December 11, 2023 • 52 mins
We like to talk to interesting people on this show so when Praxie reached out to us wondering if their CEO, Michael Lynch could come on the show we knew it would be a fun conversation.
Michael is the former head of Internet of Things at SAP software and now CEO of Praxie (and believe it or not, former lead in Les Miserables on Broadway prior to that!).
We talk about how Michael went from the acting/performance world to the internet of things and eventually wound up founding Praxie.
Praxie provides a platform that allows organizations to transform their workflows with AI-powered processes, dashboards, and applications, without spending an arm and a leg and taking months to complete. This is especially relevant for manufacturing businesses who are stuck using Excel spreadsheets and software from the 80s.
pickplacepodcast.com
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Chris (00:08):
Welcome to the PickPlace podcast, a show where we
talk about electronicsmanufacturing and everything
related to getting a circuitboard into the world.
This is Chris Dennywith Worthington.
Melissa (00:17):
And this is Melissa Hough with CircuitHub.
Chris (00:19):
Do you think people aren't quite sure whose
voice is who at this point?
Do we keep needing to tellpeople who we are at the intro?
Melissa (00:26):
Well, for the new people, the new
listeners, they won't know.
Chris (00:28):
that's true.
That's true.
That's a good point.
That's a good point.
All right.
Solid point.
We'll keep doing it then.
What's new, Melissa?
Melissa (00:35):
It's been a
Chris (00:36):
cat this
Melissa (00:36):
return not in this episode.
Oh, I don't know.
I feel like things are alwayssuper busy towards the end
of the year, work wise.
Everyone needs something.
I'm sure, yeah.
I know it's been crazybusy at the factory, too.
Chris (00:51):
crazy busy.
We have not been this busy inyears, honestly, pre, pre COVID.
We haven't been this busysince pre COVID, I think.
And it, but we'reexecuting, it's brilliant.
We had time to kind ofbreathe a little bit and set
ourselves up for success andwe're just pulling it off.
It's really exciting.
But on both sides, bothon CircuitHub's side and
on Worthington's side.
Our guess is that it'slike, a lot of people
(01:14):
want to wrap projects upby the end of the year.
They, they have budgetsthey want to spend, that
kind of stuff, yeah, so weget super busy, but, yeah.
So it's so easy to ignore, youknow, recording the episode.
Ah, just push itoff another week.
We'll push it off another week.
But, uh, this week we're, we'reexcited to have a special guest.
We're going to haveMichael Lynch on the show.
He is the former headof the internet of
(01:35):
things at SAP software.
Maybe you've heard of them.
And now the CEO of Praxieand believe it or not, and I
can't wait to talk about this.
The former lead.
in Les Miserables on Broadway.
I have got to knowmore about that.
Michael, welcome to the show.
Michael (01:52):
Hey guys, hi Chris, hi Melissa, how are you guys today?
Melissa (01:55):
Good.
How are you?
Michael (01:56):
Excellent.
Chris (01:57):
Excellent.
Me too.
Me too.
All right.
All right.
Dish.
Cause you, like my wife and Ihave seen Les Mis on Broadway
at least four or five times now.
We've seen it in Boston,but like it is, I don't
think we're alone in sayingthis, our favorite Broadway
show we've ever seen.
And we've seen dozens of them.
Michael (02:14):
It's pretty good.
There are some other ones,there's some good stuff
in like, you know, Wicked,
Chris (02:20):
We just like being really
Michael (02:21):
Hamilton.
Chris (02:22):
like being sad is
Michael (02:23):
You want to bawl your face out?
Yeah, I dream the dream, yes.
So, the story, so I actually,yeah, unlike you, Smarty Pants,
I I went to music school at the
Chris (02:33):
Oh, cool.
Michael (02:33):
School of Music.
And and then I actuallydropped out because it was,
as you do, because I, Irealized I was spending all
this money and nobody caredabout, in, in theater, nobody
cares about your degree.
They just care, youknow, can you sing?
Can you dance?
Can you act?
What do you look like?
And so I went, I've kind ofcreated my own curriculum
and just studied for afew years in Manhattan.
(02:55):
And then I started gettingjobs and ended up doing a
bunch of Broadway shows.
And then I was on generalhospital for a couple of years.
Chris (03:01):
Come on.
Michael (03:02):
Yeah, trying to be a heartthrob.
Chris (03:04):
Like out in Hollywood.
Michael (03:05):
yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
My wife and I both came out.
She was on Seinfeld and awhole bunch of other things.
She's done a ton of stuff.
She's done a ton onBroadway as well.
Chris (03:14):
Is that how you get met?
You met in the arts?
Michael (03:16):
Actually, you know what's really the coolest
thing is we have a videoof the moment we met.
Chris (03:20):
Come on.
Melissa (03:21):
Aw.
Michael (03:22):
because we were doing a TV commercial and we were
dancing on it and I came inand she came in and we have
the video of us rehearsing.
And so that was, but shewas dating this other guy
and I would see them allaround, you know, they, we,
Chris (03:34):
him.
Michael (03:35):
well, he was like, I wasn't like, it was weird.
It was like, we knew each otherand I'd say, Hey, how's Robbie?
And then yours wentby and how's Robbie?
She goes, Oh, Ibroke up with him.
I got, Oh, that's terrible.
What are you doing?
So, so, that's how, that'show it all came together.
Chris (03:51):
too cool.
Michael (03:52):
yeah, so we've been together decades now.
It's great.
Chris (03:55):
Nice.
Alright, so, no, like, whatwas your role on Les Mis?
Michael (03:59):
Oh, so I played Marius.
I did the empty chairsat empty tables.
Chris (04:03):
No
Michael (04:04):
Yeah, that's the song I did.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And I'm the, I'mthe one that lived,
Chris (04:09):
See, yeah, my wife, I think that's my
wife's favorite character.
I'm trying to remember.
I'm
Michael (04:13):
my wife had the better character.
My wife played Eponine.
Chris (04:16):
Oh my gosh, you're kidding
Michael (04:18):
Yeah.
So we did it together and shewould dime arms every night.
And the fun, the story, thefunny story I tell is the
Chris (04:23):
And you were dating at the time, or were
Michael (04:25):
we were married, no, we were married, they
hired us as a package.
So,
Chris (04:28):
This is incredible!
Michael (04:30):
it was cool.
She would, she would dye my armsinto a win-win rehearsal, like.
Well, you didn't have to act.
I was like, well, she's allcovered with blood and crying
and then by about the fourthweek You're like your elbows
in like stop it, you knowSo, yeah, we did that we did
it for about a year together
Chris (04:50):
That's so exciting!
Michael (04:51):
Came out to Hollywood and did some stuff there
Chris (04:53):
We talk, we talk in like, late 90s, 2000s, like, what,
Michael (04:57):
90s yeah 90s and then I came out to LA and I was
doing soap operas and stuffand I I actually, you guys
will laugh because you'reyounger than I am, but I have
this Time Magazine cover ofwhat they were, they were
talking about the internet.
Chris (05:08):
Oh,
Michael (05:09):
And I was, yeah, I was sitting in my, I was sitting
in my dressing room on Broadwaylooking at the same going on.
It was like that, that moviewhere they say plastics, like
I got to get out of here.
Chris (05:18):
Yeah, the graduate.
Michael (05:20):
the graduate, right?
Plastics.
So I was like the internet.
So I went to Hollywood andI was doing TV shows and
I kept looking for At thatpoint, I had got the bug.
I had to get it and I wasdoing well in acting and
everything, but I justdidn't feel like I didn't
really want to be an actor.
I kind of wanted to be apop star and all that stuff.
And I, I was losingmy hair at that point.
I go, that's over.
So I got to do something cool.
(05:40):
So anyway, I gotinto the internet.
I got, I walked into a,yeah, I walked into a
computer game company.
That was a startup thatI had read about and
said, I'd work for free.
And I go, Oh, free is good.
And so I came in and and then,I started building stuff and
I ended up running productionand we took the company public.
So I got the sortof on the ground.
(06:01):
I never, I mean, mybackground is just weird.
That, that was really lucky.
I happened to walk into a greatplace and we figured it out.
And so I learnedthat whole process.
It was called Seventh Level.
They eventually, we wentpublic and then they sold it.
I can't remember whosold it to in the end.
Chris (06:15):
Were they known for any particular Did
they have any particular
Michael (06:18):
This was early 90s.
So you guys probably, doyou remember all these games
where you had walked throughhallways and try to figure out
the combination and somethingwould open up like Myst?
Yeah, we did.
The most famous one wedid was one based on
the Monty Python series.
Chris (06:31):
Oh, no sir.
Michael (06:32):
yeah, so what the best job I ever had I spent three
weeks transcribing Monty PythonSo I got paid to sit there and
watch Monty Python all day longand laugh and change, you know
Chris (06:44):
That's incredible.
Michael (06:45):
that is an ex parrot, you
Chris (06:47):
That's incredible.
That must have been amazing.
Michael (06:50):
it was great.
Chris (06:50):
I, I, this show is known for going off in tangents.
I'll just share a funny storyabout transcribing things.
My sister was doingsomething in college.
And she told me, she's like,I'll give you 40 bucks if you
transcribe this, this thing.
thing for my paper.
And I'm like, causeI'm pretty fast typist.
I'm like, sure.
And so she'sinterviewing this woman.
She, she went to schoolto be a dietician.
She's interviewing this womanand this woman is explaining
(07:11):
how after she had a child,she's having trouble, like
losing weight again, she wantsto, you know, feel comfortable
again, yada, yada, yada.
And, and my sister'slike, Oh, I know.
My mom told me that if shehad known how much weight
she was going to gain whenshe had my brother, she
never would have done it.
I'm like, Hold on a second!I'm sitting here transcribing
Michael (07:30):
never told me that.
Chris (07:33):
So careful when you're transcribing things.
You may hear thingsyou never heard before.
Michael (07:36):
no, it was super fun.
That sounds like, thatsounds almost as fun.
A little, little harder,but almost as fun.
Chris (07:41):
Yeah
Michael (07:42):
and then started making computer games.
Then the 3D aspects got meinto mechanical cad, and then
we created a company thatread hundreds of different
mechanical CAD formats andwe generated illustrations
and virtual reality andall that kinda stuff.
And then SAP boughtthat company.
And we're basically theircollaborative backbone
and visualization backboneon the SAP platform.
And then I, and then Itook on the Internet of
(08:03):
Things and Industry 4.
0 for them as
Chris (08:06):
What time frame, roughly, like when internet 4.
0 and
Michael (08:10):
So they bought our company in 2012, 13.
And so, you know, that decadeyou know, the Internet of
Things and, you know, magicmachines and all that stuff
was kind of a super hype thing.
And as I.
You know, got and tried tocommunicate that, you know,
manufacturing had been doingit for a while and they were,
the question was, could youtake it much more broadly?
(08:32):
Like everybody tried toput it in coffee machines.
I mean, I had, I had dozensand dozens of meetings at
SAP with vendors who weretrying to figure out how
to get it into machinesthat didn't really need it.
Chris (08:42):
Well, it's here now.
Like, my dishwasheris connected to Wi Fi.
Like,
Michael (08:46):
Yeah, it's here.
Yeah.
And the vision of it was, itwas like all encompassing, but
I think, I think the internetis like You know, like motors
where they thought, I don'tknow if you know this history.
They, they, when motors,electric motors first came out,
they thought the house wouldhave a central electric motor.
Chris (09:02):
Yeah, because that's how factories were,
Michael (09:04):
Yeah.
And, and then we ended upwith motors and everything.
And so I think that's the truthabout internet as well as,
you know, AI and everythingelse that comes along.
It'll, it'll just microinto the app and it'll do
what it's supposed to do.
Chris (09:14):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Fascinating.
All right.
So you're at SAP.
Michael (09:20):
Yeah,
Chris (09:20):
I don't know, you get bored or whatever.
What, tell us about Praxieand, and how, how you
got started with that?
Well, first of all, I thinkI, I did mention it yet.
You're now the CEO of Praxi.
Tell us a little bit about likewhat exactly it is and, and what
you're trying to do with it.
When, when did you start it?
Michael (09:36):
It's about five years old now.
We.
So this goes to SAP.
SAP is an incredible companyand you know, the amount of
infrastructure they have atmanufacturers around the world
and I was, we sold our productinto the manufacturing group
and then I was right in thedead center of them trying to
figure out how to take thisto a platform level instead
of the specific applicationslike your ERP and your,
(09:58):
your MES system, et cetera.
But every manufacturingplan I went into, I saw
core applications, whetherthey be SAP or not.
And then I saw Excel everywhere.
Chris (10:09):
Yes.
Michael (10:10):
thought, why is that?
And, and you know, the moreI learned about it, the
reason is because everymanufacturing company
and even probably two PCBmanufacturers do it differently.
And
Chris (10:21):
Yes, of course we do.
Michael (10:22):
yeah.
And Excel is an incrediblyuseful and valuable way to hack
an app together to do something
Chris (10:29):
That's right.
Yeah.
And we, we basically do that,but with Google Sheets, right.
And
Michael (10:33):
same thing, Excel.
I mean, it's a,
Chris (10:35):
and you, you can, it's such a general purpose tool.
Michael (10:40):
it's a great tool, probably the best
office tool ever made.
buT.
It has real limitations.
Everything has to be a grid.
Every rolling up data acrosslots of different sheets
is really problematic.
Getting people to know wherethe sheets are is problematic.
You end up in a, you end upin this conundrum that a best
practice is not always bestlaid out in a grid and a way
(11:01):
to manage is not always best.
So what we did, what Praxieis, Praxie means the practical
application of knowledge.
And what we were tryingto do is create best
practices that could be.
Instantly modifiedfor customers.
