Great Question: A Manufacturing Podcast

Manufacturing careers for young people featuring efforts in Ohio and Indiana

Welcome to a special Manufacturing Month edition of Production Pulse, IndustryWeek's bi-weekly livestream show. Joining us to discuss the importance of recruiting young people into the manufacturing workforce were Rolland Abramah, superintendent of the Randolph Central School Corp. in Winchester, Indiana; Brant McCormick, plant manager of the Silvertowne Mint in Winchester; Jasper McConnell, a senior in Randolph schools and an employee at student-run machine shop Falcon Industries; and Lori Mesi, coordinator of Pathways Education programs at Dublin City Schools near Columbus, Ohio. 
Mesi brought a group of Dublin students to Honda's central Ohio manufacturing plant late last month in advance of Manufacturing Day and works with students who want to pursue careers in advanced manufacturing. And, as mentioned, Randolph Center Schools runs Falcon Industries and offers machining and welding programs for students, putting them in touch early with local companies who may become future employers for those students. 

Should data be driving all our decision-making?

Joe Kuhn, CMRP, former plant manager, engineer, and global reliability consultant, is now president of Lean Driven Reliability LLC. He is the author of the book “Zero to Hero: How to Jumpstart Your Reliability Journey Given Today’s Business Challenges” and the creator of the Joe Kuhn YouTube Channel, which offers content on starting your reliability journey and achieving financial independence. In our new podcast series, Ask a Plant Manager, Joe considers a commonplace scenario facing the industry and offers his advice, as well as actions that you can take to get on track tomorrow. This episode offers insight on how best to incorporate data into company decisions.

UAW Negotiations Update

The United Auto Workers has been on strike against General Motors, Ford and Stellantis for about two weeks, taking down three manufacturing plants and 38 parts distribution centers. UAW President Shawn Fain plans to address the union's membership tomorrow, either to announce progress toward a new four-year deal or to escalate the strike by taking down more manufacturing plants.
Joining IndustryWeek to discuss the topic were Dave Green, director of UAW Region 2B covering Ohio and Indiana, and Lynne Vincent, a management professor who studies labor relations and other organizational issues at Syracuse University's Whitman School of Management.
Speakers discussed how the union needs a big win here, not just to show its current members that it can deliver big economic gains after two decades of concessionary deals, but to show workers at Telsa, Honda, Toyota, Nissan, Hyundai and Kia that joining a union could deliver better wages and benefits to them as well. 

Real-world generative AI applications in manufacturing

In this episode of Production Pulse, we're talking generative artificial intelligence (AI). Two weeks ago, we spoke to our colleagues from other Endeavor Business Media manufacturing brands. This week, we're talking to Mauricio Casares, the smart industry guru at Schneider Electric who determines how and where that industrial giant spends much of its technology investments.
As with the editors, Casares says most AI manufacturing applications use traditional machine learning techniques, but his companies and others are finding ways of using ChatGPT-style systems to boost productivity and drive operations. 

How do you fill the skills gap left by retirees when you can’t hire more workers?

Joe Kuhn, CMRP, former plant manager, engineer, and global reliability consultant, is now president of Lean Driven Reliability LLC. He is the author of the book “Zero to Hero: How to Jumpstart Your Reliability Journey Given Today’s Business Challenges” and the creator of the Joe Kuhn YouTube Channel, which offers content on starting your reliability journey and achieving financial independence. In our new podcast series, Ask a Plant Manager, Joe considers a commonplace scenario facing the industry and offers his advice, as well as actions that you can take to get on track tomorrow. This episode offers insight on how to upskill your department without hiring additional workers.

AI in industry – How plants are using the new technology to overcome obstacles

Kevin Clark is the VP of Marketing and Customer Success at Falkonry. A veteran of asset management, experienced as a practitioner and educated as an engineer, Kevin brings over 30 years of experience to the fields of engineering, maintenance, and predictive analytics. As a veteran and advocate in the industrial space, Kevin plays a key role in advancing manufacturing and encouraging new technologies as a thought leader, keynote speaker, and M&R expert. He has served through decades of leadership in the Society of Maintenance & Reliability Professionals (SMRP), International Society of Automation (ISA) and as a long-standing board member of Purdue University’s Polytechnic Industry Advisory Board (IAB). Kevin recently spoke with Plant Services editor in chief Thomas Wilk about artificial intelligence's impact on the worlds of operations, maintenance, and reliability. 

