The Factory of the Future Runs on People: A Rockwell, Revere Electric, and UWM Panel on Automation and Workforce
Manufacturing Happy Hour
How are manufacturers using automation and AI to improve performance, and what does that demand of the people who run, maintain, and fix the technology? Host Chris Luecke put those questions to a four-person panel in a live episode of Manufacturing Happy Hour, recorded at the Connected Systems Institute (CSI) at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee. The panel looked at the topic from three angles: operations, workforce, and the technology itself.
The guests each saw the factory from a different position. Mike Cvelbar runs plant operations at Rockwell Automation. Phil Bush trains Rockwell's internal field workforce and runs an external program for military veterans. Joe Hamann connects university students with industry at CSI. Ryan Schneeberger sees many manufacturers of different sizes as a regional vice president at the distributor Revere Electric. Across these perspectives, the panel kept coming back to one point: automation investments only pay off when the people who work with the technology develop alongside it.
The Setting and the Panel
Joe Hamann described the Connected Systems Institute as a consortium of manufacturing and technology companies whose mission is to prepare the future manufacturing workforce. It does this in two main ways. It gives UWM students hands-on experience working directly with industry, and it hosts convening events where partners such as Revere Electric and Rockwell Automation discuss shared topics on what Hamann called a common journey in advanced manufacturing. Hamann has been at CSI for about three years. He also works with manufacturers through a Microsoft AI co-innovation lab partnership that aims to build AI skills in the manufacturing sector.
Ryan Schneeberger has spent his entire 27-year career at Revere Electric. He started on the technical side before moving into sales, and he described the company's work as solving the everyday problems customers face in manufacturing. Mike Cvelbar is director of operations for Rockwell's Mequon and Milwaukee campus and has been with Rockwell for 14 years in various supply chain roles. Cvelbar summarized the job as essentially a plant manager responsible for safety, quality, delivery, and cost.
Phil Bush has also spent his whole career at one company, 23 years at Rockwell. As global competency program manager, Bush oversees the teams that train Rockwell's service engineers and field labor, the people who work alongside manufacturers to get technology running and fix it when it breaks. Bush also runs the Academy of Advanced Manufacturing. The program brings in U.S. military veterans with technical backgrounds, trains them for free as controls technicians, and places them with Rockwell's manufacturing customers. Bush summed up the role as "we train people so stuff happens."
Luecke, a former Rockwell employee, described his podcast as often being "a leadership podcast disguised as a manufacturing podcast."
Exposing the "Dark Places" in the Plant
Luecke opened by asking Cvelbar how someone who works inside a modern facility would describe the factory of the future. Cvelbar framed it as a matter of willingness: you have to be comfortable exposing your vulnerabilities. That starts with finding what he called the "dark places" in a plant, meaning operations that happen but aren't measured.
The current example, in Cvelbar's view, is production logistics. As manufacturers have worked on direct labor and automated it, he said, production logistics has become "the next wave." Rockwell was piloting autonomous mobile robots (AMRs) in its Mequon facility at the time of recording, with a rollout planned for September. Cvelbar acknowledged that the change affects the workforce. Employees ask whether the robots are taking their jobs, and his answer to them is that the goal is to free them for tasks that are more critical to keeping operations running.
Cvelbar placed the AMRs within a broader push toward autonomous operations, which he described as part of Rockwell's strategic framework going into the fiscal year. He also mentioned Rockwell's major investment in a new facility in New Berlin, which he said will be a million square feet and where the company plans to implement autonomous operations.
From Whiteboards to Mission-Critical Digitization
Asked how operations have changed since he moved into operations roles around 2020, Cvelbar went back further. About ten years ago, as a supervisor, he wrote output and quality numbers by hand on an hour-by-hour board for each shift. Those boards, he said, are long gone. Digitization is now business- and mission-critical. Even compared with six years ago, it is no longer a matter of piloting a tool to see if it works. In Cvelbar's view, digital tools must be scaled across the enterprise, and companies that don't do this will be left behind.
His second lesson came from supply chain more than from factory technology: disruption is the new normal. "Plan A is no longer acceptable," Cvelbar said. "You need plan B, C, D, and E. And everybody needs to be on board with that." Without that mindset, he warned, a facility will face a very difficult operating environment.
Workforce Problems as the Starting Point for Sales Conversations
Schneeberger said the workforce problem Cvelbar described is something Revere's team hears about every day. Customer conversations often start with a manufacturer trying to replace labor that simply isn't showing up. A large share of Revere's daily work, he said, consists of helping customers solve or work around these workforce shortfalls.
The 3–4 Year Readiness Gap for New Engineers
Luecke asked Hamann whether there is a gap between what manufacturers need and what traditional education produces. Hamann said yes, "absolutely, 100%," and gave an example. Earlier that week he had visited a mid-size manufacturer northwest of Milwaukee that builds large electromechanical systems for biomedical applications. The company's president told him that when they hire a recent graduate from UWM, MSOE, Marquette, or similar schools, it takes three to four years before that engineer delivers at 100%.
Hamann described the goal as closing that gap by educating students differently. The aim is that a new hire would need maybe a three-to-six-month onboarding track instead of three to four years. He allowed that the three-to-four-year figure "might be a little bit on the stretchy side." But he said HR leaders and other company presidents have also told him that a readiness gap exists.
Hackathons as a Bridge Between Students and Industry
Hamann's main example of how CSI addresses the gap was its hackathons. He pointed out a former student in the audience who had taken part in several of them. The events last anywhere from two days to two weeks depending on scope. They give students hands-on experience solving a real problem that comes directly from industry.
Hamann described how the model works. A partner company, in several cases Rockwell, provides a challenge statement. A mixed team of business and engineering students is given a set amount of time to build a solution, usually with technology such as a digital twin built in Emulate3D or something focused on AI. At the end, the students dress up, present to the sponsoring company, and the best teams win cash.