We, we, we stated that we wantedto make enterprise software
as easy as making PowerPoint.
Chris (11:18):
Okay.
Michael (11:19):
And we're not there.
Chris (11:20):
It sounds like HyperCard, because I always
think of like HyperCard
Michael (11:24):
Dude, that is so fun.
It's, it's, it's the, theinternet's version of HyperCard
with, got, getting rid of a lotof the problems that HyperCard
has, that's what we built.
And basically thisinfrastructure is unique.
You don't build applicationsby building backend
structures and your relationaldatabases, and then building
your business logic andthen building your UIs.
You basically just makewhat you want on the screen
(11:46):
and then you extrapolateout the backend and it will
just functionally create.
The structures on the backend as you structure it.
So we can build fullapplications in days.
And they're very stablebecause it's all based
on a no code code base.
And they're very scalablebecause of the way we
built the back end.
It's as scalable as, youknow, Google and it's on
(12:07):
their infrastructure, in fact.
So what we are trying to do.
Is basically say, you know,in a world where you need,
where AI is going to beimportant, everything has to
be digitized and it has to bedigitized in a scalable way
where the data is auditableand all those kinds of things.
And if you do that, youcan move at web speed on
all kinds of applications.
And we want to remove thebarriers and those barriers.
(12:30):
My experience was barriers.
Okay.
At SAP, we go, Oh, you wantthis new scheduling system.
We can build you that, youknow, and guys in thousand
dollar suits had come inand negotiate a deal and.
A few million dollarslater, we would have a
plan to build somethingthat would take 18 months.
What we want, what wewanted, and that's, and
it's incredibly good.
Don't get me wrong,I'm not bashing SAP.
(12:51):
Incredibly good.
But what we thought is there'slots of companies that would
never be able to afford that.
They can't, they don'thave, their IT teams
are not big enough tobuild that kind of stuff.
They can't take, theydon't have the expertise
to take other applicationsand try to extend them.
So we want to be able tocome in and deliver an
application to do that for.
You know, the kind of money thatthey get the return on in three
(13:12):
to four months and get themup and running in four weeks.
Chris (13:15):
So, let me, let me just hit pause there for a second.
I, cause I have, I have anumber of questions based
on what you just said.
Melissa's rollingher eyes right now.
Like, okay, here we go.
So, It sounds to me, I feellike, and apologies if I'm
bringing this up and you viewthem as a direct competitor,
(13:36):
but it sounds to me a littlebit like a software I'm
familiar with called Retool.
Melissa (13:41):
I was literally thinking the exact same thing.
Chris (13:43):
sounds familiar and I don't know if you can consider
them a competitor or not.
Is this like a new class ofsoftware where, yeah, now
like we're realizing Excelis amazing, but we, we need,
you know, we need properdatabases, not just a big table.
Like, and we need, we needforms and we need table
(14:03):
views and stuff like that.
And am I on the right track?
Michael (14:07):
there.
Yeah.
And the, there is a mountain ofpeak companies that, that are
no code fast software developers
Chris (14:15):
Okay.
Okay.
Michael (14:23):
to create a better way to code.
Chris (14:27):
Interesting.
Michael (14:28):
We come in with these frameworks.
We have the entire Leanmethodologies framework.
So we come in with afull AI enabled GimbaWalk
and say, how do you wantto run your GimbaWalk?
And then we'll turn thatinto your GimbaWalk in days.
Chris (14:42):
Hmm.
Michael (14:43):
So we're not, so we're, we're not trying to code better.
We're trying to deliverbest practice workflows
and processes faster.
Now they'll end up in thesame place on some level,
but one is a bag of Legosand one is a best practice.
90 percent there that willturn around very rapidly
Chris (14:58):
Sure.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, for sure.
I, you know.
There's, there's differentapproaches to trying to you
know, accomplish the same thing.
I, I guess what I'm curiousabout is with a tool like
Praxie do you find that peopleare generally like, like
signing up and then going,okay, Michael, I've got it.
I'm going to use your toolto do, to build my thing.
(15:19):
Or are they coming to you andsaying, hey, Michael, like
here, here's what we need.
Here's what we need.
Can you help us build it?
Michael (15:26):
I would say 50 50.
Yeah.
I think it's more of thisis, I don't like saying
this and this gets maybeinto pet peeves, but, but.
I think that I've never beenat a manufacturing company
where there are extra people.
Chris (15:44):
No, they don't exist.
No.
Michael (15:47):
Right.
Chris (15:48):
No, we run negative most of
Michael (15:49):
right, exactly.
So we built Praxie so thatany knucklehead like me could
build enterprise software.
It's really easy when youthink of the difficulty of
building enterprise software.
It's about as hardas mid level Excel.
Chris (16:03):
Yeah.
Michael (16:04):
Like you can build, I build crazy stuff in days.
I built a whole CRMsystem in a weekend.
Chris (16:09):
Brilliant.
Brilliant.
Michael (16:11):
But, to learn how to build in Praxy,
requires somebody learnhow to build in Praxy.
And my experience is nobodyhas time to learn a new tool.
So a lot of customersgo, that's great.
We know we can, and here'sthe, the, the general
process we go through.
We'll come in and somebody willsay, we need to digitize our
(16:31):
daily, you know, end of shiftreporting and SQDC boards.
We need, we need that digital.
Cause we don't haveany visibility.
We can't tell where the
Chris (16:36):
alphabet soup I have not heard before.
And I've heard a lot of alphabet
Michael (16:40):
Oh, you haven't heard this one?
Chris (16:41):
me now.
Michael (16:51):
end of shift reporting is a really simple one.
If you don't have the datacoming off your, you know,
your, your machines anddynamically building it, you
generally, there's most smallcompanies, there's a person
who at the end of the daysays how many were made, how
many were scrapped, et cetera.
So they want todigitize all that.
So you roll up into a dashboard.
Everybody can seehow the day went.
Did you win the day?
Did you win the month?
We'll start on somethingreally simple like that.
And we'll buildthat for somebody.
(17:12):
And then they go, wow, weneed this problem and this
problem and this problem.
And pretty soon we're seven oreight applications in, at which
point they go, we want to have,we want to have a dedicated
person on our team, really learnhow to build everything and
just build everything for us.
Chris (17:25):
Yep.
Michael (17:26):
So we, that's generally how it rolls out.
Chris (17:28):
makes sense.
That makes
Michael (17:29):
And, and we do, because we can do it really
fast, we can do it cheap.
Like the other thing wetry to do is a 10th of the
time, a 10th of the cost.
Chris (17:35):
Yeah, well, that would that be nice.
That's a winning formula.
Michael (17:39):
And we can do it because we, you know, add
SAP, like, you know, it'smillions of dollars and
any, any big enterprisesoftware, it's very expensive.
It's time consuming.
It's rock solid, butit takes a long time.
In our case, we can, you know,take on that, you know, like
your company with 40 or 80people between you, I don't
know, you know, we can, we canturn all your Excel sheets into
applications at a price you guyswould go, wow, that's awesome.
Chris (18:00):
So let me let me.
This is this is actuallythe timing on this is is
very interesting to mebecause we have for many,
many years and I may have.
We've talked about thison the show before.
I can't remember everythingwe've discussed, but, For many
years, we've been operating onan MRP software called Alliance.
Now Alliance was written,I'm pretty sure in the 80s.
(18:21):
I'm fairly confident itwas written in the 80s.
It's database backend
Michael (18:26):
Hey, man, don't, don't beef the 80s.
Chris (18:33):
specifying it that way.
The, the backend database isold school Microsoft Access.
And it.
only runs on a 32bit operating system.
You cannot run it on amodern operating system.
So we have all these virtualmachines that virtualize
old, like Windows 10, Windows10, but 32 bit so that we
can get the software to run.
(18:54):
So,
Michael (18:55):
thinking you're running on a virtual Nintendo or
Chris (18:58):
yeah, don't tell anybody I got virtual
Nintendo in my, in my office.
So, it works though.
Right.
It works.
There's no support.
I mean, the, the, themanufacturer of the software
has given up supporton this decades ago.
Literally probably over20 years ago, they no
longer supported it.
And they have modernversions of it.
That, that are very nice.
(19:19):
We own it.
It's free and it works.
And it's one of those thingswhere you see all the time,
like I go to like my local tirestore and they've got like an.
Old DOS terminal in avirtual machine that they run
their entire operation on.
You see it all the time.
They're running this oldsoftware, but we know, we know
(19:40):
in our heart of hearts that thatis not, you know, we're going to
maximize that tool, but it's notgoing to help us grow, right?
And we want to grow.
We're, it's not going totake us to the next level.
It's, it's sort of like whenwe switched from well, it.
Very, very specifically,you may not be familiar with
it, but in the circuit boardassembly, you have machines
(20:02):
called pick and place machines.
And the platform we wereon previously was a fine
tool, got the job done.
We were delivering boards,customers were happy, but we
knew it wasn't the platform thatwas going to help us to grow.
And we knew, even though weown those machines, we knew
we had to spend the hundredsof thousands of dollars and
move on to a platform thatwas going to help us to grow.
And sure enough, we'vemade that transition.
It's been a littleover a year now.
(20:23):
And we're not looking back.
It's just, it's been afantastic transition.
We're very excited about it.
So we're in this sort ofstate with our current
business software, right?
This, this old school, it'scalled Alliance software.
We're, we know we haveto move off of it.
We know we want to finda tool that allows us to
streamline our processes.
(20:44):
And I, that is so buzzwordy.
I hate, I hate saying it.
It's so buzzwordy, but it'slike, it's like literally
there is, you know.
Like, I'll, I'll describefor our audience here, the
listeners, we, we, we getyour design files, right?
And when we open up those designfiles, we identify, let's say,
(21:05):
for example, the dimensionof the, of the board, okay?
So now we have thedimension of the board.
But then the stencil guy has toget the dimension of the board.
The pick and placeprogram guy has to get the
dimension of the board.
The, the stencil program,the SPI program, the AOI
program, the reflow oven, theselective side, we all need.
The dimension of the board,and we all look it up each
(21:27):
and every time we need it.
Right?
So we're okay.
It's 121 millimeters by 160millimeters every single time.
And you have that times 10different processes, right?
Whereas a modern platform,you would be able to plug in
the dimension of the board,121, 160, blah, blah, blah.
And then everybody, you would
Michael (21:48):
propagates to everybody who
Chris (21:49):
Just boom.
That's what I mean bystreamlined processes.
It just goes everywhere allat once, rather than having
to redundantly enter thisinformation over and over.
Our current tools arenot capable of that.
And those are the things we missout on when we don't move to a
new platform, which it soundslike Praxie is the kind of a
platform that we could move tothat would help us to do this.
(22:11):
Now, the big questionis for a guy like me is.
It's, it's not free.
I'm not asking youto give your pricing.
It's not free, but youhave to make a certain
level of investment.
And every time we've talkedto vendors of classic ERP, MRP
software It's way too much.
I mean, it's not just Mike,Michael, it's not too much.
(22:34):
It's way too much.
Like be like, we would haveto be literally 10 times the
size we are today to havethe scale, to be able to
afford what they're tryingto charge for the service.
Michael (22:49):
And that's the conundrum.
Right.
The alternative is youhave your IT team build a
custom solution for you.
Chris (22:56):
Which is, we're almost doing it because
we need these tools andwe've started to do it, you
Michael (23:01):
And you think it's cheaper because Fred or
Sarah is already on the team.
Chris (23:06):
the reality
Michael (23:07):
the reality is what you're doing is you're locking
in a very slow developmentand it's going to add, you're
going to add two additionalpeople and the system is
going to become very brittle.
Right.
Because they're not core,they're not a software company.
They're just two peoplewith great skills.
Chris (23:21):
going to be very brittle because they're not
for, they're not a softwarecompany with great skills.
Michael (23:30):
yeah.
Chris (23:33):
Google hires them, you know what I mean?
Like, oh, and now we're stuck.
It doesn't matter how goodhis code is, how, how well
he commented everything.
To get somebody elseup to speed is going to
Michael (23:43):
Even if none of that happens, even if none of that
happens, it'll be a lot moreexpensive than you expect.
I was on the phone the otherday with a group who had hired
a guy for 25, 000 to builda tool they needed just to
move their, they do metal CNCing, just to move their work
orders across the process.
It was pretty simple process.
They were 250, 000 in
Chris (24:05):
Pooh.
Oh, yeah.
Michael (24:09):
it.
And so, and that's, youknow, to a lot of companies,
that's nothing, but tosmaller companies, you know,
25, 50, 000, this is realmoney and it has to work
and it has to be scalableand all that kind of stuff.
So, one of the things thatwe often do though, is we
don't try to replace coreMES or ERP system if it's,
if you're managing yourinventory and your, you
(24:29):
know, your materials and allthose kinds of things well.
We don't try to replace that.
What we tend to do, likeyour system, your Excel
system, or your accesssystem, is if there's a
way we can talk to that.
And I don't know, usethe data that's, yeah,
Chris (24:42):
so, I'm so sick of supporting it.
I'm so sick of fightingwith virtual machines and
trying to get the virtualmachines to print, to act,
you know, real world printers.
No, I'm done.
I'm done.
Michael (24:54):
it, so if you like, or you want to keep
certain software, we tendto talk to it and what, and.
And we can go into in depthat whatever time you want,
but basically the way oursystem works is think of a
giant data lake that surroundsyour existing applications,
your existing databases,and your machine data.
And that data lake can bringin any of that information,
and then we can use it tobuild and work with on any
(25:17):
application that you want.
So instead of having, you know,lots of various applications
and Excel sheets and connectorsand ad hoc workflows, you have
basically a unified structureto bring everything together.
And then on that structure,you can capitalize on to build
data, but you can also connectdata that you would never would.
