Purdue MEP – Digital Transformation with Chris Luecke & Jake Hall

Curt Anderson  08:57

I wanted to give a big, warm welcome to the Purdue MEP. So guys, if you are new to the Purdue MEP, boy, I encourage you I invite you I welcome you to reach out to just do a little Google Search Purdue MEP Gene Jones is here today. Jean as we get our program started, you want to just give a little intro quick warm welcome from the Purdue MEP.

Gene Jones  09:17

Yeah, thanks very much if you’re not familiar with proven me P we focus on Indiana small to medium manufacturers and pretty much provide a range of services to try to help small to medium in Indiana manufacturers become more profitable. So reach out.

Curt Anderson  09:35

Absolutely. So I guess as we get things started here, we’re coming. We’re gonna get things rolling. So my name is Curt Anderson. It’s an absolute honor and privilege to be here today. Man. We have an extremely exciting program here today. So I am a third party resource. I work with my dear friend Gene at Purdue. And so our passion our purpose in life is helping manufacturers. So with that That being said, today we have a no nonsense approach to digitally transforming your business, your manufacturing facility. And I have two dear friends that I want to introduce you to and I don’t know, to greater advocates for US manufacturing than these two gentlemen. So I’m gonna start my friend Chris Luecke. Chris, happy Thursday, my friend, how are you dude?

Chris Luecke  10:21

Doing great honor to be here, Kurt, very excited to have this discussion with this crew here. This is a topic that Jake and I are both very passionate about. But I won’t I don’t want to get too far into that yet. Let’s, let’s get my co host introduced as well.

Curt Anderson  10:38

Well, hey, we’ll dive in. So for you guys that don’t know, you know, hey, if we were on person, we’d be shaking hands high fiving. We’d be handing out business cards. I encourage you, I welcome you drop your LinkedIn in the chat box. Let’s get to know each other. I really encourage you guys to connect with Jake, connect with Chris, follow these guys. You’ll thank me later. They are just fierce advocates. They are just great content creators. So with that being said, so Curtis is going to dig into a great career at Rockwell Automation, his little program called manufacturing happy hour, or we might have a little happy hour here as we’re celebrating manufacturing moms. And then I’m going to dig into J Cole. Jake, my friend, the manufacturing millennial himself is here. Happy Thursday, my friend. How are you doing today?

Jake Hall  11:22

I’m doing good. I’m doing really good. It’s, it’s been a busy morning, my internet’s kind of in and out. But my mother in law’s down in the middle of nowhere in Illinois. today. So it’s, it’s been a good morning, this morning, I talked to over 100/9 graders in Pennsylvania, about manufacturing. So that was a lot of fun. And I’m hoping it was really just the data earthquake drill in the middle of my presentation. So that was that was exciting to handle an earthquake drill. But yeah, it’s great to be here. Well, well,

Curt Anderson  11:55

you know, Pennsylvania is a hotbed for earthquakes. Everybody knows that. Oh, so yeah, who knew? But anyway, all right. So guys, let’s dive in. Chris, if you want to pull up your screen, and guys, I’m so I’m letting people in. So again, my name is Curt Anderson, you drop your LinkedIn, drop your website in a chat, we’d love to get to know you. We’re here with a Purdue MVP. And so with that being said, Chris Lukey. Go ahead and take it away, brother.

Chris Luecke  12:17

All right. Are you seeing the PowerPoint, I just want to check when I move to presentation mode, I’m seeing heads nod. So folks are seeing the PowerPoint. Yep. Excellent. All right, well, I’ll be driving today Jake does not have the best of internet connection. So we’re going to make sure we keep this moving as as we want to keep digital transformations moving as well. So before we dive into a little bit more thorough introductions for both of us, I want to set some expectations here. There are a lot of presentations out there around, let’s say a digital transformation roadmap, taking you from A to B to C to D, showing a lot of details along the way. We’re gonna be talking about, let’s say some of our most no nonsense tips that we’ve come across, we’re going to be sharing stories, we’re going to be sharing examples, because we want you to walk away from this with one, two or three nuggets where you’re like, you know what I understand what digital transformation means a lot more after this presentation than I did before it. And here are some of the best practices that really makes sense that whether you’re in the middle of your transformation, or whether you’re advising people on how to start their transformations. Hopefully at least one two or three of these nuggets are going to be things that will remain front of mind for you after this presentation is done. So we look forward to chatting here. But first, I want to give Jake an opportunity to provide more of an intro here.

Curt Anderson  13:55

Awesome. Thanks, Chris. Yeah, so I’m Jay Cole. I’ve better known online as the manufacturing millennial. It’s a brand name that I picked up when he started posting content online. Back in the summer of 2020. My background is I’ve been in the manufacturing industry for 17 years. started when I was a going into my junior year in high school I worked for a custom automation machine builder doing the grunt work of sweeping the floors and cleaning all the manual mills and went to college and I got a manufacturing engineering and mechanical engineering degree. And then I went into work for automation distribution and sales and worked for some large systems integration companies that focused on SCADA and mes and software deployment inside manufacturers. And recently I’m now a full time creator, industry advocate and keynote speaker where I travel around the US this year I gave over 43 presentations at Allender manufacturers Here’s where I like to focus on future technology, workforce development and skilled trades. On top of that, I’m a father of a husband and father of two girls where my true passion is to get more women in this industry as I want my girls to have the same passion for manufacturing that I do. And I’m a avid Chicago Cubs fan. How are you Chris? Well, hey, in Chris, a super quick so first off, man sorry about the Cubs right so a lot a lot of baseball fans got knocked out this this year. So hey, we got a note here, Chris. And I’ll be fun the chatbox guys so we welcome encourage your questions, drop them in anytime. And hate Mo is in a hit another comment here about your presentation if you want to hit your looks like Presenter View, so I don’t want to swap displays, Chris.

Chris Luecke  15:51

Okay, let me

Curt Anderson  15:54

swap displays at the top there to the left. Okay. Yeah. There we go. We got Mo Mo and Colin jafta. No. So thanks, guys. And again, welcome to the program. If you’re just sliding in, drop your LinkedIn in the chat, Chris, take it away, dude.

