Erik Mirandette 0:00
You shouldn't be spending your time and your focus and your energy and your effort on the technology. You should be spending your time and your focus and your effort on understanding the process and identifying the right problem to solve. So
Zack Scriven 0:20
hey, everyone. We're here at the Pruvit podcast booth, and I'm here with Eric Marinette and Mark Friedman with tulip, and they just had a chance to give me a demo of their Pruvit session. And I was actually really blown away that not only, you know, we can get into the your development platform, but like you specifically dug deep on the problem that you solved, and it was an actual problem within the manufacturer. Some of the vendors, you know, they kind of took a very generic approach to what problem they solved, which is fair, because they wanted to obviously highlight their their, you know, their platforms capabilities, but tell us about the problem you solved for this virtual factory customer. Yeah, maybe
Erik Mirandette 1:06
I think, before we get into the specific problem, I want to make a key point, which is, this is how we highlight the capability of tulip or the platform, which is to say, it's not about the platform, it's not about the product, it's not about the capability. What it is like using the technology as a problem solving tool. What problems are manufacturers facing while they're facing many problems, but the two that you highlighted in this particular case, well, complex, yeah. Well, this is an observation about the state of all manufacturing operations generally. The first is that they're all very complex environments, if you think about it from like a complex systems theory perspective, like they're complex environments, and two, they're dynamic. They're evolving. They're changing over time, as the operation evolves, as the needs evolve. And that's a really crucial aspect to keep in mind when we think about, how are you going to deploy tulip to help improve efficiencies within these operations at any point in time. The point is, it's a moving target, and it has profound implications for how you think about leveraging technology in that environment,
Zack Scriven 2:07
which is, which is in that moving target is really what you know in the the PowerPoint you did was really highlighted that moving target, things are changing, dynamic, and you want to tell us a little bit about that problem.
Erik Mirandette 2:21
Yeah, so,
Mark Freedman 2:23
I mean, well, I'll be honest and say that, first of all, I love solving problems in manufacturing. My background is in manufacturing. And you know, there are people every day on the shop floor who keep it running. And you may think that things are more organized than they are. You have these ERPs that are sending these signals, and you have all these tools, all this stuff, but in reality of people walking around making it work. And so we like to empathize with those people, because we're all about augmenting the human, giving them the tools they need to do their job better. And tulip is, to me, like the ultimate problem solving tool. And I was excited to have this opportunity to actually solve a real problem, but it was unusual because we couldn't actually go to the shop floor. You know, normally, that's where you go. You go to GEMBA, you go. You go to GEMBA. You understand, you talk to the people, you see what's going on. We only had a small window into this, so we had to sort of imagine what the problems were like. And apparently this is a real problem they have, because what we saw in the data from the data we had access to was that they basically have 90 schedule exceptions. And in December, they had 90 schedule exceptions, meaning they want to run these press machines as often as they can. They're not running that often. Their availability is low, and they're always changing the schedule. They're skipping jobs, pulling jobs. And to me, that sounded like, Wow. I don't see anything in here that supports the person who has to bring the material to the machine. I don't see any tools here for them. So they must be doing they must be doing the Lord's work trying to make this place run. So how can we support them? And and then we just started imagining based on the data we saw, for reasons they pulled a job that people are probably picking jobs that aren't ready, and they are doing that. So this must mean material handlers are how can we help them, augment them? So we make them sort of like a sideboard. We give them the situational awareness. We take the UNs that has all the data we know when it's running. Oh, thanks. We have we know when it's running. We know when it's going to run out. We can give that information to the material handler and tell them, you need to go get this material for them, and then the material handler might not find it, and they need to tell the press operator, okay, I don't find it, you need to pick a new job. So we just imagined all the things that can and likely do go wrong. It's like Murphy's Law, you know, if it can go wrong, it will go wrong, especially manufactured. I dropped the roll, yeah, and now it's damaged. Yeah. One thing said Roll was in the other building, so we're down. But like they they could have known that before, but they just didn't communicate on it. So we just gave them a really simple application to kind of prove the point. And and the thing is, nothing special about this problem, this solution. This is just one example, many? Yeah, this is an example of what it's like to have the capability to identify and solve problems in manufacturing, you know? So