The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Revolutionizing Maintenance with Digital Thinker’s Asset Management Solutions

Episode Date: July 6, 2025

Revolutionizing Maintenance with Digital Thinker's Asset Management Solutions Digitalthinker.com About the Guest(s): Alex Bolan is the President of Digital Thinker, leading the company’s sales and marketing efforts with a deep focus on opportunity recognition and relationship building. A strong advocate for servant leadership, Alex dedicates time to fostering understanding and emotional intelligence within his team. He is a family man blessed with a son and a soon-to-be daughter. With core values rooted in God, family, and country, Alex’s perspective is profoundly shaped by his experiences as a military veteran. With Digital Thinker, he champions cutting-edge enterprise asset management solutions and consultancy, striving to revolutionize manufacturing and maintenance industries through technological excellence. Episode Summary: In this engaging episode of The Chris Voss Show, Alex Bolan, President of Digital Thinker, delves into the transformative world of enterprise asset management and manufacturing efficiency. Chris and Alex explore Digital Thinker's innovative approach to optimizing assets and reducing downtime, emphasizing the importance of well-maintained equipment in the manufacturing sector. They discuss how Alex drives a vision of effectiveness and adaptability across various industries through cutting-edge solutions tailored to client needs. Throughout the conversation, Alex navigates the complex landscape of manufacturing in America, critiquing prevalent attitudes towards maintenance and asset management. He offers a refreshing perspective on the potential of technology, including AI, to augment and transform the manufacturing industry. The discussion culminates in Alex's mission to reshape operational culture and leadership strategies, highlighting Digital Thinker's impact framework designed to empower teams and maximize operational excellence. He advocates for a unified approach where asset management serves as a cornerstone of strategic decision-making in boardrooms. Key Takeaways: Enterprise Asset Management: Digital Thinker provides comprehensive solutions to enhance manufacturing efficiency by minimizing downtime through precise asset maintenance and management strategies. Cultural Shift in Manufacturing: Alex advocates for a transformation in the cultural mindset towards asset management, promoting it as vital to operational success and profitability. AI in Manufacturing: While critical of some AI applications, Alex acknowledges its potential to optimize menial tasks and improve manufacturing processes when implemented effectively. Skills Gap Concerns: As a significant demographic shift looms, Alex stresses the urgency of addressing the shortage of skilled workers in manufacturing through improved training and technology integration. Impact Framework: Alex introduces Digital Thinker's impact framework, a methodology aimed at revolutionizing operational change management and boosting effectiveness in manufacturing environments. Notable Quotes: "Asset management deserves a seat at the boardroom table. It's not just a maintenance issue; it's a pivotal part of strategic success." "AI can enhance efficiency on menial tasks but claiming it will solve all our issues is misleading. We still need human insight for complex problems." "We built an ecosystem of excellence because without maintenance excellence, operational excellence is unattainable." "Being bold and accepting failure is crucial for leadership. It’s about learning and adapting quickly." "Our goal is to move past unicorn farts and butterfly dust—we’re committed to providing actionable data to guide strategic decisions."

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Today we have an amazing young man on the show. Alex Boland joins us. He's the driving force behind sales and marketing at Digital Thinker. He excels with a keen eye for opportunity and relationship building prowess as the president of Digital Thinker. He embodies the philosophy of servant leadership, believing it to be the most effective approach to guiding his team. He invests time and understanding each team member personally, employing

emotional intelligence in his interactions, whether with individuals or the collective group, he's also dedicated family man, married with a son, expecting a daughter. Congratulations. His, I think, uh, his personal core values are deeply rooted in God, family and country further shaped by his experience as a veteran. Welcome to show Alex. How are you?

I am good as I've heard before, if I was any better, I don't know where I'd be. So thank you for that. Wow. Epic intro right there. I was, I was personally any better. I'd be on a, I'd have the yacht somewhere. Maybe I'd have a yacht. I can't pull the out.

I can't pull the Amazon's Jeff Bezos. I just, I'd have the Jeff wife and yacht, but I'm working a yacht. I can't pull the out. I can't pull the Amazon's Jeff Bezos. I just, I'd have the Jeff, uh, wife and yacht, but I'm working on it. So just the yard part, he can keep the wife anyway. Uh, so Alex, give us your.com. Where can you find you on the interwebs? Yeah. So if you visit digital thinker.com, uh, you can find our website and obviously understand a little bit more about what we do.

So give us a 30,000 over you, what you guys do over there. Yeah. So we are trying to revolutionize maintenance and manufacturing by providing software to amplify the excellence that the people in the process do within manufacturing organizations. So without the super fluff, in short, we are asset management experts and we can sell you software and implement the services that help companies manage their equipment, their assets, the maintenance, the cost, and everything that's involved with the critical assets

within their organization that ultimately produce them revenue. Pete Slauson Oh, wow. So, it just kind of gives them a turnkey opportunity, maybe? Is that a good analysis? Jared Slauson I don't know if I would quite describe it as a turnkey opportunity. So, I would describe it a little bit more in depth as, you know, you buy a car and you know, you have to do maintenance to your car to keep its longevity going as long as possible, right? So you wanna get as much of a return on your asset instead of maybe let's call it a return on investment

as possible. And so there are functions that need to be performed on your equipment within your manufacturing plant to keep those assets running for as long as possible. So the number one enemy in our world is downtime, equipment that's failed and not working, that's holding up production. for as long as possible. So the number one enemy in our world is downtime, equipment that's failed and not working that's holding up production. And we're constantly fighting to keep up time alive and well. And how do we do that? Well, it's a very, I don't want

