Unlocking the Hidden Factory: Tri Tech Automation on Finding Untapped Capacity in Plants and Their Own Panel Shop
Manufacturing Happy Hour
This episode of Manufacturing Happy Hour was recorded at Urban Chestnut Brewing Company in St. Louis. Host Chris sat down with three leaders from Tri Tech Automation, a control systems integrator: President Adam Ruebsam, Managing Director Luke Manier, and Ryan Williams, Director of Innovation and Solution Sales. The conversation centered on the "hidden factory." The team uses the term for the untapped potential inside a manufacturer's existing people, equipment, and floor space. Their position is that most manufacturers can get considerably more out of what they already have, usually by starting with people and data rather than new technology. They also argued that the same idea should shape greenfield plant design and applied it to their own panel-building operation.
Starting Out: Business Value Before Technology
Chris started his career alongside Adam and Luke around 2010, when all three were in Rockwell sales in St. Louis. He described the two as among his earliest mentors, so he opened by asking what lessons from that period have stayed with them.
Adam said the biggest lesson was to put business value first and technology second. At a company like Rockwell, with strong technology to sell, it is tempting to lead with the coolest product. His lesson was to start instead with the customer's business outcomes, figure out what the customer needs to achieve, and then "rightsize" the technology to fit. He admitted this is hard when you have exciting technology you want to talk about.
Luke agreed. He added that early in his career he came to understand how much manufacturing matters to the national economy and to the communities around individual plants. He said he did not grasp that impact when he first entered the industry, and that it has fueled him ever since. For him, the work is about helping others solve problems and create impact, and knowing that the cause matters is inspiring.
Chris said he did not appreciate manufacturing's importance until seven or eight years into his own career. At the time he was working in the Bay Area while his friends worked in software and tech. He noted that the current enthusiasm for manufacturing and manufacturing startups was not there when he started. He also recalled his first week in the St. Louis office, when he had come from engineering and quality roles. Adam, Luke, and others seemed to put their full attention on getting him up to speed. Looking back, he said this taught him that investing heavily in new talent early, even if it disrupts your own plans for the week, makes people self-sufficient much faster.
Ryan Williams' Path Through the Industry
Ryan has worked in project management, engineering, and now business development. Chris asked what allowed him to move between those roles. Ryan said that, like Chris, he has a mechanical engineering background. He started at a small integrator doing mechanical design. The company could not keep him busy, so he picked up PLC programming to fill the time, with help from a couple of good mentors. He said he fell in love with system integration, PLC programming, and automation. He then finished college taking electrical electives. The common thread, in his telling, is loving every corner of system integration and controls and never being afraid to take on new technologies or new vertical markets.
What Tri Tech Does, in 30 Seconds
Chris asked Adam how he would describe the company to someone at the bar. Adam said Tri Tech is customer-focused first. He called the team "our intellectual property": the people are what make the work happen. He described the company as combining the team's passion, drive, and experience with a business-first conversation with the client, again rightsizing the technology. The aim is to help clients win in their global markets. His reasoning was that clients who are winning invest, and that creates opportunities for Tri Tech to earn their business.
Defining the Hidden Factory
Luke had first raised the hidden factory concept when the episode was being planned, so Chris asked him to define it. Luke described it as "the untapped potential to do more in their operations with the resources that they have." In his account, it includes invisible inefficiencies, unused capacity, and hidden problems and opportunities that most manufacturers struggle with. Some companies know they have these issues but do not know how to quantify them or go after them. Others have challenges they are not aware of at all.
He placed this against the pressures manufacturers face: constant demands to reduce costs, bring new products to market faster, and stay agile in a more globally competitive environment. He said the concept resonates with customers because it makes the problem feel real. It also lets the team identify specific focus areas that will produce results and that people can act on.
Luke stressed that the idea is not only for optimizing existing plants. It also applies to companies planning large greenfield or brownfield expansions. In those cases the conversation becomes more proactive. The question is how to involve the right people, especially the operators who have their eyes and hands on the process every day, early in the design of the process and control system. The goal is to give them the tools and visibility to spot improvement opportunities, so the new plant does not "recreate this hidden factory."
Chris said what appeals to him is that the framing tells manufacturers there is likely a lot of unused potential already in front of them. New technology may be part of the answer, but it is not a start from square one.
Finding It: Data, Quantification, and Justification
Chris asked Ryan how Tri Tech helps a manufacturer get more from existing assets. Ryan said the specifics depend on the customer. At a high level, though, it comes down to understanding what you have, which means data: collecting it, turning it into information, and using that to see where the hidden factories are.
Echoing Luke, Ryan said many customers already know roughly where their inefficiencies are. What they lack is the data to quantify them. So the work starts with data gathering, then analysis to find the low-hanging fruit with the biggest potential improvements. Many customers are deciding whether to invest in an expansion, an addition, or a new building, or whether they can get more from what they have. Tri Tech helps identify the opportunities, works with the customer through the capital process to justify projects, and then proves the ROI afterward. Ryan's main point was that customers usually know they have issues and want upgrades. They fall short on quantification and information, and that makes projects hard to justify.
Adam added that this is part of Tri Tech's digital transformation practice. The practice helps customers get intelligent assets and data, and makes that data informative enough to support business decisions. Most of the time, he said, the underlying problem is that customers do not have the data at their fingertips.
The Most Common Starting Point: The Workforce
Chris asked whether there is low-hanging fruit the team sees over and over during assessments. Luke said the common theme is people and workforce. Everyone in the industry faces the same shortage of skilled labor and the same unfilled jobs. So a common place to start is fully empowering and enabling the workforce a company already has. He listed examples:
- guided work instructions
- a different approach to training
- decision support tools and dashboards
The goal is to help the people who interact with the process every day either prevent hidden inefficiencies or quickly diagnose and fix them when they occur. He added that an empowered, educated workforce can also find improvement opportunities on its own.
Chris said this surprised him somewhat. When the workforce topic came up, his mind went to modernization and analytics, not to equipping the existing team with tools like guided work instructions.
Ryan agreed that workforce is probably the top issue they see. He pointed to the "silver tide" of retiring workers taking knowledge out of plants and to less-experienced people coming in. He also emphasized operator empowerment through HMIs and diagnostics, so that operators can resolve problems without a technical person having to dig into PLC programs.
A Real-World Example: A Data-Hungry New Owner
For an external example, Ryan described ongoing work with a global manufacturer he did not name. The company had changed ownership. The new leadership was more data-hungry and wanted to understand the details of the manufacturing process, including its efficiencies and inefficiencies. Tri Tech was brought in for the upfront analysis: working out where the company stood on its digital transformation roadmap and how to get from point A to point B.
According to Ryan, the company has three facilities worldwide. The first has seen some immediate improvements, Tri Tech is now rolling the work out to the second, and a third remains. He described the work as largely dashboarding and exposing information. The customer thought it knew where its inefficiencies were, but seeing them on dashboards with real-time information is, in his words, empowering them to make real changes.
