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Mixed Mode Manufacturing
27 Plays7 months ago
In this episode of Manufacturing Minds, host Ron Scott, along with Dan Burke from Microsoft and Michael AuBuchon, dive into the complexities of mixed-mode manufacturing. They discuss how integrating multiple production types within a facility can enhance efficiency, reduce costs, and support sustainability through ERP systems. Discover how companies can tackle these challenges to optimize performance.
Discover the transformative role of AI in manufacturing on our new landing page, The Power of AI in Manufacturing | Alithya, brought to you by Alithya, proud sponsor of the podcast. Explore expert insights and innovative strategies that are reshaping the industry’s future.
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Transcript
Introduction to Mixed-Mode Manufacturing
00:00:08
Speaker
Welcome to Manufacturing Minds powered by Alithia. I'm your host, Ron Scott, and today we're diving deeper into the fascinating topic that is reshaping how products are made. Mixed-mode manufacturing. Mixed-mode manufacturing may sound great, but it's more than a catchphrase. It's a new way of manufacturing that integrates a variety of methods into one seamless flow.
00:00:28
Speaker
So why is this important? Let's imagine a production line that could be agile enough to pivot from producing in volume to specific client needs and back again with speed and efficiency. That's the power of mix mode manufacturing.
Guest Introductions and Challenges of Implementation
00:00:41
Speaker
Today we're joined by two industry experts, Mike Abishan from Alithia and Dan Burke from Microsoft. Our experts will share insights into challenges companies face when implementing mixed mode manufacturing systems, such as integrating incompatible systems and overcoming the monotony of repetitive tasks. We'll also discuss how these enhancements can improve system performance, enhance resource efficiency and minimize environmental impacts during manufacturing.
00:01:09
Speaker
We'll also explore the future of manufacturing, what developments lie ahead, and how businesses can leverage data analytics to proactively enhance their processes and stay at the forefront of the industry. Whether you're an industry expert or a newcomer, this episode is sure to provide valuable insights to help you understand the evolving landscape of manufacturing. So grab your coffee, settle in. It's time to deep dive into the world of mixed mode manufacturing.
Microsoft's Perspective on Mixed-Mode Manufacturing
00:01:40
Speaker
All righty, so um share with us a bit about mixed mode manufacturing and the production facilities that would require this functionality. Yeah, sure. Sure. from From Microsoft's point of view, the way that we define mixed mode manufacturing is having the discrete manufacturing, process manufacturing lean altogether. So they're just different methodologies ah of ah producing things. So if you're discrete, and you think you have a lot of different products, maybe in a bill material and it ends up with one product that's discrete, traditional manufacturing.
00:02:09
Speaker
process manufacturing is the process of like you may have one input or multiple inputs into it and have multiple outputs. um So you might have co-products and byproducts. And then with lean manufacturing, you think of it as like a one piece every or a Kanban pole system. So if you think about like that high on board scheduling, things like that are for lean. And so with Microsoft, we actually have all three of those together. ah and Like an organization that would would use something like that, like discrete pre-standard stuff, process multiple co-embio products, right? So like food processing, oftentimes they have multiple outputs into that or oil or chemicals and
00:02:46
Speaker
and then lean all all over the place. But with mix mode, a lot of companies need that. So if you think of like an automobile, you come up with one automobile at the end, but there's lots of different components including the plastic parts. The plastic parts are often made by like an injection mold. So an injection mold, you have a mold and you may have multiple different family parts. You might have three or four different parts or multiple different parts of those come out. So there's co-products that we need to account for and they'll all go back into that car. So that's and ah that's a very good example of where you're meeting mixed mode. And you know the iron ironic thing is
00:03:18
Speaker
We initially bought the process manufacturing. We bought it from a company called Fullscope. And Fullscope was acquired by Aletheia, so you guys are Fullscope. So Microsoft bought that quite a few years ago. I'm not going to say how many years ago because I was a much younger man, but we have that. So Mike, your perspective on this?
00:03:37
Speaker
Well, so, yeah, so we have ah many clients that are actually mixed mode manufacturers and, you know, they all have that same need and that is to, per your description, it might produce a discrete part, but they do require an organization that can help them also deploy um process manufacturing to support the components that that require formulation.