You'd be like, okay, well,how many of these, you
know, PCBs are going fromhere to there and actually
(25:39):
getting through the process.
Cause right now they're ontwo different apps or two
different Excel sheets.
And we have no abilityto understand the flow.
So once we get them on adata structure, we can then
create reports that willshow you how this connects to
that, et cetera, et cetera.
So one customer right now,
Chris (25:53):
I was just going to say, we've been
talking about the forest.
Let's talk about a tree.
Can we, can we point toa specific example, like
something you don't have tosay, Oh, it was Walmart or
Michael (26:01):
no, no, sir.
Sure.
Chris (26:02):
you know.
Michael (26:02):
So one of the things that I find is in
manufacturing companies isthey, the, I don't know, there
was an old politician whosaid the unknown unknowns.
Chris (26:14):
yeah, yeah.
Was it Rumsfeld?
I
Michael (26:15):
I think it was Rumsfeld, right?
The Unknown Unknowns.
So,
Chris (26:19):
knowns, known unknowns and unknown
Michael (26:21):
Unknown Unknowns, right?
So it's the Unknown Unknownsthat really get you.
And, and so what we tend todo is try to get, digitize
the plant so that the coreinformation is coming up.
Into shift information, allthe lean stuff, you know, you
can input cool processes like5S all the stuff for Incident
(26:42):
management, maintenance,all those kinds of things.
So you get that stuff digitalso you can see the stuff,
and then you start seeingthose unknown unknowns.
You start seeing that some,why do we have so many
people cutting their leg?
Well, because, youknow, whatever it is.
My point is often,
Chris (26:56):
it's We're running out
Michael (26:58):
yeah, whatever it is, but that's a really kind
of simple one, but the idea.
Chris (27:02):
the cutting the leg problem.
Just get more band aids.
We don't get
Michael (27:06):
there's a lean concept called the Obeya room
command center kind of a thing.
So the basic idea is get thecore processes digitized in
a way that you can see thecore information that drives
OEE or whatever calculationmodel you're trying to drive.
In the things that matter onyour verticals, that's the
safety, quality, et cetera.
(27:27):
First time quality, first passyield, all the different things
that you're trying to get.
Get the data coming inso you can see it and
everybody can look at it.
And then we go after what isthe infrastructure required
to optimize that further.
So we need to connectto your ERP system.
So I'll give you acouple of examples.
Working with a client rightnow who they can't ship their
products because testing.
(27:48):
Is a problem.
They, they, so the way they havediscrete kind of batch products.
And they, they test each batchproduct before they send it out.
So, a sales person or an opsperson says, this is the group
of stuff we need to test.
They send that in an email.
The testing engineersstart testing stuff.
Then they get another email.
(28:08):
And somebody's higher upon the food chain says, No,
test this product right now.
A customer sent it in.
I need to understandwhy it's broken.
So they put down the groupthey were working on and start
working on another product, etc.
So they can't see the visibilityinto their priority list.
They can't see who requested it.
They can't see whichorders it's affecting.
So you build a system that nowthey have a work order system
(28:29):
for their engineering test.
Fantastic.
So then the engineers are alsolooking at program management.
And then they want to be able tohave a handover that sends, one,
to identify which programs theyshould be doing, but then at the
end, when they're ready to senda program over to an engineering
test, connects the dots to that.
Oh, and then the suppliers aresending in Products that relate
(28:51):
to those overall products thatneed to be tested, and they
need to be able to run suppliertesting, and they want that to
connect to the testing that'sgoing on in the engineer.
So each one of theseare steps in getting the
product out the door.
That are currently being managedin Excel sheets and emails
that give them no visibilityto where the hangup is in
that test product process.
So by connecting that datastructure, they now, and
(29:12):
creating workflows thateverybody can see, and people
are notified via email andall that kind of stuff.
What you're, you know, it'sjust process improvement.
You can now see the problem.
Why does it take us sixmonths to release a product?
You know, I can't, Idon't understand why you
can now see the problemand get it digitized.
The problem is that, andthat's a really basic sort of.
Chris (29:29):
just an
Michael (29:30):
Non lean problem.
It's just an operationalworkflow problem.
But I, what I see this allthe time where people are
running Excel and they don'tknow what they don't know
and they don't know howinefficient their process is.
Chris (29:42):
Not, not my process.
I have an efficient
Michael (29:44):
No, yours is great.
Yours is great.
by the way, you know, you,everyone that I've worked with
also makes products and getsthem out the door and doesn't
need us to do that, right?
The, the question is, canwe dramatically improve
the processes, those
Chris (29:58):
I, I joke all the time.
I go, the worst thing I canever do for my own mental sanity
is go out on the manufacturingfloor and help run machines.
And it's not that I'mnot capable of it.
I do it regularly.
I, I, I And I do it onpurpose, but it, it hurts
me mentally because I seeall the inefficiencies, I
(30:18):
see all the things that arebroken and I see all the
opportunities for improvement.
And I get overwhelmedand I'm like, Oh gosh,
where do I even begin?
You know?
And so I, I get it.
You know, it's, it's hardsometimes when you don't
have the right tools thatare connecting all the dots
to be able to see, Oh, we'regoing to have a problem here.
I would much rather seeit five days ahead of
time than the moment Ineed to build the product.
Michael (30:40):
And there's something else, there's, there's
something else you mentioned.
That's a really good pointthat I often see as well as
even companies who have gooddigital data, they might
have built something withPower BI or something in a
command center where they cansee particular information.
When something is offtrack, they'll grab a note
and they write somethingdown or they send a text.
Chris (30:59):
Yeah.
Michael (31:00):
And so the other part that is critical in all of this
is not just the digitizationof the process, but the
buy in of the people part.
Because when we digitize theseprocesses, we generally will
bring in the people on the lineor all the people who are part
of the process to define howthey would like it to work.
Because they don't likethe problems they deal
(31:21):
with every day either.
They wish it was better.
And so you create this changemanagement process by getting
them involved in designinga process that's familiar to
them because we can digitizewhat they're currently doing,
the paper they're usingor whatever, Excel sheets.
And, and build in aworkflow that then brings
the people part along.
It's critical.
And lastly, is when anissue gets you know, brought
(31:42):
up, our system can triggeroff a workflow that will
send an action item toa particular person or
somebody can assign somebody.
They get an email, they getnotified in their system,
they can track everythingthey're supposed to be doing
to address all these issues.
Because often thisstuff just gets lost.
Chris (31:59):
And
Michael (31:59):
So, and then we'll talk about AI and
how that affects it.
Chris (32:02):
how that affects it.
So when you build andyou talk, making sure
Michael (32:09):
yeah.
So.
One is the digitization, becauseit has to be digital, because
you can't use AI if it's notdigital, but two is building
these processes with the teamfor the change management,
making sure that the actionitem and follow up process
works, and that management isbought into the following up.
Because people will stop, if youfor instance have a 5S process,
I don't know if you guys run a5S process where you're, right?
(32:30):
You have a 5S process, ifpeople stop doing audits,
people stop doing 5S.
Right?
So management has to do theauditing, or nobody, nobody
continues to do the process.
So how does thisall relate to AI?
So, when we were defining theplatform at SAP, it's terrific.
They do great brandingas well on it.
It's the Leonardo platform iswhat it became after I left.
(32:53):
I don't know if it's stillcalled that, but basically
we had what they calledfog connectors that would
connect out at the edgeand bring in the MQTD data.
They could even do someanalytics at that level.
And then we brought everythinginto the central HANA
infrastructure that coulddo vibration analysis, and
we were doing predictivemaintenance and the
traditional AI type of things.
(33:13):
And those have somewhatbecome commodities.
You can connect to thoseon Google or Microsoft
or SAP or Amazon.
They have their owninfrastructure for dealing
with IOT kind of analyticsaround those types of things.
The, the generative AI, thenew stuff is a whole different
thing in that it's largelanguage model based and.
Chris (33:35):
idea behind
Michael (33:36):
The idea behind it,
Chris (33:38):
as aware
Michael (33:39):
you know, and I'm not an AI expert, although I did
do a bunch of research on howgradient descent models work and
how they figure out the stuff.
It's,
Chris (33:46):
the time
Michael (33:46):
way smarter people than me.
But anyway, the point for us is,and I run into this all the time
when we're talking to people,people want to do it, but they
don't know how to pragmaticallybuild it into the system.
Like how do we do itin a way that actually
drives value for people?
So what we've done, iswe've built AI into the
infrastructure of ourplatform, into the workflow.
(34:08):
And so what that meansis you can apply a smart
AI language model to anyproblem you're looking at.
So you asked forsome very specific.
So let's say you'rerunning an A3 process.
So traditional A3,I'll bring up one here.
I've got on my you know,you have a standard
before and after, whatare the gains you expect?
How are you going to track them?
What are the actions?
What's the controlplan, et cetera.
(34:28):
In the AI version, what youdo, is you enter the type of
company you are, you enterthe problem you're having.
Let's say I'm having aproblem with spoilage.
I'm a food company.
I'm a spoilage because I'mhaving intermittent outages in
my in my refrigeration system.
And I put in all the data andI click the AI help button
and it says it could be anyone of these six things.
(34:48):
What, which one of thosedo you think it is?
Now, I might have been ableto figure that out, but
research I've seen says AIis two to three times more
creative than the averageperson in an answer because
it has the entire internetas a database to look at,
Chris (35:00):
to look at.
Michael (35:01):
So it comes back with, you know, five or six,
could it be any of these?
And the person can go, I thinkthey can select which ones
they think is most likely, theycan add text to it, it goes,
you know, I did see X, Y, andZ as part of this process.
They hit analyze, it comesback and says, here's possible
solutions to those problems.
Chris (35:17):
And then you can
Michael (35:19):
And then you could say, well, I'm going to take
number three and try that one.
And it generates a tasklist that you can then
go assign to your team.
Chris (35:24):
can then go assign to your team.
You can then,
Michael (35:27):
You can then, another one is let's say you're getting,
Chris (35:30):
line, you're
Michael (35:31):
You're on the line and you're getting too much too
many errors, too much waste.
The waste code in our systemwould bring up a dashboard
that would say, hey, you know,you're over your, your your
scrap allocation, sends anemail off to your management.
And then what it does is it,Based on the error code, it
comes back with a list of here.
Try these five things.
(35:52):
What happens today isthey click maintenance.
I need a maintenance.
And then they stop workingcause it's, they got to stop.
So you have a stoppage andnow you're waiting for a
person and your maintenanceperson's over allocated.
What we can do with AI is wecan bring up here, six things
that one, the internet saysyou should try, but even
better, uh, index all of the.
(36:14):
Or the documentation on yourproducts, et cetera, and say,
here's some of the thingsthat have worked before.
Try these, validate thatyou've tried these, these
things before we send amessage to maintenance.
Chris (36:24):
and seen things before you send a message to me.
SMT pick and place machines,because the SMT pick and
place machine manufacturersdon't publish anything.
They don't, you know, it'sall, it's all in PowerPoint
and it's all in their usermanuals and documentation.
It ain't not on thepublic internet, nothing
(36:44):
that, that anybody canscrape and learn from.
So it's like, they don'tknow, you know, we have to,
we almost have to teach theAI model, what is specific to
our machine and almost haveto feed it this information
from our manufacturer.
Michael (37:00):
So what we've implemented in the past
is systems that will bringin three pieces of data.
One is based on the aircode, any, literal SOPs to
deal with that particularthings that are designed.
It'll just bring them up, right?
And, and so you can takewhatever documentation you have
with digitize that the other oneis to go out on the internet and
(37:21):
say, have you tried X, Y, and Z?
And then the third one isto index your own databases
of what has worked in thepast and bring that up.
So those are really practicalways that maximize your people.
You know, shorten downtime,eliminate waste faster.
And you know, there's plenty ofROI models on how to do this.
We tend, when we do an analysisto try to have a three ish
(37:41):
month return on investment.
Chris (37:44):
Well that'd be nice.
That'd be very nice.
Now, are you able to find findthat kind of investment with
a small 50 person business?
Or is this, usually you haveto be a certain scale to
find that kind of return?
Michael (37:55):
no, because, you know, 50 person businesses,
you know, depending on thescale of what we're building,
we can build things that arehighly valuable really quickly
and really inexpensively.
So like our smallest, we havecustomers that, you know.
Start at 10, 000 andgo up to six figures.
I mean, we, we,we run the gamut.
Chris (38:16):
Yeah, interesting.
Very interesting.
Well, maybe we should talkmore about business than we
should about the podcast.
I don't know.
This it seems like it mightbe a fit for Worthington.
Michael (38:27):
let's do it.
I mean, you guys will be happy.
Chris (38:29):
I think, I wonder if some of our listeners think sometimes
that we have sponsored content.
And it's really just that I liketo talk to interesting people.
And Michael, you know,reached out and I was like,
okay, this would be aninteresting conversation.
I'm not, we're notbeing paid for this.
We just want to talkto interesting people.
So it just happens to bea good fit at the moment
that we have a particular
Michael (38:46):
Well, you know, the truth is that most manufacturing
companies, when I show them apicture that shows a bunch of
Excel sheets and whiteboards,They go, yeah, that's,
we know that, like that.
So it's not that, youknow, this is particularly
relevant to you, it's kindof relevant to everybody
in manufacturing, you know.
It's a problem space that isn'taddressed and it's not addressed
because making enterprisesoftware is hard and if it has
(39:09):
to be completely tailored toyour business, how do you do
it in a 50 person business?
You can't, so youend up in Excel.
Chris (39:15):
cater to your business?
How do you do it in abusiness where you can't?
So you have to do it yourself.