Hamann said the arrangement benefits both sides. Students learn by doing and connect with a real company's real problem, which may lead to a job. The company gets access to everything developed, which Hamann called open innovation. Rockwell, for example, comes away with new ideas for product development or operations improvement. Hamann said there is still "a long ways to go," but CSI had two hackathons scheduled for the fall and a couple more being planned for spring. Luecke added that the hackathons are usually the first thing he mentions when describing CSI, because they shorten the learning timeline Hamann described.
Skills Pile Up, They Don't Get Replaced
Luecke asked Bush what part of the skills gap isn't being discussed enough. Bush's answer was that manufacturing doesn't remove old skills. It keeps adding new ones on top.
Bush used the industrial revolution framework of Industry 1.0 through 5.0 to explain. He said he was going "off the top of the dome" and apologized in advance if he got details wrong. As he described it, 1.0 was the mechanization of manufacturing, beginning in the mid-18th century. 2.0 was electrification, bringing motors and electrical systems into factories. The 1920s through 1960s brought productivity gains and early automation. Industry 4.0, from the 1970s to roughly the present, is digitization. Industry 5.0 is the coming era of autonomy, AI, and technology integration.
Bush challenged the audience to ask an AI tool or search engine for the skills required at each of these stages. He predicted they would find that every one of those skills is still needed today, including the Industry 1.0 skills. Manufacturers can't abandon them. The challenge, he said, is to efficiently stack five industrial revolutions' worth of knowledge into the people doing the work.
Bush's second overlooked point was about autonomy. Lights-out, unattended manufacturing is "really cool," he said, but it describes the "front of the house," the roles operators and material handlers have traditionally filled. Someone still has to support it from the back end. "Skynet isn't real," Bush said. The technology isn't self-sustaining or self-maintaining, and when it breaks, someone has to fix it. If companies keep building and maintaining the skills from Industry 1.0 through 4.0, then adapting to 5.0 becomes a matter of adding skills rather than starting from scratch. "We've got to maintain the past to be able to build for the future," Bush said. Luecke summed it up as widening the toolbox of what skilled work looks like.
Hybrid Operator-Technicians on Rockwell's Floor
Cvelbar built on Bush's point. Once a facility runs autonomous operations or a lights-out warehouse on a 24/7 or 24/5 schedule, he said, it can no longer let a breakdown on third shift wait for first shift to arrive. Operations depend on that equipment running, and so does the return on investment. Having people who can solve problems the moment they happen is, in his words, mission critical.
Within Rockwell's own operations, Cvelbar said the company is working to turn operators into hybrid operator-technicians. Operators are the first people to work with new automation on the line. Using the PanelView interface, for example, they can learn how to clear a fault and get their machine running again on their own, rather than waiting for a technician to handle simple issues they should be able to solve themselves.
The other part of this effort, Cvelbar said, is making sure operators understand the digitization of the plant floor. Screens are already in place, but the point is for operators to understand what they mean beyond red or green: how they are performing individually, and how the operation is performing across the whole plant floor.
Five of Ten New Hires Gone Within a Month
Schneeberger shared a customer's statistic that framed the workforce problem starkly. Five out of every ten plant-floor employees the customer hires are gone within a month. "So how do you run a production facility in that case?" he asked.
Revere's response, which Schneeberger described as building on Cvelbar's point, was to work with the customer on a flexible automation system that plant-floor employees can understand and that can be applied across multiple production lines. If line one is the priority on a given day, the automation can be moved to that line to keep it running. The design came from the customer's reality that on any given day, a plant-floor employee might not show up and the product still has to be made. Schneeberger stressed that the key was ultimate flexibility, combined with technicians or employees who can reconfigure the system without needing a controls engineer.
What's Different About Manufacturing Education Now
When the conversation turned to technology, Luecke asked Hamann what has changed in manufacturing education. Hamann is an engineer by training and spent about 14 years at Regal Rexnord, much of it leading engineering work and spending time in plants. He said continuous improvement and lean principles were deeply ingrained in how he thinks. Those principles, Hamann said, are still the foundation for how UWM educates engineers in manufacturing and related fields such as supply chain.
What's different, in Hamann's description, is a layer of technology on top of that foundation. The first part is data literacy. Picking up on Cvelbar's point about unmeasured areas of the plant, Hamann said data is everywhere. Students are now taught to use tools that access data early so they can act proactively, rather than discovering a problem on third shift and waiting for first shift to fix it. Students also learn tools such as digital twins and gain a basic understanding of AI and machine learning. Hamann was clear that not every engineering or business graduate needs to be an expert. The goal is for them to understand where AI and ML are appropriate and where they add value.
His example involved a student in a data analytics program who had learned in depth how CSI's digital twin solution works. A partner company, Husco, came to CSI wanting to build a digital twin of one of its assembly cells so it could test a few things. CSI connected the student with the company, and the student's classroom work gave the company a new capability. Hamann described this as a value chain: data literacy and newer technical skills learned in the classroom, then carried into the workforce.
At this point Luecke joked about a drinking game for every mention of AI, and suggested "digital twin" would have produced more sips. The phrase became a running joke for the rest of the session.
A 40% Jump in First Pass Yield
Asked how Rockwell's plant floor is using technology to address the operations and workforce challenges discussed, Cvelbar described a torque control program introduced at the Mequon facility, which he said is primarily responsible for all the drives Rockwell ships. In the program's second year, Cvelbar reported, the plant saw a 40% increase in first pass yield. For context, he said the facility performs 15 million torque rundowns per year. He described the result as a large benefit for both labor efficiency and quality.
Cvelbar said the next step is to introduce process automation in certain areas, which should also help ease workforce challenges. He stressed that it remains important to help employees understand why these changes matter.
Where Manufacturers Will and Won't Spend
Luecke asked Schneeberger where manufacturers are willing to invest in new technology and where they are holding back. After opening with a "digital twin" joke that got the room drinking, Schneeberger said manufacturers invest where they see immediate ROI. Where they hold back is on the topics this panel was discussing. They are cautious because they don't know exactly what the outcome will be. Schneeberger said customers hear vendors and advisors give guidance all the time but remain hesitant because they can't connect it to a clear ROI or end result, whether the technology is AMRs or AI on the factory floor.
