KCAA: Inside Analysis with Eric Kavanagh (Sun, 7 Jul, 2024)

KCAA: Inside Analysis with Eric Kavanagh on Sun, 7 Jul, 2024

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
He is on ACAA LOMLA sponsored byTeamsters Local nineteen thirty two, protecting the

(00:05):
future of working Families Teamsters nineteen thirtytwo dot org. The information economy has
a rod. The world is teemingwith innovation as new business models reinvent every
industry industry. Inside Analysis is yoursource of information and insight about how to

(00:26):
make the most of this exciting newera. Learn more at inside analysis dot
com, insideanalysis dot com. Andnow here's your host, Eric Kavanaugh.
All Right, ladies and gentlemen,Hello and welcome back once again to the
only coast to coast radio show allabout the information economy. It's time for

(00:48):
Inside Analysis. You're truly Eric Kavanaughhere and a great lineup of guests for
you. Today. We'll be talkingto Al Besmeyer. He's from a company
called via Metiici. They do masterdata management and data everdence and basically help
reconcile information systems, which is prettyimportant stuff these days. And Daz Cootie
is here with us as well fromsustain three sixty and they're doing some excellent

(01:10):
work in guess what it is sustainabilityand tracking suppliers and being responsible about these
things and so we're going to talktoday about practical sustainability, like how can
we do good things to help motherEarth. I think most people want to
help mother Earth. I remember theold commercial of the Indian on the side
of the road. This is likein the mid nineteen seventies and they showed

(01:32):
a Native America to the side ofthe road. He looked down their garbage
all over the side of the road, and the poor guy's crying. And
let me tell you, everyone feltbad. Okay, everyone who saw that
commercial felt bad. We're like,oh man, we got to do better
than that. And just garbage litter. It's just bad news, you know.
So we've come a long way,I think, in a whole bunch
of different ways. Quite frankly,we don't litter as much these days.

(01:53):
We try to recycle. I rememberthe old mantra reduce, reuse, recycle
good stuff. Of course, emissionsare big on radar these days, and
we are concerned about what's going onwith CO two. And I do want
to throw out one of my theoriesand get the expert opinion to these gentlemen
as we talk about this stuff,because the focus here again is practical sustainability.
So what can we do practically thatcan help us be better stewards of

(02:15):
Earth is the bottom line. Andthe Clean Water Act, clean Air actings
of this nature have gone a longway, folks. I mean, I
got to tell you, I'm fiftysix years old, and I remember when
Lake Erie, you know, themistake on the lake, as they joked,
it caught fire because there was somuch oil and other terrible stuff.
I mean, they used to justdump everything in these rivers in these lakes.

(02:36):
It was just dreadful. And we'vereally improved on that front quite a
bit. But there are other thingsthat come into play. At the mouth
of the Mississippi. For example,there is a dead zone which is largely
because of toxins coming from petrochemicals includingnitrogen and phosphorus and other things from the
Mississippi going all the way down throughthe United States and then going out at

(02:58):
the mouth of the Mississippi zone downthere. What can we do about that?
I Mean, I've had various ideasover the years. I would love
to see capital projects focus on waterdelivery things of that nature. Every year
the Mississippi overflows, we could setup aqueducts to deliver water across the country.
There are lots of different things wecan do, and especially if caps

(03:19):
are melting up in Canada, wecan find some way to leverage that and
be strategic about managing these resources.On of course, our federal government spends
a lot of money and did inthe two thousand and eight financial crisis bailing
out the big banks. Well wasthat smart? I don't know. Some
people say it wasn't. I wouldlove to see these capital improvement projects,
but I do want to throw outthis theory I had about understanding the impact

(03:42):
of CO two because, of course, the general belief is that there's too
much CO two and that it's causingstorms to get more severe. And this
is very possible. If you thinkabout all the cars that are burning,
all the factories running, a lotof CO two is being produced. Well,
what's interesting is we do have atest case. We do have a
very clear line of demarcation when COtwo levels dropped at least from human production,

(04:05):
and that was the COVID lockdowns.Think about we locked down all over
the world, especially here in theStates. I can tell you it really
April was the peak. But Apriland May even into June there was a
serious lowering of CO two emissions becausepeople just weren't driving around, and I
noticed some things that were very interesting. We actually had to go for a

(04:25):
medical treatment for my wife across thestate, so we drove and like it
was like March, so it wasin the heat of all this stuff.
It was really intense. We werein New York City when it was all
going down. No one was leaving. They were banging the pots at sunset
to thank all the medical workers.It was intense stuff. But what I
noticed for several months after that isa lot of the animals came out.

(04:46):
There are many more birds of preyflying around. There are all sorts of
animals coming out, and it's likethey're like, all right, those humans
finally stayed inside, Let's go backand do our thing. They just came
out everywhere. So I thought thatwas pretty cool. But then I thought
to myself, you know, weshould see some change in the atmosphere with
that dramatic a drop. The dropis estimated like eight nine percent, I
read today seventeen percent during April oftwenty twenty. Well, think about it.

(05:10):
The Earth is on an annual cyclefor weather, So if you look
one year later, what do yousee around the world and guess what,
there were some changes. Texas rowsfor days, Houston freaked out, they
lost power, they lost water,all kind of terrible stuff happened because they
just weren't used to that kind ofthing. And we've seen some strange weather
patterns too, which stands to reason. So things changed, But did they

(05:35):
change strategically in the way we wantthem to change? And I think that's
an open question going forward as wetalk about CO two levels and what we
can do about it. And Idid some research as well, and you
know CO two levels used to bemuch higher a long, long time ago,
a quarter of a billion years ago. CO two levels for estimated to
be about point five percent their pointoh four percent now, so that historic

(05:59):
lows in terms of the evolution ofEarth. What does that mean. I
don't know exactly. It was hotterback then. I'm guessing there were dinosaurs
and lots of lizards and huge plantsand all kind of stuff going on.
So things have changed remarkably. ButI get back to practical sustainability. So
the gentleman today can really help usunderstand how to do practical things in supply
chain but also in our daily habitsand in our data and using our data.

