Augmented Ops - Episodes Tagged with “Workforce”

Modernizing the Industrial Base: Readiness, Resilience, and the Road Ahead

Tulip — Thu, 02 Apr 2026 00:15:00 -0400

Modernizing the U.S. industrial base is no longer a long-term goal. Between geopolitical competition, workforce constraints, and rising cybersecurity demands, manufacturers are under pressure to rethink how production systems are built and operated.

Clark Dressen, CTO of MxD, joins the show to explain how this transformation is taking shape across the defense industrial base and broader manufacturing ecosystem. As a public-private partnership funded in part by the Department of Defense, MxD works to connect emerging technologies with real-world production environments.

The conversation focuses on what modernization actually requires. Not digital transformation for its own sake, but applying technology to solve specific operational problems around quality, productivity, and consistency. Clark shares how tools like sensors, digital twins, and AI are being introduced into legacy environments to reduce reliance on tribal knowledge and create more repeatable processes.

The episode also explores the structure of the industrial base, where small and mid-sized suppliers make up the majority of the defense supply chain but often lack the resources to meet growing cybersecurity and compliance requirements. As workforce transitions accelerate, the focus shifts toward capturing expertise, improving how work is executed, and building more resilient production systems.

Watch the full episode on YouTube: https://youtu.be/T2bkZvyK5kU

Augmented Ops is a podcast for industrial leaders, citizen developers, shop floor operators, and anyone who cares about what the future of frontline operations will look like across industries. This show is presented by Tulip, the Frontline Operations Platform. You can find more from us at Tulip.co/podcast or by following the show on LinkedIn.

Special Guest: Clark Dressen.

Regional Ecosystems of Manufacturing: The Foundation of Industrial Strength

Tulip — Thu, 19 Mar 2026 00:15:00 -0400

What actually makes a region strong in manufacturing?

In this episode, Gillian Catrambone sits down with Beatriz Gutierrez, CEO of CONNSTEP Inc., Connecticut’s Manufacturing Extension Partnership (MEP), to explore how regional ecosystems, through MEPs, workforce programs, and coordinated resources, create the foundation for industrial strength.

Beatriz breaks down how manufacturers are navigating labor constraints, adopting automation incrementally, and rethinking supply chains in a more volatile environment. The conversation also highlights what separates effective regions, including strong talent pipelines, connected institutions, and easier access to capital, training, and support.

She closes with practical guidance for operations leaders. Focus on critical processes, plan for the long term, and approach transformation step by step rather than waiting for perfect conditions.

Watch the full episode on YouTube: https://youtu.be/ZJO0bbYSGII

Special Guest: Beatriz Gutierrez.

The State of Reshoring: Supply Chains, Strategy, and the Future of US Manufacturing

Tulip — Thu, 05 Mar 2026 00:15:00 -0500

Global supply chains are being rewired in real time. From tariffs and geopolitics to labor constraints and energy infrastructure, manufacturers are navigating a level of volatility few have experienced before.

Rosemary Coates, Founder and Executive Director of the Reshoring Institute, joins the show to unpack what’s actually happening beneath the headlines. Drawing on recent executive interviews and location studies, she explains why many companies are pausing major decisions, how “China plus one” strategies are evolving, and what reshoring really requires beyond political rhetoric.

For operations leaders, the conversation moves from macro forces to practical considerations: evaluating total landed cost beyond labor, balancing capital intensity with workforce availability, selecting locations with infrastructure in mind, and building resilience through diversified manufacturing footprints. While the path forward is complex, Rosemary outlines why advanced, higher-skilled manufacturing still presents meaningful opportunity for U.S. growth.

Watch the full epsiode on YouTube

For more on this topic, Rosemary hosts The Frictionless Supply Chain podcast, covering supply chain strategy and global production shifts.

Special Guest: Rosemary Coates.

From the Classroom to the Shop Floor: Building the Future Industrial Workforce

Tulip — Wed, 18 Feb 2026 00:15:00 -0500

Manufacturing is undergoing a generational shift. As experienced workers retire and automation accelerates, the industry must solve both a workforce shortage and a skills gap — and it must do so simultaneously.

Jacob “MFG Kid” Sanchez is a well-known manufacturing influencer and content creator, and a vocal advocate for bringing new talent into the industry. With hands-on shop floor experience and a growing platform dedicated to promoting automation and modern manufacturing careers, he works to make the industry more visible, accessible, and appealing to the next generation.

Check out Jacob’s newly launched Axis community — a brand-neutral space for automation, robotics, and manufacturing professionals to connect, learn, and collaborate.

In this conversation, Jacob and Natan explore how manufacturers can generate genuine interest in industrial careers, rethink how technical skills are taught and developed, and draw lessons from apprenticeship models in countries that consistently produce highly skilled manufacturing talent.

Watch the full episode on YouTube

Special Guest: Jacob "MFGKid" Sanchez.

The Need for Speed in Life Sciences

Tulip — Thu, 05 Feb 2026 00:15:00 -0500

The life sciences industry has long justified slow digital adoption through regulation. But as technology adoption accelerates faster than guidance, that logic is breaking down.

In this episode, Michelle Vuolo and Gilad Langer discuss why speed has become a defining challenge for pharma and medical device manufacturers. Drawing on experience from ISPE, quality leadership, and decades in regulated operations, they explore validation 4.0, cultural resistance to risk-based thinking, and how AI is reshaping quality and compliance work.

The conversation examines what it really takes for life sciences organizations to move faster without losing control — and why waiting for perfect regulatory clarity is no longer a viable strategy

Watch the full episode on YouTube: https://youtu.be/SPJz8_cFYM4

Special Guest: Dr. Gilad Langer.

The Human Infrastructure of Manufacturing with Stacey Weismiller of AMFI

Tulip — Thu, 22 Jan 2026 00:15:00 -0500

Manufacturing is often discussed in terms of technology, productivity, and investment — but rarely in terms of people as infrastructure. In this episode of Augmented Ops, Stacey Weismiller, Founder of the American Manufacturing Futures Institute, joins Natan Linder to reframe the conversation.

Stacey draws on her background spanning manufacturing, economic development, and global policy to explore why people, access, and community must sit at the center of industrial renewal. Together, they discuss workforce participation, civic manufacturing, equitable growth, and how AI can augment human work without eroding trust or dignity.

The conversation spans everything from factory jobs and childcare to resilience, reindustrialization, and why manufacturing needs a new narrative — one that values stewardship as much as efficiency.

Watch the full episode on YouTube.

Special Guest: Stacey Weismiller.

The Real Problem AI Needs to Solve in Manufacturing

Tulip — Thu, 15 Jan 2026 09:00:00 -0500

Read about Tulip’s $120M Series D 👉 http://tulip.co/press/tulip-secures-120m-series-d/

In this conversation, Chris Luecke, host of the Manufacturing Happy Hour podcast, joins Natan Linder to discuss AI in manufacturing, and how Mitsubishi Electric’s lead investment in Tulip’s $120M Series D helps to accelerate our mission to scale our composable platform, support an open ecosystem for frontline operations, and supports AI-enabled and human-driven innovation.
Key themes from this conversation include:
• Why "software-defined manufacturing" is essential for modern supply chains.
• The rise of the AI process engineer, and real-world implications of AI adoption among frontline process engineers.
• The importance of building a transparent, human-first culture in frontline operations.

Augmented Ops is a podcast for industrial leaders, citizen developers, shop floor operators, and anyone else that cares about what the future of frontline operations will look like across industries. This show is presented by Tulip, the Frontline Operations Platform. You can find more from us at Tulip.co/podcast or by following the show on LinkedIn.

Special Guest: Chris Luecke.

AI at the Crossroads of Regulation and Innovation

Tulip — Thu, 08 Jan 2026 12:00:00 -0500

AI is rapidly reshaping life sciences manufacturing—but as intelligent systems move into regulated environments, questions around validation, governance, and trust become unavoidable.

In this episode of Augmented Ops, host Michelle Vuolo, Head of Quality at Tulip, is joined by Bryan Ennis, Chief Quality Officer and Founder of Sware, and Martin Heitmann, of the Triality Group. Together, they explore what it really takes to deploy AI responsibly in pharma, biotech, and medtech operations.

The conversation examines why many AI initiatives stall at the pilot stage, how validation practices must evolve for probabilistic systems, and where organizations are already seeing real value—from predictive maintenance to quality signal detection and validation automation. They also discuss emerging regulatory guidance, including Annex 22, and why regulators are not anti-AI—but deeply skeptical of black-box systems.

Throughout the discussion, a consistent theme emerges: successful AI adoption is less about the technology itself and more about process design, data quality, human oversight, and building evidence that systems are safe, transparent, and fit for purpose.

This episode offers a grounded, experience-driven perspective on how life sciences organizations can move from experimentation to scale—without compromising patient safety or compliance.

Watch the full episode on YouTube: https://youtu.be/7keK_4zDaTg

Special Guests: Bryan Ennis and Martin Heitmann.

Giving Robots "Common Sense": Inside RightHand Robotics with Yaro Tenzer

Tulip — Thu, 18 Dec 2025 00:15:00 -0500

Robotics has promised to transform manufacturing and logistics for decades — but turning intelligent machines into reliable, everyday operators remains hard. In this episode of Augmented Ops, Natan Linder sits down with Yaro Tenzer, co-founder and CEO of RightHand Robotics, to talk about what it actually takes to deploy AI-powered robotics in real operational environments.

Yaro shares lessons from building robotic systems that operate in the messiness of the real world — where data is imperfect, edge cases are constant, and reliability matters more than demos. Together, they discuss why so many robotics pilots struggle to reach production, how machine learning improves through real-world feedback, and what operations leaders should understand before investing in automation.

The conversation explores the intersection of robotics, AI, and operations — focusing on practical constraints, system design, and the human decisions that determine whether advanced technology delivers value or stalls on the shop floor.

Watch the full episode on YouTube: https://youtu.be/a06GA7TvI8Y

Special Guest: Yaro Tenzer.

The Future Process Engineer with Chris Luecke of Manufacturing Happy Hour

Tulip — Thu, 04 Dec 2025 00:15:00 -0500

What does the future of process engineering look like in an era shaped by AI, automation, and rapid operational change? In this episode, Chris Luecke joins Natan Linder to explore how the role is evolving, what still defines great engineering, and why human judgment remains essential on the modern shop floor.

Chris is the host of Manufacturing Happy Hour and one of the most connected voices in the industry. Before stepping behind the microphone, he spent years as a process engineer at Anheuser-Busch and later worked across sectors with Rockwell Automation—giving him a rare vantage point on how factories actually run and how engineering teams solve problems.

Natan and Chris discuss the shift from reactive troubleshooting to systems thinking, how culture shapes the pace and quality of improvement, and why the most effective way to introduce AI is to aim it at the tasks teams collectively find painful. They also examine the idea of “Shenzhen Speed,” how faster design and production cycles influence global competitiveness, and what manufacturers elsewhere can learn from regions that move quickly.

This conversation offers an on-the-ground view of how engineering work is changing and what the next generation of process engineers will need to thrive.

Watch the full episode on YouTube

Special Guest: Chris Luecke.

AI, Industry, and the Human Story with MIT’s David Mindell

Tulip — Thu, 13 Nov 2025 00:15:00 -0500

AI is often described as a revolution, but every technological leap has deep roots in the human story. In this episode of Augmented Ops, MIT Professor and author David Mindell joins Tulip CEO Natan Linder to discuss how history can help us navigate the rise of intelligent systems.

Mindell, a historian, engineer, and entrepreneur, shares insights from his latest book, The New Lunar Society, which traces the origins of the Industrial Revolution and the people who built it. He draws connections between the 18th-century innovators who powered the first era of mechanization and today’s engineers shaping AI. Every tool, he argues, embeds human skill, judgment, and culture; from the earliest steam engines to modern autonomous systems.

Their conversation examines the enduring questions that define manufacturing and technology: How can new tools expand opportunity instead of narrowing it? What does responsible innovation look like in an age of automation? And how can societies balance ambition, governance, and trust while embracing change?

Through stories of invention, work, and rediscovery, Mindell reminds us that progress has always been a human endeavor. Technology evolves, but the drive to create, understand, and improve remains constant.

Watch the full episode on YouTube

Special Guest: David Mindell.

AI for Operations: From Everyday Tools to Agentic Systems

Tulip — Thu, 30 Oct 2025 00:15:00 -0400

Manufacturing is entering a new phase of AI adoption, one where intelligent systems don’t just generate insights but take action in context. In this episode of Augmented Ops, host Mason Glidden, Tulip’s Chief Product Officer, is joined by Olga Stroilova, Group Product Lead, and Pete Hartnett, Group Product Manager, to discuss how agentic AI is redefining what’s possible on the factory floor.

Together, they unpack the evolution from predictive and generative AI to agentic systems capable of autonomous, goal-driven behavior while keeping people firmly in the loop. They examine why many pilots stall before production, how governance and culture shape adoption, and why “human oversight by design” is becoming the new standard for responsible AI in manufacturing.

Drawing from Tulip’s own roadmap and customer experiences, the team highlights how features like AI Composer, Tulip Agents, and context-aware workflows are helping users close the insight-to-action gap, scale AI safely, and unlock new forms of operational leverage.

Rather than imagining a future without people, the episode points to a more realistic vision of AI in manufacturing: one where systems evolve, but human judgment remains the foundation of progress.

Special Guests: Olga Stroilova and Pete Hartnett.

Operations Calling 2025 Recap: From AI Hype Into Real World Results

Tulip — Thu, 16 Oct 2025 00:15:00 -0400

Kicking off Season 6, Natan and Tulip CMO Madilynn Castillo reflect on Operations Calling 2025—recorded just after nearly 800 manufacturing leaders, engineers, and frontline pros converged at Tulip HQ for Tulip’s biggest event to date. More than a showcase of technology, this two-day experience blended strategy, execution, and genuine community. Attendees dove into headline keynotes, fireside chats, interactive workshops, and panels, led by senior voices and industry experts driving the new era of manufacturing.

The episode captures how this convergence marked a real inflection point: AI moving from hype to hands-on tools like Tulip Agents, composable systems scaling across teams, and the shift from digital transformation to continuous transformation on the shop floor. Through live demos, open learning, and collaborative problem-solving, participants saw—and built—the next wave of operations-led innovation.

Packed with post-event momentum, Natan and Madi share stories and lessons that reveal how practical AI, human-centered design, and community are reshaping manufacturing’s future.

Check out all the Operations Calling Sessions!
Natan's Keynote
The Next Shift: AI-Driven Transformation of the Connected Factory
Tulip Roadmap Session

Special Guest: Madilynn Castillo.

Reindustrializing in 2025 — AI, Scale, and the Future of U.S. Manufacturing with MIT’s Liz Reynolds

Tulip — Thu, 14 Aug 2025 00:15:00 -0400

In this bonus episode, our guest is Liz Reynolds, manufacturing and workforce expert at MIT and strategic advisor to Tulip..

Fresh from Detroit's Reindustrialize conference, Liz and Natan share key insights on America's urgent push to bring manufacturing back home. They explore the "Spring of momentum" in reindustrialization efforts, from AI moving beyond hype to real implementation on the shop floor, and break down the massive scale challenges facing US manufacturers across critical sectors.

Drawing from major industry conferences including Reindustrialize, the Hill and Valley Forum, Industry Studies Association, and MIT's Initiative for New Manufacturing, she explains strategic workforce development approaches to address the 400,000 manufacturing worker shortage and the Department of Defense's $1 trillion budget impact on industrial capacity. Reynolds sheds light on how this Spring's discussions and strategic planning around technology adoption and workforce training are beginning to take concrete shape as the real work accelerates into Fall.

Special Guest: Elisabeth Reynolds.

Episode 129: AI and the Human Element in Industry 4.0 with Jeff Winter

Tulip — Wed, 17 Jan 2024 00:30:00 -0500

This week’s guest is Jeff Winter, Sr. Director of Industry Strategy for Manufacturing at Hitachi Solutions.

Jeff offers his insights into the history of the Industry 4.0 movement and how he expects it to evolve in the coming years. His discussion highlights the balance between AI and human ingenuity, the role of frontline workers in an increasingly automated manufacturing environment, and the untapped potential of manufacturing data.

Augmented Ops is a podcast for industrial leaders, shop floor operators, citizen developers, and anyone else that cares about what the future of frontline operations will look like across industries. This show is presented by Tulip, the Frontline Operations Platform. You can find more from us at Tulip.co/podcast or by following the show on LinkedIn.

Special Guest: Jeff Winter.

Episode 123: Building a Manufacturing Software Marketplace with Diego Tamburini

Tulip — Wed, 04 Oct 2023 00:30:00 -0400

Our guest this week is Diego Tamburini, Category Manager for Manufacturing for the Microsoft Commercial Marketplace.

We explore what the modern manufacturing software landscape looks like from the consumer and vendor perspective, and take a deep dive into what software providers can do to enable an open, interoperable tech stack for manufacturers. We also highlight the importance of collecting data and putting the operator first as manufacturers look to digitally transform their businesses.

Special Guest: Diego Tamburini.

Episode 122: Fixing the Failures of Industry 4.0 with Antonio Padovano

Tulip — Wed, 20 Sep 2023 00:30:00 -0400

Our guest this week is Antonio Padovano, Assistant Professor at the University of Calabria.

In this conversation, we discuss the failures of practically implementing Industry 4.0 on the shop floor, and his vision for how we can address these with a new approach that respects both humans and technology.

Special Guest: Antonio Padovano.

Episode 121: Looking Back and Looking Ahead

Tulip — Wed, 23 Aug 2023 00:15:00 -0400

In this special episode, Trond introduces Natan Linder, CEO of Tulip and co-author of Augmented Lean, as the new host of Augmented Season 4. Trond and Natan review four great interviews from 2022, and Natan previews what’s to come in 2023–with new episodes that go beyond interviews to include brainstorms, debates, and the occasional stream of consciousness.

Episode 112: Humans, Robots, and the Future of Manufacturing with Anna Waldman-Brown

Tulip — Wed, 19 Apr 2023 00:15:00 -0400

Augmented reveals the stories behind the new era of industrial operations, where technology will restore the agility of frontline workers.

In this episode, we’re speaking with Anna Waldman-Brown, PhD candidate in political economy and researcher at MIT. Our discussion dives deep into how manufacturers are automating welding processes, the role humans and robots will play in the future of the industry, and what these trends mean for small- and medium-sized enterprises in particular. We also explore the importance of collaboration between greener, tech-savvy automation engineers and the experienced shop floor operators whose skills and expertise are necessary to drive the production process.

If you like this show, subscribe at AugmentedPodcast.co. If you enjoyed this episode, you might also like Episode 92: Emerging Interfaces for Human Augmentation with Pattie Maes, or Episode 7: Work of the Future with Elisabeth Reynolds. Augmented is a podcast for industry leaders, process engineers, and shop floor operators, hosted by futurist Trond Arne Undheim and presented by Tulip.

Follow the podcast on Twitter or LinkedIn.

Special Guest: Anna Waldman-Brown.

Episode 110: Executing on Manufacturing Technology with Jane Arnold

Tulip — Wed, 22 Mar 2023 00:15:00 -0400

Augmented reveals the stories behind the new era of industrial operations, where technology will restore the agility of frontline workers.

In this episode of the podcast, the topic is "Executing on Manufacturing Technology" and our guest is Jane Arnold, board member at Aperio.ai and former VP of Manufacturing Technology at Stanley Black & Decker. In this conversation, we talk about advanced manufacturing technology, the importance of material flow, transparency, throughput, cost cutting, and captivating users with digital tools.

