192: Leading with Productivity to Drive Sustainability Featuring Lauren Dunford, CEO of Guidewheel

A lot of the things to just drive regular operational effectiveness are the same things that you want to do to improve sustainability.

Welcome to Manufacturing Happy Hour, the podcast where we get real about the latest trends and technologies impacting modern manufacturers. Manufacturing Happy Hour each week we interview industry experts that are at the top of their craft and give you the tools, tactics and strategies you need to take your career and your business to the next level. And now your host, Chris Lueke.

Hey, what's up? It's episode 192. Today we're talking about leading with productivity to drive sustainability. Our guest this week is Lauren Dunford, the CEO and co founder of Guide Wheel, a company that's been on a mission since its founding in 2018 to empower all the world's factories to reach sustainable peak performance. So here are three things you can expect from this episode. First, we're going to hear about Lauren's background. She's a Stanford grad. She's involved in the World Economic Forum. All of this adds up to a unique personal story with some solid lessons around career paths and education, plus how your customers can help shape your business. Second, sustainability comes up a lot in this interview, but in a very pragmatic way, from productivity being a primary driver for sustainability to tangibly measuring sustainable outcomes. Finally, we discuss artificial intelligence and how people will continue to play a bigger role on the plant floor and in the development environment for plant floor software. As always, if you want to learn more, go to the show notes page manufacturinghappyhour.com 192 and also, I want to let you know that Manufacturing Happy Hour is going on tour this summer 2024. I'm going to tell you a lot more about that at the end of the interview. But just know we're hitting St. Louis, Missouri on Thursday, July 18, Milwaukee, Wisconsin on Wednesday, July 31 and an end of summer party in Rockford, Illinois on Thursday, August 15. We're doing that in conjunction with the Making Chips podcast. A lot more details to share after this interview is done, but if you want to learn more, go to manufacturinghappyour.com tour. You can always go there to find out what events are going on with Manufacturing Happy Hour. And with that, let's jump right into this episode. We have a very important question for Lauren to kick off today's conversation.

Lauren, so the first let's say conversation or topic I would ask you if we were grabbing a drink at Happy Hour would be I just have to ask it. How did you get in cahoots with the World Economic Forum like you've been in Switzerland, dc, San Francisco, like you're all over this. And I feel like a lot of manufacturers would be like huh, what did she do to pull this off? I'm impressed to say the least. So tell, tell us a bit of the story if there is one.

Yeah, I think I just lucked out. So another founder friend had been a World Economic Forum tech pionee I think submitted our name Guide Wheel to be nominated and get to participate, somehow ended up getting it and didn't quite know what it was. But on the introductory call they talked about the different communities and there was a manufacturing community. And so actually all credit goes to. I don't want to speculate about the other communities, I haven't been part of them. But I do have a strong suspicion that within the World Economic Forum the manufacturing group rocks. They get stuff done, they do work, they prep different things. And so that's kind of my group of people. And the moment I started to get sucked into the actual manufacturing, manufacturing work and initiatives just got very involved and very passionate about this topic of how do we pull amazing people into this space. So I think having that channel to channel the enthusiasm for the topic in general has been amazing.

Yeah, I, I was watching one of your videos, a discussion on how to achieve net zero. Things that are going to be very in line with our conversation today. I mean what's, what's the experience been like for you? Just very candidly like has it opened doors or just tell us about the vibe in general.

Yeah, so I think the biggest thing had has been we started working with smaller and mid sized factories. So I had a lot of ties and a sense of where our mid market customers were. What the World Economic Forum work has done is help me feel like we as guide Wheel are also tied into the world's largest companies and how they're thinking about technological changes, what's keeping them up at night and being in the room with the Chief Strategy Officers, CEOs, Chief Technology Officers of the world's largest manufacturers and hearing them stressing out in some ways about very similar things to what our mid market customers are stressing out about. Older machines, newer machines, all these different types of assets, all not yet in the cloud. It's been actually crazy to me how many of the challenges are still quite similar. But then also to understand how these larger companies are thinking about evolving into the future and leveraging things like AI. Digital technology has I think allowed us to not just meet the needs of the present, but also be thinking ahead about what's coming next in a way that I really appreciate. Also good people. Maybe it's, I don't know, I'm obviously biased, but the chance to get to know as humans, a lot of these folks that are making big decisions for big companies, I'm just really impressed. They're very thoughtful. None of us as humans get everything right. But yeah, I. It's given me a lot of optimism.

