Transcript
Transcript
Bryan Sapot (00:00)
Hi, this is Bryan Sapot. I’m the CEO of [Smart Factory] and welcome to Zen and the Art of Manufacturing where we talk about manufacturing technology, software, workforce development, and lean. And today we have Tony Kaczmarek with us ⁓ who, well, Tony, I’ll let you introduce yourself and give us a little bit of your background and how long you’ve been doing kind of the same stuff that we have.
Tony Kaczmarek (00:23)
Yeah, it’s kind of funny. You we’ve been in that same ecosystem a little bit as competitors, but always loved chatting with you. And so it’s been ⁓ kind of fun to organically grow together. Yeah, so I came out of the, ⁓ originally out of the HVAC space and facilities automation, what the company called Coors Engineering, did open architecture, non-proprietary solutions using SCADA systems.
And through the years, we evolved into ⁓ industrial and then into manufacturing. Once we got into manufacturing, we partnered up with a SaaS-based technology. ⁓ And from there, we really started to organically grow the software business. ⁓ Originally, we were very engineering heavy, where we would solve everybody’s problem with a whiteboard.
Eventually we found some patterns and evolved that into providing more MES based solutions to do deeper integration into quality, into traceability, into OEE and those types of things. And that’s where you and I kind of bumped into each other. From there really grew things up and that product exploded and ended up selling the company in 2021. From there I worked with Plex who then got acquired by Rockwell.
And then fairly recently I got let go, was kind of let me spread my wings and ⁓ work with the ecosystem. And it’s probably the most fun that I’ve had to have discussions and really start to find out where the opportunity is to help customers with big challenges, which is what we’re here to talk about today.
Bryan Sapot (02:07)
Yeah. What’s interesting and what you and I talk about all the time is how surprised we are that very few companies have kind of automated data collection solutions out on the factory floor and kind of that real time visibility. And one of the things that you’ve mentioned many times is like, how do we get this? It’s actually proven technology, but how do we get this stuff into the hands of people? And like, what are the challenges? Like, why do you think it hasn’t been more widely adopted?
Tony Kaczmarek (02:37)
You know, if you look at any sort of technology, you see kind of the hump of people getting excited about it and, you know, those early adopters trying things out and a lot of failures and a lot of people trying to do really big things, really expensive things really quick and a lot of science experiments. ⁓ It is fascinating to me because, you hear about, you know, IOT and, you know, some of these digital transformation.
You and I have been doing this since the 90s, right? We’ve been collecting sensors and aggregating data and doing reports and those types of things. So to us, it’s not new. But when we look at the ecosystem, it is still shocking, you know, the percentage of plants that we walk into that have no infrastructure, no OT network, no technology, they’re literally still writing on paper out there. And I think part of that is a generational thing. I think there was a lot of
⁓ ownership that has held companies for a long time, that has been through a couple of trials and those were not successful. So, you know, I think part of it is getting burned. Part of it is a generational thing. But I think, you know, we’re starting to see that crossover where the adoption is growing enough, the competition is growing enough, and I think the price of entry, and that’s one of the reasons that I have always loved Mingo is
know, the cost of entry to get solutions in ROI is really starting to pay off. So I think we’re just starting to see that. But to your point, I think we’re probably at five or 10 % of manufacturing that has even started down that journey. It’s shocking.
Bryan Sapot (04:18)
Yeah, the being burned in the past is is a good point. Like a lot of technology projects in ⁓ manufacturing have challenges. Like you just look at ERP over the years and how much money it costs and how long it takes to get value out of it, how disruptive it is. And I think people making a connection between those two and say all of these shop floor things are probably worse. They’re probably harder because there’s so many moving parts, right? I got to connect to machines. I got to have a good network. I got to train operators. I got to train supervisors like
And, you know, we know manufacturing is very dynamic changing environment. So that, that’s a really good point. But how do you, you know, we know this stuff’s proven technology, right? But how do you get people sort of over the hump to even want to try it? Like, what is, how do we do that? I mean, you’ve mentioned some other things like over time, like government programs and
You know, you had some other really interesting ideas as well. Like, how do you do that?
