Latest / The ReForge Podcast / Simulating the Future of Factories (with Richard Schrade) | ReForge 005

Transcript

Simulating the Future of Factories (with Richard Schrade) | ReForge 005 · The ReForge Podcast

• 0:00
  Richard Schrade: there's a lot of reasons, why we should innovate manufacturing, innovate, innovation for manufacturing, get more products to market faster and cheaper.
• 0:13
  Richard Schrade: That is only going to help the human condition, and we may need it more than we think we do.
• 0:17
  Richard Schrade: I think a lot of people get wrapped around the axle with, you know, how many jobs is, is our robotics gonna displace?
• 0:24
  Richard Schrade: Hopefully all of'em, because that would mean that we can get things from start to finish way cheaper, faster, and probably capable of things that weren't even possible before.
• 0:42
  Welcome to the Reforge Podcast.
• 0:44
  I'm Matthew Chang, and we're here to explore all things AI automation and the American worker proving that the American reindustrialization is possible.
• 0:54
  Pivotal pressing.
• 0:56
  Thanks for joining us today.
• 0:57
  Let's get into the episode.
• 1:00
  Colin Russ: Welcome back everyone.
• 1:01
  Colin Russ: I'm Colin Russ, and this is episode five of three four.
• 1:05
  Colin Russ: Org podcast today, we have a awesome guest for you.
• 1:10
  Colin Russ: One and only Richard Strad and he is the president and co-founder of Automation Intelligence.
• 1:16
  Colin Russ: He's been working in the digital twin space for 14 years and his background in industrial engineering.
• 1:23
  Colin Russ: This month, they are launching their, or they're internally developed gen AI cap tool to bring gen AI capabilities to PLCs.
• 1:33
  Colin Russ: Please welcome Richard Trade.
• 1:37
  Colin Russ: Hey Richard, how are you doing today?
• 1:39
  Matthew (1): Hey Colin.
• 1:40
  Matthew (1): We left the one thing out of the bio.
• 1:42
  Matthew (1): Sorry, Richard.
• 1:43
  Colin Russ: be the Georgia Tech thing, would it?
• 1:46
  Richard Schrade: Bingo.
• 1:47
  Colin Russ: I, I knew I was getting outnumbered today, so I figured, you know, might bury the lead.
• 1:55
  Richard Schrade: No.
• 1:55
  Richard Schrade: Great to be with you guys.
• 1:57
  Colin Russ: Well, thank you so much for joining us.
• 1:59
  Colin Russ: I know, you know, we, we've been hitting kind of some of the peripheral pieces, you know, these first few episodes.
• 2:05
  Colin Russ: And, and today I'm excited'cause you know, what you are doing is.
• 2:09
  Colin Russ: Awesome.
• 2:10
  Colin Russ: I mean, I'm, I'm a huge nerd when it comes to the digital twin stuff.
• 2:12
  Colin Russ: I've, you know, had some exposure to it in, you know, previous, previous roles, so I'm a big fan there.
• 2:18
  Colin Russ: But the PLC stuff as well is super cool.
• 2:22
  Colin Russ: It's also one of those areas that a lot of people who talk reindustrialization talk about manufacturing.
• 2:29
  Colin Russ: Don't really get into that level of, hey, this is one of those key pieces that really drives a lot of what is required for America to compete, you know, in the next decades ahead.
• 2:40
  Colin Russ: I can't wait to hear what you've gotta say, but I know I really kind of gave the, the 50,000 foot view of who you are and what you do.
• 2:47
  Colin Russ: So tell us a bit more kind of about you and what, what, what you guys are working on that automation intelligence.
• 2:54
  Richard Schrade: Sure.
• 2:54
  Richard Schrade: So, um, so as you mentioned, auto Intel is a services company that specializes in, digital twin services.
• 3:04
  Richard Schrade: You know, there's a lot of, um, kind of different ways and, types of projects that we do, but really everything boils down to helping our clients innovate faster.
• 3:14
  Richard Schrade: Um, innovate.
• 3:16
  Richard Schrade: Cheaper, more efficiently.
• 3:19
  Richard Schrade: Um, so, uh, really what that means for us is that, uh, you know, we help our clients test future systems or improve existing systems by using virtual replicas of those systems rather than doing it, on the plant floor, on the fly, or in a warehouse somewhere.