If you like this show, subscribe at augmentedpodcast.co. If you liked this episode, you might also like Episode 100: Innovating Across the Manufacturing Supply Chain. Augmented is a podcast for industry leaders, process engineers, and shop floor operators, hosted by futurist Trond Arne Undheim and presented by Tulip.

Follow the podcast on Twitter or LinkedIn.

Trond's Takeaway:

Execution is everything in manufacturing. You can have any technology you want, but it's only going to be as good as the execution, both among executives and among managers all along the supply chain and all across the factory.

Special Guest: Jane Arnold.

Episode 94: Digitized Supply Chain

Tulip — Wed, 24 Aug 2022 00:00:00 -0400

Augmented reveals the stories behind the new era of industrial operations, where technology will restore the agility of frontline workers.

In episode 43 of the podcast (@AugmentedPod), the topic is: Digitized Supply Chain. Our guest is Arun Kumar Bhaskara-Baba, Head of Global Manufacturing IT, Johnson & Johnson.

In this conversation, we talk about why J&J puts operators at the center of its strategy, the empowerment effect of frontline operations apps, the evolution of personalized production, and how supply chain becomes an integral part of product development.

After listening to this episode, check out J&J as well as Arun Kumar Bhaskara-Baba's social medial profile:

J&J (@JNJNews): https://www.jnj.com/
Arun Kumar Bhaskara-Baba: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bhaskarababa/

Trond's takeaway: "Operators are the key to the next phase of industrial evolution, that which involves the deep digitalization of manufacturing, its supply chain, production capacity, personalization, and with that the reinvention of factory production itself.

Thanks for listening. If you liked the show, subscribe at Augmentedpodcast.co or in your preferred podcast player, and rate us with five stars. If you liked this episode, you might also like episode 21, The Future of Digital in Manufacturing, episode 27, Industry 4.0 Tools or episode 10, A Brief History of Manufacturing Software

Augmented--conversations on industrial tech.

Transcript:

TROND: Augmented reveals the stories behind a new era of industrial operations, where technology will restore the agility of frontline workers.

In Episode 43 of the podcast, the topic is Digitized Supply Chain. Our guest is Arun Kumar Bhaskara-Baba, Head of Global Manufacturing IT at Johnson & Johnson.

Augmented is a podcast for leaders hosted by futurist Trond Arne Undheim, presented by Tulip.co, the frontline operations platform, and associated with MFG.works, the manufacturing upskilling community launched at the World Economic Forum. Each episode dives deep into a contemporary topic of concern across the industry and airs at 9:00 a.m. U.S. Eastern Time, every Wednesday.

Augmented — the industry 4.0 podcast.

TROND: Arun, how are you?

ARUN: I'm doing great. How are you, Trond?

TROND: Oh, it's wonderful to see you and hear you. I'm very excited. This is a big interview. You have really big responsibilities, Arun. We're going to get to that in a second. But global manufacturing that is a wide, wide topic.

ARUN: Yes, indeed. But the bigger responsibility, but more importantly, what we are privileged is how we are impacting the lives of patients and customers around the world with our products. That comes with the privilege to work in the healthcare environment.

TROND: Well, I'm glad you said that because as we're sort of tracing, I want to ask you a little bit about how you got to where you are. And I know from public records, at least, that you have part of your schooling in India. So you grew up in India, my assumption is, and you got your computer degree there. You worked in India for a little while for the Tata system. And then you made your way over to Michigan. You have your MBA from there.

And then, from what I understand, you then had a bit of a career in automotive and then moved on to Dell. And this brings us to J&J. How did you end up in the U.S.? And how was that journey for you? You've come quite a bit of ways.

ARUN: Yes. It's interesting that you asked how I ended up in U.S. For me, it was a choice of either going to Japan or to U.S., And I'm a vegetarian, so for me, U.S. was a better choice. Growing up when you're a kid, you have two years of experience, the decisions that you make, some priorities.

TROND: That's funny, but you told me, Arun, that you came here with a briefcase and a $10 bill.

ARUN: Yes. I was going to go --

TROND: That's, I guess, not an unusual immigrant story, but it is still quite striking.

ARUN: Absolutely. I grew up in a very small middle-class family. So when I landed, I landed with a briefcase and a $20 bill, actually two $10 bills. And out of that, one $10 bill I still have as a reminder of where I started.

TROND: Wow. And I cut your career a little short because you have had the opportunity to work in all of the BRIC countries, essentially. And you now manage teams across, I think, at least 28 countries. And that brings us, I guess, up to present day where I was alluding to this, but you have a very wide responsibility. We're going to talk about some of it. Can you tell me a little bit about your current role?

ARUN: So, my team supports all the manufacturing operations for J&J across the globe. So we have 100-plus manufacturing plants in pharmaceutical, consumer, medical devices, and vision products. As I mentioned earlier, I am privileged to be in healthcare to serve our patients and customers. We are in 28 countries; my team is spread across. And it's a very humbling experience to really work in a global team and continue to support our operations across the world.

TROND: Well, not only that 28 countries, but I understand you operate about 100 manufacturing sites, some obviously state of the art, very big and sprawling, others actually very small or at least mid-size and have all kinds of other issues. And J&J, you know, what is the breadth of products you make? I mean, you make vaccines. You make knees, artificial knees. What else do you guys make?

ARUN: This is amazing. I used to work for Ford Motor Company and Dell. Definitely, they are also very strong in manufacturing. However, the manufacturing processes are very similar. It is either assembly process, marketing and manufacturing at Dell. I come to J&J, and any type of manufacturing, you say we got it. Whether you talk about process manufacturing or discrete manufacturing, we have that.

So in the pharmaceutical area, we produce biological products where we actually grow live cells and make medicine out of it, as you mentioned, the vaccines and biological products. We also have big chemical products where we actually use big chemical reactions to produce the drugs. In medical devices, we have artificial knees and hips, which are more like a foundry operation. You take a mold, you put it in an artificial knee, and make it happen. And we have sutures that we produce.

And in the consumer side, we have different types of liquids, gels, and tablets that we produce. And finally, in vision care is where we produce our lenses in a very high-velocity manufacturing. So if you look at the breadth of the manufacturing processes and products we support, we support almost every aspect of manufacturing.

TROND: Well, this brings us to today's topic because we're going to talk a little bit about digitizing these operations, the supply chains, the whole thing, and think about what digital means to all of it, whether it's in pharma 4.0, or indeed, you know, manufacturing and industry 4.0. Can you maybe just kick us off a little bit and say what does digital mean to your business today? And what is your main take on how to approach it?

ARUN: The first thing is really I see digital as a means to an end. So if you think about it, it's really why digital is the first and then why digital. We need to be very clearly understanding why we want to digitize. We are in the journey to transform our supply chain so that we can put our patients, our customers at the center of the supply chain and how we can get our products to our customers in a fast, nimble way and in an affordable way.

If you think about healthcare, the key is affordability as well as the ability for us to deliver what they need where they need it. And if you think about even the vaccines that we are producing now, we are manufacturing only in some locations, but we have to distribute them everywhere, whether to sophisticated networks like U.S. or developing areas where we don't even have a lot of transportation like Africa.

So how do we put the customer and the patient at the center? And how can we actually serve them in a much more faster way and in an affordable way? So that is the why behind our supply chain journey. And digitization is a very critical component of that transformation. How do we provide that end-to-end connectivity so that we can reach our customers and patients? How do we understand what is happening in the markets and react to those things quickly as well as respond quickly using digital?

And then ensure that we are delighting our customers beyond just our products, that we have world-class products. But how do we make sure that we are delivering the same customer experience to our patients and customers? So for us, the work from the digital side is how do we build that end-to-end connectivity so that we can reach our customers and we can sense and respond very quickly? And finally, how do we make sure that we significantly improve your customer experience?

TROND: I want to pick up on a couple of things, but let me first ask a basic question. I mean, when I think supply chain, I think back to business school where I was teaching for a while, and I think kind of a fairly dry subject that was a specialty subject. You either cared about it, and then you wanted to become an expert and obviously dominate the field.

But now you're speaking of it as if it is a much more integrated part of product development, which I think that was certainly taught as two separate courses, even in the very immediate past. But do you think of the supply chain as completely integrated with what you do, what you produce?

ARUN: Absolutely. If you think about where the healthcare is headed, if you think about personalized healthcare, if I'm taking a knee right now, we ship like six or seven knees to the surgeons so that they pick the right knee during the operation. And we are getting to a place where we take the picture of the knee, get it back, and make the product, and then 3D print it and give it to the surgeon.

Or if you think about how we are personalizing where we are taking the blood from the patient and making the product that is very specific to the patient and shipping it to them. So this whole flow of here is my R&D, and then it goes to supply chain, and then we deliver it versus it is now becoming a connected world where this all comes together.

So it's really a very integrated part of product development and supply chain. So we really look at that end to end. And then digital is the one that is actually accelerating that journey. Because I can now connect all of these things as a digital thread and then really push the envelope forward.

TROND: But producing for a batch of one, I mean, it's enormously challenging at scale, no?

ARUN: Yeah, absolutely. That is the trick, right? How do I produce that batch of one? And if you think about the future, where we can actually get to that and where we can produce batch of one for almost everything that we do is where we are headed. You're right; there are significant investments in terms of our manufacturing operations and the equipment that we need. And there is that balance between the scale that you need to have versus the personalization that is needed.

And the balance is I don't think the pendulum can go either one way or the other. But really, we still have a lot more to move to the personalized level. How do we really become a full supply chain so that we can produce that batch of one wherever possible? And look at that from the customer and patient's angle, right? If you have somebody who has a traumatic surgery going on and they have a bone that we need to fix...and it is not the same from one trauma to another trauma. There you can't come back and say, okay, here is a batch of things that I'm producing, and I'm going to give it to you.

So the customer expectations are also changing. As a patient and as a consumer, their expectations are also changing. And so we are moving to that batch of one. And how do you do it for different products? And how do you do it for different manufacturing processes is going to be tailored to that business model and then the product.

TROND: So another thing that one might assume when we speak about this, because okay, batch of one, but it has to be an advanced system, and it's covering the globe. I mean, historically, if a factory has machinery or systems and digital technologies, it is a very monolithic, massive system. I understand that you have taken at least some care these days to focus on the operators. Why is that so crucial to you? And what does that mean for the kinds of technologies that you're putting into your factories nowadays?

ARUN: So that's a very good question. If you think about where manufacturing is headed so that we can drive that flexibility, that approach so that we can quickly respond, we have to relook at our manufacturing operations. That means they need to be a lot more nimbler and a lot more flexible. And a lot of technologies are emerging, and that's all driving. But for us, at the end of the day, it all comes back to that operator. We are here to serve the operator. We call it #operatorrules.

Because think about this, we can do all these flexible things. We can bring in automation. We can bring in robots and all of it. At the end of the day, there is an operator at the line who is making it happen. So how do we make sure that we put the operator at the center and then create the experience for the operator so that it makes it a lot easier?

If you take any of our plants, the technology is growing very fast. We used to have an ERP system. The operator has to deal with an MES. The operator then has to look at the equipment interface that the equipment provider has given. Now I'm coming from technology and saying, okay, here is the smart glass. Wear the smart glass, and you can look at everything. Think about the operator, how complex we have made the operator's life. So we are trying to take a step back and say, how do we, first of all, make it simple?

Number two is how do we empower them? So far, we all said that, oh, technology is either manufacturing engineering or the OT or IT people. We held the keys for the technology. But how do we really empower the operators so that they can make it flexible and then they can make it nimble? So that gives you the velocity that we need at our manufacturing operations.

TROND: It's striking when you think about at least digital technologies now clearly. There have been machines in factories for centuries. I mean, that was sort of the various industrial revolution. So there have, of course, been machines that could be operated by operators to some degree.

But the kind of control and the detail-level customization that's now becoming possible doesn't come naturally, does it? It takes a lot of attention to create those kinds of platforms. How do you see that evolving? For example, we said you have over 100 different sites, some of them large, others much smaller; what sort of approaches are you taking to experiment with these solutions?

ARUN: So it's purpose-driven experimentation. Because to your point, when we have these large, fully automated factories, the key is how fast I can introduce new capabilities into that operation. Whereas when I go to a middle-tier factory with semi-automated or not as much automated, it is a very target problem-driven. I have an OEE problem. Let me figure out how do I experiment to bring the technology.

But at both the spectrums, the key is to make sure that there is a good, robust architecture principles. There is good, robust security, and then there is a good data architecture. But from a solutions point of view, how do we make sure that these are modular? Think about the mainframe days where you need to know all those to run the application to now you have apps on your device.

So how do we break these monolithic technologies that are running the operations into smaller apps by bite-sized chunks that we can actually deploy very quickly or pull it out? And that gives me the flexibility to say for a large site; I'm going to deploy all these 100 apps so that they can run it as a suite. Whereas when I go to a smaller site, I might only deploy two of those applications for a specific problem. So it's kind of like really breaking down by, number one, by purpose. Number two, having a good consistent architecture. And number three, really breaking these monolithic things into smaller apps and nimble apps that we can drive.

TROND: I know that you've tried some of Tulip's solutions. Tulip is an app system. But clearly, the bar to completely replace any number of advanced technologies that have developed over literally decades is not done overnight. How do you see the journey that app developers on the manufacturing shop floor...what sort of journey are they going to have with you to prove themselves over time to gradually solve many of these very ambitious problems?

I mean, you describe them pretty eloquently, but they're different in each factory, like you pointed out. And we're dealing with operators, some of whom are very advanced and have taken all kinds of industry 4.0 courses and others who have not. So this is a bit of a journey.

ARUN: Yeah, it is a journey, but there are similarities in this journey. If you think about maintenance of the equipment, it used to be a stronghold of those engineers that are sitting somewhere, and they get to the equipment when there is help needed. Look at where we are now. With operator asset care, we are empowering the operators to own that equipment and drive it. So that is the same journey that we have to go through from the digital side.

And the key is, first of all, making sure that we have platforms like Tulip and others that help us to be able to quickly develop those apps, of course, in a very consistent framework. Especially for us when we are in a regulated industry, some of those framework and validation things become extremely critical. How do you set those boundaries?

The second thing is educate the operators so that they feel empowered that they own the work that they are doing, and they can shape it in the way they need to do it and to continue to train them. And then the third level is to really train the rest of the organization. The management and then the operations leaders all need to be digitally savvy to drive that and then see the value. So it is a journey, but you need to be very clear about why we are doing it and putting the operators at the center and helping them.

The thing that is going to help us is this whole COVID pandemic situation. If you think about the digital savvy of almost the entire world, it has significantly improved. Every operator, whether we like it or not, yeah, they might not have a degree, but they know how to order their Uber Eats. They know how to use an app. So we are seeing digital literacy coming up very fast. So this is a great opportunity for us to drive that transformation. But you're right; it is a journey.

TROND: But you also mentioned regulated industry. I mean, to what extent can some of these apps kind of slide in between the cracks and do stuff that was never covered by regulation? And to what extent do you actually need to take very, very good care that you are, I guess, also updating the regulations and knocking on the doors of governments and telling them that "Look, there's an app for this too."? [chuckles] And we need to upgrade the regulatory framework to take that into account. So it seems to be a bit of both.

ARUN: Yes, you absolutely hit the nail on the head. You need to do both. One is, first of all, have a good, robust architecture. That's why the platforms like Tulip will need to ensure that the architecture is robust so that it has enough control so that we can drive this validation and qualification, those things, and giving the parameters of the freedom for the operators within those constraints. And let's not forget cybersecurity, which is a huge thing, especially when we come to the OT cybersecurity as well. And on the other side...sorry.

TROND: No, no, go ahead. On the other side...

ARUN: On the other side, we need to continue with the regulators and work with the regulators to make sure that they understand what we are doing. We are now working with the regulators to educate them on real-time release. How can we actually use the data rather than having to produce these samples and batches as opposed to relying on continuous data that is coming that shows that your process is in compliance?

So working on both sides with the framework so that it is robust as well as regulators to make sure that they understand how the technology is transforming. At the same time, the compliance is improving. Think about it, when you're doing samples, one, you're taking one sample from a batch. But when you're doing continuous sampling, you have the whole sample, whole product batch data you have in your hands. So we'll continue to work with them to make sure that the regulators are also coming with us on that journey.

TROND: How is pharma 4.0 going? I mean, the acronym is the same as industry 4.0. Is 4.0 actually happening, or are we still in 3.0?

ARUN: In pharma-world, I would say we still have 2.0 to 3.12 to 3.33. And there are some great examples where we have the 4.0 when I talk about what we are doing with the personalized solutions when we talk about how we are bringing IoT to the forefront, how we are doing real-time release with digital twins of our whole process. Now we have digital twins, even for bioreactors, which are very difficult to characterize. So yes, the journey is there.

The key is to keep in mind why we are doing it to really make sure that we have the patients that are waiting for our products in mind and then really transform around to support them. So the journey is continuing. Yes, there are very good examples for pharma 4.0. But are we there yet? No. But is everybody working together to get there? Yes.

TROND: Let's talk a little bit about this operator and the training of an operator because training the workforce is something I ask a lot of the people who come on this podcast about just because technology is one thing but training people on the technology to implement it in a fruitful way is a whole other challenge. What approach are you taking at the whole J&J complex when it comes to training your existing future and even training your ecosystem around you?

ARUN: A couple of things there; one is, first of all, making sure that you start with the user experience in mind and design everything from there. So you need to start with the design aspect. The second thing is how do we make it simple? The more simple you make it, the less training. How many people are getting trained on how to use an iPhone? So really, how do we make it simpler?

But actually, in the future, I'm thinking...and this I actually got from one of your podcasts, Trond, is, are we going to get to a point where there is no interface? So can we get our apps to a state where there is no interface, then your training becomes a lot more part of the evolution rather than you have to go; oh, now I need to learn this, and I need...no, it should be so intuitive. It's like gesturing with my hands.

So how do I get to that state? Hopefully, that state comes in soon, as you've been discussing with some of them. But for me, it is really how do we keep on making it so simple that it becomes intuitive? And it starts with the design, where you put the operator at the center and design around the operator.

TROND: Can we talk a little bit more specifically about the digitized supply chain? Because it is such a core to what you're up to. And I know that there are some characteristics that you care about the most one of them I think you mentioned to me was being very responsive. But what are the priorities when you are redesigning a supply chain? What are the kinds of things that are top of mind for you? And where do you start?

ARUN: You start with the customer experience. How do we make sure that that is clear on how it is impacting the customer experience? Now to help with the customer experience, how do we drive that responsiveness in your supply chain so that you can respond very quickly to what is happening at the demand side, the customer side, and then link it back?

Then the next one is really the resiliency. How do we build that resiliency in supply chain so that we can react very quickly? If there is one thing that COVID taught us is that resiliency in our supply chains actually helped the world in one way to survive this pandemic and continue to survive. So how do we drive that resiliency in the supply chain?

TROND: What do you think about these very traditional concepts that have been part of...and, you know, you had the start of your career in automotive. Lean management is something that everybody wanted to copy, and the Toyota processes and a lot from the country you chose not to study in [laughs] essentially because you weren't convinced they were vegetarian enough.

But anyway, what do you think about the heritage from lean and mixed in with some of the agile tradition from software? Is that altogether creating a new paradigm? And what does that look like, and who's describing it? If you would maybe describe where some of your influences come from when you are designing such a large organization around these principles.