00:04:05
Speaker
formulation that will have co-pop products and buy products, as you mentioned. um you know even Even if it's like some something like a sump pump manufacturer, companies like that ah will require that products are either extruded or molded as part of their process. But at the end of that production line, that product is going to be a discrete entity that is going to get packaged and shipped to your customers.
00:04:35
Speaker
um You know, if I look at the industries where we see a lot of the mixed mode manufacturing, you know, I see companies that might be a medical device. We have many building material clients that are windows and doors, adhesives, you name it. um We see it quite a bit in plastic and aluminum extrusion, where you're actually creating parts at theset at at the end of those production cycles.
00:05:04
Speaker
And even now with packaging requirements, we see it quite extensively in fruit and beverage and nuclear industries.
Historical Challenges of Integration
00:05:14
Speaker
Sounds like a very common manufacturing situation. It's not just discrete. It's not just processed. It's not just lean. you have to You have to combine them. And I guess there's challenges there. What are some of the biggest challenges companies face when implementing mixed mode manufacturing? Yeah, so so that's a good question, Ron, right? So historically, and I'm going to look at this historically,
00:05:35
Speaker
um Systems were really good at discrete, they were really good at process, or they were really good at lean, and the three shall never meet. And so we'd see like, you know, a company that need, they're they're mostly a discrete manufacturer, but they need some lean or some some process manufacturing in there.
00:05:51
Speaker
So what they'll do is they'll create a bill of material, and they'll create a negative quantity on that bill to actually get a co-product out of there, which is a workaround, and the systems aren't designed to work there. And they won't do any lean, so they do lean outside the system, then they won't have the cost in there. So that's typically the major reason I said they're not they're not a modern platform. They can't do that. You run into that quite a bit, Mike?
00:06:11
Speaker
We do. We actually, yeah, but our, our, you know, our consultants are cross trained. So managing the synchronization from the different types of production, be it process or discrete is, is very common for our functional consultants. And we really do a good job of helping our clients manage through that process. You know, one of the key areas can, once you start to define and and work with the systems,
00:06:39
Speaker
You know, complexities come out. One of the complexities we see is, you know, around scheduling, because you've got two separate types of systems, you know, feeding for an end product that is discrete. And managing those two different systems to reduce and eliminate idle time from one type of solution to the other ah can be a bit to manage. You don't want people standing around,
00:07:09
Speaker
waiting for their you know product to show up to the production line. So ah you know the D365 platform does an awesome job of allowing ah your your people to take full advantage of mixed mode manufacturing.
00:07:25
Speaker
I guess any manufacturing system, there are challenges with ah with integration, but how do you integrate mixed mode manufacturing with existing existing overall processes? or Are there any unique challenges there? Well, well first of all, it's like you know having like a mixed mode system at the very beginning and implementing that just alleviates all that problem.
00:07:42
Speaker
um You don't have to worry about that, right? So worth with other historical systems that you like you're changing over with lines of business systems like that, yeah first of all yeah you need to actually optimize their business process so they can handle it. Do we have to build integrations and other things? How are we going to get to costing?
00:07:58
Speaker
Are we going to teach people that their traditional bill of materials with negative quantities is not the way to go? Teach them how to actually use ah ah you know you know um a process bill or recipe excuse me ah for that. so so you know That's really the kind of the way to start. but We rely on our partners to to actually do that change management and actually ah do the work of implementing that software. And that includes Aletheia. Yeah, I mean, quite honestly, we've seen more reduction in the area of trying to integrate mixed mode into existing systems. ah You know, several years back, with more on premise type solutions, you know, companies tried to to
00:08:44
Speaker
process through that or implement mixed mode in those environments. um But honestly, the last couple of years with cloud computing platforms you know and the security they bring, we see more organizations just taking a leap and moving forward. um If you do try to deploy into an existing environment, it's costly.
00:09:11
Speaker
yeah Like you said, Dan, you have to do all your process mapping and hopefully your target is is appropriate. um you know It requires middleware solutions. Middleware solutions are costly to implement because you have to integrate all your web apps and everything else and then synchronize the data into the middleware. And then you've got to add a whole reporting tool to that as well to take advantage of all the data you're going to collect So it's gonna require data warehousing systems. With a platform like B365, Microsoft does all the heavy lifting for you and gives you the avenues to deploy. And that's where our consultancy excels in mixed mode manufacturing.
