Smart Manufacturing Experience 2022

Hello everyone, we're joining you live from the Smart Manufacturing Experience here in Pittsburgh. I'm Grace Donovan and I'm here with Nikunj Mehta and Mike Yost.

Hello.

Care to introduce yourselves?

Sure, I'm Mike Yost, I'm the founder of Bennett.

I'm Nikunj, I'm founder and CEO of Falconry and also of course an Industry 4.0 Club founder.

Yes, and I am in business development with Andonikx. And so we've all, well, had the pleasure of meeting in person here today. And this is, you know, I think one of a host of conferences that's happening this week in smart manufacturing. So I'll start with you, Mike, but what have been your experiences? We're doing a live, jump on in. And we are joined by—

Hi, Rick Impedasano from Delta Bravo.

Hello, Rick. Nice to— thanks for joining us.

Okay, cool.

I've been on this. Is Mike on?

This Mike?

Yeah, yeah, Mike Ungar.

Oh no, he's not.

He might be tuning in live.

Oh, awesome to be watching. Hi, Mike.

Yeah, so we were just asking, you know, what I guess what has been your experience here at the conference? What have been some of the conversations you've been having?

Do you care to—

am I going to repeat everything that you already said?

No, I haven't said anything yet.

And you go first.

Okay, well, this is my first SME, and I guess this is the first smart manufacturing event I've been to this year, I've been to very specific industry-oriented events before. And I'd say that everybody who I would have liked to either meet or liked to get to know is here, which is a relatively rare phenomenon. And Rick is one of them, but there are several other companies like that. And so it's clear that SESAME's got the right people's attention on the vendor side. Yeah.

Oh, I would agree with that. And, uh, you know, Nikunj's company is one that we've been following, and I'm a fan of Nikunj's work personally. So, uh, you know, like I say, it's the same with you, it's kind of seen a lot of that. Um, from our perspective, definitely seeing some mixed market messaging around, you know, some of the more predictive stuff, the AI stuff. It seems that, you know, there, there's some folks that are still struggling with a standard definition around what that actually means, uh, you know, which can create some level of confusion, but it's good for at least people getting out there. And I always look at it, you know, rising tide lifts all ships, right? So as long as the, you know, as the message is getting out that this is a viable thing that people are doing every day to improve operations, then, you know, that's what will shape it slightly.

Yeah. And also the fact that SESAME is able to get so many people to give up their time and have 6 sessions running in parallel, like that just tells you how much content there is that They have helped create, and how much Kathy's here.

I'll say this: this, as far as all the content choices, I could not seem to pick less than three per time slot.

Exactly.

So yeah, yeah. I mean, it was unreal. And I mean, I was looking at them like every single my things, my alerts going off. Like, if you have this to go do this thing, it's like every every minute it's like do do do. And I'm like, oh my gosh, what do I do? So so I think they've done a fantastic job.

I'm splitting fifteen minutes in every session because I can get. I mean, I don't want to be in one place alone for that whole session.

Right. Yeah, yeah. So it's funny, um, I mean, I'll tell you, these guys did a killer job of curating content. People that are delivering the presentations are excellent. Um, so yeah, I think it's been probably— yeah, it's been the best conference I've been to this year easily.

That's awesome.

Well, that's good to hear. And just to comment on that, what's going on in the background is they're handing out awards. Um, so going back to when, um, the Institute was started and actually before that, when manufacturing first came into the language nationally and recognizing people there. So it's good to see that journey because they went all the way back to 2005.

Yep.

The work that's been going on, to your point about the tide raising all boats, how many people, how many efforts have been going on for the period of time that they have. Now there's a formal institute, and, you know, now they're on 5 years of the SESAME formal institute. Manufacturing USA is represented here itself. And obviously that work continues. So to see government here, to see regional economic development folks, the vendor community, systems integrators, manufacturers all here together is really a testament, I think, to see a whole lot of hard work. And it's great to hear your guys' input that it's been valuable.

Yeah.

And so you are both speakers here at the event. What are the topics that you're speaking on? Have you already had your speaking engagement? If not, I know you're speaking tomorrow. Let us know.

Yeah, you know, I, um, I know that there are a lot of sessions, so people are not able to go to all the sessions they want to, but I'm speaking twice. I'm speaking tomorrow and then again on Thursday. They will be different talks, um, and they are all focused on applications of AI in the industrial context, specifically around time series data, which felt really my focus.

What about you?

Yeah, I've got 2 speaking engagements, uh, back to back tomorrow, so this is going to be— I'm going to be—

I'm going to sound like Roseanne when I'm done with this.

My voice is going to be toast. But no, I've got the first one is on how use case selection can be the determinant of success in an AI project. So kind of talking through some of the best practices around how to get people together that aren't used to working together and help that become successful. So that's one of them. And we've done, you know, got 90-odd customers that we've worked with.

That's great.

worked in over the years. And so this is very much built on experience through trial and error, stubbed toes, broken noses, that sort of thing, black eyes. And so that's going to be a good one. And then after that, we're going to be presenting with the folks from Rolls-Royce on our work, which are predictive quality, predicting engine failures for Rolls-Royce.

Very cool. And just in case, so just so that we know a little bit more about Delta Bravo Artificial, can you give us— or sorry, artificial intelligence. Can you give us like a quick, Can you give a quick pitch for our audience on what you do?

