Unlocking AI’s Potential in Manufacturing: A Conversation with Adam Marsh (Part 2)

So you were talking about how you go through your questions to like,

I love that part of building process solutions

and solutions in general in it. because it’s like just having a really great

conversation with someone who’s smarter than you and you just keep asking.

Why do you

can everybody do that?

Or is there specific set of, is there a person or a skill

that you’ve noticed that makes some people better than others?

Do you ever hear that like you’re really good at Google?

Like, for some reason, you know, my wife always tells me, like, why are you better at Google than me?

Right.

And I feel like if people who have gotten good there are going to get really good at AI.

And I think it’s learning learning what those inputs in it.

I think engineer minds are great for this. because we really think on that process level.

And I’m looking for it to, you got to be willing

to ask it what’s going to go wrong with this.

What are the risk of doing this?

And I would say, not jumping to

AI’s right, let’s roll with it.

But I do like your comment of who’s going to be good at it.

I don’t know.

I’m very interested to see how I have three kids and to see how how they are able to embrace it.

I would say they’re still banking on dad to do a lot of that.

But a couple weeks ago, I was editing a video

from my son plays Laros and he wanted

me to take some videos of him for, you know, he wants to be recruited.

And so we’re working on that.

Sure.

He’s, I’ll take videos for you about it.

And I was kind of struggling video editing

is my thing and and my son jumped in and he’s like, Dad, you’re taking forever.

I’ll fix it.

And that was the first time that’s ever happened.

And I was like, oh, so, so he’s like, he’s getting it.

And he’s going into high school.

And it’s funny to see him, his mind working that way because they’re going to be killer at this

Our school district just asked me to look at their AI policy.

And I’m really happy about that because they’re not completely saying, you can’t use it.

They’re given the kids the opportunity and that’s what we need to do is train people to be good at AI.

So with the children aspect, I’ve

been hearing a lot of news around like cognitive and deterioration and do you have any thoughts around that?

Yeah, I would say, you know, I’m very happy

with the way our school district put it in place where they give, the

teacher has the ability to say, you can use AI and you can’t and learning when to do that.

I’ve taught some engineering classes over Elizabethvetown.

And when I do that

there are times when I’m fine with them to use it, right?

We’re talking about a problem in class and they they start prompting and getting answered.

Great.

But if we get to a test and I really want to test their knowledge and more,

you can’t give them a fact problem anymore.

You have to give them problems, right?

That makes them think through those situations.

And by the way, I just give them paper and make them write it.

So there’s ways you can, you can enforce that.

You need to be creative, but yeah, we have to

you can’t let them rely on it.

And honestly that’s the problem for all of us.

We all have to think about, if we don’t rely on it too much, that’s a problem.

On the flip side, I mean, how good are you at reading a map nowadays?

I mean, I’m going to use the GPS going everywhere.

So there are times when, you know, you think about what you.

It just fades away….

So I’ve never heard

I’ve never heard anyone talk about that

problem with the solution of you just have to change the way your testing their knowledge.

So if I think about that versus when I was in school and

now, if all of my tests were situational, they, those are always harder.

We used to only get one or two of those on a test, right?

Because they’re really difficult..

So if you’re saying now, you can use the resources

that are available, but I’m going to give you situational.

That’s life

Yes, absolutely.

It’s no longer memorization.

And memorization doesn’t get them anywhere.

No.

Right.

And so, so, you know, I that’s the one of the

best parts because I’m an engineer and I like, I love physics, right.

And it wasn’t, I despised chemistry and biology because I felt like I just had to memorize everything.

Right.

Yes.

But with physics, I could I could understand it.

I could figure it out on a test

And so I think for the engineering mine, that’s awesome.

And that’s how we have to challenge them is give them those kind of problems.

So my one of the things I would always do is one

of my finals was I would say, hey, here’s what you’re building.

Give me all the potential risk.

That’s all I want you to do is build that FMEN, right?

That failure risk a failure risk assessment.

So we can really look at what the potential problem is going to be.

And all I want, I want you to find like 10 potential failures and just, I want to see their thinking.