Tony Kaczmarek (05:18)
Yeah, and a lot of it is about that trust. And so, you know, since I got let go, it’s gotten a lot of opportunity for me to talk to a lot of diverse technologies that impact manufacturing. So ERP, MES, ⁓ hardware, software, ⁓ iPhones, and, you know, all of these technologies.
and trying to figure out, what is it going to take to really kind of break through all of that friction of what we’re facing? You know, because to your point, the manufacturing plant floor is already so dynamic. There’s already so many fires. You have different makes, different models, different protocols, different, all of these things that just feel Herculean to overcome. So I’ve been looking at, you know, how do we help
educate and you you and I did that a little bit through some of our experiences with precision metal forming association. And I think that’s one of those ways is kind of getting that that that first kink in the armor to find out how do we build that trust again that that’s really been lost through the years. And I’ve kind of expanded that through my experiences of working with you know obviously partners and distributors that have those long term relationships they’re walking into the.
the customer’s doors every day, they have that understanding, that trust. They’re fixing their electrical closets, they’re hooking up their network. So they’ve got that relationship. So I think that’s one point of contact of evolving our technologies to expand it to those people that have face-to-face trust with that. But I’ve also started exploring into some of the nonprofit and into some of the government ⁓ opportunities.
There is a lot of money. You’ll hear me talk about how do I remove friction? Well, I think cost is always a friction point. So I’ve looked into, where are there opportunities to address that friction, whether it’s with getting OEE and devices on the platform or cybersecurity or OT networks or co-bots, whatever it is. So I started going down the path of where can we find in nonprofits.
and government organizations to help us help our customers. So we walk in with a prepared, not only do I have your solution, but I’ve helped ship 20, 30, 50 % of the cost with this grant. And then watching what some of the nonprofits out there, seeing what we can do to help educate them, to help educate and…
Kind of provide, know, right now there’s not a ⁓ Facebook for manufacturers. If you want to learn something more about manufacturing, everybody’s got their niche. You know, if you’re in precision metal forming, you’ll go to PMA, but if you’re in chemicals, you’ll go somewhere else. If you’re in aerospace, you’ll go somewhere else. So there’s not this consolidated, you know, Facebook, if you will, that’s what you and I can start building next, Of where to aggregate.
information and kill fake news of what’s going on out there, what technologies are out there. And of course, the case studies. We have decades, literally decades of case study. This isn’t something new. This isn’t a science experiment. We’re doing this every single day. ⁓ I always joke about the Jerry McWire, which I could be dating myself with that movie now, which is crazy. But help me help you. Let me figure out how to help you.
and get that trust in that education of how we do this. So that’s, I think, a huge.
Bryan Sapot (08:59)
I was thinking with Jerry Maguire, you were gonna go show me the money. it’s like, I get it to help defer the cost or actually prove to me that this is gonna get me the results that I’ve seen. And what’s weird about it, like what you say is true. Like we both have tons of case studies that this thing really works, but they don’t know what they don’t know. Like a manufacturer doesn’t know what they don’t know until they put this consistent data collection in to really understand like, where are those problems? How big are they?
Right? Like they have a gut feel sense, but you don’t know a hundred percent until it’s in there. And what’s interesting, the government program thing is interesting because you could do something very simplistic to kind of give that visibility. And then it’s free maybe. ⁓ and then it goes, ⁓ wow. Like there really is a real big opportunity here if we had this kind of stuff, ⁓ over time. And so like historically I know with the MEPs manufacturing extension partnerships, like every state has at least one.
Ohio’s got a few. ⁓ They used to fund some of these things. there, do you know if there’s new government programs like through the MEPs or like the CHIPS Act or any of that that are doing this stuff again?