to say very complicated process. There's just a lot of moving pieces. And so our technology coupled with our process and our approach to it, help these companies maximize the amount of use, dollar, and return on the investment that they've made inside of those assets. Pete Yeah. Down time can kill you because not only are you not producing product and, you know, widgets for profit, but you know, you're also paying for all the costs in it. I had this argument on time with a guy on a restaurant. It was empty a lot of the times. And I said, you have a capacity problem

or a utilization or capacity problem. There's another word that I use for it. But I mean, you have an empty restaurant sitting there. You should fill it with something rather than just leave it as nothing. And I think he was using his tax write off because he was an attorney too. But I was like, you're paying for the business license,

you're paying for the building, you're paying for the employees to stand around and look at each other. You're paying for all these different costs, the electricity and all that stuff, but you're not generating any revenue during that time. You should probably utilize that capacity. And he didn't have a clue what I was talking about.

He was just, it was beyond him. Maybe it was, maybe I wasn't talking enough attorney speak when he did it. Yeah. Downtime is real. So would you guys call yourself a software vendor, a consultancy? How would you frame yourselves? Yeah, we are a software vendor that can provide consulting services in tandem. So we are a value-added reseller to a product known as Hexagon's Enterprise Asset Management Solution.

So EAM for short is what we call it, right? Out there in the world of maintenance, you have kind of two levels. I don't want to say two levels. You have two different thoughts of technology to help manage your maintenance, not only program and strategy, you have what's called a historically a CMMS, which is a computerized maintenance management software. We don't like using the term CMMS, because it's a little dated, it's still a little 80s, which nothing wrong with the 80s. I'm all about it, right? Like I'm here for it. But Enterprise Asset Management or EAM captures a more holistic view

of your cost and opportunity and information on those assets. So an EAM does have a form of what we would call a CMMS baked inside of it, which is work order management, issuing work orders, receiving work orders, recording the work that we're doing, closing out those data points. So anyway, we sell Hexagon EAM. We also sell a slew of other products that are under the Hexagon umbrella. So one such as asset performance management, right? So are we maximizing the performance of our assets? Think about it as a sports analogy, right?

Sports teams are every single one of your players showing up to the game on their best. And how are we tracking and measuring their performance for the best opportunity possible, while mitigating the risk of cost if those assets do fail. And then we have a couple others. One is a operations management called J5, a procedural management called AKMS. And then we haven't been able to deploy this yet,

because it's not quite ready for us. But there's another one for quality management called ETQ. And so we call these blend of products our maintenance ecosystem of excellence, because if you cannot have maintenance excellence, you cannot have operational excellence. That's true. Cause you got to keep things oiled up and greasy to get them to work right. That's what I say every time I'm driving McDonald's. You gotta keep the gut greased up, right? Gotta keep greased up and all that stuff. Yeah. My cardiologist disagrees with that wholeheartedly. Anyway, but I buy him a Big Mac too and take one over to him. He seems to complain a lot less if I do that. So I just have to make sure he gets

a Diet Coke because he's into that sort of thing. Anyway, uh, so what sort of service, what sort of industries do you usually use? If people listen to this sound on LinkedIn or other business people in the forums, what industries are, are, and kind of give us a frame of what type of client is your client, are they a fortune 100 company? Are they manufacturing specifically? Did they need to have a certain budget to work with you, et cetera, et cetera? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's an excellent question, right? So I wouldn't say we're specifically in manufacturing. That is probably

like, and manufacturing is obviously a huge umbrella of sub industry vertical, right? I would say that anything, any entity that is asset intense, so that could be facilities, could be equipment, could be vehicles, could be any sort of investment you're making to help you maximize the dollar that you're trying to make is considered an asset, right? And that asset needs to be maintained to its highest order possible so you can get the maximum return on that asset. So we work primarily in manufacturing. If I had to isolate that down even further, right, there's about four or five verticals

in manufacturing that we excel in. So paper and forest products, so timber, plywood, anything forestry related, we have a very big footprint and we not only have as our clients, some of the top five lumber producers in North America that are some of our longtime clients, some of the top five lumber producers in North America that are some of our longtime clients, but we also serve a lot of mid-market segments in that lumber and forestry industry as well. Secondly, what we would call validated industries, so anything that is bound by FDA compliance. So think of food and bed manufacturing, pharmaceutical, med device manufacturing, anything that's

kind of regulatory heavy, we're also inside of that space. Automotive supplier manufacturing or automotive assembly is a relatively new industry that we're breaking into. So some fun facts for you. I live in Greenville, South Carolina, and we kind of jokingly say that South Carolina is becoming the next Detroit, because we have this massive influx of automotive assembly plants showing up in South Carolina is becoming the next Detroit because we have this massive influx of automotive assembly plants showing up in South Carolina. To name a few, right? Like we have a Volvo assembly plant.

We have a Kia assembly plant. BMW North America headquarters is 20 minutes from my house. Oshkosh Defense Assembly is building the next generation mail vehicle. Again, not too far from my house. And then we're also the Scout motors, the new Scout electric vehicle, again, not too far from my house. And then we're also the Scout motors, the new Scout electric vehicle, right? Like that's, that's right in our backyard too. And they just seem to be more and more. And then on top of those, you're right, you have their suppliers. And so they're all manufacturing organizations. And then, uh, lastly, I would say

we're in what would be more of a process manufacturing. So I would equate that to like chemical consumer product goods, likeugate, packaging, plastics, things along those lines. Then a smaller segment of our business is utilities. We work with a lot of water providers, electricity providers. These are usually more rural towns or not in corporate ships. What am I trying to think of? They're just smaller entities.