Scaling with Cloud Platforms
00:09:59
Speaker
yeah Gotcha. So mixed mode and cloud just makes the integration a lot easier. Gotcha. So how does how does it allow for scaling, scaling production, either up or down? Oh, so so first of all, this um I'll take that into kind of two different avenues here, Ron. So if we look at scaling, we're cloud, we have Azure, Azure's Microsoft Cloud, we're one of three hyperscale cloud providers in the world. So it's us, Google and and Amazon, no web services.
00:10:25
Speaker
ah For business apps, we're the only one that has actually business apps on those. So no matter how big you grow, if you start with a small company and scale up, or if you have seasonality scale, we can scale with that. We have the cloud ah with that. but But also, it's like there's the there's there's the second avenue is What about the techniques you use? it's like What if you start out small and then actually have all your process manufacturing outsourced and then you actually grow and start bringing that in? So you can actually scale with that, but you you have to have a product that allows us to do that. Or if you have seasonality to go back and forth with that. So so sometimes it might be a different process or a different line of screen, you might have a different bill material or routing on that. so
00:11:03
Speaker
so We're ready to scale with Dynamics. Mike, what do you do with your your customers for scaling? but you know we we We're aligned. I agree wholeheartedly. you know um Our mixed mode clients are able to respond because they're their systems, you know we're collecting data across their entire production facility. We're tracking their inventories and D365 does you know give um companies that have deployed our mixed mode solutions or deployed D365 using mixed mode. um you know I think about our clients like that. ah Several of them had huge years during COVID, right? And then all of a sudden the demand dropped. And I think of clients of ours that actually were able to
00:11:56
Speaker
react and respond because of D365 being implemented that platform. so you know They had some excess inventories in areas, but they were able to scale back production and they were able to adjust those inventories rapidly so it it didn't hit their bottom line extremely negatively.
00:12:18
Speaker
Yeah, I remember there was there were power apps that were written around the testing and the the the PPEs, and yeah, very, very interesting. um As far as ah sustainability is concerned, has has is there anything around mixed mode manufacturing systems, their capabilities that contribute to sustainability goals?
Sustainability in Manufacturing
00:12:38
Speaker
so So I'm going to actually take a holistic viewpoint, right? And I think you might want to narrow it, Mike, you might. But to say I'm going to look at We introduced something called Microsoft Cloud for Sustainability, which gives us a whole, whole, holistic approach, right? So, and we broke it down into four different categories. So the first one is, you know, sustainable sourcing, sustainable. The second one is sustainable manufacturing, sustainable fulfillment, and ESG reporting, which means environmental, environmental social, and and governance reporting, right? And that's all on the composable platform. So it works with all kinds of different things.
00:13:12
Speaker
But let's kind of like so look at one of each one of these pillars themselves. So for sourcing, you want supplier ratings. Make sure that the you know the suppliers are are the the best suppliers. Make sure you're getting good material. Make sure that they're going to be efficient. Make sure they're going to actually follow through what they do, right? Good quality, good cost, things like that. You want to be able to track the certifications that they have. So make sure you track those certifications, renewals, and so on and so forth, and then ah RFP considerations that you're going to send out to make sure that they ah they have that supplier relationship management.
00:13:42
Speaker
The second pillar on this is the manufacturing, of sustainable sustainable manufacturing. So first of all, it's ah IOT integration. We want Internet of Things integration into the machines or different tools or transportation components. You know, how much carbon we put on, how much electricity we're using, how much water we're using, how much is the effluent from that, on and on and on. So some people will track that and we'll talk about a little little more of that in a second.
00:14:06
Speaker
And the next thing is the circular economy. Circular economy means it's like, okay, let's reuse and bring things back into our whole supply chain that actually go in the supply chain. Process manufacturing, I mentioned earlier about like the comb byproducts or like the sprue and like all the re-grind that you get from plastic. Let's bring that back into the manufacturing process. If we're going to break something down, let's get those components out of that and reuse those different components. So that's a circular economy going back and forth.