Chris Luecke  16:12

Are we seeing the right screen now? Can I get some head nods real quick thumbs up. Alright. Yeah, that’s looking at

Curt Anderson  16:17

two beautiful young ladies there. So I have no

Chris Luecke  16:22

problems to sharing PowerPoint screens. But we are we are moving forward. And this next slide is actually a great example of why you should always proofread your co hosts edits to hear your presentations before you release them. So we’re just going to start at the bottom here. No pun intended. I am from St. Louis, Missouri. Originally, I am a Cardinals fan of blues fans. So there’s always a fair amount of call it friendly ribbing between myself and Jake when it comes to our sporting allegiances. So we we, we have a lot of fun doing these presentations together, we’re both gonna bring our own flavor to it and mix it together as well. But to give a little intro on myself, now I’m based in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, I went to school here for the university went to Marquette University spent about 10 years here. There’s a talk, I might need to mute someone here while we’re going through this, but spent about 10 years of my career working around the country 17 years in manufacturing, largely with Rockwell Automation and fix software. But I started my career as a process engineer at Anheuser Busch. So as the host of manufacturing happy hour, the beer industry has always been in the background of my career, whether it was starting with the king of beers to or when I was out working for Rockwell in the San Francisco Bay Area was a craft beer tour guide out there. So there’s always been that beer essence to my brand. And really, the essence of manufacturing happy hour. And you’ll sense this in some of the slides to come is we want to talk about topics and manufacturing. topics that are often complex, maybe difficult to explain, we want to talk about about them is if we’re having a beer with one another. And that’s the whole premise behind manufacturing happy hour. In that podcast, I’ve interviewed over 200 manufacturing leaders over the course of four years. It’s actually the second podcast I started one of the fun facts about me is I’ve been doing podcasting for about six years now. And during that time, I’ve done over 200 episodes around the globe, literally going to different countries to do these interviews. So love to travel and I’ve actually podcasted on five continents up to this point. So telling stories, and elevating the top voices in manufacturing is a huge passion of mine. And I’m going to do that in the next few slides to share some of my best takeaways that I’ve received over the course of the podcast in my career around digital transformation, to hopefully simplify it for you as well. So I’m gonna be sharing a few stories of digital transformation and how companies big and small, our future proofing their business from some of the best anecdotes I have come across a manufacturing happy hour. So the first individual I want to give a shout out to is a gentleman named Bob Murphy. Bob Murphy was a Senior VP of operations in digital transformation at Rockwell Automation before he retired and I feel I learned some of my most down to earth lessons around digital transformation from by reflecting on my conversations with Bob. So Bob not only led Rockwell’s own internal digital transformation efforts when they were going through them over a decade ago before the term digital transformation was even real. The invoke Bob was doing that before, let’s say digital transformation was cool, if you will. And then if you’re familiar with Rockwell Automation largest company in the world dedicated to industrial automation, they’ve evolved as a company that are experts in digital transformation, how to connect an enterprise to bring all your operations together to help companies make better decisions around data. I’ll simplify it at that. So before I get into some of the lessons I’ve learned from Bob, let me paint a picture of what it was like to digitally transform over a decade ago, when manufacturers were globalizing their operations, they might have been acquiring companies around the globe, bringing together factories, and in turn business systems that hadn’t necessarily grown up together. So while manufacturers were global, a lot of times their operations weren’t as global as they could be, you would have different plants around the globe that could be running dozens of different ERP systems, let alone, let’s say, 1000s of different applications on a plant floor. So while manufacturing, while those factories, those facilities that enterprise people might have gotten along and help one another, they might not have been in a position to scale, right, you would look at those type of business systems and realize, hey, where they are today, this doesn’t give us an opportunity to grow, this doesn’t give us an opportunity to transform. Because let’s face it, if you have a lot of different business systems that can’t talk to one another, how in the world are you going to be able to leverage data to make important decisions that can impact your operation in transformative ways. So I’m going to share some of the lessons that as I reflect on my conversations with Bob that that have come to mind. So when it comes to best practices for digital transformation, one of the first things I always think of is, you’ve got to have a business objective in the story that I was just sharing in that scenario, your growing company, you’ve acquired different facilities that have been added to your enterprise, you’re running a lot of different business systems. Part of that is to hey, let’s consolidate our manufacturing into one operation unit that is an example of, let’s say, the overarching objective, but why do you want to consolidate into one overall overarching operating unit? Well, you got the business objectives. And there’s a long list beyond a few of the examples that I’ve shared. But it could be a better customer experience, when you can share data seamlessly across enterprises, you’re making it easier for customers to get their products quicker, faster time to market as an example, maybe it’s increased quality, when you have visibility to what’s being made at different facilities, you have visibility to what’s going right and what’s going wrong at different facilities or back to that time to market example, maybe now you know, what’s an inventory across the world. And you can share resources when you have shortages in different areas. I’m sharing a few examples here. But when you’re going through that transformation, when you’re looking at, hey, this is the state of my enterprise today, and this is where I want to bring it in the future. Start with that business objective. And I bring that up because too many times, we see folks focus on the technology first, these little bits of pieces that technology that are important to a transformation. But a transformation shouldn’t be technology centric, as the first priority, it should be outcome, an objective centric first. So that’s, that’s the first lesson. The second thing is to create a cross functional team. And when we talk about digital transformation, we’re typically talking about a big organization. We’ll start with, we’ll start with a large organization as an example, that has their IT department. And they also have their operations technology team, their OT department, the people responsible for factory and plant operations people on the plant floor, we put all of those folks into what we call the OT category. If you’ve heard the term it ot convergence. That’s what a lot of this means you’re getting these groups together, because in order to have a true digitally transformed enterprise, you need to be sharing information from the plant floor, and how that impacts things in the business environment as well have that communication between all the way up to the ERP to the MES level down to what you’re seeing on a factory floor with HMI control platforms, et cetera. And one of the lessons when I think back to when I talked to Bob that that he had shared that made him successful was they put together a global mes organization to make their transformation possible. They pulled people from operations technology and stakeholders from information technology and IT and made sure those people were on the same team. Because when I talk to people that are discussing their roadblocks to digital transformation, a lot of times there’s some fingerpointing involve saying, hey, we want to move our plant floor operation forward, but it is not letting us do that, right? You got to remember, it and ot have different priorities. And they’re different consequences at stakes for both environments, right? In the IT network, you’re dealing with a lot of data, you’re dealing with enterprise business systems, financial systems, things you want to secure and protect. At the end of the day, on the plant floor, you’re dealing with systems that need to operate at all times 24/7, potentially, you can’t be having, you know, a network update or patching like bringing down production. So I totally get that these are two different teams. But there’s an individual named Brian evergreen used to work at Microsoft, when I interviewed him on my podcast