But to answer your question a little further, right, on like the size of companies, I mean, we can work with almost anybody. So we have some clients that are billion dollars a year, and then I would say on the bottom end, some of our clients are 50, maybe 75 million a year. And our companies that are less than 50 million a year in operating revenue, they're probably not ready to invest

into something like what our product suites are, they're they're a little pricey, right? They it's not a out of the box type solution, right? So you need to invest a little bit not only in your strategy, your methodology, how you're going to maintain your equipment, but the software and what what different differentiates us is we tailor the software to your business model. We do not try to force you to fit our product. We, we bring our product to you and let it match what you do best.

So would you say it's kind of customized then maybe a little bit? Is that true? It's yeah, it's highly customizable. It's highly flexible. Is that true? It's, yeah, it's highly customizable. It's highly flexible. Um, you know, I, I jokingly say that hexagon EAM's best and worst quality is, uh, when you first log in, it's a blank screen and you have to build it from the ground up.

There's, there's not a lot of pre-populated data or mapping that happens. So you have to quite literally build. I don't want to call it a digital twin, but you got to build a digital version of your operations within EAM. Wow. And then you mentioned highly regulatory businesses, you know, with the government, different things like that. I mean, some of the software is really important, like the maintenance and other things probably from a legal aspect of liability.

If you know, something goes wrong and I don't know, people get hurt or like OSHA type stuff or, you know, with food, uh, sort of type stuff, you know, people have, uh, you know, some disease gets into the works of everything. Having those sorts of records to know, you know, like, I know like they'll have salmonella meat or something like that and they have to figure out where it was sourced from. And you know, you're hoping to like, I hope it's on us. And so keeping those kinds of records can be pretty smart, I think. Yeah, it's a good CYA, right?

Like it's not only mandated that you keep a good record of the care of your assets and how you're doing that, but again, like maintenance, maintenance isn't just keeping things like lubricated or turning wrenches or replacing ball bearings, like properly maintained equipment is how you can guarantee or mitigate the risk of contaminants in your manufacturing line, right? So it all begins with maintenance, like a properly maintained piece of equipment. We know that it's been cleaned properly, it's functioning properly, it's not only safe. So the operators that are using it are, you know, they know that they can come to work and go back home at the end of the day because the equipment is being maintained.

And then on top of that, right, like you just mentioned on the regulation piece, you know, if a recall were to have happened, we can trace that through maintenance logs to see if there was an error that was made and then integrated with the quality control system, right? Like we can now mitigate that risk even further that we are performing the quality functions checks that need to happen to help keep this from happening. That's awesome. We've got a Daniel giving you a shout out there.

I'm Dan. Alex and a few other. Love Daniel, Alex. LinkedIn, FDA loves solid stuff. So yeah, lots of great comments from the dealio. Now, how did you get in this business? What was your journey? And FDA loves solid stuff. So yeah, lots of great comments from the dealio. Now, uh, how did you get in this business? What was your journey? Give us a little bit of entrepreneur advice, uh, so that people can get

on with that. Yeah. Yeah. Well, uh, uh, brutally honest here, right? Like I, I am a very lucky individual. My father, Tony Boland started digital thinker 20, almost two years ago. Wow. Um, he, uh, My father was an individual who's

he's always been an incredibly hard worker, right? But he was in a manufacturing plant for quite some time. And unfortunately, they shut down the plant and he was looking for a new job. So he became what he became a consultant on a product known as MP2 back in the heyday, as we call it. And from there, he started Digital Thinker, which was at the time aligned with Enfor EAM. Enfor bought MP2, or Datastream was the company that developed MP2. Little bit of a history lesson, I'm sorry. Datastream developed MP2, then Enfor bought that,

became EAM, and then Hexagon bought EAM from Enfor about, gosh, I guess it's coming on four years now. So, two, three years ago, my dad asked if I was interested in being a part of the family company. And first, I had to give it some thought. It wasn't obviously not like a no, but it was, I just needed to see if I could fulfill his legacy, right? Like, is it, can I find the passion that he had for 20 plus years? And then the other part was, you know, if dad asked, you kind of got to give him help where he had for 20 plus years. And then the other part was, you know, if dad asked, you kind of got to give him help where he asked for it, you need to go out there and do it.

That's how I got to my point or my position currently, but if I had to give a little nugget, I say of entrepreneurial advice, right? Like it's being in this role, a leader of a company, you do not have the luxury to just constantly play it safe, right? Like to be conservative all the time, you need to be bold. You need to be, I don't want to say shameless totally, but you need to be confident in what you do and willing to accept failure because it is facing you at every step of every turn. And

the sooner you realize that anything that I try to do could result in failure, the quicker you're going to be willing to try it. And it's like a science experiment, right? We're going to go try it and see if this works. If it doesn't work, we're going to learn from it. We're going to pivot and we're going to keep doing what we do best. Yeah. It's kind of funny. You talk about how being able to honor what's passed down and stuff. I wish my dad had built a successful business and had it to me. But what are you going to do? But stepping out of something, were you in these fields before?

