Fireside Chat with Catherine Briley: Deploying Industry 4.0 in a Mid-size Company

So welcome everybody. This is the Industry 4.0 Club's fireside chat. Our 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. We're glad you've decided to join us today for today's fireside chat with Kathryn Briley. Kathryn is the Director of Manufacturing 4.0 Integration at the Cooley Group. We're going to introduce her a bit more in depth in just a moment. So my name is Mike Ungar. I'm one of the Industry 4.0 Club co-founders. And for the last 2 and a half years, I've been a Focal Point business coach and executive coach. Prior to that, I spent 35 years at Michelin North America in a variety of continuous improvement, operations, finance, and HR roles. My co-host today is Mike Yost. Mike, could you introduce yourself, please?

Sure. Thank you, Mike and Katherine. So my name is Mike Yost. I'm one of the co-founders of the Industry 4.0 Club. I've been in manufacturing and primarily on the industrial automation, industrial software side of things for about I now run a company called Bennett, which is focused on helping match manufacturers and solution providers to help modernize their operations under the umbrella of what we would call Industry 4.0 today.

Thanks, Mike. So if I can introduce our guest in a bit more depth, Kathryn Bradley. Kathryn is the Director, as I mentioned, of Manufacturing 4.0 Integration at the Cooley Group. She's been with them for about 8 years, beginning first as a quality assurance manager before taking on this role. Prior to joining the Cooley Group, she worked for a company called Aplix in a variety of roles. She's got a very strong background in quality and holds a Bachelor of Science, uh, in textile engineering from North Carolina State University. So, Catherine, thanks so much for taking time to join us. We're really glad that you could, uh, You know, break away from your schedule to talk with us today. As we get started, for those listening to us either on LinkedIn Live or on, on YouTube, if you have a question, please put it into the chat, into the comment box there. And we'd be glad to ask, ask those questions or comments as we go through today's broadcast. So please join us and make sure that you, you share your thoughts as we go. Katherine, I know it's a brief introduction, but I'm really curious, why did you choose to major in textile engineering way back when, 25 years ago?

Wow. I don't know how glamorous this story is going to be. You know how you land places? That's really how it started. When I was growing up in grade school and high school, we're just really strong math, That was my favorite subject. I love to go home and do calculus and precalculus and trigonometry homework. And so I thought, okay, well, I'm good at this. I really like solving problems. I have a little bit of an analytical mind. So how about engineering? Okay. Yeah, that sounds good. That sounds like the curriculum for me. I grew up in Eastern North Carolina. So the high school that I went to was Heavily recruited, or North Carolina State University did did a lot of recruitment in that area. And there is a a part of of NC State University that is the College of Textiles, and College of Textiles came into into our high school, gave some really flashy kind of sexy presentations. And so you know I I just kind of gravitated there. The the job placement rate out you know out of the College of Textiles at NCSU was super high. So it was far enough away from home, but close enough that it kind of checked those sort of basic boxes for me at age 17, 18. And so I wound up in that curriculum.

When you finished there, you chose to go into manufacturing. And that's a— back when you went to school, I'm sure, and even today, we don't see a lot of women choosing manufacturing.

Yeah.

What motivated you to go into manufacturing?

Well, you know, again, that, that curriculum sort of lent itself, and, and still, I think, I think the curriculum still exists there. Um, it still lends itself to manufacturing. Uh, you know, the, the courses and, you know, all the yarn manufacturing courses and the dyeing and finishing courses that that I took with sort of a mechanical engineering sort of undercurrent there really lends itself to manufacturing. Now, when I finished those 4 years and went into job interviews with— there were, at that point in time, there were lots of classic textile companies that were were looking for college grads to come in and start learning. So there was a lot available at that time. But I think that I didn't really come out of school with such a love for all things mechanical because textile engineering is, it's really just mechanical engineering geared towards textile equipment and textile-type processes.

Okay.

