Modernizing Manufacturing with AI, AMRs & Digital Transformation with Carrie Brown & Krista Beyhaut of Wesco

Welcome And The Big Move

SPEAKER_02 0:00

Welcome to Automation Ladies, the only podcast we know of where girls talk about industrial automation. Hello, and welcome to another episode of Automation Ladies. It's just me, Nikki, today. I'm doing the very last episode that I'm recording from my old house here in Houston. I'm not moving very far. I'm moving from Houston to a suburb called Spring, just about 20 minutes north of where I live now, in order for me to be closer to the kids and uh to the kids' school and just get a little bit more time back in my day. And I will no longer be recording in my kitchen where I am now. The obviously the podcast is is audio, so most people don't see, and I haven't done a lot of lives this year where I'm in this spot. But due to my personal reasons and stuff, last year I can no longer work in my office where I used to record. So I've cornered, I've taken a corner out of my kitchen uh for this for the last few months. And I'll be pretty excited to try to set up a little bit more of a professional office slash studio in my new house. But as I have uh internet getting set up at my old house, I have this episode that I've been waiting. Actually, I invited uh Carrie from West Coast to come on the show some some several months ago. I don't even remember at this point. I ran into her on LinkedIn, um, was really interested to hear what she does. And it's kind of my ammo, right? I run into people that I think are interesting. I asked them to be on the show. And then I have probably had to reschedule this once or twice, which I felt terrible about. And so when I found out that I was gonna have all these utilities set up today, I decided to, I was like, no, no, I'm not gonna do that. I'm not gonna do that to Carrie again. Uh so here we are, and I'm really excited to be able to have this conversation. Uh, not just because I finally got Carrie on, but uh, she's with West Co and she actually invited her director of automation, Krista, to come on as well. And this is now, I don't know, maybe the second or third time that something like this has happened, and I love that when somebody says, Yes, I would love to come on, but can I invite my coworker or my friend? Um, or in an upcoming episode, actually, uh the answer was can I invite my mentor? And I was like, heck yes. So I not only get to have a conversation I've been waiting for for a while, but also get to meet a new friend. So now y'all get to meet them as well. Carrie Brown, welcome to Automation Ladies. How are you?

SPEAKER_01 2:17

Thank you, Nikki. Um, very excited to be here. Um, I think I told you before the show, I have listened to you or to all three of you for a couple of years now. And so it's really exciting to be a part of it.

Meet Carrie And Krista From Wesco

SPEAKER_02 2:29

Yeah, thank you so much. Um, I know some people when I invite them, they're like, oh, but and if I remember correctly, you did something similar to this. You're like, oh, but I don't remember this. And I'm like, I do not care. I wouldn't have invited you if I didn't think that there was something interesting enough about you that I wanted to talk to. Uh, and really, like, we don't want to be, we're not the show that talks to people because of a specific accomplishment or like a specific role that they've reached. You know, we're not the leadership podcast specifically. Um, we are the I want to know everything about the industry and the different roles and the cool types of people in it kind of podcast. So uh even that much more exciting that Krista was able to join us and get a couple different like perspectives on what you guys do and how you work together. So, Krista, thank you so much for joining us and welcome to Automation Ladies. Thank you so much for having me. Absolutely. And uh, as you said before the show, you only got a chance to listen after you were invited, which is like just so cool. Um, every time we talk to someone, we maybe gain a listener or two. Uh, I hope that you would maybe continue to listen to the show now that you've gotten a taste of it. But I I don't know about you, but I don't like to listen to my own episodes. So I'll leave that up to you ladies, whether you want to listen to yourselves. Uh but I would love to start with, I guess, yeah, our typical starting question, and then we'll just kind of take it one and then the other. Uh, but Carrie, Carrie, if you could start, give us an introduction to yourself and how the heck did you get into being a sales manager in distribution for industrial automation?

SPEAKER_01 4:02

Sure, sure. So I I started um well, I got my degree in mechanical engineering at the University of South Carolina, not necessarily having any particular end goal in mind. Just I had a very driving mother and father. My mom was a calculus teacher, a high school calculus teacher.

SPEAKER_03 4:20

Oh.

SPEAKER_01 4:21

And so they said I could get any kind of engineering degree I wanted. That was the only goal. So I went to college and I co-opted Bell South, the phone company then. And when I got out of college, I went into uh I worked for Bechtel. I was a field construction engineer, hypomechanical engineer at the Savannah Riverside. I did that for a couple of years. It was super interesting work, but at the time I had family reasons I really needed to get closer to home. So I went back to Bell South when they were launching. This was a long time ago and tells my age, but it was when DSL was really taking off. And so I went back as an outside plan engineer deploying DSL. I did that for many years and moved into what was the TV product for ATT when ATT acquired Bell South and got into data analytics. Um, kind of did a couple different things within ATT. And then I flashed forward to about seven years ago. I wanted to leave ATT. It was a really big company. It was a great place to work, but I just kind of wanted to change a career. And I applied at Wesco for an operations position. And the sales manager reached out to me and said, We're trying to get degreed engineers into our sales positions. Would you consider being a salesperson? And I I said, Absolutely not. And he said, just come, just come talk to me. And he if he was just a really good salesperson. So seven years later, I got I'm in his what it was his job, and um, I absolutely love industrial automation. I got here kind of in a roundabout way, like you said. I didn't really know what a PLC was before I got here, um, but I absolutely love it now. It's a it's a great industry. You get to see a lot of a lot of things uh being made that that's just really, really uh special to me. Um and you know, like you mentioned, I thought it would be great for Krista to join me because Wesco is a a great company um and we have some strong, strong leadership um with that are women, and the point of the you know, part of the point of the podcast is women in automation. And I thought it'd be really great to highlight that we you know she has a pretty cool job.