Yeah, it feels like a bit of a cheat code for a startup because when I think of the World Economic Forum, you're right. I'm usually not thinking of small and mid size. I'm usually thinking about the world's largest enterprises, not just for manufacturing, but just the world's largest companies in general. So, you know, at some point or another we're gonna have to grab a drink and I'm gonna need to figure out how to work manufacturing happy hour in there at some point. But that's a conversation for another day because today's all about you. And let's go back to where you got started because as I was researching your background, it feels like you have a very cool two part story that Stanford played into in both regards. So let's go back to the very beginning and I think this might have been more around your undergrad time. Tell us how Stanford turned you on you to operations in general.

Yeah, yeah, it just. I love doing things and seeing results of those actions. And so when I was an undergrad, the key thing that I got involved with that turned me on to operations was actually the operations of the university. There are all these opportunities for energy efficiency, operational efficiency, within how the university actually functions. So I started a small fund as a student group to pair people with those opportunities and then back initiatives that had high ROI for improving operational efficiency, energy efficiency, quantifiable results, et cetera. So definitely very, very different in terms of the focus area from what we're doing now, but similar in terms of, hey, there are things that have very high leverage for driving bottom line impact and can tee up an organization for long term success. So got very into that world of the massive opportunity that exists for low ha fruit in operational efficiency within any organization.

Yeah, it's funny, when I was working with Rockwell Automation, I would end up, you know, dabbling and seeing some of these universities and they have like a small, I wouldn't call it a factory. Right. But you know, they've got their H vac, their utilities. @ the end of the day they have an industrial operation inside of there and there's no doubt there's opportunities for energy efficiency optimization. So that makes a lot of sense. The funny thing I thought was that round two, you went back to Stanford for your.

Mba.

Yes. Where I believe you said you learned how to apply tech in elegant ways and that's ultimately where Guide Wheel came out of. Can you tell us a little bit more about.

That? Yeah. And I think you expressed it really well. I'll rewind just a bit to what got me heading back to Stanford for the mba, which was actually having five years of working out of a fresh food manufacturing plant in Oakland. So I was on the customer facing side. I was in charge of our West coast partnerships. 65 million in business, millions of units being delivered every week, and I was the one that customers called if something didn't go quite as planned. I felt that pain quite a bit because it was my responsibility. And then I also was lucky enough to physically work out of the plant, walk through the plant floor every morning to get to my desk and see that technology had not solved our production tracking problem. We were tracking with Excel and paper not because the ops team wasn't fantastic or making good choices about technology, but because somehow, unbelievably, even in the heart of the Bay Area, technology had not yet provided great solutions for that problem. So felt the pain, saw the opportunity, and then headed back and focused pretty much every second of that MBA at Stanford on how do we solve this in, like you said, an elegant and scalable way. I think a lot about the scale piece because of having had that experience of working out of a mid size manufacturing company. And then the nice thing about that MBA opportunity was I got to learn a lot and do a bunch of discovery and testing and prototyping. So we didn't jump right to one solution. We tried to zero in on the customer and the problem, which I think resulted in an elegant solution because we had to go back to first principles, thinking about how to solve it versus incremental improvements on some kind of legacy.

System. Yeah, I have a question that just popped up because you're right. I glossed over the fact that you did have five years of experience before going back into it as a startup founder. And this is for the leaders out there, whether they're at a large company, whether they're thinking about maybe starting their own thing. What value have you seen in your mba? Because I feel like we live in a world where people are like, oh yeah, just like, you know, almost like skip college and just start a company. I'd love to hear where you found value. In having that experience. And also what was the value in having that five years of work experience before diving in to the.