(06:24):
So with that, let me bringin our two guests. First,
Baz Couti from Sustaining three to sixty. Welcome to inside Analysis. Tell us
a bit about yourself and what you'reworking on and what you think about my
crazy theory, no Erica, thankyou very much for the opportunity here to
present sustain three to sixty. Beenin tech about thirty eight years, kind

(06:46):
of split into two halves. Onewas working for corporates in industrial space,
so it was Gmson, Schneider andso on, and built a lot of
products which were operational focused, soreducing energy costs and energy efficiency, especially
in data centers and telcos and thingslike that. And then in two fifteen

(07:08):
I become an entrepreneur with my firststartup, which is in data centers,
and we focused the use of AIand advanced techniques and using data within data
centers to reduce the environmental impact orthe energy costs within data centers. And
I saw you know, up toeight to twenty five sometimes forty two percent

(07:28):
improvements in energy efficiency within data center. That was a great, great journey.
And then what happened is sort ofanother opportunity where if we can look
at products and projects like construction projects, but more at design and so how
do we use data during design phasesto understand the environmental impact of our materials,

(07:49):
products, suppliers, supply chains andso on. And so our formed
sustained three sixty just over a coupleof years ago, and then we incubated
and board the product to market stemlast year and the product effectively allows customers,
manufacturers and construction companies where we're bringingtheir design documents and design data and

(08:13):
then we profile that data from anenvironmental impact perspective and then recommend alternatives to
reduce that. So that's for purposessustainably. There we're seeing on average thirty
eight percent and in one case withproject we did was about sixty four percent
improvement environmental impacts. So design canhave my view, design and operational efficiency

(08:37):
put together can have a really materialimpact on the carbon footprint. Yeah,
and you are basically building out oryou have built out a matrix or a
repository of information about suppliers all overthe world. Right, and of course
you mentioned before the show that industrieshave their own documentation on suppliers. Of

(09:00):
course, clients have their own andyou've been able to reconcile a lot of
this disparate data to get a strategicview of all those suppliers worldwide. Is
that right? Call us about thatfor a minute, and just suppliers.
It's also looking at material that sincethe nineties the world has been put in.
Environmental engineers and scientists around the worldas built out databases which can take

(09:24):
a resin, for example, andfor that resin, you can immediately know
the environmental impact for it, andso we can model what's called a life
cycle assessment for that resin. Andso the databases out there have this information.
What's not being done is actually optimatingthat external data with internal data and

(09:46):
matching the two together. And that'swhat we've done, and hence the relationship
with ours organization, because it's allabout master data management and standardization. Yeah,
that's a good segree to bring ourin. So al Bismeyer from vam
METICI you have an MDM solution masterdata management, and so that allows organizations

(10:07):
to reconcile all of these dispirit informationsystems to get that strategic view. And
it sounds like this partnership between yourcompany and sustained three sixties is really quite
complimentary. Can you tell us aboutthat? It's very complimentary, Thanks Eric.
Basically, like Beaz, I've beenin the industry for quite a long

(10:28):
time, not quite as long ashim. I've only been in for about
thirty years. But I met Bazyears and years ago as at Microsoft,
and he was at Emerson and hewas doing the environmental you know, as
he mentioned the data center stuff,and our company specializes in master data management
and product information management and space outof Germany, and Germany is way ahead

(10:50):
and Europe in general our way aheadof the US in many respects that it
looks at environmental impacts and impacts onthings that are going on with the and
so with the accession of California,I'll put that at a caveat, but
if you look at you know whereEurope is and where Germany is specifically,
and none of our customers have comeand said, hey, we really have

(11:11):
a number of issues as it pertainsto our product information and the impact that
we're having within the environment. Andso I reached out to Baz and said,
you know, I think there's anopportunity for us to collaborate and work
with our customers on this because yourknowledge and what you bring to the table,
in concert with the data that we'reworking with within these organizations, we

(11:35):
can actually provide benefit and its realworld benefit where they can do an analysis
and have an impact within the organizationsand minimize their liability and also address what's
going on environmentally. And so wesee this as a huge opportunity for both
of our organizations, but also moreimportantly for the companies that we work with,

(11:58):
and you know, the environment ingeneral. It's going to have a
big impact. I would say,well, and I mean just from a
logistics perspective, and I guess I'llthrow this out there that I love seeing
this effort to provide value on multiplelevels because I think in the abstract,
if you just tell people to reducetheir CO two emissions, it's kind of

(12:20):
hard to wrap your head around thatand like, what am I going to
do and how is that going toreally help? But when you start layering
in business value cost savings, reducingexpenses thanks to this nature, now business
people go oh okay, well that'sa conversation I will gladly have. And
so if I can help the environmentby lowering my costs, that's good,

(12:41):
but also understanding where the products andservices are coming from, right, so
being able to do the math understandingif I buy products from this country over
here, you know, what isthe impact of bringing it all the way
over to Detroit to build something versussome product maybe in South America or somewhere
else. That's Those are fairly complexthings to sort out. But once you

(13:03):
have a mechanism in place to dothat, it's very valuable. Right now,
it is actually, and there's alsoanother side to the equation. I
think actually what you just said isspot on. I also think though that
in what we're seeing, and we'vedone a few webinars and discussions with our
customers about this. If you lookat the consumer consumers want to buy environmentally

(13:28):
friendly products. A lot of thechallenges that they don't know who they environmentally
provide. The environmental product producers areother than people that self proclaim that they're
environmentally good. And so if youhave a third party validation or you're actual
to actually assess the things that arewithin the product, then it doesn't become

(13:50):
as much of an abstract. So, as you mentioned, you know,
CO two is one thing, butyou start looking at chemicals as another thing,
or you start looking at air qualityas a thing, or you start
looking at other components in terms ofreusability and life cycle. That becomes much
more tangible for a consumer. Soyou have two aspects. You have.

(14:11):
One is the internal you know,being compliant, being compliant either to your
people that are part of your supplychain in terms of your customers business the
business type of scenario. And thenyou also have working with the consumer and
our being able to provide a productwhich has a lower environmental impact, which
is validated, and then the consumerfeels good about what they're saying. And

(14:33):
we've seen people that say, youknow, consumers are willing to pay seventy
percent of consumers are willing to payyou know, a premium for products that
are environmentally compliant because intrinically they wantto have less of an impact on the
environment and then want the products thatthey're consuming to be you know, a

(14:54):
little impact products, which we're seeinga lot of people get behind in certain
industry specific you know, kind ofthe fashion industry is a big pressure there
with the construction building supply industry isstarting to look at that too, and
so there's different verticals that are ourindustries that are kind of getting behind us
as we see. Yeah, andbas I'll throw this back over to you.