• 3:40
  Colin Russ: So.
• 3:41
  Matthew (1): got a question in, in the value proposition for customers when they're wanting to expand an automation process, build a greenfield, whatever it is, um, what's the value proposition for digital twins?
• 3:55
  Matthew (1): I know back in the old days, I've been listening to you talk about this for probably a decade now.
• 4:00
  Matthew (1): Um, it was always like a cost justifier, like, well, it's gonna cost a little bit more to build this digital twin, so what am I getting for it?
• 4:07
  Matthew (1): I think, I think probably, if I had to guess, you've moved past that and people were saying like, naturally I need a digital twin of my automation system, but what, what's kind of the main value prop that drives clients to wanna hire you?
• 4:18
  Richard Schrade: Yeah.
• 4:19
  Richard Schrade: You know, we always start with that with our clients.
• 4:22
  Richard Schrade: We get a lot of, um.
• 4:25
  Richard Schrade: Requests from people.
• 4:27
  Richard Schrade: We don't always take'em.
• 4:28
  Richard Schrade: If there's not a clear value justification, it's probably not gonna be, something we take on.
• 4:34
  Richard Schrade: So we always start with, Hey, when we complete this project and we go to your boss, your boss's boss, and they say, why did we spend this amount of money on this project?
• 4:43
  Richard Schrade: Before we even start, we want to have a justification for why, uh, it, you know, it really depends on, the client and.
• 4:52
  Richard Schrade: The maturity of that client.
• 4:53
  Richard Schrade: You know, something we do for like a major US automo, automotive company, may be a different justification than like a new up and coming semiconductor company.
• 5:07
  Richard Schrade: They both kind of materialize in, in similar ways.
• 5:11
  Richard Schrade: Um, you know, the cost justification directly a lot of times, revolves around.
• 5:18
  Richard Schrade: Getting to market faster, fewer errors.
• 5:21
  Richard Schrade: You know, let's stick with the automotive company example.
• 5:25
  Richard Schrade: When you're not producing, trucks or cars, here in, in the United States, for every minute or hour, it's a considerable lost opportunity time, and that's a big value of what we provide.
• 5:38
  Richard Schrade: Being able to test and validate industrial automated systems in a virtual world, you know, takes away from the things that.
• 5:46
  Richard Schrade: You would spend your time doing in the real world.
• 5:49
  Richard Schrade: So that's part of the value justification is you increase the amount of productive time that you otherwise would be spending, finding and fixing issues in the field.
• 5:59
  Richard Schrade: You know, another thing that, um, going to a different example, um, that, is more of.
• 6:05
  Richard Schrade: You know, an insurance policy adjacent type of justification is, um, speed to market.
• 6:12
  Richard Schrade: We have clients who are building things for the first time, serial number one, and especially in the semiconductor space or, you know, alternative energy or things like this, um, you know, you do not want to find, day one that there's a catastrophic design error, um, that there's something that is gonna require you to go back to the drawing board.
• 6:36
  Richard Schrade: When you had promised your investors that you would be, up and running in a few weeks or months.
• 6:41
  Richard Schrade: So a big part of, what we can help provide is again, an insurance policy on these big catastrophic issues that, might materialize in, in the field and, and.
• 6:52
  Richard Schrade: Whereas, you know, productive capacity and opportunity is more important to people who've been around for a long time and don't generally change that often.
• 7:02
  Richard Schrade: Um, you know, missing the market opportunity to get, market share for, you know, serial number one type, innovative product is, uh, more where the value exists for them.
• 7:13
  Matthew (1): Colin, can I, train the audience how to use Richard's website?
• 7:16
  Matthew (1): Mm-hmm.
• 7:17
  Colin Russ: Absolutely.
• 7:18
  Matthew (1): Okay.
• 7:19
  Matthew Chang: So lemme just share screen here and we'll take a peek.
• 7:23
  Matthew Chang: So this is Richard website.
• 7:25
  Matthew Chang: This is what they're saying to customers.
• 7:27
  Matthew Chang: But I, I also find if we say digital twin, you've never seen one before.
• 7:30
  Matthew Chang: Colin's seen one.