Top Ways Manufacturers Are Unlocking the Hidden Factory
Chris asked each guest to name one of the top ways they see manufacturers unlock hidden capacity.
Luke first repeated worker enablement. He then built on Ryan's example. A key part of the solution for that global customer was connecting ERP data (orders, material flow, and coordination of assembly across international sites) with plant performance. While Tri Tech works at the equipment level to enable operators, it also pulls the right data from the ERP and combines it with OT-level system data. Luke sees this as a large opportunity for many manufacturers.
Ryan pointed to OEE applications on packaging lines, along with quality projects that expose data on quality and product rejection to reduce bad production. He said there is room for improvement on almost any packaging line. If there truly is none, he joked, it may be time to build that greenfield plant. He named OEE as one of the main areas where hidden factory potential starts to appear.
Adam said he struggled to pick one because every customer's journey is different. Drivers vary by industry, regulations, company size, scaling needs, quality and yield, and people. You cannot walk in and say you need to look at the network, data collection, or modernization. There is no silver bullet and no "Industry 4.0" part number to hand over. He said that is what makes the work fun. He also noted that customers sometimes get buried in their own ways of working, and an outside perspective helps.
Designing the Hidden Factory Out of Greenfield Plants
Chris returned to the greenfield question. The concept seems to apply most naturally to existing operations, so how does it work for new ones? Luke said many optimization opportunities in existing plants come from traditional approaches that left islands of automation, siloed data, and systems that evolved piecemeal. In a greenfield project, the proactive approach is to understand why manufacturers ended up with those invisible inefficiencies and design new systems differently.
Ryan said that when Tri Tech starts from a "patch of dirt," it can design information, connectivity, integration, and operator empowerment into the initial design. He gave several examples:
- Integrated power, to get as much information as possible from drive and motor control systems.
- Deep involvement in OT network design, so the network is expandable and robust and generates its own actionable information.
- Library development. Whether a customer starts from a vendor library, such as a Rockwell system, or its own add-on instruction and object library, Tri Tech tries to evolve it into new standards with more operator empowerment.
The purpose, Ryan said, is to avoid burying a hidden factory that someone will have to uncover later.
Tri Tech's Own Hidden Factory: The Panel Shop
Chris noted that he tends to picture a widget manufacturer when he hears "hidden factory." Since Tri Tech is itself on a digital transformation journey, he asked Adam what that looks like inside the company.
Adam explained that Tri Tech has in-house design and manufacturing capability at its St. Louis and Tulsa locations. He said its manufacturing is not as complex as its clients', but at a high level it is similar. Panel fabrication is almost linear: to go from 1,000 panels a year to 2,000, you could double the square footage, the equipment, and the labor. But capital is not endless. He believes many clients face the same situation, with fixed equipment, fixed floor space, labor constraints, and limited capital. So Tri Tech concluded that its hidden factory is within its own four walls, using the people, equipment, and space it already has.
That led the company to create a three-year picture of a "paperless panel shop." Adam described it as a first step toward eliminating waste. Beyond removing paper, it improves communication both internally and with clients. He was candid that the team did not know exactly where it would end up or how it would get there.
They started with people: the fabricators, designers, and frontline managers who have the ideas. That meant encouraging a different way of thinking around lean, efficiency, and a willingness to try things and innovate. Once they had a picture of how to get there, they evaluated technologies. EPLAN became the first step on the design side, followed by smart production modules in the fabrication centers. Adam framed it as people, process, and technology, "just like our customers." He estimated the company is about a year into the three-year journey and making strong progress.
Asked why three years, Adam said Tri Tech had adopted EOS, the Entrepreneurial Operating System, as its business operating system, and the three-year picture comes from that program. It forces you to write down what you have in your head and set things in motion. He described it as a picture of where they want to go, not a detailed prescription of exactly what they will be doing in three years.
Two Sites, One Company: Consistency, Quality, Velocity
Chris asked whether the journey looks different in St. Louis and Tulsa, since multi-site manufacturers usually see differences between sites. Adam said the goal is for both to look the same. He named three guiding principles: consistency, quality, and velocity. On consistency, a panel should have the same look and feel whether it is built in St. Louis or Tulsa, "all the way down to the font" on labels and wires and the printers used. Tri Tech has been in the Tulsa market for about three years.
Adam said clients are ultimately trying to reduce risk when they engage with Tri Tech, and its people, process, and technology help with that. The value differs by client type. For OEMs, design consistency across panels reduces design time, which makes Tri Tech more competitive and speeds time to market. For large EPC firms, Tri Tech designs in a cloud collaboration environment, so the end user, the EPC, and the mechanical and electrical contractors share a single source of truth. Internally, the benefit is proven, repeatable standards. He compared this to PlantPAx-style libraries that are designed around and reused, which he said drives many efficiencies.
Luke called the two shops a concrete example of unlocking hidden factory value. Tulsa came through an acquisition. It brought a strong team with its own processes, reputation, and customers, and it was doing well, but the two sites did things differently. That created friction for everyone else. One project management team had to deal with two groups working two ways. Planners trying to optimize capacity had to work across both. Salespeople wanted quick insight into how fast the company could respond to a new opportunity. Standardizing helps inside each shop because a best practice or innovation in one site can easily be applied in the other. And to sales, project management, and design, the company now looks like one organization. Luke said Tri Tech is operating more efficiently as a result and is "on our path" to extracting that value.
From Serial to Parallel: Stitching the Technology Together
Ryan pointed out that the hidden factory is not always about inefficiency or labor. Sometimes it is simply the way the work is done. The tools Tri Tech introduced let it move panel manufacturing from a serial process to a partly parallel one. He asked Adam to explain the integration between EPLAN and the fabrication equipment: the CNC panel modification center and the wire machine.
Adam described it as an internal version of the islands-of-automation problem: several technologies that need to be stitched together. It starts at design, where components are selected and laid out. In the design platform, the team knows every wire's gauge, color, length, and label. When laying out the subpanel, it knows where every hole needs to go for the DIN rail and wire duct. The aim is to eliminate every keystroke on the shop floor. A file goes straight to the wire machine, which cuts and strips each wire, attaches a ferrule-like end, and prints and applies the label. Because everything exists in a 3D, digital-twin-type environment, DIN rail and duct can be cut to length at the same time.
He contrasted this with the old linear process: get the subpanel, lay it out, check for room, measure, cut the rail, assemble, wire, then QC. Now wires can be cut, the mod center can cut holes in the enclosures, and rail can be cut all at once, with everything brought together at the end. He called the effect on velocity "huge."
