Manufacturing Future - Summer Hours

Hello everyone and welcome to Industry 4.0 Club. We are here on our Tuesday room on manufacturing future, and today we're just going to talk a little bit about summer hours, what we're planning to do here, uh, over the next couple of months. As you probably, like everybody else, uh, we have a little bit less, less, less, uh, resources when people have to go on vacation and other things. So we're going to have a— and everybody else probably having less time to get on our rooms. So we'll be having a little bit of a softer agenda here over the summer. We're going to talk a little bit about that. We're also going to be talking about what type of rooms, what we're planning, and then how we're going to use the summer hours to maybe also start planning for after summer, what kind of rooms. And we're definitely going to start looking out To you guys to get some ideas, uh, get some feedback on what we have been doing, and, uh, and, uh, see if we can get you guys engaged in, in either, you know, come on our rooms if you have a great topic, or suggesting some topics that we can work with that you would like to hear more about. And so, uh, to that, hey, uh, I just want to quickly also say thanks, uh, for joining me here today, Carol. Uh, my, my, uh, uh, trusted co-host Ira Sharp is on vacation. I just picked the vacations. This is his time to go on vacation. And so, uh, Carol has, uh, has agreed to join me here today and talk a little bit about that. And Carol, she's always been good in joining our rooms and, and providing comments. So she has some history with all our rooms and can talk a little bit about how we've been doing and what topics good. So welcome, Carol, and thanks for your help there.

Thanks very much for having me join you today, Jan. And, uh, yes, I'm looking forward to a little bit of a summer break. But, um, even though we may not be having shows every week, we're definitely working behind the scenes preparing for our fall season.

Absolutely, yes. So, um, again, Industry 4.0 Club, we, we've had these, uh, rooms every day, Monday to Thursday, typically around noon. We are now focusing our schedule for the summer, and what we've done here is, is what we're going to do is commit to, as much as possible of course, to have rooms every other week for the different days. So And the way we schedule that is to say, okay, Monday and Wednesday will have rooms the same week, and then the opposite weeks, um, every other week there will be then Tuesday and Thursday. So yesterday we didn't have our Monday room, and it wasn't necessarily because it was, uh, Independence Day here in the, here in the US. And by the way, happy Independence Day and happy Canada Day to everyone out there. Um, but it was because, uh, that is the off week for Monday and Wednesday. So this week it's Tuesday and Thursday, and then next week it'll be Monday and Wednesday, and then the week after again will be Tuesday and Thursday. So we're starting to plan our summer schedule for that, trying to find topics and, and, and guests for those rooms. Um, and, um, that's kind of going to be our, our summer schedule, um, and hopefully that will allow everybody to at least find 2 rooms per week and join us and have a good conversation. And then wherever you can't make it, there will be some rooms the week after as well. So maybe just quick, Carol, you can tell a little bit about what you guys are doing for the Monday Women in Manufacturing room.

Yes, as you mentioned, we'll be working on a schedule in line with the Wednesday fireside chats. So when you see Monday, you'll likely see on the Wednesday alternatively. Grace Donovan, my co-host, and I will be looking at time-sensitive news or reports that may arise over the summer holidays. We don't expect a lot, but if something important comes up, we'll definitely put that to the top of our agenda. As usual, Grace and I have an affinity for topics that are around the area of producing, improving the frontline worker experience. So if anything comes up around there, we'll definitely be looking at that. And also, we'll be focusing on sharing anything interesting around topics like mental health, mentorship, and work-life balance, which of course, you know, in the summer, I think, That's a time where I've seen a lot more discussion around that.