he shared of best practices, I think very much applies to this area, it’s like you want to have what he called a pilot purgatory steamroll. Or to get rid of these type of objections, a team, like the one Bob references that has stakeholders from different groups and different priorities, talking together. So that way, let’s say a digital transformation doesn’t get held up in the early phases. All the right, people are talking to one another so that you keep things moving forward. That’s what I mean by why having a cross functional team of leaders that represent different groups in the organization with different priorities are part of this digital transformation discussion. Then finally, the last point is the most successful, the most successful, enterprise wide digital transformations are driven by leadership, but embraced by everyone, if you’re talking about a true global organization that is going to evolve the way they’re doing business, you’re not going to get that by having one person on the plant floor saying, hey, you know, if we do XYZ, we’re going to be able to get through, put in this particular line that much quicker, that’s part of it, you need that type of buy in. But at the end of the day, you need to have leadership, helping to drive that. But it helps to have an environment where folks on the plant floor are able to experiment and try new things, and be bought in on any of the technology that’s part of this transformation, because you’re gonna have a lot easier time moving it forward when it’s not just an idea that leadership has. But it’s also something that’s very pragmatic for the folks on the shop floor that ultimately makes their life easier, right? Sure. There’s a little learning curve when you introduce new technology, but it’s making their life easier. So we’ll talk about some of the technologies that make it make it possible to make these transformation and transformations embraced by everyone. But I have a couple more stories we that I’m going to share before before I hand it off to Jake. So next slide here is an individual that that Jake and I both know very well, his name is Jeff Bernstein. He’s the president of the Association for advancing automation, Premier trade group in the automation and manufacturing space. And I put his lesson up here straight up, because it’s going to provide context for some of the things I’m going to share on the next line. Next slide. Whenever I’m talking to Jeff, one of the big themes of our conversations is about how, hey, despite everything I just said in the last slide that, you know, if you’re gonna do a digital transformation at an enterprise, here’s some of the best practices you need. At the end of the day. Transformation isn’t just for the big guys anymore. Automation is more accessible to small and mid sized manufacturers. And I’m going to share a couple examples of how I’ve seen that play out from the stories I’ve encountered, as well as where I saw that play out in my own career. So when it comes to democratizing digital transformation, making it available to other folks, there are a few trends and a few technologies that I’m going to share as an example that are making this more possible. So in my initial slide, I was talking about an enterprise wide transformation. Let’s talk about how you can do, let’s say, micro transformations to get the momentum going. Or maybe you’re a smaller company, you’re looking to get things started on your end. Well, let’s talk about how digital transformation projects can now start falling in a bit more of an OP X category than a CapEx category. That’s my fault. There should be an arrow pointing from capex to OP X. But sometimes those things get lost in translation in the slides. But there there are more models out there now that would allow a smaller or midsize manufacturer that doesn’t have necessarily the capital budget for large transformation to do little things that make it possible to start evolving there. peroration. For example, you might hear of new business models called robotics as a service. And there’s and robotics as a service is essentially you’re paying for your production, you’re paying for the output of a robot on an ongoing basis. Rather than paying the capital cost up front, you’ll see companies like Formic doing this. Companies like path robotics, as an example, do this specifically for welding applications. And when I think of companies like HealthBridge brothers boiler works as an example, they’re a great illustration as to why this is a necessity. They do work for waste to energy facilities, but they also do work for the semiconductor industry, you might know where this is going as the semiconductor industry starts to become more prominent here in the US and we have new fabs being built, you know, a company like HealthBridge brothers boiler works that used to do two to three pieces of equipment amount a month, might be doing closer to eight to 10 pieces of equipment a month. So in order to scale up, they might not have the capital to necessarily build out those production lines. But they can certainly supplement some of their robotic welding as an example, with a RASS type of investment like this, or robotics as a service type investment. So that’s one example. Cobots are another great example. Let’s the one I’m showing here is an example of machine tending. You know, you don’t need to automate or transform everything all at once. Cobots are becoming popular in small to mid size manufacturers because they’re smaller, more compact, they’re mobile, for example, you can move them from spot to spot if you need to, you don’t need a lot of space. And also it’s easy enough to install without without a systems integrator as an example. So for a simple, what might have been a human task of doing machine tending in the past, we’re putting, you know, moving out the different bits that you need for your machine, you can bring in a robot to supplement that type of labor. And the final thing I’ll share before I pass it off to Jake is something that this is this is a term I came up with, I wouldn’t say it’s an industry standard. But I like to refer to certain things as micro transformations. You know this, this slide shows what in the background is a paper work order for doing maintenance, some of you might be familiar with a term CMMS computerized maintenance management system. When I worked at fixed software, my job was to help manufacturers that were currently using antiquated systems, whether those were paperwork orders are Excel spreadsheets that were shared in the maintenance department. My job was to help maintenance departments digitally transform their own department by moving from what would be paperwork orders, or Excel sheets for logging maintenance activities, to moving it to a cloud based platform that you can access from your computer, from your phone to log the type of work that’s going in maintenance. So in the past, if you get to work, you might have to you might find out one of your machines is down. But you don’t have a great record as to say, Hey, why is this machine down what type of maintenance has been done on this machine? Sure, you can search through the file folder for paper records, or sure you can try to look in the Excel sheet which Bob on shift three may or may not have updated. But when you have a single source of truth, a digital platform at cloud based platform to start managing your maintenance, all of a sudden, you have better visibility to what’s been done, you can troubleshoot quicker. And maybe most importantly, as we see churn in the manufacturing space, as we see people retire and maintenance departments, we see opportunities for tracking that what what would have once been tribal knowledge and logging it into a digital platform like this. So at the end of the day, whether you’re the executive that’s driving digital transformation from the top, or whether you’re someone in maintenance that just wants to start doing your job better, and doing it in a low cost way that’s ultimately a micro transformation within your own team. That’s one of the ways we see digital transformation starting to be democratized. So I’m going to pass it off to Jake for more stats more examples. I hope these stories were helpful. I certainly look forward to addressing any questions that have come up in the in the chat as we get further into this so with that shake off to

Curt Anderson  34:40

start with Are there any questions so far? Yeah, real quick Jake. So our friend our dear buddy Gary wood from Rochester, New York says in Chris maybe this this came out in your first slide. So maybe you touched on this and Gary, please comment. He has. What about small and medium sized companies are they close out because they don’t have big IT team but you did a great chap, I love what you’re saying about that micro example. Gary, if you want to add to that comment, anything in the comment or anybody else. So guys, you know, a lot of our friends here, Phyllis and Lisa, it’s still city stills, you know, a lot of these folks are 2050 100 employee range. And so I think how Chris broke it down into micro aspect was a great job. Chris, anything that you want to add to Gary’s question there anything from a small to mid sized manufacturer, you feel that you’ve covered that?