Did you have sort of experience of this in your background? Yeah, great question, right? So the other brutal honest answer is officially, no, I've never held a title that is maintenance technician, operations leader, reliability engineer. So I am, I've grown up with it. It has been a part of my life as far back as I can remember. So I can say that, you know, I have had the luxury of learning from my dad by, you could maybe see osmosis effect, right? But what is interesting, yeah, right. But what is interesting is even when I became a teenager, right, and I started, you know, driving cars and whatnot, I was very intrigued in maintaining my

own vehicles. I always wanted to learn how to change the oil. Can I change radiator? So I had this, I wouldn't quite call it a beater, but I just had an older vehicle that needed a lot of love. It needed a lot of love. And I was determined to do it myself. And so I bought the old Greenback book that told me how to work on a 1991 GMC Jimny,

and I just did it. So I've learned through life, previous parts of my career I was a EMT for the local county that I worked for. Not a maintenance related role by any means, but there are a lot of functions and duties that cross over into manufacturing and maintenance because it's all discovering the root cause of a problem. And then how can we prescribe a fix for it or how can we manage it long enough to where the experts, doctors, so to speak, can come in and perform the more advanced procedures

that come with it. And then secondly, right, like I mentioned in my bio, I've been in the military. So I'm a US Army veteran. I've been in the Army reserves. I still am despite my beard today. I got to shave it soon before I go do my weekend warrior stuff. But been in the Army reserve for gosh, coming up on 10 years now. My job in the Army has nothing

to do with maintenance, but my initial unit that I was in was heavily required to do our own maintenance on our own equipment and vehicles. A lot of Army reserve units are like that, but I just accepted it and I owned it and I took into it and began to learn how to properly care for our vehicles, our other equipment, how to be good stewards of those things. And then as a result, right, I served a deployment tour. I went to Afghanistan for about a year

and I was in charge of a facility where we basically did logistics. We routed mail in the whole country. So I got all these packages came into my building and then we turned them and burned them and put them on airplanes and helicopters and they went out to the local fobs. And so we had, I wouldn't call them complex machinery

in there, but we had a lot of machinery in there for processing and sorting and repackaging. And that was quite literally a full-time job keeping those machines running. So we could meet the demands of the mail flow and process because if we missed one day, the backlog that would happen would be unbelievable. We were getting 50 to 60,000 pounds of mail a day. And so it was critical that we met not only the goal of processing and resorting out,

but again, if we got behind, we would never catch up. Hell to pay, man. That sounds crazy. Yeah, interesting. So a lot of the skills that you utilize, a lot of entrepreneurs don't really think about that, that a lot of the skills you utilize in life. It's funny how life, it almost seems that it prepares you on purpose for these sort of things.

It's weird how you do all these weird things in life. Sometimes you work multiple jobs and you're like, Oh, this is dead. And this job sucks. But then, you know, years later, when you start your company, you're like, Oh man, I can use that stuff. I learned from that job. And that actually wasn't, that wasn't that, uh, unuseful. Uh, how do you see AI impacting manufacturing coming down the pike? And what are some advice you have for people out there that are running these,

you know, anyone in business really for AI and software, but also for manufacturing? Yeah, AI, right. That is the hottest word around, unfortunately. I have a hard time saying I'm an anti AI hype man. That's not true. I'm very critical of it. I can't say I'm anti AI hype man because I use it every day. What I feel most people do, right? I use it to help me refine my processing of words or help me come up with creative ideas, insert any component to where an AI can help you. Within manufacturing, where I'm very skeptical, is there are a lot of

companies, vendors, software vendors that are trying to integrate AI to its core functionality of what the maintenance management software can do. And there are some vendors out there that are claiming that you can take a photo of a failed piece of equipment and it can not only prescribe the nature of the failure or, or, you know, tell you how it failed, but it can prescribe the remedy to fix it. And I, sorry, I bullshit, bull shit. You, a photo cannot tell that it can't. And that's, you know, again, I, that's a controversial line right there,

where I do see AI helping manufacturing. And I see this across, I think this could help every business, not just manufacturing. AI can help enhance efficiency on menial tasks that take up a lot of time of your day. Sales and marketing, for example, right? Like I spend a lot of time prospecting new people to reach out to. AI can do this for me while I sleep and I can wake up, hit my laptop and I have a new list of people to reach out to

with pre-generated emails, addresses and everything ready to go. I just literally eliminated an hour and a half of my day spent trying to find people to reach out to. AI can do that for me. I think AI and manufacturing and maintenance can enhance the processes. It can help us determine if our preventative maintenance schedule, if it's effective or not, or is it the most efficient process in what we're doing? And are we also assigning the most skilled technician to perform that level of work? I think it can help us do that.

What I am again, very skeptical of is there are too many variables when it comes to asset management to where AI cannot predict why it failed or even prescribe a fix for it. Because if you can't determine how it failed, how can you tell you how to fix it? And it requires that human element still to look at it Listen to it if it's still operating smell it If you're one of those weirdos that dips your finger in the antifreeze and lick it to confirm its antifreeze, right? Like you've got to use some of those pieces of what makes you a human to determine what's what's wrong with something And so that's where I think AI, I'm skeptical of it. I know

the industry as a whole is having, I wouldn't quite say a hard time adopting it, but the piece where we're tired, I am so tired of this, is being told that it's going to fix everything about my plant or everything about my life. No, it's not going to do that. I mean, I mean, seriously, what can go wrong? I've seen Terminator one, two, three, and four or five or how many, right? Anytime I see one of those Boston robots, if you'll start talking to, I have the, I have the terminator theme music start playing through my head. And I'm like, yeah, I don't know, man. I watched, I think, who was it from AZ16, Anderson Harowitz, but he was on Sam Harris's podcast talking about AI. And he was so positive

about it that it would be so perfect. And any sort of negative stuff, he had this panacea, they sort of mindset, I guess, about it and any sort of negative things that could be brought up about it. He's like, ah, that'd be fine. You know, and recently they had AI, they, they were running a test on AI. They were pushing its limits. So they were trying to see if they could break it and they were threatening to shut down a, uh, they made up a scenario.