This is really all it is. Um, but, you know, I still had that, that really strong, you know, analytics type, type mind. Uh, you know, uh, love the statistics part, the, the quality part, SPC and control charting, you know, all those kind of classic manufacturing tools that, that you, that you learn, you know, during those 4 years. So, you know, with that love of that type of thing, um, but not necessarily around like like, uh, mechanical design and things like that. No, you know, I wasn't, I wasn't really that, that minded. It, it really, um, you know, but those, that skill set, uh, those interviewers that I talked to coming out of school and, and, and finding a job really saw the more of the me being on the, the management, like business management part of things, process management part of things, getting into the cultural aspect. of the textile manufacturing that was in that area at that time. So that sort of propensity there kind of pushed me into manufacturing, into a quality management side of things. So again, kind of landed there based on those 4 years and the skill set That I had. But, you know, it's really taken getting into the industry and sort of following the ebbs and flows, especially within that industry, where my love for manufacturing kind of was created.

That's good.

Yeah, I was going to say you landed there, but you stayed there, right? So you had— Absolutely.

And yeah, and, you know, I I can't really think of doing anything differently. And I mean, just being in manufacturing. Yeah, yeah.

Well, I'd love to learn more about the Cooley Group, if you don't mind talking a little bit about where you are now and the work that you do there with the organization itself first, and then jump into your role.

Yeah, so Cooley Group was first founded in 1926. 1926 in Pawtucket, Rhode Island. And what Cooley Group does, manufactures, it's a manufacturing company. We manufacture engineered membranes and a little bit of textiles. We have 3, really 4 manufacturing locations. We have 3 manufacturing locations that our extrusion technology, extrusion process. And the 4th location, we do produce textiles that we use as a raw material in the engineered membranes. When I say engineered membrane, I'm going to throw out some examples that I think most everyone will probably recognize. billboard material. So as you drive in your car down an interstate, the billboards that are up, the huge material that's printed on, Cooley Group manufactures probably around 70% of what you see out there.

Hmm.

So that's one application. Another application, if you've ever been or seen the top of a, like a flat roof, for instance, like a, distribution center or a manufacturing building or a shopping center, the membrane that is flexible, that is relatively thin, that sits on those commercial flat roofs, that is another product that we manufacture. If you think of Starbucks awnings, the green awnings, Dunkin' Donuts awnings, the orange awnings, those are Cooley Group materials. We produce all of those awnings for those, for those 2 organizations. So like I mentioned, it is— we are mainly an extrusion process. So all of those end products involve the extrusion of normally a PVC-based plastic film that is reinforced with a textile that we also produce and then sandwiched with another plastic film. So it's extrusion of film with lamination of fabric kind of calendared together to produce that engineered membrane for those types of end uses.

So you said 4 plants, did I get that right?

Yeah, we have 4 manufacturing facilities, 3 mainly extrusion and the other is going to be the one that produces the textile that we use.

Okay. I know you said you started your— you have a strong quality background, um, and now you started in quality at the Cooley Group. Why do you think you were chosen to lead the deployment of Industry 4.0? Yeah, what— why you?

So, uh, what, what I believe is You know, to be a quality manager, to be in quality management, it's not just saying whether a product is good or bad. That is a part of it. But in many manufacturing organizations, quality management involves an adherence to a standard, whether it be a customer standard or an ISO standard or some sort of internal standard. And these standards involve the entire business, not just the piece of equipment that is making the product that you sell. It's all the way through the, the supply chain. It's management of customers, management of suppliers, and management of all of the key processes that come together to produce a good or a service to a customer's requirement. So to be in quality in a lot of manufacturing organizations, it is to, to have knowledge of and to be, and to be a part of in terms of the management of all of these key processes within a business. So I think my knowledge of the, the entire business at Cooley Group across across all of the manufacturing facilities, but within each facility vertically and horizontally to have that knowledge, but also to have an inherent— and this is kind of a personality trait really— it's to have a true passion for solving problems and to identify opportunities for improvement, but using data to do so. So, you know, for me walking into the Cooley Group, I started at one of our locations, which is just south of Charlotte, North Carolina, in Lancaster, South Carolina. And I walk into that facility and, you know, back 8 years ago, there wasn't a lot of data. There was some, wasn't necessarily being leveraged as much as, you know, that plant could have. But, you know, for me to come in and really begin to utilize that smallish dataset and begin to grow that dataset in order to, you know, to have that leverage to solve the key issues in the plant. So all of that together, I think, probably put me in a good position to take the role that I have today.