Chris Luecke  35:27

Yeah, well, I think we gave some good examples of what small and mid sized manufacturers can do to micro transform quickly, I think the one thing I do want to emphasize is the three main points that I emphasize that I’ve I’ve learned from Bob and reflected on from his lessons, those still apply to small to midsize mid sized manufacturers, you want to have a business objective for why you’re investing in technology or transforming. You also want to make sure you have buy in from different stakeholders in your organization, right, you still want to have that cross functional team. And the final thing is you want to have buy in not only from the front office, but you want to have buy in from the people that are doing the work on the shop floor as well. It’s not as I shouldn’t say this, it’s there maybe aren’t as many layers that you need to sort through and maybe the it ot relationship is a little more streamlined when it’s a smaller organization. So it’s not as big of a to do to get that coordination to get done. But those lessons still apply. They’re just going to look a little differently for a small to midsize manufacturer. So that’s the only thing I would add.

Curt Anderson  36:29

Perfect, excellent job. And Gary said, Nope, Chris covered it with a micro so again, great job, Mr. Lukey. I appreciate it. Jay Cole, take it away, brother. Yeah, perfect. Thanks. You know, so the one that I always like to highlight is a lot a lot of times, we hear so much negativity about manufacturing, when it comes to the perceptions that general industry and just general people put on manufacturing, I think we forget how critical manufacturing is. And of course with the group here with the Purdue MEP, we know that right, we’re going out there and we’re constantly knocking on. I’ve been involved with a lot of the MEP organizations for a while. And I know Chris has as well with you know, Illinois and with Michigan with MMTC, where I met with Michigan manufacturing technology, and then the right place in West Michigan, it’s hard, it’s hard to constantly feel like we’re we’re battling not only against trying to get times of manufacturers for them to invest in looking at new technology, but the constant you know, battle that we’re having with with what the perception of manufacturing is. So I love always leaving this with this statistic when I’m giving keynote presentations when I’m when talking to to future generations on how important manufacturing is. So from a global perspective, manufacturing continues to grow, we’re continuing to see growth, right? When more people is out there, we want more things, we’re consuming more things at a higher rate than we’ve ever done before. So in and from a global perspective, we have, you know, almost 500 million people working in manufacturing, which is just a crazy number that’s out there that itself is almost a $17 trillion industry. But more importantly, with me is the the impact that US domestic manufacturing has where we’re going to be approaching probably around 13 million people, we’re never going to have the same number that we had, you know, pre 2008. But those numbers are growing, we’re seeing more numbers coming back to to America where it might not necessarily be reshoring. But it’s nearshoring. And the critical number is that, you know, we’re a $2.4 trillion industry, US manufacturing is and it was just so exciting about it, when you look at what is $2.4 trillion represent what’s really exciting if you were to take $2.4 trillion, and make its own country of manufacture that the the US manufacturing is now a new country in the world, it would be the seventh largest economical GDP in the world for countries. So I think just this will just show how impactful US domestic manufacturing is. And the other thing is like for every dollar spent on manufacturing, it impacts the rest of the industry. And this was a statistic put up by the US Department of Defense on the top of your screen where every dollar spent in manufacturing results in an additional two hours and 79 cents added to the economy. And and I think that’s why I have my passion for it is because there’s no other industry out there. That what we do on a daily basis, we can directly contribute to how people live their daily lives. Right when you walk inside of a Kellogg facility here in Michigan and I see how pop tarts are made or I see the cereal that is manufactured that I then go and buy at the grocery store at buyer and I saw the machine that made that it just it just goes to show how how relatable manufacturing is and I think you know for us and for my passion to get new generations excited about the industry and how to get companies excited about adopting technology. We need to make sure we understand and share the story of why manufacturing matters. And, and we can’t convince a company to adopt change until they understand why they need to change. And when I was working for for ATS global and we were a multi we were almost a $2 billion systems integrator company that worked on mes and SCADA and deploying software and, and helping really create automation roadmaps for for manufacturers. Everything from AI is such a cool job, I worked for a company that had 45 employees. And then I also worked for SC Johnson, Procter and Gamble, Tesla and a bunch of mica. So for me, it was, it was so cool seeing him working for a 50 employee company, and then working for a 50,000 employee company. But the one thing that I learned when it came through how we how we focus on change, and how we create digital transformation for manufacturers is digital transformation isn’t changed by technology. Digital Transformation is changed by culture, and how the mindset of adopting that technology is used, right? I can go out there and implement the best software in the world, and the best Cobots in the world in the best vision systems in the world. And the best real time digital work instructions that make maintenance and frontline workers lives easier. But if the cultural perspective of leadership doesn’t understand the importance of leveraging that technology, technology will never matter. And the biggest thing that I’ve also learned when doing this stuff is change is now happening through younger generations at a critically higher rate than older generations in manufacturing. Right, we’re seeing new digital technology, new digital trends and ways of doing business not happening by the hands of younger generations, because they view technology not as an intimidating tool, but a tool that creates opportunity. Right? But Cobots as Chris referred to earlier, Cobots now are revolutionising manufacture, manufacturing not because they’re safer. Manufacturing Cobots are now changing because they’re easier to implement, right? When my five year old daughter who knows how to knows how to navigate on her iPad, and we went and hung out at Universal Robots for a day, she knew how to program a robot because it made sense to her because of the interface through that. And and so when we look at how do we change manufacturing, it’s what the costs are. So Chris, go ahead and jump to that next slide. And when we look at, you know, this is a great statistic as well, and I do a lot of this stuff in my presentation. But, you know, manufacturing has really felt a dip when we lost a lot of people coming out of the recession, and 2020 or the pandemic and 2020. Right, we saw that we lost almost $100 billion in lost manufacturing output because not because we didn’t have the technology that was available. But because we didn’t have the workforce that was available to meet the demand and pipeline that was out there. So we were averaging around 300,000 to 400,000 open jobs in manufacturing, leading up to the pandemic. And