Mba? Yeah, yeah. I mean, both were very valuable. I think the MBA without the work experience would not have been nearly as valuable. And I think there are lots of different paths to get to do amazing things. So for me, just from my own experience, the ability to have years of experience doing things in the real world and understanding that things that sound easy theoretically often are not things might sound great and in practice be much, much more difficult. So I think that understanding of some of the human aspects of making change, management, having managed people coming into the MBA was quite helpful. And in terms of the value of the MBA itself, I think it's actually become even more valuable as we scale now working with 250 plus manufacturers, Latin America, US, Europe, Africa, Asia, and being able to see the road ahead at least just a little bit. And most importantly, I'm making mistakes all the time as a founder and being able to have other founders that I know and people who are a little bit ahead in that journey to call up and say, hey, I think I just messed up. Xyz, can you help me think about a time that you solved that in the past? Or what should I be thinking about as we're at this next stage? It's been very helpful to feel like the road ahead isn't a total mystery that I've thought about topics through some kinds of class or some kinds of the different mentors that they bring before having to personally experience them and kind of know the right person to call, even if I don't know the right.

Answer. Yeah, I like your comment that the MBA has been particularly valuable as you scale because I'm a bachelor degree guy. I don't have an mba, and right now I'm running a solo business. And I can sense how valuable that would be as I, you know, bring on a bookkeeper and things like that right now. Just the simple things where it's like I'm bringing on people to handle the finances, where, hey, when you have that MBA experience, those balance sheets speak to you a little bit more. And I can imagine as you're working with these larger enterprises, having that experience and also having that network, as you pointed out, is very.

Valuable. I also think there are lots of ways to get that experience that aren't the mba. So I'm a big fan of practical experience and, you know.

Learning. Both being great and your career is a perfect testament to that right now. And I want to ask you a Little bit about guide wheel and I'm going to share a bit of my understanding here and then I want you to kind of dive in because you're on a mission to help the world's factories achieve sustainable peak production. And if I understand the solution, you have sensors that clip on to, let's say the power cord of any machine tool, whether it's old, whether it's new, and you look at the power draw, if it's, if it's in load, if it's idle, you're measuring the amperage of that piece of equipment and you can, you can leverage that to see cycle time or identify anomalies and things with that, all with amperage. How did you come up with this idea? You talked about experimenting, but you know, if I think back to when I was in engineering school, it seems like something so simple that you're drawing so much information from, like how did you come to that conclusion and build a business around.

This? Yeah, all credit to our customers. So. And first of all, you expressed it perfectly. That was drop dead amazing.

Pitch for what we do. I'll add one analogy just as we talk about kind of how we're doing it and then the, the description of how our customers actually led us to that idea is kind of a fun story. So I'll share that. Everything you described is exactly accurate of using the amperage to do all those things. We can add now, lots of other sensors too. So temp, flow, speed, you know, anything you want we can connect it in. But the amperage is interesting because if you think about a smartwatch on a human, it's non intrusive, clips on in minutes. That's kind of how those current sensors or amp sensors work as well. And years ago we probably wouldn't have thought that a smartwatch would be able to tell you what speed you're running, whether you're in deep sleep or REM sleep. There's a lot you can actually get from that heartbeat that isn't just are you alive or dead that the EKG used to show. So that smartwatch analogy I think now makes it so clear how powerful that heartbeat of the machine can be. But it definitely wasn't clear when we first started. When we first started, what we actually did was we listened, like I said to our customers, we asked them what they wanted and at that point what we were talking with them about was where was low hanging fruit for bottom line impact. And they said, oh, there are lots of energy savings that we could get. So we said okay, well, great. Let's monitor that energy use. Let's have you have great tools to achieve those energy savings alerts, real time visibility, all built for a mobile app that, like your iPhone, doesn't require training, is really easy to use outside the gate. And they said, great, great, great, that sounds wonderful, we'll buy that, we'll use it. And we said, all right. And we sold, we built and sold in this easy, intuitive energy management system and then no one used it. We looked at the usage data and we just nearly had a heart attack because across the board people were using it once a week, once a month, just not enough to have it be part of daily routines and build a viable business except for a small pocket of users. And there the difference was we had sold into the production team. So it was Parav Shah was the general manager who was most active and then his second in command, Willy Makoca. Parav and Willie were using Guidewheel all day, every day. We said, okay, what the heck are they doing? Let's go see what they're doing with this energy data that's different from others. And so showed up at the factory and watched that Parav and Willie were using that electrical heartbeat of the equipment to drive huge improvements in productivity. They had identified opportunities with changeovers. They were promoting operators based on performance and they had drove, driven a 20% improvement in productivity of their factory, which is massive for the bottom line, way, way, way bigger than the dollar value of the energy efficiency improvement. And along the way, of course, they had achieved also a great energy efficiency improvement. So we said, oh my gosh, Parav and Willy are onto something. Let's redesign Guide Wheel to have that be the first use case and energy be the second one. And to do that, we then mocked it up on paper, went out to more factories, got a bunch of feedback from folks before we built it into the product. But eventually that was kind of off to the races of let's use the electrical heartbeat as this universal way to drive productivity. First, first priority of any factory and then layer on the energy.