The, the, the big fear thatbusinesses like ours have that,
(39:36):
you know, we'll talk about FUDFUD, Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt.
afraid that Praxie is goingto go out of business and
we're going to be leftwith this, you know, we're.
We've built our wholething on this, and now
what are we going to do?
We're afraid that, youknow, Sarah is going
to get hit by a bus.
We're afraid, you know,and, and she's our in house
(39:57):
support person on, on who'swriting all this stuff for us.
Versus, everybody knows Excel.
You know, and I think that'sa lot of times when it comes
back to why a lot of businesseslike us are hesitant to move
to a dedicated platform is, isbecause of that fear, because
of that uncertainty, you know,will it be around is, is Michael
(40:19):
Lynch and his team going to bearound to support us for the
next 10 years when we need themto be, you know, SAP might be
very, very expensive, but, Weknow they ain't going anywhere.
You got the U.
S.
government as your customer.
You're going to bearound a long time.
Michael (40:32):
Yeah, I think that's fair.
One of the things in our systemthat we've done is, is dedicated
to kind of the open ecosystem.
So, you have the abilityto export the entire data
structures out of our system.
You have the ability tocreate a report query,
let's say, and exporteverything into Excel sheets.
Chris (40:52):
Mm hmm.
Michael (40:53):
You have the ability to print out everything in a PDF.
So
Chris (40:56):
So if we have to go back to the Stone Age, we can do
Michael (40:58):
You can do it.
And the thing is that, youknow, when you're a smaller
company like you guys are,you're sort of stuck in the
place, as you said, and you'reeven kind of stuck there
with your older MES system.
Is that what it does for you?
MRP, yeah.
So, that problem can happenany time, but what we've been,
(41:22):
the reason that we thoughtthere was a huge opportunity
to be a Mid size and smallermanufacturers is exactly what
you laid out is that you're notgoing to be able to buy SAP.
The IT structure isnot really affordable.
You can try to do it,but you'll be sorry.
That's been my experience.
And so this is, there'ssome risk in going with any
company, but the risk ofnot doing it is you just
(41:43):
have to stay where you are.
And as you said, if you'retrying to grow, you've got
to find an answer that, that,you know, has the minimal
risk that you can have.
So we've addressed that by justmaking our data structures,
you know, accessible.
So that people feel comfortablethat if they ever do need to
export everything they can.
Chris (41:59):
you can make good content for the community.
Michael (42:03):
Let's do it.
I'll send you a meetingrequest on Tuesday and
Chris (42:11):
This is awesome.
I, I, I feel like I'vereally you know, my eyes
have been a bit open tosome opportunities here.
I, I, this is somethingthat has been nagging
us for over five years.
I mean, maybe longer, youknow, whenever, whenever
computers got over fourgigabytes of RAM, that's how
long this has been nagging us.
Cause that's whenwe moved to 64.
Michael (42:32):
60, damn 64 bit!
Chris (42:34):
It's literally how long it's been a problem for us.
So we, we gotta dosomething about this.
Michael (42:39):
You'll be surprised.
We can help you a lotat a very low cost.
You'll be happy.
Chris (42:43):
Cool.
Very interesting.
Very interesting.
Hopefully I can get thePickPlace podcast discount.
Is that a,
Michael (42:48):
Absolutely.
Absolutely.
Chris (42:49):
Um Well, that's awesome.
Is there anything else you'dlike to share before we
get before we, we get intoour pet peeve of the week,
Michael (42:56):
No, I think we covered it all.
Yeah.
Chris (42:57):
right, cool.
Brilliant.
All right.
So Michael, if you have one,by all means, we'd love for you
to share a pet peeve of yours.
If you don't have one, trustus, we have, we have lists,
literal lists, plural.
Michael (43:12):
My you know, it's funny because we were talking
and I was going to talk aboutone with sort of business.
And then we were talking beforeabout vacations and going
abroad and things like that.
And this is going to be sweetand sad at the same time.
It's people who don't knowhow to train their dogs.
Chris (43:31):
Okay.
Tell me more.
Cause I have, I have a puppy.
Michael (43:34):
it's just like dogs are total positive
reinforcement animals.
Now, you watch the experts.
If you have a realpsychopath dog, you've got
to hold them and do things.
But I see people all the timeyanking and yanking and yanking
and yanking on these pooranimals, and they just want
to do what you ask them to do.
Chris (43:51):
right.
Michael (43:51):
You've just got to love them.
That's all.
Chris (43:53):
I know, I know.
Well, so I definitelyhave that problem.
I don't know if I, Inormally that they sit their
butt down and then theyjust get really excited.
And they're like, pleasepet me, please pet me at
my, my two little pugs.
They get there.
They're they're easy totrain though, because
they are so food driven.
Michael (44:09):
That's right.
They'll do exactly whatyou ask them to do.
You just got to, andthen love them, just give
them a treat, love them.
They'll do what you say.
That's, that's myonly pet peeve.
Chris (44:17):
So, are you saying, how does this
relate to travel though?
Because you mentioned something
Michael (44:21):
Because when I was at, when we were, when I
was overseas recently, I sawthis guy just, it was so bad
that people in the marketstarted yelling at him.
They were yellingat him in French.
So I didn't get involved,but it was just this puppy.
And he like, he didn'tknow how to deal with it.
He just kept yanking it.
He was like 25.
He's a big guyyanking a dog around.
I was like, come on, man.
It's a puppy.
Chris (44:40):
Yeah, it's a puppy.
You just got to pickthat thing up and just
throw it in their arms.
Michael (44:43):
Just love it! Just love it!
Chris (44:45):
it.
Yeah.
Yeah, exactly.
Well, I'll tell you, we broughtour puppy to a local brewery.
They had a half marathon.
My wife ran the halfmarathon and I, I
couldn't walk five feet.
I could not walk fivefeet with, without people
just being obsessed
Michael (45:02):
Yeah, pugs are so cute when they're little.
Chris (45:04):
Oh my gosh.
Michael (45:05):
cute the whole time, but they're
really cute when they're
Chris (45:07):
they're, they're not cute when they're like past
10 years old, they get prettyold, ugly past 10 years old.
Michael (45:12):
Hey! Dog ageism!
Chris (45:15):
I still think they're cute, but you
know, I'm a little biased.
I'm a little biased.
Yeah.
Michael (45:21):
Okay, what about you guys?
Chris (45:22):
Well, I, I had a recent experience.
I was, I was in, I was in arestroom, public restroom, and
it has the automatic sync thing,and I walk up to it, and it came
right on, and I'm like, this isgreat, and I'm washing my hands,
I'm like, this is great, and Iturn around to grab the paper
towels, and it's still running.
I'm like, okay, this is weird.
It's still running.
And then I walklike a couple more.
(45:43):
Well, it normally is,isn't it, Melissa?
Normally it's the opposite.
Normally you're like,my hands are here.
My hands are here.
Let's get started.
So obviously you cantune these things.
There's gotta be like alittle variable resistor
or something in there totune these sensors and.
Whoever ran this public restroomwas fed up with not getting
water and just crank thatthing to a hundred and just
(46:03):
said, if you, if there is aphysical body in this room,
I don't care if they're onthe toilet, turn this thing.
Michael (46:09):
You know what's interesting
about that pet peeve?
It's probably onboth ends of that.
Like, if it just runswater, that's dumb.
And if it won't give youwater, that's dumb too.
Chris (46:17):
I think automatic faucets are just dumb, period.
It's like valves work.
Humans give humans credit.
They know how to turnvalves on and off.
Just let them turnthe valve on and off.
Do we really have to like, youknow, Like nanny this thing
with an automatic sensor.
I, I like the push.
I like the push and it stayson for like 20 seconds.
(46:38):
I'm good with that.
That's a good one too.
Cause that's, that's a good
Michael (46:41):
Yeah, that's a good one.
Then you don't have to touch it.
Yeah,
Chris (46:44):
Yeah.
You can hit it with theback of your hand or
Michael (46:47):
I was at SAP years ago, and they had this coolest one.
This was in the executivecenter where we would
talk with customers.
They had a, it was likea trough style faucet.
And when the water was cold,it would have red LEDs.
I mean, hot would be redLEDs and colds would be blue.
(47:07):
And so it would change colorbased on how hot it was.
Melissa (47:10):
That's interesting.
Chris (47:11):
Oh man, Melissa, we got to add this
to our shower faucet.
Yeah, this is the ongoing jokewith the PickPlace podcast.
We wanted, we wanted to inventa product that, that you could
plug in the temperature of thewater you want for your shower.
And it just comes outthe correct temperature.
Michael (47:25):
The right
Chris (47:26):
out they exist and there's like, yeah, but now
we got to add LEDs to it.
Now that's our differentiator.
We'll add the LEDs to it.
And we'll be, we'll be,forget the Pig Place podcast.
It'll be the ShowerFaucet podcast.
We'll get, we'll getKohler on, Delta.
Who else can we get on here?
Michael (47:40):
They'll all, they'll all own you by then.
They'll buy it out.
Chris (47:43):
That's right.
Yeah, no, I I no, I wI, I am very frustrated
by automatic syncs.
I stayed at a my parentshave the, when I go to visit,
they have the you just tapthe faucet and it turns on.
You tap it again.
It turns off the like touchsensor, the whole faucet itself.
You just tap the faucetand leave the valve open.
I like that.
(48:03):
But the best I ever had,I stayed at a Airbnb once
and I had a foot pedal.
So as you walked up toit, you press the foot
pedal and the water turns
Michael (48:12):
I have one of those.
Chris (48:13):
amazing.
Michael (48:14):
Yeah, they're good.
It's on the, at the kitchenthere, you know, the, the
island has a, has a sinkin it for doing vegetables.
So they put that inbecause it makes sense.
You have all these vegetables.
You got to turn the water on.
Chris (48:26):
and you want, and you don't want to just leave it
running and wasting thousands
Michael (48:29):
Yeah.
I think they're,
Chris (48:30):
want to turn it on when you need
Michael (48:31):
I think they came from hospitals.
I think that's where they're
Chris (48:34):
I believe it.
I know, like, I rememberwhen I was a kid in like an
elementary school, we had theone where had a big giant bar.
They'll go across andanybody could step on it.
And there was like atrough and all these little
spouts would come out andyou'd wash your hands.
And I went to a breweryrecently that had one of those.
And there was ayoung kid in there.
He's like, how do,how do I turn this on?
And I'm like, I waslike, it's official.
(48:56):
I'm old.
I'm officially, I'm havingto teach the kids these days.
They don't know about foot
Michael (49:01):
Back, back in the Soviet era.
Chris (49:05):
We all had to wash our hands together,
uphill, both ways.
Oh, this has been brilliant.
Thank you very much, Michael,for coming on the show.
If
Michael (49:15):
of fun, you guys,
Chris (49:16):
what's the best way for people to get in touch
of you, if they want to
Michael (49:19):
super simple.
Michael dot Lynch,LYNC h@proxy.com.
Chris (49:24):
that's, that is michael.
lynch.
I'm, I'm.
I couldn't, couldn't thinkof a better email address.
That's exactly whatI did for my own.
Chris.
denny at gmail.
com back in the back in theinvite only days of Gmail.
Trouble
Michael (49:37):
you got it.
Chris (49:37):
somebody signed up for Chris Denny with
no period at gmail.
com.
And I randomlyget this person's.
Emails.
And it's very frustrating.
And I have a bone to pick
Michael (49:46):
That's a p.
Another pet peevefor another podcast,
Chris (49:48):
Oh, that's not just a pet peeve.
This is like, it's justlike identity theft.
It's like, it's like I, theguy, he, he, he's British.
I know
Michael (49:57):
Oh, that's even worse.
Chris (49:58):
he's British because, because I get all of his, his
emails thanking me for donatingblood to the local, like blood
bank somewhere in London.
Like,
Michael (50:08):
like a great
Chris (50:09):
he's probably a great guy, you know?
Michael (50:11):
Do you get like footballer type emails?
Chris (50:13):
I, I get.
Well, so he must be a fan, hemust also be a fan of American
football, which is not toounusual in the UK, there's
actually a fair number ofAmerican football fans out
there, because he belongs toa, like a Yahoo Sports or ESPN
Fantasy Football League, andThis is a children's show,
(50:34):
but I'll, you know, you're notchildren's show, but this is,
this is a family friendly show.
We, we don't, we don'tuse, we don't use foul
language on the show.
And this isn't, this is about assaucy as we're going to get, but
the name of his football team issuck my footballs, which is, and
I, yeah, I got the whole thing.
He's and all his, all his.
Every other team in hisleague, they all got these
(50:55):
like little innuendo names.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So he donates blood, he playsfantasy football, and I promise
I'm not sleepwalking and causehow can I, how can I cross
the Atlantic and donate blood?
You know what I mean?
I guess this is, this
Michael (51:08):
You'd be a really great guy then.
Chris (51:12):
In my sleep, crossing the Atlantic.
Nope.
No, sir.
But yeah hopefully,hopefully you don't sign
anybody up Michael Lynchwithout the period at proxy.
com
Michael (51:21):
No, there is nobody
Chris (51:22):
be very awkward.
It'd be very awkward.
Well, great.
Thank you very muchfor coming on the show.
As always, if, if anybody wantsto get in contact with us, we're
contact at pickplacepodcast.
com.
You know, there's, You knowhow to get ahold of us.
Just get ahold of us.
And, and I got someemails last week.
I will follow up with them.
I promise if you haven'theard from me, you'll
hear from me soon.
(51:43):
Thank you very muchfor reaching out to us.
Turns out, Melissa, peoplelove conveyors and they want
to know more about conveyors.
See, I told you it was
Melissa (51:49):
conveyor's episode part
Chris (51:51):
you it was going to be a good episode.
So, as always, please tella friend if you've enjoyed
the show and hopefullythey'll enjoy it as well.