00:14:33
Speaker
And then supply chain traceability. Where is this going? I make sure it's like, it's going to the right place. I have full trace track capability, it's full provenance um across ah genealogy across those items. So that's in the manufacturing, that's mixed mode across the board. Then fulfillment, you know, you need the calculations for the transportation, how many carbon units are we gonna use for that. And then decisions for the route, it's like let's use some AI, it's like okay, what's the optimized route with that, with sustainability.
00:15:03
Speaker
Then the last thing is the ESG, right? Which is the first of all, there's a CSRD and that's a corporate sustainability reporting directive ah that you have to have the score cards, the scope three emissions. And we we create templates for that. So yeah we would take a holistic approach that sustainability. My advantage is a bit more myopic. you know You guys have to have the vision of the platform, which does support what we require very well.
00:15:34
Speaker
But you know from from our perspective, you know we see our clients that have byproducts that are created during production that aren't necessarily sellable. And you have to expose of them. So having a solution that has the ability to track this material and quantify it and ins ensure with the EPA that you're disposing ah properly,
00:16:01
Speaker
um that's That's important to our clients and it's becoming more and more important you know as as manufacturing environments evolve through them. We do our best to help you know our clients provide a sustainable solution and to achieve their goals.
00:16:25
Speaker
So you just hit on two of those points, the circular economy and the supply chain traceability, absolutely, right? Yeah. And and he's also kind of reinforcing the fact that tracking byproducts through a a process system allows you to cost your products better, allows you to to track the disposal or any kind of expenses of a co-product or a byproduct so you really know what your what your costs are.
00:16:47
Speaker
And I guess the brass tacks are we want to sell more and we want our
Efficiency and Cost Reduction through AI
00:16:51
Speaker
costs to go down. So what kind of efficiency gains can be realized through mixed mode manufacturing and and how does that impact overall production costing? Yeah, so that's the million dollar question is, right? Like, how is it going to reduce my costs? How is it going to improve my business? Or why should I do this? And you know, what it's like,
00:17:09
Speaker
Efficient is giving me being gained across the board, right manufacturing shop floor. So I've had customers have actually optimized their throughput by 50% just by using that, ah just by using mixed mode and making sure that they have the right techniques. So that's without increasing any shop floor personnel, any back office personnel, nothing. So that's just money right at the bottom line. right so um so So there's efficiency, but first thing, you need to manage the data.
00:17:37
Speaker
Make sure you understand what it is. um You have to optimize that. You have to like optimize the scheduling, as you kind of alluded to earlier, Mike. right um You need the best modern production flow methods that you can have right to make sure that the system's capable of managing that and getting the proper cost so you can do the analysis to see actually where it is.
00:17:55
Speaker
which is we have something called process mining. That's an AI that goes and looks at the process, looks at the efficiencies, looks at the bottlenecks and things like that for warehousing, picks and different things. You have visibility in all the inventory, so there's no stockouts. Oh, guys are standing around not doing any of them. People are standing around not doing anything, not manufacturing anything, or we can't make this or, you know,
00:18:19
Speaker
um we we We don't have the raw material to make it. you know Things like OCR, um optical recognition for payables, so you don't have to go through the tedious components into that. All of those increase the efficiencies and there's a payback from that. Mike, your team's the one who actually delivers this, so do you have any thoughts? I see many of our clients where you know they they have this need to track waste, whether it's you know specific products can be recycled. I've seen deployments of ah ah camera technology, doing analysis, if you will, through AI on cable links that were being disposed of. And and and being able to track those cable links and go to the the recycling vendor and let them know the quantity of plastic versus ah copper in those cables.
00:19:16
Speaker
allowed them to have better metrics from from a waste perspective. So we see this and and in and we see these increases in a reduction in costs rather you know through through better tracking.
00:19:42
Speaker
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00:20:09
Speaker
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00:20:15
Speaker
Okay, let's ah let's let's let's shift gears. let's Let's move into the world of quality. I'm assuming quality is, it doesn't matter if you're discrete process lean or any combination of the three, quality is key, but so what are some of the best practices for maintaining quality in mixed mode specifically? Oh boy. um Good question, right? So it's like, I want to look at quality, quality control is quality assurance and quality control, right?