Yeah, so real simple. We take all the data that's created on the factory floor and different parts of the operations, that could be ERP systems, PLC data, and we put all that data together to create predictive models that help us, you know, reduce unplanned downtime, improve quality, reduce scrap, understand how and where throughput bottlenecks are occurring, and how to kind of automate the recognition of those things and give people kind of a heads up. before it results in something negative. So yeah, that's it in a nutshell. So basically we have all these companies that make this huge multimillion-dollar investment in collecting data. The next step is what do you do with it? And that's kind of where we come into play.

Very similar to these guys.

I'll just add one other thing. So I'm participating tomorrow afternoon in a session in the knowledge bar area, and it's focused on education workforce development. So in addition to the technologies and the research that Sesame is driving. There's also a big focus on defining the language, getting people to understand the business value, assessment tools that they're creating, roadmapping tools. We've been doing a series of workshops, and so we'll be talking about that kind of feedback from the field as far as how that's going, and then, you know, what's coming as far as how assessments are tied into the education.

There's some phenomenal talks that I haven't been able to go, but I've checked them and said I need to go back and look at the content at some point. And I think specifically around upskilling and worker skill gaps, there seems to be pretty good coverage.

How about you, Grace?

What are you taking away from today?

This has been, I think, the second conference that I've been to since I've been with Andonix. And for me, it's just really eye-opening and exciting to see all the technology that's really around connected workers and filling, really kind of like getting that last mile of coverage and providing tools to lots of the folks that are creating value. I know we've got a lot of, you know, there's cobots on the floor, they're doing really amazing things, but we still depend so much on people. And seeing all the solutions that are designed for our operators is really exciting. I think it provides a lot of validation to the space. And I saw some really cool technology today, definitely a lot of partnership opportunities that are exciting. So I'm certainly coming out of here with full wind in my sails.

Yeah, no doubt. A lot of really cool stuff around simplifying that factory floor data collection. You know, I just saw a lot of really, really cool things that are kind of happening on the front side of data collection on the floor. So yeah, a lot of really cool solutions for that for sure.

Yeah, thanks. And I guess a final question, I know we have a brief time here, but what was maybe the most exciting conversation or piece of technology or system that you saw The conversation I had about preparation that is required in order to succeed and how can small or medium-sized manufacturers get benefit from their data.

I mean, in a nutshell, that captures the dilemma that is being faced by lots of people in the SESAME stakeholder community. And to me, you know, getting a snapshot like that is, is really important. One of the best ways of gauging where we are at in our journey as a nation.

Yeah, I'd say too, from my perspective, I'm here working with 2 of the regional innovation centers that SESAME has, so one in Cleveland, one in Michigan. They have a national network. So to the point about how are we reaching the smaller manufacturers, providing resources for them, it's exciting to see not only the resources that are there, but the people that have come up and talked with economic development Development people and manufacturers from across the country that are looking for access to those sorts of things.

Yeah, I think at this stage of the game it's pretty evident that if we don't get Industry 4.0 right, we're in trouble as an economic sector, right? It's bad. So I'm with you. I think that, you know, obviously the straw that stirs the drink there is your small to medium size. And so it's nice to really see them kind of being a part of this. I'll tell you, I really, you know, the biggest, you know, for me, the biggest validator of the work that we do Zoom us in here.

We got live music, everyone.

All right, rocking and rolling over there. We're going to get ready to do the chickenism. Are we doing the chicken?

Oh, tune in later.

No, but the big validator for me was just we talked through just that general— that there's a huge focus around collecting data, putting that data together in ways that was more accessible and more understandable by people throughout the entire process as opposed as opposed to just people in an analyst class. And so I thought that was really powerful. And I think that's going to be critical in getting us to that Industry 4.0 place that we need to be in order to remain competitive.

Yeah, I would have to say, like, I echo that, really making a lot of this technology accessible and specifically marketed to the small and medium, which is really the bottom of the pyramid of our economy. And I know you're working with institutions in Ohio and Michigan, and I, you know, being in Michigan, like, see a lot of the initiatives that are put towards getting the smaller and medium companies Industry 4.0 ready. They're usually a little bit later on that adoption curve. So getting them accelerated is critical so that we don't have like a big gap to jump forward later. And then in just terms of like a cool technology got me really excited was this very low latency video HoloLens and hard hat that could communicate in, like you could, it had like— I'll have to like pin the company later because their name is escaping me. We met so many, but they have just really excellent communication tools with really low latency. It doesn't even depend on 5G. So that's a technology that got me very excited, like seeing how that is leapfrogging and accelerating a lot of like remote maintenance and augmented worker solutions. So that was a very, very cool technology. I will put the name in the comments later so you can go check them out. But I think that wraps it up. Any final comments?

No, I guess there's 2 more days still. Yes, yes, it should be exciting.

Yeah, no, no doubt. Start it off hot. Um, you know, good content, good people, easy conversations. So yes, come next year.

Yeah, the only thing I'd say is Koji and I have known each other for over a year and we finally met face to face, so it's nice to finally— and Grace and I finally met face to face about a couple weeks ago.

So reunions happening all over the place. That's certainly a benefit of in-person events and returning. Cementing a lot of these relationships that we've all built online and bringing it into the real world. Yeah.

Awesome. Excellent.

Thanks for tuning in, everyone.

Cheers.