(15:18):
It to that end, having aninformation resource like you folks have collaborative,
collaboratively built, that's a big dealbecause what gets measured gets managed and
you can provide some detail around that. I think you even said you've got
some foundational model or something that's woveninto it that's making recommendations for folks.
Can you talk about that real quick? Absolutely? So, once you've got

(15:41):
kind of this fabric built out acrossdifferent data sources, not big data,
it's just disparent data. And alot of that data is also unstructured,
so it's in PDFs. And whatI mean by that is this in safety
sheets, it's in bill ladings,it's in the environment product declaration sheets.

(16:02):
So a lot of the data whichis in the RP systems, which are
attachments to a transaction which has beendone, but the data is there,
So how do we sort of pullthat data together. Once you've done that
and that that data layer is inplace, you've now got and you bring
the external data in as well,so you're now matching external data where standards

(16:22):
have been put in place around environmentalmetrics by whether it's generic or across industry
verticals. You bring in external dataand you're fusing these two things together.
That then allows you to what we'vebuilt is what's called a micro foundational model.
So it's a large language model withabout sixty seven billion tokens in it.

(16:47):
It's not too small, and it'sthe world's first, collaboratively world's first
a foundational model which allows you tofocus on sustainability. And now you've got
that, you've got prompt engineering whereyou can start typing in I've got material
X, Y and Z in myproducts, in my supplies, find me

(17:11):
the best alternatives. I think Arecommends on this on behalf or I've got
material X, Y and Z.Tell me whether this material has four our
chemicals and it has got packagings init. And so also think these advanced
techniques in the eye and these dataengineering techniques to actually solve real well problems
very very quickly and like coll AIfor good. And so that's hopefully I

(17:34):
gives you a kind of practical exampleof use. Yeah, that is absolutely
fantastic, and we can kind ofdig more in the next segment about what
that means, but using one ofthese foundational models as the method of communication
between the human and the data,which, as you suggest, is wildly
disparate. That's a really seriously bigdeal and you really kind of couldn't have

(17:56):
done it before this layer. Imean, we've had elastics and other things,
but nothing like what you see withthese foundational models, of Folks,
don't touch out that. I'll beright back. You're listening to Inside Analysis
now, welcome back to Inside Analysis. Here's your host, Eric Tabanaugh,

(18:18):
and take to all right, folks, back here on Inside Analysis, talking
with a couple experts in sustainability andalso data. Data fuels decision making.
That's what you want. And thesolutions we have these days, folks,
are really quite impressive, and theone I just heard about in the past
segment is one of the more impressiveones I've come across and does actually help

(18:40):
me prove out a prediction I've madethat these foundational models really are going to
change everything. They are not beall and all solutions. You use them
in a particular workflow. They doneed to be fine tuned and monitored and
curated for sure. We've talked inthe past about foundational models. How when
they get to the fringe of certainand subjects, that's when they start manufacturing

(19:03):
ideas and making stuff up errors.Some people call them hallucinations. It's not
really hallucination. It's just it madesomething up in generated text based upon a
prompt and its training. And ifit doesn't have training in a particular domain,
that's where it starts to get alittle bit loosey goosey. But if
you do have a tight focus onsomething, that's very good. And I
should point out that these models tendto be consensus engines more than anything else.

(19:27):
So when you've trained a whole bunchof data, we train a model
on a whole bunch of data,whatever you've trained it on. If there's
enough, it's going to find theaverage and it's going to give you a
decent explanatory answer. It's when youhaven't fully trained it on a particular domain
of information that's when you kind ofrun in some trouble. But these focused

(19:48):
models, I think are going tobe very powerful because they are focused on
a particular domain of expertise or ofinformation. And now we were just talking
in the last segment with Baz aboutthis foundational model for sourcing for product information.
And you know, you and Ihave been around for a while in
this industry. Old fashioned search notso good on topics like that. I
mean, Google obviously has done agreat job on Google Search, but even

(20:11):
their Google Search appliances. I talkedto someone at a conference in April who
gave me the inside scoops. Shewas like, Yeah, we never really
quite got it to where we hopedto get it, and it just didn't
quite work out. And I thinkthat's actually where chatbots came from, because
search on websites was just a disaster. It just wasn't working very well,
and so you had the chatbots.The early ones they weren't also not so

(20:33):
great. But now with these foundationalmodels and there's something of a configuration engine
you're going to talk about too,we're really getting somewhere and that is a
very big door that we're opening tonew possibilities. But I'll tell us about
this configuration thing on the foundational modelthe bas mentioned. Yeah, so we're
working with that and this is ahuge thing. So Vamaniche actually as a
configurator, and what allows companies todo is modify the actual products. That's

(20:57):
that they're creating based on the activeaccepts that they want to pull together for
a product. So you take abill of material, remash it essentially,
and you can minimize the scope ofwhat you're creating and a lot side of
the line, Well, what thismeans is if you take it in concert
with the foundational model that Vaza istalking about, is conceptually you could actually

(21:21):
take a product and you could configureit, and then you could run and
see which product, based on itsconfiguration as the lowest environmental impact, and
you can actually look at the costthat's associated with it, and you could
also if there are substitute materials foressentially in concert with the configuration. So

(21:41):
now you have you're going from whatcould you have essentially equivalent product maybe with
some fewer things potentially that immediate meetthe business requirement that you have, and
you can look at the difference interms of its impact, and you can
also look at the difference that ithas in terms of the cost for your
organization and all these types of things. And that is very much revolutionary because

(22:06):
now you don't you're not sitting downand building this out for every single thing.
You can do it very dynamically forall, a lot of new products
that you're creating, and you know, it's it's a I think significantly,
but in terms of not only whatyou do from the creation of a product,
but it's impact on the environment andhow it's been utilized within you know,
the product ecosystem that's out there andthat applies a lot of different products.

