Adaptability, AI, and Career Growth with Louis, Anja and Hannah

Hello everyone. Uh, welcome to another live panel discussion from Automation Ladies, sponsored by our wonderful partner Elan. If you tuned in last time, we had had a automotive panel discussion, number one, and it was really hard for me because my wifi was terrible and I couldn't hear what half of the people were saying half the time.

And so to. Moderate a discussion where you don't know what people are discussing is a little bit difficult. So we thought we had to come back and do a round two. So, uh, I guess to kind of kick things off, would love to do a round of introductions for those that maybe weren't here in part one, or didn't catch that part.

 I'll start with Allie. You wanna say hi and tell us what you're up to and who's there with you? Um, yeah. I'm Allie. Allie g I am the co-host of Automation Ladies. And this is my cat Nadia. I am the owner of Process and Controls Engineering llc. We are a systems integrator, a small one in the Pacific Northwest at a Seattle, [00:01:00] and I just started a nonprofit called Kids PLC Kits that I want to talk about later.

But that's me. All right, Anya. Hi there everybody. Hi. Yeah, so my name's Anya. I'm with e Software Services and, uh, yeah, coming up. May 15th, it will be 20 years for the company. Wow. Congratulations. Thank huge e plan. Yeah. That's huge. Yes, yes, yes. And so yeah, my background is electrical engineering. So I used to work for a company in Germany, where I was putting together paint shops in the automotive industry for all the large car manufacturers.

And, uh, yeah. Then I moved to the US about 21 years ago, and I love Elan obviously. Otherwise I would've not started working for Elan and. I'm excited to help customers to set up their Elan environment. And of course, I work with all the large big three here, of course, in Detroit, in the Detroit [00:02:00] area. And, it's, it has been fun.

Glad says, wow, I didn't know Elan was that old. Yeah. You guys have been around for a while. Yeah. And out your 21 years here in the US you've been with Elan almost the entire time. I mean, that is a testament to them as a company for having kept you around for this long. For sure. Absolutely. As well as probably the software continuously evolving and keeping you on your toes, right?

Yeah, exactly. That's the, that's the exciting part because we have a new version every year. There's new tool sets coming. Right now everything is moving into the cloud and companies are moving to the cloud more so. There's a lot of things and motions and, and good new inventions happening. Well, we are excited, I hope it's okay to say this, but we are planning to do a live demo of the latest Elan release later on this year when it happens, and I'm really stoked about it.

Well, Luis, you wanna go next? Um, maybe I'll let, uh, ladies first. Maybe Hannah. Okay. Uh, [00:03:00] hey, I'm Hannah. I'm Motors production.

So, so with that said, Louis, do you wanna, now you can take a turn. Alright, thank you. Yeah. So name is Louis, um, bachelor engineer Master ins. Uh, from Australia and, I worked as a control systems engineer in, Australia for five years. Uh, Woodside Energy, over there was a Australia's largest oil and gas company.

Uh, today. They're all over the world. But anyway, I moved over to Toyota, worked with for Toyota in projects tech, you know, tech projects, taking abstract technology concepts to the line, deploying them like on thousand cars a day, kinda, you know, um, challenging environment, which was fun. Now I run innovation tech and where we know specialize in, computervision deep learning for quality inspection.

 As well [00:04:00] as I just, you know, lecture on the side a little bit as well, in the local colleges, robotics and, what have you. So you're teaching a class at a local college? Yeah. Can you tell us a little bit about that? What class is it? Yeah. Yeah. So I, just finished off the last semester and, um, that was programming C and c plus plus, and now it's, uh, turned into robotics.

So in introduction to just robotics, one course, lots of math, bit of simulation and what have you, and then some, some prac. Yeah, that's about it, I guess. Are you seeing enough girls in your classes, in the, in the community college? In, um, in programming? There was quite a lot actually. Uh, which is great.

And they were some of the top, top performers actually. A pluses and what have you. But, in robotics so far, no, there hasn't been, unfortunately. Do you think that the girls in the programming classes are going into industry, like what we're doing or are they interested in programming but then taking it somewhere else?

 The course I taught was a bachelor's of software engineering, course. So that was the programming course. It was an [00:05:00] introduction to programming course. So these people becoming software engineers, not automation, robotics. Gotcha. So I, you know, I'd imagine they're going the other way, however, who knows, right?

Like whos, we want them? Oh, you know what? I can call a few. They're really, really good. Like, some of them are just so intelligent. So we gotta figure out how, how to make the robotics more attractive to the girls. It's a lot of fun, I guess, you know, I always brought to robotics into the programming class.

Cause I, you know, that's my, sort of area. I worked in that area for a while and I think it's the most interesting application, right? But, uh, yeah. Well, thank you for that. I think, uh, Allie had a question as well that she wanted to ask. I might as well ask it now. I guess in terms of like, Mechatronics programs we're seeing more and more of them we've talked about education quite a bit on the show.

We talked with Amanda Beaton back at MIA about the Siemens cooperates with education. They're trying to get their hardware and stuff into, uh, colleges curriculum. [00:06:00] And then, allie's got her. Why don't you tell us more about, uh, kids' PLC kits, Allie, right now, and then we'll dive into actually talking about the automotive industry.

