Engaging the Shop Floor: How Everyday Innovators are Driving Digitalization with No-Code Tools

Welcome to the Industry 4.0 Club's fireside chat. The club's purpose is to engage the power of diverse worldwide talent to accelerate the global evolution to Industry 4.0. We accomplish this by hosting and supporting respectful, thoughtful, and interdisciplinary open conversations and creating quality content on wide-ranging Industry 4.0 topics to expand the reach of our community. My name is Mike Ungar, and I'm the CEO of the Industry 4.0 Club. I have over 40 years of leadership and experience, with most of that time being spent in manufacturing at Michelin. I'm joined today by my co-host Mike Yost, who's chairman of the club. Mike, would you please introduce yourself? Sure.

Thank you, Mike. Um, thanks everybody for being here. My name is Mike Yost. I am the volunteer chairman of the organization, been in industry for about 35 years, um, with the first 20 or so on the industrial solution provider side and the past 15 on the industrial nonprofit side. So happy to be here today and looking forward to the conversations with John.

Thanks, Mike. So today's topic is Engaging the Shop Floor: How Everyday Innovators Are Driving Digitalization with No-Code Tools. We're joined today by John Papaciliano, who's CEO and founder of Sisak. John has over 20 years of experience in the manufacturing sector, including working with leading legacy software vendors to deliver impactful solutions. His career spans roles in software engineering, project and program management, product ownership, and entrepreneurship. John has played a pivotal role in the successful delivery of over, over, of over 40 projects across diverse manufacturing industries, including steel production, automotive, large-scale discrete manufacturing, food and beverage, chemicals, and oil and gas. Driven by a passion for creating intuitive and engaging software, John focuses on empowering operators, engineers, and citizen developers to drive meaningful change through technology. Welcome, John.

Hi.

Yeah, thanks for being here, John. Before we jump into the topic, just wondering if you could give us a little bit of background on your motivation in starting Syzag in 2012.

Yeah, well, I mean, I'd like to say that I started off with this vision in mind and I had something already planned. But I just come off the back of a 2-year project in unionized France, and I actually was just looking forward to some time off. And on my last day at my last company, um, now I got a phone call saying, from one of, one of the people working in the company, what are you doing on Monday? I said, well, nothing planned. And they said, oh, do you want to go to a customer for 2 weeks? And actually, that turned into a 14-month project. So, um, Yeah, so that's how Siser got started. But, um, yeah, since then, um, the company's been building up. We started off mainly as a services company, just sort of, you know, just sort of working out, working with, you know, manufacturers, industrial customers. Um, we built a couple of solutions, you know, a machine learning solution, an OE solution, which which both worked fairly well, but, you know, there was something missing, and that's, that's something that we just weren't sure about. And then one day I was in a, in a control room in a chemicals plant in Canada, and I joined the morning meeting, and we're standing in front of this physical whiteboard, and There were people shouting from the other side of the control room, the pH value, the OEE, how many root cause analysis had been done the previous day. And I just thought to myself, man, this is like 2019. There has to be a better way to do this.

Yeah, that's great.

Yeah, for sure.

So, so, John, I know, I think we asked, we had this conversation offline, but I'm curious. So is that SciTech It's an interesting name for a company. How did you come up with that?

Yeah, I had to have, um, I had to have a name, uh, before I started my first project, and I had basically 1 hour to put it together. Um, so all I could come up with in that moment was that, uh, so my dad was born in Cyprus, so CY. I was born in South Africa, ZA, and my mom's from Greece, so G. So Cyzag.

Wow. Yeah, that's, that's really interesting. You know, it's, it's interesting how these things sort of developed. So that's really neat. Um, so, so one of the things that, um, people often get confused, and, and I— it's easily, you know, even, even in speech, at least in English— digitization and digitalization. Can you talk about the difference between those 2? Maybe what are they?

Yeah, I mean, they're often confused and/or used one way or the other, you know.

Mm-hmm.