Finding Your People In Automation

SPEAKER_02 6:36

Absolutely. Yeah, no, A, I think it really helps us kind of see some representation, um, see people in jobs. And the other thing is just, yeah, there's not that many of us, right? And so kind of we gotta pick us, pick us out of these little pockets and connect with each other. I was just talking to, oh, I had I actually had dinner with a LinkedIn connection from Canada on Monday night. And he was telling me his wife is like they're both business owners. His wife is incredibly smart. She does like marketing research with like reading the brain waves and all kinds of stuff like that. Like, really cool. And I was kind of saying how I didn't really feel like I fit in with girls when I was growing up. Like I I felt like I was more interested in things and how they work than like being a certain way or talking to other girls about other girls. And so I took AP physics in high school and like it was a bunch of guys, and we just played cards during lunch, and like it was simple. And I so I never really missed the the girl camaraderie that like I didn't get in my job, but it wasn't until I met Allie and Courtney, and we're both equally interested in more things like that we have in common, things that we like to see, things that we like to do, then like the whole girl talk stuff. Um but some people really like so. I had been to a women in engineering conference before, I didn't really feel like that was anything for me. Um, and not to say that these like there's a lot of different uh groups and societies and things that you can join, and they just may not be everybody's cup of tea. Um and I thought part of why we wanted to do the show, I was like, when I met Ali and Courtney, I was like, how I didn't know that this would be so cool to have girlfriends that do this stuff. And I think sometimes it's just also about like having a common interest that's outside of just being girls, um, you know, being shoved into a room and like, oh, there's the women's breakfast. And it's like, I I don't know, I may be in with the HR lady, or like I don't know that we have that much in common aside from our gender. Uh, but just meeting like the more women in the industry I can bring on the show, and then the more women that listen and and are like, dude, she's totally my cup of tea. Like, I want to know her, or I want to do what she does, or I want to like that's part of this. It's it's the representation, and also like there may be five people that listen to this podcast that just all of a sudden want to be Krista's best friend, or or your, you know, yours, Carrie. Uh so that that kind of stuff is like what this is all about, absolutely. So, Krista, with that, uh, would you like to introduce yourself to our audience, please? Sure. So and tell us how you got to be where you are.

SPEAKER_00 9:14

Sure. So, Krista Bayot, um, I'm in Charlotte, North Carolina, senior director of automation for West Co. Um, but thinking about back about you know, automation, how did I get here? I think growing up, um, I remember growing up and watching those how it how it's made segments on reading rainbow. I don't know if that dates.

SPEAKER_02 9:35

That was probably the highest common denominator of anything that's been brought up on the show that inspired people to join this industry.

SPEAKER_00 9:43

So, this was the reading rainbow segment. I remember they were making crayons, and then I think they did one on recycling. I just remember having to watch them in class, and I think I thought I was totally fascinated by it, how things are made. I loved understanding how things came together and processes and how they work behind the scenes. Um, at the same time, math was always like naturally came to me. Um, so I think that's kind of the combination that kind of set me on the path. I I fast forward, I ended up studying industrial engineering at West Virginia University. And then after graduating, um, I was one of the, you mentioned nobody wants to go into sales. I wasn't the typical engineering type, I think. And um I remember talking to uh one of my um counselors, and he was like, hey, you like to talk, you like to interact. Sales is probably gonna be a good pathway for you. And so I joined Eaton on their sales leadership rotational program. Incredible experience. It took me all over the country, um, exposed me to different parts of businesses, and eventually leading me into my first sales role. It was in Salt Lake. I covered southwest Wyoming and um got to uh regularly go to industrial end users, and that's where I really started to understand like seeing real-world operations operations up close. Um, and then life happened. I got engaged and I moved to Florida and I stepped into a role with the Rockwell distributor in South Florida as a specialist, and I had industrial controls, sensors, safety, connectivity, um, motor control centers, and I was constantly in in-users and OEM environments solving problems, and I got to see how a lot of things were made, and I loved it. I got to see their cement plants and then orange juice processing and milk processing. There were so many different types of applications, and I think that the hands-on exposure really reinforced this was the space that I wanted to be in. And then in the middle of that journey, I took a little detour. Uh, I had my daughter, I also spent some time running my own business, which was completely different than automation, um, but it gave me a different perspective on leadership and accountability, and it's something I still draw on those experiences today to impact the way that I lead and I engage with my team. Eventually, I decided to um go back into the industrial automation business. I went to work for Siemens. I was there for about seven and a half years, and that's I had the opportunity to work across both discrete and process industries, very different. I had a variety of different roles at Siemens, and it just broadened my perspective, um, different types of applications and customers and challenges. And then about a year ago, I made the move over to West Co, where I am today, and kind of bringing all those experiences together and continuing to build on that foundation and automation. And yeah, so that's how I got it here.

Digital Transformation Without The Fluff

SPEAKER_02 12:44

Okay, so a few different things there that I want to touch on. We interviewed somebody from um Kristen Quasi is her name, and when we interviewed her originally from Siemens, she had just she was fairly new in the leadership development program that they have. So the Eaton program kind of reminded me of that. It's very cool. Obviously, the larger companies kind of have the ability to really take and like nurture the talent and bring them into the industry. Uh and she's now been promoted. I mean, she's just a rock star. I will have to have her back on the show sometime. Um if she's still with Siemens by the time we get a chance to schedule her. Uh, but she's really like moved up in the in the world. Uh, and I think super cool to be able to take people with potential like you and like kind of put them through something like that, um, develop that leadership skill. I just went straight into uh sales and uh I was a machine vision sales engineer, and so it was more trial by fire in a plant than than any kind of leadership training. Uh and I now I'm realizing as I'm older that I could have really used probably a lot more like what you call soft skills training or management, like other other things and the other than just the applications and then the sales, like you know, everybody wants to teach you some sort of closing system or or you know the Sandler sales or the challenger sale or one of those other things, and like those are all great things to learn. Um, but from like a leadership development perspective, uh, I now I'm like kind of jealous of those that got to go through programs like that, especially early on. So very cool. The other thing I'll touch on is your experience, your detour, as you mentioned. Uh, or maybe you didn't put it that way, but that's how I put it. It was a detour. Uh mine was prompted by my daughter uh being premature, and I had to leave work in an unexpected way. But then I started my own business with my husband, and we similarly did something completely different for a few years. And I didn't necessarily think I was it drew me back. Like it's I when you do this kind of stuff, if you're into it, I realize now like I did data analytics and AI and software stuff and supply chain for a while, and that kept my attention because it was like AI was really this was 10 years ago before all the buzzy AI talked about. Um but it was such a developing area of technology that it was very interesting, and it was like hard to get bored with that. Um but the disconnect between that and then like actual stuff that gets made, I realize I I missed that physical, you know, kind of like the impact of like real-world projects being made and whatnot. Um but that is uh I now also my VP of sales uh at at WinTech, Keith, he owned a moving company for a while. And he like similarly started out in engineering, you know, worked for companies, then had his own business, and then kind of came back. And I feel like people with these kind of multifaceted experiences, like it can really just help like a lot of transferable skills from being a business owner, from being a mom. Um, and it doesn't all have to be like linear, okay. I'm gonna just take the next step and the next step, uh, either within the same company. Um and then Carrie, obviously, you starting out in like more telecom and and you know, other things. I feel like our industry is much richer for it in a way that we don't have a super defined path because you kind of get people's like outside influence to bring into it. So very cool. We could we could kind of jump into some of this stuff. So you guys have been doing this for a while now. We've been kind of talking about a lot of the same stuff for a really long time, I feel like. So I mentioned working in AI 10 years ago, right? And like now, all of a sudden AI is like the hottest topic, but it's not new. And but what has changed is that it's now a lot more immediately applicable to people's like daily lives. Um, and there's kind of like like a big jump in what you can actually accomplish with AI if you're not like a big enterprise company. So back when I was doing it, um, we were doing it for huge corporations, right? Because they were the only ones that had the budgets to really put these models to work and and get enough lift out of them for it to be worth it. Uh so if if they could, you know, shave two, three percent off of uh holding cost, you know, of a product in a large supply chain situation, like they could be millions of dollars or billions of dollars. But for the average person to try to like train a model to do the stuff that we were doing is just not worth it at all. Industrial automation has also kind of come a long way, but at the same time, like a lot of it hasn't, right? Because a lot of factories are still kind of operating in the same way that they were 10, 20 years ago. How do you guys feel about the process of modernization or digital transformation? Um digital transformation I'm kind of sick of because I also used to back when I was doing the AI stuff, it was used a lot in the realm of ERPs. So somebody taking like their paper-based processes and turning them into digital. And usually they were doing some sort of large ERP rollout as they related to this digital transformation. And it was usually always a total bloated nightmare, above budget, like three years ahead of behind schedule, and nobody really got what they wanted in the end, and the people didn't want to use it. Uh, and then I started hearing the same term replied to digital transformation. Let's get that out of all of our you know, equipment and tie it to the ERP and tie it to the MES and all these things. And I feel like I've been hearing that with like a marketing term and a promise over the last like it just blends in now. I just heard it for so long that it almost doesn't register for me. Do you guys see that we actually gotten some value out of that now? Do you guys have customers that you would consider to be digitally transformed, or are we still kind of in this process of trying to modernize to get people there?