Um, yeah. So I guess to relate it to the automotive industry, and really just to manufacturing in general, and I guess other parts of the workforce, just to talk about workforce.

You know, we hear skills gap, skills gap, skills gap. And then what are we supposed to do about it? And one, you know, avenue is to actually. Figure out like who we could cross train and bring them in that are already out in the world. And that's got its limitations. And then you gotta start focusing on kids coming into the world, coming into the workforce and exposing, I mean, everybody else's industry has their hands in the cookie jar.

And, you know, industrial automation doesn't really, in terms of kids, I'm not talking about mechatronics programs are fantastic and we're trying to get kids like, even pumped before the [00:07:00] mechatronics programs. So they all run into the mechatronics programs because they're gonna have robots in there.

So anyway, like kids PLC kits is, if you back up from robots, is actually like the core and the reason why it's different from something like, First Robotics, which is an amazing program that's getting kids into robotics. But the reason that kids PLC kids is different is the hardware that the kids are supposed to be playing with and wiring and using include a PLC and an H hmi, but it's all industrial grade.

So you are using real proximity sensors that you'll see. So these kids, when they are done playing with this, by the way, we're building games with this. So cuz we know that if you don't make it fun, that's not how people learn or kids don't learn better that way. But with these kids, like we want them to.

Build a game and, you know, learn programming, but when they get out into the world, they're just gonna have a totally different, I remember like when I was, a little bit further in my career, how much more confidence I had when I could identify everything I was looking at out in the field. So if I know what those sensors are, or I [00:08:00] know maybe that brand even, I feel just like more, I guess, empowered to go find the answer.

And so I feel like they're just gonna be like a totally new breed of like students that are gonna enter this if we can get them the stuff early enough. And I stumbled upon, you know, Jordan Day and a Lower and Elena Day. And Jordan Day is a HVAC and master plumber, and he's been teaching his daughter since she was four.

How to use, you know, tools and about HVAC and plumbing and. I started sending her PLCs and then they made this amazing video that came out like three months ago. And that was the birth of kids', PLC kids, because after that it was like, this is proof that this could be done. And she's, she was 

um, she was nine when we started like communicating. Yeah. I was like, how do we bring this to everybody? It can't just be, uh, we, they won't all be Elena days, but we're gonna find a lot of kids that are just gonna I don't know, I think it's gonna ignite something. [00:09:00] And none of us had that.

None of us had that opportunity. Imagine if we played, if someone gave you a P L C and all the rest of it, so you could assemble it yourself, wire yourself when you were, you know, 14, 15, 16 years old. Like, what would that do to the way that you looked at jobs and like how you, I don't know, conducted yourself.

So that's what kids' PLC kits is and it's an, it's official 5 0 1 nonprofit. Enough about me, Ali. I was, this sounds amazing, and I, you know, I really hope that you achieve what you, intend outta this, effort. This is gonna take some time, you know, these Oh, yeah.

But, but then you have, and also even automation ladies as well is a great example too, right? Like all of you, successful ladies serving as role models and prime examples for, you know, younger girls, right? 

Also outnumbering a man called Louis right on the, on the talk on a Thursday afternoon. Right. It's fun. It's fun for us to outnumber you, because it's not a girls only room that we got [00:10:00] shoot into. Yeah. Which I think sometimes the women in our industry, it's very well meaning that there's a, you know, a luncheon for the women or a, networking event for the women, and they think that we wanna talk about women's stuff.

Really wanna talk about our stuff, and it's just really fun sometimes to be in the majority in the room. Let's still get to talk about technical stuff, technology, uh, versus every time we're the majority in a room that we're supposed to be just relating over the fact that we're all women.

Yeah. Yeah. Which I think I can confidently say that Hannah and Anya are not here just because we are women and wanna talk about that.

So, Anya, can you tell us, I guess, do you have any, things that stand out that you might wanna talk about that any projects or cool things that you've been working on lately? I know you probably can't mention the customer, but in an abstract sense, anything new and exciting you got going on? So right now, yeah, this is like internally we're helping one or some, actually all of them, all of our [00:11:00]Automo, automotive, car manufacturers really learning, about Elan.

Of course the training, part of it, right? So. Usually when people are more confident with the software, obviously they can go further at hand doing the program or the work. What they need to do basically should support the help, help support the workflow or the daily workload, right? What they're doing with that software tool set, obviously to do, their engineering work.

And right now, we are working and updating with one car manufacturer right now, updating the documentation. Actually I want to three with three of 'em. And currently, the exciting part is that, a lot are now moving to the latest E plan version, which of course has new functions and feature features available.

Not only that, but all also right allows us to do the integration. It helps to collaborate, better across the world really. Also because we have interfacing where we can directly Yeah, in the cloud, access data and information for parts which are needed and they [00:12:00] can be shared. So that is what I see, which is, really.

Yeah, cool to see. And obviously there is, it's never stops, right? So you continuously have to update, the information when we do the trainings for these specific classes. So what users learn in these classes is not only using the software, but using it in that environment. We see, particular in customers, right?

And then of course suppliers are turning to us and asking us, Hey, don't you have anything available because we need to do the work there. Can you, is there anything available yet? And now more and more, things are developed for pretty much all of them that there are individual trainings available to know and learn how you apply that work, for the particular end customer company.

