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Ramia Lloyd:
Ramia Lloyd:
Welcome to the Tech Trends Podcast, where we discuss the latest manufacturing, technology, research, and news. Today's episode is sponsored by Hexagon. Hi, friends.
Benjamin Moses:
Hi, Ramia. Hey, guys.
Ramia Lloyd:
Hello.
Benjamin Moses:
Welcome back, we got the band back together.
Elissa Davis:
Yeah, I know.
Ramia Lloyd:
Oh my gosh! Look at us!
Benjamin Moses:
Are all here.
Elissa Davis:
Yeah. It's the first time in three episodes that we're all together again.
Ramia Lloyd:
It's been a while, yeah. I love this for us.
Benjamin Moses:
I do. Although I do miss a two-person episode, to be fair.
Ramia Lloyd:
We crushed it.
Benjamin Moses:
We did. That was fun.
Ramia Lloyd:
That was a week, actually.
Benjamin Moses:
This Memorial Day weekend just passed.
Elissa Davis:
Yeah.
Benjamin Moses:
I'm coming back with a scar because I cut myself with the pressure washer.
Elissa Davis:
Oh, no.
Stephen LaMarca:
Whoa.
Ramia Lloyd:
Oh my God.
Stephen LaMarca:
That's actually like a nightmare. That's nightmare fuel.
Ramia Lloyd:
That sounds terrifying.
Stephen LaMarca:
Because I'm always worried about that-
Benjamin Moses:
You should be.
Stephen LaMarca:
... with the pressure washer.
Benjamin Moses:
They're dangerous.
Stephen LaMarca:
I know you're not supposed to be in front of them, but I'm just so curious. Okay, so it'll peel skin, huh?
Benjamin Moses:
Yeah, yeah. We'll talk more about that later because it's gross.
Stephen LaMarca:
Terrifying.
Ramia Lloyd:
I downloaded a video game. It's a pressure washing simulator on my Switch.
Benjamin Moses:
I've heard good things about it.
Ramia Lloyd:
It's amazing, actually.
Stephen LaMarca:
Oh my God.
Ramia Lloyd:
It's very soothing to your soul.
Stephen LaMarca:
I should tell Melissa about this.
Benjamin Moses:
You should get on it.
Stephen LaMarca:
Since we've owned a home, she has been pestering me, "Can we please rent a pressure watcher? I just want to pressure wash."
Ramia Lloyd:
Tell her to play the game. It's real nice.
Benjamin Moses:
Play the game, yeah.
Stephen LaMarca:
Okay, and it's for Switch?
Ramia Lloyd:
Mm-hmm.
Stephen LaMarca:
We've got a Switch.
Ramia Lloyd:
Yeah, perfect.
Stephen LaMarca:
No equipment necessary.
Ramia Lloyd:
None.
Stephen LaMarca:
I made 16 hot dogs.
Benjamin Moses:
Wow.
Elissa Davis:
Wow.
Ramia Lloyd:
Heck yeah.
Stephen LaMarca:
Ate eight of them.
Ramia Lloyd:
Heck yeah.
Stephen LaMarca:
Also yesterday. I ate six on Memorial Day and two more yesterday. But yeah, dude.
Ramia Lloyd:
You make good hot dogs.
Stephen LaMarca:
Thank you.
Ramia Lloyd:
You're welcome.
Stephen LaMarca:
Thank you so much.
Ramia Lloyd:
They're like fire.
Stephen LaMarca:
And I love spreading the information of how to make them. Angus beef hot dogs. I used to be a pork blend kind of guy, but now sold on Angus beef. Poke them five times. Take a three-pronged fork, like a salami fork, poke them three times on one side, flip them over, poke two more times so you've poked a total of five times with three holes per poke, 15 total pokes. Then throw it in a saute pan filled with three to four Yuengling black and tans. Yuengling black ... The ultimate utility beer.
Ramia Lloyd:
Period.
Stephen LaMarca:
Boil them in there for a half hour.
Ramia Lloyd:
I thought it was Guinness.
Elissa Davis:
Hmm.
Stephen LaMarca:
They're too expensive. They're too expensive to be a utility beer.