Absolutely. Yeah, for sure. So thanks for that. So Monday again, every other week, and I've seen you guys already putting a schedule together. So that's what we're doing right now is trying to develop a schedule, develop the topics, and find some guests. To that point, I just also want to mention for our Wednesday fireside chat, I did reach out to Mike Ungar, who is one of the co-hosts there, and he's also going to be looking for fireside guests. So if you have any interest in coming on, please reach out to Mike Ungar from our LinkedIn page. You'll find him there referenced, and then reach out there. And I mean, we It's not that we don't have any guests, but the more the merrier, right? And, and we have a good list of people that are interested to talk to us and have an interesting topic to, uh, to talk about will be interesting. So for sure, talking a little bit about the Tuesday room, um, so we've had, uh, and I just looked through the list of different topics, all topics around this Industry 4.0 technology side. We've had a, a great panel and discussion on equipment as a service. We had a room on Quality 4.0. We've talked and have a couple, couple rooms we've had on cybersecurity. We have digital twin, machine learning. We had some talks about supply chain, digitization of the factory. We have referenced some of the events been out there. So we've had, of course, Hannover Messe. We had a whole week of that. We talked about CES when that was over up there. We talked about 4G, uh, cellular connectivity, and general stuff on innovation. So we've been around a lot of different things, and what we plan to do here for the summer is to take some of these topics and reopen them and have a little, little discussion about where is it now and what's new, etc. So, so we're gonna definitely go in that direction. Uh, and then I also want to use the time to reach out to you guys to get some ideas of topics for our fall schedule. Right now, what I'm looking at is, is even though Industry 4.0 is still being developed, there are Industry 5.0 discussions going on. So I want to maybe dig in a little bit into that in the fall schedule. Also, maybe on the side topic with Industry 4.0, what's next? Is it Industry 5.0? Is it something different? So talk a little bit about that. And then I'm intrigued with this whole metaverse stuff. I, I want to reach out to somebody that's actually working in this space or talking about this space. I, I, I, I feel I have a good understanding of the, like, the consumer metaverse, but when we talk about industrial metaverse, I'm still a little bit baffled on where, how it's going to work, and, uh, and how companies are going to be interacting and working together in this. So I would like to do is to set up a panel similar to the equipment as a service panel, reach out to a couple of experts in the area or people that have, you know, had some work going on or did some pilots or whatever that can talk about it, get on a panel. So I'll be sending out some information on LinkedIn to kind of reach out to you guys and see if you have some information, want to get on the panel. And that'll be for planning for the fall schedule to get a panel together, talk about this. I think it could be very interesting to get some practitioners, I guess, or someone that's been experimenting in it and really understand a little bit more about the industrial metaverse. So that's going to be something I'll be working on for sure. Yeah, go ahead.

I don't know if you remember, Jan, but back in In January when we had our Clubhouse rooms on CES, we already initiated that conversation around the metaverse, and it did generate a lot of interest. And a lot of people were— had— if they didn't know a lot about it, they definitely had opinions on it.

Yeah, absolutely.

And I don't think that's changed over the course of the year, and that's something I would I would love to see a panel on industrial metaverse. And after the latest round of in-person events, I think it would be fairly easy to find some people who would be able to share their experience. And there is a recommendation here from one of our viewers. who's joining us, who's interested in digital twin in ocean logistics. So that's a very specific topic, but definitely not something that we can rule out. If you know anyone that's interested, experienced in this, please recommend some people that were, or anyone step up and offer. We'd love to have these kind of conversations for sure.

Absolutely.

Thank you for that.

Yeah, we had a good conversation on initially, as you mentioned, when we talked about the metaverse, there was some good discussion around how like a hybrid conference could utilize the metaverse to that. And that those things make tons of sense to me, but it's more when you're talking about manufacturing. Sharing IP. There's, there's a lot of, a lot of stuff there that I'd like to really dig into and figure out how will that really work. Um, and so I'm looking for people with both ideas, experience, uh, and, and, and people that's been experimenting a little bit on it. And, and look out for LinkedIn posts from the club here. Um, but also if you have anything already, just please feel, just feel free to reach out. DM me on LinkedIn or email, whatever, and let us know what you got and see if you want to be interested. It'll be very interesting discussion, I'm sure. I'm definitely sure about that. So yeah, that's what we're looking at for the Tuesday Manufacturing Future. And for the Thursday room, which I haven't mentioned yet, which is People, Process, and culture. We're going to have a similar room this coming Thursday where Jason Bean, who is the lead host on that going forward here for a little while at least, um, we are going to have Jason kind of talk a little bit about what his thoughts are both for the summer hours, uh, as well as the fall schedule. Uh, he has some great ideas of some, some good topics, some very interesting, maybe even deep topics that could be good to talk about. So I'm looking forward to that conversation. It'll be Jason and myself to talk a little bit about that. So look forward to that invitation on LinkedIn as well for this coming Thursday. We're going to have a room discussing that. So, uh, Carol, what do you think? Is there some specific topics you're thinking about that would be good to bring up for Tuesday rooms, um, or, or topics to revisit that you think we, we still need to dig a little bit further into?

Specifically for Tuesdays, definitely maybe visit the digital twin and open source news that came out from Siemens last week.

Yeah.

I definitely like your take on it as well as some others and, you know, where that's going. I know that you and Ira in the past have talked about— have spoken about open source, and I'm very curious of how how digital twin will take that into consideration with Siemens and maybe in other ARED platforms as well. I would like to see maybe a couple panels. We did experiment with the equipment as a service panel. I liked how we brought in each of the guests first for one-on-one, and then we pulled them together for a panel. I thought that was really interesting.

Yeah.

Also, I'm really interested in automotive conversations where the new vehicle technology as well converges with Industry 4.0, where we have electronic vehicles, autonomous vehicles, and battery technologies. Also cybersecurity. So anything around automotive really makes me really interested, and people in that area are very passionate about talking and sharing their experience. So I, I'd like to see that maybe on the Tuesdays.