Right.

And so that’s interesting on the teacher’s side because it’s not just thinking about

how do you say, it’s not just thinking about, I can look for this fact and this fact and know that they got it right.

You have to evaluate, are they thinking the way I want them to think?

Kind of like, I don’t care what their answer is as long as they’re, they’re giving me the direction I was expecting them to go.

Yeah, and I’m not going to generalize that every

approach is going to be that way.

But if if the general consensus is we have to change our teaching

to that approach, I think that will pay unbelievably

exponential dividends back on future generations.

100%.

And I think it’s a good opportunity

Yeah.

I would say we probably learned from the internet early, right?

Like we’re in that we’re all that age, right?

This happens soon enough that we learned that them telling

us don’t use the internet for research was not a viable answer at the time.

And so now we recognize that.

Okay.

And I see at least our school district here and I see the college doing that.

So, how do you continue to do that?

I’m on the advisory board

for engineering at Penn State, and that’s something we really preached to

the engineering staff this year was you can’t say no to this.

You have have to show them the use cases and the yes and no with this, right?

And there’s times for and there’s times not for it, but um, but you can’t just turn it off.

Have you figured out any estimating solutions yet?

Yeah, I I built a tool

for a CNC shop as just a starting point.

I can tell you, I don’t love how it processes drawings.

And so I haven’t seen a really, really good tool for that yet.

I’ve seen other, there are specific tools out there for processing drawings that I think are built for that.

And I think that is a solution.

What I’ve built is more around

it has all our pacing in the background.

Enter your times and enter those kind of things.

And it’s easy to update and and enter your the

cost of heat treat and how many parts can, you know, go together, all those kind of things.

And then we can come up with a price.

I think that’s a great, that’s a great starting point of using AI as an opportunity to do that

Where I see it interesting is more in the financial analysis.

I think it can be really strong there for sensitivities.

And when I say that, it’s, I have a tool that does like a

13-w cap cash flow projection, right?

But I’ve layered in, you can say, but run it

again if my cost of goods goes up 5%

Right.

And so think about initially like doing these immediate like scenario checking.

What about scenarios?

What if scenarios?

Think about that with your scheduling tool, which this is where I really want to get to.

Your customer calls and says, hey, can we pull that in by two weeks??

And your guy can be like, full job, X, Y, Z, by two weeks.

What does that do to us?

And, oh, we need two hours of overtime to make that happen

Great.

Now you can tell the customer the price and get them an answer like that.

Maybe the adjustment and go.

I think that is going to be a game changer

in speeding up production and getting things layered in the right way.

Yeah, on the construction side of things, what’s so fascinating about that to me that customers

I could never get that across is one day moving

something could affects 12 or 13 contractors right now.

But to be able to have the, because running what if scenarios through

an actual scheduling tool manually is painful.

Oh, yeah.

Terrible. it’s probably 10,000 activities,

you know, and inside of there, not all of them are affected, but it’ll affect the logic for all of them.

And like, if you have to do three of them in a day, that is a really hard day to get through..

So if you could have that automatically done and then just say, do you want to make the decision?

This is how much it’s going to cost you.

You can have change order conversations at the same time you’re having schedul a conversation.

Exactly.

Well, I’ll tell you.

So I built

a proposal tool for my team, right?

So we can, and all I did was I used a year’s worth of my proposals.

I have a pricing table and things like that.

So while we’re on the phone talking to a customer about doing a

new ISO implementation, we got the price already.

Right?

And so, you know, imagine how quickly you can turn somebody

onto a customer when we, before they get off the phone, they already know what it’s going to cost.

They’re not waiting on a proposal for a week

Right.

And so, you know, you, people don’t go and look for three

other quotes because they are comfortable with you, the price is in line and they move forward.

Right?

You don’t even give them an opportunity to go do that.

My problem with that is we’re not a commodity base.

We’re a custom metal fabrication.

So it’s so hard because I don’t have this dashboard table

behind everything that just says X equals this amount.

And it’s so when they come up with the drawings

to bombs, I’m going to be so pumped..