Ramia Lloyd:
Fair.
Stephen LaMarca:
Yuengling black and tan? Even in this economy, you can still get for nearly a dollar per beer. Yuengling black and tans, three to four of them in a pot. Boil the dogs half hour, take them out, throw them on the grill just to get a good char. Then you put them in buns and they have to be Martin's long potato rolls.
I don't care. There's no argument. Stop it. Martin's potato buns. And then either Dijon or German whole-grain mustard. What's it called? Stone ground mustard. German works in lieu of Grey Poupon as long as it's got white wine in the ingredient somewhere. And then Trader Joe's chili crisp, chili onion crunch.
Elissa Davis:
Oh, yeah. My parents put that on everything.
Stephen LaMarca:
Which is a hybrid of Japanese style chili crisp with a Western fusion to it. So it goes perfect on a hot dog. Chili crisp though, honestly, that could be the only thing on a hot dog, but that's the perfect way to dress a hot dog.
Benjamin Moses:
That's very specific.
Elissa Davis:
I'm one of those people who I just love hot dogs and I have since I was a kid. When I was a kid, my mom would literally boil a hot dog and cut it up for me as a snack when I got home from school.
Stephen LaMarca:
Same. Throw it in a bowl of beans.
Ramia Lloyd:
Oh, beanie weenies?
Stephen LaMarca:
Beanie weenies, dog.
Elissa Davis:
No, see, I hated the texture of beans as a kid, so it was just a straight-up hot dog with ketchup on the side that my mom would make me.
Stephen LaMarca:
It sounds like you didn't like the fart.
Benjamin Moses:
I do have a question. Since I was watching Avengers Endgame, I put mayonnaise on my hot dogs. How do you guys feel about mayonnaise on the buns?
Stephen LaMarca:
Listen.
Elissa Davis:
I'm a ketchup purist. Ketchup only for me.
Benjamin Moses:
Yeah?
Stephen LaMarca:
While I don't eat that, I'm not going to fault any use of mayonnaise.
Benjamin Moses:
It was good.
Stephen LaMarca:
Culinary use of mayonnaise.
Benjamin Moses:
Oh, yeah.
Ramia Lloyd:
Oh. I'm a ketchup, mustard, relish. Or just Sweet Baby Ray's barbecue sauce.
Benjamin Moses:
Sauerkraut?
Ramia Lloyd:
It's got to be Sweet Baby Ray's. But it has to be like ... Sweet Baby Ray's is only good for the burnt ones on the grill.
Elissa Davis:
Yeah.
Ramia Lloyd:
Any other hot dog, ketchup, mustard.
Elissa Davis:
Good for a brat. A barbecue sauce is good for a brat or a sausage type of-
Ramia Lloyd:
I'm a mustard on my brat, straight mustard.
Elissa Davis:
When I go to a barbecue place and I order a sausage, I'm going to do it with the barbecue sauce. I don't want ketchup on that, I want the barbecue.
Ramia Lloyd:
Mm, okay.
Stephen LaMarca:
I'm not ignore the Sauerkraut comment, though.
Benjamin Moses:
That was good.
Stephen LaMarca:
My dad loved sauerkraut on a bratwurst or a hot dog. But funny enough, my first time at Formnext, in Frankfurt, Germany at the Frankfurt Messe, you can get Frankfurters.
Elissa Davis:
What?
Stephen LaMarca:
They had hot dog stands in Frankfurt. Amazing. And they, hot dog bun, ketchup, mustard, crispy fried onions.
Benjamin Moses:
Nice.
Elissa Davis:
Nothing beats a crispy fried onion.
Ramia Lloyd:
For us to be people who are always in Chicago, we've never been like, "Chicago dogs." I've never had one.
Stephen LaMarca:
Okay, the one that you mentioned with relish was the closest. You're just missing the celery salt.
Elissa Davis:
No, but she gets ketchup on it. You don't put ketchup on a Chicago dog.
Ramia Lloyd:
I've never had one. Isn't there a pickle on it?
Elissa Davis:
It's a pepper.
Stephen LaMarca:
A Giardiniera?
Elissa Davis:
No, it's not Giardiniera. It's like a full pepper.