ARUN: At the heart, the lean principles and agile principles are still really valid. Like, if you think about lean, what it is saying is think about the floor, eliminate the waste, and continue to improve and zero defects as possible. So that mindset has to be there for us to even look at digital. What digital is doing is actually helping us to implement lean even faster. How do you get there?

Now, from responsiveness, and we talked a lot about the responsiveness, and reacting, and resiliency that requires this agile mindset, this traditional boundaries of I'm going to go from plan, source, make, deliver. This is becoming a network. The only way you can survive in that network is having that agile mindset where we bring people together very quickly, get the problem solved, deliver that MVP, and don't look back and then move on to the next one.

So the agile principles around bringing the teams together very quickly to focus on the key priorities and delivering on the MVP aligned with the lean thinking to make sure that there is no waste and we are really getting the floor done actually is a great combination of these two. And these are the two things that need to come together even for us to roll out the digital solutions very quickly in our operations.

And COVID has been a great example if you think about how we came together to deliver a product for the instruments in a very quick way across the world in a virtual way. It has been a great example that shows that it can be done. So that's where the lean foundations and then the agile mindset are extremely critical, even for us to drive this digital transformation.

TROND: If you think about how this was built, what are some of the best influences that help you along the way? We talked a little bit about startups that bring the app mindset and maybe some of the agile thinking. It doesn't necessarily come from startups, but certainly, it does exist with startups. Where are these industry practices that you are increasingly embodying at J&J? Where do you think they come from?

ARUN: Actually, they come from many places. And for startups, really one of the places where we can actually see how their mindset is there in terms of test and learns, and learning from failure, and more. And even I'm looking at some of the journeys like how companies like Tulip are evolving as well. Especially those companies from a startup to accelerating phase, that's where we are seeing a lot of the learnings that we can learn.

And one of the big things that we at J&J look at is how can we look at our CEO and saying, "Hey, we need to act like a 135-year-old startup."? So how do we actually look at it? And to your point, where we are looking for, we are looking for everywhere; one is really those startups. But more importantly, those startups that got that first phase and are now accelerating, that's where all the processes need to come together.

And then, at the end of the day, we still have to be reliable. And we are in a regulated industry. So how do we make sure that the patient safety, product quality are the top priority and our processes are reliable? That's where the established companies also help us on how we continue to drive that.

TROND: Yeah, because that's what I guess I wanted to drive to because there is an established idea in the established industry to look for industry best practices. And in the manufacturing space, there are these lighthouse projects. Companies on their own might have lighthouse projects that are especially good. And the World Economic Forum has lighthouse factories. In fact, they have designated places around the world where they have tracked and figured out that they are of sufficient quality to put up as inspirational lighthouses for others.

What is your view on how well that works as a practice? For example, you have 100 sites. Is it possible to tell one site to become more like Site A? Because look at site A how well they're doing. Isn't that also a bit of a challenging message to communicate?

ARUN: Yeah.

TROND: No one likes to be like, all right, I understand. [laughs] My golf swing is not up to par, I get it. I need to look at my neighbor over here. It's not always a fantastic message.

ARUN: [laughs] But speaking of that, actually, we have five sites that are lighthouse sites. And we have one that is going to come up with one of the projects that we're working on as well is in one of the sites with Tulip for the lighthouse site. But the thing is, knowledge grows by sharing. The more you share, the more you're going to grow the knowledge and the faster the adoption is going to be. You're absolutely right.

It does not mean that just because this is a lighthouse site, they are at a pedestal, and then everybody else is in another place. I actually look at it the other way around. What did those lighthouse sites do that we can actually copy and paste, so I don't have to reinvent? And then I can focus on something else as well. So the lighthouse sites are helping us to really share that knowledge so that we can learn from one another. We can build on it. And then we eliminate the need for us to redo the things that they have gone through.

But you're absolutely right; that doesn't mean that those are the only sites that are doing everything and everybody else is not. But sometimes, the copycats that are coming behind the lighthouse might be the best of things because they can get lighthouse practices and implement and then really show that they can actually transform their manufacturing operations much more faster.

TROND: Well, and that's true in the history of manufacturing that you can actually leapfrog. It is still a field where if you do many things right, you definitely make a difference. I wanted to shift tact a little bit, Arun, and move to coming years. What are some of the industry developments that you are the most excited about?

So we've talked generally about digital. We've talked about personalization. What are some of the things that are going to be most crucial to get right and even just like in the year ahead? It's been a very...it's been a wild ride in the last 12 to 15 months. What's going to hit us in the next year, and what are you focused on?

ARUN: So let me break it into a few different areas. One is purely from the technology side of it. If we look at how 3D printing is going to evolve and how it is going to help us to change significantly, how the digital twin and digital threads that are coming up fast that we can actually connect. And then, more importantly, how the machine learning and AI models that are coming up that help us to be responding very quickly. So I'm very excited about those areas, how 3D printing is transforming our operations, how we are able to bring digital twins, digital thread, and machine learning to really drive that end-to-end thread all the way to the customer.

The second area is, from a mindset point of view, is how resiliency and responsiveness has become kind of like a norm. If you think about the COVID pandemic, what it has done is how that resiliency and responsiveness has become a norm. So how do we actually drive that and don't lose that as we come out of the pandemic and then go forward?

And the final one is I'm going to go back and harp on the culture side of it. How do we drive that culture where we let operators be empowered and learn from it and let them be the kings? And we also have the operator hashtag #operatorrules. And we support that culture change, the digital change, and which is really going to be accelerated because they are becoming more and more digital savvy. So there is the technology aspect. And there is actually the responsiveness. And finally, how do we drive the digital savvy across the organization?

TROND: So my last question, and I don't know how fair that question is in the context that you're in, because I could imagine that given the amount of factors that are moving at any given moment, very long-term thinking seems perhaps a little farther away from your everyday life. Because there are so many things that could go wrong literally every minute.

But if you permit yourself and me to think a little bit longer term, towards the next decade, are these things on the digital side, you know, digital twins, and AI, and machine learning, and 3D printing, as this decade moves to a close, are there other things on your horizon as well that will even more drastically transform the landscape? I mean, are digital factories going to be really coming into the scene and really transforming the way?

Are we going to recognize a factory even in the next decade? Or am I kind of overblowing this, and things are just fairly complicated, and it's going to take quite a long time to shake out and integrate all these technologies with all of the workforce challenges and cultural challenges that you just pointed out?

ARUN: Imagining the future, first of all, I really love the idea of almost no interface, intuitive use of technology. Can we get to that? That's one. The second thing is, yes, there will still be big manufacturing areas. Some of them are tied to the physics and biology, so we cannot change, but everything else can actually significantly change. And if you think about can we actually do a factory in a box very quickly for vaccine production in a developing world that cannot afford and we deploy it very quickly?

So will we get to a point where it becomes more of Lego blocks that we can assemble very quickly and get it up and running and everything has an equal and digital model that we really don't have to worry about it? It is not about the digital twin of my operations. But if I take the digital twin of my patient's body and the digital twin of operations, think about how easy it is for me to actually respond to that personalized request or personalized medicine.

Since you let me imagine and let my thoughts flow a little bit more broadly, it's really bringing the digital equivalence. So can I actually take my digital equal and to respond to the digital twin to get the personalized product for me either in a batch of 1 or even maybe a batch of 10 if batch of 1 is not possible? So the factories of the future, yes, some of them might not significantly change, but most of them will be that flexible way to bring them together for specific product or specific customer and being able to re-assemble very quickly to do something else.

And then the intelligence, can it move to the equipment so that the equipment itself can rearrange itself based on the customer base? But then, what is the implication to the workforce? And what is the implication to the operators? So this way of getting those operators to be a lot more digital savvy and really helping to manage this complexity will be a great foundation. But at the same time, that is something that we all need to watch. Yes, all of this can happen. But we need to watch for how do we bring our people together?

TROND: Yeah, and I could just imagine putting myself back in my old government days, scratching my head about self-regulating systems in the medical field, right? [laughs]

ARUN: Yes.

TROND: That would seem to be a little bit of a challenge as well. So there are so many interesting challenges. But it seems to me that even if you are occupied every minute with operational challenges and even just digitizing a supply chain without fundamentally changing its logic, it's going to take all men and women on deck. It's a cultural challenge. It is not just a technology challenge.

ARUN: Absolutely. It is. It is a cultural challenge.

TROND: Well, look, it's been fascinating to hear, and I hope I can check back in with you. It seems to me that if we had had this interview just even just 15 months ago, some of these challenges might have looked a little bit less rosy, and we wouldn't have been discussing about the next decade. I'm assuming that a lot of things for you in your business have really, I guess, opened up throughout this pandemic. Is that right?

ARUN: Yeah.

TROND: Some of these opportunities just weren't there before.

ARUN: Absolutely. A lot of the acceleration...first of all, we are privileged to serve our patients. And we have a big part in helping the world get through the pandemic, our vaccine. And even how we have brought in digital twin into our vaccines in a very faster way was enabled by the pandemic situation.

The whole digital acceleration of some of our solutions that were sitting on the shelf for almost six to nine months, the demand for them grew up within the first few months of the pandemic. So the digital acceleration of our operations has happened. The third thing, as I said earlier, is the digital savvy of our day-to-day citizen is helping us to bring these much more faster to our patients and customers around the world.

TROND: That's a very interesting statement. Because when you cannot innovate faster than your end client, then you're really dealing with the total ecosystem here. You actually depend on your end client to be caught up with all of these technologies. It's a fascinating challenge and probably very important too because there isn't a little bit of an insurance policy there, no Arun. Because if you cannot be more advanced than your end user is, at least you have the time to, or you have to take the time to educate the end user and get their real feedback on what needs to happen.

So that leaves me on an optimistic note, and if you have any last statement...I certainly thank you for your time. And if you have a last challenge, you know, there are so many challenges where you could launch, but if you think to your fellow industry executives, what is the one thing maybe you want to leave them with what you think is a shared challenge that people should focus more on in industry these days?

ARUN: Keep the operator at the center #operatorrules. Let's make sure that we empower them. We help them to be as digitally savvy as possible. That will actually help us to move these needles much more faster.

TROND: Arun, I thank you so much. It's been a pleasure. And I hope I can invite you back someday.

ARUN: Definitely. It has been great, Trond.

TROND: You have just listened to Episode 43 of the Augmented Podcast with host Trond Arne Undheim. The topic was Digitized Supply Chain. Our guest was Arun Kumar Bhaskara-Baba, Head of Global Manufacturing IT at Johnson & Johnson. In this conversation, we talked about why J&J puts operators at the center of its strategy.

My takeaway is that operators are the key to the next phase of industrial evolution that which involves the deep digitalization of manufacturing, its supply chain, the production capacity, personalization, and with that, the reinvention of factory production itself.

Thanks for listening. If you liked the show, subscribe at augmentedpodcast.co or in your preferred podcast player, and rate us with five stars. If you liked this episode, you might also like Episode 21: The Future of Digital in Manufacturing, Episode 27: Industry 4.0 Tools, or Episode 10: A Brief History of Manufacturing Software.

Augmented — conversations on industrial tech.

Special Guest: Arun Kumar Bhaskara-Baba.

Episode 88: The Future of Digital in Manufacturing

Tulip — Wed, 13 Jul 2022 00:00:00 -0400

Augmented reveals the stories behind the new era of industrial operations, where technology will restore the agility of frontline workers. In episode 21 of the podcast @AugmentedPod, the topic is: "The Future of Digital in Manufacturing." Our guest is Çağlayan Arkan, VP of Manufacturing Industry at Microsoft (@Caglayan_Arkan).

In this conversation, we talk about where manufacturing has been in the past, why manufacturing has been lacking a sense of urgency in the sense of industry 4.0 but how everything we know about manufacturing has changed. We also discuss workforce transformation, democratizing operational technology, and the future of industrial innovation.

After listening to this episode, check out Microsoft's manufacturing approach as well as Çağlayan Arkan's social media profile:

Microsoft Cloud for Manufacturing: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/industry/manufacturing/microsoft-cloud-for-manufacturing
Çağlayan Arkan: LinkedIn,
Blog: https://aka.ms/CaglayanArkanBlog

Trond's takeaway: The future of digital in manufacturing is enormously impactful. Yet, even deep digitalization will not make workers obsolete. Rather, the challenge seems to be achieving a dramatic workforce transformation which also entails empowerment, upskilling, and autonomy through augmentation of frontline operations.

Thanks for listening. If you liked the show, subscribe at Augmentedpodcast.co or in your preferred podcast player, and rate us with five stars. If you liked this episode, you might also like episode 9, The Fourth Industrial Revolution post-COVID-19, episode 4, A Renaissance in Manufacturing or Episode 20, The Digitalization of Körber.

Augmented--industrial conversations.

Transcript:

Augmented reveals the stories behind a new era of industrial operations, where technology will restore the agility of frontline workers. In Episode 21 of the podcast, the topic is The Future of Digital in Manufacturing. Our guest is Çağlayan Arkan, VP of Manufacturing Industry at Microsoft.

In this conversation, we talk about where manufacturing has been in the past, why manufacturing has been lacking a sense of urgency in the sense of industry 4.0, but how everything we know about manufacturing has changed. We also discuss workforce transformation, democratizing operational technology, and the future of industrial innovation.

Augmented is a podcast for leaders hosted by futurist, Trond Arne Undheim, presented by Tulip.co, the frontline operations platform, and associated with MFG.works, the manufacturing upskilling community launched at the World Economic Forum. Each episode dives deep into a contemporary topic of concern across the industry and airs at 9:00 a.m. U.S. Eastern Time every Wednesday. Augmented - the industry 4.0 podcast.

Çağlayan, how are you today?

ÇAĞLAYAN: I am very well. Great to be here. Thank you.

TROND: So I am alerted to the fact that you're an outdoor person. And I wanted to cover that just because a technology discussion in manufacturing is not complete without a little bit of personality. And I think you said you are a backcountry skier. I was curious about this.

ÇAĞLAYAN: I am. Skiing is my passion, one of them, but probably the one that makes me happiest, the one that I love the most. I like ski touring, and I like skiing the backcountry, the off-piste. I like climbing. I'm a very physical person. And on a similar note, I also am a cyclist. I'm a sailor, a windsurfer. I just love being out, and I love the wind on my face.

TROND: So at some point in the future, when the pandemic is over and behind us, I think my next podcast with you we will simply go for a hike.

ÇAĞLAYAN: Well, let's do it. But doing it with me has the following potential downside for you. The other piece of my outdoors work, or kind of world, if you will, is that I love miserable weather. I'm a winter person. I love my rain, my cold, my wind. [laughs] And people typically, even if they categorize themselves as outsiders, like outdoor people, they will just love fair weather, I don't. I'm not that person. I don't like the sun on my face. I don't like a lot of people out. I like trails to myself. I like mountains to myself. [laughs] If you're up for it, we'll do it together.

TROND: Well, this is probably something you didn't realize. But I grew up in Norway, and there are no people. And we have plenty of bad weather. So admittedly, I don't live in Norway, so that could give you a clue. [laughter] But there is something there.

ÇAĞLAYAN: All right, we're on. We're on.

TROND: Yeah, we're on. Okay, so having settled that, I wanted to ask you this question. So we're going to talk about, I guess, the future and the current state, present state of manufacturing. But where has manufacturing been in the past? And by the way, when you think past, how far do you go back? I mean, is this just pre-COVID? Because I've heard you talk a little bit about manufacturing traditionally, and I want you to just give us a quick sense of where you think the industry was just a few moments ago.

ÇAĞLAYAN: You started personally. Let me personalize manufacturing for me. I'm an industrial engineer with an MBA. And so, my whole education was in plants in the manufacturing environment. And I studied from operations research to metallurgical engineering, to electrical engineering, to construction, to electrical. You just name it. And so that has been something that I really really liked, the system's thinking, the optimization. I've done a lot in OR back in the day, linear and multiple. So maybe too much detail for now.

But where is manufacturing? Manufacturing has been mostly manual siloed with a separation between information technology and the data estate that that brings to the table and operations technology that that brings to the table. Technology has never really been, particularly from an IT standpoint, top of mind. Digital transformation has not really been a sense of urgency in manufacturing because things worked. Yet people at the shop floor and things were working until the pandemic hit.

So pandemic question, slap on the face for manufacturers. Business continuity none. You can't send people to the shop floor. You cannot operate. You don't see your inventory. You can't see your suppliers. You don't even know whether they're surviving or not, financially or otherwise. So it was a huge, huge, huge problem. But the silver lining of all of this is now there's acceleration into the transformation of manufacturing.

Look, why is manufacturing important? Let's spend a minute on that. Manufacturing, unlike many other industries (And I kind of make fun of my peer industry leaders at Microsoft as well.), manufacturing is very real. Manufacturing creates employment. Manufacturing creates growth, builds the economy, builds capacity. Manufacturing is about innovation. Manufacturing is about competitiveness. So it is core to populations, countries. It's core to politicians, to business leaders, and it's just phenomenal.

And so if you do things right in manufacturing, things work, including climate change, and sustainability, and a lot of other stuff. And if you do things wrong, you could see a lot of damage done. It collapses economies. It collapses, grids and stops, and creates a lot of disruption. So it is very real. And so I'm sorry I'm providing a long answer, but you can tell I'm passionate about it. It's very personal for me.

But by and large, I'm actually excited about where we are. We are at an inflection point. And we'll see a lot of acceleration coming out of the pandemic, the crisis. And stuff we're working on is actually to ensure business continuity and resiliency. Those are the things that are the conversations going forward.

TROND: Çağlayan, you took me in an interesting direction. I was just thinking as you were speaking, right before we go to the inflection, it's actually not just a little bit surprising but actually quite surprising that there haven't been any reported massive disruptions due to the pandemic. If you think about all of these mission-critical systems that we have around the world, in every manufacturing-related industry, how do you explain because, as you were saying, historically...and some of these silos are sort of still there, although obviously, we are at this inflection point so somehow already transitioned.

But how do you explain that we haven't had more horror stories? And by horror stories, I guess I mean operations completely collapsing, or I guess grids falling apart, or that one manual worker couldn't go in. So X happened that they had never, never thought about. Why haven't we heard anything like that? Are those stories going to come out, do you think, or did nothing seriously happen?

ÇAĞLAYAN: Well, it happened. I know for a fact because once this started, I started calling down on my customers, like, "How are you doing? What do you need?" For one, I think that from a table stakes standpoint, we've seen massive teams deployment because people wanted to communicate. They wanted continuity in terms of being able to talk to one another, being able to work, and then work from home, of course, because they couldn't go to their plants or to their offices. So there was a lot of pain. There was a lot of disruption.

I talked to some of my customers, and they were like, billions of dollars are tied in inventory, and we have no idea where that sits. Again, they're disconnected from suppliers as well as their customers, and so there was disruption. But luckily, we've had some leaders actually having foreseen what is to come, or they were disruptors or at least early adopters. And they have taken pre-COVID pre-crisis steps for digital transformation.

And I love my examples and partnerships where Erickson had started work pre-COVID in terms of digital manufacturing, Outokumpu, a leader in steel manufacturing, significant progress including during the pandemic, Airbus, Unilever. I mean, those are leading examples, only some of them. But you look at the World Economic Forum Global Lighthouse Network; there are so many lighthouse factories that are just like literally lighthouses for people to look at and look up to. That work started years ago.

