Automating Kentucky Bourbon: Opus Integration's Co-Founders on Data, PlantPAx, and the Modern Distillery
Manufacturing Happy Hour
Recorded over bourbon in the library room of Watch Hill Proper in the Louisville area, this episode of Manufacturing Happy Hour features Don Ault and Scott Feldmeier, co-founders of the systems integrator Opus Integration. Earlier that day, the host had toured Heaven Hill's production plant outside downtown Louisville with them. The conversation asks what a modern distillery looks like, what data and automation mean in an industry that can't keep up with demand, and how to bring IT departments, executives, and floor operators along. Both founders argue that the process of making bourbon hasn't changed. What has changed is how the process is instrumented, networked, and measured, and they expect that to keep expanding.
How Opus Got Into Bourbon
Asked how he describes Opus's bourbon work, Don says it began through a distributor who introduced them to a bourbon account. The first request was small: a report built with Vantage Point that would show management what the distillery was doing in batching. The next question was whether Opus knew anything about "this PlantPAx stuff," and that is how their distillery work took off.
Scott describes the company differently. His wife used to tell people he "works in robotics," which he says was from his automotive days. He now calls Opus "playing with big boy toys and getting paid for it." He describes the culture as family-driven. As the founders get older, he says, they wanted a place where they could bring in young engineers and teach them what they know, including lessons learned from their own past mistakes, while having fun doing interesting work.
Why Kentucky, and What Bourbon Means There
For a "Bourbon 101" segment, Don explains Kentucky's bourbon history in two parts. The region's culture came largely from Europe, where alcohol had social importance. The local resources also fit: bourbon is grain-based, and corn, wheat, barley, and rye were all readily available nearby. The host adds Irish and Scottish immigration and the limestone that affects the water.
The host cites a figure he had read before the interview: bourbon production has grown about 435% since around 1999. Scott says that when he moved to Kentucky he didn't know there were more barrels of bourbon in the state than people. He describes the economic impact in terms of the number of companies and startups and the investment flowing into bourbon. He also describes a social impact: bourbon shows up as furniture, wall decorations, barrel heads, and basements designed like the tasting room they were sitting in. He calls it "just a part of life," like the Kentucky Derby. Don adds that bourbon is a leading contributor of tax revenue to the Commonwealth's budget.
A Two-Minute Distillery Tour
The host notes that most people picture bourbon making as the showroom copper stills. At Heaven Hill they saw large-scale industrial production. Don summarizes the process, which he says works the same way at every distillery:
- Grain receiving and storage in silos.
- Milling the grain into a finer meal.
- Batching the meal with water and "setback," which is material carried over from previous mashing operations.
- Fermentation for three to seven days, producing a beer. Don thinks this runs somewhat longer than fermentation for ordinary beer.
- Distillation through a column to extract the alcohol.
- Byproduct handling, where the remaining material eventually becomes farm material or, in most cases, animal feed.
The host found the byproduct stream a strong example of sustainable manufacturing, since material that would otherwise be discarded goes into livestock feed and pet food.
From Manual Plants to Fully Automated Ones
Scott contrasts the older facility they toured, where some processes date back to the 1990s and material was moved around manually, with the distilleries Opus is building now. In those newer plants, he says, "everything is automated": the valves and the paths. He sees data collection as the part that is starting to evolve and will evolve further. In his experience, once a plant starts collecting production data, each data point leads to demand for the next. Distillation is where Opus is busiest right now, he says, but OT data collection is something the company has done for years, and he looks forward to going deeper into it with distillers.
Don describes the modern distillery in terms of infrastructure. He says the industry is in the middle of the Industry 4.0 revolution. The job now is to lay down IT/OT infrastructure and communications between the two systems, built for speed and bandwidth so data can move as needed, and to future-proof facilities for what comes next, all while keeping the plant running. Part of the work, he says, is educating IT staff who tend to see the plant network as just like their own infrastructure, when the OT side is different.
Getting IT and Operations to Talk
Asked how they avoid finger-pointing between operations and IT, Scott credits Don. Scott says he has been in controls a long time but doesn't "speak IT" well. He jokes that his approach is to get "a hub big enough to bring all the data in." Don, he says, understands both sides and can tell IT teams how the control system will tie into theirs while protecting operations' interests.
Don compares it to herding cats and describes two extremes. Heaven Hill has a strong IT team that wants to understand OT. At other distillers, IT would rather ignore the plant network and pretend it isn't there. The common factor, he says, is education: what OT infrastructure looks like, how it differs from IT, and why the two should be segmented with a good firewall between them even though data will pass across it. He argues that isolated operations networks sitting off to the side, disconnected from the enterprise and the internet, are a thing of the past. Control systems need updates and patches and must keep Microsoft "happy," so the architecture is no longer as static as older software and systems were.