The next phase, Adam said, is to take the large amount of data this equipment produces and make it available. Internally, project managers should be able to see project status: where a job is, whether material is on hand, and whether anything is late. Tri Tech also wants to share that information with clients and with its suppliers and distributors as it consumes product.
Chris said this addresses how Tri Tech's own transformation benefits its customers: consistent output from both sites, plus the move toward sharing project data with clients. He said many manufacturers he talks with want this kind of transparency, with faster communication as well as faster projects. Adam tied it back to time to market and ROI: reaching a client faster with an optimized design increases the client's return.
Ryan added that Tri Tech faces the same workforce challenges as every manufacturer. With EPLAN and the connected-worker environment, a worker does not need to be a technically trained schematic reader; the work can be closer to "paint by number." He said this reduces the skill requirement for new hires and opens up a new talent pool of people who can do the job effectively.
A Lesson from the Savannah Bananas
For the wildcard question, Chris learned that two of the three guests had recently been to a Savannah Bananas game. He asked what manufacturers could learn from the team.
One guest joked that the lesson is to set a time limit and stick to it, referring to Banana Ball's two-hour game limit. Another described the event as a cross between a circus, a rock concert, and a baseball game. Luke said his kids called it overwhelming, sensory overload from the music, dances, and constant crowd interaction, and everyone left exhausted.
Luke's takeaway was how relentless the team is about delivering a great fan experience. He connected this to Tri Tech's work with partners, customers, and vendors, and said it fits the three-year picture Adam described, which also includes the customer experience that Tri Tech is trying to keep improving. One of the guests admitted he had never seen a connection between the game and their business until that moment.
Chris added his own view of the "fans first" philosophy. As he understands it, the idea is to list everything people hate about an existing product or experience and imagine it without those things. He cited Banana Ball's ban on bunting, which he said exists simply because bunting is disliked. He also mentioned that tickets in Savannah include free food, and told a story about pocketing an extra hot dog.
Advice for Newcomers to Manufacturing
Chris closed with a question for early-career listeners, who he said make up about a quarter of the audience. He extended it to people entering manufacturing for the first time from other fields, including those joining hard-tech startups or long-established manufacturers.
Ryan said not to be afraid to try new things, believe in yourself, find good mentors, and learn as much as you can from them. He talked about how rewarding it is to see how so many things are made and to watch something start up and come to life for the first time. He said he had no single piece of advice beyond finding someone great to learn from and loving what you do. The others joked that he had taken all the good answers.
Adam also stressed mentorship. He encouraged newcomers to reach out to technology providers, distributors, manufacturing partners, and integration partners, and to lean on them "early and often." He called manufacturing "very much a team sport" and said he thinks the whole industry is rooting for people to succeed. His summary: you are not alone, ask questions, and many people want to help.
Luke said he has had amazing mentors and still has some today. His advice was to stay curious and keep reinventing yourself. The industry is changing so quickly that what you know now may not carry you through your career. He said that if he is not continuing to grow, he will fall behind fast, and he finds that challenge motivating. Chris noted that Luke's point about still having mentors shows mentorship is not only for people just starting out, and called the "stay curious" advice very Ted Lasso.
When we talk about this concept of the hidden factory with customers, it represents the untapped potential to do more in their operations with the resources that they have. An empowered educated workforce is going to be able to themselves also identify where some of those opportunities are.
What is the hidden factory? Well, the team at Tri Tech Automation is about to give us that answer in detail. This is a great new way of thinking about modernization and it's not just focused on legacy manufacturing. We'll also cover how the hidden factory applies to greenfield projects and even Tri Tech's own business as a control systems integrator. I mean, the only way to start this, right, guys? Let's grab those beers.
Cheers, folks. Cheers. Cheers. Thanks for having us, Chris. Oh, get all the way over there. Oh, boy.
Got it. Welcome, gentlemen, to Manufacturing Happy Hour. This is a fun one. I'm back home where I'm from in St. Louis with two individuals that I started my career with. Ryan, we're going to be weaving you into this as well. But as we get started on this conversation, I think we all picked a different beer, which is kind of rare for this show. So, let's go down the line. Adam, what beer did you pick and why? Because there's like some St. Louis identity to some of these.
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. So, yeah, long list here. Great place. But I went with Annie's Red. Annie's Red is for Annie Gunn's. So, born and raised St. Louis. So, throw a little back to Annie Gunn's. Restaurant's been here longer than I have been. Great place down at Chesterfield. If you ever stop into St. Louis, highly recommend it. But that's what led me to this one.
And Luke, you picked the Forest Park Pilsner.
They were out. So, I ended up with the STL IPA. So, it's hot outside. A crisp IPA seemed like a good choice. And it's named after our hometown.
That's a strong beer, too. We're going to see how you're doing by the end of this conversation. That one's no joke. I love that beer, to be clear, but it's not a wimpy beer by any means. And then Ryan, how about yourself?
I got the Stammtisch Pilsner. I'm an equal opportunity consumer. I go through kind of phases. I've been through the IPA phase and everything else. So, I'm going through kind of a clean, crisp pilsner phase.
That's what I'm saying now.
And I was mentioning at the bar, like, if you kind of knew what Stammtisch stood for. And this is a brewery that has a lot of German roots. In fact, for anyone listening, Urban Chestnut, I think, came out around like 2010, shortly after the Anheuser-Busch merger. So, one of the brewers here came out of Anheuser-Busch, so he had that quality background. But his name is Florian. He's also from Germany, so he brought a lot of that German influence to the beers. I believe Stammtisch refers to the locals' table at a bar is what it translates to in some form of German. So,
There you go. I learned something.
Yeah. Yeah. So having great beers today, and before we get into talking about the hidden factory, let's get to know, well, we already know one another, but let's get the audience to know you a little bit. So I mentioned this briefly. Adam and Luke, you were like two of my earliest mentors in the manufacturing sales world. This would have been what, like 2010, I think. I was down here getting ready for sales training, and you guys at the time were the young guys in the office, at least like the young guys with a little bit of experience. That's how I look towards you at that point.
We still feel that way.
Yeah.
Older, experience questionable.
Age is just a number. So we're keeping that youthful mindset here. But I wanted to kind of start off. You are both in leadership roles now. You moved up within Rockwell. You're at Tri Tech now. You've had different tours to get there. I'm very curious, what is a lesson you learned as a salesperson at Rockwell early in those days that has stuck with you to this day? Adam, we'll start with you and then Luke, you'll follow up.
Yeah, I would say, you know, it's hard kind of coming from a technology-based company, especially at Rockwell where you got really great technologies. Probably biggest lesson is, you know, it's business value first, right, and technology second. We got to rightsize the technology. We got to pick the right one, but we really need to start with business outcomes. What do you need to do? And then we'll find a technology, you know, in order to achieve whatever that client's trying to do. So hard to do sometimes when you got the coolest technology out there. You want to talk about it, but yeah, you need to sit on that a little bit.