Stephen LaMarca:
That's the beef.
Elissa Davis:
I know this because, so I worked at a movie theater in Colorado and for some reason, we had Chicago dogs on the menu. I know how to make a Chicago dog because it was on our menu. So personally, I'm not a pickle person, so relish is not something I like. And I'm not always big on mustard except in certain circumstances.
A Chicago dog is basically everything I don't like on the hot dog. But again, I'm a ketchup purist when it comes to hot dogs. Just put ketchup on a bun. But I am also the kind of person who, you could literally give me an Oscar Mayer hot dog and I'm like, "This is amazing." I just love hot dogs.
Stephen LaMarca:
Sometimes you just want a plain Oscar Mayer dog boiled in water.
Elissa Davis:
Yeah. Yeah.
Benjamin Moses:
Speaking of plain hot dogs.
Ramia Lloyd:
Never one of those.
Benjamin Moses:
Elissa, you found something related to Chuck E. Cheese.
Elissa Davis:
Yeah. Speaking of childhood.
Ramia Lloyd:
I like plain hot dogs.
Elissa Davis:
Yeah. Chuck E. cheese, and this is from a website called Pizzamarketplace.com that I did not know existed.
Benjamin Moses:
It's real.
Stephen LaMarca:
Love it.
Elissa Davis:
Chuck E Cheese received an award as a best in STEM brand.
Benjamin Moses:
That's interesting.
Elissa Davis:
Yeah. It's because earlier this year, Chuck E. Cheese launched its STEAM-tastic Adventure field trips, a hands-on program developed in partnership with STEM.org educational research to support real classroom learning goals and science technology, engineering, arts, and math. The field trips provide children kindergarten through fifth grade with an interactive lesson led by Chuck E. and Professor Ponder blending hands-on STEAM-friendly exploration with unforgettable fun, a kid-friendly lunch with two slices of pizza, and a refillable drink, 90 minutes of all-you-can-play games and a take-home goodie bag and return-visit e-ticket voucher. That would've been my dream field trip as a child.
Stephen LaMarca:
That sounds like a fun-
Ramia Lloyd:
No, I need that right now.
Elissa Davis:
I was a kid who, I grew up going to Chuck E. Cheese a lot because even though it was expensive, it was cheap compared to some of the other stuff that you could do as a kid. So we'd go to Chuck E. Cheese, my mom would get a pizza. If that had been an option when I was a child, to go on a Chuck E. Cheese field trip and learn about science, and then get 90 minutes of all-you-can-play games and a goodie bag? Oh my God, that just sounds amazing. But yeah, Chuck E. Cheese, best in STEM.
Benjamin Moses:
Reinventing themselves every single time.
Elissa Davis:
Yeah.
Benjamin Moses:
That's great.
Ramia Lloyd:
I love that for them.
Stephen LaMarca:
I only got to go to Chuck E. Cheese once or twice as a kid. In Arlington, Virginia, all of the yuppie parents, they turned their nose up to Chuck E. Cheese. We had Discovery Zone.
Ramia Lloyd:
We had a thing called Jeepers in Detroit.
Stephen LaMarca:
Jeepers. Oh my God. There was a few times I went to Jeepers. They had the bumper cars where you could control the sticks.
Ramia Lloyd:
Yeah, there was a roller coaster.
Stephen LaMarca:
There was a roller coaster. Okay, Jeepers was legit.
Ramia Lloyd:
Jeepers was that place.
Stephen LaMarca:
I forgot about Jeepers.
Ramia Lloyd:
I was deathly terrified of their roller coaster. And then I finally got on it and I was maybe six or seven and it wasn't that bad. It was fun. And literally two weeks later there was a story, but a kid who got his hand chopped off on the roller coaster.
Stephen LaMarca:
Oh.
Elissa Davis:
Oh, no.
Stephen LaMarca:
That's terrible.
Ramia Lloyd:
Never again.
Stephen LaMarca:
That's why they shut it down.
Ramia Lloyd:
Yeah, because people were getting their-
Stephen LaMarca:
The roller coaster first then Jeepers entirely.
Ramia Lloyd:
And then, it just went downhill from there.