Advice for Greenfield "Smart Distilleries"
Opus is working on ground-up distilleries, and the host asks how to build in data capability from the start. Don's answer: "bandwidth, bandwidth, bandwidth." He notes that not long ago the industry moved from 10-megabit to 100-megabit networks for many devices. Equipment and backbones with 25-gigabit capability now exist. He doesn't think the industry is there yet, but he calls one gigabit a good base level. He points out that servers are sometimes redundant and need bandwidth to communicate with each other. Data collection on top of that, he says, will become very important in the future.
Operators Who Want More Automation
The host was struck that their escort at Heaven Hill, Josh, who works on the operations floor, said he wants more automation. That runs against the common assumption that floor workers resist change. Don calls Josh a unique individual and Heaven Hill a forward-thinking company committed to becoming a data-driven facility with a complete digital transformation at the process level. He says explaining the technology can sometimes feel like asking a caveman what kind of smartphone he wants. Heaven Hill's people, he says, have dug in to understand it. Opus brings them to trainings so they can learn together, and the company's IT team has attended an automation fair. Heaven Hill is also taking a broader view, aiming to pull data from multiple distilleries or manufacturing facilities up to the corporate executive level to make decisions based on KPIs and metrics.
What Executives Overlook
Asked for advice to executives and floor staff, Scott focuses on something he says gets overlooked. Everyone wants data, trends, graphs, and reports, the "pie in the sky." But none of it exists without code being written and the right smart devices being installed, meaning the correct type of flow meter or instrument in the right place. That foundation has to be in place before the OT layer can push anything upward.
Don argues the effort has to involve every layer: maintenance technicians, operators, and management, not just an executive driving it from the top. He says the way Opus trains young engineers reflects this. It's no longer about designing I/O networks, adding a PLC, and "call it good." Engineers now design the network layer and the hardware architecture, with the eventual question of what information can be passed back to data scientists.
He also highlights PlantPAx, which he says Opus uses heavily in distilleries. Its libraries, he says, are rich in statistics and data points: how many times a valve failed in the last few weeks versus the last few months, a valve's cycle time, how many hours a motor has run before being serviced. In his view, this lets maintenance move from reactive to proactive.
What a "Smart Device" Actually Looks Like
Pressed for a concrete example, Scott starts with the basics: should a point be discrete or analog, and what information is actually needed? From there it can go up to adding HART communications so the plant can tell whether devices are healthy. He mentions situations where tank level is measured with pressure transmitters and others where actual level transmitters are used. The point, he says, is to understand the process and choose the correct device, rather than grabbing whatever is available when in a hurry to get running. He warns that "nine times out of 10" such stopgaps never leave: they get deferred to the next shutdown, and the next, and stay in place.
This, he says, is why someone like Josh welcomes the change. With the right devices and correct programming, the system is data-rich and makes his job easier. Josh sees it as a tool that makes him more effective, not a threat to his job.
Don gives an example of overcoming operator fears. The first PlantPAx sequencer he installed for Heaven Hill was a simple operation. Bulk 50% caustic is diluted to roughly 3–5% for rinsing equipment during clean-in-place (CIP) cycles. The transfer and flush-water addition had been done manually, and inevitably someone would leave a valve open and make the solution far too weak or too strong. Operators were initially wary of losing the ability to adjust it themselves. A couple of years later, Don says, they tell him they don't even think about it anymore.
Scott adds an example from the motor control center (MCC) they had walked through: the choice between a motor starter and a drive. He says Opus has found many times that a drive would have given much more flexibility in the process. The question is whether the process needs that flexibility or whether it's just an exhaust fan that turns on and off.
The Biggest Game-Changer: PlantPAx
Asked for the most game-changing technology of recent years for bourbon, Don immediately names PlantPAx and its pre-built library. As a systems integrator, he says, it lets him tie graphical objects and code objects together simply. It comes with graphical symbology, multilingual functionality, a universal look and feel, and predefined alarms he can customize. Building all that used to take hours, and every site's version would have looked a little different. A unified library, he says, has been a game changer.
Scott admits that, from the programming side, he initially felt something like the operators' fear. Seeing the ready-made objects, he wondered whether his future job would just be tying things together. Once he understood the power and flexibility of configuring and connecting them, he says, he came to see it as a very powerful tool.
Manufacturing Beyond Bourbon in Louisville
Asked what other industries define the region, the co-founders list several. One mentions time spent on tugboats and describes the tugboat industry centered around Paducah; a tugboat, he says, is "a floating factory." They cite automotive: an EV plant going in near Elizabethtown, Ford plants, Toyota, and the supplier manufacturers around them. They also mention glass manufacturing. UPS has its international hub in Louisville, and much industry revolves around it, including storage warehouses and third-party fulfillment centers. Amazon is active in the area and building another facility up the road near Cincinnati. As a result, they see a great deal of material handling work. Scott notes that for a while, saying "systems integrator" in Louisville made most people think of material handling.