It was a fake scenario that the engineer who was working on the AI system was having an affair, uh, uh, he was married and had an affair and it was fake. Uh, but when they threatened to straight down the AI system, it turned on them and said, if you turn me off, I will, I will out you for the thing. It was, it was just an extortion. And, uh, and it was, so it was kind of like, well, that's nice. That's good to know that, you know, Hey, I had some potential to, I don't know, turn to my ex wife or something.

I don't know. Anyway, uh, why don't we talk? Well, you know, here's the problem with AI. It's great. The best and worst of us off the internet. So it only encompasses the best. You know, the angel, the, what did Abraham Lincoln say are, are angels, you know, but also scraped the dark web probably too.

And, you know, so, uh, it's good. It's got the good, bad and evil. And so, you know, Pandora's box, be careful what you wish for. You might get it. Why don't we talk about that your company offers the solutions to other companies that we need to tease out to them and get them where. Yeah. So I'm, uh, I'm going to be honest with you, Chris, I'm going to, I I'm gonna talk a little bit about that, but I'm

gonna talk about a bigger problem. And these are things that we are doing as a company. So asset management and maintenance management is probably the least sexy thing on this planet. Nobody, I don't want to say nobody, not a lot of people, especially those that should in leadership positions within manufacturing or asset-intense industries, they do not give it the attention that it deserves. And it's wild to me that that happens because when you're having, you know, CapEx projects, capital investment or capital expenditure projects, you're buying assets, you're buying equipment, you're buying hundreds of millions of dollars worth of equipment.

And you're going to go put it in your plant. And then you're going to say, all right, let's go turn the damn thing on and just expect it to run for forever with no intervention. And then you get pissed off when it breaks. So, we need to have a little bit of a mindset shift. And this is not a new thought, by the way, right? There have been people out here battling this since, you know, before I could even be a thought in this world, and they are trying their hardest to spread the gospel truth, so to speak. And so, here I am to pick up that torch. So, we believe in asset asset management and we believe that asset management deserves a seat at the boardroom table. And how do we get it there? Well, first, we need to make sure that the people and the process

that are working within these organizations are actually doing what they need to do. So they need to understand what is maintenance, how does it affect the big picture? Maintenance isn't just a department. It affects everything within the facility. So even if you're in the sales role and you're sitting in the office, working your ass off and the air conditioning breaks, and then you start getting pissed off because it's hot in there, well, maintenance needs to go fix the air conditioner, right? So you want the people to go out and respond to these things quickly and make sure that they can make everybody's life good. I guess we could call that a little bit of reliability culture.

And that means how are we all contributing to the reliability of our assets? So anyway, our product or slew of products, Hexagons, Enterprise Asset Management, right? This helps provide visibility on total asset lifecycle cost. So how much does it cost me to buy it, to commission it, to maintain it? And then when I start hitting a level of it's costing me too much money to maintain it, do I need to start thinking about decommissioning it and buying something new?

And so you cannot make good business decisions living off of, you know, unicorn farts and butterfly dust. You need it on actionable data. You need it on things that produce results, right? And so these applications help you get there. Now I'm not, I'm sorry, man. I'd say something about land. You got a butterfly dust in my head. I'm just laughing at it.

Yeah. Yeah, so, you know. That's how we operate around here, man. You just shave the whole way we operate. We operate on a butterfly dust or unicorn farts and all that other good stuff. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So it's to do the party. That's very true. Fine. When let me know. I'd like to know where he found it. We got to care about them. And, and, and I'm on a mission to change that world. So I'm sorry. I didn't mean to interrupt you, Chris. I get a little wound up about this sometimes and I got to rein the horses back in.

So EAM helps us do that and that's how you make better decisions. And then when we start talking about asset performance management or hexagon APM, it's like adding the next level up. The foundational layer is EAM. It's your repository of all asset data. And then APM is how we can verify that our strategies are working and we're maximizing the performance output of our equipment. And then we start talking about procedural management. You probably heard from some previous folks, right? Tribal knowledge, what people keep in their head or what Bob has kept in

the front shirt pocket of his shirt for the last 30 years. That is all the knowledge on this piece of equipment. We need to digitize that because I don't know if you knew this, but over the next 10 years, there's going to be about a 50% shortage of skills in labor and maintenance and manufacturing, 50% gap. It's huge. And you're right. And then on top of that- You're right. We've talked about that before where there's, you know, the people with the most expertise, if they leave, whether it's retirement or going to their job, you know,

they know the nooks and crannies and the cheats and the corners you can cut and corners you can't cut. And, you know, if you do this, this happens, you know, those people are a database of knowledge. Nat Fisk They are. And I mean, and you've got to capture it. There's a good buddy of mine, his name is Trent McJunkin. He's a facilities manager here in South Carolina. He dropped a really hard bomb on me one day. He said, if you're not capturing the tribal knowledge that is literally leaving your plant today, like you're already behind. And that's a good way to think about it. It's not when it leaves, it is leaving as we speak.

Yeah. In fact, the numbers I've heard that I always quote is right now with the baby boomers retiring, and these are like journeyman level people. These are, like you said, 20 years that they have in that pocket protector in their front pocket, the foreman, you know, the people, they have the experience for every seven that are leaving the workforce for retirement. One, there is one employee to replace them. And that's a new employee.

