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Introduction: Be’Anka Ashaolu, Director of Marketing, Propel (BA)
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BA: Custom engineered products generate more sales and higher margins. If sales and engineering can work together effectively and efficiently.
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BA: Many times require coordination is error prone difficult and time consuming but there is a better way and manufacturers are increasingly using technology to deliver on the promise of mass customization.
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BA: In this session here from to engineer to or industry leaders discuss how they compete by aligning these teams for smoother faster earlier communication in the product lifecycle.
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BA: Ensuring proposals and designs deliver what customers need tighter collaboration ultimately winning or business and delivering more profitable orders.
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BA: Propel, VP of customer success. Mary differentiate moderate this panel featuring damn boy CEO Glenn tech and you're from is CEO and director of a MS technologies. Let's get into the duality of effectively to processes now.
Session Moderated by Mary DeFrenchi, VP of Customer Success, Propel
Panel:
Daniel Voit, Blentech
Jan Maise, AMS Technologies
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MD: Good morning. My name is Mary differentiate. I am the VP of customer success here at propel today I am joined by yon mice from AMS technologies and Daniel Voit
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MD: On in the morning, both. And thank you for joining me today. I'm really excited to have to search industry experts CEOs to discuss their digital transformation strategy.
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MD: So welcome Dan, welcome Jan
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DV: Good morning. Thanks for having us. Thank you.
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MD: And so here propel we talk a lot about engineer to order vs custom engineer products in mass customization. Jan, let's start with you. How would you describe your business today.
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JM: Well, our businesses is is twofold. So we do have some standard products which we sell which we get for our suppliers as a distributor of components and
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JM: Makes about like 20% of our revenue today, but our focus really is on customized products and engineered solutions. And so it's basically like three
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JM: Segments one being the standard products where we sell like one product many customers and we have the customized products and the engineer solutions where we have one product or solution going to one customer and that already makes up 80% of all revenue today.
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DV: How would you describe our business. Um, well I we might come from an angle of having less standardization. To begin with, then the main focus, we become from the roots of custom from from the beginning and
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DV: So we designed food processing equipment and we were founded by the adventure that mechanical grade harvester and innovation was part of what we did.
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DV: As we're growing we're developing standardized solutions standardized elements, but try and keep that custom spirit and scale through that.
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MD: Thank you. And Dan what would you say are some of the benefits and challenges, you know, running a custom engineer products are from your perspective.
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DV: Well, there are many benefits to the challenges the benefits are you can sue the customer. Ideally, with the product you can you can tailor make it to to them.
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DV: And you know that that ends up really accomplishing normally most of what they be done.
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DV: And so that's it. That's a great partnership, but when you do that you end up often creating new designs you create new programs.
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DV: And there's an early risk every time something is done for the first time. So, managing that is one aspect of managing it profitably. It's probably a bigger aspects for everyone.
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DV: You can get it done and not succeed or you can get it done exceed or you can get it done 16 and everyone profits and that's really the goal.
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DV: At the end of the day, I think probably the biggest challenge internally, though. That's from a customer perspective is is scalability of the corporation that when you're when you're focused on custom solutions customization.
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DV: Engineer to order type things.
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DV: You're very dependent upon highly experienced individuals, which take a long time to train and you can do a great job with employee retention programs and all those sorts of things.
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DV: But the fact of the matter is slow to grow.
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DV: Because it takes a while to train those people
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MD: And I know Dan before we've been talking recently about, you know, the whole move to having an entire remote workforce and how that's changed your business a little bit and
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MD: You wouldn't mind kind of sharing what you quickly realize and what we had to make to deal with that quickly, especially with hiring structures that we just talked about.
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DV: Sure, sure. Well, we've been we've been on our process of digital transformation, if you will, for a few years you moving starting from the front end sales were down through the operations. I would say we're most of the way through. When the credit crisis hit and we were able to move
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DV: The majority of our company to remote work obviously manufacturing, it's we haven't figured out how to weld remotely and I hope we get there someday, but that hasn't been accomplished yet.
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DV: And so that the fabrication team, things are still on site and we appreciate them, but we were still able to socially distant huge aspects of our Corporation, all of the engineering divisions that you see in the hotel tools.
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DV: Coordinating communication and timing of who needs to work together with with facing document Control. Control across that it's been huge.
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DV: I think the bottom line can be stated in numbers we've been able to keep the factory running through this crisis at or above 100% majority of the time.
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DV: And I think that speaks for itself. It wasn't always easy but adaptation simply isn't it will get easier and and the the tools that we use really made it possible, and we're getting into our group.