• 7:31
  Matthew Chang: I've seen one.
• 7:33
  Matthew Chang: Probably have no idea what it is.
• 7:35
  Matthew Chang: Uh, this is it, right, Richard, you've got, you've got this 3D realistic, you know, version of a factory capable of motion and production, including all the messiness that comes in on the front end, right?
• 7:47
  Matthew Chang: And the, the client, this is what the client sees, right, is they see a, a real life little replica of their factory that they can test.
• 7:59
  Matthew Chang: So we're, we're talking mainly digital twins.
• 8:01
  Matthew Chang: Before we get to the PLC stuff, I came down here that these look like pretty real customers, man.
• 8:09
  Matthew Chang: So you've got, you've got some, some major heavyweight manufacturers that want to see their production before they go buy all the robotics and do all the electrical work to install this stuff.
• 8:18
  Matthew Chang: Is that how it works?
• 8:21
  Richard Schrade: Yeah.
• 8:21
  Richard Schrade: I mean, we're, we are, very fortunate to, be able to work with some of the, largest, we call'em, users and producers of industrial automation in the United States.
• 8:33
  Richard Schrade: You know, we, can't always share, you know, a lot about, who we work with and what we do.
• 8:39
  Richard Schrade: As, as I'm sure, many people on your show, have that same, uh, predicament.
• 8:44
  Richard Schrade: But we are very fortunate and we're blessed today as our, seventh anniversary of our company.
• 8:49
  Richard Schrade: And so we, are just very grateful to, uh, to have that opportunity.
• 8:53
  Matthew Chang: This look like some of the stuff you've installed before?
• 8:56
  Richard Schrade: oh.
• 8:57
  Matthew Chang: Look at these nice
• 8:57
  Colin Russ: the little pieces certainly do those.
• 8:59
  Colin Russ: Those panels certainly do.
• 9:00
  Matthew Chang: Yeah.
• 9:01
  Matthew Chang: Panels, plates.
• 9:01
  Matthew Chang: And
• 9:02
  Richard Schrade: Those are solar panel.
• 9:04
  Matthew Chang: this looks, oh, solar panels.
• 9:06
  Matthew Chang: Awesome.
• 9:06
  Matthew Chang: So can you just run us through, we've seen a bunch of images.
• 9:09
  Matthew Chang: this is what factories actually look like.
• 9:11
  Matthew Chang: What are some of the industries you've served?
• 9:14
  Richard Schrade: probably 80% of our work, um, comes in the e-commerce logistics and automotive markets.
• 9:25
  Richard Schrade: I'd say it's probably evenly split, 40% e-commerce logistics, um, order fulfillment, 40%, um, automotive or heavy industrial.
• 9:35
  Richard Schrade: And then the other 20%, is really comprised of consumer products, food and beverage.
• 9:40
  Richard Schrade: Biopharma, we haven't done a whole lot in the process space.
• 9:45
  Richard Schrade: Most of what we deal with are discreet objects, um, we're exploring.
• 9:51
  Matthew Chang: Way things move around the.
• 9:53
  Richard Schrade: Right.
• 9:54
  Richard Schrade: Um, but we are, um, exploring and, and may dive into things like oil and gas and, um, you know, chemical processing.
• 10:05
  Colin Russ: So.
• 10:06
  Colin Russ: Yeah, so I could go a million ways into that.
• 10:09
  Colin Russ: But before we get too far, um, down, down that rabbit hole, I wanna step back and ask, you know, give us kind of your background that led to, to today, you know, what, what was your first job and what kind of got you down the path to Georgia Tech and going to the industrial engineering side of things.
• 10:27
  Richard Schrade: Sure.
• 10:27
  Richard Schrade: Well, um, I guess, you know, uh, it, yeah, it started at, at Georgia Tech.
• 10:32
  Richard Schrade: I, um, happened upon the industrial engineering program, mostly because that's what my friends were doing.
• 10:41
  Richard Schrade: Um, when I was 18, I didn't know my rear end from my elbow, so I was really just kind of floating along and I got extremely, extremely lucky to be around the right people at the right time, at the right place.
• 10:55
  Richard Schrade: You know, there were.