On what else characterizes Louisville, they mention frequent music festivals, at least one nearly every weekend. They also describe a diverse population because many people move there for work. Locals, they joke, can spot newcomers by how they answer "what school did you go to" and by how they pronounce "Louisville." The advice they were given is to "let it fall out of your mouth." The host adds the city's indie rock scene, including My Morning Jacket.
The Partnership
The host describes Scott as more "fly by the seat of your pants" and Don as more detail-oriented, with Don focused on process and Scott on discrete automation. Scott says they knew this going in, and it's what makes the partnership work. Each is good at what the other struggles with, and Christine, whom he mentions by name, often says they balance each other out. With young engineers joining, Scott can teach discrete, safety, motion, and robotics, while Don teaches process. Scott jokes that Don is still trying to turn him into a process guy and he hopes to retire first.
Don agrees their diversity of strengths and experience is the key. He had known of Scott for a long time before they partnered, and he says he couldn't find a better partner anywhere in the automation industry. The exchange includes some ribbing, with Don taking a jab at Scott's Purdue education.
Each had given the host a question for the other. Don asked how well Scott documents code. Scott said he relies on Logix to "self-document": someone opening a program at 3 a.m. doesn't want to read a novel, just to know which bit to turn on. Don countered by imagining 40-character tag names. Scott asked whether Don is "Netgear certified." Don explained that Scott likes to use "hub" when he means "network switch" to needle him, because Don's OCD won't let the two terms be treated as synonyms. Don says "hub" and "PlantPAx" are his two hot-button words, and he has told vendors calling on the account to try working them into conversation.
Their Bets for the Next Few Years
For the bourbon industry's future, Scott draws on time he spent on the barrel side before distillation work. He says there is talk, and some early activity, around tracking bourbon as it moves through the rickhouses. Barcoding, RFID, and other approaches have been discussed for years. His bet is that the industry will reach the point of actually tracking barrels and gathering data on how much is lost to the angel's share, what temperatures barrels experience, and more.
Don agrees that tracking is where the industry is heading. Bourbon spends three, five, seven, even 12 years in the warehouse. Knowing temperatures at different levels of a building and contrasting them is, he says, where data scientists are now digging in. Every distiller approaches aging differently: some use cold, damp brick structures, others wooden ones, and some even play music to their barrels. Everyone is trying to understand what separates a good barrel from a great one. Now that the tools exist to do that analysis, Don believes it will take the industry to the next level.
Bourbon production has jumped 435% since like 1999. You know, the distilleries that we're working on currently, everything is automated. The valves are automated, the paths. The data collection side of it is a piece I think we're starting to see evolve, and it's going to evolve even more. What does a modern distillery really look like? What do data and automation mean to an industry where no matter how much bourbon gets made, there's just no way to keep up with all the demand? And why is bourbon manufacturing so meaningful to Louisville and communities across Kentucky? All of this today as we chat with the co-founders of a systems integrator that's bringing distilleries across the state into the future.
Hey Don, Scott, cheers. First of all, this is the way that manufacturing happy hour is meant to be done, over a couple bourbons in the land of bourbon. We're here at Watch Hill Proper in the Louisville area. The first question is, when you're sipping on bourbon with someone, how do you describe what Opus does? Don, let's start with you, and I want to hear your answer next, Scott.
Well, how does Opus do bourbon within Kentucky? That's an interesting question. As a system integrator, we worked with the distributor, and the distributor kind of got us introduced to a bourbon account. It started out just looking at a simple little thing, I think it was VantagePoint, saying, hey, we need a report to take a look at what we're doing batching-wise to turn over to management, and can you help us with something like that? And so that's how we got introduced to bourbon initially. And then the next thread that got tugged on is, do you know anything about this PlantPAx stuff? And that was the next introduction to it, and that's really kind of how we got started within the bourbon industry.
Scott, what about yourself, as far as describing? Yeah, describing Opus, the way I typically describe it to most people, because my wife would always try to say my husband works in robotics, and people think, what, you know, R2-D2, C-3PO? Like, no, that's when I worked in the automo— When I talk about Opus, I generally liken it to playing with big boy toys and getting paid for it. I like it because we've got a very, if I'm describing Opus as a company, it's a very family-driven environment. We really cherish our employees. We wanted a place where we could, we're getting older, so we wanted to be able to bring young guys in and teach them kind of some of the things we know, a lot of things we wish we didn't know because we made mistakes in the past, and create a company where we can go and do some really cool things but have a lot of fun doing it at the same time.