That seems like a challenge though, and I've experienced this in some of my jobs working directly for, uh, an OEM or vendor is that once your, people get to know their customer process really well and they know your software tool really well. That [00:13:00] there's a huge draw for the customers to hire those engineers that now know the workflow from both sides really well.

And I know that last time we had somebody on the show that, works at Rivian now, but used to be an elan as you know, engineer. Mm-hmm. Do you guys see that? Is there a lot of pull from the customers to wanna hire you guys directly or is that kind of, you know, obviously it happens, right? But mm-hmm. Do you ever have people come back from the automotive manufacturers to come work for you after they've been at the plants?

Yeah, I mean, there, there are two sides to this, right? So, I lost the time when I was actually working, doing the actual work with the software tool myself. Right. And like earlier, I, it didn't dawn on me. I mean, it seems like to me that Elan is 30 years around, but it's next year, 40 years if you think about that.

Right? Yeah. And it has been so fun doing the work with the software. I didn't realize how much or how fast the time passed by. Right? And so there's a lot we can do and update and it just makes it so much [00:14:00] more, more fun. And we have come, yeah. People also return to us. Some, some might leave, but then they realize also in the industry, it's a different world, right?

When you work in the industry, a lot of times you have, of course deadlines to meet, the job has to be delivered and such. So now with us, it's different, from a point of view that we are not delivering, work in a way. That you have to finish a project. We have other projects. We do, of course, and we have all different kinds of nets we all use at Elan, right?

So we do trainings, we do the consulting, we help set up the environment for the customers with Elan, uh, do presentations. And it never gets boring, right from my end. This is why I, I've been with Elan so long because it's always exciting. We have new tools to use and it changes. There's a lot of new things happening.

And knowing the industry myself, I've worked in the industry for 15 years before I started working for Elan, right? So that's been a while and I've seen that site too. And yeah, it can be very [00:15:00]stressful. And, Right now the advantage is I get to see all different kinds of customers, also different industry branches.

Right. Which is exciting too. Yeah. I personally am a big fan of, you know, in this. Okay. I'll just to be transparent, like in this day and age, people, at least my age and younger don't feel like we're gonna be secure in a job for the rest of our careers. Like, oh, we can just come in, work for one company coast along and you know, just wait until retirement.

Right. That doesn't seem like something that we can count on. Um, I just was at a conference with someone in our industry last week that has been laid off three times in his career. Not because of any fault of his own. And he's always landed on his feet every time cuz he's got a fantastic skillset. But it's just one of those things that, you know, we have to look out for.

I graduated in 2008 and immediately felt like I could be laid off any, any moment. So I have seen people and we talked to, for instance, like Brennan Dugger, was on one of our shows before. He's worked at a plant, at a vendor, at a pharmaceutical company and now he's a systems [00:16:00]integrator. And he's like, all that experience from the different sides of the industry have really helped me.

And I think as we think about our career sometimes, like compounding that knowledge, not just from one company to another, but looking at knowing the different sides of the industry can make one a little bit more valuable in the long run. Just from connecting some dots that we haven't wouldn't get otherwise if we worked on one side only.

Lewis, I'll let you chime in on this as well, cuz you used to work at Toyota and now you're on the other side. Yeah. I'm sure that your previous work informs a lot of what you do now, and now you're helping companies. Can you tell us anything about what you've been working on? Yeah, I mean even like my work with Woodside in the oil and gas industry, it was very helpful with Toyota, right?

And then Toyota you know, coming into the vendor, space, or as a, as an integrator, if you will. What can I say? I think we mentioned this last time, work, working with a customer first, which really helps you understand and empathize with the customer, right? They all the challenges, right?

And how, and it really understand the process of how things go, you know, [00:17:00] from concept design all the way to implementation, and the budgets processes and the procurement processes and everything, right? So there's a couple projects, you know, there's, there's. Quality inspection happening via some kinda, uh, technology.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Collection of, uh, you know, signals from the environment.

Super generic. There are communications protocols going on. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And there's inspection going on. Inspecting inspection is not a new thing. Right. It's been around for a long time. There's some AI in it now. Right. But AI is not always what's needed. Right. Is this is still pretty much picking out of the available technology is the best thing for the application.

And is AI at a point yet where it's always the answer? No. No, there's not. It's seldom the answer, right? We always recommend AI only when it's, you know, absolutely necessary. Put it this way, right. Yeah. Um, you know, when it is, the only way to, to make it happen, [00:18:00] because realistically AI you know, not everyone understands ai.

To introduce AI into an organization that doesn't understand it can be challenging. And so, often you might resort to like, you know, rules based old style, you know, everyone understands that, right? If then else, right. That works. Um, I guess that's why we still have ladder logic around.

It's not because it is the best way to do things, but it is oftentimes the most easily supported and, you know, way to do things. Absolutely. There's also applications out in the world that just don't need to be complicated. Like a pump station. Yeah. There's floats there and that's just what they're, you know, the most complex part of that is lead lag, and that's not complicated and you can't even make that complicated.

So it just depends on the process. And then you have chemical reactions and then you have crazy, you know, actual equations related to your controls. And that's, Super complex advanced process control stuff. Yeah, it's true, it's true. Um, however, though like AI has managed tools, you mentioned [00:19:00] that, particular application, right?