So there are some extremely encouraging examples. There are some very, very dark stories in terms of complete stoppage and horror stories. But by large, we are at a good place in terms of we understand the issues and we understand how to deal with them. And I think most importantly, that notion of time to value is accelerated in manufacturing. And we're coming from prohibitively expensive, I mean, we're talking hundreds of millions of dollars of IT projects that never end to now negligible cost and like 10-12 weeks, a couple of months, and then you stand up a digital factory capability. You have visibility into your supply chain by standing up a control tower.

And then, in the case of Airbus or Alstom, you can have your 2,000 engineers still keep doing design and engineering work from home; examples go on. But we understand the issues. We have a very quick ability to build capability, to show that stuff works and you can operate remotely, et cetera, et cetera.

TROND: But would you say that this is the definite end to, I guess what you were alluding to is kind of this pilot purgatory? Is COVID the definite end to pilot purgatory? Or is it just that this particular situation was so serious that everybody kind of scrambled, and most of them got it right? Or would you say that...I guess possibly because once you have made this transition, that is the hard work. Do you think that these pilots that everyone was waiting for will that problem disappear because people have learned that this is not the way to introduce technology? You sort of learned it the hard way.

ÇAĞLAYAN: Oh, well, my view is if you take a step back, Trond, here's how I see it. One hundred years ago, we were by and large an agricultural society, and we had like 50% of the workforce in agriculture. Today we are by and large an industrial society. And we have like 2% of the workforce in agriculture, and we brought everyone along in terms of The Industrial Age. Today we are at the next junction; some call it industry 4.0, some call it other names. But we as a society assume...like humanity, we're moving from industrial to digital. So that's the higher order.

Now, what's the role of the pandemic in this? I think it's that of acceleration. So in any major shift, there are behaviors and categories of actors or players. There are the disruptors. There are those who go and make a market, build a trend. And we have seen those, and we're still seeing them. They are the early adopters. We talked about some of them as well. And then there's going to be the slower adopters and the laggards. And then some of the laggards will not see the light of day or will not maybe exist after we transition to the new reality, new realm, or that notion of digital society.

So what I'm saying is it was going to happen, those pilots or people's way, like, slow adopters' way of touching it, putting their toes in the water. For some, it's proving value and acceleration. Pandemic, again, that kind of disruption is going to accelerate and bring more to the table. But it certainly has a role to play. But the higher-level order is we are moving to a very, very different reality for manufacturers and supply chains and even as a society.

TROND: Super interesting. Çağlayan, I've heard you talk earlier. And I guess we talked a little bit in the prep about whether this is a different wave of technology because I know you have some views on the democratization of basically operational technology because there are different waves of technology in manufacturing. And traditionally, like you said, the industry has been siloed. But one of the reasons the industry was siloed is that the technology then also turned into silos, arguably.

And what is it about the technology these days? Is it getting simpler? Are you, for instance, in Microsoft spending more time on user interfaces than you were before? Or I guess even the introduction of your company so deeply into manufacturing is in and of itself a bit of a novelty. The tech players that weren't specialists are now going deep, deep into industry segments. Give me a sense of why this is happening. And what exactly is this democratization? Gartner calls it citizen developers.

ÇAĞLAYAN: Yeah, that's one aspect of it. The way I see it is, very shortly, technology now works.

TROND: [laughs]

ÇAĞLAYAN: Honestly, I don't know, like five years ago, it just didn't. It was so hard for implementations, for integration, et cetera. It now works. There's virtually nothing technology cannot deliver today. It's up to the leader's vision, leader's ability to execute, and magic happens. There's so much at play right now, that's one.

Secondly, technology is the business right now. I mean, technology was isolated. Trond, you will remember those days not too distant past. We had our own language. The CIO, it's like they were from Mars in the organization. [laughter] And they were not mainstream as an executive in the company. Company did their work, and CIO did stuff that nobody really understood.

Now, technology is the business. I mean, if you look at any research, you will see that the mainstream business leader, whether it's the CMO, the Chief, Marketing Officer, Chief Digital Officer, Chief Financial Officer, whatever those may be, they're making more technology decisions and have bigger technology budgets than the technology people themselves. So that's the other piece that business is technology. Technology is business.

The third piece is that the siloed nature of not only manufacturing, so many different industries, was because it was an application-led view into enterprises or into business. Now, it's data-driven work. And so data dictates everything, and data is actually end to end. So to the extent that you have a data architecture, enterprise-level data architecture, and a system-level approach to things, it's a completely different world.

And to bring those three together as a business, you have to forget more than you remember. And then you have to reinvent yourself. And if you do that, everybody knows cliché examples here, but then you find yourself as a completely different company or services company or actually at the risk of being disrupted by competition in ways that were not thought of or unprecedented. So that's what's happening.

So what we like to approach this whole kind of...I like to call this opportunity. It's a major opportunity. It's a huge inflection point. It's all about reinventing your business. None of that is about technology. Technology is a tool. It's a powerful tool. It's a tool that works. It's very capable. But it's about the business outcomes. Because we said, you have to reinvent your entire enterprise, starting from your culture, how you operate, your value proposition, all of that.

It is where you start should be dictated by which outcome is most important for you, or the highest value for you, or the most burning for you. Whatever your drivers are, focus on the outcome. Go back to work to find the relevant data for it and get to that in weeks, literally seriously in weeks and get to the next outcome, the next outcome. And don't forget the people and culture. It's all about the people piece, and we can talk about that later. I think we should. But those are the things that I will say to your technology question.

TROND: That's great.

ÇAĞLAYAN: Focus on data, lead with culture, and always major prioritizations on the outcomes you want to drive.

TROND: You said lead with culture, but it's not just company culture, I guess. It's the whole nature of the skills that are now needed in this new workplace. A lot of people are saying that that is changing and that the workforce needs are changing. So you initially said well, technology now works. So that's true, but what are the skills that then are needed?

So okay, technology is easier. But what are some of the tasks that are, I guess, less relevant because of this influx of call it industry 4.0 type technologies? And what are some of the skills that are more relevant? And the frontline worker of the future, what should they be focused on? And your clients, what are they starting to teach their workforce?

ÇAĞLAYAN: Great question. I will say at the highest level, Trond, it is a data-driven culture. I mean, in manufacturing, maybe other businesses and industries as well, we operate on the basis of past successes, habits. This has been delivering for me. This has been working for me, et cetera, or experience. You kind of listen to stuff. You kind of watch stuff. You anticipate stuff. And you're like, I've been doing this for 25 years. None of this has anything to do with data because, again, we established we were using less than 1% of our data, at least in manufacturing. Now the biggest cultural change is data-driven.

And then once you go to data telling you what to do, data giving you predictions, data giving you systems of intelligence like the insights in terms of what to do, and when to do it, and how to do it, et cetera, then that dictates actually two things. Again, I'm trying to come down to it in terms of a hierarchy. Manufacturing had a skills gap, has a bigger skills gap in the face of digital. And we're not an attractive industry. The young generation does not see career opportunities in manufacturing. Actually, manufacturing is fantastic. It's real; it's innovative. So we have to change that, and so we're working on it.

And secondly, the existing jobs, even if they may still be the most important jobs in manufacturing, those people have to learn new skills in terms of doing their jobs using technology. Let's see now a couple of examples. You talked about the frontline workers, first-line workers, or just shopfloor, the very people who get the job done. They typically did not use any technology. They were all mostly manual, what we called HMI, like Human-Machine interfaces, old, very, very, antique equipment, if you will, blue screens. I think anyone who's close to manufacturing will know that we used a lot of paper, et cetera.

Today's frontline worker is actually acting on data, acting on predictions, double-clicking under the modern interface, and responding to traffic lights, responding to alerts. You got to be able to do those, wearing augmented or virtual reality devices. We call it mixed reality with the unique technology that we have in terms of HoloLens in our entire mixed reality platform.

But you come to a job, and then you don't need to learn to do the job. You just wear your HoloLens. And the mixed reality platform will actually teach you how to do it with your two hands-free. If you're in the field service, someone at the back office, remote connections, or remote assist capabilities can actually guide you through as to how to deal with that; I don't know, grid asset, extruder, or packaging line because they know how to and you don't need to. And then this is the way you learn how to do stuff.

So I guess the gist of it is some jobs will no longer exist. Most of the repetitive low-value-added jobs can be automated, robots, artificial intelligence, and other means in terms of process automation, et cetera. Most of the jobs, if not all of the jobs, will be rescaled in terms of technology. And at the highest level, probably 75 million jobs will go away. Again, this is a World Economic Forum study. One hundred thirty-five million new jobs will be created. What are those jobs? Data jobs, software jobs.

And then how you do your design and engineering, you have to be able to understand AI-led generative design, additive manufacturing, 3D printing to be able to be successful. And so, all of that is a call to action for universities, policymakers, corporate learning officers, for all of us, and calls for partnerships to lean in. And again, I used agricultural example. Bring everyone along from the Industrial Age to the digital age.

TROND: It's a fascinating challenge, and it's a big one. I was just curious; there's a lot of talk about middle jobs meaning jobs that are somewhere between more than high school but less than traditional college. But then you also have an echelon above that, of course, which traditionally certainly Microsoft was hiring into, which is more high-level cognitive jobs which required bachelors, and masters, and PhDs traditionally in computer programming. But I'm guessing now certainly in your field in sort of hybrid engineering studies where engineering plus IT.

The middle jobs is a big challenge, even just from an operational point of view. It's hard to educate a billion people worldwide or whatever it is that we have to do continuously to keep the lights up. How is all that going to happen? And what sort of effort does this require? Can we use the existing institutions we have to do this? Or do you foresee that it's going to be a lot more on-the-job type of training in digital training?

ÇAĞLAYAN: I'll say all of the above in the following ways; for one, we're already working with Purdue, University of Wisconsin, and many, many universities and education institutions. So for one, manufacturing-related jobs were kind of graduate jobs. We're trying to bring the curriculum to undergrad, if not high school, so there's that. So vocational training, et cetera, all of this is important.

Secondly, we partner with the National Association of Manufacturers, MxD, Sesame, obviously Tulip, and many others in terms of call to action and doing institutionalizing, programatize, very, very important for all of that. Thirdly, I deliberately talked about corporate learning officers because a lot of people, tens if not hundreds of thousands of people in large corporations, actually had to learn new skills. And it is happening as we speak in multiple ways in many, many, many, many leading enterprises. But it's a huge part of the whole equation.

And then, I talked about the World Economic Forum and the Global Lighthouse Network. Programs like that actually bring it to everyone's attention in terms of what is possible, and how it works, and how some leading institutions deal with it, which brings me to this notion of what I like to call art of possible. I think leadership at large, political leaders, enterprise leaders, any institution, education, leadership at large has to understand what I call the art of possible, and that is how technology has already transformed everyone's lives.

And what is that leaders need to do differently? Starting from communication, setting new standards, to building the new curriculum, to encouraging everyone, bringing everyone along, and all the rest of it from cultural change to change management and defining the new normal. But by and large, just bringing everyone along. And so that is really, really important that we start that education and understanding with the leadership because it's all about leadership. It's all about them having the right vision and being able to execute to that.

TROND: What is the role of actors such as startups? You mentioned Tulip. What are startups' role in the emerging manufacturing and frontline operations ecosystem? Tulip thinks of itself a little wider than manufacturing. But what is it that startups can do? Because clearly, this is a game, technology overall, and also industries. It's an industrial game. Industrial companies are massive traditionally.

So the juxtaposition traditionally in the old world would be between the industrial conglomerates and then the SMEs. And the game was to get the SMEs to be useful providers and suppliers into the supply chain ecosystem was an educational challenge. But you now have startups somewhere in this picture as well. Can you address how you think these startups function in the ecosystem going forward?

ÇAĞLAYAN: Yeah, I think the example that I would use is startups are like Tesla for automotive, Airbnb for hospitality. They're the disruptors. They have zero legacy. And so we're talking major change, major transformation. What happens in change? Lots of the legacy will drag their feet. They will want to protect status quo. They'll be slower. What startups do is they teach you the new normal. They teach you the art of possible, and they go on and do it. This is how you carry from years of implementation time to weeks. This is how you go from hundreds of millions of dollars to pennies and cents.

And so Tulip and many, many others that I'm so excited to work together with, define the new normal. They make it happen. They go and make stuff. And actually, they are the ones who bring what I call art of possible to life. Let's take Tulip's example. Again, they go into the shop floor. And they look at that low-code/no-code citizen developers, a term that you used in this very conversation. And then they bring it to life in the context of manufacturing operations.

And so suddenly, the human-machine interfaces are modernized. The legacy-heavy applications that do not necessarily connect the enterprise have changed, and there's a new workflow in place. And people just act on data and intelligence. The job is much easier to do, et cetera, and then you can build on it. And so what they do is just extremely important, actually much bigger than their sizes or the number of people that they employ. The role that they play is actually what's going to change economies. And this is one reason why we embrace and work very, very closely with the likes of Tulip at Microsoft through multiple, multiple tools and investments that we have from Microsoft for Startups to M12 and to many others.

TROND: Yes, I understand. That's fantastic. However, it does remain the case that right now, you are a gorilla in the big space, and you do have a privileged position to analyze what you think is happening. So if you use that futurist hat that you have from your vantage point of a large player that does work with everyone, I guess, where is this now heading?

You said it's a disruptive time. It's an inflection point. You were using big, revolutionary words. We're talking about industry revolutions. There's also some uncertainty, and we have been dealing with resilience issues. But you pointed out simplicity has improved. Where is all this taking us, all of these bits and pieces altogether? Where is the manufacturing industry heading?

ÇAĞLAYAN: Manufacturing is very complex, and it's actually not one industry. So many industries are manufacturers. So let's kind of break it down and simplify to maybe customer-facing systems, sales, services, et cetera, design, and engineering making stuff which is really manufacturing, supply chains, and then maybe you look at people.

In the customer systems, particularly the pandemic, taught us that online sales and delivery, omnichannel strategies, profit optimization, pricing, contact lifecycle management, all of that is here to stay. Connected field services or field services at large is going to be changed forever. Again, we talked about mixed reality, remote assistant, remote capabilities, all of that. So that is where that is headed.

In terms of the design and engineering piece, we talked about AI-led generative design, where AI engines actually design stuff like mother nature. They don't have corners. They're not straight lines. So the existing manufacturing paradigms like welding, and bending, and et cetera, can go away, and 3D printing actually is very revolutionary in that it's the only way to actually make the stuff that is designed by AI engines which is faster, stronger, lighter, cheaper, et cetera. But again, you can only build them with the new 3D or additive paradigms, and so there's that.

And obviously, from design and engineering, that whole design supply chain is moving to a virtual environment so that you do not have to send designs in paper when it comes to like...You look at Boeing, and they have like six million suppliers. You look at Rolls Royce, the same deal. And then what they do now is they send electronic drawings. You can validate. You can verify the source is correct. You can just keep building in the virtual environment, and you can run simulations and tests. I can go on and on, but that is completely disrupted and changed forever.

Manufacturing as we know it is moving to...some call it lights-out manufacturing. But this whole remote capability being able to...business continuity, people at the shop floor being able to remotely operate, manage and monitor your assets, get predictions on them, actually have predictions visibility into your suppliers and be connected to their environment. Digital twins and digital threads are actually huge enablers from that perspective. So this whole kind of lights-out manufacturing conversation can happen. Again, technology is capable of delivering it. You have to optimize or rationalize for your own enterprise. Supply chains, completely moving to an autonomous and sustainable fashion.

And then finally, at the highest level, what we're seeing perhaps the largest opportunity is go from your...even your own enterprise was siloed. Let alone your enterprise, go and reinvent the whole value chain that you operate in. We tend to think about industries, but actually, value chains are made up of multiple adjacent industries. Look at food; it starts with perhaps the farmer, but the farm equipment manufacturer, the likes of John Deere, Mahindra, et cetera, do play a huge role. There's a lot of data there.

Then you look at warehouses, then you look at mills, and processors, and packagers, and shippers, and then you go all the way to retail. I've talked about seven different industries. The notion of I call it lead with opportunity as opposed to leading with risks. Share your data for the greater good. New value creation at the value chain level we haven't even begun starting that journey, really. And so, just some of the examples of how everything we know is already disrupted. Again, do all the leaders know, the world leaders know how to deal with it or where to take their enterprises, their people, their cultures, their businesses? And so that's kind of the conversation.

TROND: Indeed it is. Disruption at the value chain level that seems to be at the core. And then I guess my last question for you really is to take this back to the human being because I know you think that fundamentally, this is not really about the technologies or even just the various industries at the center, and maintaining and constructing is the human being.

The augmented human capabilities that these new structures and technologies enable, what does that look like? I mean, if you think augmented reality and mixed reality, HoloLens is like a beginning of that vision. But it seems like we're arguably going from a day where the idea was automate, but you have a vision of more augmenting, meaning you're supplementing the human as opposed to replacing them. How do you see the human being in this picture? What is going to be the role of the human worker?

ÇAĞLAYAN: Well, it's going to be a combination of vision and maybe aspiration. But I'll say augmented society first because of diversity and inclusion. Let's start there. Let's bring everyone along. Let's not leave one person behind, wherever they may be, whatever background. Let's bring everyone along. And as a society, let's elevate everyone. Let's make everything accessible, technology, and data, and education, and health, and water, and safe food, all of that accessible to everyone.

The new set of paradigms actually might create value at such a level in which we can give people more free time, more fulfillment, provide better work-life balance, provide other means of seeking reason and purpose in life and communicate and work together at very, very different levels. And so all of that is just, again, I think this whole kind of leader, art of possible, and what technology is capable of today. If we put the people in the center and go from there, I think we can remember these days as some of the best kind of inflection points in history.

TROND: Wow, that's a great way to end. I thank you so much. This was a whirlwind of observations. [laughs] Thank you very much.

ÇAĞLAYAN: Thank you.

TROND: You have just listened to Episode 21 of the Augmented Podcast with host Trond Arne Undheim. The topic was The Future of Digital in Manufacturing, and our guest was Çağlayan Arkan, VP of Manufacturing Industry at Microsoft. In this conversation, we talked about where manufacturing has been in the past, workforce transformation, democratizing operational technology, and the future of industrial innovation.

My takeaway is that the future of digital in manufacturing is enormously impactful, yet even deep digitalization will not make workers obsolete. Rather, the challenge seems to be achieving a dramatic workforce transformation which also entails empowerment, upskilling, and autonomy through augmentation of frontline operations.

Thanks for listening. If you liked the show, subscribe at augmentedpodcast.co or in your preferred podcast player. View our YouTube channel and rate us with five stars. If you liked this episode, you might also like Episode 9: The Fourth Industrial Revolution, post-COVID-19, Episode 4: A Renaissance in Manufacturing, or Episode 20: The Digitalization of Körber.

Augmented - upskilling the workforce for industry 4.0 frontline operations.

Special Guest: Çağlayan Arkan.

Episode 87: A Brief History of Manufacturing Software

Tulip — Wed, 06 Jul 2022 00:00:00 -0400

In episode 10 of the podcast (@AugmentedPod), the topic is “A Brief History of Manufacturing Software.” Our guest is Rick Bullotta, Partner, TwinThread, and co-founder, ThingWorx.

