57: Connecting Technology and Manufacturing- with Prashanth Sharma

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[00:01:31] Erin Courtenay: Oh, personality test.

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[00:01:49] Erin Courtenay: I am all about the Boston cream, and it has to be custard, not the frosting.

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[00:02:00] Kris Harrington: Well, what's yours? What's yours, Lori?

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[00:02:08] Kris Harrington: What about a cake person?

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[00:02:14] Erin Courtenay: You like all the donuts.

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[00:02:22] Kris Harrington: Love, love, love a good Boston Cream. Well, should we introduce our guest? We have a repeat guest.

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[00:02:31] Kris Harrington: Yes, first time we're doing, you know, the first one was so wonderful. We had so many listeners. that listened in. So Prashanthh Sharma, welcome back.

Let me just read your bio quickly. For those of you that are interested, episode 31 was the original episode with Prashanthh and he is the CTO at ThoughtFocus and leads the technology function across all business lines and customer engagements. With over 22 years of industry experience, Prashanthh is spearheading the next wave of technology growth at ThoughtFocus, motivating teams to exceed customer expectations. Welcome back Prashanthh. So glad you're here.

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It's, it's great to geek out with you guys.

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[00:03:26] Kris Harrington: We love to geek out. We love technology and we know manufacturers need technology. So let's just jump right in. Let's talk a little bit about the hardware evolution versus the software evolution. So, how are they converging for manufacturers? Can you talk to us about that?

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Because it's such a specialized field, there are aspects of design elements that goes into hardware that are very specific to a certain use of that hardware, right? And you know, in manufacturing people have used hardware pretty much over the years, and they've been able to implement certain pieces of that technology. IOT being one of the technologies that everybody knows off in terms of the hardware use in manufacturing. Now, the interesting part of this evolution journey with hardware and software now is that hardware has always accelerated at a very high speed, but it's accelerating at a much higher speed as we sit here today. And that has a very meaningful impact for the manufacturing industry because manufacturing, as you all know, it's things that you see and touch and you can hold it. And that's what manufacturing is all about. That works in the real world versus, you know, probably even all of you are sitting in front of the computer and looking at data on the computer.

You don't even think of the box, which is processing all that information as the computer. You're just looking at the screen. Whereas in manufacturing, the hardware elements brings those pieces together, whether it's IOT or Human Interfaces and such. And that shift, for example, AR VR right now is much stronger than what it was yesterday.

The first time Google Glasses came out, everybody made fun of the people who wanted to wear those glasses. Now, you're talking about service personnel wearing VR glasses or at least some sort of VR technology that can augment the way they can service equipment around in the field.

So, to circle this all back into the question, hardware and software acceleration. Today is at the meaningful convergence point for manufacturers, where it can have a meaningful impact the way manufacturers work with customers, as well as internally in operations.

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[00:06:40] Prashanth Sharma: Sure. Robotics is a very interesting field because manufacturing is the probably one of the first industries, which implemented robotics at and upper scale, and actually industrialized robotics auto manufacturers to everybody else, right? However, the robotics that have been implemented so far to the robotics of the future has a big difference because of the advent of AI and the changes in AI . I'll give an example in layman's terms when you talk about drones. Today some of those drones are autonomous in nature. Now think of the manufacturing industry, the shop floor, where there is equipment all around and accidents would happen because some forklift operator would pick up some parts and there would be something where there would be an obstruction and accidents would happen.

Now think of an AI robot, a robotic solution, with the image processing and all those things where you can have autonomous vehicles. Like even a forklift for that matter, operating in the factory, no human involvement, less safety incidents and more productivity because the whole operation is just on its own.

I mean, Amazon has already implemented it.

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[00:08:00] Prashanth Sharma: And manufacturers are catching on because there is more, I would say, trust on the technology that is being built up. And typically technology is just about trusting the technology to do its job and then working the kinks as the technology works its way through the, you know, human lives, if you will. So I think that part of robotics where it kind of disperses into other areas where manufacturers have not implemented robotics yet is going to be a big difference for the future. And AI is the engine behind being able to do that.

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Another exciting and important area when we're thinking about good things we can do with technology is sustainability. The environment ecosystems and so forth. Can you talk a little about sustainability goals and technology? And, you know, sometimes those things seem in conflicts, but there's ways they can reinforce each other. What do you know about that?

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If you look at during the COVID times and it asked any manufacturer, what is the biggest problem you're trying to solve? That was supply chain related issues. I couldn't get my material parts, whatever in time I could manufacture, so I have to figure out a way to solve this. And flexibility in supply chain was the biggest thing at that point in time.

Today, if you ask any manufacturer, what is the biggest challenge you have? It comes to inflation and energy. I mean, we are living in a world where there's inflation. And energy has always been expensive, but it's becoming more and more expensive. And that ties to the sustainability conversation.

It need not be in conflict because sustainability is all about using resources in a very mindful and effective manner. Efficiency of using the resources becomes important. And that really is a bottom line conversation when it comes to energy, efficiency and usage for the manufacturer. So they need not be in conflict and they're not in conflict.

