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Ramia Lloyd:
Welcome to the TechTrends podcast where we discuss the latest manufacturing technology, research, and news. Today's episode is sponsored by Hexagon. Hello friends.
Benjamin Moses:
Hi Ramia.
Stephen LaMarca:
Hi Ramia.
Ramia Lloyd:
How's everyone doing?
Stephen LaMarca:
Dude, it's good to be back.
Ramia Lloyd:
It is.
Stephen LaMarca:
I'm sad not all of us are here but we're getting closer. We're getting closer. I feel like it's been six months since I've been on the podcast.
Benjamin Moses:
I did enjoy the two-person podcast on stuff.
Ramia Lloyd:
Yeah me and Jim had a good time.
Stephen LaMarca:
Respect. Respect. I'm not trying to step on any toes. I missed this.
Ramia Lloyd:
We're just going to really change it. It's going to be the Ramia and Ben show.
Benjamin Moses:
That's our spin-off podcast.
Stephen LaMarca:
I would-
Ramia Lloyd:
Coming soon.
Stephen LaMarca:
Hands down. I don't listen to this one, but I would listen to that.
Benjamin Moses:
See as we're planning you mentioned you want to talk about some yard work?
Stephen LaMarca:
Yeah, because going back to the two-person podcast, back in the day when Ben and I started this, one of the first topics of banter that Ben would bring up regularly is home automation. And one of the aspects of home automation, because I was so impressed and I was not yet a home owner, but I was impressed by Ben's motivation and energy towards home ownership that he would talk about your automated sprinkler system. I don't got that. My version of home automation is that I don't like yard work. I avoid yard work like the plague. My yard work is picking up the phone and writing a check.
Benjamin Moses:
Sure.
Ramia Lloyd:
Fair.
Stephen LaMarca:
And it is fire. It's liberating. It's liberating. Some people will go to Home Depot and spend their entire Saturday getting all hot and sweaty and bug-bitten and covered in mud.
Benjamin Moses:
That's me.
Stephen LaMarca:
And then filling up their shower drain catch with that said mud. And so meanwhile, my entire weekend I'm on the couch playing video games with the boys and drinking natural light while somebody else is slaving away in the front yard. And now I have an English garden. Don't know what that means, but I have an English garden-
Benjamin Moses:
Does it have accent?
Stephen LaMarca:
It was fire.
Ramia Lloyd:
Does it have an accent.
Stephen LaMarca:
I don't know but-
Ramia Lloyd:
Does it eat brains and toes?
Stephen LaMarca:
I am into cars and as much as I'd like to think I wrench on my own car and bike, I don't because the best piece of advice I know on a first name basis, three really good mechanics that all work on my vehicles. And when I first met the first one of the three Carter, I asked him, "Hey, what's the best piece of advice from a mechanic as good as you? What's the best piece of advice you can give an enthusiast like me to keep their car running happily and never running into issues?" And he said to me, "Get a good well-paying job so you don't have to do any of this." And I've since I still kind of like to wrench and tweak on a few things here and there, but nothing major, nothing that's going to take my car out of commission potentially if it's done wrong.
But I have taken this mindset and mentality to yard work and I am in love. Don't touch it, every morning because we just got new plants put in there. They did my florist, who was my neighbor who she actually did our wedding arrangement, Melissa, and I's wedding arrangements and she sells me these awesome bouquets every Valentine's Day now. I asked her for advice like pulling the ivy from our front yard, which was making us look like a bunch of degenerates. And I asked her, I was like, "Hey, would you be interested in planting flowers once I get some landscapers to handle this ivy problem I have up front, I am interested in making it look nice." And she was like, "Let me do it all for you." And I was like, "Home automation. I love this."
Benjamin Moses:
It's funny you mentioned that because we have a current debate now. So one of the reasons I like doing the yard work is I like to be outside. I'm trying to get outside more this year. My goal is to be several shades darker by the end of the summer because the indicator of how well my summer's been.
Ramia Lloyd:
Heck yeah.
Benjamin Moses:
Also the term of touching grass. Why not? I like to touch grass.
Stephen LaMarca:
Respect.
Ramia Lloyd:
I love it.
Stephen LaMarca:
Respect. I'll go for a walk.