What good is generative AI to manufacturing?

ChatGPT is going to change everything! Generative AI is going to make every job in America obsolete by the end of Labor Day Weekend! Even fast food workers are worried that a teenager working in a parent's basement will be able to flip 500 hamburgers an hour using generative artificial intelligence tools. 
OK, maybe the hype hasn't gotten that extreme, but as is typical when a technology is hot, many tech people are trying to ride the wave, adding the word "chat" to long-standing features or promoting their integration of large-language-model tools into their software. So, manufacturing technology editors are getting inundated with pitches about how software that lets people create iambic pentameter sonnets about poodle grooming will soon change how factories make things. 
For this session of our Production Pulse live video series, Bob Vavra from Machine Design and Mike Bacidore from Control Design joined us to discuss how generative systems really could impact factory floors. Some conclusions:
Manufacturers are pretty savvy to what AI can do as they've been using it for more than a decade for quality control, predictive maintenance and to manage production settings on machines
Generative AI systems have more potential to revolutionize design and management but fewer obvious benefits for the shop floor
There are some solid applications hidden amidst the hype

2 software companies combine to help asset-heavy industries improve production and manufacturing

Nikunj Mehta is the founder and CEO of Falkonry, whose time series AI solutions are used by companies to power their digital transformation and achieve significant improvements in production uptime, quality, yield, and safety. He is the co-founder of the Industry 4.0 Club, an egalitarian effort among user advocates, technologists, and manufacturing leaders to advance industrial transformation through Industry 4.0 methods and technologies. Nikunj recently spoke with Plant Services editor in chief Thomas Wilk about the future of Falkonry, the relationship between asset management and artificial intelligence, and how detecting anomalies can improve sustainability.

Yellow’s bankruptcy, beating the heat and US Steel’s future

In this editors roundtable, staff members from IndustryWeek, FleetOwner and EHS Today discuss some of the major manufacturing news stories of the past few weeks including:
FleetOwner Managing Editor Scott Achelpohl discussed: 100-year-old Yellow shuts down, heads to bankruptcy.
EHS Today Editor-in-Chief Dave Blanchard discussed: OSHA Announces Heat Hazard Alert.
IndustryWeek News Editor Anna Smith shared finding from her recent story: More than Half of Women Leaders Believe Company Promotions Are Biased by Gender, Survey Shows.
IndustryWeek Senior Editor Laura Putre shared highlights from her recent interview with U.S. Steel's Richard Fruehauf: US Steel Bets on Mini-Mills, EV Motors for Near-Term Sustainability.

The spectrum of broken — Should you replace outdated parts if they are still functional?

Sean Phillips is a senior project manager with Hargrove Controls and Automation. In May, Sean was awarded the prestigious 2023 Rising Star Award at the Control System Integrator Association Executive Conference in New Orleans. The Rising Star Award is given to an individual who is relatively new to the industry yet has shown attributes of a leader. Sean graduated from Auburn University and began his career in control systems engineering in 2014. Sean recently spoke with Plant Services editor in chief Thomas Wilk about his career, how automation and advanced technologies are changing the industry, and how the tight equipment can prevent downtime and impact the bottom line.
On the record
"That being said, there's still a lot of those old bus protocols out in the plant and a lot of people think “if it's not broke, don't fix it.” Broke sometimes can be on a spectrum, you know? Just how broke is it? At what point is that costing you more money than it would cost to install a more robust, let's say, device level ring with EtherNet/IP. Just speaking generally, that's what I'm seeing, it's a matter of weighing the cost of the new install versus getting rid of the old stuff, which sounds like an obvious conclusion to come to, but intermingled with that is the education of the return that you would get from installing these more robust networks."
-Sean Phillips
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