media is easy, we are Augmented Pod on LinkedIn and Twitter, and Augmented Podcast on Facebook and YouTube:
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/augmentedpod
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AugmentedPodcast/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/AugmentedPod
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5Y1gz66LxYvjJAMnN_f6PQ
See you next time. Augmented--industrial conversations that matter.
Special Guest: Simon Kampa.
In episode 44 of the podcast, the topic is: No-code for IoT in the Cloud. Our guest is Rob Rastovich, CTO of ThingLogix (@ThingLogix): https://www.thinglogix.com/
In this conversation, we talk about what the Internet of Things (IoT) means for industrial business models. We discuss the impact of connected devices and the subscription based economy on industries as distant from the initial IT waves as agriculture.
Augmented is a podcast for industrial leaders, process engineers and shop floor operators, hosted by futurist Trond Arne Undheim (@trondau), presented by Tulip, the frontline operations platform, and associated with MFG.works, the industrial upskilling community launched at the World Economic Forum. Augmented--the industry 4.0 podcast.
Trond's takeaway: The Internet of Things (IoT) is about to complete its hype cycle. We might finally see the smart cities we were promised in the nineties. With IoT, digital benefits comes to infrastructure, the last mile of sunk assets, long timelines, and nearly forgotten, but hard-earned public goods.
Thanks for listening. If you liked the show, subscribe at Augmentedpodcast.co or in your preferred podcast player, and rate us with five stars. If you liked this episode, you might also like episode 29, The Automated Microfactory, episode 33, Sustainable Manufacturing at Scale, or episode 23, Digital Manufacturing in the Cloud. Hopefully, you'll find something awesome in these or other episodes. If so, do let us know by messaging us, we would love to share your thoughts with other listeners.
The Augmented podcast is created in association with Tulip, connected frontline operations platform that connects the people, machines, devices, and the systems used in a production or logistics process in a physical location. Tulip is democratizing technology and empowering those closest to operations to solve problems. Tulip is also hiring. You can find Tulip at Tulip.co.
Please share this show with colleagues who care about where industry and especially industrial tech is heading. To find us on social media is easy, we are Augmented Pod on LinkedIn and Twitter, and Augmented Podcast on Facebook and YouTube:
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/augmentedpod
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AugmentedPodcast/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/AugmentedPod
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5Y1gz66LxYvjJAMnN_f6PQ
See you next time. Augmented--industrial conversations that matter.
Special Guest: Rob Rastovich.
Augmented reveals the stories behind the new era of industrial operations, where technology will restore the agility of frontline workers.
In episode 53 of the podcast (@AugmentedPod), the topic is: Manufacturing Millennials. Our guest is Jake Hall, podcaster, The Manufacturing Millennial and Business Development Manager at Feyen Zylstra, a Grand Rapids, Michigan, US-based systems integrator.
In this conversation, we talk about The future generation in manufacturing, how we convince young people as well as how companies can make themselves attractive to this generation, and even more importantly, empowering the existing workforce.
Augmented is a podcast for industry leaders and operators, hosted by futurist Trond Arne Undheim, presented by Tulip.co, the frontline operations platform, and associated with MFG.works, the industrial upskilling community launched at the World Economic Forum. Each episode dives deep into a contemporary topic of concern across the industry and airs at 9 am US Eastern Time every Wednesday. Augmented--the industry 4.0 podcast--industrial conversations that matter.
After listening to this episode, check out:
- The Manufacturing Millennial: https://www.themanufacturingmillennial.com/
- Feyen-Zylstre (@feyenzylstra): https://www.feyenzylstra.com/
- Jake Hall: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jacobrhall/
Trond's takeaway: Millennials are the key to the future of manufacturing, not just because they are a talent pool needed in the workforce but because they have the right mindset for change which is so beneficial to a manufacturing industry faced with the challenges and opportunities of industry 4.0 or smart manufacturing using digital solutions.
Thanks for listening. If you liked the show, subscribe at Augmentedpodcast.co or in your preferred podcast player, and rate us with five stars. If you liked this episode, you might also like episode 11, Empowering Workers to Innovate, episode 3, Reimagine Training, or episode 12, Enterprise Wide Quality of Manufacturing.
Augmented--upskilling the workforce for industry 4.0 frontline operations.
Special Guest: Jake Hall.
In episode 50 of the podcast (@AugmentedPod), the topic is: The Last Mile of Productivity. Our guest is Laurent Vernerey, former CEO Schneider Electric USA, and member of Tulip's Board of Directors.
In this conversation, we talk about the digital transformation journey for the manufacturing industry, as seen through the lens of Schneider Electric. From the early days where those that did not digitize got lost, to being able to track, capture and monitor, to today's reality which is all about change management and being able to achieve scale and into the future of agile, lean and digital which entails scaling and squeezing the value out of hardware implementation as well as drastically improving the customer experience.
Augmented is a podcast for industrial leaders, process engineers and shop floor operators, hosted by futurist Trond Arne Undheim (@trondau), presented by Tulip, the frontline operations platform, and associated with MFG.works, the industrial upskilling community launched at the World Economic Forum.
Trond's takeaway: Benefiting from the industry luminaries I talk to every week, I'm eyeing a day when hardware, meaning physical objects of technological origin can scale at the speed and magnitude of software. This will create a whole new world, one where the sky's not the limit, in fact. We need it, because it might arrive just in time for us to avoid the complete destruction of our ecosystem--or at least to adapt to it--a set of issues we will tackle in forthcoming episodes about sustainability. For now, let's just work on the last mile, turning analytical improvements into intelligently preparing for unprecedented scale change in industrial manufacturing and innovation, all of which will be sorely needed soon enough.
Thanks for listening. If you liked the show, subscribe at Augmentedpodcast.co or in your preferred podcast player, and rate us with five stars. If you liked this episode, you might also like episode 33, Sustainable Manufacturing at Scale, episode 42, Business Beyond Buzzwords, or episode 23, Digital Manufacturing in the Cloud. Hopefully, you'll find something awesome in these or other episodes. If so, do let us know by messaging us, we would love to share your thoughts with other listeners.
The Augmented podcast is created in association with Tulip, connected frontline operations platform that connects the people, machines, devices, and the systems used in a production or logistics process in a physical location. Tulip is democratizing technology and empowering those closest to operations to solve problems. Tulip is also hiring. You can find Tulip at Tulip.co.
Please share this show with colleagues who care about where industry and especially industrial tech is heading. To find us on social media is easy, we are Augmented Pod on LinkedIn and Twitter, and Augmented Podcast on Facebook and YouTube:
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/augmentedpod
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AugmentedPodcast/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/AugmentedPod
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5Y1gz66LxYvjJAMnN_f6PQ
See you next time. Augmented--industrial conversations that matter.
Special Guest: Laurent Vernerey.
In episode 51 of the podcast (@AugmentedPod), the topic is: Designing Industrial Reality in 3D. Our guest is Marcelo Coelho (@marcelocoelho), Head of Design at Formlabs and Lecturer at MIT. In this conversation, we talk about the emerging practices of industrial design in additive manufacturing using 3D printing, machine learning and a high degree of customization.
After listening to this episode, check out:
- Formlabs: https://formlabs.com/
- Marcelo Coelho: https://cmarcelo.com/
Augmented is a podcast for industrial leaders, process engineers and shop floor operators, hosted by futurist Trond Arne Undheim (@trondau), presented by Tulip, the frontline operations platform, and associated with MFG.works, the industrial upskilling community launched at the World Economic Forum. Augmented--the industry 4.0 podcast.
In this conversation, we talked about the emerging practices of industrial design in additive manufacturing.
Trond's takeaway: Making products accessible is hard work. Industrial design is not an afterthought. The best companies are getting good at it. Why? Because they are bringing customers closer to them, to learn and explore. In fact, people are potentially getting closer to the making process than ever before. We have the opportunity to literally shape our future, our surroundings, and the things we touch, use, work with and enjoy in our leisure. That's a whole other level of customization. Forget personalization, this is way more than being able to adapt to your personality, it is attuning to your very purpose and context as a situated human being with everchanging resources, needs and interests.
Thanks for listening. If you liked the show, subscribe at Augmentedpodcast.co or in your preferred podcast player, and rate us with five stars. If you liked this episode, you might also like episode 36, Digital Lean, episode 29, The Automated Microfactory or episode 33, Sustainable Manufacturing at Scale. Hopefully, you'll find something awesome in these or other episodes. If so, do let us know by messaging us, we would love to share your thoughts with other listeners.
The Augmented podcast is created in association with Tulip, connected frontline operations platform that connects the people, machines, devices, and the systems used in a production or logistics process in a physical location. Tulip is democratizing technology and empowering those closest to operations to solve problems. Tulip is also hiring. You can find Tulip at Tulip.co.
Please share this show with colleagues who care about where industry and especially industrial tech is heading. To find us on social media is easy, we are Augmented Pod on LinkedIn and Twitter, and Augmented Podcast on Facebook and YouTube:
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/augmentedpod
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AugmentedPodcast/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/AugmentedPod
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5Y1gz66LxYvjJAMnN_f6PQ
See you next time. Augmented--industrial conversations that matter.
Special Guest: Marcelo Coelho.
In episode 28 of the Augmented podcast (@AugmentedPod), the topic is: Making Industry Sexy. Our guest is Scott MacKenzie, Host of the Industrial Talk podcast (@IndustrialTalk), https://industrialtalk.com/
In this conversation, we talk about Scott's personal journey from humble beginnings as a lathing contractor prepping houses for plastering and certified lineman climbing utility towers going to night school MBA to industrial marketer and educator and eventually becoming the leading independent industry podcast. We discuss his unique approach to industrial marketing and networking, focused on conversations to make introductions that turn into business. We chart the road ahead for industrial leaders, industrial tech, and marketing.
Augmented is a podcast for industrial leaders, process engineers and shop floor operators, hosted by futurist Trond Arne Undheim (@trondau), and presented by Tulip, the frontline operations platform, and associated with MFG.works, the industrial upskilling community launched at the World Economic Forum. Augmented--the industry 4.0 podcast.
Trond's takeaway: Building relationships is the foundation of business and should be the mainstay of marketing, even in the digital era. Podcasts have emerged as a powerful way to structure industrial conversations, and the Industrial Talk podcast is a masterful example of combining content marketing with authenticity, voice and a strong mission.
Thanks for listening. If you liked the show, subscribe at Augmentedpodcast.co or in your preferred podcast player, and rate us with five stars. If you liked this episode, you might also like episode 39, Covering Industrial Innovation, episode 26, Manufacturing in Massachusetts, or episode 4, A Renaissance in Manufacturing. Hopefully, you'll find something awesome in these or other episodes. If so, do let us know by messaging us, we would love to share your thoughts with other listeners.
The Augmented podcast is created in association with Tulip, connected frontline operations platform that connects the people, machines, devices, and the systems used in a production or logistics process in a physical location. Tulip is democratizing technology and empowering those closest to operations to solve problems. Tulip is also hiring. You can find Tulip at Tulip.co.
Please share this show with colleagues who care about where industry and especially industrial tech is heading. To find us on social media is easy, we are Augmented Pod on LinkedIn and Twitter, and Augmented Podcast on Facebook and YouTube:
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/augmentedpod
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AugmentedPodcast/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/AugmentedPod
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5Y1gz66LxYvjJAMnN_f6PQ
Augmented--industrial conversations that matter.
Special Guest: Scott MacKenzie.
In episode 49 of the podcast (@AugmentedPod), the topic is: Lean manufacturing in the USA. Our guest is Karl Wadensten, CEO, Vibco.In this conversation, we talk about how to create a company culture that fosters lean manufacturing practices, becoming a learning organization, and how to be an industry leader who always inspires your employees.
Augmented is a podcast for industry leaders and operators, hosted by futurist Trond Arne Undheim (@trondau), presented by Tulip.co (@tulipinterfaces), the frontline operations platform, and associated with MFG.works, the industrial upskilling community launched at the World Economic Forum. Each episode dives deep into a contemporary topic of concern across the industry and airs at 9 am US Eastern Time every Wednesday. Augmented--the industry 4.0 podcast--industrial conversations that matter.