(22:32):
Yeah, that's that's really cool.And also I'll just point out that
when you grease the tracks to explorationand discovery, people will do more of
it. I think there was anopportunity cost people didn't really look into it
because it was really hard to lookinto before. I mean, if you
don't have a directory that you cansearch and you just have to do things
manually, and that's you know,that's a tremendous amount of work and is

(22:53):
it really going to be worth youreffort? You know, unless people get
some reward pretty quickly from the effortthey put into a task, they're not
going to want to put that mucheffort into the task. So the fact
that you've opened this door and madeit possible, I have to think that
the people who are using this arelike, Wow, this is pretty cool.
Is that about right out? Oh, it's super cool and I even
I fact, just take the configurationpiece out. Let's just talk about the

(23:15):
foundational piece. The speed is amazing. I mean, guys and I would
like cause we get together and welook at how much how many records were
you know, actually you're running throughfrom an LMM perspective, and you just
can't believe how quickly you're getting areturn. I mean, it is unbelievable.
It's if you look at the speedand also the aspect that the concern

(23:42):
with large language models is that theday three goes outside of your organization,
the security aspect and the privacy aspectsof it. And what we've done collaboratively
is that we've built these models.These MIC has been called the micro foundation
because they're focused on a domain.The focused on sustainability. And so if

(24:06):
you build a sustainability assistant for you, then that needs to run on your
data within your organization, within yourcloud, within your VPC, or within
your data center, and then theprivacy is protected and data protection is in
place and the only sending out informationyou need if you need to go to
a large language model and you controlwhat data goes out. The actual foundational

(24:33):
model we've created the micro model gradedis actually running within your infrastructure. It's
not running outside of your infrastructure,and it's learned your data and it's factorized
that data so that we can makethat search super super contextual to the problem.
Yeah, he came back there.I saw it freeze for a second,

(24:53):
but that he came back. Sois there. I mean there's a
RAG model approach that companies are usingretrieval augmented generation. Is that in play
here? In other words, whenyou say the model is running inside your
environment, I'm guessing you've got avector database and you're actually feeding the embeddings
of your corporate data into this vectordatabase and that it's part of the RAG

(25:15):
model. Correct. Absolutely. Sowhat we're doing in both data sets from
an internal perspective is taking the structureddata from your RPS, but the unstructured
data as well in terms of PDFs, and then putting that. One of
the key difference areas that we usea knowledge graph database to build those relations

(25:37):
ships in. So what you're doingis the strength of two nodes, is
the carbon pathways between consumers and producersof carbon or environmental impacts are built in
your knowledge graph. And then thatis then presented too, and a search
engine which effectively goes against the sustainablea foundation model to answer your query around

(26:03):
what's the lowest cub and to costratio for something. It's very interesting.
So is it a hybrid graph vectordatabase or you have a graph structure and
then a vector database as well,so it's a it's a graph database and
then then it's been vectorized and that'show it's been done. Ok. Wow,
that's pretty fascinated. You guys buildyour own or are you? Are

(26:26):
you oeming something or weem with aleading provider. Graph databases aren't they very
cool? Yeah? When you I'ma big fan of knowledge graphs because they
do help understand the relationships between things. It's not like a relational database,
which has its own purposes obviously,but graph database is an al a throat
over to you. Graph databases arevery good at understanding relationships, right,

(26:49):
nodes and edges, and the nodesor entities the edges are are adjectives basically
facets or characteristics of the nodes,and as such they're very good at being
able to understand what goes with whatand how all that can be put together.
Is that about right now. Yeah, well, and that's what we
utilize as well. I mean itis key. I mean, if you

(27:10):
want to look at relationship a supplierto broaduct to consumer to you know,
any you know, item or elementthat's being utilized, graph is wonderful for
that. You can drill down andyou can get into the whole three sixty
view of all the interdependencies and varioussolutions that are there, which I think
is is where you know the industryis going to go and overall over time.

(27:33):
But it's very powerful. Yeah,well that's I mean, this is
very exciting stuff. So bads,can you give us any thoughts on how
many people are using this or whereare you in terms of your overall objective
like what are you doing to getthe word out to get more people involved
in this as so as self focusas manufacturing construction sectors and some examples where

(27:56):
we work with when the leading compositecompanies in the world, so composite fabri
glass companies in the world, whichis an alternative to cement. People don't
know that, and so they useour software from all their large projects worldwide
to show their customers that they're howsustainable composites are to steel, cement,

(28:25):
aluminium that's very cool, and soit's a replacement strategy where people haven't considered
that a composite can have the samestrength and longevity, will have a material
sustainability of reduction compared to what calledcarbon bonds, which are the steel,

(28:47):
the glass, the aluminium and thecement out there. And so this is
the world's largest Faber glass manufacturing companyand they use our product well every major
project to show clients that you're goingdown stair building right now. We just
did a project around the largest glassroof in the world right now and it's

(29:08):
going to use a huge amount ofglass, and it's still going to use
some of that amount of glass andsteal. But they did an alternative design,
which they did structural engineers did.They used our software to show the
cradle to grave as I call it, which which is called which is what's
called circularity, and so cradle tograve view against those alternatives and showed a

(29:33):
thirty i think a thirty six percentreduction in environmental impact and a lot of
that impact was recyclability because composits canbe recycled, crushed and reused, whilst
with cement it's very very hard.All it can do is crush it and
effectively and reuse it again. Buteffectively you can't effectively use it in any

(29:53):
other way going forward. And it'salso very toxic once you've actually crushed it
in water it. So these factorsare taken into account as we use our
clients use our software. That's onetangible example of people using our software.
Yeah, and you mentioned that glassand steel and aluminium like these typically to

(30:15):
manufacture those, to create them,you're saying, just generates a tremendous amount
of CO two, Is that right, as opponent to this composite, which
is has a much lower footprint.Is that right? Exactly? So if
you look at those four industries andthey are the highest outside petroleum, that's
some of the highest carbon emitting productsout there in the world. They what

(30:38):
do they do. They take rawmaterial and they put it through a furnace,
okay, and that furnace is heatedat a very very high temperature and
uses typically fossil fuels to fuel thefurnace. Okay. And so as a
result of that, this huge amountof car and used in the manufacturing of