Melissa (51:59):
Yeah, thanks for listening to the
PickPlace podcast.
If you like what you heard,consider following us in your
favorite podcast app, andplease leave us a review on
Apple Podcasts or whereveryou get your podcasts from.
Thanks so much, Michael.
Chris (52:11):
Thanks, Michael.
Thanks, Melissa.
Welcome to the PickPlace podcast, a show where we
talk about electronicsmanufacturing and everything
related to getting a circuitboard into the world.
This is Chris Dennywith Worthington.
Melissa (00:17):
And this is Melissa Hough with CircuitHub.
Chris (00:19):
Do you think people aren't quite sure whose
voice is who at this point?
Do we keep needing to tellpeople who we are at the intro?
Melissa (00:26):
Well, for the new people, the new
listeners, they won't know.
Chris (00:28):
that's true.
That's true.
That's a good point.
That's a good point.
All right.
Solid point.
We'll keep doing it then.
What's new, Melissa?
Melissa (00:35):
It's been a
Chris (00:36):
cat this
Melissa (00:36):
return not in this episode.
Oh, I don't know.
I feel like things are alwayssuper busy towards the end
of the year, work wise.
Everyone needs something.
I'm sure, yeah.
I know it's been crazybusy at the factory, too.
Chris (00:51):
crazy busy.
We have not been this busy inyears, honestly, pre, pre COVID.
We haven't been this busysince pre COVID, I think.
And it, but we'reexecuting, it's brilliant.
We had time to kind ofbreathe a little bit and set
ourselves up for success andwe're just pulling it off.
It's really exciting.
But on both sides, bothon CircuitHub's side and
on Worthington's side.
Our guess is that it'slike, a lot of people
(01:14):
want to wrap projects upby the end of the year.
They, they have budgetsthey want to spend, that
kind of stuff, yeah, so weget super busy, but, yeah.
So it's so easy to ignore, youknow, recording the episode.
Ah, just push itoff another week.
We'll push it off another week.
But, uh, this week we're, we'reexcited to have a special guest.
We're going to haveMichael Lynch on the show.
He is the former headof the internet of
(01:35):
things at SAP software.
Maybe you've heard of them.
And now the CEO of Praxieand believe it or not, and I
can't wait to talk about this.
The former lead.
in Les Miserables on Broadway.
I have got to knowmore about that.
Michael, welcome to the show.
Michael (01:52):
Hey guys, hi Chris, hi Melissa, how are you guys today?
Melissa (01:55):
Good.
How are you?
Michael (01:56):
Excellent.
Chris (01:57):
Excellent.
Me too.
Me too.
All right.
All right.
Dish.
Cause you, like my wife and Ihave seen Les Mis on Broadway
at least four or five times now.
We've seen it in Boston,but like it is, I don't
think we're alone in sayingthis, our favorite Broadway
show we've ever seen.
And we've seen dozens of them.
Michael (02:14):
It's pretty good.
There are some other ones,there's some good stuff
in like, you know, Wicked,
Chris (02:20):
We just like being really
Michael (02:21):
Hamilton.
Chris (02:22):
like being sad is
Michael (02:23):
You want to bawl your face out?
Yeah, I dream the dream, yes.
So, the story, so I actually,yeah, unlike you, Smarty Pants,
I I went to music school at the
Chris (02:33):
Oh, cool.
Michael (02:33):
School of Music.
And and then I actuallydropped out because it was,
as you do, because I, Irealized I was spending all
this money and nobody caredabout, in, in theater, nobody
cares about your degree.
They just care, youknow, can you sing?
Can you dance?
Can you act?
What do you look like?
And so I went, I've kind ofcreated my own curriculum
and just studied for afew years in Manhattan.
(02:55):
And then I started gettingjobs and ended up doing a
bunch of Broadway shows.
And then I was on generalhospital for a couple of years.
Chris (03:01):
Come on.
Michael (03:02):
Yeah, trying to be a heartthrob.
Chris (03:04):
Like out in Hollywood.
Michael (03:05):
yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
My wife and I both came out.
She was on Seinfeld and awhole bunch of other things.
She's done a ton of stuff.
She's done a ton onBroadway as well.
Chris (03:14):
Is that how you get met?
You met in the arts?
Michael (03:16):
Actually, you know what's really the coolest
thing is we have a videoof the moment we met.
Chris (03:20):
Come on.
Melissa (03:21):
Aw.
Michael (03:22):
because we were doing a TV commercial and we were
dancing on it and I came inand she came in and we have
the video of us rehearsing.
And so that was, but shewas dating this other guy
and I would see them allaround, you know, they, we,
Chris (03:34):
him.
Michael (03:35):
well, he was like, I wasn't like, it was weird.
It was like, we knew each otherand I'd say, Hey, how's Robbie?
And then yours wentby and how's Robbie?
She goes, Oh, Ibroke up with him.
I got, Oh, that's terrible.
What are you doing?
So, so, that's how, that'show it all came together.
Chris (03:51):
too cool.
Michael (03:52):
yeah, so we've been together decades now.
It's great.
Chris (03:55):
Nice.
Alright, so, no, like, whatwas your role on Les Mis?
Michael (03:59):
Oh, so I played Marius.
I did the empty chairsat empty tables.
Chris (04:03):
No
Michael (04:04):
Yeah, that's the song I did.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And I'm the, I'mthe one that lived,
Chris (04:09):
See, yeah, my wife, I think that's my
wife's favorite character.
I'm trying to remember.
I'm
Michael (04:13):
my wife had the better character.
My wife played Eponine.
Chris (04:16):
Oh my gosh, you're kidding
Michael (04:18):
Yeah.
So we did it together and shewould dime arms every night.
And the fun, the story, thefunny story I tell is the
Chris (04:23):
And you were dating at the time, or were
Michael (04:25):
we were married, no, we were married, they
hired us as a package.
So,
Chris (04:28):
This is incredible!
Michael (04:30):
it was cool.
She would, she would dye my armsinto a win-win rehearsal, like.
Well, you didn't have to act.
I was like, well, she's allcovered with blood and crying
and then by about the fourthweek You're like your elbows
in like stop it, you knowSo, yeah, we did that we did
it for about a year together
Chris (04:50):
That's so exciting!
Michael (04:51):
Came out to Hollywood and did some stuff there
Chris (04:53):
We talk, we talk in like, late 90s, 2000s, like, what,
Michael (04:57):
90s yeah 90s and then I came out to LA and I was
doing soap operas and stuffand I I actually, you guys
will laugh because you'reyounger than I am, but I have
this Time Magazine cover ofwhat they were, they were
talking about the internet.
Chris (05:08):
Oh,
Michael (05:09):
And I was, yeah, I was sitting in my, I was sitting
in my dressing room on Broadwaylooking at the same going on.
It was like that, that moviewhere they say plastics, like
I got to get out of here.
Chris (05:18):
Yeah, the graduate.
Michael (05:20):
the graduate, right?
Plastics.
So I was like the internet.
So I went to Hollywood andI was doing TV shows and
I kept looking for At thatpoint, I had got the bug.
I had to get it and I wasdoing well in acting and
everything, but I justdidn't feel like I didn't
really want to be an actor.
I kind of wanted to be apop star and all that stuff.
And I, I was losingmy hair at that point.
I go, that's over.
So I got to do something cool.
(05:40):
So anyway, I gotinto the internet.
I got, I walked into a,yeah, I walked into a
computer game company.
That was a startup thatI had read about and
said, I'd work for free.
And I go, Oh, free is good.
And so I came in and and then,I started building stuff and
I ended up running productionand we took the company public.
So I got the sortof on the ground.
(06:01):
I never, I mean, mybackground is just weird.
That, that was really lucky.
I happened to walk into a greatplace and we figured it out.
And so I learnedthat whole process.
It was called Seventh Level.
They eventually, we wentpublic and then they sold it.
I can't remember whosold it to in the end.
Chris (06:15):
Were they known for any particular Did
they have any particular
Michael (06:18):
This was early 90s.
So you guys probably, doyou remember all these games
where you had walked throughhallways and try to figure out
the combination and somethingwould open up like Myst?
Yeah, we did.
The most famous one wedid was one based on
the Monty Python series.
Chris (06:31):
Oh, no sir.
Michael (06:32):
yeah, so what the best job I ever had I spent three
weeks transcribing Monty PythonSo I got paid to sit there and
watch Monty Python all day longand laugh and change, you know
Chris (06:44):
That's incredible.
Michael (06:45):
that is an ex parrot, you
Chris (06:47):
That's incredible.
That must have been amazing.
Michael (06:50):
it was great.
Chris (06:50):
I, I, this show is known for going off in tangents.
I'll just share a funny storyabout transcribing things.
My sister was doingsomething in college.
And she told me, she's like,I'll give you 40 bucks if you
transcribe this, this thing.
thing for my paper.
And I'm like, causeI'm pretty fast typist.
I'm like, sure.
And so she'sinterviewing this woman.
She, she went to schoolto be a dietician.
She's interviewing this womanand this woman is explaining
(07:11):
how after she had a child,she's having trouble, like
losing weight again, she wantsto, you know, feel comfortable
again, yada, yada, yada.
And, and my sister'slike, Oh, I know.
My mom told me that if shehad known how much weight
she was going to gain whenshe had my brother, she
never would have done it.
I'm like, Hold on a second!I'm sitting here transcribing
Michael (07:30):
never told me that.
Chris (07:33):
So careful when you're transcribing things.
You may hear thingsyou never heard before.
Michael (07:36):
no, it was super fun.
That sounds like, thatsounds almost as fun.
A little, little harder,but almost as fun.
Chris (07:41):
Yeah
Michael (07:42):
and then started making computer games.
Then the 3D aspects got meinto mechanical cad, and then
we created a company thatread hundreds of different
mechanical CAD formats andwe generated illustrations
and virtual reality andall that kinda stuff.
And then SAP boughtthat company.
And we're basically theircollaborative backbone
and visualization backboneon the SAP platform.
And then I, and then Itook on the Internet of
(08:03):
Things and Industry 4.
0 for them as
Chris (08:06):
What time frame, roughly, like when internet 4.
0 and
Michael (08:10):
So they bought our company in 2012, 13.
And so, you know, that decadeyou know, the Internet of
Things and, you know, magicmachines and all that stuff
was kind of a super hype thing.
And as I.
You know, got and tried tocommunicate that, you know,
manufacturing had been doingit for a while and they were,
the question was, could youtake it much more broadly?
(08:32):
Like everybody tried toput it in coffee machines.
I mean, I had, I had dozensand dozens of meetings at
SAP with vendors who weretrying to figure out how
to get it into machinesthat didn't really need it.
Chris (08:42):
Well, it's here now.
Like, my dishwasheris connected to Wi Fi.
Like,
Michael (08:46):
Yeah, it's here.
Yeah.
And the vision of it was, itwas like all encompassing, but
I think, I think the internetis like You know, like motors
where they thought, I don'tknow if you know this history.
They, they, when motors,electric motors first came out,
they thought the house wouldhave a central electric motor.
Chris (09:02):
Yeah, because that's how factories were,
Michael (09:04):
Yeah.
And, and then we ended upwith motors and everything.
And so I think that's the truthabout internet as well as,
you know, AI and everythingelse that comes along.
It'll, it'll just microinto the app and it'll do
what it's supposed to do.
Chris (09:14):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Fascinating.
All right.
So you're at SAP.
Michael (09:20):
Yeah,
Chris (09:20):
I don't know, you get bored or whatever.
What, tell us about Praxieand, and how, how you
got started with that?
Well, first of all, I thinkI, I did mention it yet.
You're now the CEO of Praxi.
Tell us a little bit about likewhat exactly it is and, and what
you're trying to do with it.
When, when did you start it?
Michael (09:36):
It's about five years old now.
We.
So this goes to SAP.
SAP is an incredible companyand you know, the amount of
infrastructure they have atmanufacturers around the world
and I was, we sold our productinto the manufacturing group
and then I was right in thedead center of them trying to
figure out how to take thisto a platform level instead
of the specific applicationslike your ERP and your,
(09:58):
your MES system, et cetera.
But every manufacturingplan I went into, I saw
core applications, whetherthey be SAP or not.
And then I saw Excel everywhere.
Chris (10:09):
Yes.
Michael (10:10):
thought, why is that?
And, and you know, the moreI learned about it, the
reason is because everymanufacturing company
and even probably two PCBmanufacturers do it differently.
And
Chris (10:21):
Yes, of course we do.
Michael (10:22):
yeah.
And Excel is an incrediblyuseful and valuable way to hack
an app together to do something
Chris (10:29):
That's right.
Yeah.
And we, we basically do that,but with Google Sheets, right.
And
Michael (10:33):
same thing, Excel.
I mean, it's a,
Chris (10:35):
and you, you can, it's such a general purpose tool.
Michael (10:40):
it's a great tool, probably the best
office tool ever made.
buT.
It has real limitations.
Everything has to be a grid.
Every rolling up data acrosslots of different sheets
is really problematic.
Getting people to know wherethe sheets are is problematic.
You end up in a, you end upin this conundrum that a best
practice is not always bestlaid out in a grid and a way
(11:01):
to manage is not always best.
So what we did, what Praxieis, Praxie means the practical
application of knowledge.
And what we were tryingto do is create best
practices that could be.
Instantly modifiedfor customers.
We, we, we stated that we wantedto make enterprise software
as easy as making PowerPoint.
Chris (11:18):
Okay.
Michael (11:19):
And we're not there.
Chris (11:20):
It sounds like HyperCard, because I always
think of like HyperCard
Michael (11:24):
Dude, that is so fun.
It's, it's, it's the, theinternet's version of HyperCard
with, got, getting rid of a lotof the problems that HyperCard
has, that's what we built.