After listening to this episode, check out:
- Karl Wadensten: https://www.linkedin.com/in/karlwadensten/
- Vibco: http://www.vibco.com/
Trond's takeaway: Lean manufacturing is not just a process you can implement for efficiency, it is a culture you need to build for impact on the whole organization and the people in it. Quality follows from inspired, encouraged, and empowered workers who act on ideas and provide exceptional customer experiences.
Thanks for listening. If you liked the show, subscribe at Augmentedpodcast.co or in your preferred podcast player, and rate us with five stars. If you liked this episode, you might also like episode #43, Digitized Supply Chain, episode #3, Reimagine Training, or episode #2, How to Train Augmented Workers.
Augmented--industrial conversations that matter.
Special Guest: Karl Wadensten.
Augmented reveals the stories behind the new era of industrial operations, where technology will restore the agility of frontline workers.
In episode 45 of the podcast (@AugmentedPod), the topic is: The Startup Studio for Manufacturing. Our guest is Renan Devillieres, CEO at OSS Ventures, who is based in Paris, France.
In this conversation, we talk about co-creating the software bricks manufacturers need to achieve autonomy, using a venture building strategy. We discuss exciting European digital manufacturing startups, how the Tesla way might be as influential as the Toyota production system, and much more.
Augmented is a podcast for industry leaders and operators, hosted by futurist Trond Arne Undheim (@trondau), presented by Tulip.co, the frontline operations platform, and associated with MFG.works, the industrial upskilling community launched at the World Economic Forum. Each episode dives deep into a contemporary topic of concern across the industry and airs at 9 am US Eastern Time every Wednesday. Augmented--the industry 4.0 podcast--industrial conversations that matter.
After listening to this episode, check out:
- Renan Devillieres: https://www.linkedin.com/in/renan-devillieres-9349151b5/
- OSS Ventures: https://www.oss.ventures/
Trond's takeaway: Digital manufacturing is coming of age, both in the US and Europe and collaboration between corporations and startups has never been more intense. By combining the best of both worlds, industrial tech will make leaps forward, but the emerging system is still fragile.
Thanks for listening. If you liked the show, subscribe at Augmentedpodcast.co or in your preferred podcast player, and rate us with five stars. If you liked this episode, you might also like episode #40, Israel meets New England on Industry 4.0, episode #18, Transforming Foundational Industries, or episode #5, Plug-and-play Industrial Tech.
Augmented--industrial conversations that matter.
Special Guest: Renan Devillieres.
In episode 41 of the Augmented podcast (@Augmentedpod), the topic is: Scaling Software Movements. Our guest is Hilarie Koplow-McAdams(@HilarieKM), Venture Partner at NEA (@nea).
Augmented is a podcast for industrial leaders, process engineers and shop floor operators, hosted by futurist Trond Arne Undheim (@trondau), presented by Tulip (@tulipinterfaces), the frontline operations platform, where Hilarie as of this year serves as a Board of Director member, and is also associated with MFG.works, the industrial upskilling community launched at the World Economic Forum.
In this conversation, we talk about What Hilarie has learned from 35 years in the software industry, reflecting on her path, which includes taking Oracle from $100M to $11B revenue, via building a user movement of small business owners and their accountants at Intuit, integrating all those lessons with the simplicity that Salesforce brought to the customer relationship channeling the move towards trusted cloud computing, to Tulip, which enables the co-design of products and services in frontline operations, starting with the manufacturing shop floor.
Trond's takeaway: At hyper scale, growing software companies is not just about sales numbers and strategies, it is about channeling social movements. Perhaps it takes an outsider to see it and run with it? Hilarie has, through 35 years of trailblazing product and sales leadership, shown that truly understanding features, markets, users, and governance, is not just about following Silicon Valley personality cults. Rather, mega scale follows from tapping into big movements in the market, movements that are social in nature, delivering value to people who become believers and tell their friends, colleagues, and family about it. But although sales, at the core, may be social, it is also about being disciplined about market entry decisions and following through with a total solution.
Thanks for listening. If you liked the show, subscribe at Augmentedpodcast.co or in your preferred podcast player, and rate us with five stars. If you liked this episode, you might also like episode 18, Transforming Foundational Industries, episode 42 Business Beyond Buzzwords, or episode 23, Digital Manufacturing in the Cloud. Hopefully, you'll find something awesome in these or other episodes.
The Augmented podcast is created in association with Tulip, connected frontline operations platform that connects the people, machines, devices, and the systems used in a production or logistics process in a physical location. Tulip is democratizing technology and empowering those closest to operations to solve problems. Tulip is also hiring. You can find Tulip at Tulip.co.
To find us on social media is easy, we are Augmented Pod on LinkedIn and Twitter, and Augmented Podcast on Facebook and YouTube:
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/augmentedpod
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AugmentedPodcast/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/AugmentedPod
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5Y1gz66LxYvjJAMnN_f6PQ
Augmented--industrial conversations that matter.
Special Guest: Hilarie Koplow-McAdams.
Augmented reveals the stories behind the new era of industrial operations, where technology will restore the agility of frontline workers.
In episode 47 of the podcast (@AugmentedPod), the topic is: Industrial Machine Learning. Our guest is Roy Shilkrot, Lead Scientist, Tulip (@tulipinterfaces).
In this conversation, we talk about Machine Learning in Manufacturing. Emerging applications using Tulip and beyond, we discuss emerging use cases, the impact of a future with MES ML, that is, machine learning built into the manufacturing execution system.
Augmented is a podcast for industry leaders and operators, hosted by futurist Trond Arne Undheim (@trondau), presented by Tulip.co, the frontline operations platform, and associated with MFG.works, the industrial upskilling community launched at the World Economic Forum. Each episode dives deep into a contemporary topic of concern across the industry and airs at 9 am US Eastern Time every Wednesday. Augmented--the industry 4.0 podcast--industrial conversations that matter.
After listening to this episode, check out:
- Tulip: https://tulip.co/
- Roy Shilkrot: https://www.linkedin.com/in/royshilkrot/
Trond's takeaway: Industrial tech is not what it used to be and will never again be a bulky, legacy, inflexible instrument. Rather, we are entering an age with immediate feedback, rapid adjustments and a combination of human and machine monitoring.
Thanks for listening. If you liked the show, subscribe at Augmentedpodcast.co or in your preferred podcast player, and rate us with five stars. If you liked this episode, you might also like episode 29, The Automated Microfactory, episode 22, Freedman's Factory: What is nocode?, or episode 19, Machine Learning in Manufacturing.
Augmented--industrial conversations that matter.
Special Guest: Roy Shilkrot.
Augmented reveals the stories behind the new era of industrial operations, where technology will restore the agility of frontline workers.
In episode 31 of the podcast (@AugmentedPod), the topic is: Pharma 4.0. Our guest is Michelle Vuolo, Quality Practice Lead, Tulip (@tulipinterfaces).
In this conversation, we talk about GxP, the collection of quality guidelines and regulations created to ensure that bio/pharmaceutical products are safe, meet their intended use, and adhere to quality processes during manufacturing, control, storage, and distribution, specifically in the context of emerging digital technologies that promise to improve efficiency, so-called industry 4.0 or, in this case, pharma 4.0 technologies.
Augmented is a podcast for industry leaders and operators, hosted by futurist Trond Arne Undheim (@trondau), presented by Tulip.co, the frontline operations platform, and associated with MFG.works, the industrial upskilling community launched at the World Economic Forum. Each episode dives deep into a contemporary topic of concern across the industry and airs at 9 am US Eastern Time every Wednesday. Augmented--the industry 4.0 podcast--industrial conversations that matter.
After listening to this episode, check out:
- Tulip: https://tulip.co/
- Michelle Vuolo: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mtullie/
Trond's takeaway: Pharma 4.0 has to be executed with a diligence unseen in the software industry, which also explains why change has taken a while to come to pass. Now that the industry is taking on board the promise of such technologies, it also has to document its effects. The impact on digital technologies should be positive although it will not be without frustrations for those who want quick wins.
Thanks for listening. If you liked the show, subscribe at Augmentedpodcast.co or in your preferred podcast player, and rate us with five stars. If you liked this episode, you might also like episode 33, Sustainable Manufacturing at Scale, episode 23, Digital Manufacturing in the Cloud, or episode 17, Smart Manufacturing for All.
Augmented--industrial conversations that matter.
Special Guest: Michelle Vuolo.
Augmented reveals the stories behind the new era of industrial operations, where technology will restore the agility of frontline workers.
In episode 46 of the podcast (@AugmentedPod), the topic is: Manufacturing Training in Massachusetts. Our guest is John Killam, President, MassMEP.
In this conversation, we talk about the important role of manufacturing in Massachusetts, fostering the next generation manufacturers, manufacturing workforce trends and actions, including how to recruit talent to the region and to our manufacturing firms.
Augmented is a podcast for leaders, hosted by futurist Trond Arne Undheim (@trondau), presented by Tulip.co (@tulipinterfaces), the frontline operations platform, and associated with MFG.works, the manufacturing upskilling community launched at the World Economic Forum. Each episode dives deep into a contemporary topic of concern across the industry and airs at 9 am US Eastern Time every Wednesday. Augmented--the industry 4.0 podcast.
After listening to this episode, check out MassMEP as well as John Killam's social profile.
- MassMEP (@MassMEP): https://massmep.org/
- John Killam (@JKillamMEP): https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnkillammassmep/
Trond's takeaway: Manufacturing is surprisingly important in Massachusetts, which most people don't necessarily see as a manufacturing state because it is a high cost state that competes mostly in high-end, technology infused manufacturing of specialty parts. However, with industry 4.0 that kind of manufacturing is on the rise, so the issue will only become more and more key--and the workforce will need to grow to keep up with the demand. In that, there is opportunity for young people. And new manufacturing jobs can be exciting jobs, too. In fact, most of them are.
Thanks for listening. If you liked the show, subscribe at Augmentedpodcast.co or in your preferred podcast player, and rate us with five stars. If you liked this episode, you might also like episode 27, Industry 4.0 Tools, episode 17, Smart Manufacturing for All, or episode 11, Empowering Workers to Innovate.
Augmented--upskilling the workforce for industry 4.0 frontline operations.
Special Guest: John Killam .
Augmented reveals the stories behind the new era of industrial operations, where technology will restore the agility of frontline workers.
In episode 36 of the podcast (@AugmentedPod), the topic is: Digital Lean. Our guest is Edward Atkins, Head of Customer Success, Tulip (@tulipinterfaces).
In this conversation, we talk about achieving customer success with classic Lean Operations and beyond. We explore performance transparency, how operators can produce parts tracking procedures digitally, creating quality gates through inspection applications and being conscious about quality measurement. What am I making? At what quality? We also go into more complex things like work material flow, Kanban loops and taking inventory and how no-code is an exponential uplift since you no longer are burdened by logging and can collect as much information as you want.
After listening to this episode, check out Tulip's and Edward Atkins' profile on social media:
- Tulip (@tulipinterfaces): Tulip.co.
- Edward Atkins: https://www.linkedin.com/in/edward-atkins-77022213/
Augmented is a podcast for industry leaders and operators, hosted by futurist Trond Arne Undheim, presented by Tulip.co, the frontline operations platform, and associated with MFG.works, the industrial upskilling community launched at the World Economic Forum. Each episode dives deep into a contemporary topic of concern across the industry and airs at 9 am US Eastern Time every Wednesday. Augmented--the industry 4.0 podcast--industrial conversations that matter.
Trond's takeaway: Implementing digital lean on a client site especially enabling improvements to be done near 100 percent by the clients themselves is now possible with the leading frontline operations software and is game changing for industrial performance.
Thanks for listening. If you liked the show, subscribe at Augmentedpodcast.co or in your preferred podcast player, and rate us with five stars. If you liked this episode, you might also like episode 22, Freedman's Factory: What is nocode?, episode 24, Emerging Interfaces for Human Augmentation, and episode 14, Bottom up and Deep Digitization of Operations.