00:20:39
Speaker
And first of all, you have to establish the best practices and have metrics set up. Whether it be for a co-product, a byproduct, a discrete product, or a lean product, it all has to be in there. Then you need to continuously measure the quality empirically. So you need to have some tests on that, some specifications like tests and those components, right? Nonconformance, what are you going to do for best practices? What are you going to do for a corrective action plan?
00:21:07
Speaker
Um, you need feedback loops, you know, the ironic thing is it's like, you know, dynamics has all this But we bought the ip from another company a few years ago and who would that be full scope slash alethea, right? So kind of kind of You guys live it right? But there's also things like supplier relationship management diversify the suppliers, right? You want that traceability we talked about right and then like you mentioned more like that vision control It's like, you know that cognitive services for QC. So you might be just like, you know, cognitive services is an Azure service that is a vision service, right? You train the model and it'll say, you know, how much copper versus how much plastic is in this? Is this set up the right way? Am I missing a part on that? So you can actually have it do your QC and kick out nonconformance on that. So you can actually go and check to make sure you're doing it right. And unlike, you know, and the day after hunting season, everybody's kind of black, went back and they got three hours of sleep because it's like they're up driving back off, they like,
00:22:01
Speaker
and like they they miss a quality test or a visual inspection, these things don't miss, right? So then you can actually have that human behind that. So that's the way that Microsoft looks to that quality control and quality assurance. We at Alithia really think quality is important, you know, as you know, the organization that actually produced a lot of like in D365 a day and we're providing counsel for future roadmap with Microsoft as well from a quality perspective. so you know I think it's really neat that you can insert quality control you know throughout a process, especially in mix mode. And there's really no more need for those third-party QMS solutions. you know you You do have the ability to just insert a quality step wherever you need it in any particular routing, whether it's a process item or a discrete item.
00:22:58
Speaker
So you can demand that the quality metrics are being captured, you can and deploy as part of that process, quality team members to go check on what they need to. um you know You know, I think about, you know, let's use that sump pump example again, you know, if you if you're collecting quality right at that injection molding machine for the housing,
00:23:24
Speaker
um If there's something out of kilter within that formulation, you want to know about it right away and stop production at that machine until that's fixed. And you're only going to get that through collecting quality metrics you require. So we we see this as a great way to you know test for formulation of those plastics, et cetera.
00:23:49
Speaker
So ah you know it with those steps, those appropriate steps covered in the manufacturing process, our clients are are seeing great gains in and less downtime overall. it's It seems like like that process would have some extra challenges. So I'm i'm going through plastics and I'm molding the housing, but but then I'm ah moving eventually into some sort of discrete assembly. And maybe there's some lean concepts and in the assembly as well. And I have all these different things going on. How do ah how do I ensure quality, consistent quality across entire all the different production modes?
00:24:29
Speaker
Yeah. And again, it's like, you know, like if you have, you know, a multimodal system that just works together, it doesn't matter what it is. You still be able to do the empirical test, whether it's lean discrete or process, you know, you might have different ones, you might have different measurements. That's fine at different steps, but as long as it's built in the problem solved. Yeah. And we see, you know, being able to, you know, insert these quality steps throughout whatever portion of the manufacturing cycle is very key.
00:24:58
Speaker
you know Many of our clients ah are even tracking their nonconformances and actually you know looking at providing corrective action.
00:25:09
Speaker
and you know, coming to meetings, pre you know, pre-meetings before me manufacturing if it's a lean environment and and discussing with the team how things are going to be solved for. Excellent. Let's ah let's let's move to something that I'm sure everybody's talking about today.
Impact of Generative AI on Manufacturing
00:25:29
Speaker
ah You see Elon Musk with his robots walking around. You see everybody with with AI talking about AGI, ASI,
00:25:37
Speaker
There's all kinds of of of crazy things going on in the world as far as technology is concerned. What kind of trends do you see shaping mixed mode manufacturing specifically? You know, i'm I'm going to focus on something you'd mentioned, right? Because this is what everybody's talking about. And what's this going to do, right? And I get to nerd out is generative AI. That's changing in everything. I mean, there's two parts of it that enable the big change. So first of all, it's like the way we interact with the software is different.