Side. Wow, what a, what a great story about pivoting who your ideal customer is where the primary use case is. So, so you were, you were working with, let's say energy management teams and you were seeing that, hey, they're just not in there a lot. And then you're looking at this one customer that's using it all the time, but it turns out it's the production folks that are using it. And as you said, they got a 20% improvement. In productivity as a result of that. I hope manufacturing leaders out there are listening to this and realizing, hey, if you think you have a great idea, it probably still is a great idea. You just got to have the right person that it's, it's a fit for is where I would see that going.

We'll be right back right after a word from our sponsor.

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So this is, this has been great so far and I didn't mention you mentioned it, but you literally talk about your solution as being the smartwatch for machines as well. I think that was crystal clear in that story. We're going to talk a little bit about more about that at the end, but I do want to dive into sustainability because I think this is a good segue for this discussion. We were just talking about how, hey, energy management wasn't vibing with it as much but production, they were vibing with it and achieving some energy savings from it as well. Let me ask you this. What are the most important aspects of measuring sustainability that have a tangible impact on the performance or value of of a business? Because I think we hear the word sustainability a lot. And you know, anyone that works in manufacturing can't go to a trade show without seeing a company talking about how they have sustainability. I want you to get real with us and tell us where is that overlap between performance and doing something that's good for the environment, good for energy usage, etc. And good for.

Business. Yeah, yeah. And you'll see we don't actually start with the word sustainability very much. We just start with drive productivity. Because a lot of the things to just drive regular operational effectiveness are the same things that you want to do to improve sustainability. And you don't have to talk about the sustainability side if it doesn't make sense. So normally what we focus on is running a great super productive plant floor means doing more with less getting from your assets. More productivity often results in a much lower energy intensity for the production that you have, but without having to talk about it. We also look at how do you reduce waste at all points in the process, which is classic lean manufacturing, just principles of how you run a good shop floor. And all of those things drive sustainability, but again without the word. So normally what we focus on is integrating in data driven decisions to the routines on the plant floor has a really positive impact on both productivity and efficiency. Things like using data in your shift handoffs from day shift to night shift, having them pull up and look at data together versus just handoff based on gut feel can really help. Having data driven scoreboards on the plant floor where operators can look up and see green, yellow, red, how am I performing? I was hearing from a customer that put scoreboards up on the plant floor and within two weeks saw a 13% improvement in productivity from that friendly competition between the operators. And that's something where once you have the green, yellow, red scoreboards, that culture of how are we doing today? And measuring based on data, very easy to start with the things people care about most and then integrate sustainability into those same routines as well. Morning meetings, being able to pull up the Pareto attack, your top cause of loss. Oftentimes it's things like setup and changeover time where when you bring your changeovers down, your setup time down, that's also reducing wasted energy on your equipment, but very clearly driving runtime and output, which is what everyone on the shop floor is usually engaged around. So all those things in terms of using data, bringing it into the existing routines versus trying to create new behaviors and also bringing it to the people on the shop floor that are making decisions. Operators running the equipment, being able to see red, yellow, green, how am I doing? Take action on those insights right away. Supervisors, plant managers, those operational teams are committed and very continuous improvement mindset. So if we just bring in the areas to improve there, it will often result in a very tangible improvement on the sustainability side without mentioning the work. Then there's lots of stuff that you can get into around energy efficiency of different equipment. Where's our equipment Capex, how do we use data to inform those decisions? But what we found is once you start bringing data into those decisions and you've got the right data and insights to inform them at the right time, sustainability is the natural direction because do more with less results in more productive and efficient.