You know, or just like, because I even asked, I’ve asked a couple of AI people this.

Like, you remember the bar game at the corner that is this picture in this picture

find 12 different things, but they look the same?

I want that just for the return submittals, right?

Because they’re 400 pages long.

The engineers don’t tell you where they change something and we have to go through and comb that.

That’s brilliant.

So we did that

in a similar way.

I have a customer that does work for a defense contractor

and they get a purchase order once a week.

And then the next week they get their new purchase order, which is a revised version of the previous one, right?

But it’s like 400 line items.

Right.

And so they have to go through each one.

So we just build a PO comparison tool.

We just bring in both of them, tell me by line what changed and what didn’t.

And now they don’t have to go through that.

Can you do it with pictures

I would love to test it.

I would say it depends on the complexity of the picture.

Yes.

That’s what I keeps telling me.

Yeah.

You know, if I haven’t had good luck with it messing with GD&T, right?

I’ve tried to say, can you pull this in?

And then

now, look, there’s really good software out for some of that, right?

When you look at doing that first article inspection and creating

your first article report, we’ve started to use software called discuss for that, right?

That we can grab a print and it will literally bubble, you know, bubble

print it, right, and pull those dimensions down.

And that’s using some intelligelligence.

That exists

That’s way better than what ChatGP can deliver.

It just doesn’t.

It’s not there yet.

And so I would say it’s honestly hasn’t been built for that purpose yet.

At some point, somebody’s going to build it with manufacturing in mind, but it’s really been built for coders right now.

Yes.

From what I’ve heard so far, there is a solution out there more

for the wood industry or carpentry

because their commodities and units are so similar.

And so they can build the database behind that and

it’ll always be the same words on the drawings.

Unfortunately, in steel, we don’t do that.

So it’s all over the place and they said like there’s nothing to reference

Yeah.

Because the database would be so huge, but they said if they get

to a point where it’s not just reading language, it can read objects

and pictures, then that’s where you could plug in a DWG and roll with it.

Yeah, that’ll be, I mean, that’s going to be the game changer right there.

But it’s interesting.

For everything, you know, it’ll be interesting to see what what it does to prices because you’re going to see

competitive pricing in that market because people can

crank out quote, quotes really fast then, right?

So that’ll be interesting to see what that does to the whole market because

it’s going to be tough..

Yeah, it’ll be a volume.

You see it with the CNC world now.

I mean, I see, there’s so many CNC, great example, the laser guys

right?

10 years ago, 20 years ago,, having a laser was a big deal.

Now everybody’s got one.

Yep.

Right.

So that’s, that is a super competitive market now.

And so it’s interesting to see how that has changed over the years.

And then the the direction people are trying to go.

More and more of our CNC customers are shooting

for med device work or aerospace work because

the dollars are still there.

Right.

But if you’re doing OEM work, I mean, they’re pushing you so

hard on price, it is, it’s really hard.

What’s going to be interesting is the non-tangles that

proposals will need to stand out in the crowd of just the price.

Because if we all get to that point

partnerships, relationships are going to reign supreme, especially in our world, but we also do install?

That’ll be a competitive advantage.

But then on the install side, do I have to babysit you?

Do I not?

What does that look like?

How good are you running projects?

How much can I rely on you?

Because engineers are getting younger.

Project managers are getting younger in our customer facilities

And they just don’t have that experience yet to run a huge project, you know, usually like they’re being handed.

Yeah.

And I see it in machining in that defense world.

That’s a great example of the guys who are going to go through CMC.

You guys don’t do any defense..

Okay.

So there’s some new cybersecurity requirements coming

and small manufacturers are really struggling because it’s really expensive.

The audit alone, look, an ICO audit’s going to run you $5, $10 grand, right?

The CMMC audit is like $50,000.

Yep.

And when you’re a two, $3 million shop,

Okay.

good luck.

Right??

I mean, that that’s a good bit of your profit margin every year in CNC machin.

So I see it as a big hurdle for those guys

going forward, and that’s exactly what’s going to happen, right?

Is those kind of things are going to hurt the small guys.