In this conversation, we talk about how Rick has shaped manufacturing software history and the lessons learned from being an early employee of Wonderware, the famous precursor to manufacturing automation, back in 1993, a company first sold to British engineering giant Siebe in 1998, which merged with BTR to form Invensys, which, in turn, merged with French multinational Schneider Electric, and later the CTO. Rick Bullotta was also the co-founder of Lighthammer Software which was later acquired by SAP, then in 2009 founding ThingWorx, the first complete, end-to-end technology platform designed for the industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) which was acquired by PTC in 2003. We also touch on his current advice to founders in the industrial space, his board role at Tulip, and what he sees lie ahead for the industry.

After listening to this episode, check out Thingworx as well as Rick Bullotta's social profile.

Trond's takeaway: Wonderware, Lighthammer, and ThingWorx are prominent parts of manufacturing software history, and there's a chance that the 4th company he now is involved with, Tulip, also will be. I do things with things is Rick Bullotta's motto. The things he does, he does them well, and it is an internet of things, more than anything else. I, for one, am eagerly listening to what he predicts will happen next.

Transcript:

Augmented reveals the stories behind a new era of industrial operations where technology will restore the agility of frontline workers. In Episode 10 of the podcast, the topic is a Brief History of Manufacturing Software. Our guest is Rick Bullotta, Partner at TwinThread and Co-Founder of ThingWorx.

In this conversation, we talk about how Rick has shaped manufacturing software history and the lessons learned from being an early employee with Wonderware, the famous precursor to manufacturing automation, back in 1993, a company first sold to British engineering giant Siebe in 1998, which then merged with BTR to form Invensys, which in turn merged with French and multinational Schneider Electric and later the CTO.

Rick Bullotta was also the Co-Founder of Lighthammer Software which was later acquired by SAP. Then in 2009, founding ThingWorx, the first complete end-to-end technology platform designed for the industrial internet of things, which was acquired by PTC in 2003. We also touch on his current advice to founders in the industrial space, his board role at Tulip, and what he sees lie ahead for the industry.

Augmented is a podcast for leaders hosted by futurist, Trond Arne Undheim, presented by Tulip.co, the manufacturing app platform, and associated with MFG Works, the manufacturing upskilling community launched at the World Economic Forum. Each episode dives deep into a contemporary topic of concern across the industry and airs at 9:00 a.m. U.S. Eastern Time every Wednesday. Augmented - the industry 4.0 podcast.

TROND: Rick, how are you today?

RICK: Good morning.

TROND: Well, it's a nice morning. I wanted to talk to you about some history.

RICK: Sure.

TROND: Well, you are a bit of a legend in this field, Rick. You've been basically part of almost every development in this field for several years. I wanted us to spend a little time today, not just going into your history of background as the founder of several startups that have had very significant impact on the industry but also just bring people in a little bit to the environment and how it has changed, and how based on your perspective, you see it evolving.

You had a degree from Cornell, and then you went on to fund several companies. Can you bring us back to those days when you were studying industrial engineering at Cornell? What was the environment then for manufacturing? And what was it that brought you into the thought that you would start engaging sort of entrepreneurial software development in manufacturing of all fields?

RICK: Just to be clear, I barely graduated. [laughter] So I had a fantastic time in college. But that was when I think we thought of engineers as mechanical engineers, or chemical engineers, the physical aspects of making things, building things, vending product as opposed to...I think software and technology was kind of a nascent concept there, at least certainly in manufacturing.

But I actually switched degrees from mechanical engineering to operations research mid-stride there, realizing that looking at pieces of broken metal under a microscope wasn't for me. So I graduated. My degree was in operations research, and actually, my first position was at a very progressive steel company called Lukens Steel, doing essentially industrial engineering work.

However, this was what? 1985, dawn of the PC, dawn of a new gen of computing. And some opportunities opened up there to kind of take on some additional responsibilities that involved applying computing to simulations and optimization models, all the stuff that I studied but never thought I'd actually practice. So I'd spend a lot of time in the local library checking out software, take the disc home, teach myself to code.

An opportunity then opened up to go into steel plant operation. So I used to run a heat-treating process. And that's one thing that a university degree won't prepare you for, having 15 steelworkers working for you. That's where you get a real education. You also quickly realize that the exception is the rule on the manufacturing floor. And we'll talk later about how it gave me a great appreciation of the importance of the role of people in this whole process and not just technology.

But yeah, I spent a few years in that role and then moved back over to an industrial computing group. And we were applying at the time very advanced technology, mini computers, very innovative user interfaces, high levels of automation to some of these processes back at the very site that I worked. And the very operations that I worked at was one of the first places for that. So that's kind of where I got into the technology side of things.

But I like to say I was blessed and lucky, right? This crusty, old steel company happened to be very, very committed to investing in technology. And it was a learning opportunity for me. And then, across the years, I moved into systems integration. I did some stuff in discrete manufacturing. I had the opportunity; again, luck sometimes happens here, to work for arguably the first well-known company in the industrial software space company called Wonderware, first IPO in the space. And I joined very early, which is kind of cool.

TROND: The Wonderware story is somewhat famous for people inside of manufacturing, but just in case, there are some listeners here who don't really appreciate how early Wonderware was. What was the situation when you created your first product? And why, in your account, has it become so emblematic of that early-early era? And what year are we talking about exactly when that entered the stage with Wonderware?

RICK: So late '80s, early '90s Wonderware came on the scene. I joined in; I believe it was '93. And my role there was actually in sales. So you'll find that a lot of my life experiences are all the elements that help build a successful business: sales, marketing, technology. So the founding team there...and there'll be a circle of life moment here in a little bit when we talk about how ThingWorx came to be.

The two key co-founders there, Dennis Morin and Phil Huber, recognized the value. And they harnessed the PC revolution and Microsoft Windows. So we're talking Wayback Machine when Windows looked like the Mac user interface. There wasn't a lot of PC application on the plant floor. There were some very interesting companies that I had worked with, competitors to Wonderware but a bit earlier companies like [inaudible 7:28]

But we were just kind of at that inflection point where people were comfortable with the role of the personal computer as this kind of human interface to all the automation systems that we had. What Dennis and Phil did was really twofold. And this, I think, ties into a lot of the innovation we're seeing today is they democratized the ability to build applications. They made it easy and fun.

So the whole experience wasn't coding; it was very visual. It leveraged kind of a drag and drop experience. You didn't need to understand software to apply it. You could build these incredible applications literally in minutes or hours, connect them to the physical world. I don't know if you've ever seen some of the classic applications they've built. But they're those process mimics, very dynamic graphics that represent the physical world.

And I learned a lot during that period about the importance of two things: one is ease of use and empowering others to build applications, particularly in the manufacturer domain. Second was, ironically, the importance of marketing. If there's one thing, that company did extraordinarily well in addition to having a great product was getting the message out there, maintaining a larger-than-life image. And the company grew rapidly to 5 million, 10 million, 15, 20, and on and on, and then IPOed.

But there wasn't anybody in history that didn't know the name. Go to a trade show...this is a company that kind of put some perspective. I think the first year I was there; we did about 20 million in revenues. We spent about a million-five on a party. That's kind of the priorities were well balanced there. But what an extraordinary group of people to learn from; I developed lifelong mentors and friends at that company that fast forward to my last company, some of those same people came and joined my team. So it was a complete honor to work with them again, so yeah.

TROND: So back in those days, what was it that Wonderware apart from the marketing side, and like you said, the menus and things...first of all, who was the target audience at this point? Was this still process engineers that were doing this, or was it still the IT department managing?

RICK: Typically process engineers, and that was the democratization, taking it out of that...let's go back to my time in the steel industry. We were writing Fortran code, PL/M code. We were writing code. We were creating database schema, all the kinds of classic development processes. And it was part of a corporate IT function. Now, this shifted to empowering two main groups, process engineers inside these manufacturing companies and, secondly, a new breed of systems integrators that were very, very focused on this automation domain.

So historically, they may have done the physical automation, the PLCs, the actuators, sensing distributed control systems. Now they were able to take on this role. Two other things happened. Just prior to the advent of things like [inaudible 10:42] and Wonderware, that user experience was physical gauges, and push buttons, and things like that, and sliders. Now, it became digital.

In a way, this was almost like magic at the time. It's virtual reality. It's like a lot of people the first time...I'll never forget my mother the first time she played solitaire on a PC and that virtual card dragging. It was just utter magic. Well, similar experience here, right? People were able to reproduce these and rapidly reconfigure. But to your point, I would say, yeah, it was those in-house process engineers and the systems integrators that helped implement these systems.

TROND: Were you all aware of how innovative you were? I mean, clearly, the marketing department thought you were something special. But did you realize at the time how timeless and etched into manufacturing history Wonderware would become later? Were you aware of how far ahead this was? Or were the customers telling you that clearly?

RICK: That's a great question. I think it was a combination of both. We had an almost cult-like customer following that was pretty unique, and it created a lot of energy. They knew we were doing something interesting. But we had very legitimate competitors who were also doing super cool stuff. I think another life lesson here was a lot of companies create great products. To bring great products to market at scale is a whole nother task. It's a whole nother challenge.

And I think what we had going for us was an absolutely extraordinary distribution channel, global distribution channels, and very energetic, bright people, independent businesses that could sell, support, implement this technology. That allowed us to achieve scale pretty quickly. But the customers were the primary feedback loop. We won all kinds of awards from the trade rags, all that kind of stuff. I definitely think it was the kinds of applications that the customers were building. That always gives you energy when you see that.

TROND: Rick, give me another sense of as we're sort of moving to your next company, just bring us back to that time with the early years of Wonderware. What were some of the things that were challenging to you on the application side then that today we would laugh off and it would just be like a line item? What were some of the things that were really complicated that you were so proud of having accomplished?

RICK: Well, let's just take the obvious, which is sort of the inverse of Moore's law. If we turn the clock back that many years, we have half as much compute power every year. And to have a very graphical dynamic user experience, it had to be reliable. I would not underestimate the incredible work that that development team did to take not only a new product in what we built with InTouch, which was the product at the time but also Windows itself. It wasn't evolved. It wasn't mature. It certainly wasn't targeted at these kinds of mission-critical applications.

So those were the kinds of things you had to work with. You had to make it robust, reliable, and take advantage of very, very limited compute and visualization capability at the time. It changed the modalities by way...people typically, you know, we were all used to keyboards at the time. Now it's touch; it's a mouse. It's a different means of interaction. And then how do you bring that? Some interesting challenges. Like, I'm a task worker down on the floor in protective equipment and gloves, and how do I interact with that? So all kinds of creative stuff to try and bring a whole new modality of human interaction to a pretty demanding segment.

TROND: So what then happened to you? What happened around you leaving Wonderware and moving on to the next challenges? Because you've also had a foray in larger companies, but then you immediately went back to the startup world. Give me a sense of what was your thinking then?

RICK: Sure. So there was a little detour as there are often in our careers. [laughs] I left and experimented. I actually came back to Wonderware a second time prior to my first startup in a product management role. I got to see M&A. So we got involved in a couple of key acquisitions that I was intimately involved in. So that was another learning experience for me. Then I saw this opportunity at a level above the Wonderwares of the world, of the OSIsofts of the world, of all these kinds of operational systems that we had. They were islands.

No one had that holistic view, a supervisor, an operator. No one was sharing information. And so the light bulb went off. This is actually about when the web technologies were starting to get a little traction, the browser, the Netscape effect, ubiquitous TCP/IP connectivity, Ethernet, and the plants. So that's when the light bulb went off. Let's see if we could do something not dissimilar from the way a Wonderware product will connect all your centers and controllers. Why not provide a unified way to see all the systems that you have? So basically, that's what became Lighthammer, and that was in 1998, we started that company.

But the intent was, again, to provide that unified view of first...it was called the Plant Information Portal. That was another cool word at the time, right? Portals. And so that was the objective, it's kind of unified visibility. I started the company with some colleagues that I knew from Wonderware. And we built, I think, something pretty groundbreaking there.

TROND: And the situation then was there was this need for almost like an information service to kind of...it was almost like an early portal for the industry in a sense.

RICK: I think what we found...the unique thing about the industrial space I like to say that everything's a legacy the moment it gets put in. Everything has proprietary APIs, interfaces, and protocols. My approach has always been solve hard problems because you're going to have fewer competitors, and the value is there. So we tried to solve a pretty hard problem, all these like debubblizing all these different crazy systems that were scattered around.

Yeah, so that's really what the objective was initially, unified visibility. But then we realized if people can see that information, why can't other systems? So it rapidly progressed from just being empowering people with information to empowering other lines of business systems. So your supply chain systems, warehouse systems, ERP systems can now be informed with real information in a timely manner. And that was what got us on SAP's radar.

TROND: Well, because the point was there that you started discovering the importance of standards. And there were standards at that time, but they were very basic web standards. And you started realizing that even in the side of the industrial field, you had to start depending on that. Is that also what got you involved in the intersection of interoperability and also open sourcing certain types of software?

RICK: Yeah. In fact, we were actively involved in a lot of open-source projects. I think that was also early in the open-source world. So if something was broken, no one was going to fix it for you; you fix it, right?

TROND: [chuckles]

RICK: So yeah, if you want to leverage and get value out of open source, you better be prepared to give back. So as a company, we definitely gave back to a lot of interesting projects that became part of the Lighthammer stack.

The other thing that I think is important to understand is, and this pattern repeats itself in my career, is building tools, not applications. My goal was always to empower people to build interesting stuff. They've got the ideas. They've got the innovations living inside them. But if it's hard, if there's friction at every point in the process, cost, time, whatever, they're not going to undertake it, so whether it was Wonderware stuff we were implementing, Lighthammer, ThingWorx. And nowadays, with solutions like Tulip, it really was all about that takedown friction, empower non-technical people to be innovators and do it fast.

TROND: So, Rick, then you got on SAP's radar. Tell me a little bit about not necessarily your experience there per se but just the difference for you in having straddled a startup that gets on the radar of a large company, and now you're working in a large company. What's the situation there? What is their understanding of the shop floor, and how does that all work? Because it gets more complicated when you're that kind of a software environment.

RICK: Well, I think SAP was a very good place to be for a number of reasons. SAP was dominant in the manufacturing vertical in terms of cost manufacturing. Customers, the vast majority of them ran SAP for their back-office systems. SAP had kind of light solutions for the manufacturing domain but a desire to go deeper. Secondly, they were launching a partner ecosystem at the time. We wanted to prove that, in fact, partners are an integral part to their offerings. So we were able to kind of get that visibility, but also, we started stealing some revenue.

So when you start taking customer spend instead of upgrading that module in my ERP system, I'm going to spend a couple hundred thousand dollars on my plant floor. That gets you on the radar too. Interesting sidenote, so after SAP, the salespeople told us something fascinating. If you think about in a typical manufacturing company, there's arguably four to seven times more blue-collar...I hate the term blue-collar, task worker, you know, frontline workers, so to speak. But that's got a new meaning nowadays as opposed to back office.

Secondly, we had something that not only had a user license for each manufacturing worker but also manufacturing site costs. So think about comparing selling something to the CFO’s office that will run in a data center. The scale and size of the deals were pretty substantial, and there was real value being created. So I think in the first year, our sales grew like 800%, 900% from a pretty good base, having that ready base of manufacturing customers to sell into a global company with global sales and support presence. It's pretty easy to get traction there.

TROND: But then you had a stint back at Wonderware before you went on to found a new company. What was that like? So you came back and now kind of almost running the show at Wonderware for a little bit.

RICK: No, not really because I think the company...this was an interesting dynamic. The company had grown substantially by that point, so from 60 people in my first experience to probably 800 at that point. I was a remote CTO. This was long before remote work was a thing. It was extremely challenging. And I just think those dynamics kind of made it probably not as effective as I could be. That said, some work that I had done in SAP research is what kind of led to the ideas behind ThingWorx.

And I actually think, to be blunt, I think Wonderware at the time could have realized those pretty well. Collectively, we could have brought that product to market probably faster of what became ThingWorx. But it just for a variety of reasons, it wasn't the right time, fit, location, all those kinds of things. So dove back into it again, got the band back together, so to speak.

TROND: How did that happen? Because at this point, you're not new to startups, and you have had a taste of the corporate world, in fact, in two leading positions, I guess. What is it that then motivates you to go back into that grind, and then you found a groundbreaking company? [laughs]

RICK: Part of it is you feel like you cheated on the test. You've got the scars. You've had the lessons learned. I think we had a pretty well-rounded idea on what the new product was going to be, how we were going to take it to market. So I think we actually went in with a pretty solid plan rather than just A; we're going to do some R&D.

Secondly, my business partners at Lighthammer were my business partners at ThingWorx, common investors. And some new folks that I worked with at Wonderware joined the team. It was sort of...I'm not going to say we couldn't fail. There were a lot of things we could have done wrong. But we had an incredible team of people with a lot of experience building companies like this, selling software like this. I had a pretty good feeling that we were on the right track there.

TROND: And what exactly was ThingWorx in the early days? Because you read things like machine to machine, and those are terms that only much later...today we call internet of things. But you guys were very, very early, honestly, in that domain to produce products in that space when most people were just starting. Machine to machine didn't mean anything to people back then.

RICK: And I think where we did well was going a little bit beyond that. And you'll see, once again, it's a pattern that repeats itself, the importance of people, the machines, and the other systems and processes that people have in their companies. Synthesizing all those together is actually where the value nexus is just massive. Any one of those taken in isolation or the connections between them, yeah, there's value to be done.

But so we went in kind of with a broad...rather than just machine to machine. And there were some companies doing cool stuff just for getting updates down to an MRI machine or whatever. But we tried to go beyond that. We also realized early on the classic issue; it's good to know what you don't know. And remote access over unreliable links and all that stuff was something...My team had primarily lived in what we would jokingly call the internets of things. Everything's on the local network. You have different considerations.

So we acquired a company, a super team, a small company that had a lot of expertise in the kind of internet of things and that remote connectivity, remote management, and that was this the second wave of rocket fuel to get things going.

TROND: That's interesting you say that because I think that temptation for many would be you're so far ahead, and you start building things, and you're building things in the future. But I mean, surely, the reality is the shop floor and other things, and you're dealing with poor internet connections. Forget skills. I mean, you're actually dealing with a network that doesn't scale to your idea.

RICK: Exactly right. And it was a very interesting balance between...I oversimplify kind of that industrial IoT is smart, connected operations and things like that, so factories, power plants, and then connected fleets of stuff, trucks, MRI machines, light towers, and cities, radically different requirements. One's 98% on-prem, one's 99.9% cloud, one's intermittent, unreliable, expensive connectivity, one's reliable, isolated.

So we built a platform to serve both of those tests. In retrospect, we probably made compromises along the way to accommodate that. But still, today, I think PTC’s revenue with ThingWorx is fairly well split between those two domains. But that was an interesting challenge on its own because the requirements were dramatically different.

TROND: But again, you got acquired. So is this a pattern in your companies? Or is it more a pattern in the field that, at a certain point...because, I mean, I'm making this up here. But is there something about the industry itself that lends itself very easily to just in order to get that scale, you have to be acquired, and it's very desirable? Or is it more a choice that you each time made to say we've built it to a certain scale?

RICK: I think in our segment, there are the rare few that an IPO track makes sense, and it's achievable. I think, for the most part, companies in our domain are...they're talking acquisitions to technology companies, cloud companies, enterprise app companies, industrial automation companies. So they have the luxury of we can be the innovation engine. It doesn't have to come off...

If you think about a BigCo that wants to build something organically, every dollar they submit...first of all, they're typically 10 to 20 times, and it's just reality, less efficient in developing software for a variety of reasons. And that money comes off the bottom line. So it's actually an interesting dynamic that it's almost more attractive for them as well.