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MD: Yeah. And Jan what would be some of the benefits and challenges that you're seeing in your business model.
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JM: Yeah, it's, it's very similar to what put down where it says, oh, one of the things is, I mean,
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JM: A lot of the products which we are designing and which were designing for our customers are not actually end user product. So we actually are in the OEM manufacturers, so
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JM: A lot of the components which to or subsistence, which we make are being sold to a customer who then that's it into something else and then sells them to their customers. So
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JM: A lot of what we experience there is that we have much, much closer relationships, our customers. That's where
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JM: A lot of what we do is now instead of just being a manufacturer or a supplier to our, our customers. We know collaborating collaborating together and we are developing solutions, not just for our customers, but for our customers. Customers.
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JM: So we are much, much closer to understanding the needs of our customers and that drives a complete different behavior of of a partnership which historically has just been the supplier and customer
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JM: But absolutely, yes. If it doesn't come with
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JM: Challenges and as Dan has already said, yeah, it comes with overhead. There's a lot of costs of overhead would need to add to it, just by
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JM: All the proliferation of, of all the different components of subsystems, which are being used and that is the challenge and you somehow need to maintain that and also to use technology to be able to
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JM: To reduce that as much as you can. And you do need obviously when you are engineer to order, you still need to work a lot of documentation.
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JM: Documentation of anything from state in a word specifications fortification quality.
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JM: final test final inspection. A lot of that stuff needs to get done and obviously puts a lot of constraint on on the back end and operations. Also on supply chain.
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JM: Manufacturing managing all of those suppliers, because it's a plethora of of new suppliers, which are coming on board, just because of that you're
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JM: proliferating your, your products and your services to a much wider audience.
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DV: Do you mind if I add something to that add on to what Jan’s saying. Yeah. In one thing that we thought about
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DV: How this has been the help desk. You talked about the complexity on the different groups having to interact
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DV: We studied the way our company works and started building out our processes to use these technologies across Past few years in excess of
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DV: 15 stages and phases that from the life cycle of the other products we get into the the design phases of the of the systems that we build
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DV: We have in excess of eight departments collaborating eight different functional departments collaborating just during that phase.
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DV: And so then that's not just as much as eight linkages, it's, it's a by across all the other different departments, they connect and so it's just not possible to communicate effectively without
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DV: Good technology to identify the order in which those communication up to happen and raise a flag when those communication haven't happened, creating those triggers triggers and checks for a proper management.
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JM: Absolutely. We have exactly the same thing. The collaboration needs to go through so many different
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JM: Groups and also customers and we use all kinds of different technologies to make sure that we can collaborate and then we can share information and the
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JM: Information. He is not residing them an email, which then sings that in the PSD file somewhere. But that actually resides somewhere on
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JM: The actual item or whatever the item is via the quality item or be at the the product item or whatever they actually the actual object is which we are talking about store the documentation there be a great
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MD: Wonderful, thank you. So given what you've learned or seeing, you know, over the years, being in this industry.
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MD: You know, why should manufacturers dive into this industry spec mentor on the reverse. Why should they not to stay away from, in your opinion.
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MD: And can launch. You start with your thoughts. But my question is, why should people consider me to the to the moment.
DV: Okay. Well, I mean, I think the probably the single most valuable aspect of working in a retail environment for manufacturer is
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DV: It really does accelerate your ability to innovate, you start working directly with customers on real problems on the fly. We are going to call that in process Rd and our company.
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DV: Now that's amazing that you can get your innovations and technologies in use in operation far faster than incubating them and thinking about them and then developing a marketing plan and hoping it works and then finding it wrong. It's go back and change it.
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DV: You know, which is a waste of everyone's time and money. But the thing I think you have to keep in mind is everyone has to be aware of what aspects of what you're doing is new and what aspects are not new. So that all parties customer especially has it in their risk calculation.
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DV: That they understand what what's part of it and the manufacturer needs to be prepared to not necessarily make money on new developments and so a key would be after you develop them you've developed customer translation. Can you sell them out elsewhere.
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DV: Will you be able to use the elements that we should create it in a way to further scale your business.
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DV: So I think it's about open communication with the customers and working with the customers within less of a transactional sense and
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DV: More as though they're part of your team and you're part of their team and you're working toward that common goal. And I think that can change things.
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MD: And what about the so I guess kind of Internet is kind of that whole customer experience obviously that shifted and like you said your long game with the customer and being able to you know address changes or requirements differently through this process.
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MD: And you repeat the question. No, I was just kind of backing up your statement sorry again. OK.
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MD: And Jan. What about your thoughts there.