Augmented--upskilling the workforce for industry 4.0 frontline operations.
Augmented reveals the stories behind the new era of industrial operations, where technology will restore the agility of frontline workers.
In episode 36 of the podcast , the topic is: Digital Lean. Our guest is Edward Atkins, Head of Customer Success, Tulip
In this conversation, we talk about achieving customer success with classic Lean Operations and beyond. We explore performance transparency, how operators can produce parts tracking procedures digitally, creating quality gates through inspection applications and being conscious about quality measurement. What am I making? At what quality? We also go into more complex things like work material flow, Kanban loops and taking inventory and how no-code is an exponential uplift since you no longer are burdened by logging and can collect as much information as you want.
After listening to this episode, check out Tulip's and Edward Atkins' profile on social media:
- Tulip (@tulipinterfaces): Tulip.co
- Edward Atkins: https://www.linkedin.com/in/edward-atkins-77022213/
Augmented is a podcast for industry leaders and operators, hosted by futurist Trond Arne Undheim, presented by Tulip.co, the frontline operations platform, and associated with MFG.works, the industrial upskilling community launched at the World Economic Forum. Each episode dives deep into a contemporary topic of concern across the industry and airs at 9 am US Eastern Time every Wednesday. Augmented--the industry 4.0 podcast--industrial conversations that matter.
Trond's takeaway*: Implementing digital lean on a client site especially enabling improvements to be done near 100 percent by the clients themselves is now possible with the leading frontline operations software and is game changing for industrial performance.
Thanks for listening. If you liked the show, subscribe at Augmentedpodcast.co or in your preferred podcast player, and rate us with five stars. If you liked this episode, you might also like episode *22, Freedman's Factory: What is nocode?, episode 24, Emerging Interfaces for Human Augmentation, and episode 14, Bottom up and Deep Digitization of Operations.
Augmented--upskilling the workforce for industry 4.0 frontline operations.
Special Guest: Eddy Atkins.
Augmented reveals the stories behind the new era of industrial operations, where technology will restore the agility of frontline workers.
In episode 30 of the podcast (@AugmentedPod), the topic is: Rethinking Workforce Learning. Our guest is George Westerman, Senior Lecturer, MIT Sloan School of Management and Principal Research Scientist for workforce learning at the MIT Jameel World Education Lab.
In this conversation, we talk about how the industrial workforce learning system is broken. We touch on the history of "Pre-K to gray" workforce training. We discuss transforming the way workers get the skills they need to thrive in the context of the evolution of digital transformation. The trick is balancing work with learning, and changing the way learning happens. But what to learn? Westerman’s work has yielded the Human Skills Matrix. And how to learn? His research identified a new model of corporate learning and development called The Transformer CLO.
Augmented is a podcast for industry leaders and operators, hosted by futurist Trond Arne Undheim (@trondau), presented by Tulip.co, the frontline operations platform, and associated with MFG.works, the industrial upskilling community launched at the World Economic Forum. Each episode dives deep into a contemporary topic of concern across the industry and airs at 9 am US Eastern Time every Wednesday.
After listening to this episode, check out J-WEL as well as George Westerman's profile on social media:
- J-WEL (@MIT_jwel): https://jwel.mit.edu/
- George Westerman (@gwesterman): https://www.linkedin.com/in/georgewesterman/
Trond's takeaway: Rethinking workforce learning is necessary, important, and wide-ranging. It will be a massive effort with digital transformation at the heart but with the need for educational institutions, employers and the workforce all on board. Do we all agree what skills to teach or be taught? This is unlikely but developing a skills matrix is a start.
Thanks for listening. If you liked the show, subscribe at Augmentedpodcast.co or in your preferred podcast player, and rate us with five stars. If you liked this episode, you might also like episode 17, Smart Manufacturing for All, episode 2, How to Train Augmented Workers, or episode 3, Reimagine Training.
Augmented--upskilling the workforce for industry 4.0 frontline operations.
Special Guest: Dr. George Westerman.
Augmented reveals the stories behind the new era of industrial operations, where technology will restore the agility of frontline workers.
In episode 35 of the podcast (@AugmentedPod), the topic is: Industry Analysts Shape Markets. Our guest is Kim Knickle, Research Director, Verdantix.
In this conversation, we talk about The main role of industry analysts which is to identify and understand trends in their chosen sector. What is the role of analysts going forward? What will their function be? Who are the relevant suppliers at any given time?
Augmented is a podcast for leaders, hosted by futurist Trond Arne Undheim (@trondau), presented by Tulip.co (@tulipinterfaces), frontline operations platform, and associated with MFG.works, the manufacturing upskilling community launched at the World Economic Forum. Each episode dives deep into a contemporary topic of concern across the industry and airs at 9 am US Eastern Time every Wednesday. Augmented--the industry 4.0 podcast.
After listening to this episode, check out Verdantix as well as Kim Knickle's social media profile.
- Verdantix (@Verdantix): https://www.verdantix.com/
- Kim Knickle (@KimKnickle): https://www.linkedin.com/in/kim-knickle/
Trond's takeaway: Industry analysts are surprisingly relevant in today's information rich markets, perhaps because of information overload or the need for trusted sources of information. But as industry morphs and categories change faster than before, can firms keep up with the markets, and can analysts create a still picture of an evolving situation? Analysts are traditionally helpful for the buying process. Navigating the manufacturing industry is becoming more and more difficult as traditional vendors are complemented by a myriad of startups. As analysts assess trends, create segment taxonomies, size up markets, and prepare industry forecasts:
Thanks for listening. If you liked the show, subscribe at Augmentedpodcast.co or in your preferred podcast player, and rate us with five stars. If you liked this episode, you might also like episode 42, Business Beyond Buzzwords, episode 32, Covering Industrial Innovation or episode 9, The Fourth Industrial Revolution post-COVID-19.
Augmented--industrial conversations that matter.
Special Guest: Kim Knickle .
Augmented reveals the stories behind the new era of industrial operations, where technology will restore the agility of frontline workers.
In episode 29 of the podcast (@AugmentedPod), the topic is: The Automated Microfactory. Our guest is Brian Mathews, CTO, Bright Machines.
In this conversation, we talk about increasing the speed, scalability, and flexibility of manufacturing using an intelligent, software-driven approach. Can discrete manufacturing, that is, the production of distinct items such as electronics, automobiles, furniture, toys, smartphones, and airplanes, now achieve the same efficiencies that we have seen in the software world? What does the next decade look like?
Augmented is a podcast for leaders, hosted by futurist Trond Arne Undheim (@trondau), presented by Tulip.co, the frontline operations platform, and associated with MFG.works, the manufacturing upskilling community launched at the World Economic Forum. Each episode dives deep into a contemporary topic of concern across the industry and airs at 9 am US Eastern Time every Wednesday. Augmented--the industry 4.0 podcast.
After listening to this episode, check out Bright Machines as well as Brian Mathews' social media profile:
- Bright Machines (@brightmachines): https://www.brightmachines.com/
- Brian Mathews: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mathewsbrian/
Trond's takeaway: For fully software-enabled platforms to take hold, the automation of discrete manufacturing has to change exponentially in the years ahead. This has been long in the coming, and the impact is almost impossible to fathom. Factory-level automation is one thing. However, the onset of relatively mobile microfactories and the ability to remotely update, tweak, and even radically improve physical things that already left the initial production facility will not only change timelines, but might alter the very notion of what a product is. Given that the sci-fi that Brian and I both love is coming nearer reality--good luck to sci-fi writers trying to write about the next century's innovations. That is going to take some extra creativity.
Thanks for listening. If you liked the show, subscribe at Augmentedpodcast.co or in your preferred podcast player, and rate us with five stars. If you liked this episode, you might also like episode 42, Business Beyond Buzzwords, episode 21, The Future of Digital in Manufacturing, or episode 27, Industry 4.0 Tools.
Augmented--industrial conversations that matter.
Special Guest: Brian Mathews .
Augmented reveals the stories behind the new era of industrial operations, where technology will restore the agility of frontline workers.
In episode 33 of the podcast (@AugmentedPod), the topic is: Sustainable Manufacturing at Scale. Our guest is Scott N. Miller, Managing Director, Dragon Ventures.
In this conversation, we talk about his early experience building Roomba robot vacuum cleaner at iRobot, contract manufacturing challenges for startups, global hardware ecosystems, investing in hardware and industrial innovation, manufacturing strategy, the New Product Introduction (NPI) process, how to navigate the journey from prototype through high volume manufacturing including Shenzhen business models for 10K units factory first runs.
Augmented is a podcast for leaders, hosted by futurist Trond Arne Undheim (@trondau), presented by Tulip.co, the frontline operations platform, and associated with MFG.works, the manufacturing upskilling community launched at the World Economic Forum. Each episode dives deep into a contemporary topic of concern across the industry and airs at 9 am US Eastern Time every Wednesday. Augmented--the industry 4.0 podcast.
After listening to this episode, check out Dragon Ventures as well as Scott N. Miller's social media profile:
- Dragon Ventures: https://www.dragonventures.org/
- Scott N. Miller: https://www.linkedin.com/in/scottnmiller/
Trond's takeaway: Startups are ill equipped to handle global contract manufacturing challenges. They are essentially being asked to take on complex supply chain and product development procedures that even large companies themselves struggle with. Yes, there is a way to navigate this terrain, and those who do, can pick up tremendous bounties and might just change the world.
Thanks for listening. If you liked the show, subscribe at Augmentedpodcast.co or in your preferred podcast player, and rate us with five stars. If you liked this episode, you might also like episode 18, Transforming Foundational Industries, episode 23, Digital Manufacturing in the Cloud or episode 9, The Fourth Industrial Revolution post-COVID-19.
Augmented--industrial conversations that matter.
Special Guest: Scott N. Miller.
Augmented reveals the stories behind the new era of industrial operations, where technology will restore the agility of frontline workers.
In episode 8 of the podcast (@AugmentedPod), the topic is: Productizing Quality. Our guest is Surbhi Krishna Singh, CEO & co-founder, Firevisor.
In this conversation, we talk about How she once jumped over the boundary wall and escaped school, her engineering degree, working for Seagate and Micron and being an outlier-- a woman in engineering and manufacturing. We discuss productizing quality improvements in manufacturing and her startup, Firevisor.
Augmented is a podcast for industry leaders and operators, hosted by futurist Trond Arne Undheim, presented by Tulip.co, the frontline operations platform, and associated with MFG.works, the industrial upskilling community launched at the World Economic Forum. Each episode dives deep into a contemporary topic of concern across the industry and airs at 9 am US Eastern Time every Wednesday. Augmented--the industry 4.0 podcast--industrial conversations that matter.
After listening to this episode, check out Firevisor as well as Surbhi Krishna Singh's social media profiles:
- Firevisor: https://firevisor.com/
- Surbhi Krishna Singh (@SurbhiKrishna): https://www.linkedin.com/in/surbhi-krishna-singh-a7502718/
Trond's takeaway: At the Augmented podcast, in tracing and anticipating the contours of the emerging future of industry 4.0, we try to have a special focus on diversity, for example on women in manufacturing, or on young trailblazers, or individuals that represent both, as in this case. We need all perspectives onboard if industry is going to transform in a positive way. Industry is, in many ways, the last bastion of resistance against several areas of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI). I truly hope this is the last decade we need to describe industry this way. An issue so core to humankind such as manufacturing should be co-developed by all
Thanks for listening. If you liked the show, subscribe at Augmentedpodcast.co or in your preferred podcast player, and rate us with five stars. If you liked this episode, you might also other episodes featuring female trailblazers, and it's quite a list, such as episode 24, Emerging Interfaces for Human Augmentation, episode 32, Covering Industrial Innovation, episode 18, Transforming Foundational Industries, episode 16, A female fighter in a manufacturing SME, episode 7, Work of the Future, episode 3, Reimagine Training, or episode 2, How to Train Augmented Workers.
Augmented--industrial conversations that matter.
Special Guest: Surbhi Krishna Singh.