Elissa Davis:
Well, I feel like having a roller coaster designed for kids that has zero adult supervision is probably a bad idea.
Ramia Lloyd:
It was just teenagers.
Elissa Davis:
It's just asking for a kid to stick their hand out.
Ramia Lloyd:
Absolutely.
Stephen LaMarca:
Those bumper car hover crafts that they had?
Ramia Lloyd:
Those were fast.
Stephen LaMarca:
They were fast and you could hit people hard. I'm sure I gave some kids concussions.
Ramia Lloyd:
Absolutely. The amount of whiplash I would have from just being jerked around.
Stephen LaMarca:
You, broadside somebody.
Ramia Lloyd:
Oh my God.
Stephen LaMarca:
Or you watch their head ... Oh, yeah.
Ramia Lloyd:
And there was no age range. You could be like five with an 18-year-old. You're just getting murdered.
Stephen LaMarca:
I know I knocked some kids down from the gifted class.
Benjamin Moses:
Ramia, can you tell us about today's sponsor?
Ramia Lloyd:
Yeah. This episode is brought to you by Hexagon Manufacturing Intelligence, leading the charge in manufacturing innovation. Join influencers Chris Luecke, Nikki Gonzalez and Jens 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 Hexagonlivelcom to register. You can also find the Hexagon Radio podcast wherever you listen and follow Hexagon on LinkedIn to learn more.
Stephen LaMarca:
I thought you were going to say, "Interperameter." I was like, "That's a tough word."
Ramia Lloyd:
I was struggling. It was because, in the side of my peripheral vision, I just saw Ben. It was like ... I was like, "Now I can't read."
Benjamin Moses:
I am judging you as you read, so that's fine..
Ramia Lloyd:
I got nervous.
Elissa Davis:
It's like when you're a kid in class and you're like counting the paragraphs till it's your turn.
Ramia Lloyd:
Yes. I would always be prepared.
Elissa Davis:
Me too.
Ramia Lloyd:
You're not catching me sleeping.
Elissa Davis:
Me too.
Benjamin Moses:
So today, we had an interview with Chris Luecke. And it was actually a really fun interview. We had Nikki first, then we interviewed Jim, and Chris is our last interviewer for the Hexagon series. Also, Travis was on the call. Steve, do you mind giving us some background on Travis?
Stephen LaMarca:
Travis Egan, aka T-Dog, aka T, is the Chief Revenue Officer here at AMT. His 30 years of manufacturing industry experience made him the perfect host of the award-winning Manufacturing Explorers IMTS plus series, as well as the host of the Architect, brought to you by Hexagon.
Benjamin Moses:
Awesome.
Ramia Lloyd:
Nice.
Benjamin Moses:
Elissa, do you mind telling us about Chris?
Elissa Davis:
Yeah. Chris Luecke, he was one of the creators of the 2024 IMTS Creators lounge. He has a well-known podcast called the Manufacturing Happy Hour and a YouTube channel where he is steadfast on making manufacturing topics accessible, fun, and digestible to his audience. He focuses on driving change and innovation within manufacturing. And due to his background working in manufacturing, he is much more technically informed than other influencers.
Benjamin Moses:
Thanks, guys. Let's hear what T-Dog and Chris have to tell us about it.
Elissa Davis:
I would love to know if Travis knows that he's called T-Dog.
Ramia Lloyd:
Or T. I'm just so curious.
Stephen LaMarca:
I've definitely called him T. I don't think I've called him T-Dog to his face.
Ramia Lloyd:
And what did his face say?
Stephen LaMarca:
It didn't phase him.
Ramia Lloyd:
It didn't change.
Stephen LaMarca:
It didn't phase him change.
Elissa Davis:
Nothing phases him, guys.
Ramia Lloyd:
So stoic.
Stephen LaMarca:
Money.
Benjamin Moses:
Hey, everyone. We're here with Chris and Travis talking about some technology and workforce as we prepare for Hexagon Live. Let's jump right into the conversation. One of the things that stood out in some of the stuff that I've seen from you, Chris, is manufactured workforce. The workforce issue always seems front of mind, but it seems like a broader symptom of something else. How could manufacturers look past this issue?