00:26:05
Speaker
you know It was like like the last big change, the way we interact was a GUI interface, right that like a Windows interface before it was just you know all command line stuff. Now you can actually talk to it, click on it, and have a have a conversational discussion with it instead of having to know what you're doing. So that's the first big thing. And then it's also a very powerful reasoning engine. right So it helps the users get information better, quicker, higher levels of automated systems. right So it's like those two factors are the big thing. What does that do for us? right Basically, it's going to transform the business. These aren't polar tricks, and they're just not ways for your your children to cheat on history papers, right which is you know the first easy ways to start using this. But they're they're very, very different. right like So this is ah these these are transformative products. If you look at yeah ERP and I'm in second, this may be blasphemy, but
00:26:56
Speaker
you know We all do sales orders. We all do purchase orders. We do some things better than this for all the same. We're blowing everything out of the water. We're changing the way that that people do business. And it's going to transform people to do business because it's going to increase productivity and well-being. You don't want to do those mundane tasks anymore. Let's make those like really easy. Push that up to you know AI.
00:27:18
Speaker
It's gonna reshape the business process. We were just, you know, that's what we're here for, like the mixed mode manufacturing. What's the optimal way to do that? We got process money out of this. Tell me what I can do better and how I can make this more efficient. Instead of sitting there with a stopwatch for like three minutes and then the guy working or the person working as fast as they can. And then like, you know, and actually getting, you know, incorrect information, right? The old industrial engineering with the stopwatch thing.
00:27:41
Speaker
Also, we're going to reinvent the customer experience. It's like, okay, we all love chat bots and like you know automated telephony systems right from years ago. Get me to an operator. right Now we're at parity with these chat bots and you don't have to be a genius to do this. right This is like, have it go to your your model. And then we're bending the curve on innovation.
00:28:02
Speaker
I have all the information in the world, if you will, to help me synthesize this, to help me like come up with the solution that I have. If I have an idea, help me solve this with all this same and innovation, right? And so so those are just going to change the way we fundamentally do work. And it's changed the way that I finally do work already on today. And my customers are doing this, right? But how are we going to get there and how are we going to get involved? First of all, we're going to start by cheating by writing emails, right? Just like have a chat bot writing emails so I don't have to, because I don't like, you know,
00:28:30
Speaker
um Make sure it's grammatically correct and things like that and covers all those different things. And then write a poem for my wife for things for Valentine's Day. So um that didn't work out so well. We got caught on that, right? so But you know basically it's going to empower users so they can find data, you know inquire insights, and generate reports for the first thing, right? And then it's going to go and and first of all, it's like, how do I do something? What is it? How can I write? And then the next thing is to find data, give me some insights, and generate those reports.
00:28:59
Speaker
The third thing is going to do is going to say, make the best decisions. I have the data. Look for outliers. Where is this an anomaly? Where is this an aberration that I need to work on this? What's going to impact my business? We're all seeing that with our FP&A. How is this going to impact my business if this happens? What if analysis on that?
00:29:18
Speaker
um It's like to learn patterns on how people work and then optimize for the best actions to take. And the final step we're going to see in this is, you know, ah autonomous action. So it's automatically going to do something. It's going to make it more efficient, right? um Automate the the whole scenario for the users, right? So so we so we're going to see AI change the way that we do business. It's like, you know, this is the the onslaught of this came really fast.
00:29:45
Speaker
But where it came up, what we're going to see is some like generational change in the way that people do work across the board. I've been working in this industry for ah some time now and to see the evolution, to see the investment Microsoft's making and co-pilot and AI and all these take technologies.
00:30:07
Speaker
um you know As far as the technologies, the You know, we see that mixed mode manufacturing is evolving rapidly, and they were the mixed mode manufacturers require and adopt to the technologies very quickly.
00:30:26
Speaker
um But I would say that from our clients, the ones that are consistently achieving their business goals and driving year over year successfully are investing in this digital transformation that you talk about, Dan, and taking advantage of that. But I think also what is really key is these companies are also investing in their employees.
00:30:56
Speaker
So their workforce, they are working closely with them to educate and re-skill them. Let's drill down a little bit more on on data. So we have we have IoT. wherere we're um we're We're connecting to our customer. we We're connecting to environmental information within and outside of the production facility. wherere We're connecting to to market data. We have all of this data. you know what can we What specifically can we do with all of this to optimize the manufacturing process?