Luecke noted that AMRs seem to have moved past being a science project. They have been proven elsewhere, and adoption has spread beyond early adopters. He asked where manufacturers see quick ROI. Schneeberger named AMRs as probably the current hot topic, driven again by workforce challenges. Material movement is labor-intensive, and if manufacturers can replace those roles and redeploy the people elsewhere in the plant, Schneeberger said, it's an easy decision.
Training With Technology, and Training on It
Luecke asked Bush which technologies in Rockwell's training programs deliver immediate impact in the field. Bush said technology affects training in two ways. Trainers have to teach people the technology, because new systems need to be deployed, managed, and fixed. Trainers also have to use technology to deliver the training itself.
Pulling together earlier comments from the panel, Bush argued that the real conversation is about skills, not degrees or fixed credentials that take a set amount of time to earn. He said both training and hiring are moving toward skill frameworks: defining what skills a job requires, then building those skills hands-on so a person is job-ready. Digital twins and simulation fit here, Bush said, because they provide realistic experience in a safe environment. A digital twin, as he put it, won't break you or hurt you.
The other half of Bush's argument was about structuring these skills so they accumulate into something of lasting value. Calling himself a "recovering mechanical engineer," Bush said he wasn't useful early in his career because his education was heavy on theory and light on practice. He described a pathway where someone might start with a simple credential, work on the job, then earn an associate's degree, a bachelor's, and possibly a master's. Along the way they keep stacking skills and still reach the traditional degree, but with practical knowledge they can apply directly to the job. If a company can deploy a technology and its people can quickly support it, Bush said, that shortens the time to ROI considerably. Luecke said skill stacking and certifications are a trend he hears about more and more on the podcast.
Final Advice From the Panel
For his closing advice, Cvelbar said capital investment in automation and workforce development should be treated as one investment, not separate ones, because that is how a company moves faster. He repeated his earlier point about being willing to expose vulnerabilities, being honest with yourself and your team about the challenges, and figuring out how to correct course. He cautioned that it won't happen overnight. "It's going to be a journey."
Hamann's advice was "get started." Start small, learn from it, and accept that the first attempt probably won't be perfect but the next will be better. He also asked the audience for help: CSI's work is only as good as the feedback it gets from industry. He asked attendees to pass along the challenges they hear from partners and customers, because that information shapes how CSI educates students and designs workforce programs. Luecke added that listeners should engage with their local universities and community colleges.
Schneeberger said manufacturers don't have to do this alone. The panel and the audience represented resources that manufacturers can draw on, especially companies hesitant to take the leap. They can start small and get help from people who can facilitate the process. "You don't have to do it alone," he said.
Bush closed by returning to skill frameworks. Technology and the environment you build are one half of the equation, he said, and the workforce that serves the technology (or that the technology serves) is the other half. He urged companies to break down their jobs and roles into the skills their people need. That exercise clarifies which talent to hire and which to develop internally. His principle was to hire on attitude, aptitude, and culture fit, then train on skills and capabilities. He ended with a line he attributed to a comedy movie he couldn't name: "You don't have to get ready if you stay ready." If a company's skill framework is always in place, Bush said, it never has to play catch-up, because it knows where it stands and can keep upgrading its workforce as needed.
Audience Q&A: What Does Your Factory of the Future Look Like?
One audience member asked each panelist to describe their own factory of the future, whether in their current industry or a dream factory. Bush described continuous production with seamless integration, supported by many people "working behind the curtain." Schneeberger built on that by focusing on the customer experience. Ultimately, he said, the goal is that the customer never feels the pain, supply seems unlimited, and demand is always met. Hamann added clear visibility into what is going well and where the opportunities are, so problems can be acted on immediately. Cvelbar pointed to AMRs and autonomous operations, which he said also support transactional integrity and keep the plant running.
No other questions followed, and the session ended with the podcast's usual sign-off toast.
You've got to be comfortable with understanding that disruption is the new normal. Plan A is no longer acceptable. You need plan B, C, D, and E. And everybody needs to be on board with that.
There's a three- to four-year gap that we need to make up with educating these students differently so that when a company president hires somebody, they have maybe a three- to six-month onboarding track before they get to 100%.
How are manufacturers leveraging automation and AI in operations to drive performance? That is the question we'll answer in today's live episode of Manufacturing Happy Hour, recorded in Milwaukee, Wisconsin at UWM, the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.
We have four guests and we will tackle this topic of automation, operational technology, and AI's impact on manufacturing performance from three different angles. One, operations, two, workforce, and then three, the technology itself. Our guests include Joe Hamann of UWM's Connected Systems Institute, more on that place in a moment. Mike Cvelbar of Rockwell Automation, Phil Bush also of Rockwell Automation, and Ryan Schneeberger of Revere Electric. Now, let's head to Milwaukee to meet up with our four guests and the rest of the crowd for today's live studio recording.
All right, you guys ready? Yeah, all right. Welcome to Manufacturing Happy Hour. Yes, I know we're in a classroom at UWM right now, but it's okay if we get a little rowdy during the show. So, feel free to clap, laugh, whatever it might be.
Welcome to this Factory of the Future edition of Manufacturing Happy Hour here at the Connected Systems Institute at UWM. As we get going, this event wouldn't be possible without Revere and Rockwell Automation. So, give it up for them for making this whole afternoon possible.
Now, as we get into our conversation, I just mentioned we're here at the Connected Systems Institute, and you all have just been on a tour of this facility, but there are going to be a lot of people that listen to this podcast at a future date that are learning about it for the first time. So, before we get into introductions, we always like to set the stage of where we're having the conversation, where we're having a beer. Oftentimes these interviews are at bars or breweries, but today we're here at the CSI. So, Joe, I think you're the most appropriate person to answer the question, how do you describe the Connected Systems Institute as if you're having a beverage with someone?