you start with this, you bring this to the like, what I would do next is I would take this to the material handle and say, Hey, listen, I listened to you. I heard you. Here's what I heard. Does this make sense? Let's try this. And they'd say. Oh, wow, this actually, it turns out this is a problem. Okay, cool. Let's build it this way, and you do it rapidly. So this whole app came together and in three days, and I wouldn't want to spend any longer on it, because now it's time for me to go to the floor with it, work with them, change it, and then we find later that, well, why? What's the number one reason that we're finding these jobs being pulled? Oh, it's because we falsely identify work being ready, you know. And then you build an app to do that. You like, Well, how do you know if a job is ready? Oh, we use this Excel sheet that we write on. Okay, let's build an app for that. Let's get you going there. And that's sort of the journey that you're on. And that's what the platform's all
Zack Scriven 5:33
about, yeah, and, and then, not only that, like you real quickly showed me how to develop something. Throw a barcode scanner on the screen. You scan my badge and then publish that as a topic to your the name to the namespace. So we'll talk about tulip as a
Erik Mirandette 5:49
platform in a second. But like, how did your session go? You know, you guys presented yesterday. I'm interviewing after you did your on stage. Prove it. Session. Was it both of you guys up there? Okay, it was. How did it go? It was a, well, it started out as a presentation, then it turned into a demo that was, I would say, pretty planned. Then it devolved, or evolved into a, like, you know, show and tell, hey, but we could do this. Then Walker, I think, like, stood up and was like, Mark, you killed it, yeah. And then we're and then it was kind of like a free for all. The crowd started, like, shouting out. And we were just like, oh yeah, we can do this. What else do you want to do? And I don't know, it was, it was, it was pretty fun. You know, I was
Mark Freedman 6:26
a little, I was a little nervous, because I haven't spoken in front of that many people before. So, you know, I practiced a little bit like, How long, and I was only have 20 minutes. How long it's gonna take, I'm gonna go over and, you know, I spent most of my time making that stupid animation in After Effects, instead of on the on the actual app building, which is actually
Erik Mirandette 6:40
a really important point. So, you know, the apps that we talked about yesterday, we were joking over dinner last night, and we're like, Mark, I've never seen your PowerPoint be so sharp. Like, how did you do those animations? And we talked about the he actually spent more time making the animations in the PowerPoint than he made making the applications.
Mark Freedman 6:56
And also, also, that was how I figured that was kind of
Zack Scriven 6:59
that's the best way to most quickly communicate the problem visually, yeah, and
Mark Freedman 7:03
when I was making the app, actually, that was how I because I couldn't talk to them, so I did that sort of for me to imagine what it was like to be them, you know, like that was my going again. But
Zack Scriven 7:13
I did this without ever being visiting the facility or talking to the operators, and they found a real world problem within the data, which speaks to the power of the Unified namespace, but then to, you know, build, you know, three different applications for the material handler, the press operator, and then, you know, the supervisor, in a short amount of time. But what was interesting
Mark Freedman 7:32
about the presentation, though, is that I ended up having like, 10 minutes left after doing it. And so when Walker said that, I was like, okay, cool. Now we're just, now, we're just talking. So What? What? Sorry, go ahead. Oh, now we're just talking. So I'm like, oh, what else do you want to see? You want to see this because, because it's fun to build stuff. So I just started building. That's when I built the the scanning you started showing off a little bit. Well, it was just, I don't know you're
Zack Scriven 7:55
doing, but what was an interesting question that you got? What was the best question?
Erik Mirandette 8:02
Well, I think one of the interesting questions was, like, it was more of an observation, which is the whole point here is you shouldn't be spending your time and your focus and your energy and your effort on the technology. You should be spending your time and your focus and your effort on understanding the process in identifying the right problem to solve. So if you think about like, where we spent all of our time leading up to this and preparing for this, like, the hard work was not building gaps that, you know, we marked it in a couple couple days. The hard part was, like, which apps, like, which problems do we want to really focus on to move the needle for this particular operation in I think that really speaks to what tulip is all about. We want the technology to sort of fall into the background, and we want to in. The reason tulip is a no code platform is because we want, we want developing these things to be really easy. We want that to be a power that we give to people who understand the process the best and who are closest to the people on the front line, because they know where the problems are and what needs to be focused on, and then it should be easy to take technology and leverage it intelligently on top of a unified namespace to surface the right insights at the right time to the right people to inform better decision making.