So if I understand correctly, your title is Director of Manufacturing 4.0 Integration. Is that accurate?

Yes.

And so is it integration of technology solutions? Is it integration of the organization, the cultural pieces, or you have— Everything.

It's everything.

Yeah, could you talk about that a bit? Because I think a lot of times when people hear Manufacturing 4.0 or or Industry 4.0 or things like that, it's immediately in their mind a technology discussion. But it's obviously much, much more than that.

It is. And the role that I have is, it's meant to be more of a champion, like an M4.0 champion, and it's almost a facilitator. I am not an IT person. Okay, but I have to have a really good relationship with IT to get the things that, that we need from an M4.0 standpoint. And, you know, some of the initiatives that— or some of the projects or some of the tools that we want to use in order to solve the problems that we need to solve in order to meet business challenges. So, you know, it's, it's like a liaison between OT and IT, and it's, you know, I have to be somewhat a uh, a subject matter expert where, okay, if we have a, like, a scrap issue and we want to solve this scrap issue with the— with this one SKU from an M4.0 standpoint using data, I need to have somewhat of a, of a decent idea of that particular process where that problem sits, right? And, you know, have those relationships with team members in that particular plant that can help me and come together with me and say, okay, from a data-driven standpoint, how are we going to solve this issue? What datasets are missing? What do we need from IT? What do we need from a financial standpoint? Do we need to spend X number of dollars in order to get this tool in-house and maybe upskill It's getting all of that together and facilitating all of that. That's really what this role is meant to be, if that makes sense.

You've mentioned twice being a problem solver. I think that's the right outlook when you're looking to solve business problems. What data do you need in support of it? What team members do you need to include? Those sorts of things. It's absolutely the right approach. I guess my question would be, did you get that inherently? Have you always behaved that way? So both from your perspective and the company's perspective, does the company get the fact that they need this? Obviously, you have the role, so they must get the fact that they need this liaison-type role. But how natural was it for you to take the approach you take, and how natural is it for the organization to know that that's the way to attack?

Manufacturing? You know, for me, it's natural. I think my personality lends itself to be that kind of champion facilitator. I know, I personally know how valuable data is and having the right technology to leverage that data is. We've solved, you know, with putting teams together, we've been able to solve just issues that have lingered and lingered for years and years and years, just, you know, looking at even just existing datasets, just spending time being curious about an issue. So for me, I think personally, the way I work, you know, is kind of natural within, but I cannot do this. I would not have this role. We would not have created this role at Cooley Group without, you know, our leadership, our CEO being a huge, huge supporter and even being the person that, you know, the, the guy that says, okay, Cooley Group, we're, we're getting ready to go down this road. So it was, you know, all of the effort and, you know, all of the support and everything that's happened from an M4.0 standpoint has really come from our leadership. So it just, it really created a really nice opportunity for me to be able to use those sort of inherent skills And just the way I work from a collaborative standpoint and from a data-drivenness, if that's even a word, standpoint to be able to do this.

Katherine, you mentioned the importance of leadership and how your CEO says we're going to do this. I can imagine you show up in a factory now with this role and one of the first-line supervisors goes, hey, Katherine, Can you— what is Industry 4.0? Can you tell me what this is all about? We had this question from someone who's listening in, from Scott. How do you describe Industry 4.0 to others? How do you see that? I'm sure you've had to do that inside your factory.