00:31:28
Speaker
okay so so I'm going to take a little kind of a different spin on this and it's like then kind of kind of bring it back around to to the the data analytics and the output we can get from this. We have a new pre-release solution called Project Sophia, and it's reporting what is unique. It's not Power BI, it's more than that. right so It actually takes the dataset and and put provides industry contextual relevant assistance and insights into this.
00:31:58
Speaker
So you can take a raw data site. It's going to look at it from somebody's role with your sales manager, a salesperson, a manufacturing production scheduler, a production manager, whatever that that that is. So it actually gives contextual roles into it. So you just point it at the data, and it'll create a dashboard for you. It'll create a dashboard as a cycle of information, because a lot of people can't can't create those reports. But is using these LLMs, large language models, using contextual data,
00:32:28
Speaker
Just type in from a natural language query right or just type in what you want it to do with this data site, and it's going to give you that output. With that viewpoint of who you are in finance or manufacturing or purchasing or sales or whatever it might be. right And so it'll give you that output. It'll tell you what the outliers are. It'll tell you some information that you need to know. It'll give you some ah analytics. And then you can actually drill down further into that. OK, this is good information. I need to know why is Mike the very top sales guy and what behaviors does he do and what accounts is it? And so let's drill down that. And further is how we can we replicate that. And so it gives you that kind of information. So first of all, it's going to transform the whole user experience. It's fully immersive. It's just easy to use. You don't have to be trained. It's like you just have to
00:33:11
Speaker
type something. And then you can actually have a different approach and say, okay, I'm like, I need to go to somebody to actually make this report. And I'm going to give it to some of this business and analyst, and he's going to give it to somebody in IT and he's going to write it to data at a warehouse. Well, you don't need to do that anymore, we can actually just get this information from that, right? So that's coming out, right? So it also allows you to solve big problems with the use of AI.
00:33:37
Speaker
like start digging into the data for me, right? And then I mentioned it's like those was different roles, that's domain intelligence. So it's like, from that perspective, we know that that a sales manager is going to need this, a production manager is going to need that, a process manufacturing or a chemist is going to need something like that for like a mixed mode type of thing, right? But it also uses public and private data, which is secure. And everybody asks about that. It's like, here's data, we don't use that any of that to train, right?
00:34:03
Speaker
And it's cross-functional across the whole organization. So what we're seeing with data is the most important thing. We've had a jump start on every one of the competitors and the business applications for years now. And we've just put the accelerator down and and then and we're just going to blow everybody away. But I know that you guys have a very good business analytics to actually get data output out. yeah We do. And our practitioners do a great job on that.
00:34:30
Speaker
you know um Where we see you know our clients taking advantage of this is in areas like predictive maintenance. you know I saw that cheese manufacturer where they were making five pound bricks of cheese that float down ah plumm of a of brine that aged the cheese before it's packaged, but they were using IoT to collect data on vibrations so they knew when motors would go out, which I thought was brilliant. We see it also like in process optimization through, you know, having data analytics allows our customers to optimize, especially in mixed mode because you've got different ways of manufacturing. And for years, you know, companies did more visual and collected less, but now with
00:35:25
Speaker
IoT and other methods, we can track that better for them. Supply chain management, always. I mean, we've been optimizing inventory in ERP for years and years and years. And we now have, you know through AI, better ways to do that.
00:35:42
Speaker
But what I'm most excited about is our client base that is now able to react because of our ability to support the mixed mode environment to understand what their customer requirements are, the tweaks to products specifically for individual clients. To me, that's a real neat concept. And without systems like this, we couldn't achieve that before, not as effectively or quickly.
Staying Ahead with Modern Platforms
00:36:11
Speaker
Okay, so um so with all of the advancements that that we're seeing today, all the options that we're seeing today, it it can be pretty scary. let's Let's assume that I'm running a manufacturing facility and um you know I see all of the co-pilot and one owner might say, i'm I'm going to take a wait and see. I want everyone else to see what's going on.
00:36:30
Speaker
ah somebody else might say, hey, I need to i need to jump in today headfirst all in because that's where I need to be. And someone might be in the middle. and let me do a yeah Let me do a test. let me Let me just try it out. Let me do ah a pilot and and and see how that goes. So what's the best way for a company to to just to stay ahead of the curve with all of the advancements in in technology, but specifically mixed mode manufacturing?