SPEAKER_01 18:35

Our customers are all in varying stages of digital transformation for sure. And for what us hearing it for the past 10 years, really, um, there's some of them are just starting to hear it. And so it's still for them a very valuable conversation to start basic, start very basically. Um, and so when we talk to them about modernization, and you know, for some plants it's we've got obsolete stuff that we can't get replacements for, and we gotta modernize. And for other plants, it's we want to do what we're doing better than the way we're doing it now, and we need to get rid of all this obsolete stuff. So when we we try and meet our customers where they are, try and bring them into the conversation at their level and really assess what they're what they what they can take on and what their goals are. It's I can't imagine being in a plant where you've got all these challenges and looking, just you know, going to the internet and saying, How do I digitally transform? You know. So a partner, you know, having a partner, having some resources and it that can can you know curate, curate the message, say this is this is what modernization is gonna look like in your plant. This is what digital transformation could look like in your plant. Uh that's that's kind of I think where we um excel at trying to to help the customers with those things because every single one of them's different.

SPEAKER_02 20:02

Yeah, yeah. So there really is like a maturity curve, and we've got plants on every single level of those, probably way more on the long tail of not there, right? Yeah, right. Yeah. I guess it's like just the long tail of like small to medium-sized manufacturers in general, is there's a lot more small customers than there are big ones. Right. And the big ones are the ones that are succeeding, and in some cases, like these lighthouse projects, right? And it's really interesting because like depends on who you talk to more often, where you think that the general kind of curve is. So I'll say uh we have a wonderful uh speaker at OT Skatercon this year, uh, from Newell Brands. His name is Nate Piran. And he is one of the first people, if not the only person that's talked to me about a real life like lights out because he's built that and because he's worked, he works for a company that is big enough that can actually do that. Uh, but to me, that's like a really anomalous thing. Whereas like to him, it's bread and butter, he could talk about it like all day, and uh, but like I feel like most people that I know don't really see that. Although I'll be like the companies that do talk about it the most, I would say are the ones that are also selling it because they can build their own factories that way, right? So like the big the big automation companies, they build they have factories to build their stuff, and then it's like kind of like they got to drink their own Kool-Aid, right? So as they build a new factory to build whatever automation product they sell, they can kind of you know dream factory it up with all their stuff from the very beginning. Uh and that's like some of the coolest stuff that you see out there, but I I always feel like it's a little bit misrepresentative of what most people are dealing with on a day to day basis. And not to mention, too, like the budget issue. I talked to more plant engineers that like just all of their time and budget is is just spent on keeping things going. And it's like they have a lot of great ideas that they can't. Get to because they keep blowing their budgets on downtime events, and then their time also dealing with that, right? And so whatever might have been left over to actually upgrade or modernize. Do you guys find that to be a common thing where like you you go through this process with customers, you figure out where they are, where they can start.

SPEAKER_00 22:20

Um, and then maybe they have trouble actually budgeting that in, or so I yeah, I definitely see um where you'll walk into these plants and the equipment is potentially 30 plus years old and it's still running reliably. Or actually, my team was in a plant in Georgia a few weeks ago, and this was the case. And it just makes it hard to justify completely uh replacing, right? And I think the challenge is those systems often become black boxes, right? Very siloed. They're not connected, they don't share data. And I think in order to have like a true digital transformation pathway and and strategy and plan, you really need to plan. Um, so even if they're working, they can it really limits how far a company can go with digital transformation. Um, because you really need to be connected and you have to have the visibility. But I do think there's there's a if there's not a compelling reason or compelling event to to modernize, right? And it's not part of the foundational strategy of the digital transformation journey, it doesn't always happen. I don't know.

SPEAKER_01 23:26

I do. And you know, talking about budgets, you know, they really have to to build that the business case to show the return on investment. Okay, you're gonna collect all this data and you're gonna save all this waste and you're gonna do all this, and how much you know, helping them to build that. Well, they're still running from machine to machine, just keeping it running. They can't, you know, it's it's hard to get get the focus on, okay, well, let's plan for the future when you're when you're just trying to stay alive every day.

unknown 23:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 23:54

Do you see that that do your customers talk to you guys about like the labor shortage and the fact that they have trouble with operators and and people that know how to work the machinery and things like that?

SPEAKER_01 24:04

Yeah, I I hear that um every day. And so I'm in South Carolina, and we have just a ton of industry moving into our state and you know, I guess reshoring. And so what we we do have greenfield um plants coming in, and a lot of a lot of brownfield modernization. And they're looking for a workforce. And in our state, we have we have a very good technical college um system that's that's really helping in that, but that you know that you can only ramp up so fast. Um so yeah, we I hear that a lot. I hear a lot about uh the cobots trying to figure out how we can take advantage of having humans working besides beside robots, you know, really uh scaling that up. Today, or I guess recently, I read about industry 5.0 for the first time, you know, talking about buzzwords that you kind of get tired of. You get tired of industry 4.0, but I guess 5.0 talking about harnessing human humans' expertise beside the power of automation. Um, so that I don't know, it's kind of interesting. Yeah. The better we explore it, the better we do.