Honestly, when it comes to how manufacturers view sustainability. That has no impact on the technology that people want to use for sustainability.

For example, operating efficiencies are a big conversation and IT technology is a big piece of machine over ease, because your runtime has to be really up and what used to happen is, you know, there would be data, people would look at the data and say, okay, we could improve here and there.

Now tie that to the sustainability conversation, it kind of turns that conversation around saying, you know, We are a sustainable organization. We are bringing our energy consumption low and thereby helping the environment. It's the same thing. It's just a different view of looking at things. And that is the shift that we are seeing.

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[00:11:37] Kris Harrington: Yeah.

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[00:11:41] Lori Highby: Yeah, I love your big picture brain and how you bring things in from a different perspective, but they're very important perspectives to be looking at. So I'm going to ask, as we are addressing all these big technological advancements, and more and more companies are starting to adopt them, what do you see or anticipate happening with business models in general?

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There's more acceptance of buying things in the virtual sense. And that experience of buying in the virtual sense is key. The second thing is, even though we don't realize it, we have a little more want of the control of that experience too. We want to make sure that we are not in an environment where we don't get what we want, but we always want to control the environment where because we are paying for what we want, we want the best of those things. So there is a little bit of shift in consumer behavior that way. The other piece that is very important is because of some of these changes, there is a secondary change that is happening, which is your subsequent subscription model as the manufacturers look at things, right? I don't know how many of you have bought a car recently, but prior to 2010, every car came with features and you had those features for the rest of the life of your car. Including your GPS systems, other things are more like, okay, I got to go in every year, subscribe to that. Tesla has taken it a notch above in terms of the features that you want to use in a car.

And I think that is key because that goes back to the control and the experience piece. Because now you're giving the control back to the consumer in terms of how you want to experience a product. Mm-Hmm. And what thing to pay for that experience. And you're also ensuring that that experience is in your fingertips.

It's easy. So it is changing the business model a bit to from kind of you know, I'm gonna sell this, you buy this and we're done with our relationship to a more of a long term. It's a partnership. You're going to be working with us. And it's a different way of looking at things. That's the first thing.

The second thing that is happening is the financial models are shifting because of those things too. Which means the way cash flows into a company, the way that is managed within the manufacturing companies, are changing. And manufacturing is a very capital intensive industry as such.

Now if you take that and shift this way, the operational elements have to shift too. So from that standpoint, the only way you can bridge the gap is through technology because technology will give you ways ,of creative elements that you can bring to the table on how you can operate and sell to your consumers or customers.

So it's becoming more of. a B to C sort of an environment than a B to B sort of an environment. The other thing that I feel is also going to change and this is kind of digressing from your question a little bit but bear with me is the labor market. Manufacturers have always had a big challenge with the labor market, the skilled labor market.

It used to have apprenticeship programs. People would come in, they would get trained and then they would go do their job. With the advent of newer technologies, including, and I have kept myself away from saying this word AI, but including generative AI as such.

What it does is it gives you ways to bridge that skill gap without actually having to figure out answers the way people would figure it out, figure it out traditionally. If I am a new employee, I come on board going back to the Google or the VR glasses example, I can equip you with the AR VR glass, which gives you instructions in real time. So you could be trained and with all the other safety related technologies in place, I can ensure that you're not going to fail in working your job as such because some of those safety and quality related stuff, that people would count on humans for is already taken care of by technology. So it's bridging that skill gap a lot more than how it was before. So overall, I do believe with the geopolitical changes and the technology changes, manufacturing in the U. S. in the next 10 years is going to go through a tremendous change.

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And I think that that's what you're talking about right now is as the B2B consumer buying experience is very customized, we're seeing that evolve in the B2B space right now.

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[00:17:07] Erin Courtenay: It's something you said that I have not come across and I'd like to learn more. Maybe you can give us some ideas for about the way financing has changed. And the capital intensive nature of manufacturing and what that shift is, I'd like to dig in a little bit deeper.

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Now, when you have a capital intensive industry like that, there is a lot of pressure in terms of getting back the money that you've invested in. And a lot of that had only one channel before, which is your capital sales, which is your equipment sales.

So that was your way of making money. Now think of the same thing, but now you have different channels to make money you're making a car. Now you're going to ask your customer to say, okay, why didn't you buy the safety feature on my car? Or why did you buy this navigational feature on this car? Or I can over the air, upgrade your technology so easily that there are new interfaces that you can get.

Maybe, I'm making this up. It doesn't exist, but a heads up display that you have in the car, you can have that as a order air upgrade, where if you don't have it today, you can have it next year. If you think you want that next year. So you don't have to go buy a new car, but you can get new features in the same car based on what you buy.

So what it shifts is now there are more venues for the company to make money on the same card that they have made. So it shifts the way that money works for those companies.

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Just thinking about the relationship being long term, not discrete per product purchasing.

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I think that shift is going to happen in the future too. It's already happening, but it's going to accelerate in the future because companies would want to have that. Relationship with their direct customers, would want to hear the voice of the customer directly as well. So in a way it's a natural evolution.