(31:02):
those particular materials. Whilst composite doesn'tuses some degree of energy, but not
to the magnitude of aluminium plant forit. That's very interesting. What are
some of the materials that go intothis composite that can you speak to that
at all, like, because,yeah, some of them. So if
you look at the raw material wouldbe a fiberglass. A second material would

(31:29):
be a resin, which binds everythingtogether. In this case, the client,
when we started working with them,we showed a clear change in two
things. Firstly, traditional manufacturing wasresins with the fiberglass, and we showed
them that if they used a biobased resin that the reduction was a significant

(31:52):
It was like a two x reductionin the environmental impact. Second thing was
that resin current resin, petrol basedresin was being sourced from Asia, and
so we model the supply chain forthat resin and as a result of that,
the reduction by moving to a Europeanmanufacturer of a bio based resint resulted

(32:15):
in a significant reduction in combon footprint. Those kind of the materials go in.
But this is the alternative. Evenin a more sustainable product like a
composite, you've still got opportunities toreduce from the petrol based residence to bio
based residence and improve your supply chain. Yeah, that's cool stuff. And

(32:36):
like I say, when people areaware of the opportunities, they will look
into it if it's easy to do. And that's one of the keys,
right, is that you have facilitatedthe discovery, the exploration, the understanding
and the modeling. I mean,what you're talking about is price modeling.
You're talking about manufacture processes and understandinghow long this takes, how long that

(32:57):
takes, what's the overall cost,what benefits in terms of durability for example,
and reusability. And you talk abouttoxicity, how some of these old
ways of doing things do create toxicmaterials. And so I think this is
very interesting that you're kind of openingthe kimono, if you will, to
show people that there are other waysof doing things and guess what, they

(33:17):
can save you money, they cansave you time, but also you can
create more durable products and at thesame time you're helping out the environment.
You know, when you can checkall those boxes, that's when people start
to really pay attention and to listen. And you've put some meat and the
bones. Basically you've you've helped justifywhat is being suggested here, so it's

(33:38):
not just a sacrifice that someone's making. I think that's one of the challenges
right with environmentalism in general, isnot even people want to sacrifice stuff.
And folks don't touch on Delbi rightback, you're listening to Inside Analysis.
Welcome back to Inside Analysis. You'syour host and Eric Tabanac all right,

(34:05):
folks, back on Inside Analysis,talking to Bazakuti from Sustaining three to sixty
and al Bismeyer from VA Medici andwe're talking all about practical sustainability and I'm
learning a lot in the show.It's very exciting because materials management is such
a huge space and it's such abig and important space, and certainly in
construction, but in product design andmanufacturing kind of knowing the material science behind

(34:29):
things and knowing what's possible. Andyou know, I'll throw out this historical
point. I remember when I wasin middle school reading and Encyclopedia Britannic in
our house. I was looking uppolymers and it was a potential path in
my career. I decided not togo down, but I was very fascinated
by it, the chemical side ofthings. And the engineering side and what

(34:50):
you can do with polymers is veryfascinating stuff and we're kind of learning about
that today. And Al, I'dlike to throw it back over to you.
You know, as I mentioned,when it's easy to do the right
thing, and you know you're doingthe right thing, that's going to grease
the tracks as opposed to someone justtrying to guilty into changing your behavior.
I mean, there's a certain psychologyaround this stuff, right, So it

(35:10):
seems to me you guys are onthe right track for giving the information necessary
and building the information systems to enablethis stuff. Right. Yeah, it
is well and I think there's severaldifferent things though that are kind of going
on. It's almost like a vortexthing going on here. I think if
you look at ESU has been aroundfor a while, some of the compliance

(35:31):
issues have been around for a whilein terms of groups that have been requesting
this, and then you have theconsumer intent that's interested in being environmental compliant.
But if you look at like thelast six months, I would say
the sustainability issue is really heated upand it's really gotten a lot of focus.
And so the European Commission has comeout with the Digital Product Passport,

(35:54):
which really says, hey, youknow, you need to actually be compliant
by two thousand twenty seven. Andthe battery technology groups and they have a
Battery Product Battery Declaration, a DigitalProduct gassport for battery vppm acronym city,

(36:15):
I gotta get these terms of mybasically, so they got VPP coming up
and basically so batteries and fashion arekind of leading the charge there, and
it's for compliance as it pertains tocarbon and then looking at full life cycle
management of those product sets. Butthen if you actually take back and look

(36:37):
at California, California obviously had TOPninety five, which goes back years,
but it looks at a thousand chemicalsthat are required, and more and more
companies are leaning in for compliance.So with that you have in the building
and construction industry, you're looking atelectronic product declarations, which actually looks at
all the materials that are required.And that's into twenty twenty five compliance getting

(37:00):
going in there. And then evenwith ESG, ESG has come out and
I said, hey, you know, fifty thousand companies have to be compliance
for securities in exchange. But movinginto the next two years, there's more
of a proach there. So youhave the stick of all these compliance and
governing bodies that are saying, hey, you're going to have to do this.
It's coming down the pike. It'sgoing to be within the next four

(37:20):
or five years. You have Gardner, which is said sustainabilities number two in
terms of their priorities, and they'vebeen pushing that at some of their recent
conferences, and the Wall Street journalscoming out with you know, Forever pemical
compliance or DVP compliance, and inthe last few months with the front page
articles on these types of things,and so there's a heightened awareness that's going

(37:40):
on. And what I see evenwithin our customers and you ask bads about
customers, but we're looking at alot In Europe, it's predominantly building supply.
And then in the States here wehave a chemical company that's working with
us, and so it's it's complianceon different components of sustainability, and the
full life cycle is one of thethings that's being looked at in terms of

(38:04):
how do I do reusability, howdo I look at the chemicals that are
associated with it, how do Ilook at the carbon that's affiliated with it?
So lots of different things that aregoing on. Some of them are
compliance based, some of them areyou know, hey, this is the
right thing to do. And thethird thing that I'll mention, which I
mentioned earlier, is a lot ofthese companies are seeing that consumers they want