Tony Kaczmarek (10:13)
Yeah, and you know, I literally just started down this path last week and, and, and found out that, absolutely. There is, there is money sitting out there. ⁓ So again, just like anything, how, do people know about that? If you’re running a 50 million or a hundred million dollar company and how do you find out about that? How do we make that accessible? And to your point, there’s, there’s some areas that, you know, some people can, can go to, but
there’s not that one place that everybody is just like, hey, if I check this, I know I’m going to find what I’m looking for, making that more searchable, more accessible. Because it is, I think the thing that has been so frustrating from my part over the last decades is this isn’t like an incremental technology. ⁓ What Mango delivers is something that can absolutely transform a company.
not in two years, this is something that as soon as you flip on that light switch on your sensors and your software, you’re changing the behavior of your floor in a day. And I think that’s what’s so frustrating for me is, to your point, I think people got just so exhausted with this whole ERP cycle for decades, that it just took literally every ounce of energy for anybody to look into technology.
But watching what you can do with Mingo, with MES software, with fairly cost-effective solutions that can maybe automatically collect quality information or production, whatever it may be, these are things that in a week, in two weeks, the return on this, I’ll let you speak for yourself, but I know I’ve seen instances where the return was weeks on some of these cases.
Bryan Sapot (12:08)
Yeah, we have to, I mean, we’re talking about Mingo here, but you’ve seen it, with your company. Like if you look at the other people in the market, it’s the same thing, like just that consistent visibility into the data, it drives behavior change immediately. The lack of the directory thing is interesting. Like it does seem to exist by industry, like PMMI. So like if you’re in the packaging world, right, so that’s the packaging.
manufactured machine manufacturers. We’re a member of it. I forget what the acronym is, but they have this like whole supplier connect thing where like anybody who sells anything into that industry can go put, you know, their information in there and like how to make it work. But you’re right. That sort of broader directory, especially when you think about all the different technologies that you could, do you have to bring together to do these kinds of things? It doesn’t, it doesn’t really exist.
Tony Kaczmarek (13:01)
Well, and then beyond that, how do you, with all of the noise, I always try to put myself in an owner’s position after being an owner for a while of, know, there is so much noise in manufacturing of the latest technology. Of course, we’re getting hit with digital twins and AI and, you know, all of this big data stuff.
When you and I know when we walk into that plant, you know, they’re talking about forecasting when a machine is going to go down in seven weeks. Meanwhile, you and I walk down the aisle and there’s clearly oil pouring out of the machine. The machines in a downtime state 30 % of the time. A lot of people already know, you know, greatly that there are issues and they don’t need to be.
super sneaky issues that only can be determined by AI. These are very practical signals of I’m up, I’m down. So as a owner is looking at all of these options and getting bombarded, there’s always the fear of missing out, right? So I better be jumping on building a digital twin. Well, holy cow, 30 % of your machines aren’t even running.
Let’s get some of these core indicators and allow them to take a look at, okay, here’s a stack of 12 companies that do this type of work. Maybe it’s a regional thing, know, maybe, you know, there’s a solution that’s best for APAC. Maybe there’s a solution that’s best for the U.S. Maybe there’s a solution that is best for a particular industry. But right now there isn’t any sort of sorting organism to kind of help that journey. So you’re…
you’re kind of counting on a little bit of your ecosystem and your peers that you, know, hopefully you get to catch up with somebody at a conference and say, what are you using? I use this, this has worked out really well. So, you know, just wading through all that, that information, that, that brutal assault of, of, you know, internet and emails that you’re getting and, and the newsletters and, and trying to sort of, okay, what, what, what of this is really real.
And I think part of that is maybe sorted out by, hey, here’s the case examples, here’s the ROI, which is sometimes hard to get, but here’s also the history. Like you guys, I know have been doing this for a long time at Coors Engineering. We were doing it for 25 years before being acquired. That wasn’t an accident. That was because we really knew the pains that were on a plant floor, again, dealing with all these diverse environments.
⁓ And that’s huge. ⁓ There’s a lot of cool technologies out there, but bringing in a history helps too.
Bryan Sapot (15:57)
What do you think, like if I’m the CEO of a midsize manufacturing company or COO VP of ops kind of person, what technology do you think would have the biggest impact on the factory floor now?