Benjamin Moses:
But I do like your parallel of the mechanic different kind of for automation. So I think for automation companies it's actually really good parallel to have no good integrator. You know what I mean?
Stephen LaMarca:
Yes the-
Benjamin Moses:
You know the parallel is you don't have to be able to do it in house, you have to know someone that can do it.
Stephen LaMarca:
Talk to anybody that uses Salesforce, they're all going to say you got to know a good in integrator.
Benjamin Moses:
Exactly, right. I appreciate that. Also, the current fight in our house is, I've got a lawnmower but it's corded, so it's electric but it's not battery powered because I'm against-
Stephen LaMarca:
Gas in it.
Benjamin Moses:
Yeah, I'm against the battery powered because I don't need to be far away. I have a hundred foot long cable that I just connect. I don't have to worry about batteries, I don't have to worry about charging it. I plug and go.
Stephen LaMarca:
So you're mowing the lawn like a vacuum.
Ramia Lloyd:
I was just about to say it's wrapped up in shoulder.
Benjamin Moses:
It's getting around my leg. It's like, come on Ben.
Ramia Lloyd:
I love that.
Stephen LaMarca:
He's going to start planting induction coils so like can be wireless.
Benjamin Moses:
But it's a show.
Stephen LaMarca:
Not run on batteries.
Benjamin Moses:
It's a show. And it's funny because my cable is long enough where I was cutting one side of the house and I definitely ran over it. So I've got a section where it's got this big hub because I spliced it back together. That's too cheap to buy another one, I just spliced it back together.
Stephen LaMarca:
I can just picture him roadie wrapping the cable.
Ramia Lloyd:
It's just going and he's like pulling it.
Benjamin Moses:
I have Amelia and Deepa both looking at me as I roll up this a hundred foot cable, like why do I-
Stephen LaMarca:
Yeah, because everybody in the neighborhood is probably watching him for when he mow the cable-
Benjamin Moses:
Yeah, the sparse.
Ramia Lloyd:
I live in an apartment, I don't have any of these issues.
Stephen LaMarca:
I have an HOA they do that. Everybody talks to Mac about having an HOA, but like-
Benjamin Moses:
I got an HOA, they'll find you because you're not doing it.
Ramia Lloyd:
I don't have an HOA, but I have the most beef with HOA like process and the whole format of someone else telling me how to manage the house that I pay for, it drives me insane. I don't even have a house, probably won't afford one, but I'm just saying.
Stephen LaMarca:
Give it time, you'd be surprised.
Ramia Lloyd:
I'm upset.
Stephen LaMarca:
Never thought I would own, but yeah man. How good does that feel coming back to that?
Benjamin Moses:
That's good.
Stephen LaMarca:
Man. Back when we were a small podcast, we're still small, but that just means we love each and every one of our listeners that much more, just subscribe.
Ramia Lloyd:
I was just about to say that, just subscribe.
Benjamin Moses:
Ramia can you tell us about today's sponsor?
Ramia Lloyd:
I can. Let me read my little note. The episode... Okay. This episode is brought to you by Hexagon... Okay, one more time. Let me slow down. This episode is brought to you by Hexagon Manufacturing Intelligence, leading the charge in manufacturing innovation. Join influencers, Chris Lukey, Nicky Gonzalez and Jim Mayer as they explore tech trends reshaping the industry and catch them this summer at Hexagon live global 2025 in Las Vegas where they'll host exclusive sessions featuring inspired innovators, production trailblazers and enterprise visionaries. Go to Hexagonlive.com to register. You can also find the Hexagon Radio podcast wherever you listen and follow Hexagon on LinkedIn to learn more.
Benjamin Moses:
So we did an interview with Jim Mayer and Travis and it was a really good interview. So each of the influencers bring a different perspective and that's why they're-
Stephen LaMarca:
A different flavor.
Benjamin Moses:
Different flavor, right. So Nicky in our previous episode talked about the fluidity and simulations and prototyping, getting faster time to market and the leadership required for that. Got a really good interview with Jim, but before we get into that Ramia, do you want to tell us more about Travis?
Ramia Lloyd:
Yeah. Excuse me. I'm just going to cut all of these parts out. Travis Egan, our good friend and chief revenue officer.