But digitization is really about converting something from an analog format into a digital format, whereas digitalization is really about using digital technologies to transform processes, create value, and to drive innovation. Maybe a small analogy that could help to understand the difference. You know, if you have old vinyl records and you want to put them into MP3s, that process is called digitization. You're basically creating something digital from something analog, whereas digitalization is something slightly different. It's about using your digitized assets or tools or content in a different way. So for example, when looking at music again, it's really like using a streaming service like Spotify to organize, recommend, and instantly play your music whenever you want. It's really about creating a new experience, new process, and newer ways to generate value for people.

So do you find— I'm sorry, Mike, did you have any further questions?

No, go ahead.

I think it's a great point. It's a great place to start the conversation too, because it points to part of the challenge of just looking at digital tools versus looking at your overall processes and looking at how you can use those tools to impact your operations. So I'm wondering, in all the time you've been doing this, oftentimes when we talk, you know, technology or lingo like that, it turns people off, but there's actually some nuance there that hopefully people are thinking along the lines where you're talking about their overall processes and digitalization being, you know, a bigger, more important area to focus on as opposed to just, you know, having digital tools. So I'm wondering, are you seeing people over your time that are getting that message and understanding, regardless of what it's called, that you really need to be looking holistically at your processes and such?

Yeah, I mean, for sure. I think as time has progressed, people are becoming more and more focused, but it's still not strange to walk into manufacturing or industrial setting and see paper and multiple Excel sheets everywhere. So it is, it is changing, but probably not, not as, not as much as we'd like it, you know. And, you know, the other side of it is that people are trying to digitalize before they digitize, and that's also creating problems, right? Makes it difficult to really get going.

You mentioned this, I know you've mentioned paper versus digital. Do you still see a role for paper at all?

Look, I think there are some exceptions where paper could be, could still be required, you know, especially in hazardous areas or areas where you can't take a digital, you know, tablet or a mobile phone or something like that. But generally speaking, I think the role of paper is— it should be abolished. You know, when I look at it, there's often a lot of fears when people want to digitalize, you know, aging workforces and people not so technology-minded. But, you know, someone will pick up their mobile phone, they'll text their mums. So it's clear that people can use digital tools and actually really want to. You know, in my experience, when you, when you bring a solution that really adds value to the shop floor, people engage with it. You know, some people are quicker, some people a little bit slower, but ultimately, it really— people really understand the value of removing the papers and the Excel sheets.

So how— obviously the technology has changed, and, and, you know, just since you started Sizag, um, Obviously, you were in business long before that as well. So you've been engaging people on solving problems in the plant floor environment for some time, and the technologies have changed, which we can talk about. But how about how you engage with people? Like, what was it like 10 years ago, 15 years ago, when you were engaging to solve problems in the plant floor? And is that approach still the same, or do you have new ways of approaching Problem solving.

Yeah, it's a, it's a great question. I think that's really, really what led us to build the CISEC platform is that, you know, in the past 10, 15 years ago— sorry, 10, 15 years ago, the technology was really driven from top down. There was— it was driven by technology, people making technology choices, rather than looking at people and solving real pain points. And that really was the case sort of 10, 15 years ago. But, you know, as time has progressed, we see that, you know, a lot of solutions are driven from the people's perspective, where the number one focus is in how do we engage those people? How do we help them do their work in a better way? How can we— help them optimize the manufacturing processes in a much more efficient way? And how can we help them, more importantly, collaborate with each other, share knowledge, and actually capture that knowledge so it can be used in a more fundamental way, especially now that we see, for example, generative AI, and how do we— how can we use that to leverage real improvements?

Yeah, well, that makes a ton of sense to be engaging the people who understand the space, understand the problems they're trying to solve, right, as opposed to Just shoving things down on them.

Yeah, it's interesting because you— we run into this conversation with a lot of companies. And in fact, when you talk about change management, you've got to also have a vision of where you want to go, right? And a lot of times the folks on the floor don't live in that long-term vision sort of perspective. So I know we have— how do you marry these 2 together? Because we want this engagement and involvement and, and Clearly, the folks on the floor know their processes better than anybody. But you also need that vision. So how do you blend that together, John, from your perspective?