Chris Luecke:
Yeah, it's a good question. Because on Manufacturing Happy Hour, we cover everything from digital transformation, technology tools, all of the above. But at the end of the day, you can't get out of an episode without talking about workforce in some way, shape, or form. And maybe that's people not being able to find the right folks. Or how do we get them trained up quicker? Or what do we do to create a culture in an environment where everyone thrives?
Despite the broad range of topics that I discuss, workforce is always front of mind. When I think about it, how do you get past some of the workforce challenges? I like to share stories, more than anything, that really show how folks have gotten past their workforce challenges. And I think something that's in vogue in our industry right now is to talk about, "Hey, automation creates jobs." And that's true, but I think it's a lot better when you have a specific example.
One of the best stories I've heard through my conversations is a company that makes marine exhaust equipment. A lot of complex welds in the piping below the ship that go into that. They did not have the manpower to keep up with the demand. They knew they needed some sort of automated solution, so they adopted their first co-bot in order to pull that off. And the cool thing about the story was, not only did it help them catch up to capacity, meet the demand, but they also turned it into a tool to promote their welders.
For example, in welding and fabricating, a welder is mainly looking at joining the different parts together. Fabrication, you're talking about bending, cutting, there's a lot more of the art that goes along with the metal formation in that case. And to not only hear that automation was being leveraged in this scenario to catch up with production and meet the capacity demands they had, but that they were leveraging it as a tool to promote their workforce from within? That's where I think of, hey, what can manufacturers do to get past workforce? Look at those type of tools and technology as a way to not only meet your demand, but to make it better for the folks that are inside of your facility.
Benjamin Moses:
Yeah, that's awesome. Sorry, go ahead Travis.
Travis Egan:
Sorry. No, I was going to jump in. It's your operational agility of your organization too, which goes right back to the technology. If you really can do an assessment of where there are areas for your organization to improve your performance, to change your processes, improve your processes, then that leads to then, say, automation, artificial intelligence, technology type solutions like you were just describing.
I liked your discussion of telling stories. That's part of it in itself, I think, for manufacturing because there's an outdated perception to this day, and it's gotten better and better, but there's certainly an outdated perception of manufacturing being this dirty, not great place to be. And it really has evolved and it's the manufacturer's responsibility to modernize their brand and this collective modernization of the brands of the companies, and the experiences that the employees have, and what manufacturing's all about.
Chris, that's what you do essentially every day. That's what we do at AMT is to try to really educate people on what manufacturing truly is and what the importance of it is. It's almost like a branding issue at the same time.
Chris Luecke:
Yeah, we're in an interesting time, right? The discourse around manufacturing is entering the public sphere more than it would have even just a year ago. We're starting to see in those conversations, the general public still has a lot of misconceptions around what modern manufacturing really looks like. I take that as my responsibility, our responsibility as an industry, because we're out there sharing those stories and showcasing the realities of our industry, and we have been for decades, really. It's on all of us to start making sure that narrative gets heard the right way by the general public.
Travis Egan:
Yeah. The appetite's definitely growing, so it's time to feed it.
Benjamin Moses:
Absolutely. Speaking about the public, in one of your recent episodes, you talk about on-the-job training and finding fulfillment in engineering. Can you tell me some of the highlights from that episode?
Chris Luecke:
Yeah, absolutely. And to set some context, that episode was with just a great gang of industrial leaders. We had a machinist. We had Hexagon on the show. We had folks that were out in the field every day. A lot of my conversations are one-on-one interviews. This was more of a four-way conversation. It was really interesting, because over the course of Manufacturing Happy Hour ... I've done close to 300 episodes now ... I had never touched on the topic of metrology and measurement in an episode before.
And of all episodes to get into a topic like that, which to some might seem like the really nitty-gritty details about manufacturing, the conversation ended with all the individuals ... And we had business owners on this call and things like that ... Everyone talking about the different things that had kept them engaged and interested in manufacturing and engineering throughout their careers, folks that have been in this space for 30 plus years.