Stephen LaMarca:
T dawg.
Ramia Lloyd:
Is that what you call him?
Stephen LaMarca:
I call him T.
Ramia Lloyd:
Okay. Travis. He is going to be, he's the architect of the manufacturing track at Hexagon Live. I think it's going to be really cool. He's the face of manufacturing for that track because Hexagon is such a big company, they have different tracks and they do different things, but the one that we are focused on clearly is manufacturing. So Travis will be there, he's doing the keynote and then he's doing little different things and interviewing and all these good things. He's basically the face and I love that for him. We're launching the architect video, which is kind of cool. We went to Hendrick Motorsports and it was amazing. He does a great job interviewing Chad Knauss and Jeff Gordon and a bunch of other people and I didn't know anything about race cars or NASCAR before we went, but it was the coolest thing I've ever experienced and now I'm like left turn. Left turn. I'm in there.
Benjamin Moses:
And we also interviewed Jim Maris. You know Jim, so why don't tell me more about-
Stephen LaMarca:
Yeah, we love Jim. Let me do some housekeeping for Jim. So Jim is a manufacturing influencer. His strong LinkedIn presence comes from 20 plus years of experience in the skilled trades and he's the founder of the manufacturing connector. Speaking of left turns...
Ramia Lloyd:
Yeah.
Stephen LaMarca:
Working with Jim is always such a delight and he's a real fun conversation all the time. I first got to meet Jim at IMTS 2024 face to face, I got to meet him for the first time and we were talking and he told me about at the Hexagon booth that there is a Hendrick's Motorsport VR or simulation car where you actually get in the car, it's loud, it makes all of the noises, it moves a little bit, but then they're just having everybody hop in there, throw down a lap time around Daytona or Talladega, I don't remember. It's one of those circle tracks. And I was like, "This got me going." I was like, "Oh, I can't wait to put down a sick lap of time." He's like, "I don't know Steve, I got a really good one." And I started talking all this smack and I was like, 'Dude, listen, I'm going to beat your time by five seconds", but I don't know if I said five seconds, but-
Benjamin Moses:
I'm sure you did.
Ramia Lloyd:
Solid goal. Yeah.
Stephen LaMarca:
Listen, you people don't know how to put down lap times. I put down lap times. I do not know how to put down lap times. Not on these toilet bowl tracks where you're just going around in circles. My racing, my pompous F-One LeMans racing mentality is you corner tight because you want cover the shortest amount. The inside of a corner is literally less distance than the outside of a corner. But on a banked speedway track, the higher you go up the incline, the more sideways you get and the more sideways you get, the more the G-forces of going faster can allow you to carry more speed. So even though you're carrying or you're going a much longer distance, you're carrying a much greater speed over that distance than you would be if you were taking the shorter inside line. I did not understand this physics. He beat me by 1.3 seconds, but considering that he only beat me by 1.3 seconds, which is an eternity in auto racing, I did not understand the physics of circle toilet bowl, track racing.
Benjamin Moses:
See, I want to call you out.
Stephen LaMarca:
Call me.
Benjamin Moses:
You've been playing Gran Turismo. There are circular tracks in Gran Turismo. You should have-
Stephen LaMarca:
Those circle tracks are for the kids. They are for the kids. So you can take a fast car like a Corvette, ride it against the wall and you don't have to turn just like that one NASCAR driver did to win that one race and they banned that ever again from happening. Even though he was just doing what he did as a kid growing up playing Gran Turismo. No, that's for the kids. No. But then again, I'm not talking smack about NASCAR because I love Hendrix Motorsport because they brought one of their NASCARs, they actually put headlights on it. They brought one of their NASCARs to Mans and I forget if it was 2022 or 2023. And it's funny because the pompous, snobby people like me that are like, this car's not going to be competitive, you're going to start in the back. It ended up finishing, it finished the race number one. I think it did. But it put down lap times that were in competition. They were competitive with the LMP-II class.
Benjamin Moses:
That's great.
Stephen LaMarca:
And on the tail of the prototypes and plus the sound, an American V-eight, you just, have you ever heard, if you haven't heard an American V-eight at Redline, it sounds like an American bald eagle. Gargling freedom.
Ramia Lloyd:
Gargling freedom, okay.