(38:27):
to do it. You know,they want you know, if I'm going
to buy a washing machine, Iwant to have one that's going to work
for a longer period of time.If I'm going to buy you know,
electronic device, I want to makesure that it doesn't have as much of
an impact in terms of, youknow, if I throw the battery lay
or which one has a lower impact. More compliance these types of things,
and so there's a push to makesure that that build of material or the
product that's being put out there isenvironmentally compliant. And it's almost like there's

(38:53):
been a wake up call recently becausethe inquiries we're getting for this is growing
significantly. I just to say whatI'll say on compliance is was in a
if you look at the definition ofemissions, it was after the Paris Agreement
in twenty fifteen, and they cameout with what we call Scope one,

(39:16):
two and three, and Scope oneis a direct emissions are of your plant
in terms of product using energy andso on, and Scope two is effectively
the purchase of that energy to theplant from wherever the utility is. And
Scope three is effectively the supply chainand the use of your products. He's

(39:39):
kind of the big message here andwhy we at my age create sustained three
sixty is since twenty fifteen, everyCSR report out there, a corporate sustainability
report out there which is ESG focusedaround a standard called GRI, focused on

(40:00):
scope one and two, and theyrepresent thirty percent of emission. So since
two THEOUM and fifteen, what arewe focused on thirty percent of emissions?
Seventy percent of emissions are in yoursupply chain and you you see your products.
Why have we avoided that? We'veavoided that because it's a data problem.

(40:22):
I'll mention one more thing, Eric, because I just kind of popped
in my head. But in additionto all these standards and regulatory things,
another thing I've seen in the lasttwo years is the number of senior vps
of sustainability that these companies that putin So like a lot of my big
multinational companies, they all have avice president or a senior vice president of

(40:44):
sustainability that's looking at everything that theirorganization is doing from a sustainability perspective.
And that comes back to obviously withdata, we're data on everything with master
data, so they're looking at,well, where am I, how am
I sustainable as an organization? Howhow are my product sustainable? You know,
they're kind of looking at a lotof different aspects in terms of sustainability

(41:07):
within their organizations and compliance and differentiationin the marketplace relat their product sets.
Mm hmm. Yeah, that's goodstuff. And you know, we've got
about three minutes left in this segment. As I'm thinking about these foundational models
which you can now use to understandyour products and what composes them and what
alternatives you have. You know what, Also, these models are going to

(41:29):
be really good for understanding regulations.So you train the model on the regulation
and then guess what, your userscan just ask questions. And this to
me is one of the best usecases for these new tools. Even though
you have to check it, Yes, you have to check it, but
guess what, even if you askthe high powered lawyer, you'd still have
to check it. They're not alwaysright either, So we shouldn't hold ourselves

(41:50):
to one hundred percent accuracy level,but you know, somewhere in the nineties,
I think, but that's incredibly useful. Bads. I'll throw it over
to you for the end user tosay, oh, okay, how does
this regulation affect me with these differentproducts? What do I need to do?
Enter? And it comes and givesyou a bunch of information that is
so much easier than trying to readthis complex legal ease and regulations, and

(42:12):
people are scratching their has what theheck does this mean? That's a big
deal, right, beurs, that'sa huge deal. And the foundational model
focused on sustainability actually has read thetop sustainable standards out there, so in
their nation's STDs, the GRI standardsout there, Task Force to Climate Disclosures,

(42:32):
it's thread down CP. So it'salso already read all there and then
brought that so it's in context ofthe material you're looking at in the industry
you're in, so you're know howto spend time and energy learning and reading
a whole lot of PDFs that thereand then applies it to the report.
So when you're producing a report,it says, okay, which standard now

(42:53):
applies to that report, so itaids compliance and so the order to and
the order to can be improved.So it's actually spot on that one of
the key components within this foundational modelis the learning of those standards. And
the problem with these standards is thatthere's interdependencies with them, right, and

(43:15):
they're continuously changing, right, andso to keep up to speed on them
and also understand all the dependencies betweenthe United Nations SDGs and the GRI reporting
standards, is a matrix you haveto follow and how do you sort of
manually do that is labor intensive anda spreadsheet. Well, now you've got
a matrix already built for you,and is the updates is going to provide

(43:37):
that information to you. Yeah,And I think there's also a lot of
work being done right now around reasoning. So if you look at the foundational
models large language models, they're reallyjust text generators that are predictive engines,
predicting which text they think you aregoing to want based upon their training and
your prompts. And that's all findinggood. I see people throwing complex math

(44:00):
problems at them and word problems andthen going aha, look I couldn't figure
it. Out. I'm like,well, you're kind of misusing the tool
in that sense, so you dohave to understand when to use these things
and when not to use them.But I will say there is work being
done on that reasoning side of theequation, and they could just layer that
stuff in. Well. Podcast bonussegment is coming up next, folks.
Stand by you're listening to Inside Analysis. All right, folks, time for

(44:25):
the podcast bonus segment. Here ona fantastic show about practical sustainability. What
are things you could do that'll helpyour business, that'll help your clients,
that'll help the environment. We wantto kill multiple birds with every stone.
Maybe that's not the best metaphor sincewe're talking about helping the environment, but
you know, birds are people tooto a certain extent. I love birds.
By the way, we have likesix seven eight different kind of birds

(44:45):
of chirp around our house every day. I've got the app Merlin you can
like listen and see which birds arechirping. These are wonderful times for people
who love information. But as I'dlike you to focus the last few minutes
here on the collaboration between Sustained threesixty and via Medici, which I guess
is around these uh, these digitalpassports. Can you talk about that?
Absolutely? Yeah. So you know, one of the things which you know,

(45:07):
you know, we need is dataand we need good quality data.
And what Vaccine provides us is thatit connects to e ERP systems which has
all this data. So it's SAPor or whatever. Decades and decades of
data sets are in them. Andso if we can get master data,

(45:29):
market connections and also product information managementfrom eatin, we don't have to go
directly to those rps. So it'skind of a bridge to get and so
that's what as you know, solutionprovides us. But once we've got there,
what we then do is think aboutis an is an engine sitting right

(45:51):
next to your our e r Pthrough a broker from AMT, which effectively
allows us to generate environmental views ofenvironmental lens to those products. And so
when we send that back and oncewe've sent it back to keep him as

(46:12):
our's product line, we then providea digital fingerprint. So we basically provide
the ability to put a blockchain inthere and so you know exactly the date,
the time, and the data weuse to calculate the sustainable metrics.
Oh wow, yeah, that's Imean, you know, Ali throw it
over to you. One of thefunnier quotes I've heard on the show over

(46:35):
the years. Someone said, yeah, and it We always think one more
layer of abstraction will solve all ourproblems, but a lot of times it
does, right. And so you'vegot this layer of abstraction where it's kind
of like with data breaks in theirdelta lake right where you're tracking changes within
this layer, and that way youcan roll back to a point in time
and understand what was happening. Prettycool stuff. I mean before when you
couldn't do that, not so good. Now you can do that stuff.