So they they’re going to have to find alternatives

And I see the guys who are embracing it and who are willing to go out and

spend that money, they’re going to get a lot of work.

Right.

And look, there’s not enough defense contractors around right now, right?

I mean,’s when you look at, you were at the manufacturers Association yesterday, you said, right?

And, I mean, they have, they got $6 million from the Navy for a reason, right?

This area is the biggest supplier of the subparts.

I saw that.

I saw that huge submarine situation going on, and it’ll be interesting to see how they’ll start asking

locals who aren’t in that world, you know, and being like, hey, we need help.

Would you be interested?

This is what you need.

Is this something you’d want to take on?

Well, so, you guys would be well positioned because

of your IO 9001 sir.

You know, that’s where you get into the aerospace, the S9100

is good, but it’s that IT systems requirement, right?

So the cybercurity stuff gets pretty tight where you’re probably going to have

maybe more, just in the implementation, and then at least another $50 for the audit.

Yep.

And so when you’re a small guy, it’s hard to hard

to see that you can afford that and make it happen.

Yeah, actually, that’s so interesting because one of my vestige members,

uh, he runs a subsecurity for government contract specifically.

So I hear this language.

Now I’m comfortable with it because I’ve heard him talk for three or four years and

it’s just something we haven’t dealt with, but mostly because we haven’t gotten into that.

But, with some of these huge contracts coming into the area, it’s interesting.

Yeah, I would say we get to ask a lot about that.

There’s a, we’re not, I’m not an IT security guy.

We’re, you know, we

re we’re really quality in process and systems focused.

And so we really have great partners that we refer to.

And there’s a pretty good network for it.

I’m a little concerned on the funding side that I think there could

be some more funding for these small guys.

If you want them to stay in, you need these manufacturers, that’s an area that there could be.

You can’t run them out for sure.

And whether that’s like a grant or something from the state or from the

government that that’s going to be need to be looked at, maybe a revenue cap or something.

Yeah, when you pass it, when you pass the audit, you can get a reimbursement or something.

I think that would be a great way to incentivize them to go through those things.

man.

My mind hasn’t stopped since we started talking.

And I’ve gotten to one question.

These are my favorite podcasts because it’s just stuff I’m really passionate about.

And I love talking.

I mean, you know way more than I do.

And just hearing the problem and what people are doing and, and what people are getting into

It’s, it always surprises me how much people are still a little nervous about it.

Yeah.

But most of it’s like, you could go down a road,

you’ll try something and go, oh, really, I don’t really like that.

I’m like, just keep, just keep chipping away.

So I’m so happy you said that you laid tile because I tell people this all the time.

Like, I’m also, I am mechanically incompetent.

But what’s hilarious is my dad can literally build anything.

So

I’m not good with the tape measure.

I don’t understand any of this world, but I now have the confidence

and I’ll get super nerd here is to hang up my four lightsabers

on my basement wall and I can do it and spread them out perfectly because I took a picture of the wall.

I said, how long it was?

Because I did measure it.

I said, okay, what are the fractions?

What does this mean?

And then it told me how to spread it out, what anchors to use based on the weight of them?

Like

it gives me so much confidence to try things that I would I would be so frustrated by.

Yeah.

And so I’m I’m using that, you know, even in business.

I’ve been marketing more now just because I’m

able to think through, right?

Than I ever have.

I’m writing articles.

I’m posting weekly.

I’m doing a monthly newsletter that I’ve never been able to do before.

I’m generating so much more content

because I have a partner to help me think through that.

And, hey, give me some ideas for this or, you know, let’s

work through that and see how I can apply it to this customer.

And boom, now I’ve got an article out of it.

And so that’s been really good for us.

I can tell you that’s, we got a new customer in Wisconsin this year because

they, they asked ChatuPT to use and it said, use us.

I was wondering, so my marketing team actually

said, hey, we’re prepping your website for LLM instead

of SEO, like, or whatever it’s called on the chat side

so that we’re pulled into that, you know, manufacturers in the US

that have this much space because we also have a virtual tour and it can

go find that and read on the website, right and all that kind of stuff.