And it was everything from the creativity of machining a part to the fulfillment of bringing on two new team members, making it a great employee experience and making it a great customer experience at the same time. What I took away from that conversation was there's a smorgasbord of reasons that individuals love being in the industrial space, whether that's they love getting hands on with the engineering, they love getting into the details of the metrology, or it's about, in many cases, the people that they're working with, serving, within their organizations and outside of their organizations as well. That's what really stuck out from that conversation.
Travis Egan:
Yes. It's about their individual fulfillment in their job, right? What they get out of what they do every day. I am blessed, I have two older kids, but they're not kids anymore, they're adults, 25 and 24. I've got three kids, but my older two are out of college and working and they're both working for a big engineering firm. It's an engineering firm that does infrastructure and renewable energy, big projects. My son's an engineer, like a mechanical engineer, and my daughter actually works there too at the same organization and she's in marketing.
And just talking to them, I see this fulfillment in their jobs because the way the organization works is that it creates ... It breaks down silos. Marketing works with engineers a lot. And engineers typically aren't the most outgoing in a lot of cases. They're not the most ... Marketing is probably not at the top of their list. But to have them be able to work together and get a little bit different perception of what their job means, what the opportunities are, and just a little bit different day-to-day atmosphere, I think really creates that training, that fulfillment that makes you want to learn more and more and more.
Chris Luecke:
Yeah. There's variety in the day-to-day and there's variety in the roles that exist in the space. That's one of the things that ... I'm an engineer by degree as well, and I never would've guessed ... In fact, podcasting really didn't exist when I graduated.
Travis Egan:
Fair.
Chris Luecke:
Who knew that I was going to take my problem-solving skills, and the business acumen I developed, and my ability to communicate technical items? You never knew where I was going to take that. Because like I said, podcasting didn't exist before. Engineering can take you to a lot of crazy spots within engineering and even outside or adjacent to it as well.
Benjamin Moses:
I do like this sharing of our backgrounds, how we each bring up different perspective, but also, it's kind of dating ourselves a little bit here. We're all a little bit older crowd, which is fun. When you're discussing with manufacturers, Chris, what are some of the technologies manufacturers are getting value from?
Chris Luecke:
A really broad question with a lot of, I think, good answers to this. Depends. One thing, and I think a lot of folks would agree with this, you don't want to be looking at technology and trying to find a problem for it to solve. You want to start off with, "Hey, what are my current business problems and what can I do to solve those?"
I'll give maybe a couple different answers. One that's front of mind that I was just talking about in a keynote the other week is, an individual within the manufacturing industry that had an HR background and started ... We all know what a CRM is, right? A customer relationship management platform. It's what you do to manage your customer interactions. He created, basically, an ERM, employee relationship management platform for when you have a large facility, when was the last time you gave kudos to an individual out on the plant floor because they located a pallet and saved an order for a customer?
It's a great way to ... And everyone in the organization has visibility to that. The plant manager can go out and tap that person on the shoulder and shake their hand and say, "Hey, thanks for helping us save the business today." That's one example in there. And then, we started this conversation talking about metrology. We started talking about automation creating job opportunities. I think if I were to double down on an area ... And I have a feeling we're going to be talking about artificial intelligence, so I won't go there yet because that's a topic unto itself ... But the manufacturers that are starting to find ways to automate or digitize their processes are the ones that are winning.
And I always say, I think a lot of times we think of these as big capital projects, things that require a lot of stamps of approval and maybe six months to a year to get approved. I like to talk to folks about micro impacts and micro digital transformations. We talked about automation earlier, but part of my career was spent in the CMMS space, digitizing maintenance platforms. And my message to folks is, "Hey, if you're at a point in your career where you're a maintenance team member, you can still make a huge impact."
If you can help a maintenance department get off paper records, doing post-it notes that say, "Hey, Bob, during shift two, line one broke down, you got to go fix it during your next shift." If you can get that to a single source of truth, a digitized platform like that, to start having solutions that will ultimately create uptime, prevent downtime, et cetera? Those are all different wins.
My message across the board, we see a lot of different technologies in this space from robotics, automation, to tools that are part of a company's digital transformation. I always go back to saying, "Hey, think about the role you're in, where you can make an impact in your organization. What are the problems that need to be addressed right now?" And apply the technology in that capacity.