Yeah, yeah. I'm also thinking, uh, continuing something around the supply chain. Both general supply chain and also the, the current supply chain issues, especially around semiconductor, which has a huge impact on Industry 4.0 side. Talking a little bit about that too. So, but that could probably be a summer topic. Um, I think that would be maybe a good summer topic to dig a little bit more into where, where are we right now and when do we think that we're going to see some relief in that area, because it, it is definitely taking a toll. Uh, in all these different areas. So that's something to think about as well.

Actually, it's funny you mentioned that because I was going to announce that today, that July 11th, so that's next Monday, we will have Angela Thurman, a returning guest, and she's going to be talking about supply chain with semiconductors and materials around semiconductors. We decided to run this event in the summer only because it's something that we should talk about sooner than wait till September.

Yeah, wait until it's solved, right? Then it's not too much to talk about. But it's not going to be solved right away. There's still a lot going on out there for sure. And so we're expecting and hoping for some investments in the areas to kind of pick up the slack, but we'll see how it happens. The other thing I wanted to quickly mention that we did talk a little bit about it last week here in our club internally, that we're gonna maybe beef up our website a little bit and have areas in our website where people, or where you as viewers can go in and suggest topics or offer yourself up as guests. So we're going to be working on that a little bit and probably deliver that during the summer. As a small addition to our website so that we have that kind of interaction with everybody as well. Because I mean, although we do have a lot of topics and a lot of ideas, we still want to reach out and see what do you guys want to hear and what do you think that we don't spend enough time on. So open that up and we'll have some ways for you to contact us and get in touch with us about these topics as well.

Yes, the Women in Manufacturing room, Yen, in the fall we're going to be looking at topics around robotics where we can talk about women who are passionate about robotics and even AI in robotics. Also, we'd like to address the area of women in leadership. And it's going to be looking at a fairly diverse group of women in the areas of leadership, as well as revisiting— I think you mentioned you might be doing that as well— revisiting some previous guests who have something of significance to add. Of course, as we all move on with the things that we're doing, we learn and we gain knowledge and And having people who are experts in what they do share what they've learned is definitely something that we'd like to continue to do. So we have some interesting guests that we'll be bringing back.

Nice. That's great. That's great. Yeah. I think we're gonna have some, some, as I said, a little bit more softer topics probably over the over the course of the summer here for all the different rooms, um, except maybe for the fireside chat. I mean, there we want to, you know, whoever is, is scheduled for those will have a good conversation, and, and you don't want to cut those short. Um, but, but just to, to make it a little bit easier for people to be able to join our rooms here over the summer, get some time to do it, um, we're gonna have some softer and maybe some, uh, shorter like half an hour rooms is what I'm thinking for some of those, uh, wherever it makes more sense. And if, if we have a topic that takes an hour, then it takes an hour. If you have a software topic that, that, uh, it is half an hour, then, then we'll try to accommodate that and make it a little bit easier for everybody to, to get some time. But, uh, the other thing we're probably going to do is wherever possible, uh, do a LinkedIn Live room because then you can watch it at your leisure, go in and look at it and just look at the recording, very easy to access and that kind of stuff. So something to definitely look at for us here going forward. So, hey, so that was pretty much what I wanted to kind of communicate here about our Thursday summer schedule and a little bit about the planning for the fall. And again, we did mention today here both what a little bit of Carol and Grace is doing on the Monday rooms. And then also open up for if you are interested in joining a Wednesday fireside chat, please reach out to us as well. Or if you have— if maybe not yourself, but you have an idea of somebody you'd like to hear from that we should be able to get on there, please feel free to reach out about that as well. And then look out for Thursday. We're gonna have a similar room with Jason Dean. We're gonna have a discussion about what his thoughts are for the summer and for planning for the fall as well, and how we, we can— we might be wanting to solicit some topics and ideas and guests as well for that. So with that, hey, appreciate everybody coming here. And as we usually say, if you like these types of conversation, please feel free to join us.

Thank you.

Monday through Thursday in the summer, off weeks, of course. But yeah, feel free to join us, and we'd like to have you join this conversation. And we will definitely look out for any ideas and comments from you out there about what you want to hear about. So with that, thanks everyone for joining us again today. Anything last from you, Carol?

No, just a reminder, we, uh, we have our, our room next Monday like I mentioned before with Angela Thurman on semiconductors, uh, so please watch out for our LinkedIn promotion over the next couple days.

Okay, well, thanks everyone again for joining us today. A little, little intro to what we're going to be doing, and, uh, and keep on joining us and, uh, And join our conversation. Thanks everyone, and have a great day today.