Mark Freedman 9:11
One question I liked was, was, what, what other tool would you use to solve this problem? And
Zack Scriven 9:19
that was actually my next question, which, and I was gonna ask it differently, but I was gonna say, like, you know, you probably get asked this often. It's like, Well, why would i i already have ignition? Why don't I just build these applications in ignition? And I think I know the answer, but, or the question
Mark Freedman 9:32
was like, what would be the best tool? And my answer, and I stand by it now that I think about it again, but it was the tool I would probably use. Like, the best tool I could probably use would be to be a like a professional programmer, and write bespoke software using them, scratch from scratch. But like, what? That's not the problem. I'm actually not, believe it or not. I'm not actually solving the material handle the problem, right? I'm solving the capability to empower those. Who understand that problem and problems like that to solve their own problems, which is then why you build tool, which is why tool? Yeah, so, like, I'm actually not solving and that's one of the challenges. If I didn't have tulip, I would just go build it, yeah, yeah, exactly. That's why I was like, I have to join this company, because it's like, you know, I I want to, I want to be able to solve these because problems are going to change, and I want to be able to leverage technology. I technology that's otherwise not available to me in solving these problems, like, what would you reach for? You know, there's a reason why people, when they're doing I'm a Kaizen guy, there's a reason why people reach for CRE form, and they make whatever they want to make out of cre form. And they're not furniture makers, but they can go in a closet and they come out a couple hours later and they have this perfectly made bench, and maybe it's not perfect. They go back and they adjust it, and that's a capability that's just not available to the front line, like people who run operations when it comes to software. So that's actually the problem we're solving. And it's difficult, because when we communicate, sometimes it can be difficult, because people see what you built and they're like, oh, so is that tulip? Oh, is that? Is that what we're like, is that? Is that we're buying? Can it's like
Erik Mirandette 11:01
people anchor on the solution, on the on the app. They say, Oh, well, like, I want to buy that app. You can go to the library, you can import. You've got hundreds of apps there that you can use as kind of a best practice starting point. But that's not the point. The point is the investing in your infrastructure and in your IT architecture such that you have the ability to leverage technology to solve problems in this complex and dynamic environment that is a manufacturing operation. The apps that you're going to that you're going to deploy today, the problems that you're going to solve today, are likely, and should be, I would argue, very different than the problems you're going to solve in six months. Because you know what? As you solve those problems, you're going to be chasing efficiencies. You know, though, that's not your problem. You solved it. Something else will come up, and you need to have, you need to have the ability to be able to continue to evolve and continuously improve your operation. Yeah, you could build an app that solves a problem and it's like the best app for three months, and then you find out that there isn't actually a root cause problem. You end up solving that one. And now the first app is kind of obsolete. You don't even need it anymore, because you don't have those defects anymore. So it's you can, it's just another tool, like, so what if the cost of deploying that was a couple days, then
Zack Scriven 12:07
that's how you're going to evaluate. Do I buy this app off the shelf, even if it's open and plays with your ecosystem? Do I pay for this app that's already developed versus, let's say I have tulip how much? How long is it? It's not just, how long is it going to take me to build it the first time, but then when I need to change it or maintain it, or update it, or it evolves. Versus when you buy an off the shelf app, they have, like, a standard preset list of functionality, like, you know, let's just say, if you wanted to buy an ERP app or or point of sale app, you know, you guys did brew lip that was a pretty cool app at your conference, or, let's or even here, let's say, if I'm a manufacturer and I'm like, do I build CMMS in tulip or do I go to maintain X and buy their app?