Cobots, AGVs, And Spot In Plants

SPEAKER_02 25:14

I heard the term probably like two years ago now, and it kind of made me laugh because yeah, like how can we move on to five when like we haven't even we barely scratched the surface of four yet? But I think you know, I guess like careers, it's not necessarily linear like that. And if you think about two like cell phones, for instance. Cell phones were something that was adopted in first world countries with budgets for expensive things when they were new, and so people, you know, businessmen had cell phones and and cell phones were limited in in what they could do back then. But then and like everybody, you know, in in the US, like they had internet at their house, they had AOL or whatever, and we had you know cell phones and these things, and like other parts of the world had none of it, like nobody was connected, nobody had a phone, and then all of a sudden, cell phones got cheap enough that people all of a sudden had cell phones and internet and like a little computer, right, at their fingertips. And now there's millions of people all over the world that have, in some cases, even probably leapfrogged, like the old time user of the AOL. Like, there's still people with those email addresses. Uh if you work in any kind of digital marketing, it's kind of funny. We have these, it's like we can tell if somebody has a Yahoo or an AOL address, like roughly we can guesstimate their age. Uh you had to have signed up for that some time ago if you still have that, probably. So I thought about this, you know, this industry 5.0 concept is maybe I don't need to be, you know, oh ha ha, how funny, like that we try to even talk about something like this. It doesn't necessarily mean that four has to be finished before we can think about five, or at least what five supposedly represents, right? Which is this idea that we are have gotten the technology to a point where now humans can use it to become even more effective. Uh and I I believe that there's a gentleman on LinkedIn who that I have seen quite a bit. I haven't spoken with him, but he says like he's the he's the inventor of the industry 5.0 concept. He's from Germany. Yeah, we should we should bring him on sometime to explain this, like what what that really means. It's not something I see talked about like too much. Obviously, industry 4.0 is still going because it's still it's still a problem for a lot of people. They're having gotten to the promise of what that's supposed, you know, supposed to do for them. Um but the five I think is interesting, and it doesn't mean that we have to complete everything. I think the idea of we have good data from everything, now we have a single source of truth, right? We have this perfect foundation. Next we can like add the people. I think if anything, you probably want to try to integrate the people like earlier on in your imperfect uh striving for the industry 4.0 because ultimately we are gonna keep things running no matter what state of that like curve we're on. Um, and then thinking about our workforce as more of an active participant in the progress that we have as a company, rather than you know, I think I saw a lot of these manufacturing companies that are struggling, and I'll just say this from anecdotal evidence, like people that I know that have worked as machine operators, for instance. The ones that hire you in to press a button on a particular machine and they don't teach you anything else, um, there's not a lot of job satisfaction there. There's not a lot of loyalty, not a lot of reasons to really want to do your best for that company because your your A exposure to their like entire mission is pretty limited. And then, you know, I think your job satisfaction as a person that just came in, you just press this button all day, like is pretty low. And then same thing, the person I'm thinking of like got laid off before Christmas because there just wasn't enough work for that particular machine. And then you end up with this very like high turnover situation with employees that are not very engaged, they're they're working for like very low wages, so they have a hard time surviving. Um let alone then, oh, right around Christmas time when like it's the worst time to have to survive, you just get laid off because the company doesn't have enough orders. Like that's not a sustainable way to do business. And I think unfortunately, we have a lot of the smaller size manufacturers kind of still operating in this way, maybe because it's just the only way that they know how to survive. It's how they've done things for a long time. Uh I think it's gonna be more and more difficult for them to stay competitive because they have I mean, it's really expensive to have high turnover when it comes to your your manufacturing force. I met a lady here in Houston a couple years ago who she's like an HR consultant, and she told me she had a client in manufacturing who was having 90% turnover of their operator workforce every year. Wow, and they have to retrain people constantly. Uh, and she was like, I came in and I kind of told them like they need to invest in those people a little bit more and care about their culture and the benefits and all these things, and like, yes, it's gonna cost you more, but they were able to reduce that turnover rate like by an insane amount and actually save the company a ton of money because they didn't have to keep paying for that recruiting and you know all that kind of stuff. Do you find that the cobots like people are still trying to figure that out, or do you have any use cases or examples of customers that you feel like have succeeded with that with that step of trying to integrate the cobots to make their operators more efficient or to remove a lot of those more really dry, like repetitive operator jobs?

SPEAKER_01 30:34

So I know that it's being deployed and used to our customers. Um I don't have any specific use cases, but I'm gonna connect you with another lady that works for Wesco who is just our robot guru, and she will definitely have some great, some great um stories.

SPEAKER_02 30:51

I think we're gonna have uh one of the ladies in charge of uh robots at Schneider uh come on the show soon. Her name is Christine. But I I feel like I I've you know the Cobots have kind of been like they've been hot for a long time now. They've become kind of ubiquitous, right? UR was kind of the first one, and now everybody has a cobot. Um, because they're obviously there, it's a great kind of starter use case for robots. They're less expensive, they're easier to integrate um around people. But I've also heard a lot of use cases where people are like, yeah, we bought this cobot, and like it's pretty cool, but it's not quite like it's not meeting the expectations or the high hopes that people had in the beginning. Um, and I don't know if that's like a lack of defined use case. They're just kind of like, hey, it's cheap enough, then I'm gonna buy one and try it out and see how it goes. Um, you know, there have been also, I think, just a little bit of like misconceptions about how fast they are, how retrainable they are, how easy they are to move from one task to another. I think they kind of they they are closer to regular robots than we it originally thought in terms of how you have to plan for them, how you have to deploy them, um, that sort of stuff. Krista, any thoughts on the cobot revolution from from your side?

SPEAKER_00 32:04

I don't have at least I'm not aware of many customers right now that are deploying cobots. Um AGVs and and spot the robot, things of that nature, yes, but I don't have any specific examples right now.

SPEAKER_02 32:17

Okay, so AGV is mostly for like material moving things around. I'm not a young way to go get something from a station or or those sorts of things. Yes. And then spot splot's doing what? Inspection metrology? What's spot doing?

SPEAKER_00 32:33

Spot does a lot of inspection. I know that they've got a big installation down in South Carolina. Carrie, you've got one company of leading tire manufacturer.

SPEAKER_01 32:43

Yeah, yeah, and it's uh it's it's pretty amazing. It can it can do, you know, learn whatever routine you want it to learn to go like do inspections, look for visual locks. Um just in the I will say the University of South Carolina has one too that they use for teaching students, and it's um garnet and black now, painted game count colors, and you can see it around campus. It's pretty cool. But yeah, it's a it's a really neat tool.