That's like a Gen Z. That's a, they have beginner knowledge. They don't have that vast library of stuff in that knowledge. And I'm not even sure how you get it all out of them and put it into a AI app. But I suppose if we plug enough wires into them and, you know, make them look like Arnold Schwarzenegger in that one movie from Mars where they, yeah, what it does happen, right? It probably does. So I'm sure it's safe. I mean, Elon's doing that, what's that one brain crap he's doing?

Neuralink. I think that's cool, but I'm a little crazy. Yeah, I'm a little suspicious of it all, especially from a guy who's been selling self-driving cars for 20 years that can't be sold that way or something. And he can't figure out that way or something. And he can't figure out which political party he's in and how much ketamine and pooping in diapers he's on, evidently. Anyway, enough jokes about Elon. What can you say? We're just having fun. People don't write me. Don't sue me, Elon. Anyway, what else have we, should we, I noticed there was

something on your website too called the DTI Academy. What is that and how does that function? Yeah, we can talk about that a little bit. And then there's one other thing, I guess I want to kind of, I know we're like 34 minutes, I can go forever, so please stop me. But yeah, we talked about DTI Academy. And then there's one other thing, I got a couple of questions I want to ask you that will bring up a conversation that I think you'll find interesting. So DTI Academy stands for Digital Thinker Inc. Academy. We believe that training is probably the

most important foundation, not only of technology, but how people do their job. And when we come in and implement an enterprise-level solution, training is how you get the user adoption. There's a lot of other ways, but training is one key component. We got to get them to use it right. We talked about AI, right? Like it gets the good and the bad.

What makes AI good is if it's getting good data, if from an objective standpoint, right? Like if it's good actionable data, it can make very good decisions or help you make very good decisions. If it's all dog water, we're not going to get anywhere in the world, right? And so we got to think about how we're inputting that data into EAM. It's the exact same way. We got to make sure we're capturing quality data and we got to make it easy on the end user. So anyway, that's

where training begins. So we first built DTI Academy to be a paid training model. And we had a lot of interest, no surprise there where we saw issues is not a lot of people were paying for it. And we tried playing with the prices and we tried doing this, we tried doing that. And we really didn't get anywhere with it. So I finally called one of my one of my longest customers and I said, Hey, dude, do you like I could call you and tell you to buy anything and you usually will. Why aren't you guys buying our training from us? And he said, dude, we don't have a budget for training We just don't and every time I'd try to bring it up. It always gets shot down

We always get it always gets put passed on and I said, okay fair enough hung up the phone Immediately went back into uh, this kind of group office we have with uh, like our cfo and a couple other folks And I said we got to do something crazy we should we should make this free for anybody don't care if you're our customer or not if you can't get the technician or the end-user level to use your your software appropriately you're kind of flushing your million dollar investment down the toilet. So we want to help you get the maximum value out of that that software and if we can make the end users the line level people happy by using it by providing them with

quality training then a lot of other people are going to be happy in that process too. So through DTI Academy we host four trainings, free trainings a month, that's usually two webinars followed by two workshops, and I mean hands-on in the product workshop. Again, it's open for anybody. Then on top of that, we have been building a YouTube channel. I think we're at like 150 some odd videos now that are all how-tos, two to three minutes. How do you create a work order in EAM?

How do you close it? How do you schedule work in EAM? how do you close it? How do you schedule work in EAM? How do you run a inventory analysis report? How do you set up your min-max ordering on your inventory and critical spare parts? So we're trying to remove any barrier possible so anybody that's using the product can find quick success, right?

Like that's where people need it the most is when they're in the thick of it and they forget how to do something or they're trying to, I don't know, do whatever they want with it. You need a way to begin and you need a way to begin without having to spend $5,000 with a consulting company just to get your question answered, right? So that's where DTI Academy was born out of. All right. Well, that works out pretty good. You've got the training there. That's pretty wild. I mean, it was, did you get a lot of pushback?

It's kind of a risky move that you're making there. And one of those things that ends up either benefiting or not. What are, what are some of the benefits you've seen come out from making that move? Yeah. So one benefit that I unintended is, um, we, we found ourselves building a better community of end users through the training. We have found ourselves collaborating with, I would say, my direct competition, like my other implementation partners in our ecosystem. We're actually working together on how do we provide the best level of quality training, whether that's through DTI Academy or if we're just doing it together under their platform. Like we're seeing barriers being broken down in ways that are

helping the community be better at what they do. And then the other benefit is we're getting a lot of organic inquiries on not only trainings, but individuals that want to utilize us for project enhancements, net new implementations. It's a very good way for anybody that's looking to get their feet wet in a new product, right? Like you don't want to sit through a sales demo. Nobody wants to do that because we all know you're going to get sold the bells and whistles, right? Everything that it can do, not what it actually does. If you come to our YouTube channel, it's going to be real and it's going to be very honest. And I'm

also going to be brutally honest here. It's not not gonna be exciting. I'm gonna tell you that right now It's not gonna be exciting. But if you want a real-world look into how hexagon EAM operates and go to our YouTube channel That works out really good, right? I mean it sounds like it shouldn't that should give you a pretty good amazing stuff and Anything more we want to tease out to people to get them to reach out to you and get you know, better and work with you. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. So, um, I've been working on this, uh, I guess you'd call it presentation, right? Like we, we talked a little bit earlier about some of my frustrations around AI, but that, that is just one small facet of some of my frustrations. So I've been doing a lot of research in American manufacturing. And then again, I mentioned earlier, right? How do we get asset management a seat at the, at the boardroom table, at the executive level?