then the pandemic happened and all of a sudden, we saw numbers spike up to seven 800, almost 900,000 jobs. It wasn’t because all of a sudden, like oh, we’re gonna have the technology that’s available. It’s we don’t have the people that’s available. And so what’s so critical to manufacturing is getting more people are excited about the industry. And I was at a conference last week in Montreal two weeks ago in Montreal. And we were listening to a speaker from McKinsey and Company. And he throws out some really interesting statistics. The first one was 78% of people who left their job during the pandemic, who were in manufacturing did not return to manufacturing. That was number one. So you had almost every foreign five people who were in the manufacturing industry that left me that that had the either quit or or let go during the pandemic did not return the industry. The other really interesting statistic that that McKinsey and Company had that relates together was they found out the number one the number one reason why manufacturers both large and small to medium sized businesses failed to adopt technology was not because of its cost was not because of its difficulty to integrate. It was because it had a hard time finding the skilled people to understand how that change happened. And so Chris, if you want to hop over the next slide real quick, I think what’s so exciting about, oh, we see this, go ahead and hop to the next one. So I don’t remember. Perfect. And Chris, you can go ahead and click four times will bring up all the generations at once. You know, the one thing that’s so exciting about manufacturing that I love about it is, we have four generations working in the industry. And I think immediately with all of us and within MEP, and the companies that are listening to conversation, we could look at these generations of Baby Boomers, Gen Xers millennials, and Gen z’s. And we can look at the characteristics and qualities that each of these generations have. And we can think of a person right baby boomers had that strong work ethic, that hierarchy structure that job stability, and it’s what’s what’s really interesting as we look at job stability, for example, with the baby boomer, anyone want to guess and feel free to turn your microphone on or type of a chat. What is the average number of jobs a baby boomer had throughout their entire career working in manufacturing? Anyone want to guess? Too few? Yeah, it’s between two and three. Now all of a sudden, we’re seeing this shift happening where now we jump over to millennials. Anyone want to guess how many different jobs millennials will have? By the age? They’re 30 years old? Jake, how many did you have? Five we’ve got Phillip says eight, Gary, Gary’s low, Phyllis is low. It’s currently 11 jobs. It’s time a millennial reaches 30 years old, or a Gen Z reach 30 years old, they’re going to have 11 different jobs. And all of a sudden, we’re seeing a complete shift, and the mentality and the culture and the way people are working in manufacturing. Right. And, and so all of a sudden, we can’t in manufacturing, think of the good old days anymore of back when you had the same person working for the industry for 30 or 40 years now. And that’s just the way it was. That’s the way it was, that’s the way it will never be again, we’re going to see a higher cycle rate of people working in, in manufacturing, and that is that they’re coming to manufacturing, they’re leaving, but they’re gonna go to different jobs they’re gonna go to they’re gonna go work for different companies and their career now than ever before. And and I’ll jump back to that with millennials. But with Gen Xers. They really focus on work life balance, independent workers that are the entrepreneurial spirit. The one thing about Gen Xers, which you know, Kurt, you fall into, and a lot probably a lot of people in this call fall into is they’re the they’re the largest creator of manufacturing jobs, that of any generation that’s out there, and probably any met generation in the future, right. There’s more manufacturing jobs with small to medium sized businesses here in the United States that recruited who that Gen X generation than ever before. millennia and props to you. I mean, that’s one thing that I think a lot of times the Gen X generation that may How come we never get talked about. So is the baby boomers, with jokes, and so is the millennials versus jokes. The one thing that’s great about the Gen Xers is they really went out there with the entrepreneurial spirit. But now we have this next generation, the millennials, the ones that you know, Chris and I both fall into. We’re collaborative, we’re tech savvy, but we’re focused on career development. And while it’s phenomenal for younger generations to be focused on career development, a lot of times career development happens through changing jobs, rather than through getting promoted within the company. So that’s the current just culture that’s out there in the industry. People are constantly shifting and people are constantly moving. Gen Xers, they’re the focus on multitasking, they’re independent learners. And they focus on diversity inclusion without also say they focus on purpose. And, and that’s why I think digital transformation is so important for manufacturers, because while digital manufacturing helps companies be more productive, I think digital transformation, what it really does, is it shows and creates what the purpose and the impact is for the individual worker in manufacturing, right? When your company is digitally transformed, you should be able to see the direct impact that a worker creates on the floor with their job in manufacturing. And when millennials and Gen Z’s now can say hey, when I’m doing when I’m a frontline worker, and I’m assembling this component, or I’m building this machine, or I’m working on increasing the productivity of this or that and you can get real time data back and what what changes you made in the impact that you created. Now all of a sudden, manufacturing feels a lot smaller, because people can relate to their jobs can relate to the impact that they’re creating a lot more and I think that’s why tech Knology is such a phenomenal tool. Technology is not the solution to digital transformation. Technology is a tool to make digital transformation happen. And so Chris, go ahead and hop to the next slide. This is a phenomenal example that I love to show. For for manufacturing actually will go to the next one because I don’t want to, I don’t want to run us too far out of time. But for this first one, Chris, go ahead and click the first picture, right? When we think of the way we used to learn through generations. And Kurt, I’m going to pick on you just because you’re good looking. But because you’re that generation as well. Kurt, what is this image? Looks like a Ford Explorer, right? Or a forest floor book. What is it? It’s a it’s a Haynes repair manual, right? If we were out there, a lot of the times we went out there, and we picked up we got our first car, we got a car, we wanted to change something, we were told how to fix something, we will pick up that Haynes repair manual from AutoZone or NAPA Auto Parts or O’Reilly’s. And we go in the back of the book, and we look in the appendix and we figured out alternator or brake calipers or pad or spark plugs or you know timing belt. And that paper based work instructions was how we learned to solve problems in the industry or how we learn to solve problems. That was our way of self learning and self teaching. Going to click on this next one, Chris, here’s another relatable is one as well. Right? What is it? It’s the Betty Crocker international cookbook. You want to learn something new? You want to try something new? What did