Yeah. I guess the way we express it in Cooley Group is Leveraging information, leveraging data to solve issues and to gain insight that we have yet to tap into. Our process, I mentioned that our process is extrusion. It's quite technical. There are lots of inputs. You know, a lot of sensors, a lot of data that we are capturing from PLCs. There are problems. And, you know, with all of the data that we have, it is very difficult to look at an Excel spreadsheet and be able to see, okay, you know, that's where our issue is based on the data. So, you know, we're— we we get to a point probably in a lot of organizations where, you know, we've, we've put as many lean principles and, you know, Six Sigma projects and, you know, all of those, uh, things to use. But, you know, what's— what, what kind of gets us to that next level? And that's, you know, the, the leveraging of, of some, some, some deeper analytics and some more advanced analytics in order to gets you off of that plateau that a lot of these organizations are sitting in just to get to the next level.

That makes a lot of sense. I'm sure today that you're faced with challenges in moving the organization forward. Can you talk about some of those obstacles that you're facing today and How you're working to overcome them?

Yeah, you know, when we first started this journey, you know, I mentioned Cooley Group has been around since the '20s. So, you know, not all locations, but we have some older equipment. And I personally thought, and I think a lot of us thought, that our biggest obstacle is going to be to digitalize some of, some of this old equipment. You know, how in the world are we going to pull data from that dinosaur sitting over there, right? And, you know, come to find out, it really wasn't. There's, there are, you know, all kinds of very, uh, inexpensive pieces of, of technology that can be used to digitalize something. Okay, so That wasn't our biggest obstacle. But going through this, and we're probably, I don't know, I'd say maybe 5-ish years into the whole M4.0 idea and journey, it's been, and you hear this a lot, but I mean, it was so true in our case. It's a culture thing. You know, it's when we began introducing new tools From an operator that is running the line that has been operating that piece of equipment for 20 years, all the way up through the organization to start speaking and begin using these different technologies can be very scary, can be very threatening. to a lot of people within an organization. You know, anytime change is introduced, especially this type, because, you know, this—

Mm-hmm.

When you start talking about some advanced analytics and different tools and modeling and, you know, machine learning and AI, it's like, you know, it's scary on a lot of different levels. So, for us, it's been educating, it's been upskilling, Uh, you know, we, we want to get into things like machine learning and AI and creating correlations, and that's some really deep stuff. I mean, that's some serious statistics and, uh, you know, uh, uh, correct architecture of data and, you know, cloud or not, or, you know, you know, all these things. It's— and we at Cooley Group are quite lean. Uh, we, you know, we, we don't necessarily have, you know, have those skills in-house, so it's it's figuring out how we can upskill, uh, our, our current workforce, whether it be me or our PLC tech or our extrusion operator. And if we can't, you know, how are we going to figure out who we're going to partner with in order to, um, you know, pull, you know, pull some of these skills by contracting or partnering with with other folks and organizations that can help us. It's more of a skills thing now. It's the culture shift and it's figuring out how to choose the right partner to work with.

Well, I would certainly like to go down that path. You brought up the cloud. I don't know, Mike, I see there's a question in the chat about the cloud. You want to ask that question, then I'd like to come back. about the vendor. Yeah, so Andrew put in, if you can see that, Katherine, what are your thoughts about solutions in the cloud?

Yeah, so like I said, I'm not an IT person, all right? Um, I'm an operations person, and I— we are Manufacturing 4.0. We have a steering committee. Uh, we, we determine what we want to do and what, and what projects we want to go after. And, you know, we, we are, um, saying, all right, we, you know, we need to historize this piece of data. This piece of data is critical. So we're kind of making, um, making decisions on how much data we're keeping, right? And if we want to keep a piece of data every 6 seconds or every, you know, 1 second or just every minute. So I am— I'm relying on my IT team to, to say, okay, you want to do this, uh, then we need to do this from a, from a data architecture and a, um, you know, whether or not to go in the cloud, um, you know, all those types of decisions. But I think that, I think we're, we're tracking towards, um, starting to keep some information in the cloud because we, we're on the cusp of creating the data lake that's needed and, you know, the types of analytics like, you know, getting into modeling and things like this and, you know, considering really, really large sets of data in order to power these models, we're going to have to go there sooner rather than later.