I like that. Luke, what would you add?
Yeah, I'd second what Adam said. I would have said it if he didn't say it already, but the other thing that I learned really early in my career was just the importance of manufacturing to our national economy and to the local communities in which these plants operated. And I'd say, you know, it was pretty inspiring earlier in my career, and when I got into manufacturing, I don't think I really understood the impact of that. And that's been kind of a fuel to my fire throughout my career. So, I think Adam nailed it. You know, for us doing what we do, it's all about helping others solve problems, create value, create impact. And to know that we've got this cause and this purpose that's impactful is really inspiring.
Yeah, it's interesting that you bring up the importance of manufacturing because I feel like that was something that I didn't really appreciate until maybe seven or eight years into my career, especially as someone, you know, I started my career in Houston, but I moved out to the Bay Area where I was focused on the manufacturing industry, where all my buddies were in software and tech and things like that. And now we're seeing this enthusiasm around manufacturing and manufacturing startups that I didn't necessarily see at the start of my career. So, I like that you brought that up.
I mean, I'll be a little nostalgic, and then Ryan, we'll stop having our little throwback here, but you know, I remember going into that sales office in St. Louis. This was my first time. I had been in engineering and quality up to that point. And I remember that first week, you and the other folks in the office, it felt like you put 100% of your attention on me and getting me spun up. And one, I really appreciate that now, because I felt like I was part of the team right out of the gate, but it also gave me an appreciation for, hey, when young talent comes in, if you can double down on them early, they will be much more self-sufficient and can accelerate a lot quicker, even if you kind of shift up everything you might have had planned that week. So, thank you both for that. I don't know what you guys remember about when I walked in or how freaking green I was back then, but that was a good time starting my career that way.
Awesome. That's great to hear. Thank you.
Yeah. No. Well, so Ryan, we've been walking down memory lane here, so we want to weave you back into this.
Appreciate that.
One of the questions I have for you is, I was just doing my research, and your career has followed a number... you've been in project management, you've been in engineering, you're in business development now. You have been in seemingly, you know, a bunch of the roles you can fall into under the manufacturing umbrella.
Sure.
What has allowed you to be successful pivoting from one role to the next? And is there a common thread across these roles?
Yeah, I think, I mean, you and I were talking beforehand. I think that you come from a mechanical engineering background. I do the same. So early on I started with a, you know, small integrator, kind of just doing mechanical design type stuff. They couldn't keep me busy, and I started picking up some PLC programming type stuff just to stay busy, and had a couple of good mentors early on. But just when I kind of got into it, to be honest, I really just kind of fell in love with the whole system integration, PLC programming, and automation in general, and from that point on finished my college career taking electrical electives and things like that. So really, I mean, it's just kind of really loving every corner of what we do for a living within system integration and automation and controls, I think, is what's kind of kept me motivated, never being afraid to try something new, take on new technologies, new vertical markets, whatever. So that's just kind of been, you know, the way I operate through my whole career. So it's led me to here. So
Yeah, and I appreciate all the different paths you've taken to get to where you are at Tri Tech. I've got a couple over-a-beer style questions, and one of them is about the hidden factory, which you're all very focused on today, which I think is a very cool concept and a great way of describing what a lot of manufacturers are going through in this day and age. But before we get there, Adam, I'm going to ask you this one. How do you describe, as if you're having a drink with someone at Urban Chestnut, what's the real quick... You're at the bar. You got 30 seconds to describe what you do. What would that be?
Yeah. Well, 30 seconds.
Thank God that's him, not me.
No. You, I would say we're very customer focused, you know, first and foremost. We've got the best team of people behind us. You know, our people are our intellectual property. They're the ones that kind of do it. So, you know, if you couple our team with our passion, our drive, our experience with that client, talking business, talking what we want to do, right-sizing the technology, right? That's what we're all about, right? How do we help that customer? How do we help that client win in the global market that they compete in? Because if they're winning, they're investing, and we got some opportunity to earn their business.
So, Luke, I'm going to send this next one to you then, because when we were first chatting months ago about putting this conversation together, you brought up the hidden factory, which I think is... You know what? I'm going to let you take it from here. How do you describe the hidden factory to someone when you're having a drink with them? Because I think this is a great way to think about one of the core challenges a lot of manufacturers are facing right now.
Sure. Yeah. So to simplify it, when we talk about this concept of the hidden factory with customers, it represents the untapped potential to do more in their operations with the resources that they have. And it represents the invisible inefficiencies, the unutilized capacity, you know, the hidden challenges, hidden problems and opportunities that most manufacturing organizations struggle with. Some know they have it, but they don't know how to get after it. They don't know how to quantify it. And then there's a lot of challenges and opportunities that people may not even know they have.
So we all know most manufacturers are struggling and under constant pressure to reduce costs, bring innovations and new product to market faster. They've got to be agile, they've got to be flexible, you know, as they operate in a more globally competitive environment. And so when we talk about the opportunities for them and the concept of the hidden factory, it just seems to kind of resonate and make it feel real as we kind of walk forward and identify specific areas to focus on that will produce results and we can get actionable around.
And it's also, you know, when we talk about the hidden factory too, we've got some customers that we talk to that are focused on optimizing and improving existing operations at existing plants. The same conversation also applies to companies who are thinking about making big investments in greenfield and brownfield expansions too. So in that situation, the conversation turns to be a little bit more proactive. How do we engage the right people earlier in the design of the process and the control system? The operators who have their eyes and their hands on the process every day, to make sure that we give them the tools, the resources, the visibility to readily expose the opportunities for improvement and not recreate this hidden factory and hide those challenges as they, you know, build this new plant.
Yeah. One of the things that really resonates with me about the hidden factory is you're telling manufacturers right out of the gate that there's probably a lot of unused potential right here. We don't need to totally reinvent the wheel, throw a bunch of new stuff on here. Yes, there will be new technologies that get incorporated in it, but it's not like starting from square one, for example. We'll get back to how the hidden factory applies to a greenfield a little later, because I think that's worth jumping into. But my next question is for you, Ryan. What does this look like? How does this play out? How do you help a manufacturer get more out of their existing assets?
Yeah, I mean, it's the old 'it depends' kind of a thing, but just in general from a high level, I mean, it all comes down to understanding what you've got, and it comes down to data. It comes down to understanding the data you got, creating the information out of that data to figure out kind of where your hidden factories lie. A lot of times, like Luke said, a lot of customers know that they've got inefficiencies and kind of know where they are and kind of know what they are. But they can't quantify it without the data, without gathering the information and kind of analyzing the information. So, you know, it kind of starts with gathering on the front end and then analyzing kind of the, you know, the low-hanging fruit, where the biggest improvements are. A lot of these customers are analyzing, trying to figure out, you know, where do they invest their money to expand? Are they going to build a new expansion? Are they going to add on? Are they going to build a new building? Or how can we figure out how to get more with what they currently have? And so, it's just identifying where those opportunities are, you know, working with them to kind of work through the capital process to justify projects, and then, you know, on the back end, kind of proving the ROI at the end of things there. So, you know, again, a lot of customers know that they have issues or they want to do upgrades. They know why. It's just that the quantification and a lot of the information side of things is where they're falling short for the justification.