Well, you need an approach that works from both ways, both top-down and bottom-up. No initiative I've seen works without leadership support. But no solution really works without the engagement from the shop floor. So iteration is— is a great way to start, you know, involve people from all parts of the organization and iterate with them, really work together with them, understanding first of all the pain points— what are the real challenges that people are facing day to day— um, work out how to solve those problems, work out which people need to work together to solve those problems, and doing all of this before you even start to look at technology. So really leave technology as a last step. Because in this day and age, you know, there is technology out there, there's multiple different ways to solve different kinds of issues. But if you leave that aside to the end and really understand the pain points and how you're going to solve them, then it really puts you in a very strong position to be able to, to deliver.

Yeah.

And do you see, John, that, um, I know historically, um, manufacturing companies tend to organize quality departments and maintenance departments and production departments and shipping departments and such. And so everybody has their problems in their area and they're trying to solve their problems.

Yep.

Oftentimes, if you're looking holistically, they're contingent upon or they somehow impact the others. So do you see those approaches, the best approaches, being ones that cross those different departments? Or do you see folks still focused on just trying to solve stuff in their particular department?

Well, I mean, obviously it's changing, but I mean, what really— what you're saying is, is talking— what we're really talking about here is silos. You know, information and collaboration and, and processes very rarely extend outside of a single silo. And when we look at each silo, actually, the thing that, that I've seen specifically is that within each silo you have micro silos. First of all, on the people level, you have shift teams. You have engineers, and then if you go even one level below that, you have the tools. You have your papers, your Excels, your trending tools, your DCS, your PLCs, etc. And each one of those forms a silo too. So very difficult to bridge the gap between organizations when you're not solving, first of all, from the bottom up, the problems.

That's really interesting. The Yeah, you're exactly right. Of course, the, the, what's also interesting about the approach you're talking about is how you set priorities, right? So a lot of times the leaders will set priorities in one direction, but the shop floor may have a really different set of priorities that in terms of what they think ought to be solved first. And I think it's the other challenge is marrying those together appropriately, right? Because we want that level of ownership. and engagement. Um, go ahead.

Oh no, just going to say, you know, but if people talk to each other, those solutions usually come out. It's really about engaging on all levels and really get people working together, right?

Yeah. So, so one of the terms now, if we can introduce a term I've heard a lot about, is the citizen developer. And that's an interesting term. I think it's what you're talking about, but how do we now go from, yeah, I think I need to have this problem solved, to actually creating citizen developers on the shop floor that actually help us drive the changes that need to be made?

Yeah, good question. A citizen developer, in essence, is somebody who hasn't got any specialized development skills. But somebody who fundamentally understands the organization they work in, the bureaucracies, the politics, the people, the data, the manufacturing process. It's those kinds of people who we task to improve processes, or, you know, manufacturing processes, but we don't really give them the tools or the skill set to be able to do that. And so those citizen developers are perfectly placed if they only could build the solution. You know, in times gone by, you know, there'd be multiple stakeholders, uh, involved in, in building a single use case. You'd need an IT department, you'd need a manager's approval, you would need, uh, sourcing of skills and developers to be able to come in and build a solution for you. But the idea of having a citizen developer is, is something where someone without real development skills can experiment. And that's the key word here, is experimentation. How can we allow people who fully understand what they want to achieve to experiment? Now, hypothetically speaking, they want to build a, a way to track a specific parameter, you know. So no-code, uh, no-code platforms, low-code platforms are out there to help those people to be able to first of all build those solutions prove that they work, but then to help deploy those into the shop floor.

Are you seeing these citizen developers as internal to the manufacturing organization or external resources that they bring in?

No, absolutely internal. I mean, I'm not sure— I'm sure you guys have similar experiences, but when you task somebody coming from outside of your organization to help build engagement within your organization, I think you're really starting at the wrong point.