AI has managed to make, advanced process control look, look bad. Cool, cool. Yeah. Reinforcement learning, is, you know, online learning, right? Where it's just always continuously optimizing. Right. You know, throughout like, any process, it has actually made a lot of processes that are extremely hard to model or, you know, extremely complex, become super efficient, way more efficient, any of any of that process control systems.

Yeah. And there's looking that actually, yeah. But yeah. You know, it could be the answer, but having said that, the reinforcement learning is not easy. It's not easy to implement. It's mathematically, it's, more complex than, you know, your normal neural networks. You're talking like reinforcement learning.

We're talking about, you know, some of the stuff that Google does, right? So like a few select people can actually make it work, right? It requires a lot of, knowledge and expertise because it's just mathematically unstable, naturally unstable, right?

Um, if that makes sense. And that's like the last thing you want in a high volume, high critical factory setting [00:20:00] is ending unstable or unpredictable. Well, anything that's changing without the design process. I meant the design process unstable. Right. Once it's, once you get it works perfectly. Gotcha. I think Mickey has best.

Um, I can say that I definitely use AI to increase my efficiency roles engineer. But I have to be very, very careful about, what you feed intellectual property, things like that with ai. Uh, so it's, it's a little sneaky. Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. You know, there's a lot of sort of auxiliary applications that maybe we can look at to see how that could work, what we could get out of it. I think also part, there's already a lot of analytics tools out there, better interface directly with [00:21:00] than ai.

You don't necessarily want the data that you to be changing when you're analyzing. As we pull machine data from our equipment here at gm, we actually have department dedicated to device level analytics. That's what it's called. And making sure they're getting exactly right data, asking configurable. So I AI might be better used to help yourself learn new things at this point, in my opinion, and to help increase efficiency with tasks that are non-intellectual property review.

Mm-hmm. That makes sense. You definitely don't wanna be feeding any of your proprietary company information into a large language model that isn't specifically provided to you and approved by your employer. Big caveat there. Yes, I've had, uh, to be honest, like my interactions with it, I tried for a lot of things [00:22:00] and generally it's not worth like using the output.

But for myself, I've been giving more conference talks lately and stuff, and I've had it help me when I get like writer's block with structuring, talks, putting together a like proposed set of slides for me. I'll put in the abstract of what I'm talking about and the points I wanna make.

And then I've said give me a structure of how many slides and what points to put on what slides. And then I've built out a slide deck from there. None of it has been something where I got an output that I used directly. Right. But in that brainstorming process. And then I've seen some cool application or examples on LinkedIn of people showing it to create like standardized documentation.

So give it some information and then say, produce this sort of format, I don't know, training documents or different things like that. Um, but I'm very interested, but also you have to take it with a grain of salt and be skeptical. And I saw a post today that was like, oh, uh, [00:23:00] AI is never gonna take our jobs that are mathematical because, chat G B t got math wrong.

And I'm like, well, it's a language model. It's not a mathematical engine. It's not actually looking to be accurate. It's looking to sound like it's accurate. So I think we all need to just be educated on like, what, I mean, AI is just such an abstract term. It can mean so many things. Do you find Luis, when you're talking to any customers, that they have misconceptions about ai?

And do you have to like, take them steps back and tell them that their solution doesn't require ai? All, all the time. All the time. It's quite, tiring to be honest in this, there's an educational component that you have to like bear, right? When you're An AI first company.

Right. And, uh, and yeah, and you know, it's what it's right. Like we're happy to teach our customers and eventually some of them, you know, will pick it up and, you know, start reading in the right resources and ask for the right solutions. But yeah, it does take, uh, a bit, a bit of time.

However, though some of them come and they know exactly what they want, right? They know exactly what they're looking for, and they've researched the [00:24:00] market. They come to us and say, Hey, listen, you know, we need A, B, C, and we've had experience with ai. We believe Deeplearning can solve it.

Right? And we know we don't see anything out there in the market. Can you help us, develop a product from scratch for this particular application, right. We believe, and we can roll around and that's great. You know, I love those kind of customers. Right. You know, they're like on the maturity curve, they're a bit, you know, further ahead.

Yeah. And then we work with those people and, it's just that, the sales cycle becomes like much shorter, right. And yeah. Happy days. Yeah. Early on in that maturity cycle, a lot of it's just education, right? You gotta slog through that. Hannah, I haven't quite got given you a chance to tell.

Do you have any exciting projects or development since we talked last that you can talk about? I've been working a lot with um, and development team to kinda help, the plant that I'm working in, green

stuff. So all, [00:25:00] and it's kind of interesting cause it's the first time that we are doing batteries on a scale that we're doing. So when you talk about scale and manufacturing, it impacts how you do everything. You know what works for manually building batteries or building batteries, semi-automated.

Doesn't work when you're producing facility. And you basically have to reconfigure a lot of the systems that may have worked for other people. And so I've been kinda digging into that stuff, which has fund, and it's not really traditional controls necessarily. Mm-hmm. It's been a lot more project management, IT interface and trying to understand all the different systems and make sure that all of the stakeholders are well enough informed to fully understand why maybe they can't have what we want today, but maybe in six or eight weeks they'll get what they need.