So then you're thinking at this point from a cloud perspective is more along the data Storage side of things and then being able to do analysis and those sorts of things.

Yes, absolutely.

That's excellent. Thank you for the question, Andrew. Yeah, I always like to share an anecdote. I used to run a nonprofit called Mesa International, and I tell everybody that the cloud was a conversation that really we never had in Mesa. It's a member-driven organization, and it went from everybody saying, we're never going to use it, so we don't have to talk about it, To everybody going, well, we got to use it so we don't have to talk about it. Like the switch flipped overnight. Okay, there's— there, it's here, it's coming. And we have to go through a process, like you talked about, of figuring out what it means for us. There's maybe one thing with regard to that. Does your company have any questions or concerns? Is there general hesitancy, you know, concern about privacy, about security? Or are you pretty much confident that the technology can work for you? What's your general, I guess, the vibe overall with regard to the cloud?

You know, I don't, I don't sense, I don't sense hesitancy. I sense, you know, we're gonna make, we're gonna make that decision when, you know, when, when it's necessary. And that's, you know, that's a, we're gonna end up there. It's just, it's just a matter of, of when.

Yeah. And you had started also in that same conversation about if you don't have the in-house folks that you'll work externally. I'd just like to touch on your perspective 'cause oftentimes we get solution providers willing to come and talk, but not so much folks in your position, you know, the manufacturers themselves. So can you talk about your relationship with solution providers? One of the things that I like about where we are as a space is that there's this vision that we're working more as an ecosystem and that the solution providers, the systems integrators, the manufacturers, they're all focusing on shared business outcomes of the manufacturer. That's what's driving everybody. But I still think that's pretty visionary versus what's practically happening for people. So just wondering, like, how you— work with technology vendors, if it's a top-down strategic play, if it's plant by plant, just sort of how do you treat the vendor community and how do they treat you?

Yeah, so we're kind of new to this. You know, we're really just now creating Some, some good partnerships there. Um, I don't— you know, everybody gets email, you know, I don't know, X number of emails every day from, from salespeople. And, you know, somebody like me, I don't, I don't know who's good or who's, you know, if it's, if it's legit or not, right? So, I mean, so far for us, you know, I, I like to I like to come across vendors, uh, or potential vendors organically, um, you know, by, you know, a, a pretty solid, um, sincere reference where, you know, I, I have a, a colleague or, you know, I know someone from a company that, you know, I used to work for that, you know, because he or she actually worked with that company and could, you know, could show me unbiased results from, you know, from that particular vendor. That, I mean, that's more how I kind of start my dialogue with a vendor. That's how it's been so far.

Yeah.

Cooley Group is also a member of the Manufacturing Leadership Council, which is kind of a subset of NAM, which is a group we, we do, we do create a lot of good contacts through that organization, um, that, that have been, you know, quite worthwhile. Uh, so that's, that's been my experience so far. I, I, I kind of, you know, tend to lean towards very organic type of relationships.

Gotcha. Well, it's one of the things I'm really passionate about. I always joke that I'm a recovering solution provider. So, you know, I get the spot that you're in and also being in the nonprofit space and what we're really shooting for with Industry 4.0 Club is to be that environment where you can socialize and share and get input from people on best practices, who to trust, those things.

There's another question I think that would be interesting, Katherine, from something you talked about earlier that I'd like to put up on the screen and just get you to talk more about it if you don't mind. You mentioned culture change and really your role is to help lead that culture change. Do you have a particular framework you use for that? Who's involved in leading that? Can you help Scott with some insights from your experience?