And basically thisinfrastructure is unique.
You don't build applicationsby building backend
structures and your relationaldatabases, and then building
your business logic andthen building your UIs.
You basically just makewhat you want on the screen
(11:46):
and then you extrapolateout the backend and it will
just functionally create.
The structures on the backend as you structure it.
So we can build fullapplications in days.
And they're very stablebecause it's all based
on a no code code base.
And they're very scalablebecause of the way we
built the back end.
It's as scalable as, youknow, Google and it's on
(12:07):
their infrastructure, in fact.
So what we are trying to do.
Is basically say, you know,in a world where you need,
where AI is going to beimportant, everything has to
be digitized and it has to bedigitized in a scalable way
where the data is auditableand all those kinds of things.
And if you do that, youcan move at web speed on
all kinds of applications.
And we want to remove thebarriers and those barriers.
(12:30):
My experience was barriers.
Okay.
At SAP, we go, Oh, you wantthis new scheduling system.
We can build you that, youknow, and guys in thousand
dollar suits had come inand negotiate a deal and.
A few million dollarslater, we would have a
plan to build somethingthat would take 18 months.
What we want, what wewanted, and that's, and
it's incredibly good.
Don't get me wrong,I'm not bashing SAP.
(12:51):
Incredibly good.
But what we thought is there'slots of companies that would
never be able to afford that.
They can't, they don'thave, their IT teams
are not big enough tobuild that kind of stuff.
They can't take, theydon't have the expertise
to take other applicationsand try to extend them.
So we want to be able tocome in and deliver an
application to do that for.
You know, the kind of money thatthey get the return on in three
(13:12):
to four months and get themup and running in four weeks.
Chris (13:15):
So, let me, let me just hit pause there for a second.
I, cause I have, I have anumber of questions based
on what you just said.
Melissa's rollingher eyes right now.
Like, okay, here we go.
So, It sounds to me, I feellike, and apologies if I'm
bringing this up and you viewthem as a direct competitor,
(13:36):
but it sounds to me a littlebit like a software I'm
familiar with called Retool.
Melissa (13:41):
I was literally thinking the exact same thing.
Chris (13:43):
sounds familiar and I don't know if you can consider
them a competitor or not.
Is this like a new class ofsoftware where, yeah, now
like we're realizing Excelis amazing, but we, we need,
you know, we need properdatabases, not just a big table.
Like, and we need, we needforms and we need table
(14:03):
views and stuff like that.
And am I on the right track?
Michael (14:07):
there.
Yeah.
And the, there is a mountain ofpeak companies that, that are
no code fast software developers
Chris (14:15):
Okay.
Okay.
Michael (14:23):
to create a better way to code.
Chris (14:27):
Interesting.
Michael (14:28):
We come in with these frameworks.
We have the entire Leanmethodologies framework.
So we come in with afull AI enabled GimbaWalk
and say, how do you wantto run your GimbaWalk?
And then we'll turn thatinto your GimbaWalk in days.
Chris (14:42):
Hmm.
Michael (14:43):
So we're not, so we're, we're not trying to code better.
We're trying to deliverbest practice workflows
and processes faster.
Now they'll end up in thesame place on some level,
but one is a bag of Legosand one is a best practice.
90 percent there that willturn around very rapidly
Chris (14:58):
Sure.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, for sure.
I, you know.
There's, there's differentapproaches to trying to you
know, accomplish the same thing.
I, I guess what I'm curiousabout is with a tool like
Praxie do you find that peopleare generally like, like
signing up and then going,okay, Michael, I've got it.
I'm going to use your toolto do, to build my thing.
(15:19):
Or are they coming to you andsaying, hey, Michael, like
here, here's what we need.
Here's what we need.
Can you help us build it?
Michael (15:26):
I would say 50 50.
Yeah.
I think it's more of thisis, I don't like saying
this and this gets maybeinto pet peeves, but, but.
I think that I've never beenat a manufacturing company
where there are extra people.
Chris (15:44):
No, they don't exist.
No.
Michael (15:47):
Right.
Chris (15:48):
No, we run negative most of
Michael (15:49):
right, exactly.
So we built Praxie so thatany knucklehead like me could
build enterprise software.
It's really easy when youthink of the difficulty of
building enterprise software.
It's about as hardas mid level Excel.
Chris (16:03):
Yeah.
Michael (16:04):
Like you can build, I build crazy stuff in days.
I built a whole CRMsystem in a weekend.
Chris (16:09):
Brilliant.
Brilliant.
Michael (16:11):
But, to learn how to build in Praxy,
requires somebody learnhow to build in Praxy.
And my experience is nobodyhas time to learn a new tool.
So a lot of customersgo, that's great.
We know we can, and here'sthe, the, the general
process we go through.
We'll come in and somebody willsay, we need to digitize our
(16:31):
daily, you know, end of shiftreporting and SQDC boards.
We need, we need that digital.
Cause we don't haveany visibility.
We can't tell where the
Chris (16:36):
alphabet soup I have not heard before.
And I've heard a lot of alphabet
Michael (16:40):
Oh, you haven't heard this one?
Chris (16:41):
me now.
Michael (16:51):
end of shift reporting is a really simple one.
If you don't have the datacoming off your, you know,
your, your machines anddynamically building it, you
generally, there's most smallcompanies, there's a person
who at the end of the daysays how many were made, how
many were scrapped, et cetera.
So they want todigitize all that.
So you roll up into a dashboard.
Everybody can seehow the day went.
Did you win the day?
Did you win the month?
We'll start on somethingreally simple like that.
And we'll buildthat for somebody.
(17:12):
And then they go, wow, weneed this problem and this
problem and this problem.
And pretty soon we're seven oreight applications in, at which
point they go, we want to have,we want to have a dedicated
person on our team, really learnhow to build everything and
just build everything for us.
Chris (17:25):
Yep.
Michael (17:26):
So we, that's generally how it rolls out.
Chris (17:28):
makes sense.
That makes
Michael (17:29):
And, and we do, because we can do it really
fast, we can do it cheap.
Like the other thing wetry to do is a 10th of the
time, a 10th of the cost.
Chris (17:35):
Yeah, well, that would that be nice.
That's a winning formula.
Michael (17:39):
And we can do it because we, you know, add
SAP, like, you know, it'smillions of dollars and
any, any big enterprisesoftware, it's very expensive.
It's time consuming.
It's rock solid, butit takes a long time.
In our case, we can, you know,take on that, you know, like
your company with 40 or 80people between you, I don't
know, you know, we can, we canturn all your Excel sheets into
applications at a price you guyswould go, wow, that's awesome.
Chris (18:00):
So let me let me.
This is this is actuallythe timing on this is is
very interesting to mebecause we have for many,
many years and I may have.
We've talked about thison the show before.
I can't remember everythingwe've discussed, but, For many
years, we've been operating onan MRP software called Alliance.
Now Alliance was written,I'm pretty sure in the 80s.
(18:21):
I'm fairly confident itwas written in the 80s.
It's database backend
Michael (18:26):
Hey, man, don't, don't beef the 80s.
Chris (18:33):
specifying it that way.
The, the backend database isold school Microsoft Access.
And it.
only runs on a 32bit operating system.
You cannot run it on amodern operating system.
So we have all these virtualmachines that virtualize
old, like Windows 10, Windows10, but 32 bit so that we
can get the software to run.
(18:54):
So,
Michael (18:55):
thinking you're running on a virtual Nintendo or
Chris (18:58):
yeah, don't tell anybody I got virtual
Nintendo in my, in my office.
So, it works though.
Right.
It works.
There's no support.
I mean, the, the, themanufacturer of the software
has given up supporton this decades ago.
Literally probably over20 years ago, they no
longer supported it.
And they have modernversions of it.
That, that are very nice.
(19:19):
We own it.
It's free and it works.
And it's one of those thingswhere you see all the time,
like I go to like my local tirestore and they've got like an.
Old DOS terminal in avirtual machine that they run
their entire operation on.
You see it all the time.
They're running this oldsoftware, but we know, we know
(19:40):
in our heart of hearts that thatis not, you know, we're going to
maximize that tool, but it's notgoing to help us grow, right?
And we want to grow.
We're, it's not going totake us to the next level.
It's, it's sort of like whenwe switched from well, it.
Very, very specifically,you may not be familiar with
it, but in the circuit boardassembly, you have machines
(20:02):
called pick and place machines.
And the platform we wereon previously was a fine
tool, got the job done.
We were delivering boards,customers were happy, but we
knew it wasn't the platform thatwas going to help us to grow.
And we knew, even though weown those machines, we knew
we had to spend the hundredsof thousands of dollars and
move on to a platform thatwas going to help us to grow.
And sure enough, we'vemade that transition.
It's been a littleover a year now.
(20:23):
And we're not looking back.
It's just, it's been afantastic transition.
We're very excited about it.
So we're in this sort ofstate with our current
business software, right?
This, this old school, it'scalled Alliance software.
We're, we know we haveto move off of it.
We know we want to finda tool that allows us to
streamline our processes.
(20:44):
And I, that is so buzzwordy.
I hate, I hate saying it.
It's so buzzwordy, but it'slike, it's like literally
there is, you know.
Like, I'll, I'll describefor our audience here, the
listeners, we, we, we getyour design files, right?
And when we open up those designfiles, we identify, let's say,
(21:05):
for example, the dimensionof the, of the board, okay?
So now we have thedimension of the board.
But then the stencil guy has toget the dimension of the board.
The pick and placeprogram guy has to get the
dimension of the board.
The, the stencil program,the SPI program, the AOI
program, the reflow oven, theselective side, we all need.
The dimension of the board,and we all look it up each
(21:27):
and every time we need it.
Right?
So we're okay.
It's 121 millimeters by 160millimeters every single time.
And you have that times 10different processes, right?
Whereas a modern platform,you would be able to plug in
the dimension of the board,121, 160, blah, blah, blah.
And then everybody, you would
Michael (21:48):
propagates to everybody who
Chris (21:49):
Just boom.
That's what I mean bystreamlined processes.
It just goes everywhere allat once, rather than having
to redundantly enter thisinformation over and over.
Our current tools arenot capable of that.
And those are the things we missout on when we don't move to a
new platform, which it soundslike Praxie is the kind of a
platform that we could move tothat would help us to do this.
(22:11):
Now, the big questionis for a guy like me is.
It's, it's not free.
I'm not asking youto give your pricing.
It's not free, but youhave to make a certain
level of investment.
And every time we've talkedto vendors of classic ERP, MRP
software It's way too much.
I mean, it's not just Mike,Michael, it's not too much.
(22:34):
It's way too much.
Like be like, we would haveto be literally 10 times the
size we are today to havethe scale, to be able to
afford what they're tryingto charge for the service.
Michael (22:49):
And that's the conundrum.
Right.
The alternative is youhave your IT team build a
custom solution for you.
Chris (22:56):
Which is, we're almost doing it because
we need these tools andwe've started to do it, you
Michael (23:01):
And you think it's cheaper because Fred or
Sarah is already on the team.
Chris (23:06):
the reality
Michael (23:07):
the reality is what you're doing is you're locking
in a very slow developmentand it's going to add, you're
going to add two additionalpeople and the system is
going to become very brittle.
Right.
Because they're not core,they're not a software company.
They're just two peoplewith great skills.
Chris (23:21):
going to be very brittle because they're not
for, they're not a softwarecompany with great skills.
Michael (23:30):
yeah.
Chris (23:33):
Google hires them, you know what I mean?
Like, oh, and now we're stuck.
It doesn't matter how goodhis code is, how, how well
he commented everything.
To get somebody elseup to speed is going to
Michael (23:43):
Even if none of that happens, even if none of that
happens, it'll be a lot moreexpensive than you expect.
I was on the phone the otherday with a group who had hired
a guy for 25, 000 to builda tool they needed just to
move their, they do metal CNCing, just to move their work
orders across the process.
It was pretty simple process.
They were 250, 000 in
Chris (24:05):
Pooh.
Oh, yeah.
Michael (24:09):
it.
And so, and that's, youknow, to a lot of companies,
that's nothing, but tosmaller companies, you know,
25, 50, 000, this is realmoney and it has to work
and it has to be scalableand all that kind of stuff.
So, one of the things thatwe often do though, is we
don't try to replace coreMES or ERP system if it's,
if you're managing yourinventory and your, you
(24:29):
know, your materials and allthose kinds of things well.
We don't try to replace that.
What we tend to do, likeyour system, your Excel
system, or your accesssystem, is if there's a
way we can talk to that.
And I don't know, usethe data that's, yeah,
Chris (24:42):
so, I'm so sick of supporting it.
I'm so sick of fightingwith virtual machines and
trying to get the virtualmachines to print, to act,
you know, real world printers.
No, I'm done.
I'm done.
Michael (24:54):
it, so if you like, or you want to keep
certain software, we tendto talk to it and what, and.
And we can go into in depthat whatever time you want,
but basically the way oursystem works is think of a
giant data lake that surroundsyour existing applications,
your existing databases,and your machine data.
And that data lake can bringin any of that information,
and then we can use it tobuild and work with on any
(25:17):
application that you want.
So instead of having, you know,lots of various applications
and Excel sheets and connectorsand ad hoc workflows, you have
basically a unified structureto bring everything together.
And then on that structure,you can capitalize on to build
data, but you can also connectdata that you would never would.
You'd be like, okay, well,how many of these, you
know, PCBs are going fromhere to there and actually
(25:39):
getting through the process.
Cause right now they're ontwo different apps or two
different Excel sheets.
And we have no abilityto understand the flow.
So once we get them on adata structure, we can then
create reports that willshow you how this connects to
that, et cetera, et cetera.