Operations. I think my biggest takeaway from that answer was bring data into existing routines. You're not creating a bunch of new stuff. You're doing things that, like you said, data driven scoreboards. You're taught, you're looking at, set up and change over time, things you need to be looking at to run an effective factory in general. And I like that you talked about showing it to the folks on the shop floor as well, getting them involved. I want to talk about that crew here in a little bit. I find one thing, I've really started thinking about this more over the past year and I heard this on a previous interview. You were talking about how having this data to look at downtime, to look at additional capacity is not only helpful when you're running the company and trying to achieve that sustainable peak production, but it's also it helps drive up the value of your company as well, makes it attractive to investors as well. So we were talking about why it would be important to the production team. Why is all this important to, let's say, an investor or someone that's looking to get more into the manufacturing.

Space? Yeah, definitely. And so this is such a good point of once you've got that data, and especially once you have a consistent dependable system, Guide Wheel is one of those systems where it's not just taking in data and giving it back to you, it's turning that into insights over time. So we've built the AI within the system to be learning not just based on one manufacturer's machines, but based on the anonymized data from all the extruders, compressors, boilers, et cetera, across all those different pieces of equipment. And what that can show from an investor perspective is if you want a benchmark and say, hey, where do we probably have additional capacity within our operation to produce more, do more with less, that actually lets a CEO or investor know where could we be selling in to open capacity on that equipment, driving more sales from our existing business, looking not just at from the same number of sales, how do we do it more efficiently, but also how do we make our entire Business more.

Customer centered in the speed at which we respond, higher margin in terms of how we use our equipment to produce what customers want. Being able to use data to pinpoint the areas where you can grow in addition to the areas where you can be more efficient from an investor standpoint is just absolute gold. And if you're thinking from that investor standpoint about the business as a whole, not just today, how do I pinpoint those opportunities to grow more, improve more, but also how do I have confidence that if I've got key teammates with knowledge in their heads, if they're on vacation or retiring, that that system works in a dependable way so that we're always identifying and taking advantage of the right opportunities to grow and improve in the future. It's having that system that's a continuous learning system of taking in knowledge, giving the right insights, improving consistently with the team versus being something static or being something manual that's locked in people's heads, that gives an investor a ton of confidence to say, hey, I can put money into this business and have confidence that my investment is going to be worth a whole heck of a ton in the.

Future. Yeah, I, I have one, one more question around this sustainability topic directly. And you know, when I think about it, I know the best manufacturing leaders out there see the correlation between productivity and sustainability. Right? Do more with less. It's a pretty simple equation a lot of times, right? If you want to be more sustainable and more productive. Hey, is there a way to reduce scrap A lot of different things on the table in that category. Well, I'm curious, there's a bigger macro challenge at play, right? And you've been part of this with the World economic forum. The IPCC says we need to reduce emissions by 43% by 2030 to limit global warming by 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre industrial levels. Right. So, you know, there's, there's, let's say a greater good element to this as well. I'm curious, when you talk to manufacturing leaders, how much of this is on their mind? How much of productivity is on their mind? You know, this is kind of just what you're seeing out there right now. Because I know, hey, at the end of the day we want to make money, we want our plants to run effectively. At the same time, we got to think like on a decade basis, 20 years out, 30 years out. I'm curious where people's mindsets are right.