Tony Kaczmarek (16:16)
Yeah, again, I always, when we were back at cores, kind of were taking a look at that message of what’s really the critical message. Because there are some really powerful things when you get into, you know, deep levels of quality and traceability and labeling and all those types of things. But getting into, am I even running? I would love to do a survey.
of CEOs or COOs and say, do you know exactly which machines are running right now? Do know which ones are down right now and which ones have, how long they’ve been down? Because you think about the impact of that upstream and downstream, from the customer all the way up to ordering, and then beyond that into the sales channel of those guys, knowing what they’re capable of selling. We were dealing with a… ⁓
a prospect that said, hey, I’m not sure why I need any sort of ⁓ signal out of the plant floor. said, well, let’s take a look at what you got. So they took us down onto the shop floor and really, you know, probably, you know, 400, 500,000 square feet, lots of machines. And I said, well, you know, show me your bread and butter, show me the thing that you’re most proud of. And so they took me to the center of the plant and this machine was supposed to be running 24 hours a day. It was supplying, you know, OEMs and it was
their biggest moneymaker and all this great stuff. so we’re sitting there talking and over a period of not even five minutes, that machine went down probably six times, maybe more, maybe eight times. And not once was that captured. And it was fun to watch the operator because the operator was really good at getting that machine up and running again. It only took them
you know, maybe 30 seconds, 45 seconds, but in a period of time of five, six, seven minutes, it going down that many times, you think about the repercussions, you know, the impact of their ability to deliver the quality, you every time that that machine goes down, you’re at a quality risk for that starting back up and maybe missing a few pieces. And then you go upstream.
because now you go into the office and they say, well, that machine is running 100% of the time and it can make 100 parts. So I’m going to go and say, I can sell 100 parts an hour. And then realistically, that secretly is running at 30%, 40% less than what they think it is. So they’re misordering, they’re misselling, they’re misguiding their ability to deliver to the customer.
So that one signal of, I running or not, to me is huge. Let’s solve that first and then let’s figure out, ⁓ know, cause there’s all of these ERP systems are great at defining. Here’s if everything is running perfect. How do we address when it’s not running perfect? We don’t have great ways of ⁓ addressing that workflow, that annunciation, all of those types of things. So how do we figure out that?
that gap between ideal and everything in the system and the chaos of what’s really happening down in manufacturing.
Bryan Sapot (19:40)
Yeah, yeah, it’s hard. mean, even, even honestly, even with our system, when you have to look across multiple systems to really understand what’s going on, it, it becomes a challenge. Like there is a definite lack of, even if you have a good ERP system that’s well implemented and you have, you know, like us or something else connected out to the factory floor, you guys, even with that tight integration you guys had with Plex, a lot of times there’s just a lack of kind of in your face visibility, like,
I don’t have enough material to make this, to do this job, you know, and seeing that ahead of time versus, ⁓ crap, we ran out. So now we have to stop, right? Or all the other issues. it’s, and it’s really interesting in an age of really, ⁓ consumer friendly, easy to use pieces of software that are out there, even in the enterprise space, like HubSpot, ⁓ that, that hasn’t made its way over to really manufacturing. It’s kind of, yeah, I’ve done a few talks on how.
Manufacturing software sucks.
Tony Kaczmarek (20:40)
Yeah, you know, it’s funny because I remember, my gosh, this must have been a decade, maybe not quite a decade ago. It’s hard for me to have any bearing on time anymore. But we had talked to one of the early AI companies and they were doing some really cool things. They had had a bunch of investors and they had all of these PhDs and we thought,
we had a joint customer, it’d be fun to kind of talk to their CEO and see, hey, let’s start bringing the shop floor integration. And when we talked to them about manufacturing, they just said, ⁓ no, no, we don’t do anything in, know, we like AI, like, you know, we’re watching an engine to watch these variables, because we have this contained set. When we looked at manufacturing, it was
To your point, you look at the butterfly effect of all of those things that can impact from the incoming materials and the quality of those materials and where are they scanned in right? And is Bob there to put it in the right location? And is it late getting delivered to that work center? And did it tip over and did it get loaded right? And is there enough dimension? mean, there are two million. So that’s where I think AI is going to become
interesting. But again, if we don’t know if the machine is running, ⁓ let’s start there. Let’s get people on that, that that that ground level. And then let’s start escalating into quality into traceability, because all of those are huge, too, right? ⁓ And then escalating that, you know, past that into getting into, okay, this is really cool that we have all of this tracking on production.