So a fair amount of education involved there as well. I think [00:26:00] that's, and that's a running theme in your career. You're gonna be educating people above and below you and to the sides of you all the time. And we all need to be better about educating each other rather than shaming people for not knowing what they don't know.

For instance. I would also like to touch on, I guess Hannah, but you have a fairly unconventional way that you came into controls. Would you agree? Yeah, absolutely. Can you tell us a little bit of that backstory? And then I also wanna touch on the fact it sounds like you're kind of stretching yourself in your role right now, doing something that isn't quite the controls job that maybe you took initially.

And how does that feel and is that something like you can give people advice on how to get into a role and feel comfortable stretching yourself and growing in a role? That's a lot of questions. I don't think it ever feels comfortable. I don't think stretching yourself ever feels comfortable by design.

I don't think it's supposed to. Right. Um, so for me, I kinda started in college nursing and I didn't like it. I ended up [00:27:00] leaving at my, and realizing

college. Um, that associate Robotics allowed me to take some PLC courses and a few other things, but prior to college I had no exposure. So I'm really excited about what's, um, then I moved first manufacturing role but they hired me cause I had a degree in robotics and then they forced me to be a die set, which wasn't really in my planned career path. So I left and I went into a machine building and started traveling around the world, install stuff and meeting a lot of.

Moved through a few different places and ended up, at JR Automation. And I really [00:28:00]enjoyed working there. And after about two years though, I was pretty tired of traveling. So I've been traveling for about five years then and I took a local role and the company I was with wasn't a great fit. They were a tier one supplier.

They were ok, but they didn't really understand any of the equipment that they had on their shop floor. Great people just, they needed to be handed a turnkey system and that was it every time, so I left there and ended up, with GM pretty quickly thereafter. But during the course of that, from the time that I was at JR to the time that I came to gm, I was also teaching robotics.

So, I did all of that and I've been with GM on and off since I started as a contract employee. And Id kinda of ups, downs. Downs and. Employment. And I've been in a couple of different interesting roles here and still growing and liking it, for the most part. So as [00:29:00] far as stretching yourself in roles though, I don't think it's something that's really a decision that people make when it happens.

I think they realize, Hey, you know what? I might be qualified to help solve this problem in some way better than other people who are trying to convey with, they can't maybe even necessarily understand the system that they're trying to use. So I need to help them understand system and then figure out what the problem is, root cause it, and then go back to the integrator side.

Say, Hey, integrator person, I need help. Everybody. Is that type of, if you're type, just leverage. Your thinking capacity. So Dan says when he left the company where you guys worked together, he also went to a machine builder. So do you think your varied experience being, having worked at a systems integrator and those other places has kind of made you that type of thinker?

Or is that just independently how you are? I was that type of thinker. [00:30:00] Yeah. I was fixing vacuums and stuff at six, seven years old. Whatever broken I was. Yeah. Fixed it. It think you started at four, right? This is correct. I had my first tool blocks when I was four years old. A hammer, some pliers, and the screwdriver, my grandpa on it for me.

And he was proud and I was proud too. So that was awesome. So now I'm wondering for Elena. Hmm. Yeah. Is it our job to make these types of people or just find them wherever they are? Right. I don't know if this type of thinking because we can teach industry skills, we can teach. A lot of things, but certain things I think are kind of innate.

I mean, and I think back to my husband as an example. For instance, he took apart a computer when he was a kid, and I think he managed to put it back together just fine. But he got in big trouble for it. Like he was not encouraged and he did not end up in our side of the world at all. And I wonder if maybe he would have, if it had been [00:31:00] encouraged from a young age rather than said like, no, don't do that.

 I think it's a huge part of. You know, as we're growing up, you, we definitely do have tendencies. There's kids that are better at language and some kids that are way better at math. I think about like the people that I know in cuz I wasn't one of them that, you know, their parents handed them tools or, got them like to do hands-on stuff.

It's because those parents do that for a living, like in a lot of cases like that is their trade and they're giving it so they don't even know any different than to teach their kid to use a wrench cuz they use a wrench in their real job. And every time I've seen that happen, I've never seen that al in like, trauma to the kids.

 They've just done well as far as I've seen, so, I don't think that it's a bad thing. If we were like, yeah, maybe you're not mechanically inclined, but just buy that weird pink like drill and see if she likes it. There's like pink drill sets and I was looking on Amazon at what kind of like toys, you know, are for, you know, [00:32:00] different, there's like robotic sets that are like pink and purple.

 So you know, there's toys that you can get 'em look sinking about things, but I think that we should drive it. I, I do personally think, but I don't have kids so

and I gotta tell you, if a tool would be pink or purple, I would not use it. So I don't like these colors. Yes, I'm with you on the, on your, that's funny. You're listening to the pink and purple and I was like, no, gimme something black. Please. Seriously. That's funny. When I was a kid, I wanted to paint my room black.

When I was four, I painted my room pink. It's what I picked when we moved into the house at four years old. Then at seven years old, I begged my mom to paint my room black because I was sick of the pink. And I wanted to do nothing but pa play with Ninja Turtles and paint my room black. And I got a no, that's what you picked and you stick with it.