you do you open up the Betty Crocker’s cookbook and pray to God when you went to go visit your mother in law, she didn’t have the meatloaf page open wondering what was going to happen for dinner that night because then you knew you shouldn’t probably before you came and, and and got dinner. Now we’re seeing a shift, right? Those are paper based work instructions and how we’re learning how a lot of times we’re solving problems now, Chris, next one. We got what is this? It’s a YouTube video. Right YouTube University. We’re learning now we’re solving problems. We’re learning new skill sets through visual through video and digital means. Right, Chris? One more. We have now Instagram Pinterest, right. And we can look at the cost. Here we use the Haynes repair manual to solve a problem to fix a problem to learn something new. Now we use YouTube university right? We had the Betty Crocker cookbook. To learn a new way to learn a new recipe learn something new. Now we use Instagram or Pinterest or Tik Tok. And we see this generational divide. Where with Baby Boomers and Gen Xers, they grew up on the Ford Explorer and the Betty Crocker cookbook, the millennials and the Gen Z’s grew up on the YouTube University and the Pinterest of how we’re learning and solving problems. Now, if we were to take that generations and remove that word, and put manufacturers in the middle, right now, all of a sudden, what side of the world, especially for you as manufacturer, or for you people at MEP, who are working with manufacturers, if you were to put manufacturers down that line, and you want to classify the manufacturer that you’re working with, if they if you want to teach your employees something new, are they on the left hand side of the screen, which is the Ford Explorer, but the paper based work instructions, the way we’re learning and setting up equipment is through paper based means or we’re using digital tools digital technology video to teach that. Now, what is important to understand with this is us older generations I grew up on I’m 34. So I mean, I am kind of in that older, you know, the left hand generation as well. And now on that, you know, on the newer technology set, but these upcoming generations, these new gen Z’s like the ones I talked to this morning, they are fully digital, right? All their communication of their learning the way their programming things now, the way they’re they’re becoming independent learners. It’s all digital now, now to where if you if you were to bring a Gen Z or inside of manufacturing facility and hand them a three ring binder, and say, Hey, go set up a machine, they’re gonna look at you like you’re crazy, because they have to go and open to this up and flip to a page and find what page they’re on. That’s not how they learn that, you know, that’s not how you enable the young generations to grow. They learn through digital means and digital tools. So going back to that whole entire thing, digital transformation happens when you can enable your workers to when you can enable technology that meets the workers that are on the floor. And so Chris, go ahead and hop to the next slide real quick. I think I have one more fun example. I always do this as the bathroom test. So I’ve got 100,000 miles on delta so far this year, I’ll probably hit close to 125 this year with delta. And the one thing that I always I always get a kick out of is going to airports and some of these airports now have what we see on the left Inside the screen is stacked lights indication lights above these bathroom stalls, right? So you can walk into a bathroom stall. And you can see if that stalls occupied really to save you from that really awkward of like, do I kind of pull on the doors anyone in there not, you don’t want to really be that guy that does the awkward, you know, glance like through the stalls are somewhere in there, I don’t know. Now you have technology that makes using the bathroom easier. If you have all the stalls occupied, there’s a screen outside and the front will tell you, hey, if all these stalls are being used, and there’s a line in there, it will tell you, you can go a walk for gates down and use that bathroom because that bathroom is, you know, has open spots. So right bathroom, airports are enabling technology now yet, we’ve all know we go into manufacturers, and we and we walk into, you know, injection molding machines, right? Here’s a bunch of injection molding machines, what do you not? What do you notice? That is not any of these injection molding machines? A stack like an indication like any form of digital information to let us know, what is the productivity that is happening on that machine? Right. So what things that manufacturers are struggling with is a bathroom has embraced technology more than a multimillion dollar Florida manufacturing facility. Right. So when we think of the perception that younger generations have through what manufacturing is as being this dark, dirty doll industry, we need to change that perception by enabling technology. So when we’re helping companies, or when you’re going into manufacturers to say we want to help you through a digital transformation, it’s not just about the productivity that you’re trying to drive on the floor. It’s about the culture that you’re trying to create, that will bring the next generation into manufacturing. Right. And that’s so important for me and Chris, go ahead and go ahead and hop to that next slide. You know, we hear about these things through all these different buzzwords that are out there, right, industry 4.0 Smart Manufacturing, digital transformation, automation roadmaps. And that’s why we call this presentation, the no nonsense approach to digital transformation. Because while we can get so caught up in the buzzwords, we can get, so caught up in all the different types of technologies and solutions and how there’s 15 or 20 Different SCADA or mes software companies that are out there trying to soft the cell manufacturers solutions, what’s really important is the people, right? The people are the ones that change the business from a small to medium sized business, right. 98.6% of manufacturers in the US are small to medium sized businesses, right. That’s how important these companies are to manufacturing. Now granted, there’s a lot of large companies out there who employ a lot of people, but the backbone of the manufacturing economy is still small to medium sized businesses, which a lot of the people here MDP work with, right. And so the one thing that I always like to highlight is use technology not as a tool to just drive productivity, but to drive the interest of the future person that’s working in manufacturing. So here’s a couple of videos. And this is more like what I like to share on my social media pages, or on going to events on a wide manufacturing is just so cool. So here’s a couple of awesome stuff. This is called this is projected augmented reality, this is by a company called light guide. And they use projected AR to do manual assembly and manual inspection of parts. Right. So this isn’t replacing the workers job. This is an enabling technology to to to pull people out of the industry. This is enabling technology to make it so we can train workers more efficiently, we can remove the boring, dull, three ring binder, paper based work instructions that manufacturers have struggled with for so long, and embrace technology, one that will retain the knowledge of the skilled workers who have been in the industry for a long time because they understand all the manual processes that are there, but also excite that next generation to make their job more fulfilling. Chris got out to the next one. You know, here’s another exciting one as well. Let’s see, I need to hit the arrow key.