Now. Yeah, I've actually seen a really big change in the past two years on that in terms of specifically emissions reduction. So addressing climate change being not something that is on the fringe anymore or something that it's just about the greater good. What I'm saying now is the requirements that are coming from big investors, big companies committing to their boards that they'll make emissions reduction are actually starting to affect the entire landscape of the supply chain and the regulatory. One last thing is just the loss and policies that are getting passed also causing from the top down a ton of requirements that I'm seeing really forward looking leaders get ahead of even within the smaller and mid market customers that we work with. And now we work with big companies as well. But it's been really, really amazing to see how thoughtful a lot of the manufacturing leaders, especially at that C suite level are about using this as a competitive opportunity. There's a big change that's happening in the world. What's happening is that top down carbon tracking and reduction are becoming pretty essential to be part of the supply chain of any big company that's doing business internationally and specifically has presence in Europe. And so what that is affecting is not just those companies direct operations but their, what's called scope three, their supply chain emissions. So all of their suppliers, a big global company might have 30,000 suppliers across the globe and they're now going to be responsible for reporting on and eventually reducing the emissions of those suppliers. So what that creates is a competitive opportunity that hadn't existed before for a supplier who wants to cement their relationship with that large company to get ahead of what's going to be required and show how they're thinking ahead about what that company needs to have happen in their supply chain. On the converse, it worries me that if there are smaller companies that don't have the resources or haven't been staying attuned to those requirements that are coming, there is the chance that it might just be the larger ones who can continue to compete and satisfy those regulations, which would be really awful. That's why we are so committed to making guidebiel accessible to smaller companies as well. And what we provide is a way to drive productivity really quickly, but also to comply with that tracking, have data to back up the carbon emissions. And we're seeing people be more and more interested in that piece of guide wheel. Not just to be able to have emissions reduction being something they're proud of as leaders themselves, but also to be able to drive the competitiveness and profitability of their companies from the customer standpoint moving.

Forward. You touched on a lot there. You talked about how hey, this is becoming A requirement to cross supply chains for large manufacturers. There are laws coming in place that push it as well. But you know, I think back to some of our earlier conversations, right? You had a production team driving increased productivity while at the same time driving better energy efficiency. What I appreciate is there's data to back this up that this is a good business move. So whether the, let's say the world 10, 20, 30 years from now is front of your mind or not, when you're making decisions, there's more data here to push people in that direction, help their business in the short term, help the world in the long term is is the way I see it. So a lot of good stuff there.

Next round of our interview is coming up right after a word from our sponsor.

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I want to ask you about where Guide Wheel has gone over the past. It looks like you've been around for six years. It started in 2018, is that.

Correct?

Yes. Let me ask this. How has Guide Wheel changed since its founding in 2018? Or let's say evolved. Right? Because I'm sure you did not have AI powered at the front of like the description of what Guidewheel does back in 2018. How has it evolved? What stayed consistent? Let me ask you.

That. Yeah, yeah. I mean they're kind of one and the same. What stayed consistent is we listened to our customers and we work closely with them and we build the next evolution of the platform with their insights and ideas and feedback informing it. What that's resulted in changing is we started with unplanned downtime because that was often the biggest bang for your buck on the plant floor. Drove really good P and L impact fast. And the core of how many customers get started with Guide Wheel still is unplanned downtime. What we then layered on was full overall equipment effectiveness. So being able to drive improvements in oee, if that's a metric that you track for your key lines and then layered on top of that the predictive element, you're exactly right. AI powered is one of the new things where in the past two years we've really leaned in to getting more and more predictive and ahead of breakdowns or problems and other types of things. We have AI in the system now that does alerting to things that people should care about, forecasts out where you're going to land at the end of a shift, end of the week, benchmarks in real time across equipment. And we're continuing to lean into that area quite a lot. The next stage for us over the next year or two will continue to lean into that predictive side and also get more and more prescriptive and recommending because we've got so much good context in people's heads coming into the Guide Wheel system and making it smarter and smarter with everyone who uses it, Every machine that's clipped in and there's a big problem right now where talented people are retiring with a lot of knowledge locked in their heads. Guidewheel is a system where as they use it, that knowledge becomes part of the system and then is able to inform recommendations for new teammates, onboarding. How do we do the right thing with this machine at the right time and being really smart about usable, intuitive software we really think about like your iPhone. Guide Wheel should not require training. It should be easy and intuitive for everyone to use from the start. And getting from that first area of unplanned downtime, then to overall equipment effectiveness, then to predictive and then getting more and more prescriptive is the next stage. Last thing I'll mention is the vision here. When we think longer term, 5 years, 10 years, 15 years in the future is not just that Guide Wheel will be building valuable intuitive value add for our customers on that plant floor, but that we're also going to make it easy for our customers to build on top of of the platform that we have and be able to create their own applications and eventually at scale for an ecosystem of developers to build on Top as well. So that Guide Wheel can provide that universal real time intelligence layer for the factory floor that's easy to be interoperable and for customers to build on top of themselves. So that's what gets me really excited. It's not just what we're building in the next little bit of time, but what our customers are going to build on top over time as.