I'm curious, is there a common thing that you come across when you're looking at this, like right at the beginning of an assessment or when you're evaluating where the potential for improvements might lie? Like, is there some low-hanging fruit you're seeing on a regular basis over and over and over again as you're doing these walkthroughs, engaging with these folks? Luke, do you want it? Looks like you
I got something that comes to mind. Ryan, jump in after me here. But it's a great question, and I'd say, you know, I think every organization that we work with is constantly looking to raise the bar and improve. The one common theme that I think most of, you know, your listeners would probably agree with comes down to people and workforce. You know, everybody in our industry is struggling with the same challenge. Not enough skilled labor and so many unfilled manufacturing jobs.
So a great place, and I should say a common place, for us to start is with a focus on fully empowering and enabling the workforce that they have today. So that could be things like guided work instructions, you know, a different approach to training. You know, could be just, you know, decision support tools, dashboards,
Anything to help the people that are interacting with the process day in, day out either prevent those hidden inefficiencies that come back to bite them and prevent them from getting to where they want to go to, or, when they have them, quickly diagnose and fix and remediate them. So that seems to be one of the more common challenges, because an empowered, educated workforce is going to be able to themselves also identify where some of those opportunities are.
That's a great way to describe it, because you're absolutely right. The number one topic that we hear come up on this show is the challenges around workforce, not being able to get enough people. The Manufacturing Happy Hour audience is extremely familiar with that challenge. I like the way you described it though, because when we jumped into the conversation about the hidden factory, I knew the topic of workforce would come up, but my mind immediately jumped to modernization, right? Getting more analytics. And the way you described it, how can we empower the team that's already there with guided work instructions? That makes a lot of sense. Ryan, it looked like you had something you were going to add to that.
No, it was the same topic. It was workforce related for sure. That's probably the number one thing that we see. You know, it's the retiring, the silver tide, whatever you want to call it. It's the retiring knowledge base leaving the plant. It's the less qualified people entering facilities. It's operator empowerment through HMIs and diagnosis as opposed to requiring a technical person to get into PLC programs. It's the whole mindset around enabling people.
Digital transformation, you know, Ryan hit on it earlier a little bit. It's having that data, right? In order to justify what they need to do. They feel they need to do something, but how do we help them justify it, right? So part of our digital transformation practice as well is trying to help them get those intelligent assets, get that data, make it informative so they can make these business decisions a little bit better, right? And that's underlying: most of the time they don't have the data at their fingertips.
Now, Adam, I was going to have you start this next one for us, but if anyone wants to jump in and take it, I'm curious. Do you have a story that illustrates what bringing out the hidden factory looks like? Whether it's with someone you've worked with before, maybe a combination of clients. I'm very curious if there's a real-world example that one of you wants to pin to this.
You guys are closer to more external ones. I think we'll get into the internal one a little bit.
Okay, I'll put the internal one back on you in a bit. After, what do you see externally?
See that? Yeah, we're doing some work with some, you know, global manufacturing company that we'll leave kind of names out to protect the innocent kind of a thing, but they had a challenge where they were kind of changing ownership hands a little bit, and the new ownership coming in, the new person coming in, is more data hungry and really wants to understand the details of their manufacturing process and efficiencies and inefficiencies. And so they kind of tapped us to come in and do that upfront analysis and understanding kind of exactly where they are on their digital transformation roadmap, right? So figure out where they are, how to get from point A to point B, so they can fully understand big picture-wise where they are, where their inefficiencies are. We're starting to roll out the second facility now. They've seen some immediate improvements on the facility that they're running right now. They've got three facilities across the world, so we've got one more to go after we're finished rolling out to the second facility. So yeah, real-world application. It's dashboarding. It's exposing information that they, again, kind of thought they knew where the inefficiencies were and where they had room for improvement, but seeing it on paper or seeing it on dashboards and providing real-time information is really empowering them to make some real changes within the company.
I love that we got a real-world story here. What I want to kind of end this segment on is, what are the top three things you're all seeing? And some of this might be reiterating some of the things we've talked about, and that's totally okay. But what are the top three ways you're seeing manufacturers unlock their hidden factories? And probably the easiest way to do it is if you each name one that you've seen.
Well, we talked about enabling the worker. Yeah, and I think, you know, that to me is one of the top opportunities and needs, and that relates directly to unlocking the untapped potential in a plant. The other thing, and I'll just kind of build on what Ryan said. So the other opportunity is, you know, we talk a lot about connecting and gathering, connecting assets in the plant floor and producing information in the plant floor, and, building on Ryan's example, one of the key aspects of the solution that we built with the customer that he referenced is the connection between data in the ERP, orders, material flow, coordination of assembly across different international sites, with the performance in the plant. So while we're working at the equipment level enabling an operator, we're also working with them to gather the right data from the ERP to marry that with, we'll call it, OT-level system data. So there's a great opportunity there, I think, for a lot of manufacturing organizations.
That's a huge one. So I'll say we already have two, right? Workforce is obviously right on that list, empowering that workforce, but connecting data to the ERP, coordinating with performance, the different facilities. I love that one. Ryan or Adam, anything you want to add to this list?
I mean, you know, the typical OEE-type applications from a packaging line standpoint, quality-type projects and exposing data around quality and product rejection, minimizing bad product production. Yeah, we've done so many projects with so many different customers, and it's like, they're all different. They all have different needs and they're all focusing on different challenges. Obviously we talked about the people stuff, but there's room for improvement on almost any packaging line you've ever seen. And if there's not, then maybe it is time to start expanding and build that greenfield plant. But yeah, I would say that OEE is probably one of the big ones that you get into that you really start exposing some hidden factory potential. Yeah.
Yeah. I was kind of thinking back and struggling a little bit, because every customer is a bit unique in that journey, right? That's what's fun walking through this with them, whether it's industry related, regulations related, size of the company, scaling, quality, I need more yield, people, we kind of talked about it. So again, you can't walk in with technology of, hey, we need to look at your network, we need to look at data collection, we need to look at modernizations. It's that process, right? There's not really one silver bullet that we can come in and say, hey, this is what you need to be Industry 4.0, here you go, here's the part number. So that's what's fun about the journey.
Sitting down and taking an outside look with a client, you know, sometimes they get kind of buried in their ways, and so having somebody outside coming in is the fun part.