Thanks, Chris, and thanks everybody for being here. So, the Connected Systems Institute, we're a consortium of manufacturing and technology companies. And our purpose is to serve a mission of enabling the future workforce in manufacturing.
We do that a few different ways. One, we create experiences for our students at UWM to gain hands-on experience working directly with industry to better prepare them for future technology-enabled careers in manufacturing.
We also host a lot of convening events where we bring partners together like Revere Electric, like Rockwell Automation, around common topics of interest that helps them learn from each other as they're all on a common journey within advanced manufacturing as well.
All right, we're going to get more into workforce, how education is changing and evolving as we get deeper into this conversation. But before we get there, let's get into some introductions first. So, Ryan, if you wouldn't mind leading us off, and then Mike and Joe and Phil, we'll go to you after that. So, Ryan, how do you describe what you do as if you're having a beverage with someone?
Great. Thanks, Chris. Ryan Schneeberger, Regional Vice President for Revere Electric. Been with the company for 27 years, actually my whole career. Started in the technical side of our business and it's transitioned into the sales side. Really what we do with Revere is we work with our customers to solve their problems that they're experiencing in manufacturing every day. And that's what we do, and we have a team of people here that are supporting us every day. A round of applause for them.
All right, Mike.
Mike Cvelbar, director of operations for our Mequon and Milwaukee campus. Been with Rockwell Automation for 14 years. Various roles throughout our integrated supply chain. It's pretty easy for me to say what I do and how to explain it. Plant manager essentially, right? So you're responsible for the operations between the safety, quality, delivery, cost of those facilities.
All right, Joe. You already gave an intro on the CSI, but give us a little intro on yourself.
Yeah, so Joe Hamann. I've been here at the CSI for about three and a half, about three years coming up here in November. I believe I've got a pretty fun job. Again, our role here at the CSI is to connect students to manufacturers so those students are ready for the future.
So we do a lot of partnering work with, again, companies like Rockwell, like Revere Electric. I see a Husco shirt. Husco is one of our partners here as well. Also spend a lot of time working with other manufacturing companies through our Microsoft artificial intelligence co-innovation lab partnership, where we're working to deploy more focus on AI skills in the manufacturing sector. Thanks again everybody for being here.
All right, and Phil.
Last but not least, and like Ryan, I've been at my company my whole career. So I graduated from Marquette, which I'm going to put the plug in even though this is UWM. But graduated and went to work at Rockwell and I've been there 23 years.
Currently I am our global competency program manager, which is a lot of words that simply means I'm responsible for the teams that train internal workforce in the form of all of our service engineers, field labor, the folks that are going in and working right next to the manufacturers on their technology, getting it up and running, fixing it when it breaks, which the Rockwell stuff never breaks, but when it does, we have teams that can fix it and whatnot.
And then I also manage an external workforce training program, our Academy of Advanced Manufacturing, which is really cool in my opinion, but we basically bring in US military veterans with technical background. We train them up. We host them. It's free to the veteran. They come in. They get trained up as a controls technician, that frontline resource that's going to go fix the problems when they occur. So we host that program, we train them up, and we get them hired at our manufacturing customers. So we can help solve the workforce problem. So the short answer is we train people so stuff happens.
Yeah, Phil definitely has one of the coolest jobs at Rockwell, if I do say so myself. Maybe we could have planned it better because I too am a Marquette alumni. So literally 40% of our panel is from the other university across town here today.
But I will introduce myself quickly as well. My name's Chris Luecke. I host the podcast Manufacturing Happy Hour, which the way I describe it, it's oftentimes a leadership podcast disguised as a manufacturing podcast. We talk about the latest trends and technologies in manufacturing and the issues that we're all facing as industrial leaders in a candid way as if you were having a beer with someone or in scenarios like this where we're literally having a beer with each other.
So that's a little bit about me. And to add one additional plug for this panel, I was thinking about it as I was coming out here. When it comes to talking about the factory of the future and the future of manufacturing, what's unique about this group is we have four individuals up here that represent workforce development, education, daily operations inside of a manufacturing facility, as well as someone that gets to see manufacturers of all shapes and sizes on a regular basis from a commercial standpoint. So, we're really getting a good range of perspectives, and that's what we're going to dive into as we explore how the factory of the future plays into operations, the impact workforce is having on it, technology, etc.
But, to kick things off, Mike, the first question's going to be for you. Actually, the first couple questions are for you because if we're talking about the factory of the future, let's go back to that Manufacturing Happy Hour standpoint. How do you describe the factory of the future as someone that works in a facility that inevitably has a lot of characteristics of that future of manufacturing?
Yeah, great question. I would say, how I look at it is you've got to be comfortable with exposing your vulnerabilities, right? And that starts with understanding what I would call some of the dark places within your plant. And what I mean by that is where are there operations that are taking place that aren't being measured? I think one of the latest and greatest right now is production logistics.
That's the latest rave, right? Because as we've continued to evolve and continue to look at direct labor, automation that we're implementing within the facilities, production logistics is the next wave here, right? So, right now we're starting to implement our OTTO AMRs within our Mequon facility. That's being piloted right now. Within the month of September, we'll start rolling that out. It's going to be a shift, obviously, from the workforce perspective as well. A lot of challenges where they're asking questions of, "Are you taking my job away?" And it's, "No, we're enabling you to do other tasks that are more critical to continuing our operations."
You think about not only the AMR aspect of it, but then the autonomous operations is something within Rockwell's strategic framework that we're building towards. We worked on, as we went into this fiscal year. We've got our major investment in our new facility that's going to be a million square feet that will be in New Berlin. And all the operations and autonomous operations that we're looking to implement there, it's been a fun journey thus far and it's only going to get more enjoyable.
Yeah, so we're going to look backwards with this next question a little bit and then Ryan, you'll be up after this. But Mike, you've been in operations roles at Rockwell since June 2020, I believe. And I'm curious how operations has changed in that six-year period. You were just highlighting AMRs and autonomy as a big thing you're focused on now, but maybe take us through what it was like back then and where it is now. What's been most challenging about leading manufacturing operations during this time period?