Yeah, it just doesn't seem to work, does it? So what— so as we— if we want to engage these folks, what tools are available today for them to be able to actually make those changes that need to be made?

So there are multiple tools out there that can really help. I mean, there are some very ones that people don't think are no-code solutions. So Power BI, for example, is a kind of no-code solution where, you know, sort of an average— sorry, a non-skilled developer can, can go in and build a, you know, a dashboard, for example, or a visualization.

Mm-hmm.

There's also other tools like Power Apps that'll help people build, you know, isolated solutions to problems. Yeah, and there's also, of course, the SISEG application, which is built specifically for industrial settings, for industrial settings where you really have a full suite of functionality that helps drive new use cases through the organizations.

What about you? Would you— obviously we would consider, or I think we would consider GenAI also to be a kind of a tool that's, uh, for citizen developers, right?

Well, I mean, it's a good, good question in the context of digitization. And digitalization, you know, uh, GenAI is probably, I would say, not useful at all unless you can first of all digitize your, your operations. But second of all, digitalize it. You know, it doesn't help if you're writing your logbooks on a piece of paper, checking off your task list on a piece of paper or in an Excel sheet. You know, you need to have those really digitalized in a good way, really capturing the knowledge of the people before GenAI can really work in your environment.

So, so, Jan, I chuckle a little bit with my career. It's like we're almost back where we started, but in a better way. I used to sell against the idea of citizen development because it used to be shadow IT projects. When I giggled, it's because Power Apps and Microsoft BI, things like Power BI and stuff like that. Yeah, people could take those tools and then create their own solutions with them. Well, they used to do that with Excel and Access and all those things, right?

Yeah.

And create their own applications. And then, as solution providers, we would come along and say, wait a second, you're building these silos, you're building these islands. They're not necessarily secure. They're not easy to get information into or out of. They're not good to support from a long-term perspective. With where we are today, we are advocating for citizen developers. We are recognizing the fact that the domain knowledge that exists in these problem solvers who have their hands and their heads in these problems every day are the ones that are well suited to attack the problems. But now we have an evolution in the toolsets that make it safer, more scalable, more secure, to be able to turn those people loose. Has there been— is the technology changed enough and foundational enough that we can turn people loose to do what they've been trying to do all along, I guess?

I think it definitely has. There's no question about it. We're not the only example of this platform out there. It definitely has changed. And I think— not I think, I'm sure going forward you'll see that no-code platforms will really start to take a big step and really become mainstream. Yeah, really help eliminate those silos and get people engaged in the right way.

Yeah, it's just really interesting to me because, I mean, 20 years ago I was probably at my 3rd platform company that was trying to sell MES platforms, operations management platforms, you know, quality solutions, etc., different types of solutions as sort of monolithic, almost like the enterprise ERP type of solutions into the manufacturing environment, right? And, you know, there are places for those, but for the masses, there are so many things that are unique and challenges that people are dealing with that they really need the flexibility to to build from the bottom up. But then I guess also, to your earlier point, connected with the top-level vision and the right guardrails and things like that as well, right?

Yeah, I mean, the big difference between now and 20 years ago is that people 20 years ago were focused predominantly on technology, whereas today we recognize that unless we're focused on the people, the technology is not going to work irrespective Irrespective of the tool, you could have the best, shiniest Excel tool, but it's not going to work unless people are engaged in helping you use it in the right way.

That's good. You used the example earlier of Power BI as one of those tools. Yet even that to some degree, at least in my experience, required a certain level of competence to use, right? I mean, it had, you know, yes, it was for citizen developers, but it still required a bit of expertise to learn the tool and use it. Do we find that some of the tools today are even simpler than that, where we truly could bring them to the person running the machine on the shop floor?

Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. I think, and we have seen a lot of examples of that where you know, even an enthusiastic operator will stand up and say, it would just be great if we could do this one extra thing. And then, you know, you flick a switch, you give him designer access, and a week later he's got this great use case and everyone's sort of standing there in awe. So, I mean, it is possible. It really is possible. And the learning curve with new technologies, if designed in the right way and delivered in the right way, really is much, much shorter. You know, you just kind of need sort of Excel-level, PowerPoint-level, um, skill base to be able to build some of these, uh, use cases.

That's neat. So I know you've, you've done some work with, of course, some large companies, but some small and mid-sized companies. Do you have any more examples you could share maybe? Um, for— because small and mid-sized folks, we, we find that they tend to be a little bit slow to get moving in this For whatever reason, focused on today's issues with the client, or, you know, they just don't have the resources to invest. So how can we help them? What kind of things are available for those folks? And maybe some examples.

Yeah, I can give you an example. Um, recently we worked with, uh, the company and they delivered this use case in our, in our platform. But what they had tried previously was, um, and to give you an idea on how convoluted the process was, you know, the process engineer had to extract data manually from, from a historian, use Minitab to crunch the data, use Excel to develop a kind of use case, get an IT person involved or developer involved to extract the data and build the Power BI. And then they went and stuck it on a big screen inside the control room, and a month later The process engineer walked in and found that, you know, the screen was turned off. And when he nudged a little bit and asked why the screen was off, they said, well, the Power BI stopped working, so we turned the screen off. So that's really the problem when you're using multiple tools and you're not empowering people.

Yes.

But when you go one step further and you look at how you can do it in a kind of no-code platform, that same engineer is able to experiment. And I use the word experiment again because it's fundamental here. He went through 3, 4 iterations, was able to build the model, was able to extract the data without any troubles, build the visualizations and the dashboards that they needed, and deliver it to the operators who were already working in the platform, doing their logbooks, their task management, their shift handovers, etc. They were already working in that space, but injecting on top another use case for— it was for steam consumption. You know, in that single use case, because the operators were already engaged in the platform and because the process engineer was able to layer on top this new use case, it meant that they were able to save something like €150,000 on a single steam consumption problem. So it is a really exciting thing to see when, um, when people are— exciting for them really more than for me, but, uh, when they're able to solve their own problems and actually really showcase how, how other parts of the organization can do the same.

So, so you started off by saying you came off of a 2-year engagement and then you stepped into a 14-month engagement. How long are these types of— like that use case you just went through, was that a, was that a 14-month engagement, or what time does it take to use these types of tools?

So the example I gave now, the original use case took about 11 months for the engineer to get going. And with the most recent iteration of that, when they built the use case for steam consumption, it took about a week for him to iterate, experiment, develop, and then get in front of operators. Yeah, so there's a huge difference.

Yeah, it sounds like, you know, I'm going back because I'm a— I spent a lot of time doing lean, but it really sounds like it's— I use the term agile for the shop floor, you know, and agile, the agile approach, you know. Am I right thinking that way?

Absolutely. I mean, if you think about all the steps that needed— that you need to go through in the original setup where you need to define the problem, you need to define it right the first time, because if you get it wrong, you have to start all the way back again, you know. So define the problem, uh, get management approval, get the budget, find the skilled resources. You know, it's about eliminating all of that waste. Someone can sit down, can just have a play. I have this idea. If it doesn't work, well, you've lost a couple of days. But if it does work, that means that you can then deploy it into an operational setting. So it really is about lean. It really is about— eliminating as much of the waste as possible and getting people to just focus on what really delivers value.

That's really neat. Just another question about that. A lot of times people do development in what I would call a sandbox. Is that environment also very helpful in this approach where you have a place where you can play before you make it live or just Give it a try. What— tell me, what's your experience there?

Well, I mean, it depends on the environment that you're in, but normally if, if the solution has the right level of role access and the security rights, etc., it doesn't really matter. You can experiment. If it doesn't work, just click delete and it's gone. There's no harm to any other parts of the application or process. If it doesn't work out for you. So you don't really need a sandbox per se.

That's good.