how does that impact ⁓ sustainability and energy? So now you bring in another layer of complexity where you have service providers, you have multiple utilities that are coming in, and then you have natural gas and compressed air, and then you have leaks in the system. So again, as a manufacturer and trying to get your guys to make parts on the floor and…
all of the aggregated things of how to address that, I get ⁓ it. It’s overwhelming, but seeing the technologies that coming out, seeing the protocols that are evolving, seeing the APIs that are opening up ⁓ is starting to crawl towards that ⁓ ability to start to get that visualization. ⁓ But then you get into the next level of, well, that’s not my context.
You know, we get so proud that we’ve delivered a report that we think is really valuable to the customer. And they’re like, well, we don’t really do it that way. So then you get to the next layer of complexity. Got to start somewhere, right?
Bryan Sapot (23:40)
Right. What, I mean, to circle back to kind of, do you get this into hands of people? Have you seen work? You’re based in Michigan, right? So kind of the, still the, the heart of, you know, automotive suppliers and all kinds of different manufacturing up there. ⁓ what have you seen work like over the years? And do you even know what’s available?
Tony Kaczmarek (23:47)
What is
Yeah, so what we’ve seen be successful, there’s usually two ways to draw it. There’s the proactive way of saying, I think that we’re not running at capacity and would like to take a step towards that, or I’d like to get better quality information, better visibility. And then there’s the push, where the customer, maybe the OEM or the tier above you says, hey, you got to have this, or we’re not even going to talk to you.
And that could be anything from the quality and traceability side to now I’m starting to see it on, this sustainable? I want to see your supply chain. I want to see the fuel that’s delivering your raw materials. ⁓ So we take a look at both of those versions and try to simplify it. ⁓ On the customer that wants to be proactive, let’s start small.
let’s find a project that is kind of consolidated, low-hanging fruit, easy to connect to, and high visibility. And we like to go that route because it quickly builds that trust. When they see that that equipment is running, when they see the visualization of what’s going on, when they see the end results of the reports that come out of that, and the predictions and the across the shift, here’s what it looked like.
Once you get that trust, that’s our end. And then that’s a little bit of an addiction and the gamification of, if we could improve that by 5%, think about what that does to our bottom line. And then 5 % across all of our lines, that’s huge. And then you go the other route, know, carrot, and then here comes the whip, right, of your customer saying, if you don’t do this. So that is a little bit more ⁓
risky because oftentimes that is much more penetrating technology of them saying you have to do this, this machine has to do this, I have to have this information come out. So those challenges are riskier, but I think the payoff and the breath of relief after you deliver that also helps build that trust. So the trust is built in different ways.
⁓ And fortunately, they typically meet the same kind of success. The challenge that we see is when we have that carrot, there’s usually vision beyond that first work center that we integrate of, this has worked, this is really great. Whereas the whip, once we solve that immediate problem, maybe it’s for one particular program or one work cell, they’re done.
I’ve solved that problem. I’m ejecting because I have another dumpster flier that I need to put out. So when we have those situations, ⁓ we always worried about those more because they were so thrilled that we addressed that one particular problem that they didn’t think about how to take that to the next step. So had to really work with them to say, hey, this is just the beginning. Let’s take these tools and extend it with that best practice.
Bryan Sapot (27:24)
Yeah, yeah, it’s just that start. We call it start simple, think big, move fast, like just do, get some quick wins, build on the momentum. It’s a really good point. All of that is a really good point. It’s like we had a Ford supplier that made these custom parts. I think it was, I have no idea, but I’m pretty sure it was like one of the fancy Mustangs. And they had to report up OE and then once that program ended, no more OE. Yeah.