But the ThingWorx story is super interesting in the sense that I told someone the other day...so Jim Heppelmann super visionary right there. He had this concept of the digital twin and IoT connected with products way back. And he actually took some of his best and brightest people, his CTO, a number of other people, moved them out of their office, put them in the Cambridge Innovation Center, and said, "Go create something."

Well, along the way, we got introduced to that team. And they came to the conclusion that, hey, it's going to be faster, cheaper. We can get to market capture mindshare quicker through acquisition. And if you think about it, that's a very...immature is not the right word. I don't even know what the word I'm looking for here, but it's you've just been given an opportunity to intrapreneur. You've got a clean sheet of paper, all the fun stuff after grinding out your day job for years.

And you make that decision to well; we're not going to do that. We're going to go buy a company. I have huge respect for that. And it turned out to be a very good decision for everyone involved. So that's actually how that happened. We were an intrapreneurial effort at a relatively large company, decided to go and become acquisitive instead. And that's worked out quite well.

TROND: So we haven't talked so much about the surrounding companies throughout these years. But were there other companies doing innovative things? I'm not so familiar with the history of all of the kind of less successful or less visible manufacturing IT companies throughout the early '90s. What was wrong with some of those, and why don't we talk about them? I mean, are they also still part of the picture? Were there smaller acquisitions that go into this history?

RICK: Yeah, there's actually a lot that we were doing right. It was a big enough pie that the gorilla, you know, in the segment might only have a 20-something percent market share. So it was still fairly fragmented. It's partially because of geography, partially because of different segments, and partially just because it was such a big opportunity. The companion market to a lot of what I was doing, for example, at Wonderware and Lighthammer, was the data side of it. So that's the historian companies.

Greatest example of that recently is the acquisition of OSIsoft by AVEVA for $5 billion, biggest little company you never heard of. I mean, just a fantastic success story. They stuck to what they did very well and built essentially a dominant market position. They had competitors with good products as well. But I think they're one of those success stories in that space that's only visible to most people now. We had competitors in almost every company I've ever worked at that had great solutions.

But this is, again, where I think the X factor stuff comes into play. Your go-to-market machine, the passion that your team and people have that's contagious. If people really believe and they interact with customers and partners, it's just magic. The second thing was, again, where you're really doing useful stuff for customers. Some companies were software companies. Some companies were really just integration companies masquerading as software companies. But, Trond, you know this. There's no shortage of bright people on this planet, and it's --

TROND: Well, sure, there's no shortage of bright people. But I guess this is the third segment that I wanted us to get into. You kind of have a third career now, which is this portfolio life, I guess. [laughs] You can characterize it yourself, but I don't know how to explain it otherwise where you're seeing, first of all, a number of companies and the maturity, I guess, in the space, that's a little different. But you are in a different stage in your career. And I want to eventually get to Tulip and discuss why you got involved with that. But first, maybe you can address some of these portfolio things that you're doing right now.

RICK: Sure.

TROND: Obviously, mentoring a lot more and getting involved on the board side. How do you see even just the last five years? What's happening right now? Where are we right now with manufacturing software?

RICK: So generically, I would say I'm doing manufacturing and adjacent stuff, kind of IoT industrial. I am so excited that it's cool again, right? Because it was for two decades. It was like --

TROND: Well, you were never concerned about that, surely. [laughs]

RICK: But, you know, what's the old...in the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king. So if you were cool within your segment, you didn't have to be that great. And you could have done underselling what we achieved at the different companies. But I think it really has visibility now. There's investment money flowing into it. I think the increasing importance of...we kind of hit that little productivity inflection point where it started to flatten out. People are investing in technology.

The challenges around people there's just not a lot of know-how, or there's much less know-how about everything from manufacturing operations to the different tasks that get performed to the technologies. So, how do we offset that? So technology is starting to fill an increasingly important role of focused VCs, and focused investors, and focused incubators around this kind of stuff. I think that's probably the biggest change.

And then, like any technology segment, the building blocks, the Lego blocks that we build from, just get better and better and better. Someone that wants to add AI capabilities to their solution today, it's never been easier. I want to add Vision. Now, what you do with it can be very differentiating. But my point is that the building blocks we have today are just better than ever.

I think the challenge...what's changed maybe in a negative, I think the way you get to customers, get to market has changed and become more challenging. An example, if you think about a venture-funded or otherwise funded startup, turn the clock back 10 or 15 years. We primarily sold perpetual licenses plus maintenance. So you get a big chunk of revenue upfront.

Today in the SaaS and subscription world, in essence, we're all in the financing business. We're financing our cost of sales, our R&D., So the capital requirements for companies in our segment are bigger than they ever have been. And we see that with some of the raises, but that's just a reality. That dynamic perhaps even gets ignored sometimes, but it is a big change. Yeah, and then, you know, just to --

TROND: And what got you to Tulip?

RICK: So I think it was actually indirectly through Wonderware, if I recall. So Natan and team and Rony and team were looking around at comparables. What are some companies that have been successful growing a business in this space? And he kind of had the hit list of Wonderware folks that he wanted to talk to. And somewhere, somehow, I don't recall the exact moment, but we connected up, and I got it. When he explained what they were doing. The light bulb went off, and I said, "I'd love to be part of this." So I'm both an investor and advisor in the company. And also, I love smart people, like innovative people.

TROND: [laughs]

RICK: And there's no shortage of those in Natan’s team. So first visit there, seeing what they were doing, meeting the team, it was like, all right, there's something going on here.

TROND: So tell me what it is that you saw because I was also...I was at MIT at the time when Natan created the company. And I remember vividly going into the lab or whatever you want to describe his early workspace. Because that's what it was, right? It felt like a lab.

RICK: Sure.

TROND: But the stuff that was coming out was incredible. What do you think? Was it the product vision, or was it just a capability of the people that you saw early on? And now that you're looking at Tulip and its environment, what is being accomplished right now, would you say with this new app reality?

RICK: I think it was the aggregate of all the above. Because great example, if you recall the first demo scenario with the mixed reality projecting instructions onto the work –-

TROND: That was crazy. That demo was for me, the demo of all demos in the -- [laughs]

RICK: Absolutely.

TROND: It was crazy.

RICK: And I said, wow, you're taking a very fresh look at a problem here. And obviously, with their collective backgrounds, really interesting mix of skill sets, they're going to do cool stuff. And I think Natan and team would be the first to admit they were coming in with not a lot of domain knowledge. They had been involved in companies that made stuff, but there was a learning curve for sure. And that's what a lot of...not just myself, but they had a lot of advisors, customer feedback, brought in some folks into the team, and then just learned on the job training, engaging with customers, engaging in pilots.

So I think it took a year or two to kind of get grounded in what are some of the realities of the shop floor, not that they didn't have a good idea. But once that kind of confluence of smart people, customers starting to do cool stuff with it, and the end the product itself evolving, then that's kind of when the rocket took off.

TROND: Well, this is interesting what you're saying here because as I'm interviewing a lot of people who have innovated in this space, time and again, what comes back is this is not just your average software innovation garage. A lab is not a garage. Literally, you can be as smart as you are. You can have a big team of smart people. But unless you get coupled up with that manufacturing shop floor experience, you don't stand a chance, or you just can't build. You can't get past the demo.

Tell me more about that one because you have had it ingrained. We talked about this a few minutes ago. You started out that way. But there are so many more innovators these days that they can't; well, maybe they can start out, but they haven't started out on the shop floor, so many of them.

RICK: I wish they would...everybody who wants to get in this space needs to do...the equivalent of in law enforcement would be a ride-along. You go and spend a couple of nights working the streets. You realize how things really work. It's not like TV. It's not like you read in your textbooks. So there's no substitute for it, even if it's like super-concentrated real-world experience actually going out and spending some time with customers, real-world experience.

But I also think it's the third leg of the stool, which is important. It's the technology expertise and creating products. It's manufacturing domain knowledge and then figuring out how to get it in front of customers and sell it. We can never underestimate the importance of that. So that's another thing that I think Tulip took a lot of very iterative and A/B style testing approaches to go-to-market models and continue to innovate and experiment.

It's a challenging space to do low-touch, but they've found a niche with that, particularly as a means to plant seeds of customers that can take a first taste of the technology like, wow, that's pretty awesome. The holy grail, I think, for a lot of companies in our space to try to figure out how to do that. No one's really completely cracked the code yet. So it's a kind of combination model. But the domain expertise, a couple of key hires, for example, a great example is the hires they made in the pharmaceutical industry.

So life sciences now has become a really, really powerful vertical for Tulip as a result of bringing in civilian expertise plus the evolution of the product from a platform and tooling and some hardware to application, so the app marketplace that they launched. Now when I'm a buyer, you can approach not only that developer buyer, that integrator buyer, but now you can approach a business buyer and say, "I've got all these apps you can assemble together or just use as is." That was also a maturity thing. So it took the domain knowledge, interaction with customers, and then you can progressively build more into the software itself and less that the customer has to configure. That maturation has been pretty exciting to see.

TROND: Rick, we've been through a history here that's very, very exciting to me and, I think to listeners. What's next for the digital factory, for the manufacturing, execution systems, all these acronyms? I tried to shy away from them a little bit because we had so many, many other interesting things to talk about today.

But if you're looking to the next decade, the holy grail you mentioned, or this final integration project that would marry software, hardware, shop floor, and considering all the challenges that just the past year has brought us, and let's not even bring into it all of the other challenges of this decade and of this century, if you're going to go into the big words. Where are we headed?

RICK: I'll maybe focus on where I hope we head, which looks perhaps a little bit different. I started the discussion with one of the things that I learned in my first job working in the plant flow is the importance of people, the knowledge that they have, the experience that they have. People in a lot of our processes are still the sensor, the algorithm, and the actuator.

Like it or not, we haven't yet reproduced the human hand. We haven't yet reproduced the human brain. There are some really unique things about humans. And in that context, I hope that the next decade or so is about collaborative technology and how we use robotics, and AI, and information, and mixed reality to help people be better at what they do. And there's always a risk of dehumanization in something like that where people become interchangeable and they don their Iron Man assembly suit.

But I'll maybe take a more optimistic view that it's really...we're going to continue to increase productivity output. But there are so many roles like that that could benefit from the synthesis of all these cool technologies that we have. I maintain that there's no such thing as an AI market. There's no such thing as an IoT market; that they're all just building blocks, right? It's what we assemble to solve some actual problem that is interesting.

I'm hoping, and I'm confident, that the bar to implement these things becomes increasingly lower. AR is a great example today. It's hard. Building content is time-consuming and difficult. So maybe that's the next one that needs to bring the content creation to mixed reality, next-gen robotics, codebots, and some really interesting stuff happening there. The democratization of machine vision, and audio, and meta sensing that's happening.

TROND: But it's interesting you're saying they're still our building blocks, and they're still our collaboration challenges. And maybe those collaboration challenges are going to have to last longer than a decade, and maybe we need more building blocks. But what comes after that once a critical mass of building blocks get assembled? And you have watched this decade by decade that there's a certain coalescence of building blocks, and then a new platform is formed.

But still, in this industry, as you have said, so far, most of the time, these new platforms merge into the more traditional platform players, or they merge into more established. Is that a pattern that you see also in this decade? Or will we see the first mega conglomerates come out of completely new manufacturing combination platforms that are integrating all of these technologies and doing something truly new and can sustain their own new creation, whatever iteration of the manufacturing industry that would become?

RICK: And I don't know if it's going to be necessarily the suppliers that become the mega innovators. What may well happen is that the manufacturers themselves start to become because the tools have become so powerful that they become the mega. If you actually take a deep dive into a lot of really innovative manufacturing companies, it's the machines that they built to make the product. It's the processes they use to make the product. That's where some of the real breakthroughs happen. That doesn't come from outside. Now, sometimes suppliers can provide some of that equipment. So maybe this is just an amplifier for that.

And the second thing is I know is coming is this massive disintermediation of manufacturing. So we already have companies where the brand owner contracts the design of the product. It contracts people to make the products. It contracts people to service the product and sell the product. So they're literally just the brand name on top of it. Now you matrix that, right? Where you have companies with very, very flexible manufacturing capacity that's additive or traditional. Who knows, right?

But I think a manufacturing supply chain 10-20 years from now is going to look radically different. Fewer companies will be making stuff on their own. But the companies that are making stuff will be really applying some innovative technology to be flexible, versatile. That's never going to happen for grunt commodity stuff where the cost to produce matter; you do purpose-built. But increasingly, look at the proliferation rate on new product introductions and electronic products and so many different things in our lives, clothing, right? There are so many things that we could innovate faster if the manufacturing systems themselves could adapt faster. Maybe that's an outcome.

TROND: Well, I mean, whichever of these scenarios pan out, it seems to me that at least segments of this industry, if it remains, you know if you can talk about it as one industry anymore, is going to be super exciting. So that brings me, I guess, to just my closing question. If you were to advise a young person today who is maybe thinking about college, or they're thinking about should I follow my passion, which happens to be actually going and making and building things? Or should I get a theoretical education, or is that a false choice? Where should they go today?

There's this dichotomy between getting a four-year education versus just going and getting some skills like we have been talking about, so you have some inkling of where you actually need to be to understand in order to produce the innovations.

RICK: I think all the above, and let me elaborate on that a little bit. When I was in university, I created my own co-ops in the summer. So I worked...I sought them out. My son's at Drexel University now, and a co-op program is an integral part of his education there. For a lot of folks, getting kids particularly exposed to co-ops and those kinds of internships give you two things. It might tell you what you don't want to do just as much as you want to do, which is I think a lot of people in their career would wish they knew that earlier.

It helps you get that real-world experience and just interacting with people. So I think that aspect of in your university education doing a diverse and interesting set of co-ops would be very valuable. Having a liberal arts aspect to any technical education or focus skills education is still valid. You have to know how to read, write, speak, those kinds of things.

Design is ever increasingly important. The polymath is going to be a great skill to have. Secondly, learning has never been easier. You've got so many online resources as well. If you need a technical skill, I mean, I could probably learn neurosurgery on YouTube if I really needed to if there was no other option, you know, 60% chance that patient would live.

TROND: [laughs]

RICK: But we have so many different resources. I'm a believer in lifelong learning. So it's not a static thing. Certainly, a highly specialized skill if you're going to be geneticists doing CRISPR whatever, you need to spend 8-10 years of true rigorous study to master a lot of that kind of stuff. Maybe not; maybe that's even getting easier.

TROND: Ricky, you just brought me back to eighth grade and my one-week internship at the National Geological Lab, where I was sorting through minerals. And it's incredible how one week is etched into my mind. I don't think about it every time, and I haven't thought about it for years. But while you were just describing with seeking out these internships, you brought it all back to me. And I can almost remember how the Monday was different from the Tuesday rotation when I went through that institute. There is just no comparison to that kind of real-life experience.

RICK: And the other advice that I give any person is versatile set of skills. Do a sales role sometime in your life. You might hate it, you might despise it, but you're going to learn what the salespeople in your company go through. You might love it, and it becomes a career. Communications, what your marketing folks have. Having a diverse set of skills and getting exposure...maybe it happened accidentally for me. Those were the opportunities that presented themselves, but I think having that diverse skill set and toolbox is extremely valuable, particularly if you want to start a company.

TROND: Rick, I thank you so much. We have gone way over what I had promised and even my promise to our listeners to be very succinct. But this has been, for me, at least a fascinating roller coaster through your career and throughout manufacturing, both history and future. I thank you very, very much.

RICK: My pleasure.

TROND: You have just listened to Episode 10 of The Augmented Podcast with host Trond Arne Undheim. And the topic was A Brief History of Manufacturing Software. Our guest was Rick Bullotta, Partner at TwinThread and Co-Founder of ThingWorx. In this conversation, we talk about how Rick has shaped manufacturing software history and the lessons learned from being an early employee at Wonderware, the famous precursor to manufacturing automation, back in 1993, a company first sold to British engineering giant Siebe in 1998, which merged with BTR to form Invensys, which in turn merged with French multinational Schneider Electric and later the CTO.

Rick Bullotta was also the Co-Founder of Lighthammer Software, which was later acquired by SAP. Then in 2009, founding ThingWorx, the first complete end-to-end technology platform designed for the industrial internet of things, which was acquired by PTC in 2003. We also touch on his current advice to founders in the industrial space, his board role at Tulip, and what he sees lie ahead for the industry.

My take is that Wonderware, Lighthammer, and ThingWorx are prominent parts of manufacturing software history, and there's a chance that the 4th company he now is involved with, Tulip, also will be. I do things with things is Rick Bullotta's motto. The things he does, he does them well, and it is an internet of things, more than anything else. I, for one, am eagerly listening to what he predicts will happen next.

Special Guest: Rick Bullotta.

Episode 86: Augmenting Industry: Reflections on Season 2

Tulip — Wed, 29 Jun 2022 00:00:00 -0400

Welcome to episode #86 of the Augmented Podcast (@AugmentedPod). Today's episode will be a reflection on Season 2. Join host and futurist Trond Arne Undheim (@trondau) as he reflects on season 2 of the Augmented podcast, diving into a few highlights from the season.

Augmented reveals the stories behind the new era of industrial operations, where technology will restore the agility of frontline workers. Technology is changing rapidly. What’s next in the digital factory? Who is leading the change? What are the key skills to learn and how to stay up to date on manufacturing and industry 4.0? Augmented is a podcast for industrial leaders, process engineers, and shop floor operators, hosted by futurist Trond Arne Undheim (@trondau), and presented by Tulip Interfaces (@tulipinterfaces), the frontline operations platform.

In Season 2 we honed in, covering a specific topics relevant to manufacturing, such as marketing, frontline operations, reshoring, digital lean, startups, supply chains, pricing strategies, the manufacturing software market workers, the low code/no- code issue, diagnostic manufacturing, operational data, life science manufacturing systems, the industrial tech transformation outlook, the future factory, the evolution of lean, and industrial interoperability. As you can see, these ranged from technical topics to HR to investing to management principles--all of which go into operating and innovating in manufacturing and industrial tech.

Guests featured in this episode:

Joe Sullivan (@sullivan_joe), host of The Manufacturing Executive podcast and founder of Gorilla 76 (@gorilla76)
Lydia M. Di Liello (@LydiaDiLiello), CEO and founder of Capital Pricing Consultants, and co-host of The WAM Podcast: Empowering Women in Manufacturing and Business. (@wam_podcast)
Yossi Sheffi (@YossiSheffi), Director, MIT Center for Transporation and Logistics (@MITSupplyChain)
Harry C. Moser (@reshorenow) founder and President of the Reshoring Initiative
Dr. Gunter Beitinger (@beitgugb) (@Siemens) SVP of Manufacturing at Siemens AG, Head of Factory Digitalization and Head of Product Carbon Footprint/SiGreen

Thanks for listening. If you like the show subscribe to augmentedpodcast. co or on your preferred podcast player. And rate us with 5 stars. If so, let us know by messaging us your thoughts. Hopefully, you'll find something awesome in this show or in other episodes. Please, if you do, let us know by messaging us. We would love to share your thoughts with other listeners.

The Augmented podcast is created in association with Tulip, the connected frontline operations platform that connects the people, machines, devices, and the systems used in a production or logistics process in a physical location. Tulip is democratizing technology and empowering those closest to operations to solve problems. Tulip is also hiring. You can find Tulip at Tulip.co

Please share this show with colleagues who care about where industrial tech is heading.