Augmented reveals the stories behind the new era of industrial operations, where technology will restore the agility of frontline workers.
In episode 42 of the podcast (@AugmentedPod), the topic is: Business Beyond Buzzwords. Our guest is Jeff Immelt, Venture Partner, NEA, former CEO of General Electric.
In this conversation, we talk about Jeff Immelt's new book Hot Seat, running a top tier manufacturing business, industrial tech, the impact of globalization, plant innovation, workforce training, global supply chain, virtual cloud connected value streams and what it is possible to do today and what was very difficult even a few years ago with the myriad of non-integrated enterprise IT and ERP systems and other challenges. Lastly, we discuss how industry will evolve in this decade.
After listening to this episode, check out NEA, GE, Jeff's book Hot Seat as well as Jeff Immelt's social media profile:
- NEA (@nea): https://www.nea.com/
- GE (@generalelectric): https://www.ge.com/
- Hot Seat (book): https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Hot-Seat/Jeff-Immelt/9781982114718
- Jeff Immelt (@JeffImmelt): https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeffimmelt/
Trond's takeaway: Jeff Immelt's brave, honest, and wise book is unusually revealing and instructive. Jeff has shared not only how lonely it is at the top, but seemingly how few big choices and at times how many smaller choices you have at any given time. His struggles with industrial tech are near timeless. Nobody has all the answers in terms of getting organizational implementation of exponential tech right. Especially not if your organization is the size of GE. I was struck by the implication for leaders--be vulnerable or risk not only your own happiness but those of all your co-workers. Immelt's struggle was to digitize GE, a behemoth in transition. He chose to build an in-house capacity, at great cost, and with mixed results, but how many other options were there on the table? Hindsight is 2020. As Immelt points out, nowadays, low-code and no-code systems, such as Tulip, are about to transform frontline operations in ways we can only start to imagine. The promise is empowerment of workers and immense productivity gains from freeing up the human mind. Our challenges might, at times, seem or indeed be smaller in scale, but might feel equally overwhelming. Good to know then, that the folks at the top struggle as well.
Thanks for listening. If you liked the show, subscribe at Augmentedpodcast.co or in your preferred podcast player, and rate us with five stars. If you liked this episode, you might also like episode 21, The Future of Digital in Manufacturing with Çağlayan Arkan, VP of Manufacturing Industry at Microsoft, episode 32, Covering Industrial Innovation with Amy Feldman, Senior Editor, Forbes, or episode 27, Industry 4.0 Tools with Carl B. March, Director, Industry 4.0 at Stanley Black & Decker.
Augmented--industrial conversations that matter.
Special Guest: Jeff Immelt.
In episode 22 of the podcast (@AugmentedPod), the topic is: Freedman's Factory: What is nocode? Our guest is Mark Freedman, Lean Practice Leader at Tulip for our new segment, Freedman's Factory, which you will always recognize within other Augmented episodes because of especially groovy music. Freedman's Factory will take us deep into the shop floor philosophy of Kaizen, and with that, into the heart of manufacturing excellence
In this conversation, which is the first episode of the new segment we have called Freedman's factory, which takes us deep into the shop floor philosophy of Kaizen. We introduced this new segment a month ago. In this episode of Freedman's Factory, we talked about Nocode in manufacturing. What is it? What existed before? What’s the difference it makes? After listening to this episode, check out Tulip's and Mark Freedman's profile on social media:
- Tulip (@tulipinterfaces): https://tulip.co/
- Mark Freedman: https://www.linkedin.com/in/markjfreedman/
Trond's takeaway: Nocode for industrial applications is something truly special. Building on what we have come to know from contemporary software applications that don't have a learning curve, industrial nocode attempts the same thing, but with software written for the physical world, which is immeasurably harder to do because production cannot go down and you don't get second chances. I learned from Mark Freedman, that Tulip's deeply humanistic approach to nocode is rooted in the shopfloor experience, in trying to reflect, but also question factory floor behavior. I am on a learning journey. I still want to understand more the discrete tasks and functions that digital nocode apps make flow so naturally--work instructions, machine monitoring and other things. As always, the depth in Freedman's message lies, it seems to me, in his insistence on experience before tools, understanding before action, and understanding people, and the reasons behind their current process, way before introducing any kind of technology as a tool to simplify their life.
Thanks for listening. If you liked the show, subscribe at Augmentedpodcast.co or in your preferred podcast player, and rate us with five stars. If you liked this episode, you might also like episode 10, A Brief History of Manufacturing Software, episode 6, Human-Robot Interaction challenges, or episode 1, Automation to Augmentation - the podcast's vision to build a movement. Also, if you missed the introduction to Freedman's Factory, listen to episode 15: Freedman's Factory: Introduction. Augmented-upskilling the workforce for industry 4.0 frontline operations.
Special Guest: Mark Freedman.
Augmented reveals the stories behind the new era of industrial operations, where technology will restore the agility of frontline workers.
In episode 23 of the podcast (@AugmentedPod), the topic is: Digital Manufacturing in the Cloud. Our guest is Jon Hirschtick, Head of SaaS, Onshape and Atlas Platform, PTC.
In this conversation, we talk about the story of SolidWorks, using agile methods, listening to the market, charting the evolution of CAD into SaaS, and its emerging and future iterations in the open source cloud and beyond.
Augmented is a podcast for industry leaders and operators, hosted by futurist Trond Arne Undheim (@trondau), presented by Tulip.co, the frontline operations platform, and associated with MFG.works, the industrial upskilling community launched at the World Economic Forum. Each episode dives deep into a contemporary topic of concern across the industry and airs at 9 am US Eastern Time every Wednesday. Augmented--the industry 4.0 podcast--industrial conversations that matter.
After listening to this episode, check out PTC, Solidworks, as well as Jon Hirschtick's social media profiles:
- PTC (@ptc): https://www.ptc.com/en
- Solidworks (@solidworks): https://www.solidworks.com/
- Jon Hirschtick (@jhirschtick): https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonhirschtick/
Trond's takeaway: Digital manufacturing is moving to the cloud and that means a whole lot more than office software moving to the cloud. In fact, establishing a real-time digital thread, through next generation low-code and no-code systems, will reshape industry. The notion of factory production, distributed teams, product development, will all evolve significantly, and will enable personalization across industry and across any and eventually all of manufactured goods. The ramifications will be huge, but they won't automatically happen tomorrow, and the benefits will spread unevenly depending on who--be it corporations, nations, startups, or small- and medium enterprises--grabs the gauntlet first.
Thanks for listening. If you liked the show, subscribe at Augmentedpodcast.co or in your preferred podcast player, and rate us with five stars. If you liked this episode, you might also like episode 43, Digitized Supply Chain, episode 24, Emerging Interfaces for Human Augmentation, or episode 21, The Future of Digital in Manufacturing.
Augmented--industrial conversations that matter to everyone.
Special Guest: Jon Hirschtick.
Augmented reveals the stories behind the new era of industrial operations, where technology will restore the agility of frontline workers.
In episode 43 of the podcast (@AugmentedPod), the topic is: Digitized Supply Chain. Our guest is Arun Kumar Bhaskara-Baba, Head of Global Manufacturing IT, Johnson & Johnson.
In this conversation, we talk about why J&J puts operators at the center of its strategy, the empowerment effect of frontline operations apps, the evolution of personalized production, and how supply chain becomes an integral part of product development.
After listening to this episode, check out J&J as well as Arun Kumar Bhaskara-Baba's social medial profile:
- J&J (@JNJNews): https://www.jnj.com/
- Arun Kumar Bhaskara-Baba: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bhaskarababa/
Trond's takeaway: "Operators are the key to the next phase of industrial evolution, that which involves the deep digitalization of manufacturing, its supply chain, production capacity, personalization, and with that the reinvention of factory production itself.
Thanks for listening. If you liked the show, subscribe at Augmentedpodcast.co or in your preferred podcast player, and rate us with five stars. If you liked this episode, you might also like episode 21, The Future of Digital in Manufacturing, episode 27, Industry 4.0 Tools or episode 10, A Brief History of Manufacturing Software
Augmented--conversations on industrial tech.
Special Guest: Arun Kumar Bhaskara-Baba.
In episode 40 of the podcast (@AugmentedPod), the topic is: Israel meets New England on Industry 4.0. This is a special episode where we tune into a webinar on Industry 4.0 put on jointly by AMHUB New England and the Israeli Economic Mission to North America. We have individual interviews mixed in with this webinar to provide a complete picture of this exciting meet.
Our guests are Michael Tamasi, Co-Chairman, MA Advanced Manufacturing Collaborative and CEO & owner, AccuRounds, Mark Goldfarb, CEO & co-founder, Sixdof Space, Carl B. March, Director, Industry 4.0, Stanley Black & Decker, Michael Zolotov, CTO & co-founder, Razor Labs, Lior Zadicareo, Chief Revenue Officer, Visual Factories, Natan Linder, CEO & co-founder, Tulip, Anat Katz, Minister Trade Affairs, Consulate General of New York, and Karin Chen, Head of Sectors, Automotive & Smart Mobility, Industry 4.0, Israel Export Institute
In this conversation, we talk about Industry 4.0 with top Israeli startups and advanced manufacturers from New England, notably the daunting challenges in manufacturing, the ever-changing context, the trailblazing tech solutions, Integrating it all - what do factory managers need to know, and last but not least, Partnering.
After listening to this episode, check out:
- The New England Advanced Manufacturing Hub (AMHUB NE): https://mfg.works/amhub/amhub-new-england/
- The Government of Israel’s Economic Mission to North America: https://embassies.gov.il/washington/AboutTheEmbassy/Pages/Economic-Mission.aspx#:
- ISRAEL meets NEW ENGLAND: Advanced Manufacturing in Factories and Workplace: https://mfg.works/israel-meets-new-england/
If you liked this episode, you might also like to listen to individual episodes featuring each of the guests of this webinar, notably, episode 32, Visualizing Factories with guest Lior Zadicareo from Visual Factories, episode 27, Industry 4.0 Tools with Carl B. March from Stanley Black & Decker, episode 19, Machine Learning in Manufacturing with Michael Zolotov from Razor Labs, episode 25, Industrial Tracking: Drones, Warehouses and Theme Parks with Mark N. Goldfarb from Sixdof Space, or episode 26, Manufacturing in Massachusetts with Michael Tamasi, CEO of AccuRounds.
Augmented--upskilling the workforce for industry 4.0 frontline operations.
Special Guests: Carl B. March, Lior Zadicareo, Mark N. Goldfarb, Michael Tamasi, Michael Zolotov, and Natan Linder.
Augmented reveals the stories behind the new era of industrial operations, where technology will restore the agility of frontline workers.
In episode 24 of the podcast (@AugmentedPod), the topic is: Emerging Interfaces for Human Augmentation. Our guest is Pattie Maes, Professor at the MIT Media Lab.
In this conversation, we talk about augmenting people instead of using or making smart machines, AI summers and AI winters, parallels between AI and expert systems and why we didn't learn our lessons, enabling people to perform better through fluid, interactive, immersive and wearable systems that are easy to use, how lab thinks about developing new form factors, and much more.
After listening to this episode, check out MIT Media Lab as well as Pattie Maes's social profile:
- MIT Media Lab: @medialab (twitter) https://www.media.mit.edu/ (web)
- Pattie Maes: https://www.media.mit.edu/overview
Trond's takeaway: Augmenting people is far more complex than developing a technology or even experimenting with form factors. Instead, there's a whole process to exploring what humans are all about, discovering opportunities for augmentation and tweaking it in dialogue with users. The Media Lab's approach is work intensive, but when new products make it out of there, they tend to extend a human function as opposed to becoming just a new gadget.
Thanks for listening. If you liked the show, subscribe at Augmentedpodcast.co or in your preferred podcast player, and rate us with five stars. If you liked this episode, you might also like episode 19, Machine Learning in Manufacturing, episode 7, Work of the Future, or episode 13, Get Manufacturing Superpowers.
Augmented--industrial conversations.
Special Guest: Pattie Maes.