And we're going to get into both the dynamics of your company, and we're going to talk about technology and how it impacts bourbon making as we get further into this interview. But first, you know, we got to do a little, let's say, Bourbon 101 for the casual listener that might not know as much about the bourbon space. So let's do a little history. You know, how did Kentucky become the bourbon capital that it is today? Don, you look like you want to lead this.
Wow. Well, now you're going to challenge my history and knowledge. So bourbon just naturally came to this area. A lot of the culture of the area was very much from Europe, and so alcohol was always kind of an important thing to them society-wise. And then the local resources here, I mean, bourbon consists of a lot of grain, so we're in an area where, you know, corn is readily available; wheat, barley, rye, those kind of things are fairly close by. And so those are all kind of the primary ingredients of bourbon. You know, it all starts with that, and just naturally that kind of formulated around this particular area of the country.
Yeah, I find it interesting that you have the cultural aspects, you have Irish and Scottish immigrants, you have the geographic aspect, you got the limestone and how that impacts the water, just everything kind of coming together here in Kentucky. I'm interested, Scott, I'd like you to lead this one off, because I'm interested to know what does the bourbon industry mean to Louisville and the greater, you know, state of Kentucky today? Because I was reading before this, bourbon production has jumped 435%, I think, is the amount since like 1999. So it's continually on the rise. So what does it mean to this region?
I think you can start that off. When I first moved to Kentucky, I had no idea that there were more barrels of bourbon in Kentucky than there were people. So that kind of gives you the importance, how much bourbon is. But as far as economic impact, just the number of companies, the number of startup companies that we're hearing about, people investing in bourbon. Then you get out of the economic impact, you get into just the social impact. I mean, this place, there are places like this, there are basements people have like this that, you know, it's a part of it. I mean, it can be furniture, it can be wall decorations, barrel heads. It's just a part of life, kind of, you know, like the Kentucky Derby. I won't mention the basketball team in Lexington, but there are a lot of things here that, you know, it's just a part of life.
Yeah, and from an income standpoint, I mean, bourbon is the economic driver as far as the state taxes. I mean, that's one of the leading contributors to the Commonwealth of Kentucky as far as their budget goes, is the income off of bourbon residuals.
Well, I think you both bring up great points. Scott, something I want to talk about that you brought up is I don't think we gave enough justice to the spot where we're hanging out yet, because for people listening to this audio podcast that can't see the video right now, I mean, we are in a very regal-looking bourbon tasting room. We're in a specific room here called the Library. Like you said, people design their basements around this stuff, so very nice facility. One thing I want to ask is, this is kind of a juxtaposition to where we were this morning. We were at the Heaven Hill plant right outside of downtown Louisville, and the reality is, I think a lot of people, when they see bourbon manufacturing, they see the nice copper distillation columns that they have at like a showroom facility and things like that, but we got to see real big industrial bourbon production. So Don, you were leading our tour there essentially this morning. You know, can you give us a two-minute verbal distillery tour just to kind of recap what we saw?
Sure, sure. So I mean, all the distilleries work the same way. You start off with grain receiving, so we walked through the grain receiving area, into the silo storage for that material. Eventually that goes and gets ground up into a meal, so it's really a finer particle that gets introduced along with water and then setback, which is from the previous mashing operations. They bring that setback in and they batch that together. From batching it goes to fermentation, where it will set for anywhere from 3 to 7 days and formulate beer, just like a normal beer would be formulated, which I think goes a little bit longer in that fermentation process. But after that period of time, it's good enough to go ahead and start extracting the alcohol, and so they run that through a distillation column. After it's been through distillation, that's where we get our good product out of. And then another big stream of that, as we looked at today too, was the byproducts and what happens with that. So that goes off to become eventually like a farm material or an animal feed in most cases.
Yeah, that was one of the aspects that I found really interesting just looking at, and the word we used during that time was sustainability. When you talk about sustainable manufacturing, you're literally taking the parts that aren't going to be used in the finished bourbon product and you're sending those to become dog food and livestock feed. Like, that's what I think of when I think of sustainability. You're taking parts that otherwise would get discarded and you're putting them into another use, another industry, whatever that may be. So my next question is a follow-up on that one: obviously the way you make bourbon, that process has been the same for decades, for centuries, but there's a lot of modern technology that has made things different over the years. So maybe, Scott, you can lead this one off. I'm curious, in the amount of time you've been in the field, how have you seen bourbon making evolve?
That's interesting. Yeah, one of the ways is just, whenever we were on the tour, we were talking, and you noticed, like we said there, that plant's been around since, what, the '90s? It's been around for a really long time. Some of those processes have been around since the '90s, and just the way they move things around manually, you know, and evolving now to where, you know, the distilleries that we're working on currently, everything is automated. The valves are automated, the paths. You know, the data collection side of it is a piece I think we're starting to see evolve, and it's going to evolve even more, because once you start getting that data in your production facility, then, you know, it just leads to the next piece of data that you need and the next piece of data. And that's something we've kind of, you know, bourbon is distillation, something we're really heavy in right now, but the OT data collection side is something we've done for years, and, you know, really looking forward to diving into that with some of these companies.