To find us on social media is easy, we are Augmented Pod on LinkedIn and Twitter, and Augmented Podcast on Facebook and YouTube:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/augmentedpod
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AugmentedPodcast/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/AugmentedPod
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5Y1gz66LxYvjJAMnN_f6PQ

See you next time. Augmented--industrial conversations that matter.

Special Guests: Dr. Gunter Beitinger, Harry C. Moser, Joe Sullivan, Lydia M. Di Liello, and Yossi Sheffi.

Episode 81: From Predicative to Diagnostic Manufacturing Augmentation

Tulip — Wed, 27 Apr 2022 09:00:00 -0400

This week on the podcast (@AugmentedPod), Trond is in conversation with returning guest and colleague, Roy Shilkrot, the Lead Scientist at Tulip (@tulipinterfaces). In episode 81 of Season 2 of the Augmented podcast, the topic is "From Predictive to Diagnostic Manufacturing Augmentation." In this conversation, we're diving further into machine learning in manufacturing and emerging applications.

My takeaway: Industrial tech is not what it used to be and will never again be a bulky inflexible instrument because we are entering an age with immediate feedback and rapid adjustments and a combination of human and machine. Diagnostic manufacturing is, in fact, quite different from a time when we had to wait until the product was onerous to see what could be wrong with it.

Thanks for listening. If you liked the show, subscribe at Augmented podcast.co or in your preferred podcast player and rate us with five stars. If you liked this episode, you might also like episode 29 The Automated Micro-Factory, episode 22 Friedman's Factory: What is No-Code, or episode 19 Machine Learning in Manufacturing. You can listen to all of these episodes simply by pasting in the episode number after the URL.

Please share this show with colleagues who care about where industrial tech is heading.

To find us on social media is easy, we are Augmented Pod on LinkedIn and Twitter, and Augmented Podcast on Facebook and YouTube:

See you next time. Augmented--industrial conversations that matter.

Special Guest: Roy Shilkrot.

Episode 76: Low on Code, High on Process

Tulip — Wed, 20 Apr 2022 14:00:00 -0400

Joining us this week on the podcast (@AugmentedPod) is CEO and Founder of Pyze, Inc. (@PyzeInc) Prabhjot Singh (@psinghSF) Here with futurist Trond Undheim to talk all about business process intelligence, the workflows in manufacturing and logistics, and the future outlook for low-code in industrial applications, the episode is 76 and the topic is: "Low on Code, High on Process."

Augmented reveals the stories behind the new era of industrial operations, where technology will restore the agility of frontline workers. Technology is changing rapidly. What’s next in the digital factory? Who is leading the change? What are the key skills to learn? How to stay up to date on manufacturing and industry 4.0? Augmented is a podcast for industrial leaders, process engineers, and shop floor operators, hosted by futurist Trond Arne Undheim (@trondau), and presented by Tulip, the frontline operations platform (@tulipinterfaces).

Trond's takeaway: Business process intelligence is the "why" of technology. Because smoother operations are where the value of technology is realized. The future outlook for low code in industrial operations is bright because it has the potential to streamline workflows in manufacturing and logistics. However, it is important to keep in mind that to leverage automation to do better decisions, and not just to squeeze out more with less--that starts with keeping in mind what the real problem is and steering with that in mind. If you don't know, figure out the problem and then invest in the process and if technology gets you there, invest.

Thanks for listening. If you liked the show, subscribe at Augmented podcast.co or in your preferred podcast player and rate us with five stars. And if you liked this episode, you might also like episode 73 The Challenge of Front Line Operations. Hopefully, you'll find something awesome in these or in other episodes.

And if so, do let us know by messaging us because we would love to share your thoughts with other listeners. The Augmented podcast is created in association with Tulip, the connected frontline operations platform that connects the people, machines, devices, and the systems used in a production or logistics process in a physical location. Tulip is democratizing technology and empowering those closest to operations to solve problems. Tulip is also hiring. You can find Tulip at Tulip.co. Please share this show with colleagues who care about where industrial tech is heading.

To find us on social media is easy, we are Augmented Pod on LinkedIn and Twitter, and Augmented Podcast on Facebook and YouTube:

See you next time. Augmented--industrial conversations that matter.

Special Guest: Prabhjot Singh.

Episode 75: Designing a Worker Friendly Industrial System

Tulip — Wed, 13 Apr 2022 14:00:00 -0400

This week on the podcast (@AugmentedPod), futurist Trond Undheim interviews Erik Mirandette, Head of Product and Ecosystem at Tulip Interfaces (@tulipinterfaces). This is episode 75 of Season 2: "Designing a Worker Friendly Industrial System."

In this conversation, we talk about what designing and redesigning a worker-friendly industrial system might entail, how to build capabilities and not point solutions that simply fix existing use cases to empower operators and workers along the way.

Trond's takeaway: It is unusual to hear the case for manufacturing efficiency, coupled with worker empowerment, and then expressed so clearly as a systems dynamics problem that needs to have an overall fix instead of just attacking.

Augmented reveals the stories behind the new era of industrial operations, where technology will restore the agility of frontline workers. Technology is changing rapidly. What’s next in the digital factory? Who is leading the change? What are the key skills to learn and how to stay up to date on manufacturing and industry 4.0? Augmented is a podcast for industrial leaders, process engineers, and shop floor operators, hosted by futurist Trond Arne Undheim (@trondau) and presented by Tulip, the frontline operations platform.

Please share this show with colleagues who care about where industrial tech is heading.

To find us on social media is easy, we are Augmented Pod on LinkedIn and Twitter, and Augmented Podcast on Facebook and YouTube:

See you next time. Augmented--industrial conversations that matter.

Special Guest: Erik Mirandette.

Episode 67: Manufacturing 5.0

Tulip — Wed, 06 Apr 2022 14:00:00 -0400

This week on the podcast (@AugmentedPod), futurist Trond Undheim interviews Kathryn Kelley, Executive Director of the Ohio Manufacturing Institute at Ohio State University (@omiosumfg). This is episode 67 of Season 2, "Manufacturing 5.0"

Augmented reveals the stories behind the new era of industrial operations, where technology will restore the agility of frontline workers. Technology is changing rapidly. What’s next in the digital factory? Who is leading the change? What are the key skills to learn and how to stay up to date on manufacturing and industry 4.0? Augmented is a podcast for industrial leaders, process engineers, and shop floor operators, hosted by futurist Trond Arne Undheim (@trondau), and presented by Tulip, the frontline operations platform (@tulipinterfaces).

Trond's takeaway: In this conversation, we talked about industrial trends in Ohio, across the US. Ohio, along with Michigan, California, and Texas, is where the bulk of US manufacturing habits are formed. That's why tracking their thinking is important. To think that it would take decades to roll out industry 4.0 in Ohio is mind-boggling. Can it be true?
This is why we need a new approach to industrial tech and one where training needs are drastically reduced and technology can be implemented in days and weeks instead of months and years. I believe that the opportunity exists now. Now let's roll it out, test it and see if it can happen. Training is key, and government and state-sponsored programs are an important component.

The Augmented podcast is created in association with Tulip, the frontline operations platform that connects the people, machines, devices, and systems used in a production or logistics process in a physical location. Tulip is democratizing technology and empowering those closest to operations to solve problems. Tulip is also hiring. You can find Tulip at Tulip.co
If you liked this episode, you might also like episode 49 Lean Manufacturing in the USA, episode 46 Manufacturing Training in Massachusetts, or episode 30 Rethinking Workforce Learning.

Please share this show with colleagues who care about where industrial tech is heading.

To find us on social media is easy, we are Augmented Pod on LinkedIn and Twitter, and Augmented Podcast on Facebook and YouTube:

See you next time. Augmented--industrial conversations that matter.

Special Guest: Kathryn Kelley.

Episode 72: What is Tulip University

Tulip — Wed, 30 Mar 2022 14:00:00 -0400

This week on the podcast (@AugmentedPod), futurist Trond Undheim interviews John Klaess, Head of Product Education at Tulip Interfaces (@tulipinterfaces). This is episode 72 of Season 2, "What is Tulip University."

Trond's takeaway: Training is crucial to contemporary manufacturing, though not in the way we usually think. Employees must train people all the time, which brings us to question, what if the technologies and the user interfaces were simplified.

The Augmented podcast is created in association with Tulip, the frontline operations platform that connects the people, machines, devices, and systems used in a production or logistics process in a physical location. Tulip is democratizing technology and empowering those closest to operations to solve problems. Tulip is also hiring. You can find Tulip at Tulip.co
If you liked this episode, you might also like episode 3 Reimagine Training, episode 46 Manufacturing Training in Massachusetts, or episode 2 How to Train Augmented Workers.

Please share this show with colleagues who care about where industrial tech is heading.

To find us on social media is easy, we are Augmented Pod on LinkedIn and Twitter, and Augmented Podcast on Facebook and YouTube:

See you next time. Augmented--industrial conversations that matter.

Special Guest: Dr. John Klaess.

Episode 71: Trends in the Manufacturing Software Market

Tulip — Wed, 23 Mar 2022 11:00:00 -0400

This week on episode 71 of Augmented Season 2 (@AugmentedPod), Trond is in conversation with Ralph Verrilli, the Managing Director of Madison Park Group. The topic is: "Trends in the Manufacturing Software Market."

Augmented reveals the stories behind the new era of industrial operations, where technology will restore the agility of frontline workers. Technology is changing rapidly. What’s next in the digital factory? Who is leading the change? What are the key skills to learn and how to stay up to date on manufacturing and industry 4.0? Augmented is a podcast for industrial leaders, process engineers, and shop floor operators, hosted by futurist Trond Arne Undheim (@trondau), presented by Tulip Interfaces (@tulipinterfaces), the frontline operations platform.

Trond's takeaway: The manufacturing software market is rapidly evolving. Is there hope that we can get the industry weaned off legacy technology with poor interoperability, horrible user interfaces? Which as a result, requires hours and hours of training only not to work very well at all.

The Augmented podcast is created in association with Tulip, the frontline operations platform that connects the people, machines, devices, and the systems used in a production or logistics process in a physical location. Tulip is democratizing technology and empowering those closest to operations to solve problems. Tulip is also hiring. You can find Tulip at Tulip.co.

Please share this show with colleagues who care about where industrial tech is heading.

To find us on social media is easy, we are Augmented Pod on LinkedIn and Twitter, and Augmented Podcast on Facebook and YouTube:

See you next time. Augmented--industrial conversations that matter.

Special Guest: Ralph Verrilli.

Episode 68: Industrial Supply Chain Optimization

Tulip — Wed, 09 Mar 2022 03:00:00 -0500

This week on the podcast, we are in conversation with Yossi Sheffi (@YossiSheffi), Director, MIT Center for Transporation and Logistics (@MITSupplyChain) He joins us for episode 68 of Season Two of Augmented Podcast. The topic is: Industrial Supply Chain Optimization. Augmented reveals the stories behind the new era of industrial operations, where technology will restore the agility of frontline workers. Technology is changing rapidly. What’s next in the digital factory? Who is leading the change? What are the key skills to learn? How to stay up to date on manufacturing and industry 4.0? Augmented is a podcast for industrial leaders, process engineers, and shop floor operators, hosted by futurist Trond Arne Undheim (@trondau), presented by Tulip, the frontline operations platform.

Please share this show with colleagues who care about where industrial tech is heading.

To find us on social media is easy, we are Augmented Pod on LinkedIn and Twitter, and Augmented Podcast on Facebook and YouTube:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/augmentedpod
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AugmentedPodcast/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/AugmentedPod

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5Y1gz66LxYvjJAMnN_f6PQ

See you next time. Augmented--industrial conversations that matter.

Special Guest: Yossi Sheffi.

Episode 59: Early Startups Meet Industry 4.0

Tulip — Wed, 02 Mar 2022 03:00:00 -0500

This week on Augmented Podcast, Laila Partridge (@techstarsLaila), Managing Director of STANLEY + Techstars Accelerator (@StanleyBlkDeckr) (@Techstars) joins us for episode 59. The topic is: Early Startups Meet Industry 4.0. Augmented reveals the stories behind the new era of industrial operations, where technology will restore the agility of frontline workers. Technology is changing rapidly. What’s next in the digital factory? Who is leading the change? What are the key skills to learn? How to stay up to date on manufacturing and industry 4.0? Augmented is a podcast for industrial leaders, process engineers and shop floor operators, hosted by futurist Trond Arne Undheim (@trondau), presented by Tulip, the frontline operations platform.

Please share this show with colleagues who care about where industrial tech is heading.

To find us on social media is easy, we are Augmented Pod on LinkedIn and Twitter, and Augmented Podcast on Facebook and YouTube:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/augmentedpod
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AugmentedPodcast/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/AugmentedPod

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5Y1gz66LxYvjJAMnN_f6PQ

See you next time. Augmented--industrial conversations that matter.

Special Guest: Laila Partridge.

Episode 62: Manufacturing Excellence in Michigan

Tulip — Wed, 23 Feb 2022 03:00:00 -0500

Today’s guest is Jon Sobel, CEO and Co-Founder of Sight Machine (@sightmachine), for episode 62 of Augmented Podcast (@augmentedpod). The topic is: Manufacturing Excellence in Michigan. Augmented reveals the stories behind the new era of industrial operations, where technology will restore the agility of frontline workers. Technology is changing rapidly. What’s next in the digital factory? Who is leading the change? What are the key skills to learn? How to stay up to date on manufacturing and industry 4.0? Augmented is a podcast for industrial leaders, process engineers and shop floor operators, hosted by futurist Trond Arne Undheim (@trondau), presented by Tulip, the frontline operations platform.

Please share this show with colleagues who care about where industrial tech is heading.

To find us on social media is easy, we are Augmented Pod on LinkedIn and Twitter, and Augmented Podcast on Facebook and YouTube:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/augmentedpod
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AugmentedPodcast/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/AugmentedPod

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5Y1gz66LxYvjJAMnN_f6PQ

See you next time. Augmented--industrial conversations that matter.

Special Guest: Jon Sobel.

Episode 73: The Challenge of Frontline Operations

Tulip — Wed, 19 Jan 2022 11:00:00 -0500

Today our guest is Jason Dietrich, Head of Commercial Operations, Tulip (@tulipinterfaces), for episode 73 on Augmented Podcast (@AugmentedPod). Augmented reveals the stories behind the new era of industrial operations, where technology will restore the agility of frontline workers. Technology is changing rapidly. What’s next in the digital factory? Who is leading the change? What are the key skills to learn? How to stay up to date on manufacturing and industry 4.0? Augmented is a podcast for industrial leaders, process engineers and shop floor operators, hosted by futurist Trond Arne Undheim (@trondau), presented by Tulip, the frontline operations platform.

In this conversation, we talk about the following: What is frontline operations? What are the specific needs industrial companies have when they want to digitize their operations? What are some key Tulip use cases? What will industrial operations look like over the next decade?

Trond's takeaway: Frontline operations is an increasingly crucial business function whereby a function that previously was considered back office or lower priority, that of the industrial worker, receives increased attention. When the frontline gets digitally augmented and managerially supported, workers feel empowered just like white collar knowledge workers with desks. Connecting machines to serve people, simplifying technology implementation, operators can carry the key task of uniting industrial production with consumption needs. Over time, this might eradicate inefficiencies in the supply chain. This development will not only shape industrial operations over the next decade, in some companies, it is already in place.

Thanks for listening. If you liked the show, subscribe at Augmentedpodcast.co or in your preferred podcast player, and rate us with five stars. If you liked this episode, you might also like episode 50, The Last Mile of Productivity, episode 49, Lean manufacturing in the USA, and episode 41, Scaling Software Movements. Hopefully, you'll find something awesome in these or other episodes. If so, do let us know by messaging us, we would love to share your thoughts with other listeners.

The Augmented podcast is created in association with Tulip, connected frontline operations platform that connects the people, machines, devices, and the systems used in a production or logistics process in a physical location. Tulip is democratizing technology and empowering those closest to operations to solve problems. Tulip is also hiring. You can find Tulip at Tulip.co.

Please share this show with colleagues who care about where industry and especially industrial tech is heading. To find us on social media is easy, we are Augmented Pod on LinkedIn and Twitter, and Augmented Podcast on Facebook and YouTube:

Augmented--industrial conversations that matter. See you next time.

Special Guest: Jason Dietrich.

Episode 61: The Digital Journey of a Flower Wholesaler

Tulip — Wed, 22 Dec 2021 03:00:00 -0500

Today's guest on episode 61 is Andy Burton, Managing Director at Double H Nurseries Ltd (@DoubleHUK). In this conversation, we talk about the experience implementing the Tulip digital app in the midst of COVID-19 lockdown in the busiest flower season to try to save his flowers and turn on e-commerce without spending a fortune in time and resources and without deep digital skills in his workforce.

Augmented reveals the stories behind the new era of industrial operations, where technology will restore the agility of frontline workers. Technology is changing rapidly. What’s next in the digital factory? Who is leading the change? What are the key skills to learn? How to stay up to date on manufacturing and industry 4.0? Augmented is a podcast for industrial leaders, process engineers and shop floor operators, hosted by futurist Trond Arne Undheim (@trondau), presented by Tulip, the frontline operations platform.

Trond's takeaway:
Frontline operations is about so much more than technology, but getting technology right is often about picking the right technology for the skillset of your workforce. Implementing tech must be followed up by a complete tie-in with all your business processes, otherwise you enable speed in one part of the process and backlog in another. No-code apps make this easier, but not self evident.

The Augmented podcast is created in association with Tulip, connected frontline operations platform that connects the people, machines, devices, and the systems used in a production or logistics process in a physical location. Tulip is democratizing technology and empowering those closest to operations to solve problems. Tulip is also hiring. You can find Tulip at Tulip.co.

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/augmentedpod
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AugmentedPodcast/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/AugmentedPod
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5Y1gz66LxYvjJAMnN_f6PQ

Augmented--industrial conversations that matter. See you next time.

Special Guest: Andy Burton.

Episode 51: Designing Industrial Reality in 3D

Tulip — Wed, 13 Oct 2021 03:00:00 -0400

In episode 51 of the podcast (@AugmentedPod), the topic is: Designing Industrial Reality in 3D. Our guest is Marcelo Coelho (@marcelocoelho), Head of Design at Formlabs and Lecturer at MIT. In this conversation, we talk about the emerging practices of industrial design in additive manufacturing using 3D printing, machine learning and a high degree of customization.

After listening to this episode, check out:

Formlabs: https://formlabs.com/
Marcelo Coelho: https://cmarcelo.com/

Augmented is a podcast for industrial leaders, process engineers and shop floor operators, hosted by futurist Trond Arne Undheim (@trondau), presented by Tulip, the frontline operations platform, and associated with MFG.works, the industrial upskilling community launched at the World Economic Forum. Augmented--the industry 4.0 podcast.

In this conversation, we talked about the emerging practices of industrial design in additive manufacturing.

Trond's takeaway: Making products accessible is hard work. Industrial design is not an afterthought. The best companies are getting good at it. Why? Because they are bringing customers closer to them, to learn and explore. In fact, people are potentially getting closer to the making process than ever before. We have the opportunity to literally shape our future, our surroundings, and the things we touch, use, work with and enjoy in our leisure. That's a whole other level of customization. Forget personalization, this is way more than being able to adapt to your personality, it is attuning to your very purpose and context as a situated human being with everchanging resources, needs and interests.