Augmented reveals the stories behind the new era of industrial operations, where technology will restore the agility of frontline workers.
In episode 39 of the podcast @AugmentedPod, the topic is: Covering Industrial Innovation. Our guest is Amy Feldman, Senior Editor at Forbes @amyfeldman.
In this conversation, we talk about whether manufacturing's image problem is going away, the future of industrial innovation post-COVID-19, and when will we see the next $50B ARR industrial scale-up? We also discuss the Future of tech journalism and the art of narrating innovation.
After listening to this episode, check out Amy Feldman's social profile as well as her Forbes column:
- Forbes column: https://www.forbes.com/sites/amyfeldman/
- Amy Feldman: https://www.linkedin.com/in/amy-feldman-a360861/
Trond's takeaway: Industrial innovation is hard to narrate but the masters, such as Amy Feldman, make it seems exactly as compelling as it is. Tech journalists get to not only cover, but also uncover and explain industrial trends for a wider audience. There's much to love in industry 4.0 technology adoption and many interesting players in the surrounding ecosystem. It helps not to think just in terms of individual companies but consider what they are connected to and what adjacent fields will be impacted.
Thanks for listening. If you liked the show, subscribe at Augmentedpodcast.co or in your preferred podcast player, and rate us with five stars. If you liked this episode, you might also like episode 21, The Future of Digital in Manufacturing, episode 18, Transforming Foundational Industries or episode 7, Work of the Future.
Augmented--industrial conversations.
Special Guest: Amy Feldman .
Augmented reveals the stories behind the new era of industrial operations, where technology will restore the agility of frontline workers. In episode 21 of the podcast @AugmentedPod, the topic is: The Future of Digital in Manufacturing. Our guest is Çağlayan Arkan, VP of Manufacturing Industry at Microsoft (@Caglayan_Arkan).
In this conversation, we talk about where manufacturing has been in the past, why manufacturing has been lacking a sense of urgency in the sense of industry 4.0 but how everything we know about manufacturing has changed. We also discuss workforce transformation, democratizing operational technology, and the future of industrial innovation.
After listening to this episode, check out Microsoft's manufacturing approach as well as Çağlayan Arkan's social media profile:
- Microsoft Cloud for Manufacturing: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/industry/manufacturing/microsoft-cloud-for-manufacturing
- Çağlayan Arkan: LinkedIn,
- Blog: https://aka.ms/CaglayanArkanBlog
Trond's takeaway: The future of digital in manufacturing is enormously impactful. Yet, even deep digitalization will not make workers obsolete. Rather, the challenge seems to be achieving a dramatic workforce transformation which also entails empowerment, upskilling, and autonomy through augmentation of frontline operations.
Thanks for listening. If you liked the show, subscribe at Augmentedpodcast.co or in your preferred podcast player, and rate us with five stars. If you liked this episode, you might also like episode 9, The Fourth Industrial Revolution post-COVID-19, episode 4, A Renaissance in Manufacturing or Episode 20, The Digitalization of Körber.
Augmented--industrial conversations.
Special Guest: Çağlayan Arkan.
Augmented reveals the stories behind the new era of industrial operations, where technology will restore the agility of frontline workers.
In episode 32 of the podcast (@AugmentedPod), the topic is: Visualizing Factories. Our guest is Lior Zadicareo, Chief Revenue Officer at Visual Factories
In this conversation, we talk about The complex reality of industry 4.0, how the future is a product of the past, and what will change in the life of an operations manager of a manufacturing company over the next few years.
After listening to this episode, check out Visual Factories: http://www.visual-factories.com/ as well as Lior Zadicareo's profile on social media: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lior-zadicareo-905572/
You may want to also be aware of the 'Israel meets New England' smart manufacturing event on June 9 and its organizers, the Israeli Trade Mission and Amhub New England:
- The New England Advanced Manufacturing Hub (AMHUB NE): https://mfg.works/amhub/amhub-new-england/
- The Government of Israel’s Economic Mission to North America: https://embassies.gov.il/washington/AboutTheEmbassy/Pages/Economic-Mission.aspx#:
- ISRAEL meets NEW ENGLAND: Advanced Manufacturing in Factories and Workplace: https://mfg.works/israel-meets-new-england/
Trond's takeaway: Visualizing manufacturing means making what machines do visible. More than that, it means starting to understand what humans do on the shop floor. Even more ambitiously, we have to figure out how humans and machines can work better together.
Thanks for listening. If you liked the show, subscribe at Augmentedpodcast.co or in your preferred podcast player, and rate us with five stars. If you liked this episode, you might also like episode 19, Machine Learning in Manufacturing, episode 27, Industry 4.0 Tools or episode 25, Industrial Tracking: Drones, Warehouses and Theme Parks. Augmented--industrial conversations.
Special Guest: Lior Zadicareo.
In episode 19 of the podcast (@AugmentedPod), the topic is: Machine Learning in Manufacturing. Our guest is Michael Zolotov, CTO & co-founder at Razor Labs.
In this conversation, we talk about where we are with machine learning and AI for manufacturing. What are the main techniques? What is possible now? What will be possible soon?
After listening to this episode, check out Razor Labs: http://www.razor-labs.com/ as well as Michael Zolotov's profile on social media: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-zolotov-33a2b26b/
You may want to also be aware of the 'Israel meets New England' smart manufacturing event on June 9 and its organizers, the Israeli Trade Mission and Amhub New England:
- The New England Advanced Manufacturing Hub (AMHUB NE): https://mfg.works/amhub/amhub-new-england/
- The Government of Israel’s Economic Mission to North America: https://embassies.gov.il/washington/AboutTheEmbassy/Pages/Economic-Mission.aspx#:
- ISRAEL meets NEW ENGLAND: Advanced Manufacturing in Factories and Workplace: https://mfg.works/israel-meets-new-england/
Trond's takeaway: Machine learning is definitely entering manufacturing over the next few years. Already, interesting experiments are underway to do simpler things such as prevent future downtime using sensor data already being captured by advanced machinery. Pure machine optimization can only get us so far, though. The real potential lies in complex business process optimization and simplification with augmented frontline operations. Technology plays a part, but clever workers, operators, and engineers will have to make intelligent use of the technologies available, they cannot just blindly implement. For that, we need reskilling--always learn.
Thanks for listening. If you liked the show, subscribe at Augmentedpodcast.co or in your preferred podcast player, and rate us with five stars. If you liked this episode, you might also like episode 27, Industry 4.0 Tools, episode 13, Get Manufacturing Superpowers, and episode 14, Bottom up and Deep Digitization of Operations.
Augmented--upskilling the workforce for industry 4.0 frontline operations.
Special Guest: Michael Zolotov.
Augmented reveals the stories behind the new era of industrial operations, where technology will restore the agility of frontline workers.
In episode 27 of the podcast (@AugmentedPod), the topic is: Industry 4.0 Tools and Analytics. Our guest is Carl B. March, Director, Industry 4.0 at Stanley Black & Decker.
In this conversation, we talk about what industry 4.0 means, the importance of upskilling the entire manufacturing industry, and the lessons from Stanley Black & Decker's digital transformation journey.
After listening to this episode, check out Stanley Black & Decker (@StanleyBlkDeckr): https://www.stanleyblackanddecker.com/ as well as Carl B. March's profile on social media: https://www.linkedin.com/in/carlbmarch/
You may want to also be aware of the 'Israel meets New England' smart manufacturing event on June 9 and its organizers, the Israeli Trade Mission and Amhub New England:
- The New England Advanced Manufacturing Hub (AMHUB NE): https://mfg.works/amhub/amhub-new-england/
- The Government of Israel’s Economic Mission to North America: https://embassies.gov.il/washington/AboutTheEmbassy/Pages/Economic-Mission.aspx#:
- ISRAEL meets NEW ENGLAND: Advanced Manufacturing in Factories and Workplace: https://mfg.works/israel-meets-new-england/
Trond's takeaway: Industry 4.0 requires a mindset shift, not just technology adoption. It's not just about you--whether you in this case is a big company or a top leader--rather, it is about bringing people, partners, SMEs, and the entire ecosystem along. To do so openness to learn, having a strategic roadmap so not chase all shiny objects, and investing in lighthouse factories that can illuminate the possibilities are each important ingredients.
Thanks for listening. If you liked the show, subscribe at Augmentedpodcast.co or in your preferred podcast player, and rate us with five stars. If you liked this episode, you might also like episode 20, The Digitalization of Körber, episode 14, Bottom up and Deep Digitization of Operations, and episode 9, The Fourth Industrial Revolution post-COVID-19.
Augmented--upskilling the workforce for industry 4.0 frontline operations.
Special Guest: Carl B. March.
In episode 26 of the podcast (@AugmentedPod), the topic is Manufacturing in Massachusetts. Our guest is Michael Tamasi, CEO & owner, AccuRounds and Co-Chairman of the Massachusetts Advanced Manufacturing Collaborative (Mass AMC).
In this conversation, we talked about the ecosystem for manufacturing in Massachusetts, its challenges, opportunities, and future.
After listening to this episode, check out AccuRounds, (@accurounds): https://www.accurounds.com/ as well as Michael Tamasi's profile on social media: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaeltamasi/
You may also wish to check out each of the various organizations making up the Massachusetts manufacturing ecosystem,
- MassTech Collaborative: https://masstech.org/ and The Center for Advanced Manufacturing (CAM): https://cam.masstech.org/center-advanced-manufacturing-cam
- MassMEP (@massmep): https://massmep.org/
- Mass. Manufacturing Innovation Initiative (M2I2): https://cam.masstech.org/m2i2
- Manufacturing in Massachusetts - a one-stop-shop (@mamanufacturing): https://mamanufacturing.com/
- Mass Technology Leadership Council (@masstlc): https://www.masstlc.org
Finally, you may want to also be aware of the 'Israel meets New England' smart manufacturing event on June 9 and its organizers, the Israeli Trade Mission and Amhub New England:
- The New England Advanced Manufacturing Hub (AMHUB NE): https://mfg.works/amhub/amhub-new-england/
- The Government of Israel’s Economic Mission to North America: https://embassies.gov.il/washington/AboutTheEmbassy/Pages/Economic-Mission.aspx#:
- ISRAEL meets NEW ENGLAND: Advanced Manufacturing in Factories and Workplace: https://mfg.works/israel-meets-new-england/
Trond's takeaway: Massachusetts is undergoing a rapid evolution into a forward looking region which more fully embraces the manufacturing industry as part of its innovation thrust. One could wonder why it took decades.
Thanks for listening. If you liked the show, subscribe at Augmentedpodcast.co or in your preferred podcast player, and rate us with five stars. If you liked this episode, you might also like episode 25 Industrial Tracking: Drones, Warehouses and Theme Parks, episode 14 Smart Manufacturing for All, or episode 16 A female fighter in a manufacturing SME. Augmented--upskilling the workforce for industry 4.0 frontline operations.
Special Guest: Michael Tamasi.
In episode 20 of the podcast (@AugmentedPod), the topic is: The Digitalization of Körber. Our guest is Daniel Szabo, CEO of Körber Digital.
In this conversation, we talk about Transforming a German industrial company through digital acquisitions and spinouts. Körber went from mechanical engineering company, to diversified manufacturer through the 1990s, to an international technology group over the past five years, with a digital arm focusing on venture building, building digital solutions and digital enablement. We discuss building new businesses that leverage "unfair advantage", accessing customers to co-develop scale commercially. Where is European industry heading? How to combine agility and scale?
After listening to this episode, check out Körber Digital as well as Daniel Szabo's social media profile:
- Körber Digital (@koerber_digital): https://www.koerber.com/en
- Daniel Szabo: https://www.linkedin.com/in/szabodigital/
Trond's takeaway: Körber's journey is still quite unique and also about to become typical, at least of manufacturing or engineering companies that want to survive. Embracing deep digitalization is a smart choice, but not the easiest feat to accomplish."