Yeah, I'll actually take it further back. I was a supervisor about 10 years ago and the hour-by-hour roto board that I had to write on of what was our output and our quality number for that specific hour for the entire shift, those are long gone and the digitization that's required, it's business critical, it's mission critical now. It's no longer, I would say even from six years ago, it's no longer, hey, we're going to go pilot this and see if this works. You need it and it needs to be scaled across the enterprise. Without that, you're going to be left behind, quite honestly.
So I see that as one and then the other piece of it I would say relative to supply chain, really less than factory of the future, is you've got to be comfortable with understanding that disruption is the normal. Plan A is no longer acceptable. You need plan B, C, D, and E. And everybody needs to be on board with that. Without that, it's going to be a very challenging environment for your facility as it relates to operations.
So, that's a nice little piece of advice right there. Plan A, B, C, D. Ryan, I'm interested to get your broader perspective on this because from a commercial standpoint, you get to see a lot of different operations every day. And I'm curious, what are some unique challenges that you've come across recently? We just heard about it from Mike's perspective. What are some other things you're hearing out there?
Well, I did want to highlight, in Mike's answer is something that our team hears every day. Workforce challenges are constant. And what's unique about that is the challenge of solving the problem at hand. So often we get in front of a customer and we're working on a situation where they're replacing some workforce that unfortunately isn't showing up. And so we're trying to solve that. So, every day those workforce challenges are really key to what we work with our customers to try to solve and circumvent.
Yeah, and we'll take a deeper dive into workforce here in a bit, especially as we start making a little segue to education because Joe, I have a question for you as well. Based on the challenges that Ryan and Mike have both just highlighted, from workforce to bringing new technology, I'm curious, is there a gap between what manufacturers need and what traditional education is producing? Kind of a two-part question because the second part is how is the Connected Systems Institute, where we are today, helping bridge that gap?
I think the answer to question one, is there a gap? Yes, absolutely, 100%, and I'll give everybody an anecdote here. I was out visiting a local manufacturer a little bit northwest of Milwaukee earlier this week. Mid-size company, they make these larger electromechanical systems that get sold into biomedical applications. I was talking with their company president on a variety of topics and workforce was one of them. And he said, "Joe, when we hire a recent grad, whether that's students coming from UWM, MSOE, Marquette, etc., it's three to four years by the time that engineer is actually delivering at 100%."
Said differently, there's a three- to four-year gap that we need to make up with educating these students differently so that when a company president hires somebody, they have maybe a three- to six-month onboarding track before they get to 100% versus three to four years. So, it's real. That three- to four-year window might be a little bit on the stretchy side, but we certainly do hear from other leaders of human resources, other company presidents that said, "Yes, there certainly is a gap that exists with readiness."
What's CSI doing or more broadly what's UWM or higher education doing to address that gap? I'll share one example that I talked about with the tour group I had earlier. This is kind of a fun one. I see one of our former students in the audience, Yash, who participated actually in a few hackathons that we have hosted here at the Connected Systems Institute.
Hackathons have been a massively, I would say, fun and impactful activity for us, the university, to give students real hands-on experience in a relatively short amount of time, two days to two weeks, depending upon scope. Hands-on experience working to solve a real problem that comes directly from industry.
So, how the model works is we ask our partner, in this case we've done a few hackathons with Rockwell. Rockwell brings forward a challenge statement. We put that challenge in front of students, a mix of business and engineering students. We give them a certain amount of time to go and build a solution. Typically, that solution building involves some technology. Could be something like the digital twin, Emulate3D. Could be something artificial intelligence focused.
Students build a solution. They get to stand up in front of the room at the end of two weeks, put on a nice shirt, put on some nice shoes, give a presentation to, in this case, Rockwell, the sponsoring partner. And the teams that do the best job, they take home some cash, right? So, it's a fun activity, students get to learn by doing. They get a connection to
A very real problem that comes from a partner company. The company, by the way, gets access to anything that's been developed, so it's open innovation for them. So, Rockwell now walks out with some unique ideas about how to advance their product development or their operations improvement. And the students now maybe have a connection to get a job. So, that's what we're doing to close the gap. Again, we've got a long ways to go, but the hackathon programming has been pretty fun for us. We've got two events on deck for this fall and already a couple we're planning out for the spring semester.
Yeah, I love that example, Joe, because when I talk to people about what the Connected Systems Institute is, that's often the first thing I like to highlight, the hackathons brought by companies like Rockwell Automation that present a real problem, and the cash prizes that you can walk away with as well, which is awesome. And it's one of those things that does truncate that learning timeline that you were just highlighting.
And Phil, I'm bringing this one to you next because I think everyone in this room, everyone listening to this podcast, very familiar with the fact that there's a skills gap. No doubt about that. I'm curious, Phil, from your perspective, what's something relative to the skills gap that's not being talked about enough yet? I think what Joe was just sharing around the timeline to get people spun up is one thing, but I'm curious, what are some other areas that aren't being talked about enough?
Yeah, I think one of the things that's not really being talked about is that we aren't necessarily taking skills off the table within manufacturing that you no longer need to have. We're piling on additional skills. And one of the frameworks I remember about a decade ago, someone came out with the idea of the Industrial Revolution, but its milestones along the way. So, there is Industry 1.0, 2.0, 3.0, 4.0, and 5.0. I'm doing this off the top of the dome, so apologies if I get the nomenclature wrong, but 1.0 was like mid-18th century, and that was the mechanization of manufacturing. 2.0 was late 18th century, early 19th century, and that was the electrification, right? We're bringing motors and systems into the situation. Then '20s on through the '60s is kind of the productivity. We're starting to see early automation. '70s until now, maybe over the next couple of years, is the digitization. That's Industry 4.0, right? And then the future is Industry 5.0, autonomous, AI, all these technology integrations.