Well. I like that. That way your system doesn't exist as like a monolith that they need to call you for every single thing. You have some flexibility there. You know, I heard some comments in some other interviews that you'd been on that AI has made the complex simple and it's unlocking speed for like behind the scenes computation. Is it fair to say that's what applies to let's say the predictive element and then soon to be the prescriptive element where now you have that power to do all that in the.

Background? Oh, beautifully said. Yes. So an example there would be just from this morning I was hearing about a customer I'll keep anonymized where they've got big important equipment, critical bottlenecks to their process where we've got 16 different pieces on the machine and these are huge pieces of equipment clipped into Guide Wheel. And what their maintenance team was describing was it's really easy for them now to know when their equipment is performing well. Because guide we all saying hey, no anomalies. This is working great to get the right flag when something does need attention and importantly to go straight to the one of the 16 pieces of equipment that needs their attention versus knowing something's wrong and needing to spend hours with the machine shut down the line down, not producing, looking through all 16. So being able to say hey X is the problem. And then in the future I why is what we did to address it last time. Here are the recommendations. Just takes what used to require an expert and hours and hours and would often actually just remain invisible to the human eye. No matter if someone had all the data and turns that into the right prompt at the right time with the calculations and analytics done behind the scenes. 247 in real.

Time. Yeah. And as, as we go through this and get to the end of our conversation, you know, I noticed that you describe Guide Wheel as a factory ops platform and I was trying to understand how do you get from plugging a sensor into a power cord to being a like a full factory ops platform. But I think everything you described helps me understand that. Right. You started with unplanned downtime. You've moved on to OEE overall equipment, equipment effectiveness predictives like the. The thing right now. Prescriptive is next. So you really have created this platform that you've also mentioned. You're going to be able to have your customers, they're going to be able to build on top of that as well. So I guess my last question is Factory Ops Champions. You describe this as a new approach that's empowering the plant floor. Let's hear about how Guide Wheel is doing that because I'll let you know up front. Empowering frontline workers is one of the biggest topics on the show this year. People are saying it's the age of the frontline worker. The more I have conversations, the more I see that in practice. I want to hear your, your perspective on this and how your platform plays into.