Thanks for listening. If you liked the show, subscribe at Augmentedpodcast.co or in your preferred podcast player, and rate us with five stars. If you liked this episode, you might also like episode 10 A Brief History of Manufacturing Software, episode 9 The Fourth Industrial Revolution post-COVID-19, or episode 4 A Renaissance in Manufacturing. Augmented--upskilling the workforce for industry 4.0 frontline operations.
Special Guest: Daniel Szabo.
Augmented reveals the stories behind the new era of industrial operations, where technology will restore the agility of frontline workers.
In episode 25 of the podcast (@AugmentedPod), the topic is: Industrial Tracking: Drones, Warehouses and Theme Parks. Our guest is Mark N. Goldfarb, CEO & co-founder of the Israeli tech startup Sixdof Space, who is a panel speaker at an upcoming, fast-paced panel debate with Q&A on Industry 4.0 with top Israeli startups and advanced manufacturers from New England. The event is a collaboration between the New England Advanced Manufacturing Hub (AMHUB), a global network associated with the World Economic Forum, The Government of Israel’s Economic Mission to North America, Tulip, and Stanley Black & Decker.
In this conversation, we talk about positional tracking technology, touch on the many tracking technologies that exist out there- magnetic, UWB, Wifi, Lidar, LiFI - each with pros and cons. We then move into optical tracking, an approach that uses light, and as such requires a direct line of sight, but is less power hungry than other approaches. We discuss outfitting factory floors with this stuff to track movement by vehicles, people or goods in a manufacturing warehouse, and exciting futuristic use cases in remote surgery and landing space shuttles.
After listening to this episode, check out Sixdof Space, as well as Mark N. Goldfarb's profile on social media, as well as the Israel meets New England smart manufacturing event and its organizers, the Israeli Trade Mission and Amhub New England:
- Sixdof Space (@SixdofS): https://www.sixdof.space/
- Mark N. Goldfarb: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mark-n-goldfarb-822b/
- The New England Advanced Manufacturing Hub (AMHUB): https://mfg.works/amhub/amhub-new-england/
- The Government of Israel’s Economic Mission to North America: https://embassies.gov.il/washington/AboutTheEmbassy/Pages/Economic-Mission.aspx#:
- ISRAEL meets NEW ENGLAND: Advanced Manufacturing in Factories and Workplace: https://mfg.works/israel-meets-new-england/
Trond's takeaway: Photonics is an exciting field with a tremendous amount of innovation. Optical tracking is only one use cases, there are many, many others for this platform technology.
Thanks for listening. If you liked the show, subscribe at Augmentedpodcast.co or in your preferred podcast player, check out Augmented podcast on YouTube, and rate us with five stars. If you liked this episode, you might also like episode 14 Smart Manufacturing for All, episode 13 Get Manufacturing Superpowers, or episode 6 Human-Robot Interaction challenges.
Augmented--upskilling the workforce for industry 4.0 frontline operations.
Special Guest: Mark N. Goldfarb.
Augmented reveals the stories behind the new era of industrial operations, where technology will restore the agility of frontline workers.
In episode 18 of the podcast (@AugmentedPod), the topic is: Transforming Foundational Industries. Our guest is Dayna Grayson, General Partner and Co-founder of Construct Capital, a newly formed VC firm.
In this conversation, we talk about how Dayna became a trailblazing female VC, her early thesis around the SaaS model as transformative for industry to avoid ERP lock-in, her experience from being on the board of many famous startups, including Formlabs, Desktop Metal, Onshape, and frontline operations platform Tulip. She explains why she co-founded $140m fund Construct Capital in late 2020. We discuss how software is transforming industries that have arguably been somewhat stale since the industrial revolution. She shares her approach to invest in and scale the startups by non-linear and product design aware founders; we look at some recent investments of hers, engineer workflow tool Copia, EV charging software ChargeLab, fresh food assembly automation Chef Robotics. Finally, we touch on the future of manufacturing.
After listening to this episode, check out Construct Capital as well as Dayna Grayson's profile on social media:
- Construct Capital (@constructcap): https://constructcap.com/
- Dayna Grayson (@daynagrayson): https://www.linkedin.com/in/daynagrayson/
Trond's takeaway: Dayna Grayson is right about factories. The factory floor is a too limiting framework to use to understand emerging manufacturing firms. Production facilities might also become microfactories, industry products become tech platforms. What does industry look like 15 years from now? We won't even recognize it. The foundation is changing. Foundational industries, yes, but created in new types of foundries.
Thanks for listening. If you liked the show, subscribe at Augmentedpodcast.co or in your preferred podcast player, and rate us with five stars. If you liked this episode, you might also like episode 13 Get Manufacturing Superpowers, episode 10 A Brief History of Manufacturing Software, or episode 11 Empowering Workers to Innovate. Augmented--the industry 4.0 podcast.
Special Guest: Dayna Grayson.
Augmented reveals the stories behind the new era of industrial operations, where technology will restore the agility of frontline workers.
In episode 15 of the podcast (@AugmentedPod), the topic is: Freedman's Factory: Introduction. Our guest is Mark Freedman, Lean Practice Leader at Tulip for our new segment, Freedman's Factory, which you will recognize because of our new segment specific music, with a cool, shopfloor vibe.
In this conversation, we talk about Freedman's Factory. What is it? What do we hope to accomplish? We learn that Mark Freedman, whose job title is all about Lean--which has to do with eliminating waste and increasing productivity, is, in fact, all about Kaizen, which is somewhat more ambitiously Japanese and means change for the better, or in better English--continuous improvement, from Kai meaning change and Zen meaning peaceful, relaxed, and aware. We are aiming for all those things. In fact, we hope to probe deep into the manufacturing experience, learning from people who live it and breathe it. We also want to investigate what it means to explore Kaizen and Lean together with digitalization--and with the nocode approach. And, as Freedman says, with all change we have to respect the current state. In other words, before we start to change something, we have to take in what is and recognize why it is that way. If all of these things sound slightly philosophical, it is because they are. This is down-to-earth philosophy with a small p.
After listening to this episode, check out Tulip's and Mark Freedman's profile on social media:
- Tulip (@tulipinterfaces): https://tulip.co/
- Mark Freedman: https://www.linkedin.com/in/markjfreedman/
Augmented is a podcast for leaders, hosted by futurist Trond Arne Undheim, presented by Tulip.co, the manufacturing app platform, and associated with MFG.works, the manufacturing upskilling community launched at the World Economic Forum. Each episode dives deep into a contemporary topic of concern across the industry and airs at 9 am US Eastern Time every Wednesday. Augmented--the industry 4.0 podcast.
Thanks for listening. If you liked the show, subscribe at Augmentedpodcast.co or in your preferred podcast player, and rate us with five stars. If you liked this episode, you might also like episode 10 A Brief History of Manufacturing Software, episode 6 Human-Robot Interaction challenges, or episode 1 Automation to Augmentation - the podcast's vision to build a movement. Augmented--the industry 4.0 podcast.
Special Guest: Mark Freedman.
Augmented reveals the stories behind the new era of industrial operations, where technology will restore the agility of frontline workers.
In episode 17 of the podcast (@AugmentedPod), the topic is: Smart Manufacturing for All. Our guest is John Dyck, CEO at CESMII, the Smart Manufacturing Institute.
After listening to this episode, check out CESMII as well as John Dyck's social profile:
- CESMII: (@CESMII_SM) https://www.cesmii.org/
- John Dyck: https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnsdyck/
In this conversation, we talked about democratizing smart manufacturing, the history and ambition of CESMII (2016-), bridging the skills gap in small and medium enterprises which constitute 98% of manufacturing. We discuss how the integration of advanced sensors, data, platforms and controls to radically impact manufacturing performance. We then have the hard discussion of why the US is (arguably) a laggard? John shares the 7 characteristics of future-proofing (interoperability, openness, sustainability, security, etc.). We hear about two coming initiatives: Smart Manufacturing Executive Council & Smart Manufacturing Innovation Platform. We then turn to the future outlook over the next decade.
Trond's takeaway: US manufacturing is a bit of a conundrum. How can it both be the driver of the international economy and a laggard in terms of productivity and innovation, all at the same time? Can it all be explained by scale--both scale in multinationals and scale in SMEs? Whatever the case may be, future proofing manufacturing, which CESMII is up to, seems like a great idea. The influx of smart manufacturing technologies will, over time, transform industry as a whole, but it will not happen automatically.
Thanks for listening. If you liked the show, subscribe at Augmentedpodcast.co or in your preferred podcast player, and rate us with five stars. If you liked this episode, you might also like episode 8 on Work of the Future, episode 5 Plug-and-play Industrial Tech, or episode 9 The Fourth Industrial Revolution post-COVID-19. Augmented--the industry 4.0 podcast.
Special Guest: John Dyck.
Augmented reveals the stories behind the new era of industrial operations, where technology will restore the agility of frontline workers.
In episode 16 of the podcast (@AugmentedPod), the topic this week is: A female fighter in a manufacturing SME and our guest is Lena Jaentsch, Business Development Specialist at HERMA Group, a German manufacture, interviewed by futurist Trond Arne Undheim.
In this conversation, we talk about being a champion for new, efficient modes of production, bringing customers value, and also being a young woman in manufacturing. We discuss the challenges in today's manufacturing companies to explore new business models and stay on top of digitalization, yet keep a holistic view. Lena is an innovation manager, and calls herself "a strong but mostly single fighter in the SME space". We discuss the war for talent and why young people don't choose manufacturing. We also discuss the need for a global manufacturing community to exchange information, tools, solutions, and experiences--especially for women.
After listening to this episode, check out Herma as well as Lena Jaentsch's social profile.
- Herma: https://www.herma.com/
- Lena Jaentsch: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lena-jaentsch-8b0278191/
Trond's takeaway: With people like Lena on board, the future of any business would seem bright. She has the kind of limitless energy that characterizes what everyone should aspire to in the workforce. Moreover, she has the guts to go explore new things, learn, adapt, and implement. I predict Lena will move fast up the ladder. In small companies, you don't need many shopfloor managers like that, but you do need some, otherwise you will be left behind."
Thanks for listening. If you liked the show, subscribe at Augmentedpodcast.co or in your preferred podcast player, and rate us with five stars. If you liked this episode, you might also like episode 11 Empowering Workers to Innovate, episode 3 Reimagine Training, and episode 2 How to Train Augmented Workers.
Augmented--the industry 4.0 podcast.
Special Guest: Lena Jaentsch.
Augmented reveals the stories behind the new era of industrial operations, where technology will restore the agility of frontline workers.
In episode 15 of the podcast (@AugmentedPod), the topic is: Bottom up and Deep Digitization of Operations. Our guest is Dr. Damir Hrnjadovic, Managing Director, DMG MORI Digital GmbH
In this conversation, we talk about How DMG MORI was able to digitize their operations in a matter of weeks, using Tulip software. Lean, nocode startups are transforming experiences for factory owners because its shopfloor solutions are so easy to implement. We discuss whether nocode actually means process engineers can become independent from the IT department. Damir confirms that DMG MORI power users are able to do that even though not every shopfloor operator will create a Tulip application. We discuss upskilling in the German Mittelstand of small-and medium size businesses and how Damir feels like a time traveler when he encounters paper based processes on the shop floor.
After listening to this episode, check out DMG MORI as well as Dr. Damir Hrnjadovic's social profile.
- DMG MORI (@dmgmorieu): https://us.dmgmori.com/
- Dr. Damir Hrnjadovic (@DamirHrnjadovic): https://www.linkedin.com/in/dr-damir-hrnjadovic-3ba0485b/
Trond's takeaway: It is striking to hear about how Damir at times feels like a time traveler when encountering paper based operations at the shop floor, at other times, he can experience bottom up, deep digitalization in a matter of weeks. How can those to co-exist? Clearly shopfloor change is uneven at the moment, depending on whether you heard the right digital gospel and what the attitude of the IT department is to introducing changes that democratize IT.
Thanks for listening. If you liked the show, subscribe at Augmentedpodcast.co or in your preferred podcast player, and rate us with five stars. If you liked this episode, you might also like episode 3 How to Train Augmented workers or episode 10 A Brief History of Manufacturing Software. Augmented--the industry 4.0 podcast.