• 10:57
  Richard Schrade: Some of just the classes that I would take, 3000, 4,000 level classes like stochastics and optimization.
• 11:05
  Richard Schrade: I kind of found myself wanting to go to office hours and looking forward to going to class, which really wasn't the case elsewhere in my career at Tech.
• 11:15
  Richard Schrade: So, I kind of knew that I had found the right, um.
• 11:19
  Richard Schrade: Scientific niche and, um, I was really just kind of exploring where to, um, go professionally.
• 11:26
  Richard Schrade: Again, I got lucky again and got to work with a, a great team, through my co-op in my first job, doing consulting, uh, very similar to what we do today, you know, doing, uh, consulting, uh, improvement plans for, packaging and process systems as, a co-op.
• 11:45
  Richard Schrade: And then for my first job, um, and then, you know, we found kind of a niche in the marketplace.
• 11:51
  Richard Schrade: We found that, uh, there's not really a company out there that was specializing in, these kind of services.
• 11:58
  Richard Schrade: And, uh, we kind of made the leap and, um, and, and went after it.
• 12:03
  Colin Russ: That's awesome.
• 12:04
  Colin Russ: So I, you know, you said seven years today.
• 12:07
  Colin Russ: First off, congratulations.
• 12:08
  Colin Russ: A lot of companies don't make that.
• 12:10
  Colin Russ: So that's obviously huge.
• 12:11
  Colin Russ: But in that seven year period.
• 12:14
  Colin Russ: We've seen huge advances in both the hardware side of it, just the robotics pieces as well as the underlying software and systems that enable that.
• 12:24
  Colin Russ: You know, just even to communicate with your core backend systems, warehouse management, all that good stuff.
• 12:29
  Colin Russ: What do you think has been the biggest shift, or what has your observation been of some of the major changes that have.
• 12:37
  Colin Russ: Led us to where we are today.
• 12:39
  Colin Russ: 'cause I'm a big believer that we've reached a point where the industrial automation can and frankly, should be far, far greater than as it exists today in in industry.
• 12:52
  Richard Schrade: Yeah, well.
• 12:54
  Richard Schrade: I'd have to get a little philosophical here, which
• 12:57
  Colin Russ: for it.
• 12:58
  Richard Schrade: I'm comfortable doing, you know, among friends, but I understand you guys, you know, are somewhat professional in this setting, but,
• 13:04
  Matthew Chang: April fool.
• 13:07
  Richard Schrade: fair enough.
• 13:07
  Colin Russ: So you, you, you've got that, that default.
• 13:10
  Richard Schrade: lemme tell you that, um, I am so disappointed in the level of advancements in our industry.
• 13:21
  Richard Schrade: Save for like it stuff, you know, I was talking to my wife the other day and we were going, on a trip somewhere and I got to thinking about it and you know, we were flying on a plane very similar to what.
• 13:37
  Richard Schrade: A plane my grandfather flew on.
• 13:39
  Richard Schrade: It could have been the same one.
• 13:40
  Richard Schrade: You know, my granddad got to the airport the same way.
• 13:43
  Richard Schrade: Probably was faster.
• 13:45
  Richard Schrade: You know, he, went to the store and bought very similar products.
• 13:49
  Richard Schrade: And, you know, when you think about it, things haven't really changed or progressed to the same extent they did.
• 13:56
  Richard Schrade: In his lifetime where, you know, his grandfather, there were no planes, there were no cars, maybe there were trains, you know?
• 14:03
  Richard Schrade: I'm kind of disappointed with the way that we've innovated again, save for the chat GPT type things and the telephone and apps and things like that.
• 14:11
  Richard Schrade: So philosophically, I think that companies like ours bridge the gap of uncertainty and give people who want to innovate.
• 14:22
  Richard Schrade: A faster and cheaper and more reliable way to do it.
• 14:26
  Richard Schrade: You know, there have been tons of advancements even since we started our company, where the resolution to reality in digital twins is considerably higher than it was, in 2019 when we started.
• 14:39
  Richard Schrade: Um, you know, the level of detail of gravity and friction and, inertia and even, in the process space, which we talked about briefly, you could create a pretty real picture of reality in a virtual world.
• 14:55
  Richard Schrade: So if you wanted to test out a new.