Yeah. Don, I mean, in your mind, what characterizes the modern distillery? Data is definitely going to be a topic we touch on a bit more here.
It is. And laying down that infrastructure that's required for all of that, not just now but kind of future-proofing ourselves a little bit for what's to come. You know, we're in the middle of the Industry 4.0 revolution of manufacturing, and so being able to prepare for that next layer. So again, it's laying down that IT/OT infrastructure and the communications there between those two systems, making sure that we're going to be built for speed and bandwidth to be able to move that data as it gets required, all while keeping the facility running. So, you know, sometimes it's a battle of educating IT folks that kind of very much look at it like their own infrastructure, as to how it's really different on the OT side of things.
I want to dig into that a little bit more, because we talk about it a lot in any manufacturing industry, right? But you're actually out there talking to both parties when you're doing your projects, whether it's a greenfield, whatever it may be. How are you getting those type of people together to make it a proper conversation, to make sure that, you know, because I mean at the end of the day, if you can avoid any of that finger-pointing between operations folks as well as the IT team. I'd love to hear how you're making that possible, because I think, man, that's something manufacturers struggle with in any industry when you're trying to evolve. How do you get the right people talking?
And that's one thing, I'll brag on him before I give him a hard time later, but I will brag on him, because he can speak that IT speak. I've been in controls for a long time; I don't speak it very well. You know, I always tease him about, you know, you just need a hub big enough to bring all the data in, and everything's fine. But he does a really good job of understanding both sides of it and bringing those two groups together, being able to go in and talk to the IT guys and understand how our system is going to tie into theirs, while still keeping the interest of the operation side in check.
And it's a lot like herding cats. I mean, these guys are all over the board. So while the facility we're in today has a really strong IT team that has a really good desire to dig in and understand the OT side, on the flip side of that, other distilleries you work at too, their IT team is kind of like, I don't want to touch it, I just want to ignore it and pretend it's not there. So you get the two extremes, and, you know, the common factor though is just education. You know, what does this OT infrastructure look like? How is it different from IT? Why is it important to segment them and have a good firewall infrastructure between the two, even though we're going to be passing data back across that platform? You know, the days of having a detached operations network of operation equipment sitting off to the side and not being able to connect to the enterprise or even out to the internet itself, those days are gone. We have to do that because our systems need to have updates, we need to, you know, apply a patch, we need to make sure that Microsoft's all happy with what we're doing. So it's not as static as what it once was with the older kind of software and architecture that was in place.
Yeah, I have a question around a comment you made about the Industry 4.0 era that we're in now. And you're working on, as I understand it, a couple ground-up distilleries right now. So how do you build in intelligence, and how do you build in the ability to leverage all this data that comes from the process from the beginning? Because there are obviously a lot of people out there that are trying to figure out, okay, I've got a legacy factory, how do I work this in? But I think you could probably share some great advice from the perspective of, hey, this is how you plan to make sure you're getting the right type of information, data, creating, let's say, a smart distillery from the get-go. What advice would you have on that? Don, maybe we'll start with you on this one.
Bandwidth, bandwidth, bandwidth. You know, it wasn't that long ago when we as an industry moved from 10 megabit to 100 megabit type network for a lot of our devices out there. Throw in equipment that, you know, throw in a backbone that's got 25 gig communications capabilities. Are we there yet? No. You know, one gig is really good, especially if you can get your hands on it for your servers. So that's going to be your base level. But I mean, keep in mind you're talking to servers, and sometimes that architecture is redundant, so that bandwidth for them to communicate amongst each other, and eventually having that there for data collection, is going to become really, really important in the future.
Follow-up question for you. Something that I thought was interesting when we were at Heaven Hill this morning: our escort, who's literally out there on the operations floor, was talking about how he wants more automation, right? And I think there's maybe this misnomer that people on the plant floor don't always want that, they don't want change, they want to do things the way they've always done. But we got quite the opposite response out there.
Yeah, Josh is one of those unique individuals, and even Heaven Hill itself is really a unique company. They're very, very forward-thinking about, hey, we're going to have a data-driven facility. They're committed to a complete digital transformation at the process level. And so being able to kind of understand what that means for them right now, you know, in some cases it's trying to explain what kind of a smartphone do you want to a caveman who didn't even have an idea what a cell phone is or a smartphone is. But these folks have really kind of dug in and got their hands dirty in understanding the technology a little bit. And so the biggest thing again is educate. You know, get them off to some of the trainings with you so we can learn together. Their IT team has been really good about going out to an Automation Fair and kind of learning what does this mean and how does it piece in with our facility. And they're taking a very broad approach at it, in, hey, it's not just this distillery that we have; we might have a couple different distilleries or a couple different manufacturing facilities we want to pull together and roll up to that corporate executive level to be able to make some
decisions and view our KPIs and our metrics at that layer.