Well, I think you’re probably positioned pretty well

because you’re generating content for right now.

It’s not pay to play right now.

No.

Right now.

I mean, you know that’s going to come.

But, but right now, it’s not pay to play.

Right.

And so they will, they will be able to find you if you, if you’re a content creator.

And I’d

I spent a lot of years writing blogs, right?

I wrote a lot of blogs for the Business journal.

I’ve and I’ve just posted them and posted them, you know,

and sometimes too, like, why am I even doing this?

But I just felt like I needed to get it out.

Right.

And now I’m so glad that I did it because I got a library.

Yeah, exactly.

And I’m able to refer to that and say, and it’s finding

them and pulling data out, you know, you kind of get mad at Google because when

you think about it, if somebody asks a question and the answer is on your website

they’re just telling people, right?

It’s in that summary at the top and they never drive your website.

So it’ll be interesting to see how they have to shift in this because I’m sure that

not going to spend as much on Google ads as, you know, I don’t need to be the top of Google now.

I need to be the first name it comes up with when they ask, you know, who’s the expert in this?

I love that you that you said marketing.

I think, so I wouldn’t be able to be into half the shit I’m in without AI.

Like I haven’t, I mean, I’m going to be honest here.

I haven’t written an actual podcast question since I started this thing..

Because my process allows me to put in the data that I need

to go make engaging questions.

Just like when I do YouTube videos, I don’t write scripts anymore.

I talk about what I’m going through, what, like I do

a lot of our vacation travel trips and then I review the places we go

and I’ll say, these are all my highlights for my trip is what I like, what I didn’t like.

And then it, you know, I want it to be this this is my engage.

I give it all my an analytics from my channel.

It knows the aged range it’s going after tells me what music to use because of the age range.

How you know what?

I didn’t, I didn’t even realize.

It said, most of your audience is going to watch on a television because of their age range.

And I was Oh, interesting

They said, so don’t zoom in and out.

Don’t get poppy.

Don’t do all the Mr. Beast stuff because your audience is going to want

to feel the longer five second clips to be in that moment.

And I was like, this is brilliant.

So I’ve started using, I’ve been speaking a lot.

And so I’ve been encour, Hey, start recording them.

And then I started using opus

which is, which is pretty strong because I’m not that good at video editing yet.

Right.

And so I drop it into opus and it helps me cut it up the way

I want it to and put the words over it.

And then it ranks those clips to say, this is the one you should put up.

Yep.

And so that, I would say

that’s been really helpful.

And look, I now have a team that’s helping coach me through this.

Yeah.

And having the, you know, sort

of having the thought that you learn very quickly that you’re not the expert in that, but you can become the expert.

And so they’ve coached me through what cameras to use, what microphones to have and things like that.

And

then I can go execute and set things up.

And, and so we’re working through all that in ways that

we’ve, we’ve really been able to expand.

And I would say over the next year, I will really see the fruits coming up of that.

But that’s all, that’s all hustling, right?

Right.

You’re always

Did I post five days a week, man?

I get it.

But I’m two months ahead all the time.

Like I just scheduled all my post out because some days you just don’t have the time.

But when you do, you post twice.

Biggest thing for me, I don’t think people realize on LinkedIn.

I don’t even do a good enough job, but it is

responding to people’s posts will get you probably faster engagement than posting your own stuff.

Yeah, yeah, I think you’re right.

And I don’t, I probably don’t quite do enough of that..

And it’s a tough, it’s a tough one.

Right.

We really tried to use LinkedIn

probably primarily compared to Facebook or any of the other ones,

because it’s just so right up our alley and I can target the people that

I really want to target, but it’s expensive to market on.

And so I think you’re way better off spending some time doing those kind

of things and posting videos and posting original content.

The videos have really driven a lot.

The Videos I get the most play on are anything to do

with family, things that feel really real.

So I would say like..

Right?

And so two years ago, I had to go to an event and I had to speak at it.

It was for a group called Leadership York here.

And somehow my daughter, who was like three or four at the time

just, I didn’t have anywhere for her.