• 14:59
  Richard Schrade: A drone that could take, you know, fly me to Matt's house so we can go to the beach.
• 15:03
  Richard Schrade: You would be able to do that, a lot differently and more effectively than the Wright brothers did.
• 15:09
  Richard Schrade: Uh, so that's really what I'm, excited about is that, the technology that we provide and that we help our customers with will help kind of accelerate innovation, at least I hope.
• 15:20
  Matthew Chang: Yeah, Richard, you know, you and I have followed each other's careers and we both had, um, entrepreneurial journeys that, that were very closely, aligned.
• 15:32
  Matthew Chang: I will compliment you on starting a business in 2019 right before COVID.
• 15:36
  Matthew Chang: That was a stroke of genius, I must say.
• 15:40
  Matthew Chang: But, uh, but you know, in terms of robotics, which is my specialty, and you are the guy digitally simulating the robotics to demonstrate that they're gonna work.
• 15:52
  Matthew Chang: Um, we like to, when we look back on our company and all the hours and blood, sweat, and tears, we put in some of the major accomplishments we've had, first of a kind systems or breakthroughs with technology, it's easy to feel like.
• 16:05
  Matthew Chang: We've come so far, but if you zoom out like you just did and talked about how in some respects things really haven't changed and improved and, and I think manufacturing is, right in the center of that.
• 16:15
  Matthew Chang: It's like day one for this advanced automation.
• 16:18
  Matthew Chang: I mean, I, I feel like we're at maybe 1% proliferative proliferation of robotics and certainly the AI infused robotics that's coming.
• 16:26
  Matthew Chang: Do you see that, that this is like a kind of a forever industry that's getting.
• 16:31
  Matthew Chang: Where we need to catch up and, and like everyone on this phone call is trying to help, you know, get us caught up as a country.
• 16:38
  Richard Schrade: I think it is.
• 16:40
  Richard Schrade: I can't think of anything more important.
• 16:43
  Richard Schrade: I think the human condition relies on it.
• 16:47
  Richard Schrade: A hundred percent.
• 16:48
  Matthew Chang: Yeah.
• 16:49
  Richard Schrade: We'd have to get more philosophical to, to unpack why that is.
• 16:53
  Richard Schrade: But I think that, there's a lot of reasons, why we should innovate manufacturing, innovate, innovation for manufacturing, get more products to market faster and cheaper.
• 17:08
  Richard Schrade: That is only going to help the human condition, and we may need it more than we think we do.
• 17:13
  Richard Schrade: I think a lot of people get wrapped around the axle with, you know, how many jobs is, is our robotics gonna displace?
• 17:19
  Richard Schrade: Hopefully all of'em, because that would mean that we can get things from start to finish way cheaper, faster, and probably capable of things that weren't even possible before.
• 17:31
  Matthew Chang: Yeah.
• 17:32
  Colin Russ: I'm a big believer in the idea that hard things are worth pursuing because they're going to bring things better.
• 17:38
  Colin Russ: So I'm, I'm a hundred percent with you on, I think that the implications and opportunity.
• 17:43
  Colin Russ: You know, they're, they're tremendous.
• 17:47
  Colin Russ: Unfortunately.
• 17:48
  Colin Russ: One of the things that I hear and have heard in a lot of conversations, particularly from, a lot of the traditional capital allocator types, is, well, you know, how do we know this is gonna work?
• 18:00
  Colin Russ: How, how can you really say we can do that?
• 18:03
  Colin Russ: You know, we, we've made progress, building highly automated facilities, pre facilities.
• 18:09
  Colin Russ: It's a problem.
• 18:10
  Colin Russ: You know it, it's a problem to work, a problem to solve, but it is, I mean, it's solvable, right?
• 18:17
  Richard Schrade: Well, I mean, I think it depends on the application, right?
• 18:21
  Richard Schrade: And, and, the specifics.
• 18:23
  Richard Schrade: But I think that, um, you know, anybody who's deploying capital, especially considerable amounts of capital, wants to have some reassurances that the.
• 18:32
  Richard Schrade: Payoff is there, you know, part of the advantage of our company is that we don't, we don't sell any solutions.
• 18:39
  Richard Schrade: We don't sell any systems.