But I would challenge you, go to AI or your Google search engine or whatever and say, "Hey, give me the skills list for each of these Industrial Revolution milestones along the way. And what skills were required in those milestones?" You'll look at that list and you'll go, "Huh, every one of those skills is still required, right? The Industry 1.0 skills, those are still there." So, we can't forget those things. We can't abandon those things. So, we have to find ways to efficiently stack five industrial revolutions' worth of knowledge and domain expertise into the human body that's going to be doing that work.
And I think the other piece that gets missed a lot, because the future is autonomous, unattended, the lights-out manufacturing, and that's really cool and that's awesome, but that's really the front of the house, right? That's the operators, the materials handlers. Those are going to be the folks that are going to be the front of the house that you're used to being in manufacturing. And everything's going to be autonomous, right? And technology-driven, but somebody's got to feed that on the back end, right? Skynet isn't real. It's not self-sustaining. It's not self-maintaining. It's really cool technology. It works, but when it breaks, somebody's got to fix it. And those are the skills we've got to impart on a consistent basis.
And if we're putting skills into people and maintaining those skills, Industry 1.0 through 4.0, as 5.0 becomes real, it's a matter of just stacking on those additional skills as opposed to starting from square one. So, we've got to maintain the past to be able to build for the future.
Yeah, I think both of those tie together pretty nicely, right? You need the skills of the past as you prepare for the skills of the future, right? We're just widening the toolbox of what skilled work looks like.
Mike, I'm interested to hear what you're seeing around workforce challenges, maybe within your own operation, and some of the things you're doing to solve that. What are you seeing in your operation? What are things you're doing to get ahead of some of the challenges that happen when you don't have the people that you need?
Yeah, maybe just to piggyback off what Phil mentioned there earlier, though, when you introduce the autonomous operations and lights-out warehouse, you're no longer in a position where, if you're running 24/7, 24/5, where this breaks down on third shift, we'll just wait for first to come in. That's no longer an option. Obviously, operations are dependent on this. The ROI is dependent on that as well. So, having that skill set and that workforce that's able to solve those problems at the time it happens is mission critical.
Going back to your question, though, Chris, I would just say I think one of the elements here from what we're doing at Rockwell and within the operations itself is we're trying to mold our operators from just an operator. They need to move more towards a hybrid operator-technician because they're the first ones there working with this new automation that's being introduced into our facilities. They're front line, right? So, they're the ones that, working with a PanelView, this is how I clear the fault, right? And then my machine is back up and running. No longer waiting for a technician to come over on those simple items that really they should be solving at their level.
I would say the other element of it is, too, ensuring that they are aware of the digitization of the plant floor. Meaning, we have the screens up, but what does that mean? Not just red or green. How am I performing? And how is the operation itself performing holistically across the entire plant floor?
Awesome answer. Ryan, we're going to wrap this round with you. I'm curious, do you have a story that illustrates the workforce challenges that you see out in the field, maybe how one of your customers is creatively solving the challenges they're running into around workforce?
Yeah, we have a customer. They have a statistic that they gave us recently. Five out of 10 employees that they hire are gone within a month. And those are plant floor resources that are gone. So, in turn, how do you run a production facility in that case? What do you do? And so, this is a little piggybacking off of what Mike said. So, we worked with them to develop a solution, an automation solution that is nimble, and the plant floor employee understands the system, and it can apply across multiple production lines. So, if production line one is important, they can move that or transition that automation system to that line, so that line can stay up and running.
So, being nimble in helping them create that system that offers ultimate flexibility is really what we did. And it's because one day they have a plant floor employee that doesn't show up. So, they need that production line still producing the product, offering them an automation system that is flexible and it can apply, and then having a technician, an employee, that can manipulate that without a controls engineer.
Awesome. As we get into our last two rounds of questions, this is where we get into a bit more of the tech. And Joe, you're going to lead us off on this round. In general, what's different about manufacturing education today? Your example of the CSI and the hackathons, I think, is one great answer to that right out of the gate. But maybe from a technology standpoint, what do manufacturers need to operate efficiently today, and how are you prepping the folks that come through here for that?
Yeah, so it's an interesting question. I'm an engineer by education. Before I came to UW–Milwaukee, I worked with a company locally called Regal Rexnord for about 14 years. Spent a lot of my time leading engineering and spending a lot of my time in plants. So, I was very much wired around continuous improvement and lean principles. And that still continues to be the foundation for how we educate engineers in manufacturing and related areas, things like supply chain, etc., here at UWM. I think the difference now is, I like to describe it as there's a layer of technology we put on top of that.
So, data literacy. And Mike touched on this very well when he talked about, I forget the specific example you were saying about an area that's not measured on the plant floor, Mike, but data is everywhere. And what we're trying to educate our students on now is how to use tools to access that data early so you can do things proactively with it instead of waiting till that oops on third shift and saying, "Oh boy, we'll wait till first shift to fix it."
So, again, data readiness. Certainly understanding tools, things like the digital twin, which we pointed out on our tour. Things like basic understanding of artificial intelligence and machine learning. We don't need every engineer or every business student that graduates from UWM or comes through a program at CSI to be an expert, but to understand where tools like AI and ML are appropriate, where they can add value.
I'd share one example, and then I'll pause and pass the mic. I talked about digital twinning, right? We had a student who spent a lot of time working with us in a data analytics program. She did some great work understanding how our digital twin solution works. Another one of our partner companies, and I'll point to Husco again, came to us with an opportunity. They said, "Hey, we'd like to build a digital twin for one of the assembly cells in our operation. We've got a few things we'd like to test. Can you help us with that?"
So, again, here we have a connection, right? Student learns data literacy. They learn new capability in the classroom. We're able to connect that student to a company, and now we have a company with a new capability that was enabled by that student's work in the classroom. So, it's kind of that value chain of, again, data literacy, understanding some of the newer capabilities with technology, digital twinning, AI, etc., and then moving that forward into the workforce.
Yeah, Mike, I've got a question for you, but I'm going to talk to the audience real quick. Sometimes in a situation like this, we play the AI drinking game. Anytime any of the panelists say artificial intelligence, everyone has to take a drink. Honestly, I think if we did digital twin as the term today, we'd probably have a few more sips in us at this point. But we'll enact that rule going forward.