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For so long, manufacturers have left that relationship up to the distributors, but based on these services and these subscription opportunities, certainly It will be better even in an AI world for the manufacturer to have knowledge of the end customer and understand their desire-

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[00:20:35] Kris Harrington: In order to personalize and other things.

That's where the world is going. And that's the opportunity. And I think, as you mentioned, Prashanthh, some manufacturers are already headed in that direction, but a limited few understand it. are afraid to have the conversations. And I think that's where it starts, right? At the conversational level, how do we really support our customers going into the future?

That's the challenge for these organizations to come together.

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Let's take a simple example, a hypothetical situation of buying a car. Today, it's a big buy. It's a lot of money. People want to go test drive a car and take a look at it and then say, okay, yes, this is, what I want to do. And that's why you have those dealers who are facilitating that kind of a bind.

When I sit in the car, I look at how the car feels and everything else. Imagine technology, again, hypothetical and we are technology. It gives you an immersive nature of experience, experiencing the internal car features and such. You know, you have that. And it's very different from what you see on the website, right?

Because it's immersive. If you want to have like a driving experience, It can give you that driving experience with the right kind of, you know, whatever. So I'll ship this kit to you. You experience that on your couch and you say, yeah, I like it. I want to buy it. And you buy the car. So it just shifts that behavior of the whole car buying aspect completely.

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[00:23:04] Prashanth Sharma: I think that absolutely I 100 percent agree with you and I think that is going to be a natural step that will happen. Going back to what I talked about hardware and evolution of hardware. One of theside effects of that evolution is that it becomes cheaper.

And when it becomes cheaper, it becomes more accessible. So, you know, today we use our phones probably we throw our phones out every two years. If I told my grandparents that we have a phone that has a lifetime of Two years, three years, whatever it is, they would just, you know, there'd be like, that's such a waste of money.

That's a waste of resources and such. Right. But it is possible today because it's become cheaper for us to or more I'd say affordable for us to make that kind of shift in our lives. Hardware has the biggest impact on how those shifts happen and that shift that is happening in hardware. There's a reason why the NVIDIA stocks are going up so much as well, what they're the kind of shifts that is happening in hardware.

It is kind of make the kind of cultural shifts that you're talking about possible, and it is going to democratize a little more in terms of it gives control back, back to the consumer.

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[00:24:39] Kris Harrington: I'm sure listeners are, you know, their minds are working. Yes. You know, you can take a lot of nuggets off of this one. So thanks so much for that, Prashanth. We're going to shift over to our section I just learned that and Lori, could you?

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So he's got the green thumb. I've got the brown thumb, but he showed me this cool, fun thing that Apple now does. I know there's like these plant identifying apps, but if you just take a picture of a plant on your Apple phone and then look at the info of it, it'll actually identify the plant for you now.

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[00:25:41] Lori Highby: Look up. Oh. This is, that's the type of plant that this is. And this is just the picture that I took of these flowers. And it tells me right away. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Isn't that cool?

I didn't know much information. Really? Technology. It's amazing. Yeah. And that's exactly what we're talking about right now. The evolution of hardware and soccer.

I love it. Yeah. I'll go try that. So I

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[00:26:31] Prashanth Sharma: Don't think my allergies are going to go away anytime soon.

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[00:26:40] Kris Harrington: I love that.

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[00:26:44] Kris Harrington: Well, I have useless information here, but it's something that I just learned. And that is that Pat Sajak of Wheel of Fortune is in his 41st season and he, and he will be ending his run.

The show isn't ending. My grandmother. Grandmother. It was my Milwaukee grandmother, love to watch Wheel of Fortune and Pat Sajak. And it's kind of amazing that four seasons. Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah. And I think for many of us, we know that show, especially when TV programming was such that everybody in the family sat around and watched the TV together. It's very different today, right? But that's what it reminded me of. That's what the emotions it created. And thinking of my grandmother as I, as I heard that today. So.

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Would you play together?

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[00:27:54] Prashanth Sharma: I was trying to wrap my brain for a scientific fact, but unfortunately I have all useless facts right now in my head, but I will say this.

I just learned that there is a T20 cricket World Cup that is happening. In USA, for the first time ever has a cricket team participating in the World Cup.

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[00:28:20] Prashanth Sharma: I ever had a cricket team. This is the first time they've had a cricket team and they are part of a World Cup, which is, I think 35, 40 nations or more Europe, Asia, Australia, everything.

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[00:28:33] Prashanth Sharma: So, I just learned that yesterday they beat Pakistan who were the winners of the World Cup last year.

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[00:28:45] Prashanth Sharma: and they won both the games.

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That's cool.

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[00:28:59] Kris Harrington: Yeah. Yeah. Cool. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Well, this has been great. A lot of good stuff that we all learned too. So Prashanthh, for those listening that would like to get a hold of you where should they go?

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I really enjoyed the conversation with all of you. I'll cherish this. As far as contacting us or me thought focus. com is the website. There's a contact us button on the top right. You can click on it and you'll be able to see an email.

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