 But it's funny. Now we have the purple, color for automation ladies. And I actually, for a big part of my life, paid at the color purple. I thought it was the worst color out of all of them. I've grown fond of it now, but [00:33:00] I'm the same way. Like, if you try to push like girly stuff at me, I would always be like, no, no, man.

Not, not for me. So it's great. Some girls are girly and they want the pink screwdriver, but let us buy the black one or the blue one if we want. Don't wanna be shoot into that. Hannah, I have a question about, what was the moment when you decided to switch from nursing into a, you know, technical field?

Like, what was that moment where you were like, okay, you know what, I'm done. I'm not gonna do this anymore and I'm gonna just, you know, switch my life, purpose into that. Do you wanna cry today?

She didn't wanna watch

people's, were four boys. And my father died when I was little, and I was always very close to his parents and my uncles. Um, and my one uncle lived at home with my grandparents and he had schizophrenia. Severely he was paranoid [00:34:00] and he passed away when I was like, maybe eight, maybe nine years old.

And, he left the lasting impact on me. We, we put puzzles together, we did math. He taught me how to count money. He taught me how to do all kinds of math things that I don't think my mom had the bandwidth to try to teach me as a widow mother. I don't think that she had it. So he passed away from the complications of schizophrenia, from a lack of effective care in the halfway home that he had just moved into.

I mean, he'd lived there less than a month and then he died. And, I was in my externship and I was working with some patients and a doctor's office when one of the other nurses. Came out into the hallway and was kinda, talking really badly about a woman and calling her schizophrenic. And I said, really, that's not her chart.

I would've noticed that, oh, well we just went to E four years ago and we just haven't updated it yet. That's a pretty significant thing. That's updates chart first of all. Second of all, like I'm not really [00:35:00] cool with you making mental health more of a stigma than it's, and if she does suffer from schizophrenia, you should be happy that she's showing up here in sleep treatment in any fashion.

Cause most schizophrenic really struggle with that. And, not long after that, I was actually let go from my free labor job that I was doing for that doctor's office as an exter. So, uh, I was like, no. I've met too many nasty people in this field. Too many people who are just absolutely miserable and don't see the value, the impact that they're having.

I don't wanna do it. So then I went to community college and I said, Hey, like I just walked out on my degree completely. And there were some reasons for that in the backstory, but I went to CC and I said, Hey, like I need a degree tomorrow. What can you guys do for me? Because I'd been on my own, like I was emancipated at 16, so I'd been on my own and minimum wage just wasn't really cutting any.

So I went to CC and I said, what do I do? And they're like, well, you could wait two years to do a nursing [00:36:00] degree. And I was like, oh, no, I think I'm good on that. They said, oh, well what do you wanna do? I said, I, I dunno, help me decide. And they said, here's a test. Take the test and figure it out. Been poor, right?

Minimum wage. I'd been extremely poor. I'd been fixing my own car, fixing things for people, for money, doing whatever I could to make money on the side. I mean, if it came down to it, I was returnings from bottles to get gas money to be able to go to a minimum wage. And they said, well, have you considered, Any tech careers or anything like that.

And I said, well, I, I don't wanna go to engineering school, you know? And they said, no, but you can go to trade school out at the regional manufacturing tech center, and you're like extremely mechanically savvy. So you could do just about anything out there. So I went out there and I took electives and everything, and I chose robotics because it was the least likely to be physically painful for the rest of my life.

Yeah. I stood there, I did some machin. I was like, man, my back hurts.[00:37:00]

Give it to the robot. Program it. Yes. Wow. That's, that is a powerful story. Thank you for sharing that, Hannah. That is not the first time we've heard, I wouldn't say the same, but similar. We, we spoke with a girl that. Was living outta her car before she ca came into being an industrial mechanic. It is also, I mean, it is definitely, and I was, when I was talking to Amanda Beaton a couple weeks ago about this too, like there are a lot of career opportunities in our industry that are a lot more accessible for the amount of pay that you can get once you, are certified.

And it doesn't have to be a four year degree. I mean, yeah, there's some demoralizing things in factories, but it is, a lot less emotional, for instance, than the healthcare industry. I, I would yes say, right. Um, it's not normal for people to die in the factory there. Yeah. There, there [00:38:00] should not be safety concerns in today's factories, and you're absolutely right.

I think sometimes, yeah, pushing for technology over people, whether it's safety-wise, culture-wise, like burnout of employees. I guess there's always like, Some trade offs, but as you try to move to a massive amount of automated production, you have to keep some of Man, that, that's a tricky one.

I was gonna talk about that too a little bit. You know, just from that sort of going from manual to semi-automated to like full automation with like very, very large production targets. I mean, it's not simple, it's not easy. Mm-hmm. But automation ultimately in the long run is the way to do it.

we're talking about safety and nobody should die in a plant today, right? This is really the number one, reason for automation, right? You look at all the hazardous processes in the automotive industry particularly, right? They're almost fully automated.

Like you go, [00:39:00] you walk into any body shop, right? All the welds, cause all those, Patterns and you be like, that's coming out of the, from the world, they're very dangerous right? To humans. And they've, you know, you go into anybody shop and they're almost fully, fully automated, right?

\ No humans involved in, uh, whether wherever there's like hazardous chemicals, cancer causing chemicals, whatever, like it's always a robot that's dealing with it and it's just fantastic, right? That's, yeah, I think automation's really great in handling that, but I will say it does introduce another level of risk, and I feel like all too often people take automation, not very seriously.