Well, for the audience that's out there, I'll do a quick summary on this. We've talked empowering the workforce. We've talked leveraging that data that's in the ERP. Ryan, you were just talking about OEE. And then Adam, I think you made a very great point to round that out: hey, everyone's going to be different. So we're naming a few of the top ones we've seen, but that's not necessarily the rule to the whole thing either. You know, I did remember the question I was going to ask before we moved on to talking about Tri Tech's own journey in all of this. I'm very curious to know what the hidden factory conversation or exploration looks like when you're working with a greenfield type of facility, because hidden factory intuitively makes a lot of sense when you're talking about unlocking potential within what's already there. But Luke, you're the one that brought up the greenfield aspect. So how does this play out in the context of someone that's building, expanding, etc.?
I'll start, but I'm going to quickly hand it over to Ryan because he's got a great example, I think, based on some recent work he's been doing. But you're right. So it intuitively kind of makes you think about how do you optimize what you already have? But a lot of the reason that people are finding these opportunities to optimize is because of, let's say, traditional approaches, right? And they've ended up with islands of automation, siloed data, systems that have kind of evolved over time. So it's really about taking a proactive approach, thinking about, okay, what are all the reasons that we are where we are today, or many manufacturers are where they are today, with these invisible inefficiencies that they struggle to find? Let's take a different approach to looking at how we design and implement a new system. So Ryan, why don't you build on that, man.
Yeah, anytime you have the opportunity to work with starting from scratch, from a greenfield, patch of dirt, whatever, to be able to take that opportunity to kind of design in the information, the connected, the integration, the empowered operator, everything into that initial design is pretty rewarding and fun to see. And the reasoning behind it is, whether it's integrated power, being able to get all the information that you can out of your drive systems, out of your motor control systems, or heavily involved with the OT network design to make sure that you've got an expandable network that's robust, that in itself generates its own information that's actionable, all the way down to developing the library. If you're starting from a canned library, whether it's a Rockwell system or whatever, or maybe the customer has their own add-on instruction and object library, kind of taking them to the next level, taking them from where their library started to evolving that library to their new standards, more operator empowerment, things like that. So being forward thinking on the front end of things when you're, again, blessed enough to work in a greenfield, brand-new environment is something that we definitely focus on to make sure, again, that you don't bury some hidden factory that somebody else has to come uncover later on in life. So
That's a good point. You don't want to get rid of some potential that might be there, like burying a hidden factory, like you said. So let's take this internal to Tri Tech Automation as well, because when I think hidden factory, I think of a widget manufacturer first and foremost. That's probably where my head defaults to. But you're a system integrator, so I'm very curious to hear what your hidden factory journey has looked like within Tri Tech, because I also think it's highly relevant that, hey, this is what you're preaching to your customers, the folks you work with, the manufacturers you engage with, but you're also going through your own digital transformation journey. So Adam, since you've got probably the most visibility internally, if you can kick us off, and then we'll get into some other detailed questions from there.
Yeah. No, absolutely. So yeah, our hidden factory starts with: we've got in-house design capability, in-house manufacturing capability, both in our St. Louis and Tulsa locations. And our manufacturing process is not as complex as our clients'. I don't want to say that, but at a very high level, it's very similar. You know, fabrication of panels is almost a linear thing. If I'm building a thousand panels a year and I want to get to 2,000 panels a year, I double my square footage in my space, I double my equipment, I double my labor force, and voila, I'm there. Capital isn't endless, right? And that's what I think a lot of our clients are kind of facing. I've got fixed equipment, I've got fixed floor space, and we've got the labor aspect, and they don't have endless capital by any means. So when we kind of looked at that in our own manufacturing process, that didn't make sense, right? Our hidden factory is within our four walls, with the existing people that we have, the existing equipment we have, with the existing square footage we have.
So that's how we kind of started down that journey. It led us to a couple of places. We kind of created a three-year picture that we had of a paperless panel shop, right? That was kind of the first step of trying to get rid of waste, and outside of the obvious of getting rid of paper, it's increased communication, both internally and external with the clients. So we kind of headed down that, and honestly we didn't really know where we were going to go, how we were going to get there. Like I said, we've got three years to kind of get there. And you start with our people: our fabricators, our designers, the frontline managers. Those are the ones with the ideas. So we first started with our people, kind of getting a different way of thinking, right? Lean, efficiency, and what can we do? We've got to try some stuff, we've got to be innovative. Then we kind of went to the technology set, tried to look at some technologies once we kind of painted that picture of how we are going to get there with technology. So again, trying to define, it's very similar to our customers we're kind of talking about. I think they all have fixed assets, fixed floor space, fixed people, and a lot of these challenges start with our... Then now we've got to go evaluate some technologies, and we kind of headed down that path and found a great partner in EPLAN, which was kind of our first step from a design perspective, and then that went into our smart production modules, down into our fabrication centers. Then process. We've got people, we've got process, we've got technologies, just like our customers. So we kind of went down that path internally, and I'd say we're about a year into our three-year journey and making some great strides.
Why three years, out of curiosity, right? Like one, two, five. I feel like you could have found ways to say it's going to take, you know, different ways to fit into different time frames. Why was three years the time frame that you ultimately said, "Hey, this will push us to go quickly and it's also achievable"?
Yeah. Great thing. So another evolution of our company, I guess, is EOS, the Entrepreneurial Operating System for business, is kind of what that stands for. So we adopted that internally as our operating system, and part of that is that three-year picture, right? And we have it documented. I think we all in our heads, right, have this idea where we want to kind of go, and it kind of forces you to
kind of put it down, put things in motion. And so yeah, honestly, the three-year comes from their program more than anything. And it's a picture, right? It's like, hey, this is where we want to kind of go. We don't know how we want to get there, versus, hey, in three years we want to be doing X. It's like, man, can we paint that picture?
Yeah. No, no, that makes sense that it fits into an existing program that was there. You mentioned that you've got the facility here in the St. Louis area. You've got that facility in the Tulsa area. Does this hidden factory journey look different between the two facilities? And I would say the reason I'm asking this is I would imagine that pretty much any manufacturer that's going on this journey that has multiple facilities, it's going to look a little different between site A, site B, site C, etc.
Yep. That's part of our plan as well. The other thing we kind of live behind is, you know, consistency, quality, and velocity, right? And we can kind of get into those as well. But from a consistency perspective, no matter if it's built in St. Louis or if it's built in Tulsa, same common look, feel, you know, all the way down to the font that we use on labels and wires is consistent across, the printers we use are consistent across. So, no, I mean, at the end of the day, our clients want a good high quality product and we can build it at either location and have no issues doing it there. So, yeah, we kind of addressed that early. We've been in Tulsa about three years, in that market.
So, consistency, quality, what was the third one?
Velocity.
Velocity. Yeah, that one makes a lot of sense there. All right. You said we could go into those a little bit more. What would you add to that about those three?