Stephen LaMarca:
And anyway, but tip to Jim. Yes, you beat me.
Ramia Lloyd:
The car is going to be at-
Stephen LaMarca:
I'm coming back next year.
Ramia Lloyd:
Say the car is going to be at Hex Life, you should go.
Stephen LaMarca:
Hexagon better bring that at 2026.
Ramia Lloyd:
It's going to be at Hexlive. Go and challenge him.
Stephen LaMarca:
We're going to have a problem if it's not.
Benjamin Moses:
And Jim will beat you by two seconds.
Ramia Lloyd:
Yeah.
Stephen LaMarca:
No.
Ramia Lloyd:
He's been practicing.
Benjamin Moses:
And with that, let's get to the interview.
Ramia Lloyd:
Yeah.
Benjamin Moses:
Hello everyone. We are here with Jim Mayer and Travis Egan and of course Steve and myself here to talk about a lot of new technology. So we're going to jump right into this. Jim, I know the things, you've been very interested in this intersection of humans and technology and with the current markets and current pace technology, a lot more things are more fluid. So can you tell us more about how technology can continue to evolve through the lens of a human?
Jim Mayer:
Yeah, absolutely. And I think what we need to start at is how do we get humans to embrace technology. Historically we have looked at change as it's a bad thing and that people hate change. And Benjamin, you and I talked a year ago or six months ago or so, people actually love change. People love change that they author though, and anybody out there who's heard me talk at any length about this will find this familiar. We have a restaurant industry because people like change. They don't like eating the same thing every day. We have a fashion industry because people don't like to wear the same clothes day in and day out. We have a travel industry because people like changes in their physical environment. People truly love change, but they love change that they author. And when it comes to technology, we have looked at industry 4.0 technology as this magic wand that would solve our skills gap, solve our capacity issues, solve all these things.
And these owners have been buying technology, whether it's automation or robotics or software or whatever that looks like and forcing it into their shops from the top down, which gives the employees zero buy-in, zero chance to author that change. So in order for that intersection to truly happen, we have to go to our shop floor and we have to say, what do you guys need to make your job easier? I see that we have an issue with capacity. How do we solve it? Here are three or four platforms that could be the answer, right? If we start giving people that ability to author that change to be the subject matter experts that we know they are, that we hired them to be, then they'll start to embrace change and that technological transformation will happen a little bit quicker.
Benjamin Moses:
Awesome. And continuing that same thought I saw in your podcast lineup here that you talked to Joe Hungerman about continuous improvement and I think that's an interesting takeaway. When we look at continuous improvement for technology, there is a strong intersection. Can you elaborate a little bit more on that?
Jim Mayer:
Yeah, absolutely. It's all about small incremental change when it comes to continuous improvement. The most productive cultures that embrace continuous improvement as a whole tend to not try and take on massive projects and fix it all at one time. They say, okay, they take that scrum, that agile methodology into play into their culture and they make those small incremental changes to make people's jobs better and easier. Small in small chunks at a time instead trying to make it all change at once.
Travis Egan:
Nice. Jim, if we can go back to that kind of first question and sort of tie the two together. I mean, when we talk about the human centric piece and sort of this transformative time that we're in manufacturing, you talked about the shop floor, but it's also technology sort of driving a difference in generation and I think it's about communication actually. At the end of the day, it's that shop floor communicating with different aspects of the manufacturing the factory itself. So somebody in quality, somebody inspection, maybe even further down the line to design and engineer. And with technology then comes this enablement of say even the different generational groups. So different mindsets come with that, and so it expands things and it makes things more complex at the same time when it expands both generationally and then different departments. But that is what's enabled by the new technology.
Jim Mayer:
I agree. And Travis, I think you used one key phrase that I think encompasses that all and that's communication. Steve and Benjamin, Travis, you guys have all been in shops, the majority of your professional careers. How often have you walked into a shop and the people out on the shop floor don't communicate well with the front office, right? There's a disconnect or with quality or with different processes within the organization. Technology is that enabler at this point. There are so many different tools out there, so many different platforms out there that can be the conduit between the shop floor and different areas within the organization. I think you nailed it.