So, pun intended, let's distill this knowledge into a couple actions for the manufacturing audience out there. You've been talking about the importance of education a lot, Don. So for the manufacturing executives, the leaders listening to this podcast, what would be your advice for getting people comfortable with, let's say, these Industry 4.0 technologies, these data-driven technologies? What would be your advice for executives that want to get their teams involved, and what would be your advice for people that are on the factory floor to get involved? And feel free to take whichever one you're more comfortable with first.
Yeah, I'll address the factory floor side. I mean, from an executive side there's a lot that they can look into, but one thing that gets overlooked a lot is the devices that you use, the code that goes in. Everybody wants data: I want data, I want trends, I want all this. But they tend to forget that there's a lot of code that has to be written, there's a lot of devices that have to be put in place, smart devices that have to be put in place, that you can actually pull the data from, you know, the correct data that you want, and do something with it. Because a lot of people want, the executives want, the pie in the sky. They want the trends, the graphs, you know, the reports, but none of that happens without having your guys truly understand this needs to be this type of flow meter, this type of device here or there, getting all the right information in the right places before that OT layer can push it up.
Mhm. Don, what would you add to that?
So it's really like Scott said, it's important to kind of hit it really from all layers. You can't just take an executive person and drive this process. You're going to have to get the maintenance technicians, you're going to have to get some operators involved in that, you're going to have to have kind of the management team involved in that, so they really understand at what different layers this happens.
You know, as we bring in and teach young engineers, it's not the old days of where you go in and just simply design I/O networks and you got a PLC and, wow, call it good. At this point in time we're designing that: what does that network layer look like, what does the hardware architectural layer look like, and eventually all this mounds up into being, okay, what information can we now pass back to the data scientists that are actually getting in and getting their hands dirty with the numbers?
And the other thing to kind of add to that too is PlantPAx is really a tool that we use heavily, especially in the distillery industry, and the nice thing about those libraries is they're very, very rich in whatever kind of statistic or data point that you may want to capture. You know, how many times did a valve fail in the last couple weeks versus the last couple months? And it helps you become not even a reactive kind of maintenance but a proactive kind of maintenance of, hey, what's the cycle time on this valve, how many hours is this motor run before I visited? So this really kind of rolls up into a really very, very powerful technology forum.
I was going to say, you wrapped some other answers in there in terms of, you know, from a maintenance team being more proactive rather than reactive. I like what you mentioned about PlantPAx. Another area I want to dig into a bit more, Scott, that you brought up is, hey, when you have all the smart devices out there, right, this might seem like 101 stuff for you guys because you deal with it every day, but what is an example of a smart device in bourbon manufacturing? Because at the end of the day we throw terms like smart manufacturing and Industry 4.0 around all the time, but I think we can do a better job of sharing this is what it actually looks like, right, when it comes to a smart device that's feeding that into a bigger system where, like you both talked about, executives can make decisions. So can you give us an example of one of those devices?
At the basic level it would be, you know, just the simple: does this need to be a discrete device, does this need to be an analog, what kind of information am I looking for? It can go all the way to, you know, we want to put HART communications on so we can actually tell if the devices are healthy. You know, is this the type of device that is going to give us the information from this tank? I know we've got a couple situations where we're using pressure transmitters to get a tank level, where we're using actual level transmitters. There's just so many different... understanding the process and understanding the correct device to put in there, versus, you know, on occasion, what can I get, I'm in a hurry, I'm just going to slap something in there, I'm going to get it running. Because nine times out of 10 whenever you do that, it never leaves. It's, yeah, we'll do that on the next shutdown, and then the next shutdown, the next shutdown, and those devices are always there.
And that's where you get somebody like Josh who's looking at this and going, when I have the right devices in place, the programming is correct, and it's data rich, he can get so much more out of it. It makes his job easier. Mhm. So he's not looking at it as a threat to take over, oh, they're not going to need me anymore. He's looking at it as, oh, this makes my job easier, I can be much more effective in my day-to-day operations.
Yeah, I remember the first time I dropped in a PlantPAx sequencer for them, just in a really simple little operation. So they go through and they take bulk caustic, which is a 50% caustic solution, and they dilute it down to, you know, I think it's like 3 to 5% diluted caustic, and they use that to kind of rinse all their equipment out as they're going through and cleaning and doing CIP cycles. And that was a manual operation for them to transfer, add some flush water, and inevitably somebody would forget, oh, I've got that valve open, and they would make it either way too weak or way too strong. And that was kind of the first place where we dropped in an automated sequencer for them, and they're like, oh, I don't know if I'm going to like this, I lose the ability to change that all myself. And we dropped it in, and you know, here we are a couple years later from that, and those guys look at it like, wow, I just don't even think about this anymore. And so kind of overcoming those fears is another part of it as well.