There's internal and external aspects to it. I mean, if you boil it down, you know, from an external perspective, right, at the end of the day our customers are probably aligning risk as they engage with us, right? And they're engaged in a project, it's all kind of down risk, and I think our tools, our people, our process, and our technologies help reduce the risk for them. Part of it's technology, a lot of it's kind of process. So when you talk about consistency, we want to help that client, and we've got OEM clients, we've got end user clients, you know, we're working with large EPC firms, and they all have a little bit different value prop. And so that kind of takes a little bit of a flavor, but from a consistency perspective, you know, for an OEM, we want to drive consistency across panels to draw down design time, right? If we draw down design time, we could be more competitive for that client. We can be faster time to market. That increases the velocity. They obviously want that consistency too. And for a large EPC firm, some of the technologies, you know, collaboration, cloud environments, some of the technologies that we have deployed have helped us with that, where we design in a cloud environment. So now there's a single source of truth for us, their end user, the EPC, the mechanical contractor, the electrical contractor. So each of those have a little bit, you know, I could sit here and talk all day about each of those value propositions, but for our end users, and then internally especially, right? Internally, it's having those standards, repetitive, they're proven. It's almost like, you know, the PlantPAx, you know, we're going to create these libraries that we design around and we're going to reuse those over and over again. And it drives a ton of efficiencies internally for us.
Yeah, just kind of building on what Adam said and your question about the two different panel shop locations. It is a great specific example of how we've unlocked value in the concept of our hidden factory. So the Tulsa location for us came in via an acquisition, and we brought on a great team of people with their own processes, you know, their own reputation, their own customers. They had their way of doing things and they were doing well, but we were doing things different in two spots. And so, you know, when you think about it, we've got one project management team that needs to interact with two different groups of people doing things two different ways. We've got planning folks in our organization that are trying to optimize the capacity that we have. So, you know, doing that across two different locations, doing things two different ways. We've got a sales team and a sales organization that wants, you know, quick insight into how quickly can we respond to this new opportunity or this new challenge that my customer just presented me. So, all of those things are harder when we've got disconnected locations or different locations doing different things. So, we recognized that right away.
So, so far now that we, you know, just as Adam mentioned consistency, the consistency is great within kind of the four walls of each of those plants, because, you know, when we've got one best practice, we can easily go implement it somewhere else; one innovation, it applies. But now to other stakeholders in our organization, whether it's sales or project management or design team, it kind of looks like one organization. And so just because of that, we're operating more efficiently, more effectively. So there was value to unlock between those two different groups within our organization. And we've extracted, you know, we're on our path to extracting that right now.
Kind of on that same, I mean, digital transformation journey. We're talking about unlocking a hidden factory. I mean, by incorporating the tools that we have, we've completely changed the way that we manufacture panels from a serial perspective to kind of parallel path some things because of the tools we put in place. I don't know, Adam, you want to talk a little bit about, I mean, we haven't really mentioned the CNC machine, the panel mod center and the wire machine, and the tight integration between EPLAN and our design tools and the fabrication side of things. I mean, by taking, you know, two processes that essentially happen serially between modifying a panel and then, you know, laying things out and then taking wires, running it through, the fact that we know the wire lengths and everything else, we can kind of do some things in parallel with creating wires and modifying panels and things like that. And, you know, so hidden factory type stuff isn't always inefficiencies or labor related issues. It might just be the way you're doing things. There's a better way of doing it that kind of cuts out time in the process.
Yeah, great point.
Yeah. Yeah, for sure. Thanks, Ryan. On a technology front, you know, kind of a couple things. So, we have these technologies. So, it's kind of like, you know, just like our customers, kind of islands of automation, but how do we stitch them all together? In our case, you know, it starts with the design. At the design phase is when we're, you know, selecting, picking components, laying them out in a certain manner. But within the tool technology and our design platform, I know every wire, every gauge, every color, every length, what the label is. When I lay out the sub panel, I know where all the holes need to be mounted for the DIN rail, for the duct and all this. And so what Ryan's talking about is that, you know, seamlessly we're trying to eliminate every keystroke that we have on the plant floor from our design aspect, but we take a file, we dump it right into our Komax wire machine, and it cuts, strips, welds almost like a ferrule, prints the label and slides it on. That could be done at the same time, because it is all in a 3D digital twin type environment. All the DIN rail and duct can be cut to length at the same time. So instead of, kind of, building a panel was a very linear process of I've got to get the sub panel, I lay it out, I make sure I've got room, I measure, I cut the DIN rail, I lay it down, I assemble it, I wire it, I go through QC. Right now I can cut the wire, I can go in our invent mod center program and cut out all the holes in the enclosures, I can be cutting the DIN rail at the same time, and then these things can kind of get married together at the end.
So when you talk about velocity, that's huge, because we can kind of parallel path instead of that linear path. So yeah, we've deployed a lot of technologies, but it's stitching it together, just like our customers, right? We have certain sets of equipment, but they all seamlessly work together and they're producing big data. In our next phase that we're bringing in is how do we pull that data up, right? Internally communicate to our PMs the status of the project, where it's at, do I have product, do I have material, is it here, is it late? And then also exposing that to our client. That's really where we're headed, is taking that information, getting it internal, even external, our suppliers as well. We've got great suppliers and distributors we work with, and we want to be able to share that information with them as well as we're consuming product.
I was going to ask you how unlocking your own hidden factory is impacting the manufacturers you serve, but you kind of already gave the perfect answer for that. Like between the two facilities having the same look and feel. That's huge, right? You feel like you're working with one company versus being like, "Oh, are we working with Tulsa? Are we working with St. Louis?" Whichever it is, right? And then, Adam, I love that cherry you just put on top there where you're talking about getting that next set of data to the project managers, then to the clients as well. That's where I think a lot of manufacturers are trying to go right now. Certainly the ones that I speak with, it's like, how do we make what's taking place more transparent? Not only make our projects go faster, have that higher velocity, but get that communication to have that higher velocity as well.
Yeah.
Time to target, return on investment, right? If we can get to that client a little bit faster and with an optimized design, that return on investment is that much greater.
We fight the same people challenges that every manufacturer does as well. So, EPLAN and, you know, the connected worker environment there, you don't have to be a technically trained, schematic reading type individual. It can be a paint by number type of thing. So, we're taking a lot of the skill requirement out of, you know, the people that we're hiring. The people we're able to hire, it opens up a whole new talent pool for us that's able to do an effective job. So,
Yeah,
impressive technology for sure.
So, we're here towards the end of our conversation and I always end with a wildcard type of question. Actually, I've got another question after this, but this is an easy one. This is a choose your own adventure. Yeah, take that sip of beer first so you're prepared. But is there anything you wish I would have asked you specifically about the hidden factory, about manufacturing here in St. Louis where we're hanging out right now? Is there anything you wish would have come up in this conversation? Sometimes people bring up the topic of sports, but the baseball season is not going too well here right now. So I wouldn't be surprised if that one's coming up.