And we've all seen it happen where somebody, you know, makes a poor choice because they're still accustomed to doing something that they forget. So it it does still happen in factories. 

 As people are trying to create new processes, a lot of times they forget, like the risks involved in the things that they're doing to create the new processes in the automation particularly. And I see [00:40:00] that on a day-to-day basis, even working for gm, which is highly, highly focused on safety, we're told it's our very number one priority all the time.

 We're trained on it very, very routinely. And for some reason when it comes to making new processes, it's like people lose their mind. They just, they've gotta start from scratch and reinvent everything and they're forgetting like the basic safety things in a lot of cases. And I don't know if there's a better way to help people stop forgetting them.

To keep 'em safe because a lot of companies can have a really great safety program, but it's still on an individual basis when something bad happens. Yeah. I have heard quite a bit about, people just sort of putting the safety stuff to the side, individual operators even doing it because it's inconvenient for them or, you know, bypassing things and that's not from a, I'm sure that's, you know, some of that is maybe pressure from above, but I think a lot of times it's our just [00:41:00] like we're comfortable and used to doing things and don't realize the risk that is actually taking place.

Yeah. I, what I see too is, that people get carried away, right? If you're trying, and this is the whole thing, you are into trying improving something or putting a new process out, and you get so involved in it that you completely forget everything around it. And that's unfortunately what happens then as well.

So that's the creative side of things when they take over and that, I think what happens too, Yeah, in the oil and gas industry, there was a really, useful process, in the management of safety. And that really came about in the 19, in the end of 1980s, I think early 1990s, after a major accident event that just, you know, cost the life of lives of like over hundred people 

 But yeah, so there's something known as the permit system or or the, uh, permit to work or something like that. Right. I think we have a something similar , in the automotive industry I've seen, but it's so much more rigorous in the oil and gas industry because like obviously you're dealing with hazardous products, right.[00:42:00]

And you know, whenever you're introducing any process, any kind of change, right? Manage, management of change is taken so seriously. And there is so many reviews, happening at many different levels by qualified people who are, examined at a certain frequency. And then, you know, you're meeting the, management in the office and then the technicians on site and then the manage management offsite will know the site better than other people.

You know what I mean? So there's like so many different, um, layers of reviews before you're actually allowed to make, any change, right? And then, before you do the change, you have, you need a permit for anything.

By the way, every single change, you have to get permit before you. There's a site review that does like a 3D review, where are you doing this work and what's happening above it? Yeah. Under it on the side, right? What's happening to the system? The systems come, you know, that are connected to it, right?

What is the communication plan, what are the emergency procedures, right? In the oil and gas industry, you're always about preventing fire something from happening, right?

Preventing, preventing the gas leak, preventing the [00:43:00] ignition, you know, you're talking about people's lives,

When something goes wrong, it's awful. It's really, really awful. So yeah, it's all about prevention. And all those reviews just make the probability always lower every time, like, of something happening. Someone will catch something. Um, yeah. Cause I worked with them for five years and out on, out in the ocean in the middle of those, um, um, oil rings.

So yeah. I just thought I'd share it. No, that's a good point. And like we've talked before about, oh, the, the amount of paperwork that you need, if you're in the pharmaceutical industry, it's extremely frustrating but there's a reason why these things are in place. Mm-hmm. Is because is the amount of paperwork worth somebody not losing their life or on a large scale?

Right. Bad medicine that goes out into, , a lot of people can die from that or. Brad forbid a safety issue in a car. Like a lot of people are gonna be driving that car when something happens. So it can be easy, especially from a vendor standpoint to just go, why don't they just do X?

Or, oh, it's so simple. Or, you know, and then you realize that you are not the one with [00:44:00] the nuance and the risk and the liability of all of the downstream effects and changes that your great new technology is actually gonna introduce. Now bring up a point. I guess Hannah, when we saw each other at Automate last year, somebody made a point that they were complaining that, oh, the automotive companies, they never use anything the way it just comes from us.

They have to bastardize it and make it their own way, and then it's hard to support and all this kind of stuff. Yeah, I remember that. Would you say that there's a good reason that you guys quote unquote bastardize the vendor's product for your own needs? So for us, and I think Anya can definitely, reply to this too, we have very, very stringent standards at gm.

 I know not all automotive and not all suppliers are the same because I've worked for other places. But what I can say is GM standards are very well defined and stringent when it comes to a lot of things and. There's a few different [00:45:00] reasons for that. One is that we've defined our own internal systems, and those systems have to interface properly, right?

Additionally, when it comes to even hardware, we have what's called G C C B or G C C H, and those define what the approved pieces of hardware are to use on our equipment. And it's because we have ais that we plug in easily. It makes programming easier. We know the safety ratings for it. So whether it's a still two or a still three, we know what we're getting immediately and we know how to buy off on it, which methods we need to check to make sure that it's safe to use and across the board.

That's kind of how we do things here. We have a very, very strategic method of deploying things in general. Now, when we launch new departments, You see some variance in that because everybody's trying to figure out which pieces fit into that department. So that's kind of where I am right now [00:46:00] is getting to be one of several puzzle masters over here.