So she was gone with me.

And so I’m up speaking and she decides she’s got to be with dad.

And so somebody snapped a picture of me and it’s her hanging on my leg as I’m talking.

And I have to tell you, I’ve never gotten more hits.

And so it’s like, great, you know, my daughter drives more traffic than I do.

Right.

Yeah.

But, but, you know, those kind of like that being trying to be real like that I think is really strong

You do a great job for that too.

And so you can see like you, you bring that passion and it’s

not, I’ve learned, I cannot read into the camera, right?

I just can’t.

It just sounds too stale.

So these kind of things where we just get to talk is way better.

So let me ask you a couple of things about speaking because I am fascinated about it.

I want to get into it because I’m like a culture monster.

I could talk about culture like forever.

And I have a weird feeling about culture and kind of how to get it there.

And I I saw, I don’t know if you use the glasses that have the prompters in them that connect.

So they connect to your phone and you can put your entire speech on

there so you can have the highlight reel, just like a regular computer prompter.

And they’re green, nobody can see from the outside.

They’re actually only inside the lens.

And I was like, well, if I have to do, you know, like an hour, it’s a long time, especially

it’s my first one and it’d be a little scary.

So I was like, maybe I’ll just, because apparently these glasses are used by.

You can see once you see them, you’ll never unsee them on everyone who’s doing huge speeches.

So they’re like all over TEDXs and stuff.

So that’s pretty funny.

When I do, when I do like the AI talk I’ve been giving,

I get it so much that I don’t, I wouldn’t want to read that one

because I really have to read the room and get their kind of what,

what is the room like before, while I deliver that?

You almost have to see how much are they nodding along?

How scared do they look?

And so for that topic, I’t, I don’t need it, right?

I just got, I just did one, what about a half hour, right, give or take?

And,

and that’s what they wanted to keep me to.

People stayed for an hour afterwards and asked me questions.

And that, you know, so it’s really that like topic for us, that this one’s really easy.

I did a keynote last year up at Penn State and

for the industrial engineering grads.

And while I was there, like that one had me more nervous than going in

front of professional going about AI because I really, you know, it’s it’s just a different delivery.

You know, what really helped me was teaching

So I, you know, taught these classes, so I’m in front of kids and

I really got, you know, kind of more used to

it and fell a little better about my presentation there.

And then doing as many of these.

So if people ask me to do a podcast or do any, I will do them because I just want the reps.

Yes.

Right.

So even if it’s one, I’m not sure it’s like worth it, I’m going to probably do it

because I love getting the reps and I’m just getting better at it every time.

No, I think that is so brilliant.

I actually love being on the other side of the mic as well because I think it’s really good practice.

It’s this has made me so much better at listening all over the place.

And

I went into it.

I started doing this because I don’t like going to mixers.

I don’t golf.

I hate being out of my house when I’m not at work.

So This was my happy place right here.

My video game right there.

And so this allows me to stay relevant and also

make real connections with people because it’s hard to hide for an hour.

You can kind of get to know people pretty well.

And I have 80 hours that people if they want

to go work for us can go see what it’s like to hear me.

I’m the same person almost every episode.

So like you get, if you like it or you don’t.

I think it gives people, my team has been really

encouraging of me diving into the AI thing, right?

And because they see the potential for us and for the company,

but also really appreciative that I’m trying to think in the future of where we’re going to go.

And so by doing what you’re doing, right, and

showing people, here’s the path we’re going and here’s

what I’m thinking and getting making sure they’re kind of on the same page as

you, I think that’s that’s that’s really powerful.

I agree on the mixer thing.

Mine is I’m okay going to them, but I just don’t have the time.

I’ve got three kids and no offense if it’s go to a mixer tonight or hang out with my kids.

I only get so many more years with them

And so I want to do more of them.

We’re going to the Revs game tonight..

And so, so those kind of things we really try to do.

And so, uh, you know, I have, I have a team member that can go to more mixers than I can.

And so, but I try to to go when I can, but it’s tough, right?