Tough.
Actually, which one of you was at the Savannah Bananas recently? You were there. What? Two out of the three folks were at the Savannah Bananas. Okay. Well, this is going to be fun. I saw the Savannah Bananas a little over a year ago in Savannah. Based on the fan experience, the vibe of the event, this is going to be a little cheesy, but what is a lesson that you learned from the Savannah Bananas that could apply to manufacturers?
Oh boy.
Think about this one for a second.
Apply a time limit or schedule and stick to it. I mean, that 2-hour game, man, it's like, in true.
That's true. Yeah, that is a rule they have in Banana Ball, is the name of it. I assume most folks out there listening are familiar with it, but Banana Ball, it's like the game doesn't go longer than 2 hours. They have a time limit.
Yeah, it's a cross between a circus, a rock concert, and a baseball game, kind of all rolled into one. That's the way I kind of knew it. It was pretty cool.
What was it? Just describe what it was like being there, because I think everyone is familiar with the Savannah Bananas by now, but I think most people are still on the waiting list to get tickets. So, you are two rare individuals that have gotten to see this in person before. Just describe the experience, Luke.
I'll take some words from my kids. They said it was overwhelming. I think they were over, sensory overload is how I would describe it. And, you know, the music, the dances and all the crowd interaction, it was non-stop. When my kids left, they were exhausted. And I was, too. So,
Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah, I think one of the takeaways for me from that is the thing to admire is how just relentless they are with delivering a great experience to the fans. And I think, you know, in our business, we're all working with partners, working with customers, working with vendors. I think that's a great takeaway, because it's incredible how much effort they put into that fan experience, and, you know, I think it aligns really well with what we talk about, when Adam was talking about a three-year picture. The other part of that picture is our customer experience, and we're relentlessly trying to evolve that, too. So,
I never really thought that there was any correlation between what I saw last Saturday night and our business, but now I do.
His fans first philosophy is pretty, I mean, it is apparent just the way they go about it now in Savannah, because part of his philosophy is take everything you hate about the existing product or service and whiteboard what it would be like if that didn't exist, right? Like that's why they, what is it, I think they don't allow bunting in Banana Ball because, yeah, bunting sucks. That is the simple reason they don't do it. In Savannah, your ticket gives you free burgers and hot dogs as well, which is pretty great. You know, I remember being made fun of by my wife down there because I snagged a hot dog, then I threw another one in my pocket. And she's like, "Are you just going to hoard all of them?" Like, I'm going to eat both of them, but how often do you get to buy a pocket? Not even buy. How often do you get a pocket hot dog at a game? So, no, I love the philosophy. I knew there were parallels there, so I'm glad we got to weave that in here at the end.
I am going to ask one more question: advice for one of the segments of our audience, because we started our conversation where I started my career working with you, Adam, and Luke in 2010 here in St. Louis. A good quarter of our audience that listens to this show are people that are new to the manufacturing industry. They're, you know, just trying to learn what's going on, what this industry is all about. I'd like to hear from all of you, and Ryan, we'll start with you because I feel like we kind of excluded you right there at the start this time. So, you get to lead this one off. What is your advice for young career talent getting into this industry?
Getting into this industry. Oh man, I think, yeah, just don't be afraid to try new things. Believe in yourself. Find good mentors and learn as much as you can from them. I mean, I know it's kind of all over the place, but, you know, it's just like I said, I love what you do. I mean, this is one of the coolest things. We get to see how so many things are made and done and
You know, get to be a part of that. I love the, you know, starting up something for the first time, seeing it come to life for the first time. I mean, there's so many rewarding parts of what we do. I don't have any one single thing of advice, just, you know, find somebody great to study under and love what you do, I guess.
That was, no, that was a good smorgasbord, and I should add one, I'll add one more thing to that, like—
Took all our answers.
We were thinking. I'll give you something else to think on while I add another element to this question. I mentioned early career talent, right? But there are a lot of people that are entering or going to be entering the manufacturing industry for the first time ever, especially as we see more hard tech startups coming into the space, people moving to work for, let's say, manufacturers that have been doing this for decades or centuries and things like that. So this could be not only for early career talent, but folks that might be entering this industry for the first time. So Luke and Adam, you both have an opportunity to answer this yet. I know you're still, you're like having a personal debate as to who's going to answer it first.
Ryan was pretty selfish by taking all the good ideas.
I like how Ryan said he didn't have a good answer, but he gave all the answers right there.
Yeah.
Go ahead.
Yeah, along the same lines, find mentors. But there's a lot of people in the space that are passionate about it. We obviously are, too. But yeah, if you're getting into the space, reach out, find people. There's technology providers, distributor partners, manufacturing partners, technology partners, integration partners. Lean on them. Lean on them early and often to try to help. You know, I think it's very much a team sport. I think the entire industry is rooting for people to win. So yeah, reach out, be inquisitive, and really kind of get some help. And Ryan hit it hard: you find a good mentor, and that could come from a variety of different places. But yeah, that would kind of be it. You know, you're not here alone. Team sport, ask questions. There's a lot of people out there that want to help.
All right, so we doubled down on mentorship. So Luke, I see you thinking, it's like, man, I really wish I could have given the mentorship answer.
I've had some amazing mentors. I have some today, and I know some of them are listening. So thanks to them.
Great advice, but go ahead. No, I want to hear your answer, but I have a follow-up question after that.
Sure. I was going to add to what these guys said. Stay curious and continue to reinvent yourself. Our industry is changing so rapidly. It's very exciting. And, you know, to think that what you know today is going to get you through the rest of your career, depending on where you're at, may not be the case. So stay curious, continue to reinvent yourself. There's so many great resources for knowledge out there, and, you know, I certainly feel like it's kind of the space and the time, like if I'm not continuing to grow, I'm going to fall behind real fast. And I like that. It's a great challenge, it's a great motivator, and it excites me and inspires me.
So I don't actually think I need to ask one other question, because I was going to say, we think of mentorship sometimes from like, hey, you're young, you're getting into your career, right? But you explicitly say, I still have a ton of mentors, and you've been doing this for a little while. So I feel like you gave a great answer on—
Like a little while.
Yeah.
I was hoping we'd, you know, razz one another a little bit. I was worried we were going to get to the end of this and that wouldn't have happened. But no, I think that's a great way to look at it. Stay curious, a very Ted Lasso style piece of advice. Another pop culture reference we were talking about before the conversation started. So hey Ryan, Luke, Adam, I really appreciate you guys taking the time to hang out here on Manufacturing Happy Hour. This has been a fun conversation, and looking forward to sharing this one out with the listeners.
Very cool. Thank you.
Thanks so much, Chris. Appreciate it as well.
Cheers. Cheers, buddy.
Stand up for this. Thank you, buddy.
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