And Anya, do you see that in your clientele since you work with multiple automotive companies? Yeah. They all do things their own way, right? Yes. And you guys pretty much become experts in their process as well as you assist them? Yeah, to some extent at least. Right? So of course when we were closely with them together or developed like training materials and later on teacher classes and so forth, a certain degree of knowledge of, obviously we need a gain to understand of course, why.

So that's always the idea is to, to find out why and how and that. Both of these questions need to be answered. Right? And this is then also something we can then teach in the classes, right? So that's important to know. Then people take this in a lot easier when you explain this in the beginning first and then, it's incorporated in every company.

Any large automotive company has their own way of doing things for several different reasons, right? There's some processes, [00:47:00] some of them go across, yeah, the ocean obviously worldwide, and therefore you have certain parts which are approved worldwide, right? And they get, um, part of it is buying it, uh, this part manufacturers and what's available.

 Then you have IAC components and NEMA components, and then you have to look at the markets and see what's available and what can be utilized everywhere, right? So there's a. Yeah, I, I agree. I think it's also, you know, something about the automotive industry. It's because, traditional automotive, you know, as usually we're talking about the GMs, the Toyotas, the Volkswagens of the world, they're very high, very high, volume, mass manufacturing, you know, spitting cars out, every few seconds if you count all the factories around the world, right?

Um, and so, it's high volume and generally, generally low margin, so there's gonna be very streamlined processes, right? You come, you bring a new system in if it doesn't fit into those processes, right? Nicely. We're gonna make it fit nicely.

And that's [00:48:00] why it's always, changed and made to fit. Just like Hannah was talking about, like all these tests, right? That you have, integration tests, all these, like, it just becomes so much more streamlined. The tests become easier because you're gonna, usually what happens, , you, you, you come up with a new system for a new plant, or an old plant, let's say.

And that works out really well. It's rolled out everywhere. It's gonna be rolled out everywhere. It's gonna be, it's gonna go in the manual, you know what I mean? Of factories, right. And it's just gonna be standardized. It's gonna be pushed out everywhere. And then, and now, because of that, it's gotta be really like, bastardized, as you say, we call it, making it more robust.

Yes. That's a good way of putting it. Yes, yes. Exactly. Exactly. You know, nicer into the gear set. Well, looks like we're pretty much coming up on time here. Like I've said before, I think we have, I would be happy to get together with you guys once a quarter to see what's up and what's new.

 I really appreciate you guys coming on. Really appreciate Elan helping us put this together. 

And we will be [00:49:00] doing more stuff with Elan this year. We're really excited. I hear somewhere in these comments earlier as well that Elan has some stuff going on to let, kids at a younger age learn elan. So that's pretty exciting because I think we've always thought that it was one of those.

Fancy things for the fancy engineers and not quite, as easy to learn as some of the basic softwares that are used for building panels and stuff. But I think we are all wrong and we wanna make sure that everybody out there knows that that's wrong. And you can get started with Elan early and easily and actually then use it to get to a point where you're extremely automated and proficient and so we're gonna be doing a bit more of that, learning, and figuring that stuff out this year. So just pretty excited. Anya, do you have any, closing remarks you wanna say? So there is a lot new to discover, so anybody who's interested possibly in test driving than the new [00:50:00] version Elan 2024.

Right. That will be out there. So, we will be, able to give you a test version, right? You can be part of test driving it and yeah, give us some feedback. Obviously, that's greatly appreciated. And if somebody out there listens to this, whether it's live now or later and wants to get in touch with someone from Elan, get a free trial or get some training or figure out how they can use it, do you know Anya where they should go or should they just reach out to me and I'll hook you up with wherever you need to talk to because Allie and I will be happy to make those in introductions as well.

I do not not know, um, if everybody can see Josh in here, that would be fine. Or contact you. Right. And then we just funnel it through. Yeah, we'll make those introductions. Anybody of us can be contacted. Right. So yeah, you'll find these guys on LinkedIn. Mm-hmm. You should see them by now. Any closing words from you, Luis, before we head out?

Thank you so much for organizing this and it was great catching up with you all. And I'm sorry I keep calling you Luis. It's Louis, right? Louis? Absolutely, yes. Yeah, I'm, [00:51:00] it's Luis Narva from Siemens that I keep talking to and ta and saying his name, although I know you guys pronounce it differently and spell it differently.

No, no. Yeah, it's funny to our friends at Siemens, we'll be seeing them at automate as well. And then Hannah, any closing words for you before I close this out? Get outside and enjoy the sunshine. I will take you up on that. I need to get some sunshine. So thank you everybody that joined. Hope the weather's good wherever you are and you get a little bit of sunshine and, we look forward to seeing you around Next time we have something live, hit us up with questions, comments, suggestions for future panel, topics, or if you would like to join us on one of our panels in the future.

Definitely contact myself or Allie. If you're out there in the field working in industrial automation or with robotics or doing education, basically anything but just pure sales and marketing, please reach out to us. We wanna talk to you. Thank you so much everyone. Thank you again two e plan for putting this [00:52:00] together.

Thank you for your time. Anya, Louis, Hannah, appreciate you guys. Hopefully see you all in a couple weeks at Automate and have a great rest of your Thursday. Thank you. Bye everybody. Cheer. Bye everybody.