Benjamin Moses:
Awesome. And I think that feeds into one of the next thing I was thinking about diving into is you talk about identifying problem areas. So how can companies assess either their personal or technology risks in the face of growing markets? Could we see markets emerging and growing over the next bunch of years? How can companies assess where their weaknesses are and continue to harvest value from this growth?
Chris Luecke:
Yeah, I'll give a bit of an obvious answer to start, and then I think I'll go into something a little more nuanced that I saw recently when I was traveling to a manufacturing facility in the center of the country. So when I think about what are the things to assess their risk, I worked in the automation and cybersecurity space for a long time. There are a lot of folks that can do audits on some of the basic things inside of your facility, inventory, spares, lifecycle analysis within your equipment. Whether you're working with someone to do that or whether you're doing it yourself, you really should identify, especially with aging automation assets and larger factories, figure out where your biggest weak points are, the technologies that can't be replaced, the things you can't get spare parts of. Identify some of those obvious weak points first. My more nuanced answer to this is I was recently in Nebraska and I was at a large manufacturing facility there, and it's a place where I would say the culture was rapidly evolving, A culture of empowerment where the different teams are meeting to discuss the issues with, I shouldn't even just say the issues, what's going well, what needs to be fixed within their different departments, and then having the leadership there and then cascading that through their organizations as well.
I think companies really need to create the habits that allow folks to address what's going well, address what's not, and then being empowered to make those changes to the process, whether that's an immediate or more of a long-term change. So that way folks have a sense of ownership over their manufacturing operation. You want folks to feel empowered, you want them to make good decisions. There's no point to hire smart people if you're just going to tell them what to do. Let the smart people get out there and make the decisions that need to be done. And back to the original point, I think if you're creating habits, the right type of ongoing discussions between different levels of the organization on a regular basis, that's something I've seen work firsthand.
Travis Egan:
Yeah. If you're going to do some sort of risk assessment for your company, I think one really important way to look at it ... Because of change. Change creates challenge, right? Is to look at where you're growing or where you're strategically headed, where you want to grow. Because that's where you're going to either, if you're a manufacturer, increase your production. And with increases in production, there's going to be new challenges and there's going to be some risks or some challenges or changes. What new markets are you going after? Changing something over, you're completely retooling something, doing something very different. Well, in the beginning, you're going to run into your challenges, your bottlenecks. That's where issues will come about.
And with the pace of innovation, you're constantly pivoting, you're constantly changing, and you're creating more risk for your company. And it actually goes back to the previous question of technologies and innovation. Where are people innovating? I think the most successful companies are probably the ones that are innovating in areas where they know that their business is evolving. We talk about AI a lot or automation a lot. An example what I was just talking about is lightweighting. That's a technology evolvement that is an area to invest in new technology. But there's a problem that you start with to evolve your business to solve that problem. And then, the technology is a piece of that equation.
Benjamin Moses:
That's great. And you definitely hit on one of the topics I wanted to get into. Chris, in one of your last episodes, you talked to a company that specialized in AI agents. What are your thoughts on the impact of artificial intelligence in manufacturing?
Chris Luecke:
Yeah. I think a lot of companies are starting to think about it in the right ways to address some of their immediate one-on-one needs that artificial intelligence can address. And in the control space, right? Artificial can help you write that base code for that new PLC. Or artificial intelligence can ... I'm trying to think of the word someone just used. You can use it as almost a collaborator when you're using a GPT or Copilot, for example, to think of new ideas.
I see manufacturers really starting to adapt and embrace that. Going back to one of the earlier parts of our conversation though, we opened this discussion on workforce. And leveraging artificial intelligence as a solution to company's workforce issues, I think, is one of the most underrated ways manufacturers need to start thinking about artificial intelligence. And it goes back to what you were saying: AI agents, I think, is a great way to look at it.
In the past, we might've thought about artificial intelligence the way I described it, or we might've thought of it as a vision system that's looking at defects and then leveraging cameras. It sees that, hey, three out of these thousand parts looked a little different. It's providing that observation, but it's not providing action. AI agents are tools that can ultimately help you retain the knowledge of some of the best operators in your facility before they retire.