Travis Egan:
And it's even different industries too. You look at how technology, say just machine tool technology has been adopted traditionally in the automotive industry, then into aerospace, then you look into medical and you even have some cases now hospitals buying machine tools and doing machining in a hospital. And so that community is ever expanding. And even different types of folks that you really wouldn't consider the people that you'd be working with on whatever manufacturing challenge. It really evolves and grows the community.
Jim Mayer:
Absolutely. And your point about the difference in generations I think highlights that, right? What the baby boomer generation, what Gen Xers, myself, what we're looking for out of a communication is not the same as what a Gen Z or a Gen Alpha or a millennial is looking to utilize as far as communication tools are concerned. So finding that commonality between generations, between industries, between verticals within our industry is super important.
Travis Egan:
We see that at AMT, don't we, Stephen and Ben?
Stephen LaMarca:
That's right. I actually want to ask if I may for an example, because I really like what you said with the development in technology just for communication, we've all seen the evolution from the shop floor going from just a stack light on a machine and maybe a whiteboard to say how many parts we've cut that day, but to the evolution and the development and really the beautification of dashboards, that's all in the shop floor. But if you could give me an example of how that communication is developed between the shop floor and the front office.
Jim Mayer:
Yeah, I mean gone are the days of spreadsheets gone are the days of paper travelers gone, are the days of those pockets that are magneted to a whiteboard outside of the shop door. You know what I mean? That doesn't suffice anymore. That doesn't cut it. It doesn't create that community that Travis was talking about. There are a lot of different platforms out there, some that I've found that I appreciate between cross-functionality tools. Caddy is a big one that I've loved to see them grow. Just the ability for estimating and the shop floor estimating and the front office to be able to look at the same set of documents and be able to reference, that's pretty cool. But then you've got companies like L-to-L, you've got some of the MES systems, you've got the ERP systems out there. These aren't your grandma and grandpa's software platforms anymore. These are really robust, all-inclusive platforms that help communication within different areas of the shop.
Stephen LaMarca:
Awesome, thanks.
Benjamin Moses:
Let's continue that conversation on technology as manufacturers, what are you seeing as some of this, we'll say top four technologies that manufacturing manufacturers are leveraging to continue maintaining pace with the growing market?
Jim Mayer:
Yeah, I would be remiss if I only mentioned Caddy in that estimating type software space. I think that Caddy and Paperless parts have both created a very unique platform to help manufacturers access past drawings in a way that they have never been able to before. What would take hours in searching through physical files or even computer files is now able to be done in mere minutes. And both those platforms are doing a great job. I'm seeing a lot of the enterprise-sized shops embrace that kind of technology. What I love to see most of all is the small to medium sized shops that are embracing the robotics, that are bringing in machine tending technology, that are bringing in ways to automate those repetitive tasks that historically we have had massive turnover rates because there's no development, no pathway that these people who are brought in the door, there's no future for them in just loading parts.
There's no pathway internally. So if we're able to use machine tending to load parts and remove parts and upskill the people that we have to really be able to utilize the machine tools better and program better and engineer the parts better, that to me is pretty powerful. So that's two. Let's talk about connected worker platforms. Platforms like L-to-L have really revolutionized that ability for somebody to virtually raise their hand in a stop call wait type scenario so that they're able to get the help at their machine, at their location, wherever that may be when they need it. And they're not shutting lines down for 20, 30, 45 minutes like they used to when they'd have to stop something, they can get that instant access, get that support right there on the spot. Then I don't know, man, there's so much out there. To me I'm going to go back to IMTS.
The coolest thing that I've seen technologically was that convergent manufacturing system that Oak Ridge had at IMTS. That is still the coolest thing that I have seen because that takes so many skill sets into one manufacturing cell and it doesn't make the operator a machinist, it doesn't make them a welder, it doesn't make them a quality person, but they're the ones responsible. And this is really where the future of technology is going to be in our industry. It's not going to be one person is a machinist or a welder or quality tech. They know how to operate the machines in each of those areas to be able to run that convergent manufacturing type cell. I was blown away. I haven't stopped talking about it. I'm sure you guys geek out about that stuff as much as I do, but that was the coolest thing I've seen in 20 years.
Stephen LaMarca:
Dude, it's really hard not to. I mean, I thought it was so cool. Number one, the fact that they had different swag for every day of the show. Did you get all five tokens?