Tony Kaczmarek (27:53)
It’s heartbreaking because they have the technology, have the ⁓ success story. again, and I think that’s where working with these people that are living in the plants every day, these partners, these distributors that are literally taking care of an electrical fault. If we can extend their knowledge to say, okay, that electrical fault caused this.
are, take that to the next step. Are you watching that? If not, why not? So that boots on the ground guy might be able to help. And at this point, I don’t even care who the solution is. We need to get solutions to these manufacturers, because we’re in desperate hour with the labor issue, with the retirements that are coming out.
with cybersecurity, with on-shoring, with competition, with all of these things that are coming, this is go time. So in some way, I’m really scared with where we’re at, but I’m also like really excited at the opportunity of, you know, we’re at a golden age of technology and software and SaaS and low cost IOT. So we’re at a ⁓ point where we can make a huge impact and help transform these companies. ⁓
But again, we’re back to that message of how do we get this message out there? Is it the boots on the ground guy? Is it the CEO that’s trying to converge in all of these messages into which one to elect? So I’m working with all sorts of partners and ecosystems to try to answer that question of how do we solve that? Do we hit it?
everywhere at once, you know, I can’t remember the name of the movie, but everything everywhere at all at once. We got this message out there because it’s go time. And I just really worry for, know, as I drive down through Metro Detroit and I see, you know, I drive down that one road where there’s literally 300 mom and pop manufacturers, they’re going to be out of business. They are going to lose.
competitively to a startup that has everything integrated from day one. So I’m just so desperate to try to figure out how to communicate to those customers. Here’s how we do it. This is your answer. ⁓ So yeah, a lot of challenges out there.
Bryan Sapot (30:33)
We have one automotive customer that we haven’t done a case study with, it dovetails with the, and I don’t want, this shouldn’t be like a commercial for Mingo. And I don’t think it is. It’s like this kind of technology, right? So they, like everyone had a problem recruiting. They, like everyone had a problem with turnover, you know, coming out of the pandemic and, and up to now, and you know, they implemented our solution and it has helped them retain people.
It has helped them do more with or the same with fewer folks, you know, cause this, this company, you got 16, 17 people working online. And if you can figure out, well, you know, we, can’t hire 17 people. can only get 15 every day. How do we do the same with 15? Right. And they started very, very simply. And these are big, this is tier one automotive supplier. I mean, this is a complicated manufacturing process that they’re doing.
And they started out with simple end of line counters and then figured out where the problems were coming from. And then just keep knocking off little things of efficiency over and over and over again. And they, I mean, they, I don’t know what I’m allowed to share. So I’m not going to, but I mean, they went from middle of the, kind of normal, I don’t have automated data collection, OEE numbers up to that. What people say is, you know, world-class and above. mean, it was really freaking impressive. ⁓ but we can’t.
tell people what to do, we can just give you the data to show you where the problems are, but ingraining that in their culture and every single day knocking off one of these little things. And people will say, well, they’re tier one auto supplier, right? They got tons of money and all this stuff and yada, yada, yada. Like they are no different than the rest of you. And their cost pressure is worse than somebody in food and beverage or packaging or ⁓ making whatever. So if they can do it with their constraints, you can too, right? ⁓
It just takes adoption, discipline, which honestly is the hardest thing. Like we, talk here quite a bit about like money and stuff like that. But at the end of the day, the most finite resources time with your people, they have a lot to do. They have a different thing to do every day. ⁓ and how do you get the team on board with one of these things to deal with this kind of culture change that’s going to happen? how did, how did you guys handle that? Or was it sort of easy because you were.
piggybacking off of Plex where they had some processes already and now you’re just automating what they were already doing or where there are a lot of challenges around.
Tony Kaczmarek (33:03)
You you kind of hit on a whole topic of, you know, from, and it’s always been one of my passions, tracing back to my days in HVAC when I would deal with, you we would be in new projects of putting in a new HVAC system and doing all the controls for it. And we would have all the architects and we’d have the engineers and we’d have the contractors and everybody would be in the war room designing and talking about all that stuff. And I’d say, well, where’s Rick? What do mean Rick?