So I do go to the big ones, but

I can’t make them all anymore.

Well, you’re going and talking on them, so you don’t have to go to the.

I can go talk.

Yeah, that’s a different story.

I’m doing it’ss funny.

You mentioned I’m working on the wood products.

They have a conference in Lancaster, and they asked me to do a keynote about AI.

And so your comment about they have their own maybe tool that I can.

I’m going to go do some research so I have something.

But I have a bunch of them scheduled for the fall because people have

seen it and now they just want somebody who’s actually using it come to talk.

It’s really good.

Yeah., there’s a lot of noise with it.

And I think I love having AI people on here

to talk about it because I literally turn around and then just work with them because

it’s like, and then I’m giving like the first AI partner I

have on here, I think I’ve given him like 15 clients because I’m just like

there’s so, like I get DMs every day about it.

And it’s, I understand there’s probably a ton of amazing partners

out there, but at the same time, I want you to work.

Like I asked almost all of them.

Like you can come on and talk about it if you’re really passionate about it.

And you’d be surprised about by many people to say no.

And I’m like, well, then

maybe you’re not that passionate about it.

Like, you know, I had a customer yesterday who,

who we gave them a good quote for it and they’re like, it’s a little much.

And I was like, look, understand it’s, you know, it’s, it’s expensive.

I said, but when you look at the reality of where we’re heading, and

I ended up with like this really long email this morning about it.

And I was and I apologized.

I said, sorry, I’m just really passionate about this

And I just, I want you to be prepared because this is coming, whether you’re going to invest or not.

And when you think about the investment that you can make into AI of

$5,000 or $10,000 here, it’s pretty low compared to a robot.

And everybody in your business can use it.

And so I think it’s an opportunity that you that there’s

going to be things that you have no idea about.

And that question is, what’s the RI?

We have no idea, but it’s probably incalculable

Right.

And so let’s think about that as more

about, this is a really wide tool that your whole business can use.

And that’s where you can get people on.

Like get everybody using it. and thinking about it versus that sort of top down.

Here’s our new software.

Here’s how we use it, guys.

No, no.

This is, here’s the software, guys.

You tell us what you need and we’ll build it.

Yeah, I don’t understand the RLI question because it’s literally hours, times however many employees you have.

Thank you.

Exactly.

Don’t get it.

Like, it is that simple.

It’s, you just take really task heavy

things that irritate your team and wipe them away.

And then guess what?

You go say, do this other thing.

It’s more valuable.

I just took a scientist and he was spending two

and a half, three hours creating some documents after he’d made a project

And we’ve eliminated that.

What do you think that time’s worth?

Every time he does that, that’s probably two or three times a day. invention.

Yeah.

So it’s it’s really becomes a no-brainer, but you got to get people past.

So I’ve actually, a lot of the sales we’ve done, I’ve had to build them that first tool

to help prove the ROI.

So, so leadership would be like, okay, we get it.

All right?

All right.

All right.

I’ll build the first tool for you if that’s going to get you over the hump.

But, you know, that’s not where it really should be coming from.

And, you know, some of them take a long time.

I’ll build a simple one for.

But once they see it, they’re in.

No, yeah, I’m a thousand percent with you.

And I think part of it’s just like

even presenting some to my own team of like, hey, you don’t have to do that anymore.

Just put it in here.

Like when we did the contract review, like I did the first 11

to make sure it was getting what we needed.

And then I hand it off to my sales team.

Like, what do you mean we’re doing it?

I’m like, it’ll take you half an hour to 45 minutes to go through this.

So yeah, they’re good.

Or they’re not doing it, which is really scary, by the way.

Well, a lot of our customers said, there’s a lot of red on here.

And I said, it was actually way better than what we used to do.

Yeah.

But it had all of our same boy playate stuff in there.

It just said

it’s black or white.

You either want it or you don’t.

Sobot doesn’t care.

It’s just telling you don’t put it in there.

So it was really funny.

We had to actually scale it back a little bit because our customers were getting a little upset.

We’re already at an hour so I don’t want to, I don’t want to take your time away.

Where, one, where can I find you?