Mark Freedman 12:53
Well, the other thing is, like, if you have something that's working, then we believe in an open ecosystem, like we're not, we're not trying to rip and replace anything you have that's working. The fact is that people are currently reaching for tools and building things, but they typically reach for what they can reach, like
Erik Mirandette 13:12
Excel. And by the way, if you think about like, what's the number one software development tool that engineers use to solve problems in manufacturing? Excel, yeah, it's Excel, and it's what's hilarious is a lot of times and look like we believe in full governance, our platform is well outfitted with approvals and approval chains and version control and all these things we run in regulated environments in which life saving drugs are being created, medical devices are being created, like parts that are going on to airframes that are keeping jets in the sky. So look, governance is a super important topic. But a lot of times when we talk with people, they say, whoa, whoa, whoa. This is, like, a scary and dangerous capability. And there's like, this, this, like, come to Jesus moment, where I'm like, you realize your engineers are doing this right now. And there's always like, the No, they're not. Like, yeah, they are. They're doing it with Excel, they're doing it with paper processes. They're doing it with green sports. They're you just don't know it, so you know, yeah, you know. So that's what stood out to me, you know. And that problem
Zack Scriven 14:03
that you highlighted, like the lower like 57% or 54% availability, 90 schedule changes, that was a symptom of a problem that you imagine the material handler going through and their current workflow. There I was saying, like, it was obvious to me that they're doing this in their head right now. They're looking at the dashboard. They're trying to anticipate what's coming, and then just having to react, but without that feedback loop to the supervisor or the press operator. So you're already doing the problem. So you might as well just make that easier for that that user, which is a very empathetic and that's why you guys are the frontline operations platform. I would say, yeah.
Mark Freedman 14:43
And we did the UNs was in was use, really useful in this, you know, because I've only really become aware of uns thanks to Walker and his, you know, ideology. And I found it to be really interesting, because I think we might have been the only, and I haven't seen all the other I'm looking for. Forward to seeing other presentations, but, you know, we made a point to put the human in the UNs, because almost every one of these booths is throwing high frequency machine data in there. But like, I'm a human. When I go to the factory, I'm talking to humans, you know, and those are the people who run it, and they they belong in there as well. Because, like, it's not just, like, we're not just giving human context to the like, what work orders running and whatever to that machine. We're also bringing the machine context to the human so now they're a part of it, you know, and, and, and that information we can see over time, like, well, who's who's been running this weather material quest, like, what are the lead times going through? Are we getting better at this over time? Because all this other stuff, these great solutions you've seen from some of our partners, like snowflake and whoever else, like they're doing this AI work on top of this information. So now you have, I saw that, now you have that, that visibility into the like the reality of the shop, like the full picture, you know well,
Erik Mirandette 15:53
and I think that's a really important point, because, like, Look uns is, is fundamental, super important, incredibly helpful in terms of how to understand what problems go after, and how to build the solutions, which we've talked about. But I do think that uns sometimes misses the other I don't know, maybe it's half or something, but it's like the there's no place for the human worker in the UNs if you don't have a human centric platform that allows you to take the insights that are available in the UNs and expose it to them in situ, and then also capture their input and incorporate that as a data source into the broader uns. And so I think traditionally, when people think about uns, sometimes they're biased towards thinking about it from like a machine perspective, or like an automation perspective, but we're really like, we're leaving out the most important part of the manufacturing operation, which is like, that, that human worker on the front line. Yeah,
Mark Freedman 16:49
it also does, I'm gonna say one more thing about it, because it also adds to the other persona that we care about, which is the person who serves manufacturing operations, or the person building the apps. That person. And it can be a it can be, it should be a citizen, but like that, but there is ultimately a person who's serving, right? They're serving the manufacturing operation, versus executing. And that person, and they could be executing, but that person is now able to very quickly through the UNs, like, I don't know what, anything about the what's running on that machine. I don't know anything about the tags or anything, but I could just go in, you're pulling the data from Aviva, yeah, yes, it was, that's the thing. It was super. I have no idea how they did that, and I don't even care. All I know is I want the OEE. I want to know when that role is going to run out, so I just go press whatever. This is the role, drag onto my screen. Now the material handle has it so, like, it's also empowering to that person. So the UNs was definitely, like, it made it so I could do it in three days instead of seven or whatever, you know, because otherwise I have to figure out, how do I get it out of the machine and all that. Instead, it was all right there. What do you
Zack Scriven 17:46
guys, as we wrap up here, like, what do you guys looking what's the what stands out to you the most about the conference?