Jim Mayer:
I did not. I'm so bummed.
Stephen LaMarca:
Same, same.
Jim Mayer:
I got three out of the five.
Stephen LaMarca:
But it is so cool that they were able to take the mold that they made with that 3D printed mold, cut it down, rebuilt it before the show opened every day, and then start churning them out on the show floor. That really was wild. That was like, I mean, I don't have that many IMTSs under my belt, but that was one of the coolest ones for sure.
Jim Mayer:
I love it. I thought it was so cool. I want to go out to Oak Ridge and see it in action and see what's next for them., so-
Stephen LaMarca:
You haven't been?
Jim Mayer:
I haven't.
Stephen LaMarca:
Oh my God, dude, it really is great.
Jim Mayer:
Do I get to go road tripping with Steve and go to Oak Ridge?
Stephen LaMarca:
Listen, I mean, we could probably work that out. We have to figure out sponsors though. That's the tough one. But anyway, not about that.
Jim Mayer:
The battle of the beards on the way to Oak Ridge. Before I go, let's continue with Travis.
Travis Egan:
Yeah, I want to just weigh in on that comment about what you saw there at IMTS. And really there is one sort of common theme that was used in that example in the ETC, but really throughout IMTS and really maybe the big swing of the pendulum, and that's digital or data essentially. And that is what enables what you saw there in the ETC. And it really then starts to impact things like automation or technology like additive manufacturing. And so at the leading edge, it's all this digital connectivity that's sort of enabling strides in manufacturing, in performance. And just to give an example, and one that was pretty exciting recently with Hexagon, I got the opportunity to go to Hendrix Motorsports. And so here you have world-class manufacturer and they have the ability to leverage technology and technology is truly their competitive advantage.
So they are winning, leveraging technology very specifically. And the way I really saw that they were doing it with Hexagon as a partner was to just add up little incremental things in terms of their ability to measure and keep things at a certain level of quality and re-inspect all the components. And when I say all the components of the car, it's everything that you could possibly think of and how that's all interconnected and that data that they can pull out of it, that's how they win races. So that's a really good example, but it comes down to that digital connectivity and then they have, to your point, armies of people there, that human-centric component that are leveraging those technologies to get ahead.
Jim Mayer:
Travis, can I ask you a question Benjamin, Stephen, is that okay if I ask Travis a question?
Travis Egan:
Please.
Stephen LaMarca:
Absolutely.
Jim Mayer:
You'll find me later it'll be okay. Okay, Travis, so you mentioned that pendulum swinging back, right?
Travis Egan:
Yeah.
Jim Mayer:
And I'd agree like Stephen, I don't have a ton of IMTS is under my belt, but I've been to five I think at this point, right? This was my fifth, this was the first one that I saw. So many technology companies, software technology companies, this was the most like software forward IMTS is that I can remember, especially when you've got Google Cloud, you've got AWS, you've got some of the biggest names in the software world in that data world participating in our trade show in the one that's for us. And to me that was really cool. And I had the benefit of interviewing somebody from Google Cloud, which was wild. Are you seeing that we're swinging the pendulum too much or have we found that balance to you between the people and the technology, between the people and the data? Because it's always dangerous when those pendulums swing and you go too far to either side. Are we balanced now, do you think?
Travis Egan:
So I think I've been to IMTS, I think my last one was the 13th IMTS. I remember another time that was probably the closest to this, which was around 2000. And the big hype, or I don't want to use the word hype, the big movement was around the internet and the effects from internet would have on the manufacturing industry. And you saw new companies coming in, new technology companies coming in, and that was something that was digested by the industry. And I think we're at that point where that really, you saw this growth and then it got sort of right sized. And I think we're seeing that growth right now. And I think there, there's a lot of more growth we're going to see through the next several iterations of more technology companies coming in and showing more and more interest.
And I think that's going to be a cycle period, several cycles of the show that we're going to continue to see that. And then we'll start to digest it down to the practical applications. And it's already happening here, here and here. And that takes time for people to then see, oh, that worked. You know Hendrix is a great example. They have these Roma arms and they use them to inspect the car. And the story that the guys were telling me on the shop floor was, well, we had one of these arms and then we saw the value of it, and then everybody else wanted to leverage it. So we got a couple more. And then now come to today, so we'll say, I don't know, several years, four or five years, they have two at every station. And there's stations, they probably have upwards of 35 of these arms in there. But they started with one, right? Then they got two, then they got five. But they saw how they could leverage the technology to get ahead.