Special Guest: Dr. Damir Hrnjadovic.
Augmented reveals the stories behind the new era of industrial operations, where technology will restore the agility of frontline workers.
In episode 13 of the podcast (@AugmentedPod), the topic is: Get Manufacturing Superpowers. Our guest is Dave Evans, CEO & co-founder, Fictiv.
In this conversation, we talk about Building hardware, at the speed of software. How do you define manufacturing superpowers? Why are such superpowers possible and relevant now? We discuss specific industry 4.0 technologies, the emerging ecosystem of players in digital manufacturing, from e-Machine shop and 3D print platforms to manufacturing apps and manufacturing as a service. We discuss government engagement,? Buy America, trade wars, and where US positioning falls short, and we discuss the next decade.
After listening to this episode, check out Fictiv as well as Dave Evans's social profile.
- Fictiv: https://www.fictiv.com/
- Dave Evans (@makrdave): https://www.linkedin.com/in/evansda11/
Trond's takeaway: As exciting as the ecosystem of players in digital manufacturing is, we do need strong public sector policy to drive regulation which drives change so the superpowers Dave Evans talks about, including supply chain predictability, can get evenly distributed.
Thanks for listening. If you liked the show, subscribe at Augmentedpodcast.co or in your preferred podcast player, and rate us with five stars. If you liked this episode, you might also like episode 5: on a Renaissance of Manufacturing or episode 7: on the Work of the Future. Augmented--the industry 4.0 podcast.
Special Guest: Dave Evans.
Augmented reveals the stories behind the new era of industrial operations, where technology will restore the agility of frontline workers.
In episode 12 of the podcast (@AugmentedPod), the topic is: Enterprise Wide Quality of Manufacturing. Our guest is Joseph DeFeo, CEO, Juran.
In this conversation, we talk about The history of Quality, its origins, the terms involved and the evolution of the field into Lean and Agile. We discuss persisting workforce challenges, emerging trends and best practices. We cover the Future outlook: What’s next? How to stay up to date?
After listening to this episode, check out Juran as well as Guest's social profile.
- Juran (@Juran_Institute): https://www.juran.com/
- Joseph DeFeo: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joseph-defeo-76869ba/
Trond's takeaway: Quality is a concept many instinctively would say they have a great handle on, but time and again, manufacturing consultants have uncovered through factory visits that they do not, whether they call it Quality, Agile or Lean. The processes that work are near timeless, but implementing them is unfortunately also a timeless task. Arguably, the productization of quality is coming and it will, like so many other things, also be tech enabled.
Thanks for listening. If you liked the show, subscribe at Augmentedpodcast.co or in your preferred podcast player, and rate us with five stars. If you liked this episode, you might also like episode 2: How to Train Augmented Workers or episode 9: The Fourth Industrial Revolution Post-COVID-19.
Augmented--the industry 4.0 podcast.
Special Guest: Joseph DeFeo.
Augmented reveals the stories behind the new era of industrial operations, where technology will restore the agility of frontline workers.
In episode 11 of the podcast (@AugmentedPod), the topic is: Empowering Workers to Innovate. Our guest is Robin Dechant, Founder, Future of Manufacturing Community.
In this conversation, we talk about Why Robin is so deeply interested in Manufacturing Innovation at such a ripe, young age? Also, how do you define manufacturing innovation? Why is it relevant now? Why should young people be excited about manufacturing? Why is upskilling so fundamental? What should people know about his new 'The Future of Manufacturing' community? How to scale upskilling? What’s next in the digital factory in the next 20 years.
After listening to this episode, check out the as well as Robin Dechant's social profile.
- Future of Manufacturing Community: https://www.futureofmanufacturing.io/
- Robin Dechant (@robindchnt): https://www.linkedin.com/in/robindechant/
Trond's takeaway: Robin Dechant represents the future of manufacturing. He is young, he is deeply engaged in innovation, he tracks startups, talks to the whole community and wants to improve the ecosystem and is passionate about upskilling. Robin is an i4.0 native, one of many we will follow on this podcast.
Thanks for listening. If you liked the show, subscribe at Augmentedpodcast.co or in your preferred podcast player, and rate us with five stars. If you liked this episode, you might also like episode 2: How to Train Augmented Workers or episode 3: Reimagine Training. Augmented--the industry 4.0 podcast.
Special Guest: Robin Dechant.
Augmented reveals the stories behind the new era of industrial operations, where technology will restore the agility of frontline workers.
In episode 9 of the podcast (@AugmentedPod), the topic is: The Fourth Industrial Revolution post-COVID-19. Our guest is Francisco, Betti, Head of Advanced Manufacturing and Production, World Economic Forum.
In this conversation, we talk about why he got into manufacturing and how the World Economic Forum works. We discuss how the Forum has changed over these past 5 years and how manufacturing has become the lead topic among the global elite. The manufacturing platform is now, arguably, the primary among 17 flagship initiatives at the World Economic Forum. We go deeply into the changing business models of manufacturing and what the next decade holds.
After listening to this episode, check out World Economic Forum as well as Francisco, Betti's social profile.
- World Economic Forum: https://www.weforum.org/
- Francisco, Betti: https://www.linkedin.com/in/francisco-betti-10074342/?originalSubdomain=ch
Trond's takeaway: Manufacturing has escalated in prominence during COVID-19, and for good reason. What we can produce decides what we can become. The deep digitalization gains society has made over the past few years had to quickly be implemented on the factory floor. Surprisingly, a large part of the industry was ready. But the process now needs to complete and the results will likely be an entirely new production platform for the world.
Thanks for listening. If you liked the show, subscribe at Augmentedpodcast.co or in your preferred podcast player, and rate us with five stars. If you liked this episode, you might also like episode 4: A Renaissance of Manufacturing or episode 6: Work of the Future. Augmented--the industry 4.0 podcast.
Special Guest: Francisco Betti.
In episode 10 of the podcast (@AugmentedPod), the topic is: A Brief History of Manufacturing Software. Our guest is Rick Bullotta, Partner, TwinThread and co-founder, ThingWorx
In this conversation, we talk about how Rick has shaped manufacturing software history, and the lessons learned from being an early employee of Wonderware, the famous precursor to manufacturing automation, back in 1993, a company first sold to British engineering giant Siebe in 1998 which merged with BTR to form Inventsys, which, in turn merged with French multinational Schneider Electric, and later the CTO. Rick Bullotta was also the co-founder of Lighthammer Software which was later acquired by SAP, then in 2009 founding ThingWorx, the first complete, end-to-end technology platform designed for the industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) which was acquired by PTC in 2003. We also touch on his current advice to founders in the industrial space, his board role at Tulip, and what he sees lie ahead for the industry.
After listening to this episode, check out Thingworx as well as Rick Bullotta's social profile.
- Thingworx: https://www.ptc.com/en/resources/iiot/product-brief/thingworx-platform
- Rick Bullotta: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rickbullotta/
Trond's takeaway: Wonderware, Lighthammer, and ThingWorx are prominent parts of manufacturing software history, and there's a chance that the 4th company he now is involved with, Tulip, also will be. I do things with things, is Rick Bullotta's motto. The things he does, he does them well, and it is an internet of things, more than anything else. I, for one, am eagerly listening to what he predicts will happen next.
Thanks for listening. If you liked the show, subscribe at Augmentedpodcast.co or in your preferred podcast player, and rate us with five stars. If you liked this episode, you might also like episode 4: A Renaissance of Manufacturing, or episode 5: Plug-and-Play Industrial Tech. Augmented--the industry 4.0 podcast.
Special Guest: Rick Bullota.
Augmented reveals the stories behind the new era of industrial operations, where technology will restore the agility of frontline workers.
In episode 6 of the podcast, the topic is: Human-Robot Interaction challenges. Our guest is Kel Guerin, Chief Innovation Officer, Ready Robotics.
In this conversation, we talk about Trends in the robotic manufacturing community, Solutions, Robotic O/S, and The Future including a vision of a world where open robotic platforms dominate and no specialized skills required to operate robots.
After listening to this episode, check out Ready Robotics as well as Kel Guerin 's social profile.
- Ready Robotics: https://www.ready-robotics.com/
- Ready.academy: https://ready.academy/
- Forge OS/5: https://www.ready-robotics.com/forge-os5
- Kel Guerin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/futureneer/
Trond's takeaway: The fact is that human-robot interaction has not developed at the pace of technology is a challenge. We now need to remedy this shortcoming. Change is underway. Is it happening fast enough? Are the interfaces simple enough to bring in scores of existing manufacturing workers or recruit new talent? If robots truly are to make manufacturing cool again, our tools to communicate with them--and our willingness to try--both need to improve. We have a ways to go, but the direction is good.
Augmented is a podcast for leaders in the manufacturing industry hosted by futurist Trond Arne Undheim, presented by Tulip.co, the manufacturing app platform, and associated with MFG.works, the open learning community launched at the World Economic Forum. Our intro and outro music is The Arrival by Evgeny Bardyuzha (@evgenybardyuzha), licensed by Artlist (@Artlistio). The show can be found at http://www.augmentedpodcast.co/
Thanks for listening. If you liked the show, subscribe at Augmentedpodcast.co or in your preferred podcast player, and rate us with five stars on Apple Podcasts. If you liked this episode, you might also like Episode #2 How to Train Augmented Workers, Episode #3 Reimagine Training, or Episode #4 A Renaissance of Manufacturing.
Each episode dives deep into a contemporary topic of concern across the industry and airs at 9 am US Eastern Time every Wednesday.
Augmented--the industry 4.0 podcast.
Special Guest: Kel Guerin.
Augmented reveals the stories behind the new era of industrial operations, where technology will restore the agility of frontline workers.
In episode 7 of the podcast (@AugmentedPod), the topic is: The Work of the Future. Our guest is Elisabeth Reynolds, Executive Director, MIT Task Force on the Work of the Future.
In this conversation, we talk about Why is the Work of the Future is particularly relevant now? Why did MIT take this initiative and what did the task force learn? Which specific "institutional innovations" are necessary? What will be the adoption curve for Industry 4.0 technologies? I ask her what the next decade will look like. Finally, we discuss how to stay up to date?
After listening to this episode, check out MIT Work of The Future as well as Elisabeth Reynolds's social profile.
- MIT Work of The Future (@workofthefuture): https://workofthefuture.mit.edu/
- Elisabeth Reynolds (@LReynoldsMITIPC): https://www.linkedin.com/in/elisabeth-reynolds-6714a8103/
Trond's takeaway: The work of the future has just begun. In fact, we are discovering how advanced automation doesn't necessarily mean that robots are taking over, or at least that as robots and software - or both together - move into the workforce, and roll onto the factory floor, there are so many jobs still for humans to do, which is reassuring. But the structural changes in the labor market will be profound, and workers, organizations and governments alike need to prepare now and be ready. Change is upon us.
Thanks for listening. If you liked the show, subscribe at Augmentedpodcast.co or in your preferred podcast player, and rate us with five stars. If you liked this episode, you might also like Episode #4 on A Renaissance in Manufacturing or Episode #2 How to Train Augmented Workers.
Augmented--the industry 4.0 podcast.
Special Guest: Elisabeth Reynolds.
Augmented reveals the stories behind the new era of industrial operations, where technology will restore the agility of frontline workers. In episode 5 of the podcast (@AugmentedPod), the topic is: Plug-and-play Industrial Tech. Our guest is Etienne Lacroix, CEO & Founder, Vention.
In this conversation, we talk about the Consumerization of Industry, high-mix manufacturers, shorter product life cycle, and end-to-end approaches. Etienne shares best practices for industrial workflows with 10x speeds to design, automate, order, deploy, comments on the appification of manufacturing software platforms, the legoification library of modular parts and factory equipment, and how it ties into empowering agile manufacturing. We discuss remaining complexities and briefly touch on the future.
After listening to this episode, check out the Vention well as Etienne Lacroix's social profile.