Thanks for listening. If you liked the show, subscribe at Augmentedpodcast.co or in your preferred podcast player, and rate us with five stars. If you liked this episode, you might also like episode 36, Digital Lean, episode 29, The Automated Microfactory or episode 33, Sustainable Manufacturing at Scale. Hopefully, you'll find something awesome in these or other episodes. If so, do let us know by messaging us, we would love to share your thoughts with other listeners.

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/augmentedpod
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AugmentedPodcast/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/AugmentedPod
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5Y1gz66LxYvjJAMnN_f6PQ

See you next time. Augmented--industrial conversations that matter.

Special Guest: Marcelo Coelho.

Episode 47: Industrial Machine Learning

Tulip — Wed, 08 Sep 2021 03:00:00 -0400

Augmented reveals the stories behind the new era of industrial operations, where technology will restore the agility of frontline workers.

In episode 47 of the podcast (@AugmentedPod), the topic is: Industrial Machine Learning. Our guest is Roy Shilkrot, Lead Scientist, Tulip (@tulipinterfaces).

In this conversation, we talk about Machine Learning in Manufacturing. Emerging applications using Tulip and beyond, we discuss emerging use cases, the impact of a future with MES ML, that is, machine learning built into the manufacturing execution system.

Augmented is a podcast for industry leaders and operators, hosted by futurist Trond Arne Undheim (@trondau), presented by Tulip.co, the frontline operations platform, and associated with MFG.works, the industrial upskilling community launched at the World Economic Forum. Each episode dives deep into a contemporary topic of concern across the industry and airs at 9 am US Eastern Time every Wednesday. Augmented--the industry 4.0 podcast--industrial conversations that matter.

After listening to this episode, check out:

Tulip: https://tulip.co/
Roy Shilkrot: https://www.linkedin.com/in/royshilkrot/

Trond's takeaway: Industrial tech is not what it used to be and will never again be a bulky, legacy, inflexible instrument. Rather, we are entering an age with immediate feedback, rapid adjustments and a combination of human and machine monitoring.

Thanks for listening. If you liked the show, subscribe at Augmentedpodcast.co or in your preferred podcast player, and rate us with five stars. If you liked this episode, you might also like episode 29, The Automated Microfactory, episode 22, Freedman's Factory: What is nocode?, or episode 19, Machine Learning in Manufacturing.

Augmented--industrial conversations that matter.

Special Guest: Roy Shilkrot.

Episode 46: Manufacturing Training in Massachusetts

Tulip — Wed, 25 Aug 2021 03:00:00 -0400

Augmented reveals the stories behind the new era of industrial operations, where technology will restore the agility of frontline workers.

In episode 46 of the podcast (@AugmentedPod), the topic is: Manufacturing Training in Massachusetts. Our guest is John Killam, President, MassMEP.

In this conversation, we talk about the important role of manufacturing in Massachusetts, fostering the next generation manufacturers, manufacturing workforce trends and actions, including how to recruit talent to the region and to our manufacturing firms.

Augmented is a podcast for leaders, hosted by futurist Trond Arne Undheim (@trondau), presented by Tulip.co (@tulipinterfaces), the frontline operations platform, and associated with MFG.works, the manufacturing upskilling community launched at the World Economic Forum. Each episode dives deep into a contemporary topic of concern across the industry and airs at 9 am US Eastern Time every Wednesday. Augmented--the industry 4.0 podcast.

After listening to this episode, check out MassMEP as well as John Killam's social profile.

MassMEP (@MassMEP): https://massmep.org/
John Killam (@JKillamMEP): https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnkillammassmep/

Trond's takeaway: Manufacturing is surprisingly important in Massachusetts, which most people don't necessarily see as a manufacturing state because it is a high cost state that competes mostly in high-end, technology infused manufacturing of specialty parts. However, with industry 4.0 that kind of manufacturing is on the rise, so the issue will only become more and more key--and the workforce will need to grow to keep up with the demand. In that, there is opportunity for young people. And new manufacturing jobs can be exciting jobs, too. In fact, most of them are.

Thanks for listening. If you liked the show, subscribe at Augmentedpodcast.co or in your preferred podcast player, and rate us with five stars. If you liked this episode, you might also like episode 27, Industry 4.0 Tools, episode 17, Smart Manufacturing for All, or episode 11, Empowering Workers to Innovate.

Augmented--upskilling the workforce for industry 4.0 frontline operations.

Special Guest: John Killam .

Episode 30: Rethinking Workforce Learning

Tulip — Wed, 11 Aug 2021 03:00:00 -0400

Augmented reveals the stories behind the new era of industrial operations, where technology will restore the agility of frontline workers.

In episode 30 of the podcast (@AugmentedPod), the topic is: Rethinking Workforce Learning. Our guest is George Westerman, Senior Lecturer, MIT Sloan School of Management and Principal Research Scientist for workforce learning at the MIT Jameel World Education Lab.

In this conversation, we talk about how the industrial workforce learning system is broken. We touch on the history of "Pre-K to gray" workforce training. We discuss transforming the way workers get the skills they need to thrive in the context of the evolution of digital transformation. The trick is balancing work with learning, and changing the way learning happens. But what to learn? Westerman’s work has yielded the Human Skills Matrix. And how to learn? His research identified a new model of corporate learning and development called The Transformer CLO.

After listening to this episode, check out J-WEL as well as George Westerman's profile on social media:

J-WEL (@MIT_jwel): https://jwel.mit.edu/
George Westerman (@gwesterman): https://www.linkedin.com/in/georgewesterman/

Trond's takeaway: Rethinking workforce learning is necessary, important, and wide-ranging. It will be a massive effort with digital transformation at the heart but with the need for educational institutions, employers and the workforce all on board. Do we all agree what skills to teach or be taught? This is unlikely but developing a skills matrix is a start.

Augmented--upskilling the workforce for industry 4.0 frontline operations.

Special Guest: Dr. George Westerman.

Episode 35: Analysts Shape Markets

Tulip — Wed, 04 Aug 2021 03:00:00 -0400

Augmented reveals the stories behind the new era of industrial operations, where technology will restore the agility of frontline workers.

In episode 35 of the podcast (@AugmentedPod), the topic is: Industry Analysts Shape Markets. Our guest is Kim Knickle, Research Director, Verdantix.

In this conversation, we talk about The main role of industry analysts which is to identify and understand trends in their chosen sector. What is the role of analysts going forward? What will their function be? Who are the relevant suppliers at any given time?

Augmented is a podcast for leaders, hosted by futurist Trond Arne Undheim (@trondau), presented by Tulip.co (@tulipinterfaces), frontline operations platform, and associated with MFG.works, the manufacturing upskilling community launched at the World Economic Forum. Each episode dives deep into a contemporary topic of concern across the industry and airs at 9 am US Eastern Time every Wednesday. Augmented--the industry 4.0 podcast.

After listening to this episode, check out Verdantix as well as Kim Knickle's social media profile.

Verdantix (@Verdantix): https://www.verdantix.com/
Kim Knickle (@KimKnickle): https://www.linkedin.com/in/kim-knickle/

Trond's takeaway: Industry analysts are surprisingly relevant in today's information rich markets, perhaps because of information overload or the need for trusted sources of information. But as industry morphs and categories change faster than before, can firms keep up with the markets, and can analysts create a still picture of an evolving situation? Analysts are traditionally helpful for the buying process. Navigating the manufacturing industry is becoming more and more difficult as traditional vendors are complemented by a myriad of startups. As analysts assess trends, create segment taxonomies, size up markets, and prepare industry forecasts:

Thanks for listening. If you liked the show, subscribe at Augmentedpodcast.co or in your preferred podcast player, and rate us with five stars. If you liked this episode, you might also like episode 42, Business Beyond Buzzwords, episode 32, Covering Industrial Innovation or episode 9, The Fourth Industrial Revolution post-COVID-19.

Augmented--industrial conversations that matter.

Special Guest: Kim Knickle .

Episode 43: Digitized Supply Chain

Tulip — Wed, 23 Jun 2021 03:00:00 -0400

Augmented reveals the stories behind the new era of industrial operations, where technology will restore the agility of frontline workers.

In episode 43 of the podcast (@AugmentedPod), the topic is: Digitized Supply Chain. Our guest is Arun Kumar Bhaskara-Baba, Head of Global Manufacturing IT, Johnson & Johnson.

J&J (@JNJNews): https://www.jnj.com/
Arun Kumar Bhaskara-Baba: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bhaskarababa/

Thanks for listening. If you liked the show, subscribe at Augmentedpodcast.co or in your preferred podcast player, and rate us with five stars. If you liked this episode, you might also like episode 21, The Future of Digital in Manufacturing, episode 27, Industry 4.0 Tools or episode 10, A Brief History of Manufacturing Software

Augmented--conversations on industrial tech.

Special Guest: Arun Kumar Bhaskara-Baba.

Episode 21: The Future of Digital in Manufacturing

Tulip — Wed, 09 Jun 2021 03:00:00 -0400

Augmented reveals the stories behind the new era of industrial operations, where technology will restore the agility of frontline workers. In episode 21 of the podcast @AugmentedPod, the topic is: The Future of Digital in Manufacturing. Our guest is Çağlayan Arkan, VP of Manufacturing Industry at Microsoft (@Caglayan_Arkan).

In this conversation, we talk about where manufacturing has been in the past, why manufacturing has been lacking a sense of urgency in the sense of industry 4.0 but how everything we know about manufacturing has changed. We also discuss workforce transformation, democratizing operational technology, and the future of industrial innovation.

After listening to this episode, check out Microsoft's manufacturing approach as well as Çağlayan Arkan's social media profile:

Microsoft Cloud for Manufacturing: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/industry/manufacturing/microsoft-cloud-for-manufacturing
Çağlayan Arkan: LinkedIn,
Blog: https://aka.ms/CaglayanArkanBlog

Thanks for listening. If you liked the show, subscribe at Augmentedpodcast.co or in your preferred podcast player, and rate us with five stars. If you liked this episode, you might also like episode 9, The Fourth Industrial Revolution post-COVID-19, episode 4, A Renaissance in Manufacturing or Episode 20, The Digitalization of Körber.

Augmented--industrial conversations.

Special Guest: Çağlayan Arkan.

Episode 32: Visualizing Machines

Tulip — Tue, 08 Jun 2021 09:00:00 -0400

Augmented reveals the stories behind the new era of industrial operations, where technology will restore the agility of frontline workers.

In episode 32 of the podcast (@AugmentedPod), the topic is: Visualizing Factories. Our guest is Lior Zadicareo, Chief Revenue Officer at Visual Factories

In this conversation, we talk about The complex reality of industry 4.0, how the future is a product of the past, and what will change in the life of an operations manager of a manufacturing company over the next few years.

After listening to this episode, check out Visual Factories: http://www.visual-factories.com/ as well as Lior Zadicareo's profile on social media: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lior-zadicareo-905572/

You may want to also be aware of the 'Israel meets New England' smart manufacturing event on June 9 and its organizers, the Israeli Trade Mission and Amhub New England:

The New England Advanced Manufacturing Hub (AMHUB NE): https://mfg.works/amhub/amhub-new-england/
The Government of Israel’s Economic Mission to North America: https://embassies.gov.il/washington/AboutTheEmbassy/Pages/Economic-Mission.aspx#:
ISRAEL meets NEW ENGLAND: Advanced Manufacturing in Factories and Workplace: https://mfg.works/israel-meets-new-england/

Trond's takeaway: Visualizing manufacturing means making what machines do visible. More than that, it means starting to understand what humans do on the shop floor. Even more ambitiously, we have to figure out how humans and machines can work better together.

Thanks for listening. If you liked the show, subscribe at Augmentedpodcast.co or in your preferred podcast player, and rate us with five stars. If you liked this episode, you might also like episode 19, Machine Learning in Manufacturing, episode 27, Industry 4.0 Tools or episode 25, Industrial Tracking: Drones, Warehouses and Theme Parks. Augmented--industrial conversations.

Special Guest: Lior Zadicareo.

Episode 25: Industrial Tracking: Drones, Warehouses and Theme Parks

Tulip — Tue, 25 May 2021 16:00:00 -0400

Augmented reveals the stories behind the new era of industrial operations, where technology will restore the agility of frontline workers.

In episode 25 of the podcast (@AugmentedPod), the topic is: Industrial Tracking: Drones, Warehouses and Theme Parks. Our guest is Mark N. Goldfarb, CEO & co-founder of the Israeli tech startup Sixdof Space, who is a panel speaker at an upcoming, fast-paced panel debate with Q&A on Industry 4.0 with top Israeli startups and advanced manufacturers from New England. The event is a collaboration between the New England Advanced Manufacturing Hub (AMHUB), a global network associated with the World Economic Forum, The Government of Israel’s Economic Mission to North America, Tulip, and Stanley Black & Decker.

In this conversation, we talk about positional tracking technology, touch on the many tracking technologies that exist out there- magnetic, UWB, Wifi, Lidar, LiFI - each with pros and cons. We then move into optical tracking, an approach that uses light, and as such requires a direct line of sight, but is less power hungry than other approaches. We discuss outfitting factory floors with this stuff to track movement by vehicles, people or goods in a manufacturing warehouse, and exciting futuristic use cases in remote surgery and landing space shuttles.

After listening to this episode, check out Sixdof Space, as well as Mark N. Goldfarb's profile on social media, as well as the Israel meets New England smart manufacturing event and its organizers, the Israeli Trade Mission and Amhub New England:

Sixdof Space (@SixdofS): https://www.sixdof.space/
Mark N. Goldfarb: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mark-n-goldfarb-822b/
The New England Advanced Manufacturing Hub (AMHUB): https://mfg.works/amhub/amhub-new-england/
The Government of Israel’s Economic Mission to North America: https://embassies.gov.il/washington/AboutTheEmbassy/Pages/Economic-Mission.aspx#:
ISRAEL meets NEW ENGLAND: Advanced Manufacturing in Factories and Workplace: https://mfg.works/israel-meets-new-england/

Trond's takeaway: Photonics is an exciting field with a tremendous amount of innovation. Optical tracking is only one use cases, there are many, many others for this platform technology.

Thanks for listening. If you liked the show, subscribe at Augmentedpodcast.co or in your preferred podcast player, check out Augmented podcast on YouTube, and rate us with five stars. If you liked this episode, you might also like episode 14 Smart Manufacturing for All, episode 13 Get Manufacturing Superpowers, or episode 6 Human-Robot Interaction challenges.

Augmented--upskilling the workforce for industry 4.0 frontline operations.

Special Guest: Mark N. Goldfarb.

Episode 10: A Brief History of Manufacturing Software

Tulip — Wed, 17 Mar 2021 03:00:00 -0400

In episode 10 of the podcast (@AugmentedPod), the topic is: A Brief History of Manufacturing Software. Our guest is Rick Bullotta, Partner, TwinThread and co-founder, ThingWorx

In this conversation, we talk about how Rick has shaped manufacturing software history, and the lessons learned from being an early employee of Wonderware, the famous precursor to manufacturing automation, back in 1993, a company first sold to British engineering giant Siebe in 1998 which merged with BTR to form Inventsys, which, in turn merged with French multinational Schneider Electric, and later the CTO. Rick Bullotta was also the co-founder of Lighthammer Software which was later acquired by SAP, then in 2009 founding ThingWorx, the first complete, end-to-end technology platform designed for the industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) which was acquired by PTC in 2003. We also touch on his current advice to founders in the industrial space, his board role at Tulip, and what he sees lie ahead for the industry.

After listening to this episode, check out Thingworx as well as Rick Bullotta's social profile.

Thingworx: https://www.ptc.com/en/resources/iiot/product-brief/thingworx-platform
Rick Bullotta: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rickbullotta/

Trond's takeaway: Wonderware, Lighthammer, and ThingWorx are prominent parts of manufacturing software history, and there's a chance that the 4th company he now is involved with, Tulip, also will be. I do things with things, is Rick Bullotta's motto. The things he does, he does them well, and it is an internet of things, more than anything else. I, for one, am eagerly listening to what he predicts will happen next.

Special Guest: Rick Bullotta.

Episode 6: Human-Robot Interaction challenges

Tulip — Wed, 10 Mar 2021 03:00:00 -0500

Augmented reveals the stories behind the new era of industrial operations, where technology will restore the agility of frontline workers.

In episode 6 of the podcast, the topic is: Human-Robot Interaction challenges. Our guest is Kel Guerin, Chief Innovation Officer, Ready Robotics.

In this conversation, we talk about Trends in the robotic manufacturing community, Solutions, Robotic O/S, and The Future including a vision of a world where open robotic platforms dominate and no specialized skills required to operate robots.

After listening to this episode, check out Ready Robotics as well as Kel Guerin 's social profile.

Ready Robotics: https://www.ready-robotics.com/
- Ready.academy: https://ready.academy/
Forge OS/5: https://www.ready-robotics.com/forge-os5
Kel Guerin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/futureneer/

Trond's takeaway: The fact is that human-robot interaction has not developed at the pace of technology is a challenge. We now need to remedy this shortcoming. Change is underway. Is it happening fast enough? Are the interfaces simple enough to bring in scores of existing manufacturing workers or recruit new talent? If robots truly are to make manufacturing cool again, our tools to communicate with them--and our willingness to try--both need to improve. We have a ways to go, but the direction is good.

Augmented is a podcast for leaders in the manufacturing industry hosted by futurist Trond Arne Undheim, presented by Tulip.co, the manufacturing app platform, and associated with MFG.works, the open learning community launched at the World Economic Forum. Our intro and outro music is The Arrival by Evgeny Bardyuzha (@evgenybardyuzha), licensed by Artlist (@Artlistio). The show can be found at http://www.augmentedpodcast.co/

Thanks for listening. If you liked the show, subscribe at Augmentedpodcast.co or in your preferred podcast player, and rate us with five stars on Apple Podcasts. If you liked this episode, you might also like Episode #2 How to Train Augmented Workers, Episode #3 Reimagine Training, or Episode #4 A Renaissance of Manufacturing.

Each episode dives deep into a contemporary topic of concern across the industry and airs at 9 am US Eastern Time every Wednesday.

Augmented--the industry 4.0 podcast.

Special Guest: Kel Guerin.

Episode 7: Work of the Future

Tulip — Wed, 03 Mar 2021 21:00:00 -0500

Augmented reveals the stories behind the new era of industrial operations, where technology will restore the agility of frontline workers.

In episode 7 of the podcast (@AugmentedPod), the topic is: The Work of the Future. Our guest is Elisabeth Reynolds, Executive Director, MIT Task Force on the Work of the Future.

In this conversation, we talk about Why is the Work of the Future is particularly relevant now? Why did MIT take this initiative and what did the task force learn? Which specific "institutional innovations" are necessary? What will be the adoption curve for Industry 4.0 technologies? I ask her what the next decade will look like. Finally, we discuss how to stay up to date?

After listening to this episode, check out MIT Work of The Future as well as Elisabeth Reynolds's social profile.

MIT Work of The Future (@workofthefuture): https://workofthefuture.mit.edu/
Elisabeth Reynolds (@LReynoldsMITIPC): https://www.linkedin.com/in/elisabeth-reynolds-6714a8103/

Trond's takeaway: The work of the future has just begun. In fact, we are discovering how advanced automation doesn't necessarily mean that robots are taking over, or at least that as robots and software - or both together - move into the workforce, and roll onto the factory floor, there are so many jobs still for humans to do, which is reassuring. But the structural changes in the labor market will be profound, and workers, organizations and governments alike need to prepare now and be ready. Change is upon us.

Augmented--the industry 4.0 podcast.

Special Guest: Elisabeth Reynolds.