So one customer right now,
Chris (25:53):
I was just going to say, we've been
talking about the forest.
Let's talk about a tree.
Can we, can we point toa specific example, like
something you don't have tosay, Oh, it was Walmart or
Michael (26:01):
no, no, sir.
Sure.
Chris (26:02):
you know.
Michael (26:02):
So one of the things that I find is in
manufacturing companies isthey, the, I don't know, there
was an old politician whosaid the unknown unknowns.
Chris (26:14):
yeah, yeah.
Was it Rumsfeld?
I
Michael (26:15):
I think it was Rumsfeld, right?
The Unknown Unknowns.
So,
Chris (26:19):
knowns, known unknowns and unknown
Michael (26:21):
Unknown Unknowns, right?
So it's the Unknown Unknownsthat really get you.
And, and so what we tend todo is try to get, digitize
the plant so that the coreinformation is coming up.
Into shift information, allthe lean stuff, you know, you
can input cool processes like5S all the stuff for Incident
(26:42):
management, maintenance,all those kinds of things.
So you get that stuff digitalso you can see the stuff,
and then you start seeingthose unknown unknowns.
You start seeing that some,why do we have so many
people cutting their leg?
Well, because, youknow, whatever it is.
My point is often,
Chris (26:56):
it's We're running out
Michael (26:58):
yeah, whatever it is, but that's a really kind
of simple one, but the idea.
Chris (27:02):
the cutting the leg problem.
Just get more band aids.
We don't get
Michael (27:06):
there's a lean concept called the Obeya room
command center kind of a thing.
So the basic idea is get thecore processes digitized in
a way that you can see thecore information that drives
OEE or whatever calculationmodel you're trying to drive.
In the things that matter onyour verticals, that's the
safety, quality, et cetera.
(27:27):
First time quality, first passyield, all the different things
that you're trying to get.
Get the data coming inso you can see it and
everybody can look at it.
And then we go after what isthe infrastructure required
to optimize that further.
So we need to connectto your ERP system.
So I'll give you acouple of examples.
Working with a client rightnow who they can't ship their
products because testing.
(27:48):
Is a problem.
They, they, so the way they havediscrete kind of batch products.
And they, they test each batchproduct before they send it out.
So, a sales person or an opsperson says, this is the group
of stuff we need to test.
They send that in an email.
The testing engineersstart testing stuff.
Then they get another email.
(28:08):
And somebody's higher upon the food chain says, No,
test this product right now.
A customer sent it in.
I need to understandwhy it's broken.
So they put down the groupthey were working on and start
working on another product, etc.
So they can't see the visibilityinto their priority list.
They can't see who requested it.
They can't see whichorders it's affecting.
So you build a system that nowthey have a work order system
(28:29):
for their engineering test.
Fantastic.
So then the engineers are alsolooking at program management.
And then they want to be able tohave a handover that sends, one,
to identify which programs theyshould be doing, but then at the
end, when they're ready to senda program over to an engineering
test, connects the dots to that.
Oh, and then the suppliers aresending in Products that relate
(28:51):
to those overall products thatneed to be tested, and they
need to be able to run suppliertesting, and they want that to
connect to the testing that'sgoing on in the engineer.
So each one of theseare steps in getting the
product out the door.
That are currently being managedin Excel sheets and emails
that give them no visibilityto where the hangup is in
that test product process.
So by connecting that datastructure, they now, and
(29:12):
creating workflows thateverybody can see, and people
are notified via email andall that kind of stuff.
What you're, you know, it'sjust process improvement.
You can now see the problem.
Why does it take us sixmonths to release a product?
You know, I can't, Idon't understand why you
can now see the problemand get it digitized.
The problem is that, andthat's a really basic sort of.
Chris (29:29):
just an
Michael (29:30):
Non lean problem.
It's just an operationalworkflow problem.
But I, what I see this allthe time where people are
running Excel and they don'tknow what they don't know
and they don't know howinefficient their process is.
Chris (29:42):
Not, not my process.
I have an efficient
Michael (29:44):
No, yours is great.
Yours is great.
by the way, you know, you,everyone that I've worked with
also makes products and getsthem out the door and doesn't
need us to do that, right?
The, the question is, canwe dramatically improve
the processes, those
Chris (29:58):
I, I joke all the time.
I go, the worst thing I canever do for my own mental sanity
is go out on the manufacturingfloor and help run machines.
And it's not that I'mnot capable of it.
I do it regularly.
I, I, I And I do it onpurpose, but it, it hurts
me mentally because I seeall the inefficiencies, I
(30:18):
see all the things that arebroken and I see all the
opportunities for improvement.
And I get overwhelmedand I'm like, Oh gosh,
where do I even begin?
You know?
And so I, I get it.
You know, it's, it's hardsometimes when you don't
have the right tools thatare connecting all the dots
to be able to see, Oh, we'regoing to have a problem here.
I would much rather seeit five days ahead of
time than the moment Ineed to build the product.
Michael (30:40):
And there's something else, there's, there's
something else you mentioned.
That's a really good pointthat I often see as well as
even companies who have gooddigital data, they might
have built something withPower BI or something in a
command center where they cansee particular information.
When something is offtrack, they'll grab a note
and they write somethingdown or they send a text.
Chris (30:59):
Yeah.
Michael (31:00):
And so the other part that is critical in all of this
is not just the digitizationof the process, but the
buy in of the people part.
Because when we digitize theseprocesses, we generally will
bring in the people on the lineor all the people who are part
of the process to define howthey would like it to work.
Because they don't likethe problems they deal
(31:21):
with every day either.
They wish it was better.
And so you create this changemanagement process by getting
them involved in designinga process that's familiar to
them because we can digitizewhat they're currently doing,
the paper they're usingor whatever, Excel sheets.
And, and build in aworkflow that then brings
the people part along.
It's critical.
And lastly, is when anissue gets you know, brought
(31:42):
up, our system can triggeroff a workflow that will
send an action item toa particular person or
somebody can assign somebody.
They get an email, they getnotified in their system,
they can track everythingthey're supposed to be doing
to address all these issues.
Because often thisstuff just gets lost.
Chris (31:59):
And
Michael (31:59):
So, and then we'll talk about AI and
how that affects it.
Chris (32:02):
how that affects it.
So when you build andyou talk, making sure
Michael (32:09):
yeah.
So.
One is the digitization, becauseit has to be digital, because
you can't use AI if it's notdigital, but two is building
these processes with the teamfor the change management,
making sure that the actionitem and follow up process
works, and that management isbought into the following up.
Because people will stop, if youfor instance have a 5S process,
I don't know if you guys run a5S process where you're, right?
(32:30):
You have a 5S process, ifpeople stop doing audits,
people stop doing 5S.
Right?
So management has to do theauditing, or nobody, nobody
continues to do the process.
So how does thisall relate to AI?
So, when we were defining theplatform at SAP, it's terrific.
They do great brandingas well on it.
It's the Leonardo platform iswhat it became after I left.
(32:53):
I don't know if it's stillcalled that, but basically
we had what they calledfog connectors that would
connect out at the edgeand bring in the MQTD data.
They could even do someanalytics at that level.
And then we brought everythinginto the central HANA
infrastructure that coulddo vibration analysis, and
we were doing predictivemaintenance and the
traditional AI type of things.
(33:13):
And those have somewhatbecome commodities.
You can connect to thoseon Google or Microsoft
or SAP or Amazon.
They have their owninfrastructure for dealing
with IOT kind of analyticsaround those types of things.
The, the generative AI, thenew stuff is a whole different
thing in that it's largelanguage model based and.
Chris (33:35):
idea behind
Michael (33:36):
The idea behind it,
Chris (33:38):
as aware
Michael (33:39):
you know, and I'm not an AI expert, although I did
do a bunch of research on howgradient descent models work and
how they figure out the stuff.
It's,
Chris (33:46):
the time
Michael (33:46):
way smarter people than me.
But anyway, the point for us is,and I run into this all the time
when we're talking to people,people want to do it, but they
don't know how to pragmaticallybuild it into the system.
Like how do we do itin a way that actually
drives value for people?
So what we've done, iswe've built AI into the
infrastructure of ourplatform, into the workflow.
(34:08):
And so what that meansis you can apply a smart
AI language model to anyproblem you're looking at.
So you asked forsome very specific.
So let's say you'rerunning an A3 process.
So traditional A3,I'll bring up one here.
I've got on my you know,you have a standard
before and after, whatare the gains you expect?
How are you going to track them?
What are the actions?
What's the controlplan, et cetera.
(34:28):
In the AI version, what youdo, is you enter the type of
company you are, you enterthe problem you're having.
Let's say I'm having aproblem with spoilage.
I'm a food company.
I'm a spoilage because I'mhaving intermittent outages in
my in my refrigeration system.
And I put in all the data andI click the AI help button
and it says it could be anyone of these six things.
(34:48):
What, which one of thosedo you think it is?
Now, I might have been ableto figure that out, but
research I've seen says AIis two to three times more
creative than the averageperson in an answer because
it has the entire internetas a database to look at,
Chris (35:00):
to look at.
Michael (35:01):
So it comes back with, you know, five or six,
could it be any of these?
And the person can go, I thinkthey can select which ones
they think is most likely, theycan add text to it, it goes,
you know, I did see X, Y, andZ as part of this process.
They hit analyze, it comesback and says, here's possible
solutions to those problems.
Chris (35:17):
And then you can
Michael (35:19):
And then you could say, well, I'm going to take
number three and try that one.
And it generates a tasklist that you can then
go assign to your team.
Chris (35:24):
can then go assign to your team.
You can then,
Michael (35:27):
You can then, another one is let's say you're getting,
Chris (35:30):
line, you're
Michael (35:31):
You're on the line and you're getting too much too
many errors, too much waste.
The waste code in our systemwould bring up a dashboard
that would say, hey, you know,you're over your, your your
scrap allocation, sends anemail off to your management.
And then what it does is it,Based on the error code, it
comes back with a list of here.
Try these five things.
(35:52):
What happens today isthey click maintenance.
I need a maintenance.
And then they stop workingcause it's, they got to stop.
So you have a stoppage andnow you're waiting for a
person and your maintenanceperson's over allocated.
What we can do with AI is wecan bring up here, six things
that one, the internet saysyou should try, but even
better, uh, index all of the.
(36:14):
Or the documentation on yourproducts, et cetera, and say,
here's some of the thingsthat have worked before.
Try these, validate thatyou've tried these, these
things before we send amessage to maintenance.
Chris (36:24):
and seen things before you send a message to me.
SMT pick and place machines,because the SMT pick and
place machine manufacturersdon't publish anything.
They don't, you know, it'sall, it's all in PowerPoint
and it's all in their usermanuals and documentation.
It ain't not on thepublic internet, nothing
(36:44):
that, that anybody canscrape and learn from.
So it's like, they don'tknow, you know, we have to,
we almost have to teach theAI model, what is specific to
our machine and almost haveto feed it this information
from our manufacturer.
Michael (37:00):
So what we've implemented in the past
is systems that will bringin three pieces of data.
One is based on the aircode, any, literal SOPs to
deal with that particularthings that are designed.
It'll just bring them up, right?
And, and so you can takewhatever documentation you have
with digitize that the other oneis to go out on the internet and
(37:21):
say, have you tried X, Y, and Z?
And then the third one isto index your own databases
of what has worked in thepast and bring that up.
So those are really practicalways that maximize your people.
You know, shorten downtime,eliminate waste faster.
And you know, there's plenty ofROI models on how to do this.
We tend, when we do an analysisto try to have a three ish
(37:41):
month return on investment.
Chris (37:44):
Well that'd be nice.
That'd be very nice.
Now, are you able to find findthat kind of investment with
a small 50 person business?
Or is this, usually you haveto be a certain scale to
find that kind of return?
Michael (37:55):
no, because, you know, 50 person businesses,
you know, depending on thescale of what we're building,
we can build things that arehighly valuable really quickly
and really inexpensively.
So like our smallest, we havecustomers that, you know.
Start at 10, 000 andgo up to six figures.
I mean, we, we,we run the gamut.
Chris (38:16):
Yeah, interesting.
Very interesting.
Well, maybe we should talkmore about business than we
should about the podcast.
I don't know.
This it seems like it mightbe a fit for Worthington.
Michael (38:27):
let's do it.
I mean, you guys will be happy.
Chris (38:29):
I think, I wonder if some of our listeners think sometimes
that we have sponsored content.
And it's really just that I liketo talk to interesting people.
And Michael, you know,reached out and I was like,
okay, this would be aninteresting conversation.
I'm not, we're notbeing paid for this.
We just want to talkto interesting people.
So it just happens to bea good fit at the moment
that we have a particular
Michael (38:46):
Well, you know, the truth is that most manufacturing
companies, when I show them apicture that shows a bunch of
Excel sheets and whiteboards,They go, yeah, that's,
we know that, like that.
So it's not that, youknow, this is particularly
relevant to you, it's kindof relevant to everybody
in manufacturing, you know.
It's a problem space that isn'taddressed and it's not addressed
because making enterprisesoftware is hard and if it has
(39:09):
to be completely tailored toyour business, how do you do
it in a 50 person business?
You can't, so youend up in Excel.
Chris (39:15):
cater to your business?
How do you do it in abusiness where you can't?
So you have to do it yourself.
The, the, the big fear thatbusinesses like ours have that,
(39:36):
you know, we'll talk about FUDFUD, Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt.
afraid that Praxie is goingto go out of business and
we're going to be leftwith this, you know, we're.
We've built our wholething on this, and now
what are we going to do?
We're afraid that, youknow, Sarah is going
to get hit by a bus.
We're afraid, you know,and, and she's our in house
(39:57):
support person on, on who'swriting all this stuff for us.
Versus, everybody knows Excel.