JM: It's so again we're we're selling OEM solutions to our customers and our customers need to differentiate
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JM: And the differentiation is not getting writing down the lowest cost denominator. Yeah, we're all our customers need to somehow differentiate themselves from their peers and that's as Danny said
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JM: Through innovation. And there's different innovations which you can do either you you will take logically. Yes. And we embed a lot of different technologies into our
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JM: Systems and systems. The other one is feature sets. So we need to work with our customers understanding isn't what their customers need for them to be successful. And the next one is make those units serviceable so that
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JM: Whatever we have put together then is server serviceable out there in the field so that very quickly. The uptime is always as close to 100% as possible so
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JM: We see that obviously we're not in playing in the market of very high volume. So we're not playing in the automotive market. So we're more in the
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JM: High a mix LOW TO MID volume markets and that's where customers really are looking for. How can they bring the differentiation to their to their customers. That's where standard products really are not available. And that's where I think we will
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MD: See, and you see this is a growing trend in manufacturing
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JM: Absolutely, especially in the
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JM: In the, let's say Western side. Yeah, we see that here in Europe, quite a bit. Yeah. So we there was obviously standard products which you can
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JM: Buy it from multiple sources. But when you we are engaged with the customer on ETS programs.
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JM: You are locked together, you win or lose together and you're trying to make a win win situation so that they are winning in their customers. And we do see quite a few projects which are completely through through our phone. Oh, absolutely. We see growth.
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MD: Dan what about from your perspective.
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DV: Yeah, you're asking do we see a growth in in this type of product. I think the answer is yes. And we've always seen that there because it's where we you know we began
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DV: I think what I would say overall is that some more. More and more of the customers are looking for.
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DV: Products that are helping them create their own differentiating edge, and as a result they need you to customize something for them create something special for them that allows them to hold some kind of an enduring edge.
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DV: But I think what's probably changing and growing is is the customers understandably want that customization at a standardized price and delivery.
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DV: Which that's the nature of business, but that's where the opportunity lies. And so from our perspective, it's the question internally is how do we use technology.
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DV: To allow us to create customized tailored solutions for our customers that can reasonably compete on price and delivery with otherwise standardized product, or at least within a range which which helps give our customers the day
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DV: An ROI within during differentiation and that's what they really want to see.
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MD: So that's great Dan and so you can. You were just talking about technology and how it plays in your success of bringing people process, you know, together to deliver what the customer wants.
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MD: And you kind of dive into a little bit more about the technology and the process. You said you're using to be provide that success customer success.
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DV: Um yeah I I'll do my best to to elaborate on it, it becomes a huge subject, I think, because there's so many different facets of that and what will we do at the heart is we are
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DV: Jan talking about having a moderate sized customer for a particular product or what other times we have one or two customers particular product. So we're on the the extreme of that other end where we may build a model and only ever the other ones. And those type of examples do exist.
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DV: You know how we use the technology is within any design. It's possible to create standards of documentation standards of component and then even if the system itself isn't
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DV: Totally replicated elements of it can be so that's where the technology comes in as far as the the the people side of it. The technologies, you know that we're deploying allow us to connect the people quickly and create quick communications. And that's largely through triggers and checks.
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DV: So it's using the systems on the platform to identify specific things we want to watch identifying those
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DV: So we can manage that pipeline of work or projects that it's identifying potential development projects. Early in the pipeline and then
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DV: Fostering those specific opportunities or identifying potential red flags in process so that you don't find out when you're in final inspection prior to ship.
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DV: And I think that that process is largely adaptive and it's one of the things I feel really great about platform that we're on is that
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DV: You get into it, you have an idea of how you're going to connect people and you're partly right.
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DV: But you can quite quickly learn through data analysis not collaboration within your team and Oh shoot, we should have we should have a trigger for this.
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DV: But, you know, we can identify a trigger on on Tuesday morning and have a trigger in place by Tuesday, you know, at lunch or faster and then that triggers in place. And I think that's what's just undeniably powerful about the direction we're going
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MD: In every call Dan mentioned one time beginning of COVID that
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MD: You know, there was this element of in person, you know, collaboration, and just being able to walk over and taps on the shoulder and
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MD: And clarify a blinder ask the question, and now everyone's remote. And so how do you, you know, continue with that communication or quickly seeing maybe there was a lack of communication. How you know you were able to address that quickly. The technology platform. Correct.
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DV: Yeah i think that i mean i think these human interaction is always going to have a place in our world. And I think if we're if we're isolated for too long. I don't think it's going to be good for all of us.