• 18:40
  Richard Schrade: You know, we're kind of an inde independent, um, auditor's not the right word, but we're an independent party to the situation that can help guide people and show them, you know, what we feel confident will work, what may not work or, you know, areas of improvement there.
• 18:59
  Richard Schrade: I talked about that gap of uncertainty and I think that gap of uncertainty is, really what people.
• 19:06
  Richard Schrade: Feel uncomfortable about, you know, people who get in, the types of roles that deploy a lot of capital.
• 19:11
  Richard Schrade: They're not, in the business of gambling.
• 19:14
  Richard Schrade: And I think when, you talk about will it work, will it not work?
• 19:17
  Richard Schrade: That's a pretty big gap.
• 19:19
  Richard Schrade: You know, I could spend a hundred million dollars and get nothing, or I could spend a hundred million dollars and it pays back in three months.
• 19:25
  Richard Schrade: Part of what we do is we narrow that gap.
• 19:27
  Richard Schrade: We don't eliminate it completely, but we say, you know.
• 19:31
  Richard Schrade: Here's, uh, here's a more narrow band of what you can expect.
• 19:35
  Richard Schrade: Maybe it's a narrow band on the high side.
• 19:37
  Richard Schrade: Maybe it's on the low side, but either way, we bring that to light.
• 19:41
  Matthew Chang: Yeah, Colin, you know, as you frame it through the deployment of capital, which you and I have been bantering about for a few weeks now on x.
• 19:49
  Matthew Chang: The way I see Richard's work is it's really that, that the biggest check mark on the diligence step, right?
• 19:55
  Matthew Chang: If, if you are gonna deploy capital, whether acquiring factory assets, a company that's investing in new technology, new automation, new capabilities, or an investor that's about a place, a sizable check in one of these, uh, sectors.
• 20:10
  Matthew Chang: To me, with the amount of money that's spent on diligence for these types of things, for financial and legal purposes, it's almost silly not to get a guy like Richard on board to just tell me, is it gonna work?
• 20:20
  Matthew Chang: Right.
• 20:20
  Matthew Chang: Let's take that off.
• 20:21
  Colin Russ: Uh, see, so that's, that's exactly where I was going with it.
• 20:23
  Colin Russ: I mean, it's, it, it, it seems just obvious.
• 20:27
  Richard Schrade: Uh, I wish it were more obvious sometimes, but, uh, there are more and more people coming to see the light for sure.
• 20:33
  Richard Schrade: And, um, you know, that is kind of the, the itch that I have and that the people who work, uh, for me have, is that we all.
• 20:42
  Richard Schrade: For whatever reason, have just an innate, it, it just turns our light on to be able to, build a really complex system, virtually get into the weeds, find things that people would find, uh, much later, find catastrophic issues or, you know, be able to check the box and say, you're good.
• 21:03
  Richard Schrade: Everything looks good.
• 21:04
  Richard Schrade: Um.
• 21:06
  Richard Schrade: Good luck and, uh, you know, we continued, of course to stay involved and, and help people along the journey, which we're, we're also grateful to do.
• 21:14
  Matthew Chang: Yeah, do your, a little bit of a tactical question, but do your clients, when you're done, do they get a copy of the digital twin and they're able to exercise it, test it, and play with it themselves?
• 21:26
  Richard Schrade: we prefer to steer them towards our auto Intel cloud, which is gonna be part of the new website, hopefully soon.
• 21:32
  Richard Schrade: But we found that our clients.
• 21:34
  Richard Schrade: Found it difficult to, uh, buy big computers, make sure they have the right licenses and packages and, and, um, you know, keep things up to date.
• 21:43
  Richard Schrade: So the auto Intel cloud, is something we develop to, break down the barriers of them operationalizing digital twins.
• 21:51
  Richard Schrade: So while we provide services, um, you know, for a project or, or something upcoming, we want them to continue to use our deliverables long into the future.
• 22:01
  Richard Schrade: And so we, we've developed some systems to make that
• 22:04
  Matthew Chang: Yeah, so heard heard it here first on Reforge, the Auto Intel Cloud is coming.
• 22:09
  Colin Russ: Breaking news.
• 22:10
  Matthew Chang: what that means is just that all they need is a regular computer and a browser.