This. Yeah, totally. And I'll start with just when we talk about Factory Ops, it's fantastic for other Factory Ops platforms to evolve as well. So for Guide Wheel, it's not just the real time sensor data, it's the software on top plugging into existing workflows, the AI built into that, and then the ability to build on top nicely. We want other Factory Ops platforms to exist and evolve. That real time intelligence layer across the factory floor is really critical and it doesn't have to be just Guide Wheel building in that area. So that's why we've built this overall Factory Ops category that goes beyond just Guide Wheel in terms of the Factory Ops champions. It's all about the humans at the end of the day who are taking the technology and driving results. No platform does any good if a human doesn't actually use it and make good decisions with it. And so what we've observed is there's a way to build on what naturally happens with manufacturers that drive really successful adoption of technology. And Guidewell didn't invent any of this. We are just creating a community and a playbook around what we saw evolve really naturally. And often what we saw was there's the VP of Ops who's really, really important, a forward thinking VP of OPS making a decision to use a universal single source of truth across plants. But what's key is the person that that VP of Ops chooses who can be that Factory Ops champion. And it's someone who has not just the kind of up and coming excitement to grab onto technology and use it to drive bottom line results, but who also has the relationships across the plant floor to be able to support change in a very thoughtful way. And so with Factory Ops Champions, what we've done is we've found those people within our existing customer base because they exist and we know who they are and they use guideview all the time. It's really easy to see we've brought them together to learn from each other in an anonymized way and a community where they can share. Hey, here's what worked, here's what didn't, here's what we need from a technology standpoint, all of that. And then we've also brought in mentors to that community, experienced folks, especially as there's a generational transition in manufacturing who want to pass on the hard won learning that they have about what works and what doesn't to support change over time on the plant floor. So those mentors joining and supporting the community and then we've built out also a bunch of playbooks for those champions. And what we found is that very motivated, very talented person is the kind of person who wants to learn and dive into playbooks and test and improve. And if we can support them with the community, the mentorship and the playbooks to do that, that's actually far more powerful in some ways than even the best technology on the planet and even more powerful when paired with that great technology. We're excited to lean into this as core to guide you over time and hope because manufacturing is such an exciting place to be, that this can be one piece of ways that many folks are contributing to creating those types of community for these awesome up and coming leaders within.

Manufacturing. Yeah, I like envisioning a world where you've got a VP of ops that has a frontline factory ops champion reporting straight into them. I love how that elevates folks that are seeing what's taken place on the shop floor day in and day out. I love everything you've described here. You know, this has been a great conversation over coffee and guava tea as much as it would have been a great conversation over beer as well. So I love doing these things first thing in the morning. Lauren is. As we wrap up, as I ask this to almost all my guests, we covered a lot of ground today. Is there anything that you wish we would have talked about? Something that hasn't come up yet that you wish had been part of the conversation? This is your opportunity to add one more thought or just provide a call to action for the.

Audience? I think that the call to action to the audience is probably something the audience is already doing, but manufacturing is just the coolest spot to be working. It is the best spot in my opinion. I couldn't imagine doing anything else. And so I would just do a call to anyone who has not decided yet to spend their career in manufacturing. Come join this amazing group of people building the things that we use every day, making all the products that make life great. And just a call to bring in all incredible talent that we can to.

Manufacturing. I mean, especially to have this coming from a Stanford grad, right? We need more smart folks coming out of Stanford jumping into this field. If I had had to make a call to action to the audience. So in all seriousness, Lauren, this has been an awesome conversation. I appreciate you sharing your perspectives experience. Thanks for bringing your story to Manufacturing Happy.

Hour. This was awesome. Thanks, Chris. I appreciate.

It.

Hey everyone, thank you for listening. You know where to go if you want to learn more. Head to manufacturing happy hour.com 192 to check out the show notes for this episode. There you can connect with Lauren, you can learn more about guide wheels. And as always, our show notes have links to our sponsors, which is my segue to thank our two sponsors for today's episode. We got E Plan, we've got Harding. Thank you both for doing what you do to support the show. And as we wrap up, the last thing I want to tell you about is the Manufacturing Happy Hour Summer 2024 tour that's hitting three three cities St. Louis on July 18th. That's coming up first. We're going to be downtown at Four Hands Brewing where we're going to be doing a live podcast with Drew Crow. He's appeared on this podcast twice. Can't wait to have a party and a podcast interview in person in St. Louis. Then after that, Milwaukee, Wisconsin is Wednesday, July 31st. Megan Zimba is gonna join me for another live episode. If you don't know her, she's the host of Mavens of Manufacturing. And that's a very special one because that's actually gonna be episode 200 of Manufacturing Happy Hour. That's taking place at Broken bat Brewing upstairs, 5pm to 8pm all of these events are 5pm to 8pm and the last one is gonna be in Rockford, Illinois. We're doing a joint party, an end of summer pre IMTS celebration with making chips. Look out. For more details on all of these events go to manufacturinghappyhour.com tour to learn more today. With that, stay innovative, stay thirsty and we will catch you next week.

Cheers.

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