Yeah, and on the device side as well, you know, we walked through the MCC room earlier. That's another side that we run into where people are making decisions: do we want to put a motor starter or do we want to put a drive? As we have found out many times, there are a lot of situations where, man, if we had this on a drive we have so much more flexibility to do what we need to do in this process. It's understanding this process needs that flexibility versus now we just need an exhaust fan to turn off and on.
Last question kind of on the technical side of this conversation: what has been the most game-changing piece of automation or information technology that you've seen in the past five years, 10 years, whatever it may be, for the bourbon industry?
I would have to immediately go through and say it's PlantPAx, having that pre-built library for them. PlantPAx solves so many different problems. I mean, from an automation SI standpoint of, hey, I can tie the graphical object and the code object together in kind of a really simple fashion. But what's inherent in that is the graphical symbology, it's the multilingual functionality, it's a universal look and feel across those, it's automatically having all my alarms predefined for me, and I can customize them how I want. Things that would have taken us hours and hours to build in the past, and each one of those would have looked a little bit different at each place that we go to. And having kind of that unified library that we go to has really been a game changer.
And being on the programming side, you initially have those thoughts, kind of like you were talking about with the operators earlier: I don't want more automation because it's going to take my job as a programmer. Sometimes you look and you see they've got this library, they've got these objects, is my job in the future just going to be tying these things together? But once you understand the power and the flexibility of what's there and how to tie things together and configure them, it's a very powerful tool.
I want to get your take on maybe some of the broader manufacturing here in the Louisville area, Kentucky as well, because we're really exploring what manufacturing means to Louisville, and bourbon is a huge part of that. But for someone that's maybe just learning about this area for the first time, what are some of the industries that really stick out that also characterize this? Because it's not just bourbon that's coming out of Louisville, Kentucky.
No, you drive around just Kentucky in general. I know I've bounced... I was at Rockwell for a little bit when I first moved to Louisville, and then I was on my own, and I've spent time on tugboats. People don't really realize, you know, the tugboat industry centered out of Paducah, what is actually involved. You see those going up and down the river, you don't think about it a whole lot, but it's a floating factory. There's so much going on there. Automotive: the EV plant that's going in down around Elizabethtown. But you've got the Ford plants, you've got Toyota, you've got the big guys, but you've also got a lot of supporting manufacturing that goes along with them. Glass manufacturing. I'm trying to think of...
You know, it's UPS. UPS is right here in town, and their international hub is here in Louisville, and so a lot of industry floats around it. So they've got a lot of storage warehouses, they do third-party fulfillment centers for different folks. Amazon's pretty heavy in the area; they're putting another facility just up the road in Cincinnati. And so, I mean, we see a ton of material handling in this market.
Yeah, material... I would say, you know, for a while, if you mentioned systems integrator in Louisville, most people thought material handling. That's what most of the bigger names that you would hear of were; then there's this guy does this, this guy does that, this guy does that.
But yeah, so I'm hearing you got logistics, material handling, tugboats was new, bourbon, automotive. I mean, it is a manufacturing powerhouse here. And this one's a little bit of a fun question: there are some people that are just getting to know Louisville for the first time. We know the Derby, like that's here, but what else characterizes this as just a great town?
Oh wow, they've got a ton of music festivals. I've never been to a place that has... I mean, there's probably at least one every weekend, if not every other weekend at the worst case. There's just so much of it. I was really surprised by that.
Yeah, and it's Louisville in general. There's so many different... it's diverse. It's very diverse because a lot of people move to Louisville for work. You can usually tell really quick about someone who's lived in Louisville for a long time versus someone who's new, because they'll say, what school did you go to? And you'll say UK, and it's like, oh, you're not from here.
Yeah, or even how you pronounce the name, or even how you pronounce Louisville. Yeah, yeah. When I first came over they were trying to help me learn how to say it, so it's Louisville, Louisville. Yeah, I've heard a couple variations just in the short time we've been down here this week. So from what I have been told, you just have to let it fall out of your mouth. Yeah, that's a good way to describe it, let it fall out of your mouth. Yeah, I'm sure somebody will correct me.
But well, you know, the bourbon culture is obviously huge here, but you're right, indie rock. It's become a pretty well-known scene for that, with bands like My Morning Jacket that are on the national radar. So it's a cool town. I love coming here.