Jim Mayer:
Yeah.
Travis Egan:
Similarly that process will happen.
Jim Mayer:
Yeah. That's awesome. Thanks for answering that.
Benjamin Moses:
Let's jump ahead a little bit. That was a really good example. Let's jump ahead a little bit and talk about AI. Jim, in your opinion, should I be afraid of AI?
Jim Mayer:
No. Embrace it, man. AI isn't as scary as a lot of people talk about ai. If you have an Apple phone, you've been carrying AI in your pocket since 2011, right? Siri is AI, right? Alexa is AI. I think the part about the new AI trend that's scaring people is that it's generative. It's creating, before it was just reporting data that you already had. So I think that when you look at change, when you look at fear, when you look at AI as a whole, that's the new fear is, oh, I almost swore, sorry, I don't know, can I swear on your podcast? Oh shoot. Oh shoot. This thing is telling me it can give me a strategic plan. Oh shoot, this thing can tell me how to market this most effectively. And it's not perfect. It's not great, but it at least gets you moving in the right direction. On my podcast, on the manufacturing culture pod, I was able to interview Garrett Tornquist and he said something that has stuck with me since we interviewed back in December.
He said, "AI is not going to replace humans in shop floors, in factories. People who adopt AI technology are going to replace humans who don't adopt AI technology." And to me, I think that's the most important takeaway for people as we look at the future of this industry, as we look at the future of AI and what we have at our fingertips. Don't be afraid of it, learn it. Learn how to utilize it. My mother is 70 years old, she just started learning how to chatGPT. It's the scariest thing in the world because now I get text messages in chatGPT language from my mom, which is weird. But it's those people who will eventually be taking the jobs of people who don't utilize and learn how to adopt those technologies. Those are the people who will take jobs.
Benjamin Moses:
Thanks Jim. And to be fair, I wasn't afraid of AI, I'm just taking up the question I just don't want to feel to [inaudible 00:35:37].
Jim Mayer:
I love that. I love the way you ask that, the big grin on your face, Benjamin, anybody who knows you knows that you're not afraid of AI. And so that's why that was so great. But Travis, Stephen, you guys have seen people in shops for the better part of two, maybe three decades in some cases. We saw a similar shift back when CNCS came into our shops. We saw reluctance to use CNC technology and people thought that manufacturing could only, or machining could only be done on manual machines. Do you see that a similar correlation between the AI technology and CNC technology coming into shops?
Travis Egan:
I think people are still discovering it. They're discovering probably more in their personal lives or their professional lives from not on the shop floor perspective first. And then it's going to seep into the different layers of, say a manufacturing organization. An AI is evolving and actually is evolving very quickly. The key to get ahead of us is maybe the question. I got the chance to go to NVIDIA's global technical conference two years ago, not just this past one, but two years ago. And that's when they came out with the Blackwell chip, which exponentially fast forwards their ability to create new data and information, generatively more and more data, more and more information speeds up the AI process. What's next? I mean, it can be so fast. And how do we with our human brains keep up with that and do it in a way that's very valuable to our organizations. That's the question.
Jim Mayer:
Yeah, I love it.
Stephen LaMarca:
We've got an ADA here at AMT just saying an ADA Blackwell eight 5,000 on our test bed just saying.
Benjamin Moses:
And look at your podcast again, Jim. I see an district title that I want to hit on. So you talked to Stephanie Crystal and the title that caught me off guard was she won an award, but it was our team that made history. Can you elaborate on that a little bit more?
Jim Mayer:
Yeah, this was a really cool interview. So at IMTS, I had ANCA come to me and say, Hey, we've got this female machinist of the year award, we'd love to get her on your podcast. And I said, yes, a hundred percent yes, let's talk about it. Schedules didn't align. So it took us months to get this interview on the books. Stephanie and I just did this back early March, I want to say, middle of March. And I had all these notes from Sandvik. I had all these notes from Anka on the award and why she won this award. And so I had written this intro for her, and I read all of my guests the intro just so they don't hate it when it's released. And she hated it. She hated every word that I talked or that I said when it came to why she won this award and what had happened. And so I had her explain to me this thought process. She won the award for creating faster processes, getting more product out the door, et cetera. But she said, "It wasn't me. I am just part of a team.