Chris Luecke  59:26

I’m working on it. All right, come on. Come on computer

Curt Anderson  59:29

in row. Chris while you’re doing that real quick, Jake. So the one slide you had with the industry 4.0 So friends out there, reach out you know, if you’re in the state of Indiana, Purdue is doing an amazing job I see my friend Kyle is on the program with Guy gene. We’ve got Michelle from the Purdue learning P they’re covering cyber, they’re covering a lot of these topics and aligning themselves with experts like Chris Jake on these topics. So again, reach out to your local MEP for Latinas topics. Jake real quick. I know we’re under our 10 minute warning. Just want to give you a heads up there and a time chat. Perfect. We’ll speed through these So yeah, so here, here’s a great example as well with this one, this is an exoskeleton device, right? So a lot of times when we’re thinking of quality of life, right, quality of life is often a discussion that comes up within manufacturing, we need to enable tools that make it so the workers lives are easier. So instead of being so exhausted, that you’re, you’re physically, you know, lifting up your hands all day or carrying heavy boxes around, we can use technology to make the workers life easier. Go ahead and hop in the next slide. And there, Chris. Here’s another fun example that I love to highlight. So Chris and I, we have a good friend Aaron Prater, he worked at FedEx for one point in time, and this is by a company called plus one robotics. And this is an issue where they had getting people to come in at one o’clock two o’clock in the morning to individually cingulate, and separate these parcel and polybags that are getting sent next day delivery. Well, the company plus from robotics was leveraging AI to make it so robots can do these tasks instead. But they didn’t leave the worker out of it, they have what they call a crew chief, which allows the worker still to be there, but they’re doing it means they’re using a tablet now to control the robots to help the robots be guided, if they don’t know what product to pick up. Because the robot AI is confused. The robots still there as the humans still there as a crew chief, but it’s enabling and making their job more exciting, Chris, go ahead and hop to the next one. So here’s a fun one. This is a device called Pro Glove. It’s a wearable device, right? This is making that workers life easier by adopting technology, instead of going out there and you have a handheld barcode that you have to carry around, pick up, sit down, pick up, sit down, when you’re doing inspections, you can now just have it on your wrist. This is another fun one as well. This is called Iron glove. This is a device that humans wear to work in manufacturing or logistics. And it gives their fingers that extra 15 pounds of grip strength. So when you have these, these, you know, doll repetitive tasks, if you have to go and pick up like a a heavy, you know, aluminum or steel casting out of a automotive bin, and then put it in a machine for post processing, right? It’s making it so that workers life is easier, they’re enjoying their life, they’re not getting so tired. During the day, Chris got to hop on the next slide. Another fun one as well, right? We’ve all seen Boston Dynamics that’s out there. This is a robot called spot. It’s a quadruped Ed robot. I like to call it a mobile IoT platform. So it’s got cameras and sensors, and Lidar and inspection systems that can be used inside large manufacturing facilities to collect and gather data. Right? So instead of a human having to go around and do all this stuff manually and write it down on a clipboard to get what real time information is, you can now have these systems go around and autonomously or control it through, you know, a gamepad to collect that data. And what’s I call it the dinner table conversation factor, right? If you’re out there, and you’re mainly walking around, you’re doing you know, 14 Miles any walking with a clipboard and do inspection, is that something you would be excited to share about at the dinner table with your family. But if you’re a controlling a robot, with a video game controller, what generation will be excited about wine to share their friends and say, oh, yeah, check out the cool job, I do a manufacturing. Chris gonna happen in the next slide. You know, here’s another fun one as well. We talked about collaborative robots that Chris mentioned with with that area of, you know, tools for digital transformation. This is a really cool one. This is a device. It’s a software called Mimic, where it enables companies who are running smaller production to have a lot of variability in the product that they’re managing, right? Instead of needing a robot technician or a robot programmer to program these robots. They pick up a teacher, a joystick, and they do that inspection. Or they do that process with their hand and then the robot will mimic their movements to be able to do that autonomously through through programming. And that’s just like, another fun tool. That’s excited. One final one, Chris, that we have. Here’s what a fun one, right? We always talked about the cool stuff in manufacturing. This is MakerBot. Granted, we’re probably not working with baking companies in manufacturing. But it just goes to show how cool collaborative robots can be right? Instead of going out there and palletizing and putting individual pieces of cookie dough on a baker tray. Robots can do that instead, right? You’re you’re taking the boring the doll the repetitive parts out of manufacturing, and instead of hiring a baker, you’re bringing a robot technician on board and that’s why manufacturing is so cool. All right. I think this is the final slide Chris? Oh, here we go. So how do we change the direction of manufacturing? How do we bring new generations excited about digital transformation and excited about the industry? We bring manufacturing from what is viewed as a variable industry of where future generations want to work to a generation that’s sort of innovation, technology and science, which is what the stem industry is now being a part of. All right. I think this is the next final slide. All right. So what’s next? That’s our. That’s our q&a Slide. Any questions real quick, I guess we’ll wrap up. I only have three minutes left, Chris, what would have more slides. So I know there’s a couple of slides that we wanted to put in. Next slide. And Kurt, I don’t know if you want to sorry, one more. There’s our contact information. If you want to

Chris Luecke  1:05:31

screenshot this real quick. I’m gonna give a countdown 321. Next slide, because we really want to show this

Curt Anderson  1:05:40

one. And Chris, real quick, Chris. Two things is out. We’ll be sticking around guys. So if you have any questions that are Jacob, Chris, if you guys have to run, but I’m more than happy to stick around for a few minutes if you guys have any questions whatsoever. And so first off before anybody sneaks off, if they do have a call at the top of the hour, I would love to give a huge warm round of applause for our two esteemed digital transformation. rockstars here so shake that was absolutely just lights out, Chris. Thank you. You’re just amazing as always. So guys, let’s give a big thank you and a big warm welcome to to these guys. And so Chris, thank you for putting up this slide. We have a program coming up in a few weeks with Wesleyan Grier. If you don’t know Wesley man, she is a powerhouse. She actually gave the keynote speech at the annual MEP conference last month and buffalo. She’s just a dynamo, a woman of high integrity. She’s fantastic. So guys, check that Purdue MEP website, you can sign up for a little LinkedIn jam session that we’re going to do next month. And Chris, if you want to go back to your slide real quick. Again, I look for folks that connect with you guys. Guys, you want to absolutely connect with Chris and Jake. They are just fierce advocates for US manufacturing. Jake does an amazing job putting out all sorts of fun these videos that you just saw. If you love those man, follow him on LinkedIn and you’ll get them on a basically daily basis. Chris just interviews amazing, incredible people on manufacturing happy hour. Again, if you need to jump. Thank you for joining us reach out to the Purdue MEP. But Jay Chris, if you guys have another minute or two, go ahead and wrap up or whatever you wanted to finish up with. I can see.