(46:59):
It sounds similar to what Beaz istalking about. Can you go into some
detail on how that works. No, it's actually really good and it's actually
where things are going. So ifyou look at and I mentioned the Digital
Product Passport kind of standard that's beenput out there by the European Commission,
they're looking at the full life cycleof products essentially, so you have everything
that went into that product, that'sbill of material when it was actually produced

(47:21):
and made available. And one ofthe things that they've been talking about is
using RFID to actually do this,which actually is just a step that's not
necessary. So what you can actuallydo is you can pick a QR code
into token and actually have the fullblow of material maintained is to what goes
into the making of that product uponits release, and then you can pick

(47:42):
that up off the QR code andyou have full information about that product and
then replacement and reusability all built intothe solution. So we're really seeing the
collaboration and the fulfillment to digital productpassport is something that is very beneficial in
our building supply. Customers are verymuch behind this. They're actually giddy about,

(48:06):
you know, what we're doing inthis space because of its you know,
it's usability as much as anything.It's like the whole audit trail and
what are some of our customers arelooking at in different industries more CpG and
fashion and this type of thing isthe ability to actually have this validation for

(48:30):
their consumer. Because one of thethings we didn't get into is v meditry
also does We did not only doMBM, but we do product information management.
So we're actually taking information and we'remaking that information available down into either
a retail environment or e commerce applicationor a marketplace or whatever. So a
consumer can look at product data andwhat's going on, and sometimes that's B

(48:53):
to B and sometimes that's B twoC. But if you have all that
information, it's maintained, scan yourQR code, you can see, Okay,
this is what's within the product set, and then you have a full
detail and a validation throughout the thirdparty that this is what made up this
product. Essentially. Yeah, theB to B to say on the so

(49:15):
when you as a consualistic experience,so I was saying, is you're on
an e commerce site fuel by theirepin product which has now got embedded sustainable
information. That QR code has ablockchain associated with it, so it's a
secure QR code as I call alumnia. And so as soon as you scan

(49:37):
the chain of customer, chain ofevidence on that sustainability information is guaranteed.
So you're the customer, got trustwith the consumer that this has got the
right level of integrity and evidence behindit. Yeah, and I'm just guessing
here that the ideal endpoint is theQR code on the product where the consumer

(50:00):
can just scan it with their phoneand see all this information. Is that
is that already there or that's thevision of where it's going. No,
we built That's cool. That's justamazing because now again a consumer can get
access to information, very detailed information. I mean, I'm old enough to
remember when they started putting all thethe details on the cereal boxes. It's

(50:22):
got riboflavid and vitamin D, invitaminB twelve and like all this stuff.
That was just an estimate, Imean obviously, But you can go so
much deeper now and it can bedynamic, meaning something changes on the back
end. Something will change when Iscan this code and take a look at
it. And like I say,when you know better, you do better.
So people want to do good things, People want to do things that

(50:43):
are good for the environment, andyou folks are enabling them to do that,
which I think is just absolutely fantastic. Well, folks, look these
gentlemen up online. We've been talkingto Baz Kouti, that's b a z
k h u Ti from sustain threesixty and al Bismeyer al I could expect
American League. Bissmeye R looked themup on LinkedIn, another great resource for

(51:06):
information about people and companies and goodthings. Happening in the world. And
wow, what a great show today. Thanks to both of you telemen for
all your hard work and for improvingthe beautiful environment around us. This does
include our show. Send me anemail if you want to be on this
on this radio show sometime. Infoat Inside analysis dot com. We'll talk
to you next time. Folks.Take care you've been listening to Inside Analysis.

(51:27):
A journey of a thousand words beginshere. KCAA Redlands Ranch Market is
a unique full service international or grocerystore that specializes in authentic food items from
Mexico, India, and from manyMediterranean and Asian countries, including popular writems
from the US. They offer freshbaked items from their in house bakery,

(51:49):
housemade tortillas from their tortilla area,a delicious araya prepared Mexican foods, a
terrific fresh food and juice bar,and a large selection of meat, seafoods
and deli sandwiches and hellal meets.Their produce department is stocked full with fresh,
local and hard to find international fruitsand vegetables that you cannot find anywhere
else. Don't forget to step intothe massive beer cave and experience the largest

(52:13):
selection of domestic, artisan and importedbeers in the IE. They can also
cater your next event with one ofthe delicious takeout catering trades of food.
Visit them at Redlands ranch Market dotcom. That's Redlands Ranch Market dot com.
Redlands Ranch Market a unique and funshopping destination. To Hebo Tea Club's
original pure power to rcosuper tea comesfrom the only tree in the world that

(52:37):
fungus does not grow on. Asa result, it naturally has anti fungal,
anti infection, anti viral, antibacterial, anti inflammation, and anti parasite
properties. So the tea is greatfor healthy people because it helps build the
immune system, and it can betruly miraculous for someone fighting a potentially life
threatening disease due to an infection,diabetes, or cancer. The tea is

(52:59):
awesome, organic and naturally caffeine free. A one pound package of tea is
forty nine to ninety five which includesshipping. To order, please visit to
Hebotea Club dot com. T hebowis spelled tea like tom a, h
ee b like boy o. Theycontinue with the word t and then the
word club. The complete website isto Hebota club dot com or call us