- Vention https://vention.io/
- Etienne Lacroix https://www.linkedin.com/in/etiennelacroix/
Trond's takeaway: Industrial tech is indeed becoming plug-and-play. We may be at the cusp of a lowcode and approaching a nocode environment, but that doesn't mean zero cognitive skills required, quite the contrary, at least if you want to shape the future development or lead the manufacturing process. Vention's Cloud-CAD makes use of engineering grade 3D in the web browser and is a big step forward. Many more exciting applications are to come, as we map out the use cases, get feedback from previously not sought-out parts of the shopfloor, and integrate those findings. Is a zero bottleneck future in the line of vision? Not now, but we are getting closer.
Augmented is a podcast for leaders in the manufacturing industry hosted by futurist Trond Arne Undheim, presented by Tulip.co (@tulipinterfaces), the manufacturing app platform, and associated with MFG.works, the open learning community launched at the World Economic Forum.Our intro and outro music is The Arrival by Evgeny Bardyuzha (@evgenybardyuzha), licensed by Artlist (@Artlistio). The show can be found at http://www.augmentedpodcast.co/
Thanks for listening. If you liked the show, subscribe at Augmentedpodcast.co or in your preferred podcast player, and rate us with five stars. If you liked this episode, you might also like Episode #1 From Automation to Augmentation, Episode #4 A Renaissance of Manufacturing, or Episode #5 Plug-and-play Industrial Tech. Each episode dives deep into a contemporary topic of concern across the industry and airs at 9 am US Eastern Time every Wednesday. Augmented--the industry 4.0 podcast.
Special Guest: Etienne Lacroix.
Augmented reveals the stories behind the new era of industrial operations, where technology will restore the agility of frontline workers. In episode #4 of the podcast, the topic is: A Renaissance of Manufacturing. Our guest is Enno De Boer, Partner, Digital Manufacturing Lead, McKinsey.
Augmented is a podcast for leaders, hosted by futurist Trond Arne Undheim, presented by Tulip.co, the manufacturing app platform, and associated with MFG.works, the manufacturing upskilling community launched at the World Economic Forum. Each episode dives deep into a contemporary topic of concern across the industry and airs at 9 am US Eastern Time every Wednesday. Augmented--the industry 4.0 podcast.
In this conversation, we talk about **What is digital manufacturing? How to transform operations strategy, best practices, specifically the World Economic Forum Global Lighthouse Factories. We also tackle future developments: How to stay up to date in this fast moving field? What’s next?
Trond's takeaway: is that manufacturing is indeed undergoing a renaissance. There should be a tremendous amount of excitement among policy makers, industry professionals, and frontline workers about the changes in play. Technologies are maturing. The digital factory is becoming a reality. For those who already took on board the lessons of lean manufacturing and are exploring the latest opportunities, automation has become augmentation. Yet, there's still a lot to learn. The World Economic Forum's Lighthouse factories is one place to seek inspiration.**
After listening to this episode, check out the World Economic Forum Global Lighthouse Network, McKinsey's Operations practice, well as Enno De Boer's social profile.
- World Economic Forum Global Lighthouse Network: https://www.weforum.org/projects/globallighthousenetwork
- Enno De Boer (bio): https://www.mckinsey.com/our-people/enno-de-boer
- McKinsey Manufacturing & Supply Chain practice area (@mckinseymfg): https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/operations/how-we-help-clients
Augmented is a podcast for leaders in the manufacturing industry hosted by futurist Trond Arne Undheim, presented by Tulip.co, the manufacturing app platform, and associated with MFG.works, the open learning community launched at the World Economic Forum. Our intro and outro music is The Arrival by Evgeny Bardyuzha (@evgenybardyuzha), licensed by @Artlist_io. The show can be found at http://www.augmentedpodcast.co/
Thanks for listening. If you liked the show, subscribe at Augmentedpodcast.co or in your preferred podcast player, and rate us with five stars. If you liked this episode, you might also like episode #1 on From Automation to Augmentation or Episode #2 on How to Train Augmented Workers. Augmented--the industry 4.0 podcast.
Special Guest: Enno de Boer.
Augmented reveals the stories behind the new era of industrial operations, where technology will restore the agility of frontline workers. In episode 3 of the podcast, the topic is: Re-imagining workforce training. Our guest is Sarah Boisvert, Founder and CEO Fab Lab Hub, LLC and the non-profit New Collar Network.
In this conversation, we talk about re-imagining workforce training, industry 4.0., what do you mean by “New Collar” jobs? We discuss the mushrooming of Fab Labs. What skills are needed? How can they be taught? How can the credentials be recognized? .What has the impact been? Where do we go from here.
After listening to this episode, check out Sarah Boisvert's online profile as well as the New Collar Network:
- Sarah Boisvert https://www.linkedin.com/in/sarah-boisvert-3a965031/
- The New Collar Network (@NewCollarNetwrk): http://newcollarnetwork.com/
- Fab Lab Hub (@FabLabHub): http://fablabhub.org/
Augmented is a podcast for leaders in the manufacturing industry hosted by futurist Trond Arne Undheim, presented by Tulip.co, the manufacturing app platform, and associated with MFG.works, the open learning community launched at the World Economic Forum. Our intro and outro music is The Arrival by Evgeny Bardyuzha (@evgenybardyuzha), licensed by @Artlistio.
Thanks for listening. If you liked the show, subscribe at Augmentedpodcast.co or in your preferred podcast player, and rate us with five stars on Apple Podcasts. To nominate guests, to suggest exciting episode topics or give feedback, follow us on LinkedIn, looking out for live episodes, message us on Twitter @augmentedpod or our website's contact form. If you liked this episode, you might also like episode 3: How to Train Augmented Workers. Augmented--the industry 4.0 podcast.
Special Guest: Sarah Boisvert.
Augmented reveals the stories behind the new era of industrial operations, where technology will restore the agility of frontline workers. In episode 2 of the podcast, the topic is how to train augmented workers. Our guest is Elisa Roth, doctoral student at the Institute for Manufacturing at the University of Cambridge in the UK, a Global Shaper by the World Economic Forum.
In this conversation, we talk about what industrial augmentation is and what industry 4.0 is. We discuss the training challenge in industrial operations, specifically the need to go beyond the traditional approach of formal training, apprenticeships, and on-the-job observation. I get her take on emerging training needs, what are the exact industry 4.0 skills we should be teaching? How to teach it and scale the teaching? Advice on how to learn and design learning journeys. Lastly, we discuss future developments: where is the manufacturing industry heading?
Trond's takeaway: Training augmented workers will have to happen in a much more streamlined way than previous training efforts. As Elisa Roth points out, first off, the organization needs to be on board with its workers integrating training into their workday. There is a lot of training available, but it might be of various quality, it might be hard to find exactly when you need it, and it may be hard to verify and get credit for informal learning. In short, it is going to require trust, as well.
After listening to this episode, check out the Institute for Manufacturing at the University of Cambridge in the UK, the Global Shaper Program by the World Economic Forum, as well as Elisa Roth's online profile:
- The Institute for Manufacturing at the University of Cambridge in the UK: https://www.ifm.eng.cam.ac.uk/
- The Global Shaper Community by the World Economic Forum: https://www.globalshapers.org/
- Elisa Roth: https://www.linkedin.com/in/elisa-roth/
Augmented is a podcast for leaders in the manufacturing industry hosted by futurist Trond Arne Undheim, presented by Tulip.co, the manufacturing app platform, and associated with MFG.works, the open learning community launched at the World Economic Forum. Our intro and outro music is The Arrival by Evgeny Bardyuzha (@evgenybardyuzha), licensed by @Artlistio. The show can be found at http://www.augmentedpodcast.co/
Thanks for listening. If you liked the show, subscribe at Augmentedpodcast.co or in your preferred podcast player, and rate us with five stars on Apple Podcasts. To nominate guests, to suggest exciting episode topics or give feedback, follow us on LinkedIn, looking out for live episodes, message us on Twitter @augmentedpod or our website's contact form. If you liked this episode, you might also like episode 3 on Reimagine Training, which will be live on Wednesday 17 Feb 2021. Augmented--the industry 4.0 podcast.
Special Guest: Elisa Roth.
Augmented reveals the stories behind the new era of industrial operations, where technology will restore the agility of frontline workers.
In episode 1 of the podcast, the topic is: Automation to Augmentation. Our guest is futurist Trond Arne Undheim, host of the Augmented and Futurized podcasts, venture partner at Antler, ecosystem evangelist at Tulip, nonresident Fellow at the Atlantic Council, and co-founder of Yegii. Trond is a former Director of MIT Startup Exchange, Director of Standards Strategy & Policy at Oracle and National Expert for e-Government at the European Commission. Trond is a 4x author. His upcoming book, Future Tech: How to Capture Value from Disruptive Industry Trends, will be released on 3 March in the UK and Europe and on 30 March in the US. He holds a Ph.D. on the future of work and artificial intelligence and cognition.
In this conversation, we talk about the ambitious aim of the Augmented podcast to shift the discussion about industrial operations from Automation to Augmentation, bringing a bottom-up perspective that benefits the frontline worker.
After listening to this episode, check out Tulip as well as Trond Undheim and Natan Linder's social profile.
- Tulip(@Tulip): https://tulip.co/
- Trond Undheim(@trondau): https://trondundheim.com/
- Natan Linder ((@linder78): https://www.forbes.com/sites/natanlinder/
Trond's takeaway: The path from Automation to Augmentation won't be linear. Clearly, there is still a place for automation. What we need to ensure is that industrial operations doesn't only become efficient but also maintains meaning for the frontline worker. The shift from automation to augmentation, starting with the appearance of 3D printing which is continuously improving, adding the revolutionary layer of lowcode and nocode apps on the manufacturing shop floor, has just begun, literally only a few years ago. This is why, discussing what is happening to make sure both industry insiders and those who depend on industry are comfortable, have a stake in the process, and can be part of the change, is so important. The Augmented podcast, aims to be part of the upskilling process that has to occur, equally and equitably, among government policy makers, industry leaders and frontline workers
Augmented is a podcast for leaders in the manufacturing industry hosted by futurist Trond Arne Undheim, presented by Tulip.co, the manufacturing app platform, and associated with MFG.works, the open learning community launched at the World Economic Forum. Our intro and outro music is The Arrival by Evgeny Bardyuzha (@evgenybardyuzha), licensed by Artlist (@Artlistio).
Thanks for listening. If you liked the show, subscribe at Augmentedpodcast.co or in your preferred podcast player, and rate us with five stars on Apple Podcasts. To nominate guests, to suggest exciting episode topics or give feedback, follow us on LinkedIn, looking out for live episodes, message us on Twitter @augmentedpod or through our website's contact form. If you liked this episode, you might also like Episode #3 Reimagine Training, which will be live on Wednesday 17 Feb 2021. Augmented--the industry 4.0 podcast.
Special Guest: Natan Linder.
Welcome to the Augmented podcast! Augmented reveals the stories behind the new era of industrial operations, where technology will restore the agility of frontline workers.
In this introduction, we introduce you to a few of the topics and some of the thought leaders featured in season one of this podcast, including small clips from upcoming episodes with Etienne Lacroix, CEO of Vention, Elisa Roth, Industrial Researcher at the University of Cambridge, Natan Linder, CEO of Tulip, Kel Guerin, CIO and co-founder of Ready Robotics, and Youri Regnaud, Business Capability manager for precision manufacturing at the luxury goods conglomerate and artisan watchmaker Cartier. Technology is changing rapidly. What’s next in the digital factory? Who is leading the change? What are the key skills to learn? How to stay up to date on manufacturing and industry 4.0?
Augmented is a podcast for leaders, hosted by futurist Trond Arne Undheim, presented by Tulip.co, the manufacturing app platform, and associated with MFG.works, the manufacturing upskilling community launched at the World Economic Forum. Each episode dives deep into a contemporary topic of concern across the industry and airs at 9 am US Eastern Time every Wednesday. Augmented--the industry 4.0 podcast.
Special Guests: Elisa Roth, Etienne Lacroix, Kel Guerin, and Natan Linder.