• 22:15
  Matthew Chang: They can still access this model, but they don't have to have the big Nvidia computer, you know, workstation set up with maintenance of licenses.
• 22:23
  Matthew Chang: You just take care of all that for them, so they have constant access to their model.
• 22:27
  Matthew Chang: Right.
• 22:27
  Richard Schrade: A hundred percent correct.
• 22:29
  Colin Russ: So a lot of people, I mean, digital twins, especially in the case of, you know, factories, logistics, all that.
• 22:38
  Colin Russ: I'm not sure that everybody necessarily understands how kind of in the weeds and nuanced you're able to get and kind of what those weird things that break or bottleneck are.
• 22:51
  Colin Russ: Can you maybe speak to, you know, the level of granularity that you're actually able to provide and the types of things that you're able to show clients that they sit there and say, oh, wow, I never thought of that.
• 23:03
  Richard Schrade: Yeah.
• 23:03
  Richard Schrade: You know, a, depending on the company, a lot of people never see the really complex logic that's controlling all of the moving parts and pieces.
• 23:12
  Richard Schrade: You see, you know, videos of, you know, 20 robots in, you know, some automotive welding station.
• 23:19
  Richard Schrade: You think that's cool, but you've never seen what's underneath it and how it all talks to each other and works in real time.
• 23:24
  Richard Schrade: Part of what we do.
• 23:27
  Richard Schrade: Is uh, basically take all of that computer code, I call it computer code, but it actually looks very different than what you might see computer code elsewhere.
• 23:39
  Richard Schrade: Um, more on that in a minute.
• 23:40
  Richard Schrade: But basically we take that code and we trick those controllers or that, uh, those blocks of code lots and lots of it, and into thinking they're controlling the real system.
• 23:51
  Richard Schrade: When really they're controlling our digital twin.
• 23:53
  Richard Schrade: So as far as the, brains of the system go, they think they're controlling the real system, but really they're talking to, uh, you know, digital inputs, digital outputs from our models.
• 24:05
  Richard Schrade: They're talking to each other in the same way.
• 24:07
  Richard Schrade: And so it's as exact of a replica of the real system as you can get with today's technology.
• 24:15
  Colin Russ: That's, that is pretty cool.
• 24:16
  Colin Russ: Well, I know we are, uh, we're, we're starting to get to the end there.
• 24:19
  Colin Russ: One of the things we like to ask, you know, is in that AI space.
• 24:23
  Colin Russ: So first off, what is your, you know, go-to AI model that you like to use, and what was the last thing that you asked it?
• 24:33
  Richard Schrade: Well, one of the things that I use, uh, we use AI a lot.
• 24:39
  Richard Schrade: I use it for, writing proposals.
• 24:41
  Richard Schrade: The last thing I did was I uploaded a ton of documentation on a proposal that I'm working on, including the transcripts from, um, our previous meetings, and asked it to find omissions or errors in the proposal that I already did.
• 24:55
  Richard Schrade: And I actually had to stop short to join this call.
• 24:57
  Richard Schrade: So it's, it was crunching along the way to, to, um.
• 25:01
  Richard Schrade: You know, help me, uh, you know, draft a thorough proposal.
• 25:05
  Richard Schrade: So that's the last thing we, uh,
• 25:07
  Matthew Chang: AI augmented already, Colin.
• 25:09
  Matthew Chang: We don't have to,
• 25:10
  Colin Russ: He is already got his link, you know, plugged in
• 25:14
  Matthew Chang: yeah, we don't have to preach the AI gospel to Richard.
• 25:17
  Matthew Chang: It seems like he's baked in.
• 25:19
  Matthew Chang: Um,
• 25:20
  Richard Schrade: I'm drinking the
• 25:21
  Matthew Chang: just a reminder before, um, we wrap, Colin, do you want to have Richard talk for a second about what's going on with PLCs?
• 25:30
  Colin Russ: Absolutely.
• 25:30
  Colin Russ: Um, I mean, so yeah, tell us, you know, you, you've got this AI enabled or supported PLC creation or talk to us about that a bit.
• 25:38
  Richard Schrade: Yeah.
• 25:38
  Richard Schrade: So I'll tell you a story and um, this will kind of capture the whole picture.