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DV: But I think that the technologies do allow us to stay connected and work remotely quite effectively for for periods of time. And it also is replaced some aspects of
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DV: Communication or collaboration that really didn't need to be in person and maybe at times shouldn't have been because maybe it was slowing things down.
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DV: So yeah, we've we've been able to use a lot of the capabilities on the platform. And one of the things I think that Jan mentioned a talk about things residing in a box.
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DV: That didn't used to be our problem augmenting that though there were times when various documents were written, and you wouldn't necessarily know which the master was because
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DV: You might have various different versions of it. And so, identifying which thing needed to be read control, but having the power to read control more things.
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DV: And and quickly identify something that categorically needs to have control and put that in place has created a sense of stability is the information that is incrementally improving trust with the teams and in turn the performance of the organization.
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MD: Thank you.
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MD: So Jan for your perspective, what role has technology played in, you know, kind of the growth of your organization's success.
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JM: Yeah. So very similar to what Daniel has been talking about. There's a lot of documentation, which we need to do and the documentation is not just on
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JM: On actual components. Yeah, I mean that is very clear reuse. If you're working on ETO you need to make sure that you're working order that you're reusing components that you're reusing building blocks which you have
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JM: Designed already have year ago, a year ago and that you need to make sure that that that you have those also available so that you can very quickly.
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JM: design something for a customer and that delete hands are often not that long, but the very important is to document each step.
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JM: Of that. Yeah, and that this empirical engineering advances which we have made over the last
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JM: five plus years that you somehow document those yeah that they are not just in the brains on our engineers, but that you are
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JM: Providing that collaboration platform, being able to utilize that empirical knowledge and build upon that knowledge and document that Mars and that is for ourselves so incredibly important not just to look at the components and the
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JM: Subsystems and so on, but especially on on testing and validation
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JM: Yeah, what we call it our side, the design verification tests and that you need to do those early on and that you need to document the hits and misses of those
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JM: That you need to then feedback. Those misses back through the quality organization, making sure isn't how do we ensure that this will never happen again. Yeah. And then in incrementally improve
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JM: Your stability on the designs in the first round. Yeah, and I think that's where we have gotten quite a bit better on
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JM: Now obviously, when we talk about technologies and processes causes sounds sometimes manual
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JM: I like technology because in somehow drives the process. Sometimes, or sometimes it causes drives technology but
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JM: Sometimes you still also need to talk to other technology platforms. Yeah, and that's where you need to build very strong processes manual process to make sure that
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JM: information flows and that's where we are not yet in our organization completely sufficient on connecting all those different technology plays together integrated. Yeah, that's something where we still need to work on on the integration layer.
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MD: And, Jan, would you mind elaborating a little bit more, you know, why did you choose the Salesforce.
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JM: Salesforce platform and delivery or customer engineered products. Yeah. And that is, I think, on the iOS side, it's very easy because you start with a customer.
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JM: Used to or you. It starts with a lead. Start with the lead the lead into a contact you move the contact into an opportunity and then union feel opportunity into
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JM: A solution or a project that's where we already were in bed with Salesforce for the last 10 years so for us to try to find an extension.
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JM: On the Salesforce platform was just very natural and well we were lucky to find something there and and haven't regretted it so it's a very seamless process from the starting point to quoting to the engineered solution.
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JM: All seamlessly only one integration platform.
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MD: Thank you. And, Dan, I believe, you know, Salesforce platform as well for you taking it from sales to engineering. Now, all the way to finance and operations side of the house. Correct.
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DV: That's correct, yeah. That's correct. I can elaborate on that and what, what was the kind of the inspiration for moving into that.
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DV: I spent my my career working too many, many different. So, so far, the many, many different departments within the company.
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DV: At a time and service and you will build so many custom machine business for more than 30 years we wanted to
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DV: Help out a customer at an issue and go get the serial number of the machine and the serial number. We would then go back to an Access database. Look it up and then
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DV: Go over to a paper file because see what we've done that and we go over to a different paper file and then we go into a different era P to go find some information and you go across.
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DV: Lots of different platforms to get the information. And so in the process of identifying the full scope of of what occurred.
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DV: Was an endeavor, in and of itself, just because of the way the disconnect the systems work even more so the actual the actual
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DV: You know basis for the designs were often identified in the early stages of the lead communication. So, somebody might approach the trade show and say,
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DV: Hey, I want to, I want to make a large amount of tomato soup, but my tomato soup is special.
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DV: And so I need some type of thing. To add, this different ingredients or if you look at some different way, those types of things happen often
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DV: They can talk about in the early stages that they're documented there, but by the time it gets into the engineering operations, you're focused on
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DV: Mechanical designs your focus on software design. And it's not that you lose track of the original spirit of that. But as somebody walks in, to try to help out that customer 2-3-4-5 -10-20 years later.