I was brought in to lead this team to make us better, but it was a team effort in getting the results that we got." And I loved every minute of that. And it changed the entire tone of the interview too, because all of a sudden I wasn't interviewing this person who individually excelled at this one thing. I was interviewing somebody who did something phenomenal with a great group of human beings around her, and it just so happened that she won an award for it. But she's very uncomfortable holding that award as a solo person. And to me, that just shows the mindset shift that's happening in leadership in this industry right now. It's not individual accolades, it's a team. And we are moving forward as a team, and sometimes that team is an industry, and the four of us are here on this podcast as a team right now, and we're moving the industry forward. Sometimes it's within the facilities and these shop floors in these factories. Sometimes it's departments within them, but the mindset is changing as to how we lead people. And I love every minute of that, man.
Travis Egan:
Yeah, I love that nod to teamwork, and I'm going to take it in just a little bit of a different direction. The ultimate form of teamwork is partnership. And with AMT, our constituency is the technology companies. And we strive every day to create this connectivity between the buyer and seller community. But really what our members, the technology purveyors do really well is they partner with their customers to solve their problems. And that's really what drives this industry forward. So it is sort of that ultimate teamwork by a technology company working with a manufacturer to do things better and to move the needle forward. And so partnerships are just a really critical part of manufacturing technology solutions. And so that kind of takes me to where we're at with this whole, what brings us all together on screen here at Hexagon Live, which we're here to talk about.
That's really what they're trying to do, is they're trying to bring together examples of these great partnerships that they've had with their customers and show how they have really created a formulas for success in different areas all across different industries, all across, not just in manufacturing, but the other areas that they serve with Hexagon. And so it's going to be fun. We had a podcast with Nikki just a day or so ago, and so now we get to do it with you, Jim, and then we also, I'm going to be connecting with Chris Lukey. It's all kind of a connected thing to see how this teamwork can really expose all these different applications of technology to drive success in different industries.
Jim Mayer:
I love it. I love it. And man, what a cool ecosystem. When you've got organizations like AMT, organizations like Hexagon, really working together, like I said earlier, to make this industry better, make the lives better of the people who work for your member companies. It's a cool thing to be a part of. So appreciate you guys bringing me along for the ride today.
Benjamin Moses:
Awesome. And with that, we'll kick it back to the podcast.
Stephen LaMarca:
Anytime, Jim.
Benjamin Moses:
That was a great interview with Jim and Travis. We definitely hit on some fun topics, so how to move technology through humans, change and adoption. And with of course, Jim's podcast, he brought in Joe Hungerman talking about continuous improvement for tech, and definitely wanted to pick on his thoughts on the top four techs, tech items manufacturers are adopting. But in our pre-roll, Steve, you had to in these comments.
Stephen LaMarca:
Yeah. One of the things that I definitely remembered and made me feel warm and fuzzy, even though he's my nemesis on the track, I thought it was funny that he was talking about the beards that we had on screen going from Travis clean shaven to Ben, mild beard to Jim, a little bit more cultivated, and then to my homelessness. But I also really liked how you asked him, should we be afraid of AI? And sure, are there some creepy things? Yes. But at the end of the day, it's just a tool and it's like the most advanced tool known to humankind since us figuring out fire and it can be damaging. No, it can't no, cut that out. But it's just a tool. Use it. Nobody ever lost their job to turning a wrench. You lose your job to somebody who turns a wrench better than you. It's a tool. Learn to use it.
Benjamin Moses:
Thanks, Steve. Ramia, where can they find more info about us?
Ramia Lloyd:
First, I would like to say thanks to today's episode sponsor Hexagon. Everyone go sign up for Hexagon Live. You can find more information at techtrends.amtonline.org. Like, share, subscribe.
Stephen LaMarca:
Bing bong.
Benjamin Moses:
Bye.
Ramia Lloyd:
Wee hee.