Well, Rick has worked in this building for 20 years. We’re talking about renovating that entire building and all five floors. And he literally walks that floor every day. He lives in it all day every day. He knows every twist and every turn. And nobody brought Rick in to talk about what the nuance was. So I would bring in Rick. of course, Rick was a little not quite as a…
you know, as clean and organized and everything, but Rick knew every issue and he’d go, well, you can’t do this, that, that, And we’re talking about hundreds of thousands of changes that he called out in the same way as we take that into manufacturing, we quickly made sure that we worked with the operators to say, how does this impact you? How do we automate? How do we take this burden? How do we communicate to you?
How do we gamify this? How do we make you excited about this? When we did literally our first screens on the shop floor, ⁓ it was out in Mansfield, Ohio. And I’ll never forget, we did the first screens of kind of OEE and we were quite frankly, we were terrified because we were like, here comes the big brother concern, right? They’re watching me, I’m gonna hate this.
this is gonna be then I’m not gonna wanna work here. And they did a great job of engaging with the operators and saying, here’s what we’re doing, here’s why, here’s how you can use it. And the first thing was within the first couple of days, everybody’s peering at everybody else’s monitors, because they were up in the air and trying to see, hey, how am I doing against him? But then we started seeing the…
the longer term repercussions of this, of them being educated in using this information and having a conversation. Holy cow, an operator now has a conversation and tools to talk to their supervisor to say, I’ve been telling you for two years, you tell me this can make it 400 parts an hour. You chew me out that it does 300 parts an hour. I now have evidence that this machine went down this many times.
So I think a huge part of that is how do we kind of flip this? Again, we talk about trust a lot. How do we build that trust with operators that we’re here to support them? We’re here to give them information. We’re here to give them tools to know how they’re doing. I can’t imagine just going in and making a part for nine hours a day, five days a week, 52 weeks out of the year, minus vacation. ⁓
have any semblance of what I’m doing for the company. That I think that simple concept of this little bit of gamification and seeing, yeah, I’m running 80 % today. And then watching the management take that to the next level and say, hey, if you hit that number, then we’re gonna reward you. We’re gonna do some sort of profit sharing or some sort of reward system. And watching them really take that to the next level. And then watching
those owners, as the operators come in, that’s one of the first things that they’re trained in is how to use your screens, how to use our screens, how to use this technology. ⁓ I think there is a tendency to be very dismissive of the average person and how they can contribute. And if you’re dismissive to them, then they’re going to deliver as little as possible to you. If you enable them and you’re part of that solution.
You know, make them part of that, that, that excitement of being able to, to deliver a great product at a great price, ⁓ with great quality. And I think you’re going to see longer, you know, less turnover, less churn of those employees and, and make them part of that. You you talked about continuous improvement. Holy cow. Is that so important? But if you don’t care about your operator, if you, if you feel that they’re the lowest common denominator, that’s what you’re going to get out of
Let’s flip that, you know.
Bryan Sapot (37:56)
Yeah, what’s interesting, what we found on the change management and adoption side from an operator perspective is, ⁓ if you throw an iPad in front of them, even if you don’t tell them how to use it, ⁓ they’ll start entering stuff in it, they’ll code downtime, they’ll put in notes because of what you described. Like I have these challenges every day, nobody believes me. And if the management, engineering, et cetera, team starts to look at and react to those things to…
you know, it helps solve those problems or at least acknowledge, Tony, look, I get it. You have this problem. We are working on it. It is on the list, right? Literally on the list. This is where it is in the priorities. These are the other things that are going on. And this is why we can’t get to it. You feel more valued than it’s just like Tony, you don’t know what you’re doing. I don’t believe that’s happening, right? Like you said, being dismissive. You do those things, they’re going to be more engaged. And then you’re giving them a tool every day.
to know whether or not I had a good day or a bad day. I mean, I think everybody wants to feel like they’ve done a good job and accomplished something every day. And without those targets in front of you to know what you’re being held accountable for or what the expectations are, I don’t like being held accountable, but expectations are. You don’t know. You might have thought you crushed it today, but I didn’t, right?