Yeah. I think I mentioned before, we've put together a team of people from each of our locations. We call it the Manufacturing 4.0 Steering Committee. As far as how we're going to change, that's where the changes are born. That committee comes together to say, okay, this year, from a Manufacturing 4.0 standpoint, we want to hit these targets. And then, you know, those sort of action plans are pushed down to the 4 facilities. And, you know, the production management teams at each of our facilities then, you know, take those targets and develop some more detailed plans against those. Which involve end users of these tools, of these changes in the facilities. The end users could be any, you know, any, anyone, you know, in a plant. And I'll mention operators. I've mentioned operators before. So, you know, a lot of these changes involve our operators. They are the ones out there running the machinery that, you know, that makes our product. So— You know, those individual production teams at each location have to very diligently and, you know, come up with, okay, you know, this is what we want to do. This is the piece of technology we're going to, you know, want to implement. You know, how do we either introduce this to our operators? But more importantly, and the way we've been operating recently, because we have kind of hit some sort of not roadblocks, but we've kind of learned from mistakes. How do we bring in our operators and develop this change or this tool or whatever the case may be? How do we develop it together? How do we create the ownership from the end user? And let's develop this together as a team, the production team along with the operators or whoever the end user is, to make sure that we've got that buy-in, that we've got that kind of dual ownership, that we create the understanding of, okay, this is how it's going to make our company better. This is how it's going to make your job easier and better so that, you know, we can make sure we're successful at a lot of these implementations. This is something I mentioned that we didn't do well in the beginning. We created a tool as a production team and we introduced it without buy-in, without input, without, you know, designing these types of things together. And it did not work. flopped. And that's, that's why I say that the, the culture thing, the, you know, that's, that's been the hardest part for us because we, we went, we went into this, um, not so great in the beginning, but we've, you know, we've, we've learned from those types of mistakes that it just, it's, you know, it's, it, it's only going to work if we involve the end user in from the get-go. Making sure that it doesn't make jobs harder, it makes jobs easier, but it makes the company better.

Well, that's a big learning and that's a true sign that you've been on the journey and you've recognized that for sure. Would you say that the company overall considers it to have a data-driven culture?

I think that the company has transformed into a data-driven culture. I think that when I came to the company, not that it was me, but it was, you know, our journey together. I think Cooley Group has really grown into more of a data-driven culture. And for instance, you know, you hear the term and the metric OEE thrown around a lot these days. You know, that is something that, you know, that we developed about a year and a half ago that we created as kind of our north star for all of our facilities. So, you know, this is something that we use to create baselines, to create goals for our plants, whether it be, you know, downtime goals or quality goals or performance goals. And, you know, our teams, our plant managers, our production teams, all the way down to operators understand this metric. And we all work towards specific goals for each of those components. So that's not something we were doing 2 years ago.

Yeah.

So, you know, this is, you know, I would say that, you know, just creating a goal and working towards it when, you know, we really weren't in the past, not all together at least.

Yeah.

has, has really been a really nice step forward over the past year and a half or so.

That's fantastic.

You, you've talked, Catherine, that's, that's great. You've talked a lot today about data, and it's, it, it seems that that's the main focus is how to leverage that to get better business results. Are there other elements of, of technology that you're, you're taking responsibility for, for integrating into your environment besides working and improving how you use data?

Well, you know, at the moment, our— one of our objectives this year is to, is to begin to try to understand and take the first step towards machine learning. You know, everybody wants to do that. Not everybody, but, you know, a lot of manufacturers want to start to get into creating algorithms and machine learning and, you know, creating autonomous processes and all these things. But for Cooley Group, this is something critical that we need to do. This is a piece of technology we believe it's probably going to be a product. We believe that we're going to need to partner with someone and purchase licenses for to gain the insights that we know are there, that are buried in our, our, you know, big sets of data that we need these types of tools to pull out so that we can get to the next level. Uh, so, you know, that's, that's going to be a, a piece of technology, or it's really a, really a tool that Is coming for Cooley Group probably within the next year. And I'm going to.

Yes, so sun's coming through. It's nice problem to have, huh?

Yeah, all of a sudden it's just glaring. Okay, hopefully that's better. Sorry.