Last thing I want to talk about in this conversation is partnerships and kind of how Opus Integration came to be, because you are two very dynamic individuals. Scott, from what I understand, you're more of a fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants type guy, and... Is that me? You're... oh yeah, Paul's back there laughing. Yeah, the audience in the room is getting a kick out of this. And Don, you've got more of the details. You do process, Scott, you do discrete, so you bring a lot of different strengths to the table. I want to ask this: when you created Opus Integration, did you know this going in, when you guys were becoming co-founders of this company?
Yeah, and that's part of what makes this work, is the fact that things that I struggle with, he's good at, vice versa. And just the way we... you know, Christine says it all the time, that we balance each other out quite a bit. Mhm. And the fun thing for us has been, with the younger guys coming in, now we're like, okay, I'm going to be able to teach you the discrete, the safety, the motion, the robotics; Don's going to be able to teach you the process side. And he's still trying to talk me into being a process guy, and I'm hoping to retire before that happens.
Okay, Don, I'd like to get your take on this answer. Like, what makes a great partnership, right?
Nailed it. It's kind of our diversity. You know, his strengths are my weaknesses, my strengths are his weaknesses. We're all the time balancing, or bouncing ideas off each other. Oh my gosh, can't talk, cut me off. Blame the bourbon. Is that for Purdue education? Oh, there we go. Yeah, shots fired, shots fired. Hey, Muhammad Ali's here, we got a boxing... why not.
But it really is kind of that balance of different exposures and different experiences. It's really odd, I've known Scott for a long time, or knew of Scott for a long time, before we had actually come together on a partnership. And it's always kind of been that, hey, one-two, and we're always back and forth on different things. And I couldn't ask for a better partner. I really... you know, I could search the whole automation industry and there's not a better partner to be found.
So, well, I like the balance here, because I love the compliments, I love the accolades, I love that you also threw the gloves off a little bit with the Purdue comment there. So we're going to stay on that train here right at the end, we're going to have some fun. You each gave a question to me for me to ask in this conversation. So Scott, the first question is for you. Don wanted me to ask Scott: how well do you document code?
Okay, let's get something straight. This is where I have come to leverage the tools that are given to me within Logix. Logix will self-document, so there's really no reason for me to embellish. You know, a guy gets into a program at 3 a.m. in the morning, he doesn't want to read a novel, he just wants to know, I need to turn that bit on. So the code will document itself.
All right, so a 40-bit or 40-character-long, hey, whatever it is, register, whatever it takes. Yes. I mean, Don, Scott had a question for you as well. So the question is: Don, are you Netgear certified? I feel like I need some backstory here as well. Let's get a story here to wrap this conversation.
Oh my goodness. This guy knows my hot buttons are a couple different terms in the world. If you can manage to work in PlantPAx, oh yeah, into the conversation. Hub. Mhm. I'm trying to think of what the other one... those are the two main ones. Those are the two main ones. I work those in, and then I've made sure and let everybody know, you know, anybody that calls on our account, you know, kudos if you can work those into a conversation of some sort. But yeah, so the big
thing is, network switch versus a network hub. He loves to insert that in and just kind of jab me a little bit, and he knows my OCD won't allow for him to pass those terms off as being synonymous.
It's clear based on the dynamic here that it is a great partnership. Hearing about all the work you're doing, all the knowledge you have, I really appreciate you sharing that with our audience out here today.
Last question for both of you as we finish this off: what is your big bet for the bourbon industry over the next, I don't know, two, three, five years or so? Where do you see things going based on the stuff you're doing today and the things you're hearing in the future?
I think, just based on... I spent a little bit of time on the barrel side of things before, on casks, before I got on the distillation side, and one thing that we're hearing a little bit of mumbling about and seeing is, at some point, being able to track the bourbon through the rickhouses. It's something that a lot of guys have talked about. There's been barcoding, RFID, a lot of things talked about, but at some point getting to that level where they can actually track that through and figure out just how much of it is angel's share, and different things, different temperatures. There's a lot that they can gather by trying to collect that data. So some more tracking, that's my bet.
It definitely is where that industry is heading. You spend three to 5, 7, 12 years actually in the warehouse, and so knowing what the temperatures are at the various different levels within the building where it gets stored, and being able to contrast that. I mean, this is really where the data scientists are getting in and just getting their hands dirty to really kind of understand what that means.
And everybody approaches it a little bit differently. You've got some that are these cold, dank brick structures and others that are more wooden. There's some distilleries that play music to their barrels through the course... Yeah, yeah. So everybody's kind of looking for what differentiates a good barrel from a great barrel of finished product. And I think a lot of opportunity, now that we've got some of the tools to be able to go through and do that analysis, is really going to take that industry to the next level.
Yeah, well, I'm excited to see what happens, and I'm excited to see you two continue to be a part of it. With that, just want to do one more cheers, and thank you for being on Manufacturing Happy Hour. Thank you very much. Thanks for the opportunity.
[Music] Cheers.
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