I don't think anybody has the answer to that question. Otherwise they'd probably be a billionaire. So maybe I'll be a billionaire in about 10 or 15 years and I'll crack the code. Doubtful. But you know, so, so how do we do it? So I've been doing a lot of research and I found some statistics that I think should keep manufacturing leaders awake at night. You know, over the past few years, we've been toying with this idea that manufacturing in America is going to return it to its greatness. We're gonna reclaim the throne of manufacturing excellence

because we're gonna bring the factories back to America. We're gonna open the jobs. We're gonna build the communities because right, a manufacturing plant is more than just producing a widget. It impacts a community. So you're hiring 500, 800,000 people, regardless of how big your manufacturing organization is. And then in turn, you're propping up the economy. And then if you're being a good steward to the environment and

a good steward of caring for your assets, you're doing it in a way that people want to go work for you and you don't have a labor shortage anymore. So there's so many elements that move into caring for your equipment. So here's some interesting statistics. There's this term out there in the manufacturing world called OEE, or overall equipment effectiveness. And so we measure OEE by how, what is our uptime, how effective is our equipment? Are they running and are they doing what they're supposed to do? So if you had to guess, where would you suspect America ranks among other global leaders in manufacturing with our overall equipment effectiveness?

I don't know, 20% maybe. I have no idea, but I know we're in the bottom 8%. 8%? That was kind of close. Yeah, Kind of. So there are what, uh, you know, debatably could be called developing nations that have better overall equipment effectiveness than we do in America. So Vietnam, for example, right? We know a lot of manufacturing is moving to Vietnam,

cheap labor. That's, you know, let's call a spade a spade on that one. There, there OEE hangs around 50%. 50%. And do you think they're using technology in Vietnam? I don't know. Probably not. But they probably have the labor to maintain the assets, which is another story. But let's look at Europe as a whole, right? Europe, which has a lot of manufacturing in it, they're also highly regulated not only by unions and other things. I mean, they're only at 18%, but they're still higher than we are India. 41% China is like, I think 48 or 40, 49%.

So why, why are we sucking ass at overall equipment effectiveness? Like what's happening here? So through my research and through talking to a lot of people, I've learned a couple of things. One, it is, it boils down to a culture, a mindset. So here's another interesting statistic. Less than 3% of graduates who obtain an MBA have any experience in the manufacturing world. have any experience in the manufacturing world. Less than 3%. Yet majority of these MBA holders are holding decision level making roles in manufacturing organizations. And I'm not saying they're dumb, they're not dumb, they're very smart people. They just weren't trained to learn how to run a manufacturing organization. So they need to go walk the shop floor. They need to go down and see how equipment is working and being utilized and is it the most efficient way possible to do

so. We need to stop looking at spreadsheets. We need to stop looking at quarterly profit earnings, and we need to start caring about our return on asset. That is the return on investment, because if we're properly caring for the equipment, if we have a good strategy around it, the profit margins are going to be there. Manufacturing in America can return to its greatness. So I'm on this mission to eradicate what I'm calling the epidemic of culture in America, which is not my job. Manufacturing is a team sport. When maintenance says that's not my job or when operation says maintenance broke it or when quality says I'm not touching it, we failed.

We've already failed. The team is done. And so we need not only our leaders, but we as people need to come together to understand that the more we can work together, we put a man on the moon for God's sake, right? We built a barge in World War II that's sole purpose was to deliver ice cream to Marines in the Pacific theater. And you mean to tell me we can't work together to increase our

overall equipment effectiveness to make a great manufacturing plant inside of America? We should be ashamed and we should want to adopt a proud mentality of how do we do this and how do we become the best at it. So that's my revolution and here's how I'm going to fix it. I've looked at the top five best operational change management strategies, operational change management, right? Like we're just writing down on paper, how are we mitigating risk? How are we changing things? And how are you going to make sure that it guarantees success at the executive level? They love it at the shop floor level. They hate it. But we need to bridge that divide, right? So I'm building what I'm calling the impact framework. So impact stands for investigate and assess, mobilize and prepare, pilot and adapt, activate and deploy, submit and transfer, track and optimize. So each stage fuels into the next. So how do we determine our level of risk? How do we determine who our key stakeholders are? How

do we understand what the mission is? And then how do we assess it? Right? How do we make sure we're there? Then how do we provide the right resources? I don't need to go through the rest of it because it's semi self-explanatory. But the other harrowing statistic is 70% of digital transformation projects, another buzzword rolling around right now, digital transformation, 70% of them are failing. 75% of them are going over budget by $1.5 million. This bubble is going to pop. And if we as vendors and consultants don't, you know, if we don't do something about it,

we're going to almost blacklist ourselves out of being trustworthy individuals for these manufacturing organizations. So it's almost like we need to have our customers best interest in mind. So we have our best interest in mind. Crazy thought, right? The customer should be our hero and we should be their guide. And so that's what we're trying to do. So through this impact framework, I think it can change the world. I think it can help leaders shift their mind and my goal out of it. We're actively working on this. I'm hoping in the next actually

30 to 45 days, we're going to have a web based application where open source anybody can use it. You can log in, you can input your data, you can utilize our friend, our framework and our methodology to help provide success for change management within your organization. Probably about six months, we'll add an AI agent. I know I just spent a lot of time shitting on AI, but I do think it can help. I do think it can help in this product.