But, Mike, I want to hear from your perspective on the factory floor today. How are you leveraging technology and innovation? You've talked a little bit about this so far, but how are you leveraging it to address some of the operations and workforce challenges that we've covered in the conversation so far? Again, to hear it from someone that lives and breathes this every day.
Yeah, so I think one element here is, in Mequon, we introduced a torque control program. So, we're responsible primarily for all the drives that are sent out from Rockwell. And over the course of that journey, year two, we identified, while utilizing this torque control program, we saw a 40% increase in first pass yield. For context, we do 15 million torque rundowns per year. So, to get that was not only a huge benefit from a labor efficiency perspective, but quality.
Then the next element of that is we're going to continue this with now introducing, in certain aspects, process automation. And with doing that, that obviously helps alleviate some of those workforce challenges, but it also is important that we're empowering our employees to understand the importance of this. So, I'd say that's one story that I think has been a very successful one for Mequon.
Awesome story. Ryan, let's take this from the commercial standpoint this time around. This is a question I've been looking forward to asking you as someone that spent the first decade of my career in sales as well. Where are manufacturers willing to invest when it comes to new technology right now? And then where are they holding back and why?
First, let's start with digital twin. Drink up.
Cheers. Good job. Cheers, everyone.
I would say where a lot of manufacturers are willing to invest today is where they get instant ROI. It's where they see that instant ROI is where they're going to invest their money. Where they're not willing to invest is what we're talking about actually here because they're cautious. They don't know exactly what the outcome is going to be. They hear us talk. They have people come in and give them guidance all the time, but they're still cautious because how does that relate to an ROI? What is the end result that they're going to get from going down a path of AMRs or utilizing AI in their factory? So, that's where they're not willing to spend that money quite yet.
Yeah. I am curious, in your perspectives, what are one of those quick ROI areas that people are getting comfortable with? Because I think it's great that you brought up AMRs, actually, because that's one of those areas that it's no longer a science project, right? People are like, "Oh, yeah, this works. We've seen it work other spots." It's not just the early adopters now that are going after that. But what's one of the spots that you do see as a quick ROI, or maybe that manufacturers out there see as a quick ROI right now?
I would say that AMRs is probably the hot topic right now where you see many manufacturers exploring that, again, just because of the challenges they're having in the workforce. And that's a heavily labor-intensive activity that they're doing there. And then if they can replace those resources and repurpose them in other places of the plant, it's a very easy one to tackle.
So, sticking on this immediacy topic, Phil, I'm curious, what technologies are you focused on in your training programs that are providing immediate impact when folks get out to the field? I think this is a nice way to kind of bring things back together because, Joe, you led off with talking about, "Hey, sometimes it takes engineers a few years to really get ramped up." But, Phil, I'm curious to hear, where's the immediate impact right now in some of the areas you're focused on in your training?
Yeah. Well, and I will legitimately use digital twin in this response, but we'll throw that out early. Yeah, we're going to get good and sauced here, folks.
No, I think they're never problems, there's always opportunities. When I look at training, technology cuts two ways. One, we got to train on technology. As these new technologies become available, we need to train on them because you got to fix them, you got to deploy them, you got to manage them. So, those require skills, but we also have to utilize technology to support the training environment. One of the critical things we see in training, and I want to kind of circle up a couple of different comments that came from Ryan and Joe and Mike, we are very explicitly talking about skills within the context of
Manufacturing, and what we're not talking about necessarily is a degree or a finite credential that I'm getting that takes me an amount of time to get. And what we're really seeing an evolution in, both the training and the employment space, is capturing skill frameworks. What skills does my job require, and then how do I get those skills in a hands-on way to make sure that person is job ready for that?
So, when we look at the training and the technology we evolve, is how do we put discrete skill training in front of somebody that's hands-on or leveraging digital twins and simulation to give them that real-world experience? Come on, guys. Get that real-world experience, that hands-on experience that they're going to see out in the field, but do it in a safe—a digital twin is not going to break you or hurt you.
So, that digital experience is going to be great for a training environment, but how do we rack and stack these skills that are going to be applicable, and rack them and stack them that we still have value, right? When Joe talked about that manufacturer that they said, "Hey, it takes three to four years to get an engineer to be 100% valuable." I myself am also a recovering mechanical engineer, right? I came from that field, but I wasn't useful for—because it was a lot of theory, not a lot of practical.
And so, I think that's the technological training evolution, is how do we get practical, discrete experiences into people's hands so they're job ready? But we want to build it within the framework of, how do I advance my career through educational opportunities? Maybe it starts as a simple credential. I work on the job. I then get an associate's degree. I then get a bachelor's degree. And maybe I go on for a master's or whatever. But there's a pathway where I'm stacking skills that results in the end outcome that's been traditional, but I've got practical knowledge that I can apply to the job directly.
So, it reduces that time of ROI around the technologies. If my company can deploy the technologies and I can rapidly support those technologies, that's a huge ROI gain off the jump.
Yeah, and one of the fun parts about my job is I get to have conversations like this basically on a weekly basis. And, Phil, I'm glad you brought up, let's say, the shift to skill stacking and collecting those certifications, and ultimately getting back to some of those more traditional degrees, associate's, master's, whatever degree we're talking about, right? But that is something that I would say is a trend we're hearing on Manufacturing Happy Hour more often, that skill stacking, collecting those skills and certifications, is becoming more of that new normal in industry.
So, at this point, I'm looking to go down the line to get a final piece of advice for the audience. Something people can go do to help bring out, whether it's their factory of the future or take their operations to the next level. Mike, we're going to start with you, and we're going to go down the line to Phil. Then, after that, I think we're going to have time for maybe a couple questions. We'll get to that as time permits.
But first, as we wrap our conversation, we've covered everything from operations, workforce, to tech. What advice, Mike, would you give to the manufacturing leaders out there? You already had a great one right at the start about plan A, B, C, etc. But what's another action someone could take to really bring about the factory of the future or the future of their manufacturing operations?