(53:20):
at eight one eight six one zeroeight zero eight eight Monday through Saturday nine
am to five pm California time.That's eight one eight six one zero eight
zero eight eight to hebot club dotCom. With sixty years of fascinating facts.
This is the man from yesterday andback in time. We go to

(53:40):
this time. In nineteen sixty nine, Senator Edward Kennedy pleads guilty for leaving
the scene of a fatal auto accidentwhich killed Secretary Mary Joke Pacney. Ted
Kennedy is given a two month suspendedsentence and is placed on probation. This
morning, I entered a plea ofguilty to the charge of leaving the scene
of an accident. Prior to myappearance in court, it would have been

(54:02):
proper for me to comment on thesematters and from this time. In nineteen
seventy six, the FCC expands citizensbanned radio to forty channels from its present
twenty three. Currently here in nineteenseventy six, there are twenty million CBE
radios in use. Radio Shack hasthe hottest thing on wheels today, realistic

(54:23):
two way CB radio. We introducedour realistic CB line way back in nineteen
sixty and today we have sixteen lowpriced mobile and walkie talkie models to choose
from and from this time. Innineteen ninety seven, Wilworth's announces it's going
to close its four hundred Stewart chain, bringing an end to an era.

(54:44):
Over nine thousand will lose their jobs. The store has been around since eighteen
seventy nine. It's Woolworths Stereo Spectacularseventy one, a fantastic once a year's
sale of albums, LPs, tapes, everything in stereo, unbelievably price with
more at man from Yesterday dot Com. This segment sponsored by our friends at

(55:08):
the All News. Sammy's Restaurant Sammy'sis now open in Kalamesa at Exit eighty
eight off the ten Freeway, nextto the Jack in the Box in the
former Bob's Big Boy Restaurant. Notto name drop, but Sammy's in the
former Bob's is a lot like Norms. It has an extensive menu with multiple
restaurants in rialto in places like Uplandand Ranchukumonga. Samm's is a great place

(55:29):
to dine. Their menu is verysimilar with their American trio of delicious steak,
shrimp and chicken and an expansive menu. You won't go hungry and you
won't go broke. At Sammy's youcan come meet Sammy and his family.
Sammy was a chief cook for Normsfor years and it shows in his menu.
Sammy's is a great place to meetthe family, friends or have a
community meeting. You can ask abouttheir private meeting room, available for parties

(55:51):
of fifteen or more on a firstcome, first serve basis. Sammy's is
now open from six am to ninepm every day at five point forty Sandal
would drive off of Exit eighty eightat the ten Freeway in Kalamesa. Looked
for the Big Boy statue. It'sstill there. We thanks Sammy for returning
to this station as a loyal sponsor. You can find more info about Sammy's
at Sammy'scafe dot Net. At Sammy'scafedot net well, you can also find

(56:14):
discount coupons to save money. Andby the way, Sammy's has free Wi
Fi too. Sammy's and Kalamesa rayltobut one of their other locations are ready
to serve you. Sammy's is nowopen in Kalamesa. The Village Mud wants
to remind pet owners of the importanceof spang and neutering. Shelters overflow with

(56:35):
unwanted pets. Spang and neutering helpsprevent this and has many health benefits.
To that message. Courtesy of theVillage Mudd at sixty sixty five East Foothill
Boulevard and Claremont for self serve pedwawashtubs and high end food and treats for
dogs and cats featuring natural and rockcalled the Village Mud nine oh nine six
two four three zero two zero andlike them on Facebook. Hey y'all,

(57:00):
merle here good news for once,my neighbors is jealous of me. You
want to know why, because mygrass is growing and looking green, and
I can sell my sofa out inthe front yard and I don't even have
to overwater it anymore. You knowhow I did it. I listened to
damn water Boys under Waters on everyThursday night on KCIA. Well, I

(57:21):
got me a smart controller and nowat Water's at night yard looks darn tooting.
No more sneaking around and hooking upmy horse to my neighbors spigott in
the middle of the night and hisdog won't bite me anymore. And you
can do it too. Listening iseasier than ever. KCIA is now screaming
online. It's streaming. What it'sstreaming? You don't, well, I

(57:45):
don't know much about streaming, butthey doing it apparently at KCA radio dot
com. So AnyWho listen to thewater zone and fix your yacht up right
right here at KCIA, the stationthat leaves no listener behind NBC News Radio.
I'm Chris Garagio. House Minority LeaderHakim Jeffries is taking part in a

(58:06):
virtual conference call today to discuss PresidentBiden's twenty twenty four candidacy. Five House
Democrats have publicly called on Biden todrop out of the race following his shaky
debate performance. Virginia Senator Mark Warneris said to be organizing a similar effort
in the US Senate. Both PresidentBiden and former President Trump should take cognitive
tests. That's what California Democrat AdamSchiff told NBC's Meet the Press. They

(58:28):
both should be willing to take atest. I think, frankly a test
would show Donald Trump as serious illnessof one kind or another. Some are
concerned over whether Biden can defeat Trumpand serve another four years in office due
to his age. Ramon, SenatorBernie Sanders says voters should focus on the
candidate with the best policies instead oftheir age. What we have got the

(58:52):
focus on is policy whose policies haveand will benefit the vast majority of the
people in this country. Appearing onCBS's Faced the Nation, Sanders did concede
that Biden's age is a factor inthe election, but emphasized that he's the
candidate talking about expanding Medicare and otherpriorities that Americans support. Tropical Storm Burl

(59:14):
is getting stronger as it nears theTexas Gulf Coast. Hurricane warnings are posted
along much of the Texas coast,with Burle expected to make landfall overnight.
The National Hurricane Center as warning coastalresidents of life threatening storm surge along with
significant flooding. John Landau, theproducer and COO of legendary director James Cameron's
Light Storm Entertainment, has died atthe age of sixty three. Landau was

(59:37):
known for producing such iconic films asTitanic and Avatar. Cameron remembered his longtime
friend and collaborators, saying his legacyis not just the films he produced,
but the personal example he set.Landau died Friday in la after a month's
long battle with cancer. I'm ChrisKaragio, NBC News Radio, NBC News

(01:00:00):
on CACAA Lomel, sponsored by TeamstersLocal nineteen thirty two. Protecting the Future
of Working Families Teamsters nineteen thirty two. Dot Org