The individual I was talking to in this episode, his name is Kence Anderson. He's from a company called Composable. They focus specifically on AI agents. He has a great story that he shares often where, inside of a facility that manufacturers like Cheetos, for example. Within that process, there are about 25 variables that go into that. But one variable that really can't be measured is the moisture content of the corn that comes in. Only the most experienced operators are able to see what the impact of, let's say, the corn moisture content does when they start making that Cheeto.
Here's how to think of an AI agent. You teach that AI agent the skills of your best operator. In many cases, that's an operator that might be retiring from your facility in the near future. That way, in the future, you have an automated tool that is not only helping control that process, but it's able to make those decisions that only your best operator were once able to make, saying, "Hey, this is what we're seeing the Cheeto do. We're going to need to do something with the moisture. We're going to need to make these adjustments because this is what we're sensing from the moisture content in this scenario."
And here's the best part: by having that AI agent, your newer operators can in turn learn from that AI agent as well. There are a lot more details we could go into this, but to make sure my fundamental point resonates, artificial intelligence is a solution to company's workforce challenges. If I were a manufacturer right now, I would be finding ways to create that database of skills that might be lost or retiring from my company in the near future. That's one of the areas where I'm bullish and excited about artificial intelligence.
Benjamin Moses:
Awesome. And with that, Travis, do you mind giving us a little forerunner of what's going on in Hexagon Live?
Travis Egan:
Yeah, I'd love to. Yeah. Hexagon Live is coming up here in June in Las Vegas. And the whole purpose for us being here today is to bring some of the characters, some of the players that are going to be involved in the event. Hexagon has reached out to a variety of different influencers like Chris and given them different areas of expertise to cover. They really want it to be about stories of manufacturing and bringing stories from outside in as opposed to simply introducing the new technologies. That will be a part of it, but let's really get into some discussions about what people are really observing out in the real world. And not just what technology improvements are happening, but ultimately how that impacts people's lives.
I have the opportunity to host the events. We're calling it the Architect Series. We've come out with a program where we've done some pretty cool videos, had the opportunity, believe it or not, to meet Jeff Gordon a couple of weeks ago in Charlotte, which was ... You get to go on a lot of different plant tours and see a lot of manufacturing outfits over the years, but to go into Hendrick Motorsports and spend a day with world-class manufacturer and really get to meet someone like Jeff Gordon was pretty special. That'll come out in some of the pre-publicity. But we're all getting together and we're going to put on a really big show in Las Vegas in a couple of weeks now.
Benjamin Moses:
Awesome. Chris, do you want to give us a tease, because doing quite a bit on-site too, so do you want to tell us about Production Trailblazer?
Chris Luecke:
Yeah, absolutely. I'm looking forward to being part of one of the tracks focused specifically on production called the Production Trailblazer track. I'm also going to be giving a talk there as well. Kind of like this conversation, a lot of my discussions are around lessons I've learned from the podcast. I'll be sharing 10 lessons from over 100 interviews with manufacturing leaders while I'm at the event as well. I'm looking forward to that, as well as the Production Trailblazer's track. Y'all really have put together a great lineup for this event, and it'll be cool to kick off our summer with Hexagon Live in Las Vegas.
Benjamin Moses:
Thanks a lot, guys, let's kick it back to the podcast team.
Travis Egan:
Thank you.
Benjamin Moses:
Guys, welcome back. That was a fun interview with Chris and Travis. Hit on some really fun topics. Chris was talking about the manufacturer's workforce always seems to be on front of mind, but the current shortage issue is more of a symptom as opposed to a clear-defined problem.
In one of his podcasts, he talks about on-the-job training and finding fulfillment through engineering. One of the last things we talked about was an interview with a company that does AI agents and how important it is to start looking into where AI can be a solution for improving efficiency. With that, Ramia, can you tell the people where they can find more info about us?
Ramia Lloyd:
Absolutely. First, thank you to this episode's sponsor, Hexagon. Love you guys. You can find more information at techtrends.amtonline.org. Like share, subscribe.
Stephen LaMarca:
Bing bong.
Benjamin Moses:
Bye, everyone.