Yeah. So, I would say, as you look at capital investment into automation, you need to look at it as capital investment in automation and workforce development together. They're not separate entities. They need to be together because that's how you're going to move it forward more quickly.
Like I said earlier, too, being comfortable exposing your vulnerabilities, being honest with yourself and your team, and say, "What are our challenges here? How do we course correct them?" It's not going to be overnight. It's going to be a journey.
Awesome. Joe?
Yeah, my short answer would be get started. Try something, right? Start small, learn from it. It's probably not going to be perfect, but you'll be better the next time.
And maybe the other parting shot that I might ask everybody for a little bit of help with. So, our work, our service here at the CSI, is only as good as the feedback we get from industry. And so, my ask for all of you would be, as you're out working with your partners, working with your customers, trying to understand their challenges, please pass that back to us. That informs how we educate students. It informs how we build workforce programs that, again, are directly feeding your future as manufacturing leaders. So, please don't be afraid to stay in touch and let us know.
Yeah, and I'll say for the folks listening to this podcast at a future date, it's good advice to be engaged with your local institutions, whether it's the universities, community colleges, etc. Great advice on bringing that information back to the variety of educators that are in a region. Ryan?
Yeah, this one's easy, as in the easy answer. As you can see, there's a panel of individuals here. There's a group of participants in the audience, and it's resources that our customers in the manufacturing community can take advantage of. So, leveraging those resources when you don't necessarily—you're afraid to take that leap, start small. We can help facilitate that. Many people can help facilitate that. So it's leveraging the resources that are at your fingertips. Critically important, you don't have to do it alone.
Awesome. Phil, take us home.
Yeah, well, cheap plug, there's always the Academy of Advanced Manufacturing. Feel free to participate in that and get the workforce you need. But in all seriousness, I think the panel has a really awesome perspective from a technology and an experience standpoint. I think the biggest thing is kind of repeating what I said in my previous answer: skill framework.
Start looking at your workforce like the technology you build out, the environment you have, that's one half of a critical piece. The other piece is the workforce that's going to serve that technology, or the technology is going to serve the workforce. Start looking at it from a skills perspective. Look at your jobs and your roles and your needs and start breaking down, what does my talent need to have? One, that'll bring into focus what talent you actually need to go get, but also what talent you need to make, right? We want to hire on attitude and aptitude and culture fit, and we want to train on skills and capabilities. That's going to be the easiest way to maintain that workforce, to keep those operations up and running.
So a skill framework is a really strong starting point, and kind of the catchphrase I would use—I'm stealing it from a movie, but I can't remember the movie. It was a comedy—but you don't have to get ready if you stay ready, right? If your workforce and your skill framework is there all the time, you're never having to play catch-up because you know where you are in your journey, and you're just adding things that you continuously are upgrading your workforce as you need to.
You don't have to get ready if you stay ready. I wish I knew what movie that was from. It just reminds me of "If you're not first, you're last" from Talladega Nights. That's the first one that came to mind. But hey, in all seriousness, give it up for Mike, Joe, Ryan, Phil.
I'm looking at the clock here. Looks like we have time for at least one question, maybe two if we're quick. Does anyone have any questions for anyone up here? Show of hands if you got one. Come on up. I'll have you ask it into the microphone so that way we can capture it for the podcast as well. So come on. Yeah, if you want to swing up here, you can just stand right in front of me and block me from the camera temporarily.
Okay, you want me to stand like right in front of you, or?
Oh, there is good. Yeah.
I was going to say, I would hope that you—and this might be on the record—I hope you like European so much that you stay on camera the whole time. Okay, I'm done.
So to each of you guys, because this event is called the factory of the future, what does your factory of the future look like? It could be related to the industry you're already in, or it could just be your dream factory. I don't know. This—
That's a great question, and Phil, I know you're the one with the time crunch here. So we'll start with you, and we'll go down the line the opposite way this time.
I think the factory of the future is continuous production with kind of seamless integration with a bunch of people working behind the curtain, right? That's really what the future is.
I would say that a little bit of what Phil said there, expanding on that, is it's the customer experience. Ultimately, that's what we're trying to solve. The consumer, the customer experience, they don't feel that pain. There's unlimited supply, and we're meeting their demands.
Yeah, I can't argue with what either of the first two answers were. I think the other thing that I might add is just clear visibility to what's going well and where do we have our opportunities so that they can be immediately actioned.
Yeah, what I maybe highlight a little bit, as it relates to AMRs and autonomous operations, that also helps with leading to transactional integrity. So, I think those elements there keep your plant running.
Awesome questions. Awesome answers. Anyone else? I think we got time for one more if we have one more out there. Not seeing any hands going up right now. So, if not, a couple more groups to thank, right? So, let's give it up one more time for UWM, Joe and the Connected Systems Institute for hosting us here this afternoon.
And then on a personal note, I'll say it's always fun doing events like this. I think a lot of my regular listeners know this, but I spent the first decade of my career working with Rockwell. I got to work with guys like Ryan, and Phil is actually an alum of Manufacturing Happy Hour. Shout out to folks like Bert and Andy, Donahue, Aaron, folks from across my entire career in this audience. So, it's a ton of fun, but I'm using that as a segue to say, "Hey, let's give it up one more time for Revere Electric and Rockwell Automation for making today's event possible."
And with that, as we wrap our recording, we'll end this with the Manufacturing Happy Hour sign-off. So, we'll do one final cheers. Raise your glass to everyone here. You're all doing awesome things in manufacturing as well. Stay innovative. Stay thirsty. Digital twin. Thanks for being a part of today's show. Cheers, everyone.
Everyone, thanks for listening, and thank you one last time to Revere and Rockwell for making this whole event possible and to UWM for hosting us. If you want to connect with any of our guests, head to the show notes page at manufacturinghappyhour.com, and make sure you're subscribed to Manufacturing Happy Hour wherever you get your podcasts. We'll catch you again next time.
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