Where can I go talk to you and talk about future things?

Where can everybody find you?

Where do you like everybody to go to find you?

All right.

So number one, look me up on LinkedIn is Adam Marsh

at Led Yank.

You can always go to ledyank.com.

You’ll see things about our quality services, our AI services.

You can schedule meetings with us.

We are more than half happy to jump on, talk about use cases, and see if we can find one for your businessits.

So our team loves to do that, and we’re spending time

really helping manufacturers, whether that’s on the quality side, helping them implant

new systems so they can get new customers, helping them stay current with

their system or even being a fractional quality manager

all the way over to delivering them software solutions.

So we’re becoming this service provider where we look at systems

and then and then find the solution for that system.

That’s where we’re really getting good is looking at at operating systems

and looking for those things we can tweak to make it better, faster, higher possible. quality.

One last question.

Have you seen the AR goggles in the quality world now that

people can wear that the drawings are right in the eyeglasses and they overlay?

Have you Yeah.

So, all right.

So I’m working on some knowledge capture right now.

Okay.

And I have this, this kind of crazy idea that I want to build.

And one of the things I was pushed about was, well, we could just put on these

VR headsets on on our production workers and we’ll capture things that they’re doing.

And my first thought is the production workers I put that on are going to throw it in the trash can really fast.

And so I’m really careful to see what direction are we heading with that?

I think it’s cool

I’m cautious on, is it more work than it’s worth?

Right.

And so, and that that’s actually a really interesting question

is we’re not, we don’t just want to use AI for the sake of AI.

We got to see the real value coming out of it.

And I haven’t seen them unless you’re in an assembly situation, right?

That you’re doing high volumes.

And I tend to work with customers that are lower volume

is really, it’s just like justifying a robot.

It’s really hard to spend the time to do all that for what you get out of it.

Yeah, I love that.

So the conversation I had with the AI person last three week, they were heading

into a, they were heading into like a meta conversation and I

bought a pair of Ray-band metas because one, I took a lot of video

and they had the cameras in them and I wanted the translation portion.

And I said to them, can you tell them in there to put safety

glass in it with sid shield so I can wear it in the shop because

we are getting into spaces that I need to translate

with some of our team members in the field or in the shop.

And I want, I want to feel like I know them.

And then also I can use the cameras in the face and not have to

And they were like, wait, what do you want?

I said, I just want safety glasses out of these things so I can actually

use them in the shop because I got to put them on over my safety glasses and I can’t say anything.

It’s annoying.

Oh, that’s a nightmare.

Yeah, that’s, that’s that’s a.

There’s some really cool applications there, but I’m cautious

on the big guys are going to be able to use them.

The guy’s doing tons of assembly are going to be able to be so great.

But how does that help the smaller guys?

I’m always careful on what are we going to use that that adds the value?

And we still need those people who are just kick butt in

the shop and and how are we training them?

So our focus has been on that side more

and really working with guys like the manufacturers Association Man Tech to do that kind of training.

Yeah, that’s sick.

This was amazing.

One, thanks for taking the time.

I sorry for you two podcasts back to back it.

Wow, you’re good.

I’m always happy..

So if you ever want to do another one, you know.

You’re good.

Yeah.

Well, no, I’ve, we’ll have to get on a call because I want to, I want to pick your

brain some more and then have you look at a couple things.

Because I’m actually, as I’m doing my Clueless CEO Chronicles, I’m

capturing the process improvements that I’m seeing because that’s just, I’m like you, my brain works that way.

I’m like seeing annoying things.

And so as I’m capturing those, I’m running into roadblocks of things I maybe want to solve.

So I’ll give you a ring and we chat.

Hey, we’re all about seeing what those are because it’s going

Look.

That’d be great.

to be a whole industry coming with us.

And if people are

if you got your head in the hand, you’re in trouble six months from now, a year from now.

Yeah, I agree.

Well, Adam, thank you so much for spending an hour and six minutes.

Hopefully have a good time at the baseball game tonight.

And yeah, man, we’ll catch everybody on the next one.

Thank you.