So, John, just thinking back to, you know, the old days, the Microsoft Excel approach and the different applications and how different it is now, how these tools have evolved and such. And I guess one thing that was always a concern before that always pops up, especially with the smaller companies that we talk to a lot, is concern for security. Do these no-code, low-code platforms provide a secure environment? Is it safe for the people to be experimenting as you're talking about?

Yeah, absolutely. As long as the security setup is done correctly, I think that's the key thing. There's no secret that there's always sort of hackers and devious, devious personas out there who are trying to get access to your data and use it against you. So security is number one priority without question, not just from a system perspective but also from a people perspective, making sure that the right people have access to the right things at the right time and being able to revoke and give access in a, in a secure way.

That's good.

Very good. Well, it's been— so this is very enlightening to think through what we're talking about because the power, you know, at the end of the day, you know, as you've mentioned, the power of engaging each individual in helping to drive continuous improvement and ultimately supporting the client, the customer, is huge. And the more we can put those tools in their hands, the better. Do you have any final thoughts for our audience as we begin to wrap up this conversation?

Yeah, I would say, I would say, generally speaking, my experience is, is focus on people. I think I've said it already a couple of times already, but focus on people, not on technology. Really work out how to engage those people, how to empower them. That's the most important thing. The technology will follow, and the technology will follow quite simply, I think. So important to engage those people early on during the discussions and then start small, you know, involve people, focus on solving real challenges, not, not focusing on sort of, you know, not to use AI for the sake of using AI. Really, if, if you have a real problem, AI is the technology at the end that'll help you solve it. But I think In general, in general, I would say that let people experiment. Let them, let them have a go at helping, at trying to solve problems, because it's those people that fully understand the kinds of problems, they understand their organization, the manufacturing processes, etc. Yeah, and with that experimentation comes solution for sure.

Mike, do you have a thought, a final thought as well from what we've heard today?

Yeah, I guess a couple of things. You know, I think John's point on, you know, focus on process versus the, you know, the technology to focus on engaging the people. I mean, that is spot on and learnings from many years that I think everybody should take as really, really valuable to get. The other thing I would say is that, The notion of experimentation, of people being able to try things and move quickly and be agile, I mean, that's the core of innovation, right? And so the folks on the shop floor are problem solvers. They're getting things done. They're dealing with realities that don't match, you know, what you want them to be every single day. And so the fact that there are tools that allow people now today to empower their workers, get value out of them, and allow them to experiment and innovate, I think, is really a powerful message. And quite honestly, a promise of something that's been coming for a long time. So I encourage folks to listen to what John says with regard to that experimentation point.

That's great. You know, John, thank you. This idea of engaging, I mean, creating a culture, you know, with today, one of the things that's really key for manufacturers in general is hiring and retaining the workforce that they've got. And I can't help but think that, you know, this sort of mentality, this sort of approach can't do anything but support and help a manufacturer to accomplish that as well. So that's really key. Thank you for that.

Thank you, it was my pleasure.

Yeah, so, so I'd like to thank John Papastiliano, who's CEO and founder of Cyzag, for his time and for taking time out of your schedule, John, to join us and, and discuss this idea of how, how to enhance the engagement of the shop floor and digitalization, really to drive really better business results. So thank you, John. So the Industry 4.0 Club would like to encourage you to take action. to advance the deployment of Industry 4.0. Read an article, attend a workshop, develop a roadmap for smart manufacturing for your plant or your company, or challenge your organization to move forward, as we've been talking about today, in engaging its team in this— in citizen development. So we'd like to know what you're doing. Please don't hesitate to drop us a note. Either through our LinkedIn page or on our website. We routinely host conversations like these on LinkedIn and YouTube. If you'd like to join us in a future conversation, also please reach out to us and let us know. Our website is www.industry4oclub.com, and, and follow us on our LinkedIn page. Anyway, John, thank you. Mike, thanks again. And we wish everybody a good rest of the day and good rest of the week. Thank you.

Excellent. Thanks, John.

Thank you.