Tony Kaczmarek (39:13)
Well, you know, was just leaving a review for somebody that did some work for us. And I said, you know, for the first time, ⁓ my gosh, probably in years, this contractor did a great job. They did a great job. None of them only did they deliver, but they also communicated. So you talked about that whole communication layer of, okay, it’s not performing well. It’s got a bad bearing or it’s, you know, something isn’t optimal. The operator’s told somebody. So then what?
If that goes into the ether and nothing gets done, how demoralizing is that? They don’t care about you. They don’t have the money for it. Whatever the 18 reasons, all you know is, I’m not a priority. I can never do my job as good as I could. So once you get into that continuous improvement and they see that there’s this list of
200 things that are being worked on. Mine was 78 last week. Now it’s up to 50. my gosh, how exciting to see that. kind of like when you’re on the call waiting and it starts out, you’re 30 minutes until a representative helps you. And all of a sudden it skipped to two minutes and all of a sudden you’re at 60 seconds. Literally you’re excited about being old.
So if you can take some, know, it’s a lot of it’s just about that expectation. If you know that your car is never gonna get fixed, you’re never gonna be excited about getting in your car. If you know that your machine’s never gonna get fixed, you’re gonna deliver that same level of commitment that your manager’s liver to helping you solve your problem. So again, getting that visibility to that stack, that communication, how do we all do that better? ⁓
We don’t have perfect answers. You you mentioned it at Minko. There’s still, you know, so much opportunity in all of our software to improve things. So, but let’s get some of those common simple signals out there and let’s start taking action on that. So, gotta start somewhere, right?
Bryan Sapot (41:24)
Yeah, well, that’s a good point, I think, to to wrap it up, too. So I appreciate you taking the time to talk to me today. And I think it’s really good discussion. You know, at the end of the day, I think if we sum it up is that these things work. There’s probably money out there for this. Like contact your local MEP, like in your state, your manufacturing extension partnership. Right. And, you know, we gave some good tips on how to get your operators and folks engaged and, you know,
these kinds of projects. ⁓ So, you like you said, you’ve left Rockwell Plex and onto other things. So how, you know, if people want to talk to you, what’s the best way to get a hold of you?
Tony Kaczmarek (42:06)
Yeah, honestly, probably the best way is through LinkedIn. ⁓ Got a good presence there and a lot of good connections. And really what I’ve been trying to take advantage of is ⁓ the whole networking aspect of LinkedIn and just my personal network of not only using that to find my next opportunity, but how do I connect people? How do I connect technologies? How do I…
figure out when I do run into that customer of I don’t care if it’s my solution or 38 other people’s solution. I’d love to walk in with a tool belt and say, I’ve got a cobot person, I’ve got a robot person, I’ve got a SaaS, ERP, MES, OEE, ⁓ AI, digital twin. So I love that network and being able to say, hey, here’s somebody that I trust.
Let’s get a conversation. Maybe the three of us get a conversation to help provide that trust and that understanding and cover those gaps.
Bryan Sapot (43:10)
Yeah, that’s great. Yeah, there’s a lack of that in the manufacturing world. Somebody that has those connections and all those understanding of all of that stuff. So that’s great. That sounds fun, Yeah.
Tony Kaczmarek (43:23)
Honestly, it’s the most fun that I’ve ever had in my adult life. I’ve had at least one meeting a day every day since May. And it has been such a blast just to see people’s solutions and their challenges and help them out in trying to figure out where to reduce friction. So I have a blast. I’m converging into a potential position. I’ll be… ⁓
I’ll let you know how that works. I’m very excited. Same thing, you’ll set that challenge of how do we how to remove friction to solve problems on the shop floor, right? So that’s where.
Bryan Sapot (44:00)
Exactly. Yeah. Well, great. Well, thanks, Tony. We’ll link to your LinkedIn profile in the show notes. And we’ll ⁓ thank you for doing this again.
Tony Kaczmarek (44:10)
Awesome, thank you. You know me, my passion’s here. I love talking about it. So anytime, talk to you soon.