SPEAKER_02 33:11

Yeah, so we've we've seen spot in various different permutations over the years. One of our first episodes was with uh a few ladies from uh an integrator called Loop, and they do uh they have a spot, and they actually were the they trained the spot that was in the music video with Katy Perry uh to do that dancing uh with her. So that was a really cool project that we got a chance to talk to talk to them about. Um, and then our friend Sam Janes, who was formerly with Gray Solutions uh out in Kentucky, he had a spot also that he would bring out to to students and stuff like that, bring him to like the trade shows, different events. Um he was really heavily involved in outreach to students. And Sam James, shout out to him, by the way. He did the music, all original music on the show by an engineer from the industry. Uh, thank you, Sam. And he would bring Spot and Allie, it's funny. Like the first time we talked about Spot, she's still she's still afraid of him. Like she does not like Spot or his animal robot companions. Like it freaks her out how they could just like take over and start doing things. I'm like, how will the humanoids not freak you out more then? At least they like have pants and can potentially do things. Uh, are your questions?

SPEAKER_01 34:34

At this point, I haven't seen humanoids um yet. Well, I've seen them, of course, but I haven't had the chance to interact with them or take them in front of customers. But I've had the similar reaction with Spot of taking him into a lot of um plants and just a demo. And it's so funny to see these the half the people that are really excited about it and they think it's cute. And then there's some some that they really just turn around and go the other way.

SPEAKER_02 34:58

Yeah, they're like, no, not for me. Leave me alone with this thing. Well, I don't know if y'all are going to Automate this year, but there is a humanoid pavilion at Automate this year.

SPEAKER_03 35:11

Wow.

What Modernization Investments Really Look Like

SPEAKER_02 35:11

So A3 is, of course, one of the associations like most heavily involved in robotics and the development of robotics. And so a lot of the startups in the robotic space uh are involved with A3. And so they had a first of its kind, I think, last year, humanoid humanoid robot forum in Seattle, like a specific conference for it. And then I guess it's just like blown up so much lately that they have integrated it with the broader automate show. And so the humanoid conference is now card of automate, and there's a special pavilion. Uh, so anybody that is gonna walk the floor and automate, uh you can go to a little area and see more than one humanoid um in one spot. I'm pretty interested, just for like personal reasons. I don't know. I just think that they're cool. I don't necessarily think that they're the best form factor for any kind of factory automation just yet. Um but the fact that there's so much investment into them probably means that at some point they will get good enough. So it's like worth watching. Uh but similar to a lot of these technologies, is like our industry kind of, you know, most things don't get taken up immediately by everyone. Like there's this kind of like long phase of acceptance testing, but like by different organizations, and some will be leaders, you know, big companies that have RD budgets and things like that, usually with the most to gain if it works, we'll invest in it up front. And then some of that trickles down to the smaller guys eventually. But I say most companies like they're making such rare investments anyway that they don't want something experimental, they want something that they know really works. Um so when we talk about like modernization, do you feel like customers are kind of going to like the next tried and true version of what they already do? Or are they being more kind of transformational in what they're trying to do with their operations with these investments?

SPEAKER_00 37:05

I think, at least from what I've seen with every manufacturer's somewhere in this journey, um there it's just different levels. I and I think it's just everybody's in a different spot. Um that's kind of what I'm seeing.

SPEAKER_02 37:23

Yeah, it's very hard to draw trend lines when you have such different, diverse customers, right? Different sizes, different products, different industries.

SPEAKER_00 37:33

Right. And I think sometimes they're just rolling out new tools and it's about achieving specific measurable outcomes. But I think um overall, I you know, the bigger companies, like you said, do have a true uh foundational and a plan to move forward with digital transformation where some of the smaller um companies are still kind of catching up or trying to upgrade certain pieces of their line. So I think it just really depends. Every customer is somewhere in the journey, but it's it really depends how what size and if they have the investment.

SPEAKER_02 38:03

Yeah. Would you say, are there any trends that you see like more often than not in terms of applications that are more common that people are investing in, or um and if if the answer is no, then that's also the answer.

SPEAKER_01 38:15

Like I think we're definitely going to see more embrace of AI. Like we've been talking about it for 10 years, like you said, and we've seen it. We've got case studies of where it's helped in our in our customer base for you know the seven, eight years old. But now it's becoming so mainstream that it when it gets to the plant manager, he's or she is already exposed to it a little bit. And so I think it's there's a little bit more comfort level of experimenting and trying to hearing someone out on what what their what their case study or what their business plan would be to to apply it in their plant. Um, so just you know, level of comfort is kind of getting there with AI and and in some cases discomfort with and fear with AI. So um it's a it's a delicate conversation to have, but it's definitely part of modernization and digital transformation for for every client. So you just gotta get get comfortable with it in some some way.

SPEAKER_02 39:13

You guys provide any um like tips or or would you personally have for a manufacturer that does want to roll out something new, um, but it's concerned like maybe half the workforce doesn't want it. Like, do you guys talk about the implementation phase and the change management and things like that with your customers as well as the technological side of things?

SPEAKER_00 39:33

On our side, um what typically we we recommend is something that we offer and we can work with our customers on. We recommend doing an assessment. So helping the customer understand where they are today, where their gaps are, um, what risks they might have, and then where the opportunities to improve are. Okay. And that's something that we spend a lot of our time, you know, that we spend time with our customers helping them understand. Um that's that's something that we do. But in terms of the change management, education around change management, um, you know, bringing your team in early, understanding the why behind the what, those aren't conversations at least I I don't have every day. Um, but that's something that's incredibly important to make sure that the the workforce is bought in um and that they're helping move the transition along versus creating, you know, a roadblock.

SPEAKER_02 40:23

Yeah. I've been reading a bit on um Reddit. I like to I like to talk to engineers a lot. They're like some of my favorite people. And I like to read what they have to say, even if I'm not in the conversation. Reddit's a great place for that. Uh, because people they say whatever they want that they may not say to a salesperson or you know, somebody during a recorded conversation. But there's been a bit of chatter about like how the plant managers are happy to invest in the latest like AI initiative, but they still can't get the data from the PLCs that they would need for it to be successful, and that there's like there can be this gap between like management being willing to spend money on the latest like buzzword because yeah, they have been hearing about it for so long, and then they see these use cases, and it's like, yes, this could be successful now. It's easier to get budget for something like that because it's on everybody's mind, but then maybe kind of not realizing that in the trenches, like that you may those gaps may still exist, right? So having an assessment from a partner like you would probably be a really foundational step because it may be that that leadership may or may not be talking to that plant floor personnel enough in a way that they those gaps get to them, right? Because also like good good plant engineers and operators usually cover for all the problems because they're held responsible for the outcome, right? And so when by the time the final numbers get to management, they may look okay because everybody's made it their job to make it okay. Do you feel like working with a partner like you guys to kind of really take a whole look at that picture and see where those gaps are would potentially help with that gap so that management isn't trying to invest in the latest AI thing when really they don't have, they have got a bunch of obsolete like equipment that really couldn't support that on the bottom?

SPEAKER_01 42:08

Yeah, the the first step we always take with our customers is an assessment. Like you say, it's a modernization health check. Where are you? Are you connected on the floor? Do you have an OT? Um just to see see where you stand, and then and then you can you can go from there. We we had a a very successful project with a um manufacturer here in South Carolina where they were already collecting just tons and tons of data for years, and they did not do anything with it really. So it was it was super easy to step in and say, well, we can help.