Mark Freedman 17:56
For me, it's the Well, I love the community that Walker brought together the people who come over and talk to us. Like, if I've been to not many, many shows, but when I went to, like, one bunch of, like, a lot of people come by, maybe they're, like, disinterested there. Maybe they don't like, they don't, they're they don't, maybe care about people come over here, like, Hey, I have this problem. Here's what my factory does, and I know the details about how the factory works. And can you help me? And I'm like, This is awesome. Talk to me more about like, like, I just learned a ton about how, uh, potato is made, are made, and chocolate milk is made. And I'm like, Oh, wow, we could build an application for this. So I made, like, literally, in the like, an hour ago, we made a because he didn't really understand how uns works. So I'm like, Okay, let's pretend like we're writing this chocolate milk thing to your vessels, and they have this thing we built a dashboard for him, like, in a couple minutes. And I don't really do that in conferences, but with the people who are here, they they seem to be citizens.
Erik Mirandette 18:53
Awesome. The next conversation was how the F 35 is made, just for context. So it's like, it's like, wild. Who are coming together. We're getting
Zack Scriven 19:01
kicked off here last he's
Mark Freedman 19:03
not, he's not gonna, he's gonna say something. He has to say something. Yeah, I
Walker Reynolds 19:07
just want to say that. Alright, so yesterday, Mark, like, really, the show started, like, there's been great presentations, but like, the high level started when you guys got on stage. Like, the biggest buzz, you know, you guys were the would, I think, third presentation on day one, Opto did a great job, software tool, but actually they did a great job. But you were the first presentation where I'm like, the customer will want that. Like, I could literally drive into the plant right now and they're gonna go, I want that. Because there were two things Mark and I were talking about this morning. There was a variance number on one of the applications that showed that they had nine schedules, 90 schedule variances in December of 2024 and that number was right. It was, I think it was a, I thought it was 89 you had 90 on there. That was a right number. The customer doesn't know that number. That's a KPI. They don't know. So 90 changes means nine. 90 variances, means 90 opportunities for inefficiency in the in the workflow. And number two, you unified the material handler with the supervisor and the operator. Right now at that facility, the material handler is not integrated, so he's just he's wandering around, and no one knows where he is, and he's looking at dashboards on this on the wall, which is better than the way they were doing it. But the application you built was a specific, you covered two actual specific problems that that client would have. They can have it, yeah, and it wow. I actually said, I said we should take you guys to the plant. We should say, Hey, listen, what right here, this is 50% of their the way there, there's 50% more work. And then this would be actual production, and then it'll and
Erik Mirandette 20:41
then it'll and then it'll change, because you know what, you'll solve that problem. There'll be other problems that you want to solve, and then there'll
Walker Reynolds 20:46
be other problems you want to solve. And blew everybody away, it really did. You guys, you guys. And then when concept, concept reply and snowflake came up afterwards, you guys up the game. Tanya actually told me, Tanya Zack conference director, she said the number of vendors who actually submitted changes to their presentation after you guys six. Oh, wow. Six of the vendors came and changed their said, we want to change what we're doing, and they're still sending the updates after you guys presentation. You guys blew it out of the water. It was awesome. That's thank you guys for being
Zack Scriven 21:16
here. Thank you for having us. Thanks, man. All right, I got to end it. But yeah, that was the last thing I want to, like I was you were talking about the we always say industrial internet of things is not just machines, it's software, hardware and people, yeah, and so we'll end it with that. Get your people into the unified namespace. Take a look at tulip. We'll have information how to get started with tulip, as well as how to connect with Eric and mark down in the description below. Thank you for being on the podcast, guys, and have a great conference. Thanks
Erik Mirandette 21:41
for having us. Thanks for having us. Thanks for
Zack Scriven 21:43
having us. My pleasure. You.