Thank you. That's all right. Thank you. So you know. As a— as I don't know, I'm going to say mid-sized manufacturer for— to put a label on Cooley Group, but a lot of small and mid-sized manufacturers struggle to get started on their Industry 4.0 journey. What advice would you give them on how they should get started? I don't know if that's something that you, you were part of at the beginning of the journey, and, you know, they— you brought you in a position and you, you were part of starting it, or it was already started and then you joined. But what would you advise for companies who are small companies or mid-sized companies that are trying to get started on their journey?

Well, the way we started is we chose a problem that has never been able to be solved, and I mean year after year after year after year. We created data around that problem and we solved that problem and it went away. That proved out the value of using data to solve issues or to get to some sort of objective. About the same time, Our CEO, I mentioned our CEO earlier, our CEO came down with, okay, this is, this is what Cooley Group is, is going to do. So, you know, the, the problem example that I just described occurred while I was a quality manager in South Carolina. We were able to, to do that and, you know, create a level of satisfaction amongst our second largest customer. So, it was a huge impact. So, it was a huge impact to one of our really important customers. And we were able to show, okay, you know, all you got to do is look at the data. You know, sometimes the answers are just sitting there, right? And then, with the support all of a sudden from our CEO, you know, those two together kind of created our sort of flagship plant down in South Carolina, and that's now the place that we pilot a lot of these M4.0 projects. You know, we test them out there, we prove the value there, and then we scale, you know, we scale across our facilities. So that's how it happened for us.

No, that makes sense. So if I were to— if you were giving advice to another manufacturer, I'm going to see if I can summarize what you just said. Pick a problem to solve. If you're going to get started, pick a problem to solve. Have top-down leadership support. Get, get that as well. You said something earlier too, involve— you've learned that you have to involve the shop floor.

Yeah.

And, and then maybe have a place where you pilot things so that it's, uh, there's a safe environment, if you will, safe to— before you go everywhere with it. Is that fair? Other elements you might include?

Yeah, and the only other thing I would include, at least for me and our organization, is it's been really important for us to educate ourselves. You know, I mentioned we're a lean organization. We don't have a staff of data scientists. We don't have one data scientist. So it's been important for us to educate ourselves as to, you know, what technologies are out there, what are other manufacturers doing, You know, what, what is— what's the next, you know, what's the next step? You know, what, what does AI really mean? What does it mean for us? What does machine learning mean for us? Is that really what, you know, what we need to do based on, you know, some of the— you, you can get your hands on all kinds of information. So it's, it's been important for, for us to educate ourselves, um, as to what's going on. Within this space.

And so how did you go about doing that? How did you educate yourself? I mean, you mentioned earlier that a lot of relationships you, you, you've created with vendors has been organic. Is that how you did it or other things as well?

Uh, you know, I think that, I think you, you, you really have to understand what, you know, what you want to accomplish. You know, there's, there's all kinds of, of, of shiny tools and products out there that, that look really cool. And wouldn't it be cool if we, you know, if we use this product or, you know, partnered with this, this big company? Uh, yeah, but it's, it's important to understand what, you know, what is it, what is it that, that you, that you need to do right now? What are the problems that, that you need to solve? Um, so that you, you pick, you pick the right thing. But in order to pick the right thing, the education's got to be there. For us, like, for us, like I mentioned, you know, it's been the— our, uh, our participation in the MLC, the Manufacturing Leadership Council, and, you know, those types of organizations have been, um, have been great in terms of getting educated on, you know, what's to come and whatever— when, you know, what everybody else is is using or doing to solve these types of similar problems that we could potentially relate to.

Well, I'm glad you went there, Kathryn, because it's actually one of the things that I was going to come back to, your involvement there. Obviously, Industry 4.0 Club, we're trying to foster the platform for people to share together. One thing I wanted to come back to with you and your undergrad at NC State, I used to lead education and workforce development for the National Institute on Smart Manufacturing called SESAME, and they have at the Nonwovens Institute at NC State, they have actually testbeds and education and things like that. I don't know if you're familiar with SESAME or the work that's happening at NC State, but that's another potential area for you. To plug into and get some of that research.

Would love to.