SPEAKER_02 42:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 42:44

Um and we we worked with an uh AI integrator and and solved a very big problem for them. And the return on investment was huge, but that's not that's not the usual case. Um you don't you don't usually find where they just have this well of data that you can start mining and and find solutions. So it's it's a you know, again, meeting them where they are and figuring out what they assessing their their plant floor.

SPEAKER_02 43:08

So can you tell me what how that assessment works? Like you you send somebody out, they walk the floors or like a specific kind of report format that you guys provide to the customer with recommendations, like where they are. Can yeah, I guess tell me a little bit more about that. So if somebody hears this and thinks, hey, my plant could use that kind of assessment, what would they be in for?

SPEAKER_01 43:27

So it's uh we work as a team. Um, so the way Wesco usually is set up is that you have an account manager that's that's assigned to your plant, and they are your single point of contact. They come out, see you all the time, they invite you to events, they keep you up to date. But then behind them, they have a team of specialists that might be a drive specialist, cybersecurity specialist, uh PLCs, HMIs, um, the role that Crystal is in, um, sensor safeties and controls. Um, and so then you bring that team in, and it's uh We we kind of call it like you're going into your physician for a health check and he we've got a a list of things that we're we're looking at and it's usually not a real long plant floor visit so much as a very long conversation with the key players in the plant that can can answer questions about where, you know, do you have a CMS? Do you have um i is your ERP tied into your MES? All those things that that you really need to have the right players in the room. So a real in-depth conversation, and then yeah, we follow it up with a kind of a readout of what what you what we suggest, what what we think your next steps would be. Yeah, and it might be a lot of steps, it might be that you need a lot of help, or it might not.

SPEAKER_02 44:44

You find that more often than not they need more help. Or that the everything was ready with you now was kind of a surprise or uh more delightful surprise than you usually encounter, right?

SPEAKER_01 44:57

Yeah, yeah. And you know, sometimes a plant doesn't have an up-to-date one-line drawing, you know, things simple things like that, that you've got to, you've really got to start basic.

AI Integrators And A Predictive Win

SPEAKER_02 45:06

Yeah, yeah. You sometimes have a lot of panels without any documentation. And uh I know Allie's done quite a few jobs where she's just got to trace everything back to that panel and like get some documentation to folks to see what's actually going on there. Um you mentioned AI integrator. So let's talk about integrators for a second. Are these the same types of integrators that are doing the the cobalt stuff, uh plc work, SCADA work, or are there like siloed different types of integrators? Like you would you would bring in somebody that specializes in AI. Yeah, I guess that's the first time I think I've heard somebody talk about an AI integrator. So tell me a little bit more about that.

SPEAKER_01 45:47

Sure. Wesco has a network of partners that we work with, uh, integrators and um industrial contractors, engineering firms that we have vetted relationships with that we know if we're gonna bring them into a customer, we trust that the experience is gonna be good. So um, in that is is one of the integrators. Well, there's a couple of integrators that we use that are in the AI space.

SPEAKER_02 46:12

So um and do they do all of them specialized? Because I know like AI is really big in certain types of vision applications. Um there's like the visual AI, there's you know, predictive maintenance AI, there's bespoke, like let's build an application using AI for your particular use case.

SPEAKER_01 46:31

Oh, yeah, yeah. Um this particular integrator is is mostly in data, and so using using data with a model to predict. Well, I'll I'll give you the example. So it's a large engine manufacturer in South Carolina. Um, so think large tanker ships, um, military, just huge, huge diesel engines, and the failure rate was higher than you know was acceptable. And so and it was it's stuff that they we we could probably uh predict from the data. So they brought this company in, they took the historical data and told them which ones did in fact fail in the field.

SPEAKER_03 47:12

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 47:13

Um and with 80% accuracy.

SPEAKER_03 47:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 47:16

So that they were able to deploy a model that would help them during production predict which ones would would have problems and and they you know saved them. I I think they had 20 real-time failure events that they would have would have uh prevented.

SPEAKER_02 47:33

Wow. And it's nice when you do have that large, when you have a large data set that goes back, then you can actually validate your models on that past data. Because you have the data and then you have the real performance. Whereas if you're starting from scratch now to collect data that you need AI to work on, it's a little bit more of a game, right? Like how how the model is gonna perform. Um, because you you know that 80% rate because you had data on the production, and then you also knew which ones actually failed or didn't fail in the field. This is very similar to the work that I used to do um with the in the in the supply chain stuff. I actually was brought to them to bring that competency to industrial manufacturing. Uh, but we were a small company, and there ended up being so much demand in the supply chain space that like I never had any time to bring it to anybody industrial. Because once we started predicting demand for movies for one movie studio, and all the other ones wanted that, and then I crazy I ended up spending like two years with past like I I could walk on the lot at some of the movie studios. Uh, who would have thought, right? But because I I knew some stuff about data and predicting demand for products and how many to manufacture. Now they're doing a lot more digital, but back back then, um, and I mean still today, people still buy DVDs occasionally or Blu-rays, um, mostly for like kids' birthdays and when you want to hand somebody something. But funny too, back then, I mean it was a shrinking category, right? Like everything is going to digital, but you could still make more money on selling a physical DVD than you can on streaming a movie. Uh so it's like I feel like our industry in particular, too, the automation and just manufacturing industry is like one of the industries that touches literally everybody's lives, and so many people have no idea how it functions or how any of the things that they buy or consume get made, how many times they have to get shipped, like where that material comes from, um, all the stuff, all the checks that it has to go through. Do you guys uh this is not really a this is not in the list of topics, but since you started working in this industry, how what do you notice when you go to like the grocery store? Like what are the things that pique your interest that a normal person would never think about when you go to the grocery store? One for me is because I used to sell laser markers for date coding and stuff, and I also used to do vision inspection. But like when I notice a label that's skewed or like if the date code is off or something, like it just drives me completely nuts. And I'm like, how do these people not have a good vision system for this by now? Um and it makes me want to call their customer service. And like once or twice I did this back when I was really doing it, and I called and I was like, Oh my gosh, there is plastic in my like in my whatever I was eating some sort of instant food bowl. And they I they were just they were like, Oh, we can give you a coupon. I'm like, no, that's not why I'm calling. Like, I need you to I need you to trace this back and tell whoever's operating this equipment that this is happening. They're like, How many coupons can we send you? I'm like, never mind, this is not worth it.

SPEAKER_01 50:32

So I actually do have a good example. I um I there's a popular candy that everybody eats candy-coated chocolate with a peanut inside. And when you find one that's perfectly round, it does not have a peanut inside. And so my kids from when they were little, I would always say, like, hey, look for the round, you know, the misprint. They'd always like dig through their MMs to find the perfectly round one and say, I found one.