00:36:57
Speaker
so So I'm going to give you the the easy button and then then kind of drill into what you're saying. right So its like first of all, get down on the modern platform. You've got to get on the modern platform, manage the data, manage AI, be able to like have everything work together, right that interconnectivity.
00:37:16
Speaker
So, but the the bottom line is, like you know, you got to start someplace. It's like, a you know, often, often, like, is the best to start like in a finance, finance platform for everything, everything fits in there, they can start going in supply chain. Not everybody can do that. Some people start in supply chain and go out. Other people can't because they're too embedded with these. So it's like, start out with like, something called and like an IOM, intelligent order management, coordinate all of the different logistics across and the order management. You might want to just make up, you know,
00:37:43
Speaker
um Power BI reporting, start getting your data and in and in in line. A line of business apps like a service management or a customer service or something like that. Or it's like you know start building Power Apps. We didn't really talk much about Power Apps. Power Apps for me was a godsend when it came out. Because it's like, OK, if I can't do this, what are my customers are going to do? Do I have an ISV? Are we going to have to do like a six-month or a one-year customization that's going to cost hundreds of thousands of dollars? Now I can actually just plug the hole with a Power App and actually make that solution. And you kind of mentioned that earlier, Ron, like in the discussion. You know you make the Power Apps during COVID with the quality stuff.
00:38:21
Speaker
But you can actually start there and this are kind of building across but as long as you're on the modern platform that works with some of these. um um um Aging systems right some of these legacy systems that's a place to start but yet you need to get on a modern platform to actually make it you know they actually get the most benefit out of this.
00:38:40
Speaker
And Alithia, you know, we we believe in this. I'll say a quote crawl walk run kind of initiative. We have an express methodology that allows our clients to engage as they go to a new platform. It can be a bit overwhelming. And we'll define a plan with you, with organizations to actually deploy and take advantage of all that Microsoft is is bringing out. We see our most successful clients are digging in and you know we have these long-term relationships with our clients and support them as they need to adjust ongoing ah with their current systems that are deployed in Cloud.
00:39:32
Speaker
cloud environments. But you know I had mentioned digital transformation. I think our most successful clients are spending money there. um But you know I also see our clients, and you know I love the Lean Institute for what they brought to ah the psychology, if you will, of manufactured modern-day manufacturing, and fostering an environment or a culture, if you will,
00:40:01
Speaker
of innovation, of having your employees bringing ways to tweak and provide input. I think that's brilliant. um I think companies really need to focus on investing in workforce development, you know, upskilling, reskilling. One of the things I've seen is organizational change management over the recent years really on the uptick.
00:40:27
Speaker
And one of the key things that we provide is adopted. We do an analytics after no live on how the ah various folks in our clients' production facilities are adapting to the system or the back office, how they're utilizing the system, and are they doing that effectively. so um very, very cohesive, you know, ah analysis once the systems are in place and
Conclusion and Reflections
00:41:00
Speaker
are operable. Excellent. Well, it looks like we took up way too much of your time. We went over. So, I think we'll put a bow on it for today. So, that's it for manufacturing mines powered by Ellithia for today. ah Thank you all for joining us on this exciting exploration of mixed mode manufacturing and the profound changes this paradigm shift brings to manufacturing facilities across the globe.
00:41:21
Speaker
Some of the topics that we covered today include the challenges of enriching those discrete motions with mixed mode systems and how such advancements can affect the future of manufacturing. We also addressed the management of the various production processes within systems integrations where quality assurance and control remain imperative as well as projected future developments of the industry.
00:41:43
Speaker
We have endless appreciation for our two esteemed expert guests who openly shared their wisdom and experience with us by describing the real world implications and advantages of mixed mode manufacturing. If you have any questions or would like to go in more in depth on something that was said today, please don't hesitate to contact us. We always want to hear from our listeners. We appreciate you for listening.
00:42:05
Speaker
It's quite gratifying that you believe in us. We're very happy to sit side by side with you as we and investigate the dynamic nature of manufacturing. If you'd like to have a complete transcript of this episode, please visit our website. Additionally, don't forget to subscribe to our podcast series on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube Music.