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DV: And it looks it up some of those documentation is really are, you know, rat hole somewhere in some kind of email system or or otherwise.
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DV: What what we always wanted to have was one of the walk up to a machine. Look at the serial number, identify a serial number and have full traceability and then
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DV: everything that was said from the day that potential customer came into our, our trade show booth or called our company and said hi
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DV: It says, you know, Chuck for ABC foods or something.
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DV: Here's what I want to do want to know what he what he needed at that time. Well, I don't know how we developed it, I wonder how well it works. I want to know all the way through, so that i can i can diagnose that. So from our perspective.
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DV: We wanted to work towards a single platform that gave full and and continuity of communication and documentation and this from our perspective, it'd be only on the delivery side.
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MD: Thank you.
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MD: So just a few more minutes to go here and our discussion, you know, beyond. And then what would you say some recommendations with want to share with the audience, you know, in regards to considering each year.
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MD: And Dan do you want to kick us off.
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DV: Recommendations with regards to um I think I just wanted a bit, but I guess I can elaborate a bit more, um, I think it's, it's about being careful
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DV: Really to make sure that you're discussing the scope of risk and the scope of what you're doing with the with the customers and collaboratively developing those projects and making sure that you understand that an EPO sales and support process is radically different than
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DV: Makes ordered him to process or or something that's relatively standardized your organization needs to be needs to adapt in all areas to support that I do believe with the right technology, you can run both systems in parallel. And that's our corporations goal.
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DV: But you do need to understand that processes procedures behaviors expectations and even the way you finance or calculate your, your profitability is expect your overheads, the different company if you can run companies under one under one roof with the right technology.
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MD: And Jan. And what about some recommendations from your viewpoint.
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JM: Again, very similar. So there are a few
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JM: Points which which I think I did. I think I second the starting point is, and really understanding the needs of the customer. If you don't understand the need of the customer you're somewhere, not
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JM: Working in sync. And this always ends up somewhere. Later on in the project and and something that, sir. So you need to make sure that your, your, your initial statement of work.
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JM: You spend lots of time together with the customer understanding what he really wants. So that's number one. Otherwise, your project is derailed.
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JM: Second one is so
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JM: So sometimes you do need to do, especially on the technology side.
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JM: Like the lasers, which we have. So sometimes you need to do proof of concept. Yeah. So sometimes you do have like skunk works projects which I will call
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JM: And maybe those you don't document Estoril but anything else beyond the proof of concept needs to be documented. If you don't document you lose control.
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JM: Yeah. And one of the mantras which which I drove into the organization is there is no such
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JM: Change as a small change. There's no small change. You're always every change which you do to something has lots of implications which is going all the way down through the entire organization to lead to the finish line.
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JM: And the last one which I have is if you build that technology if you build out that it was you always need to make sure that you have an eye on the
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JM: Processes and the integration layers into the rest of the technology which you have and this could be anything from like cad, ca tools which we use CFD tools review us
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JM: Or even the your pieces and you need to make sure that you look at the when you design the process for the technology even on the
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JM: On the iOS side that you need to make sure you have the the overview into all the other tools so that you can integrate them either on day one, or maybe even a little later down the curve that's something where you need to have an eye on. Very good.
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MD: Thank you. So Daniel and Jan, you know, I'm I've asked quite a few questions. Is there anything else that you think this audience should to know or range and ask that they should be aware of this, they're considering this path.
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DV: Difficult question.
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DV: Probably a million things to know. But I think that probably what I would say is the key. The key is to just get started, pick, pick a pick a point. Keep it contained
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DV: Don't, don't get too much on it. Do something small and start working through with the right trust the key to wins in and say, from the perspective of implementing the technologies from our perspective.
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DV: Start small and expect that your first implementation or your first execution.
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DV: It's going to have problems. So budget for that accordingly and prepare everyone's expectations. But if you don't start and you keep waiting for that perfect moment. Don't ever start
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DV: So you just have to start
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JM: Take a customer who is 40 kilometers or what is it 30 Miles man is probably charity, because then you want to drive to the customer quickly.
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JM: You want to fix problems quickly. You want to collaborate. You want to learn that the more of those ETOs, you have coming through. Then you can make that radius little wider, but you don't want to start with your first equal customer on a different continent or no.
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JM: hours away on a on a zoom call you want to be close to the customer.
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DV: Here. Another that
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MD: Well, I think you go through your time this morning, joining us and sharing with the audience. Thank you very much.
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DV: Thank you, bye.
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