AMRs, AI Copilots, And The Next Wave

SPEAKER_02 50:58

Oh, that's fun. That's kind of like that's almost like a game. Find the hidden treasure. Uh yeah. One that doesn't belong. How about you, Krista? Any all right. So what is it that you guys are the most excited about for the future? Either new stuff that y'all are seeing at West Co from your suppliers or or stuff that you feel like is finally gaining traction with your customers.

SPEAKER_01 51:18

So um, I'm pretty excited locally for South Carolina to see it growing so well. And um it's it's exciting because you know, I've got I've got kids in their late teens, early 20s, and I want to see uh the economy in South Carolina continue to do as well as it is. So that's it's really exciting for me to see reshoring happening and new investment in in this area, and really in the entire United States. So that part's pretty exciting to me.

SPEAKER_02 51:48

Absolutely. I will agree with you on that one. Every time I see like a new project being approved or a plant, let's come into Houston, even though like I to me it does, it's not gonna change much, but I just think in general, like for the for the community that you live in, like stuff like that is so vital to for things to keep growing, for there to be more opportunities for people in the community to get to you know know about these jobs. And then of course, every greenfield project is probably a a huge opportunity for all the great new ways of manufacturing, right? Like starting from scratch. Seems like it would be the ideal situation at this point. You don't have to worry so much about the modernization and the retrofitting and you know, all the headaches that come along with having to keep an existing plant running while at the same time trying to do the new stuff. Um, although I do know that Greenfield comes with this whole other, you know, its own set of problems and surprises and you know, all kinds of things like that. I know right now, you know, data centers are huge topics of conversation in a lot of places in Texas here, particularly, there's a lot of that going on, um, Virginia and a few other places. But one of the big constraints there is power generation, right? How do you need more power to do all this stuff? Uh Krista?

SPEAKER_00 52:59

Sure. So I think we talked about it before, but I think AMRs are gonna be interesting to see where the autonomous robotics goes and how that plays into you know the workforce gaps and filling that and what that looks like. Um I think AI Copilots is gonna be interesting. I think that's gonna be a game changer. So um there are tools the operators and engineers can talk with directly, um, like using natural language to like troubleshoot issues and make decisions on the fly. I think that's something that's that we're seeing more and more on um with with platforms, which is interesting. And then um I think one thing, and I I don't hear a lot of people talk about it, it's something that I think about a lot, um, which is AI starting to move from supporting software to actually doing the work. So I'm curious to see if like automating workflows and decision making, AI is actually gonna be making those decisions at some point, replacing some of the software. Um and I think it's gonna fundamental maybe fundamentally change a lot of like how traditional software is used, and some cases potentially replace it. So I'm curious to see how that how that plays out and what the future looks like.

SPEAKER_02 54:12

Absolutely. I agree with you on that one. What I struggle with is like the timeline is what do I think the timeline is? So in my little notes here, I had written like what do you think you know manufacturers should be paying attention to over the next three to five years? Or like I think that co-pilots right now are kind of the most immediate use case for AI actually providing tangible value because it's not replacing that human or some other piece of software. It's usually coming inside of software you're already buying or using. Um, so for instance, with Wintech, we really uh we have an AI co-pilot inside of the HMI development software. So to write macros and things like that. So again, uh what would have been like a novice user can now become an advanced user very quickly because you kind of have a built-in assistant to help you learn. Um and if it's coding related, like that's also a really big strength of these co-pilots, right? Is it can either debug your code, help you write code, review your code, all those sorts of things. But it doesn't take away the need to know what you're doing, what you're asking the code to do in the first place. Um, and I think it's a big accelerator, it's opening the doors to more people getting to learn it more quickly. So I think it lowers the barriers to some of these people. Like if you want to be, you you come from a technician background and you want to become a PLC programmer. Well, now there's tons more tools to help you. And the fact that you also understand how to trace it back to the panel, you understand how to look for, you know, not just, oh, is it a bug in the PLC program, but is there something in the panel that's not connected or whatever? Like that practical knowledge plus the AI co-pilot to me is like a very exciting combination because it can upscale people a lot faster. Right. What I will say about the software replacing or AI replacing software, I think it will happen. What I am entirely not sure is the timeline on that. Because that's a big part of what I used to do uh back with Algo is we did the prediction for supply chain. So it's great to get 80% accuracy, you know, on when you're trying to predict demand and you're trying to, you know, schedule your production runs and things like that. You don't need it to be 100%, you need it to be directionally as accurate as possible and help you with those swings in supply and demand and so on. Um if it's deciding like a discrete thing, do you do this or do you not, then it has to be correct most of the time, depending on what the consequences of the yes or no are. And we did a pilot at that time where we were trying to predict how to deliver digital content. So surprisingly, again, I thought, hey, it would be much more expensive to manufacture a DVD and have to ship it to a store and then sell it in the store. You've got all these like physical touch points, you've got physical manufacturing, you've got raw materials that go into this. But it was actually at the time, and this is probably changed now, it was actually more expensive to fulfill a digital order because even though yes, the movie's already been made, they have it in so many different formats and and resolutions, and then they need different dubbing depending on the type of station that it is that's running it. Is it a TV station? Is it a streaming platform? Is it you know reruns on a uh you know, who knows, right? And so they have this huge matrix of combinations of things that they actually need to do to deliver the digital content. And we tried to automate it, and it was actually not automatable at all. Uh, and so we needed to build a system that allowed a human person to process, like, unless it was what we would call a happy path, whereas like everything had happened before and it was real easy to predict, most of the time it would get kicked to a human to make whatever decisions were not super easy to identify. And then the idea was that the system would learn from every order that then got fulfilled by that human, and so over time it would become marginally better better. And then that's how I kind of think about some of these AI things today. It's like we're gonna have a period of time in which the AI is kind of learning with us, and we're almost gonna need to have like a human in the loop situation until it finally gets good enough that we can confidently say, like, yes, you can go ahead and make this decision on your own. And especially in a manufacturing context where there's safety implications, there's physical, like, and in some cases, even like depending on the product that's being made. But if you make scrap product for like an hour, you could have lost like millions of dollars. So the AI being 80% correct at that point is is a total disaster. Uh, but this is definitely something that I also think about. Um, in fact, I used to speak on stages 10 years ago about how English would become the primary way that we would interact with software. Uh, not clicking around, but just talking to it. Um, and I'm kind of I'm getting I'm getting pretty close to that prediction being correct right now. Uh, although I really hate predicting because well, I'm probably wrong, like most of the time. I think most people that predict are probably wrong most of the time. Is there anything that we haven't covered in this conversation that you guys would like to touch on or or bring to the attention of our audience? Um, for that matter.

SPEAKER_00 59:16

What I would ask, what are you most excited about going forward? And what do you think, you know, where do you see the next three to five years? And what are you interested in?