You know, and I think that'sa lot of times when it comes
back to why a lot of businesseslike us are hesitant to move
to a dedicated platform is, isbecause of that fear, because
of that uncertainty, you know,will it be around is, is Michael
(40:19):
Lynch and his team going to bearound to support us for the
next 10 years when we need themto be, you know, SAP might be
very, very expensive, but, Weknow they ain't going anywhere.
You got the U.
S.
government as your customer.
You're going to bearound a long time.
Michael (40:32):
Yeah, I think that's fair.
One of the things in our systemthat we've done is, is dedicated
to kind of the open ecosystem.
So, you have the abilityto export the entire data
structures out of our system.
You have the ability tocreate a report query,
let's say, and exporteverything into Excel sheets.
Chris (40:52):
Mm hmm.
Michael (40:53):
You have the ability to print out everything in a PDF.
So
Chris (40:56):
So if we have to go back to the Stone Age, we can do
Michael (40:58):
You can do it.
And the thing is that, youknow, when you're a smaller
company like you guys are,you're sort of stuck in the
place, as you said, and you'reeven kind of stuck there
with your older MES system.
Is that what it does for you?
MRP, yeah.
So, that problem can happenany time, but what we've been,
(41:22):
the reason that we thoughtthere was a huge opportunity
to be a Mid size and smallermanufacturers is exactly what
you laid out is that you're notgoing to be able to buy SAP.
The IT structure isnot really affordable.
You can try to do it,but you'll be sorry.
That's been my experience.
And so this is, there'ssome risk in going with any
company, but the risk ofnot doing it is you just
(41:43):
have to stay where you are.
And as you said, if you'retrying to grow, you've got
to find an answer that, that,you know, has the minimal
risk that you can have.
So we've addressed that by justmaking our data structures,
you know, accessible.
So that people feel comfortablethat if they ever do need to
export everything they can.
Chris (41:59):
you can make good content for the community.
Michael (42:03):
Let's do it.
I'll send you a meetingrequest on Tuesday and
Chris (42:11):
This is awesome.
I, I, I feel like I'vereally you know, my eyes
have been a bit open tosome opportunities here.
I, I, this is somethingthat has been nagging
us for over five years.
I mean, maybe longer, youknow, whenever, whenever
computers got over fourgigabytes of RAM, that's how
long this has been nagging us.
Cause that's whenwe moved to 64.
Michael (42:32):
60, damn 64 bit!
Chris (42:34):
It's literally how long it's been a problem for us.
So we, we gotta dosomething about this.
Michael (42:39):
You'll be surprised.
We can help you a lotat a very low cost.
You'll be happy.
Chris (42:43):
Cool.
Very interesting.
Very interesting.
Hopefully I can get thePickPlace podcast discount.
Is that a,
Michael (42:48):
Absolutely.
Absolutely.
Chris (42:49):
Um Well, that's awesome.
Is there anything else you'dlike to share before we
get before we, we get intoour pet peeve of the week,
Michael (42:56):
No, I think we covered it all.
Yeah.
Chris (42:57):
right, cool.
Brilliant.
All right.
So Michael, if you have one,by all means, we'd love for you
to share a pet peeve of yours.
If you don't have one, trustus, we have, we have lists,
literal lists, plural.
Michael (43:12):
My you know, it's funny because we were talking
and I was going to talk aboutone with sort of business.
And then we were talking beforeabout vacations and going
abroad and things like that.
And this is going to be sweetand sad at the same time.
It's people who don't knowhow to train their dogs.
Chris (43:31):
Okay.
Tell me more.
Cause I have, I have a puppy.
Michael (43:34):
it's just like dogs are total positive
reinforcement animals.
Now, you watch the experts.
If you have a realpsychopath dog, you've got
to hold them and do things.
But I see people all the timeyanking and yanking and yanking
and yanking on these pooranimals, and they just want
to do what you ask them to do.
Chris (43:51):
right.
Michael (43:51):
You've just got to love them.
That's all.
Chris (43:53):
I know, I know.
Well, so I definitelyhave that problem.
I don't know if I, Inormally that they sit their
butt down and then theyjust get really excited.
And they're like, pleasepet me, please pet me at
my, my two little pugs.
They get there.
They're they're easy totrain though, because
they are so food driven.
Michael (44:09):
That's right.
They'll do exactly whatyou ask them to do.
You just got to, andthen love them, just give
them a treat, love them.
They'll do what you say.
That's, that's myonly pet peeve.
Chris (44:17):
So, are you saying, how does this
relate to travel though?
Because you mentioned something
Michael (44:21):
Because when I was at, when we were, when I
was overseas recently, I sawthis guy just, it was so bad
that people in the marketstarted yelling at him.
They were yellingat him in French.
So I didn't get involved,but it was just this puppy.
And he like, he didn'tknow how to deal with it.
He just kept yanking it.
He was like 25.
He's a big guyyanking a dog around.
I was like, come on, man.
It's a puppy.
Chris (44:40):
Yeah, it's a puppy.
You just got to pickthat thing up and just
throw it in their arms.
Michael (44:43):
Just love it! Just love it!
Chris (44:45):
it.
Yeah.
Yeah, exactly.
Well, I'll tell you, we broughtour puppy to a local brewery.
They had a half marathon.
My wife ran the halfmarathon and I, I
couldn't walk five feet.
I could not walk fivefeet with, without people
just being obsessed
Michael (45:02):
Yeah, pugs are so cute when they're little.
Chris (45:04):
Oh my gosh.
Michael (45:05):
cute the whole time, but they're
really cute when they're
Chris (45:07):
they're, they're not cute when they're like past
10 years old, they get prettyold, ugly past 10 years old.
Michael (45:12):
Hey! Dog ageism!
Chris (45:15):
I still think they're cute, but you
know, I'm a little biased.
I'm a little biased.
Yeah.
Michael (45:21):
Okay, what about you guys?
Chris (45:22):
Well, I, I had a recent experience.
I was, I was in, I was in arestroom, public restroom, and
it has the automatic sync thing,and I walk up to it, and it came
right on, and I'm like, this isgreat, and I'm washing my hands,
I'm like, this is great, and Iturn around to grab the paper
towels, and it's still running.
I'm like, okay, this is weird.
It's still running.
And then I walklike a couple more.
(45:43):
Well, it normally is,isn't it, Melissa?
Normally it's the opposite.
Normally you're like,my hands are here.
My hands are here.
Let's get started.
So obviously you cantune these things.
There's gotta be like alittle variable resistor
or something in there totune these sensors and.
Whoever ran this public restroomwas fed up with not getting
water and just crank thatthing to a hundred and just
(46:03):
said, if you, if there is aphysical body in this room,
I don't care if they're onthe toilet, turn this thing.
Michael (46:09):
You know what's interesting
about that pet peeve?
It's probably onboth ends of that.
Like, if it just runswater, that's dumb.
And if it won't give youwater, that's dumb too.
Chris (46:17):
I think automatic faucets are just dumb, period.
It's like valves work.
Humans give humans credit.
They know how to turnvalves on and off.
Just let them turnthe valve on and off.
Do we really have to like, youknow, Like nanny this thing
with an automatic sensor.
I, I like the push.
I like the push and it stayson for like 20 seconds.
(46:38):
I'm good with that.
That's a good one too.
Cause that's, that's a good
Michael (46:41):
Yeah, that's a good one.
Then you don't have to touch it.
Yeah,
Chris (46:44):
Yeah.
You can hit it with theback of your hand or
Michael (46:47):
I was at SAP years ago, and they had this coolest one.
This was in the executivecenter where we would
talk with customers.
They had a, it was likea trough style faucet.
And when the water was cold,it would have red LEDs.
I mean, hot would be redLEDs and colds would be blue.
(47:07):
And so it would change colorbased on how hot it was.
Melissa (47:10):
That's interesting.
Chris (47:11):
Oh man, Melissa, we got to add this
to our shower faucet.
Yeah, this is the ongoing jokewith the PickPlace podcast.
We wanted, we wanted to inventa product that, that you could
plug in the temperature of thewater you want for your shower.
And it just comes outthe correct temperature.
Michael (47:25):
The right
Chris (47:26):
out they exist and there's like, yeah, but now
we got to add LEDs to it.
Now that's our differentiator.
We'll add the LEDs to it.
And we'll be, we'll be,forget the Pig Place podcast.
It'll be the ShowerFaucet podcast.
We'll get, we'll getKohler on, Delta.
Who else can we get on here?
Michael (47:40):
They'll all, they'll all own you by then.
They'll buy it out.
Chris (47:43):
That's right.
Yeah, no, I I no, I wI, I am very frustrated
by automatic syncs.
I stayed at a my parentshave the, when I go to visit,
they have the you just tapthe faucet and it turns on.
You tap it again.
It turns off the like touchsensor, the whole faucet itself.
You just tap the faucetand leave the valve open.
I like that.
(48:03):
But the best I ever had,I stayed at a Airbnb once
and I had a foot pedal.
So as you walked up toit, you press the foot
pedal and the water turns
Michael (48:12):
I have one of those.
Chris (48:13):
amazing.
Michael (48:14):
Yeah, they're good.
It's on the, at the kitchenthere, you know, the, the
island has a, has a sinkin it for doing vegetables.
So they put that inbecause it makes sense.
You have all these vegetables.
You got to turn the water on.
Chris (48:26):
and you want, and you don't want to just leave it
running and wasting thousands
Michael (48:29):
Yeah.
I think they're,
Chris (48:30):
want to turn it on when you need
Michael (48:31):
I think they came from hospitals.
I think that's where they're
Chris (48:34):
I believe it.
I know, like, I rememberwhen I was a kid in like an
elementary school, we had theone where had a big giant bar.
They'll go across andanybody could step on it.
And there was like atrough and all these little
spouts would come out andyou'd wash your hands.
And I went to a breweryrecently that had one of those.
And there was ayoung kid in there.
He's like, how do,how do I turn this on?
And I'm like, I waslike, it's official.
(48:56):
I'm old.
I'm officially, I'm havingto teach the kids these days.
They don't know about foot
Michael (49:01):
Back, back in the Soviet era.
Chris (49:05):
We all had to wash our hands together,
uphill, both ways.
Oh, this has been brilliant.
Thank you very much, Michael,for coming on the show.
If
Michael (49:15):
of fun, you guys,
Chris (49:16):
what's the best way for people to get in touch
of you, if they want to
Michael (49:19):
super simple.
Michael dot Lynch,LYNC h@proxy.com.
Chris (49:24):
that's, that is michael.
lynch.
I'm, I'm.
I couldn't, couldn't thinkof a better email address.
That's exactly whatI did for my own.
Chris.
denny at gmail.
com back in the back in theinvite only days of Gmail.
Trouble
Michael (49:37):
you got it.
Chris (49:37):
somebody signed up for Chris Denny with
no period at gmail.
com.
And I randomlyget this person's.
Emails.
And it's very frustrating.
And I have a bone to pick
Michael (49:46):
That's a p.
Another pet peevefor another podcast,
Chris (49:48):
Oh, that's not just a pet peeve.
This is like, it's justlike identity theft.
It's like, it's like I, theguy, he, he, he's British.
I know
Michael (49:57):
Oh, that's even worse.
Chris (49:58):
he's British because, because I get all of his, his
emails thanking me for donatingblood to the local, like blood
bank somewhere in London.
Like,
Michael (50:08):
like a great
Chris (50:09):
he's probably a great guy, you know?
Michael (50:11):
Do you get like footballer type emails?
Chris (50:13):
I, I get.
Well, so he must be a fan, hemust also be a fan of American
football, which is not toounusual in the UK, there's
actually a fair number ofAmerican football fans out
there, because he belongs toa, like a Yahoo Sports or ESPN
Fantasy Football League, andThis is a children's show,
(50:34):
but I'll, you know, you're notchildren's show, but this is,
this is a family friendly show.
We, we don't, we don'tuse, we don't use foul
language on the show.
And this isn't, this is about assaucy as we're going to get, but
the name of his football team issuck my footballs, which is, and
I, yeah, I got the whole thing.
He's and all his, all his.
Every other team in hisleague, they all got these
(50:55):
like little innuendo names.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So he donates blood, he playsfantasy football, and I promise
I'm not sleepwalking and causehow can I, how can I cross
the Atlantic and donate blood?
You know what I mean?
I guess this is, this
Michael (51:08):
You'd be a really great guy then.
Chris (51:12):
In my sleep, crossing the Atlantic.
Nope.
No, sir.
But yeah hopefully,hopefully you don't sign
anybody up Michael Lynchwithout the period at proxy.
com
Michael (51:21):
No, there is nobody
Chris (51:22):
be very awkward.
It'd be very awkward.
Well, great.
Thank you very muchfor coming on the show.
As always, if, if anybody wantsto get in contact with us, we're
contact at pickplacepodcast.
com.
You know, there's, You knowhow to get ahold of us.
Just get ahold of us.
And, and I got someemails last week.
I will follow up with them.
I promise if you haven'theard from me, you'll
hear from me soon.
(51:43):
Thank you very muchfor reaching out to us.
Turns out, Melissa, peoplelove conveyors and they want
to know more about conveyors.
See, I told you it was
Melissa (51:49):
conveyor's episode part
Chris (51:51):
you it was going to be a good episode.
So, as always, please tella friend if you've enjoyed
the show and hopefullythey'll enjoy it as well.
Melissa (51:59):
Yeah, thanks for listening to the
PickPlace podcast.
If you like what you heard,consider following us in your
favorite podcast app, andplease leave us a review on
Apple Podcasts or whereveryou get your podcasts from.
Thanks so much, Michael.
Chris (52:11):
Thanks, Michael.
Thanks, Melissa.
Popular Podcasts
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com