Chris Luecke  1:07:19

I didn’t mean to interrupt. Yeah.

Curt Anderson  1:07:22

Yeah. Any questions? Of course, and you have questions just send Chris I email to you know, we’d love to answer things more in detail. If there’s anything that we can help you out with. Yeah, absolutely, guys, and again, if you want to stick around if you have any questions by this a great and again, I want to thank Colin Allen do thank you, you’re always showing up. Kyle is one of the guys from the Purdue MEP team. He taught I want to give a shout out to your the Jumpman that made the connection here for myself. So thank you. Big shout out to you Stephens here today. I saw Phyllis Lisa. So again, guys anything that any questions you have Chapman chat or take yourself right off a mute. Jane, do you want to give any parting thoughts or any closing thoughts here for the Purdue MEP before we end? Again, Jake and Chris are gonna stick around for a few more minutes for questions. But Jean, anything that you wanted to share from your end? Yeah, I

Gene Jones  1:08:09

thought, you know, Jake and Chris presentations were really, really interesting and right on and really consistent with the message that we’re giving small to medium manufacturers in Indiana. In fact, we’re coordinating in an automation event in Elkhart for the week of 11 December for any people who are on the call who who are in that Elkhart region. And it’s going to follow pretty closely to Chris’s top lessons learned associated with how to prevent falling into pitfalls. When you are deciding on you know, don’t focus on the technology focus on the problem that is that you want to solve. And I also liked the way that guys also emphasize the point that the next best automation or digitization or the next best action doesn’t have to be some high dollar solution. There are some relatively low cost things that enable are very powerful enabling of information. Maybe maybe not the light over the toilet, I was thinking that was like a smell warning alert. They’re not necessarily an occupancy. Warning. So but anyway, yeah, I really enjoyed the presentation.

Curt Anderson  1:09:29

That was great. So again, guys, please don’t be shy. And again, if everybody’s good, we can wrap up and move on with your day. But please don’t be shy. If you have any questions whatsoever. Pop yourself off of mute. You’d be be great opportunity to connect with Jake here and Chris and Jake. That was you know how many ninth graders were you jamming with this morning? How many how many did you say I’ve done? It was 100 this morning and they recorded my session so they’re playing him this so it’d be it’d be about 200 in total. Nice and I’ll take Jake just does a great job. firing up young people just to show what a great future there is in manufacturing and shakez. We’d like to say all the cool kids are definitely going into manufacturing. Are they? Is that what you’re saying? So absolutely. 100%. Awesome. So, guys,

Gene Jones  1:10:15

here’s a question for Jay. Yes, sir. So, you know, you’re giving presentation to the young people. What about the parents who still believe that every kid has to go to a four year university?

Curt Anderson  1:10:32

Yeah, no, that’s a great point. I mean, there’s a bunch of other things that we could do. So here in Michigan, we have this thing called discover manufacturing week, which is happening in two weeks where we have at about 85, manufacturers open the doors up for a week where kids can go with their parents inside manufacturing floors, and get tours. And then the parents can hear from the manufacturers themselves on the importance of that area. We also then have in March is Mr. Career quest. So we ran out the local convention center, we have about 12,000 kids that show up for one day, to learn and meet with a bunch of different manufacturers in the area. So yeah, one of the biggest, I guess, you could say, battles that companies that that we face as manufacturers, is it getting future generations excited about it’s getting their parents excited about why them to go in the industry? And you know, one thing that I would say that not to point back to my my profile, but like I created a bunch of content and like posters and stuff that like you can they encourage you to bring your schools and say, Hey, here’s a side by side of if your kid went and did manufacturing versus another degree, or when the skilled trades versus a four year typical degree, what are some of the benefits and economics? And, you know, it’s one of those things where one on one conversation or one touch? Is it going to change your parents mind? But seven touches will, you know, and I think that’s just the big thing that we want to hit.

Chris Luecke  1:12:00

And I’m sharing a book recommendation for Hey, how can parents have this type of conversation with their kids? One of my recent guests a couple months ago, Terry Iverson just wrote a book called inspiring champions in advanced manufacturing. He wrote, he wrote a parent edition, and a Student Edition, they’re pretty similar, but the parent edition is really built around, hey, how do you have a conversation with your kid? Or really? How do you start developing at a young age to show them that manufacturing is an option? Right? How do you create creative spaces for them to to execute that? So I just shared a link in the comments. And I will also type the title out as well.

Curt Anderson  1:12:47

Perfect, yeah, Chris. And if you don’t mind shamelessly, if you want to drop your podcasts in the chat, real quick, just let everybody know. You know, you’re interviewing, you know, latest, greatest leaders of manufacturing. Just love what you’ve done. And again, Jake, if you want to jump your LinkedIn profile in there, again, just if anybody missed it, they popped in late, Chris, if you want to jump your LinkedIn in there, I strongly encourage everybody connect. So okay, if we don’t have any questions, I want to be mindful of everybody’s time. going once going twice. So uh, okay, I will guys, thank you. We’re gonna have the recording of this. And so if there’s any boy, I encourage you, there’s tons of incredible value. Share this with friends, family, your pets, maybe high school, boyfriends, girlfriends, whoever that you think should be manufacturing because this was just pure gold. Again, once again, Jake. Chris, thank you guys. Appreciate you more than you can imagine. Gene the entire team at Purdue MEP. Appreciate you guys for all you do for manufacturers. And again, just keep spreading the word man. Manufacturers are truly the heroes of our are the backbone as Jake said, they are the heroes of our economy, go out it’s manufacturing month, high five hug just you know, salute a manufacturer and tell them what a great job they’re doing. So appreciate you guys. We will catch you at the next program.

Chris Luecke  1:14:05

Thanks everyone. See ya.

Curt Anderson  1:14:09

Thanks, guys. Thanks, Chris. Thanks, Jean. Thanks, Kurt. Thanks, Steven. Rico. See guys. See ya.