Yeah, would love to learn more about that. There's— there— I know that there are more avenues that we should probably explore. So just to learn more about what's available.

It is an important step. It's a really, really important step. And quite honestly, in my It's difficult to find folks like yourselves that are— because I believe you and Mike actually met at an industry conference speaking.

Yeah.

So you're proactively out there doing this, and there are a lot of organizations. So maybe back to the earlier question about how to get started. I mean, you know, just the fact that you're out there and you're, you know, meeting people, asking questions, you know, educating yourself, things like that. It's a really, really important part, and it's not a clear path. Right? There's not one straight place to go.

It's not. It's like, you know, you, you, you, you just say yes to every opportunity. And, you know, and you look for every opportunity to, to just have a conversation with somebody.

Well, yeah, if I can just add, what's really interesting and what I really would congratulate you and the Cooley Group on is they're giving you the time to do that. Yeah, a lot of companies that I'm that I'm aware of, you know, you get very busy internally, and you don't either take the time or have the time to go out and do that. So really kudos to you and the group to, and your company to, to give you the time to do that.

Absolutely.

Or they give it to one person and say, you figure it out, right? And, you know, so to give you the resources and to give you the air cover to—

Well, yeah. And, you know, a lot of these events, you know, my, my boss and my boss's boss are, you know, they're, they're right there with me. You know, I'm going to an Info 2.0 event next week. And, you know, my boss's boss is the CEO. So, you know, the 3 of us are going to this event together. And that, you know, that really shows the level of, you know, support and, you know, and persistence of our leadership team to do this thing right, because we know that it's— we have to. Right.

Yeah, that's excellent.

Well, we're getting— well, I think we're getting close to the end of our time together. Mike, would you share any, any kind of summarize some insights you might have picked up from today? And then Katherine, I'd love to hear a final word from you too as well. So Mike, you want to start us off?

Yeah, um, I'll just come back to the phrase that was used, um, several times that I think is spot on, and that's problem solving, right? That Katherine's approach to identifying a business problem. Using data to go attack that problem is very insightful. And if anybody was just to come away with one thing and that was the thing, I think they'd get a ton of value out of this conversation with Katherine.

Katherine, do you have a final comment for the group that you'd like to share?

And, you know, I'll just tack on to that, that, you know, it It can be done manually at first. You know, it can be manual sets of data. You know, it's just solving that first problem to prove the value of the concept and to gain that support to start investing because it's going to take some investment. But we're not a big company. You know, we don't have, you know, $800,000 a year to spend on this stuff. We're, you know, we, we pick and choose, um, but, you know, you can, you can start this thing manually. You can create those datasets manually and prove the value and, and go from there.

Thank you for that. So I wanted to kind of— Katherine, one of the, you, one of the things you shared with, with me when we were at this conference that I thought was interesting, which is a good way to wrap up because it's something you've stressed more and more today, is one of the mantras you'd like to have And so if I can quote you, you say, data is king, unemotional and non-confrontational, and it's also the fastest way to a solution. So I think that that's something that you've really demonstrated as you've explained today how you see data and how you use it really to help your company move forward. So thank you for that.

Yep.

So I want to thank you, Catherine, for joining us for that. I guess I think it's a very insightful discussion. Also, Mike, thank you as well. I hope that everybody who's joined us today has gotten something as well from it that they'll take forward in what they're doing day in, day out. If you like these conversations, please look for more. Please look for us, the Industry 4.0 Club, on LinkedIn Live or LinkedIn Audio through our Industry 4.0 Club or group page. We host these conversations on alternating weeks with Mondays being designated or dedicated to women in manufacturing, Tuesdays to the future of manufacturing, Wednesdays to our fireside chat, and Thursdays we focus on people, process, and culture. Um, please don't hesitate to— we'd love to have you join us on our LinkedIn page or visit our website at www.industry4.0club.com. So for everybody who's been joining us, thanks, Catherine, Mike. I hope everybody has a great rest of the week. Thanks very much.

Thank you.

Thank you, Katherine.