• 25:43
  Richard Schrade: One of the projects that we did with a big US auto, uh, automotive supplier or really, uh.
• 25:50
  Richard Schrade: Big automotive company, we're doing a project with them.
• 25:53
  Richard Schrade: I mentioned all this computer code, the robot code, all baked in a very complex system.
• 25:58
  Richard Schrade: These projects always get squeezed for time.
• 26:01
  Richard Schrade: We get towards the end of the project and they uncover a number of issues that need to be remedied before the equipment.
• 26:09
  Richard Schrade: Ships, ships in
• 26:10
  Colin Russ: Of course.
• 26:12
  Richard Schrade: They were trying to find teams of people to work 24 hours a day, to get this, to pass all the tests that needed to in order for the equipment to ship and to stay on time.
• 26:23
  Richard Schrade: It was a monumental task and not one that was possible.
• 26:26
  Richard Schrade: So that kind of inspired us to figure out ways to, be able to edit, create.
• 26:34
  Richard Schrade: Check, this robot PLC type code, um, much faster and much more intelligently than just, um, you know, the way people are doing it now.
• 26:45
  Richard Schrade: We kind of found an untapped market.
• 26:47
  Richard Schrade: So we are bringing to market, basically what, Claude is for software developers only.
• 26:53
  Richard Schrade: We're bringing PLC Forge to market for, PLC engineers.
• 26:57
  Colin Russ: So is that gonna be more of a, I don't wanna say consumer, but obviously more open to public, people can subscribe to use, or is it gonna be more of a suite, you know, a adding it to your existing service offerings?
• 27:10
  Richard Schrade: It will be, uh, yes, it will be a software that people can use on their own.
• 27:14
  Richard Schrade: We expect to have a free version of that.
• 27:17
  Richard Schrade: Similar to, we're kind of stealing a lot of the ideas that Claude and Anthropic have.
• 27:21
  Richard Schrade: So, almost identical to their strategy.
• 27:24
  Colin Russ: Well, very cool.
• 27:25
  Colin Russ: We're absolutely gonna have to have you back to, to go into a bit more depth, on that.
• 27:30
  Colin Russ: I know today we got into the digital twin stuff more, but, obviously we're gonna have to get into the, uh, AI PLC piece.
• 27:36
  Richard Schrade: Happy to do it.
• 27:37
  Richard Schrade: Look forward to it.
• 27:38
  Colin Russ: Awesome.
• 27:39
  Colin Russ: Well, so before we head out, give us the rundown.
• 27:42
  Colin Russ: Where can people reach you?
• 27:43
  Colin Russ: How can they get in contact?
• 27:44
  Colin Russ: Socials, website, all that good stuff.
• 27:47
  Richard Schrade: Yeah.
• 27:47
  Richard Schrade: You can find us@autointel.io.
• 27:51
  Richard Schrade: You can reach me via email atRichard@autointel.io.
• 27:56
  Richard Schrade: I think we have a YouTube channel, automation Intelligence, LLC, and um, we're always adding new socials and things like that.
• 28:04
  Richard Schrade: So maybe more in the future.
• 28:06
  Richard Schrade: Check out our website,
• 28:07
  Colin Russ: And the website's getting a, an update, right?
• 28:10
  Richard Schrade: Hopefully as we speak.
• 28:11
  Richard Schrade: Yeah, we should have something later this month.
• 28:13
  Colin Russ: Very exciting.
• 28:15
  Colin Russ: Well, Richard, thank you so much.
• 28:17
  Colin Russ: Uh, as always, thank you to viewers tuning in.
• 28:20
  Colin Russ: I am Colin Russ.
• 28:21
  Colin Russ: You can find me on X at that, Colin.
• 28:24
  Colin Russ: Uh, you can find me on LinkedIn as well, or wherever the internet takes you.
• 28:29
  Colin Russ: Uh, but thank you all for joining us for another great episode of the Reforge Podcast.
• 28:33
  Colin Russ: Catch us again for the next episode
• 28:38
  thanks for tuning in to the Reforge Podcast.
• 28:41
  Make sure to like, subscribe and follow us on all of our social media at the Reforge Pod.
• 28:47
  We'll see you next time.