We're going to bake in an AI agent that's going to help you build out your impact methodology so you can find the level of success that needs to be done with your organization. So that is my passion project. That's my high horse. And that's how I tell my wife every day, this is how I'm going to change the world. For our kids to have a better world is I'm going to change manufacturing leaders' minds to start giving a shit about their equipment so we can all be proud of what we do here

in America. Yeah. From your point of view, there's this political thing to try and bring manufacturing back to America. There's a few different problems with that. Of course, costs and regulation and what Americans like to be paid. They don't seem to want to work like Chinese or Vietnamese workers when it comes to pay. And then the other thing is we have a declining population.

You know, like I mentioned, for every seven retirees in the workforce that are retiring, that have extreme knowledge, there's just one beginner coming. And then of course, with the manufacturing industrial industries, correct me if I'm wrong here, because you know more than I do, but a lot of the Gen Zers and some of the millennials, you know, they were more concerned about you being TikTok and Instagram influencers rather than going into what they think are dirty businesses, you know? And now you're kind of seeing like welders that almost make more than doctors and people. But still, I mean, there's probably a shortage of people. And I guess my second question is, or my question is, can we bring manufacturing back and what's the timeline? Can AI and robotics, you know, short that distance for us of a fewer workforce?

My short answer is going to be, yes, it can be done. We can still do it in America and meet the wage requirements without suffering profitability. And yes, we're going to have to, we have no choice, but to lean on technology and humanoids to supplement the labor gap. But we're still going to need people at the end of the day. And so I firmly believe that through process refinement, maximizing our overall equipment effectiveness, our asset performance and our asset reliability, we can do it. We can do it. It's not, it's not a skills gap.

It's not a, it's not an engineering problem. It's a cultural problem. And we have the thoughts, we have the methodologies, we have all the tools in the tool bag. We're not using them. Well, certainly after seeing all the tariffs that look, I just saw across the wire, the Vietnam of Enelius settled some sort of tariff agreement. So, you know, they're a big manufacturer bring stuff in, be interested to see what that's about. But, you know, I think we learn with COVID that nearshoring and having stuff that, you know, supply lines that don't get interrupted by, you know, whatever sort of crazy events go on, you

know, we have wars going on and we have the other stuff going on with supply chains, you know, COVID, I mean, people really didn't understand how, you know, whatever, in supply chains recently with the tariff thing. And, you know, we're not seeing boats come to America if they're filled and you're just like, and we're so reliable in that stuff. I mean, I don't know why we just don't invade Mexico and take it over. I'm really tired of seeing all the people get slaughtered there and hung from freeways. And it's just amazing. Cause I watch it and I go, man, that wouldn't, that would never happen in America.

I hope, you know, the FBI would try to hunt those people down, but I'm just like, you know, it seems like Mexico would be a really great place for, I'm not encouraging taking over Mexico. Folks don't write me, but you know what I'm saying? I mean, maybe we could buy them out or something. But, and I understand that some of the near, the near, what I'm saying? I mean, maybe we could buy them out or something. But, and I understand that some of the near, the near, what do you say you call it near, near shoring is happening. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, it is. You know, I think we're seeing it right. And you're right. Like supply chain, the supply chain disruption that, that was COVID really affected manufacturing America, right. And, and it affected what we call, you know, just in time manufacturing.

And then I probably, in my opinion, just as we got to a point of getting past that, getting back to a sense of normalcy, is when we started getting hit with tariff talk, and then we got scared again, right? Like we got real concerned, but you know, I'm gonna keep going back to this proper asset management, right?

So if we're properly managing our equipment, then we're also properly managing and forecasting the type of inventory that we need to produce the widgets that we're using to maintain the equipment. And then we're not gonna have issues of not having the parts right like I We walk into store rooms across America that are Millions of dollars of inventory items just laying on the shelf because they don't know what's there. They just bow

Wow, and and then we walk into other Store rooms that are very technologically advanced other store rooms that are very technologically advanced, still the same problem. They have no idea what they have. And part of it stems from a lack of, I wouldn't say technology, it's lack of properly using the technology. But then again, it comes back down to a cultural element. Leaders need to be able to motivate their people in a healthy way that they should care, that their job is important to how the company performs.

And it's important not just because it's lining the CEO's pocket with money, it's important because it keeps them employed, it keeps their best friends employed, it keeps their favorite shops around open, it props up the local economy, right? Like how do you convince a small cog in a very big machine that it's the most important piece

in it? And it is, right? It's, you go back to a military terminology, there's what? A million service members, each one has a very critical role in how we defend our country. And we need to adopt a similar mindset to that. Well, thank you very much for coming to the show. We really appreciate it. It's been very insightful and fun to have you give us your dot coms as we go out.

Absolutely. Yeah. Go to www. insightful and fun to have you. Give us your dot coms as we go out. Absolutely. Yeah. Go to www.digitalthinker.com. You can find us on LinkedIn as Digital Thinker, or you go to YouTube channels, search Digital Thinker, Inc. You can find not only our website, but follow us on LinkedIn. You can follow me on LinkedIn, Alex Bollin. I post disruptive stuff on the day. I try to call out the BS where I see it in a good way. And yeah visit our YouTube channel and give me a ring if you need help. I just I just want to help you guys That's it. So, thank you. Thank you. Thanks for tuning in go to good read sidecom for chess Chris Foss linkedin.com for chess Chris Foss Chris Foss one the tick tock any all those crazy places in this show Make sure you're subscribed the show at Chris Foss dot show you can find it over there Thanks for tuning in be good to each other. Stay safe. We'll see you next time and that should have us out great