SPEAKER_02 59:25

Honestly, uh I want a humanoid robot in my house to do my dishes in my laundry. I've been around AI at work for so long, and then I come home, and like it does not matter how many amazing problems I solved in my workday, the dishes in the laundry are still waiting for me. Ah, yes. And I I actually pre-ordered a humanoid robot called Neo last year because it was the first one that readily admitted that it can't do any of this stuff autonomously. But if you pre-order this and you let this this robot into your house, you can schedule it to do tasks and it will be teleoperated by a person. And that person will drive the robot to do that task until that robot learns that task well enough to be able to operate it autonomously. And so, and and this company, I think, is from Denmark or something. So they were asked, like, okay, this is like a lot of people would not want to agree to just let a stranger into their home in the form of a robot. And he was like, Yeah, this is the social contract that you sign up for, basically. Like, we can only train these robots in these real world situations if we allow robots out in these real world situations to train on. Like, I don't think you can get the there's a lot of like synthetic data and these foundational models for uh humanoids now. Like if one finally, like kind of like the LLMs, right? Like the the the large models figure out these small steps, and so if I guess if you can teach one robot to you know pick a sock out of out of the hamper, then that skill somehow can be transferable. But home environments are just so chaotic that it hasn't we that we haven't found a way yet for somebody for a humanoid to be trained to go do laundry and then go do it in somebody else's house. Like, you know, everybody's laundry room is different. You have different type of washing machine, you have a different setup, you've got different set of constraints, the way that your kids throw their stuff in the hamper, you know, all of this is different. But and then I've been seeing a lot of these videos, and it's like clearly these demos are not real, right? You have what maybe looks like a robot doing something on its own, and you know that it's being teleoperated or it's pre-programmed in the back, and so it's just like eroded a lot of people's confidence in these things. And I've always said, like, it's a feature, not a bug, that it can be teleoperated. Uh, and I don't know why, but I don't mind having a stranger from the other end of the earth operating a robot in my house just as much as if I hired a housekeeper, like, yes, I can get to know them or you know, him or her. Um, but it's still a person that is inside my home that can do something or not do something. And then the Neo itself is like a very soft, it's a pulley system mostly for like the motors and the muscles and whatnot, and then it's covered with those like a soft fabric. So to me, I also was like, well, if it goes haywire, I can just like snip its tendons real easily with a pair of scissors, and then it could kill me uh too easily. So that's a bit more on the personal side, but I am honestly A, very excited to try it if they ever ship that thing, and B, excited to see how how quickly that learning curve is really gonna go. Because with a lot of the technology that we've seen in our lifetimes, I mean, thinking about going from DSL to I'm just having a gigabyte fiber installed in my new house today. Right. Uh cell phones, you know, to the smartphone that we have. Now I don't even need a phone itself, I can just call for my computer, right? These things were like they took time to get going. And then all of a sudden they just keep getting better and better very quickly. Like Moore's Law, right? Things get to an exponential phase eventually, and they seem really slow on the uptake at first. And then one day they just kind of go whoosh. And I don't know when we're gonna get to the whoosh point of these robots, whether it's you know the AMRs or the the dog form factor or or the humanoid form factor, or even the cobots, like they've taken off in a big way in terms of adoption, but I think in terms of real adoption, but I think in terms of really getting the value that we kind of hope for them, we're not there yet. And I think one of those is gonna pop in the next three to five years. I couldn't tell you which one it is, which one it is. But yeah, that's personally where I'm most excited. And I, audience, if you are out there, uh if you want to tell me if you would put a humanoid in your home or not, I'm curious. Um, because I I've got a lot of strong opinions on this. A lot of my industry friends think that they're completely useless and a waste of time and a waste of money. Um I see the value potentially, and I am willing to be the guinea pig. Uh but as soon as if I do get one, I I'm definitely gonna be creating some content with it, I think. I'm not a social media person, I'm not a person to create content on really anything other than like these conversations I want to have at work. But that's one where I was like, maybe I would actually have just like a YouTube channel that maybe people outside the industrial automation industry would watch. Um if I can show you my robot doing my laundry or or loading my dishwasher. I I would watch.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:43

That sounds very interesting.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:46

So as we wrap up, can you tell us where people should uh follow you guys, reach out to you guys, whether that's you know, through West Co. More on the professional front, or if there's anything. Um I usually ask people if they've got anything else going on. Some people have like hobbies or side things uh that they want to tell people about. But yeah, our little last wrap up thing is there are there any events coming up that you guys are involved with that we should be looking out for, or otherwise, you know, places to find you guys or reach out to you guys.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:18

Sure. I think uh the number one way to probably connect with Carrie and definitely myself, LinkedIn. You can find us both easily on LinkedIn. Um actively monitor our inboxes there. Um, so that's probably the first, the best way to connect with us. And then West Co. Um, we have events all across the country all the time. I there's so many I can't keep track. Um but you can find more on on our website about what's going on locally. Like, I've got one tomorrow. I'm going to Tennessee. We constantly have events across the country. I know there was one uh in Texas last week, so our website, understand like in and follow us online, that would be I assume that there's probably like an events tab somewhere on.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:00

Your website where people can look for those. Yes. I would hope. I'm hoping. We will drop a link to the events if there is one in the in the show notes. Krista, thank you so much for being on the show. Uh, I appreciate that you got roped into this. And we'll have to thank Carrie. Now she's gonna have to listen to the episode since she didn't get a chance to catch the end there. Um, and if Carrie does have anything that she wants to add in particular, we also do have, and this is to the audience as well, I don't know if y'all knew this, but we have a feature on our website where you can send us some voicemail kind of a thing. It's like a button and you can record something and tell us whatever you want or give us some feedback or suggest a guest. Uh really, I feel like people could use that more. Maybe it's just one of those things that like nobody ever wants to do, but we may actually even put your message on the podcast. Um, I think that that would be cool if more people did that. So I want to encourage you to go do that. Carrie, if you want to uh record anything to add to the episode, go to the website automationladies.io, uh record us a little voicemail, and Veronica will add it to the episode. And uh yeah, we really appreciate you guys being a part of our network now. Please consider us friends and resources. And the same thing kind of goes out to our audience. This is a place to, you know, get to know some cool people, hear their stories, if anything resonated with you, connect with those folks, uh, keep the conversations going, and let's keep uh learning from each other and helping each other out. So thank you so much. Have a great rest of your day. Thanks so much for having us. It was a lot of fun. Bye. Bye. Thank you for listening to Automation Ladies. If you like our content and you want to stay in touch, please connect with us on LinkedIn, follow the show page, subscribe to our YouTube channel, and you can send us a message or a copy on our website, automationladies.io. We look forward to getting to know you. Our producer is Veronica Espinosa, and our music is composed by Samuel James.