In this week's Industrial Talk Podcast we're talking to Scott Heide, Founder and CEO at Engineering Intent Corporation about "Solutions that Streamline and Automate your Engineer-To-Order Business". Get the answers to your "Efficiency" questions along with Scott's unique insight on the “How” on this Industrial Talk interview!

You can find out more about Scott and the wonderful team at Engineering Intent Corporation on how you can up your Engineering game by the links below. Finally, get your exclusive free access to the Industrial Academy and a series on “Why You Need To Podcast” for Greater Success in 2020. All links designed for keeping you current in this rapidly changing Industrial Market. Learn! Grow! Enjoy!

SCOTT HEIDE'S CONTACT INFORMATION:

Personal LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/scott-heide-34a2353/

Company LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/engineering-intent-corporation/

Company Website:  https://www.engineeringintent.com/

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Industrial Marketing Solutions:  https://industrialtalk.com/industrial-marketing/

Industrial Academy: https://industrialtalk.com/industrial-academy/

Industrial Dojo: https://industrialtalk.com/industrial_dojo/

Safety With Purpose Podcast: https://safetywithpurpose.com/

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PODCAST TRANSCRIPT:

Scott Heide Interview

Tue, 2/2 9:25AM • 28:09

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

engineering, customer, scott, company, solution, product, automate, cost, sales, automation, people, impatient, engineers, intent, heidi, industry, capture, challenges, procrastinate, conversation

00:04

Welcome to the industrial talk podcast with Scott MacKenzie. Scott is a passionate industry professional dedicated to transferring cutting edge industry focused innovations and trends while highlighting the men and women who keep the world moving. So put on your hard hat, grab your work boots, and let's go. All right, let's go. Welcome to the industrial talk podcast absolute, as you know, an honor that you've joined this platform that celebrates industry heroes each and every day, and you're saying to yourselves, God, why do we celebrate? Because? Because industry, manufacturing, the people that are in those professions are bold, brave, dare greatly innovate like no buddy's business, and you're changing lives, and at the same time, changing the world. So that's why we celebrate you. All right. But Hot Seat today. His name is Scott. He's a good looking guy, by the way, because his name is Scott. Heidi, last name. co. Engineering intent.

01:14

Cool. It's cool. It is cool. Let's get cracking.

01:20

Yeah.

01:23

Outside of the fact that I can remember his name.

01:27

He's, he's damn good looking. But anyway, what's interesting about this conversation, and I think it's an interesting Avenue and

01:37

engineering intent is a, let's say, a software, a technology company, right. And they provide a platform that allows people in the field to be able to create sort of pretty accurate engineering quotes on solutions for firms that are in the engineering space, right. So for example,

02:06

I go out, I visit a customer, the customer has something in mind, it looks like XYZ, it's got this and that right then and there because of their platform because of their software. Because of their technology. I'm able to come up with a pretty doggone decent swag at what the cost of that particular solution will be. And and for me, right, Scott MacKenzie, being impatient, as I've always impatient, unfortunately,

02:38

I like it. I like it. It's like real time insights into like, Hey, I got this idea. And then I want to be able to come up with some sort of an estimate of what it might look like, engineering intent. The team of Scott, Heidi. I mean, come on. Come on. It's pretty doggone cool. You got to sit there and say, it's pretty damn cool. Now I'm not gonna do it justice, because Scott and his team at engineering intent, live eat breathe this solution. But Oh, I know. Boy, it satisfies my my curiosity, of being able to get something on paper that looks like what I'm thinking about and have a dialogue right then and there. I don't, you don't even have to go back to that. You know, whatever your your office is. You can do it right then and there. Come on. That's what the future holds. That's what this is all about. That's a that's an industry hero, his team, their industry heroes, what can you say? All right. Remember, I want you to do a couple of things. And just note this before we get into the interview is one you got to constantly educate, right? Just keep keep educating. Now's the time. This, this is speeding by us. So educate, collaborate, reach out to me, Doc gotta reach out to me and we'll let's collaborate. Let's figure out the way to get your story out there. And as well as all the other people who you want to collaborate and of course, innovate. You got to keep innovating, just like engineering and tech men. They don't shop. It's not as if like, hey, all right, we got our platform, blah, blah, blah, and a stop. Nope. They keep hammering on that technology so that it brings the value that you so deserve, because you're an industry hero.

04:29

All right, let's get cracking on the interview. Now his card is pretty doggone chock full of great stuff. Right? Scott, Heidi, that's h Ei D. Engineering intent is the company. And as I scroll down, I look at his stat card. Oh my gosh, he is smarter than me. absolutely spot on. All right. Instead of me yammering on and on and on and on. Let's get going with the interview. Enjoy Scott and his insights into what they're doing at

05:00

Engineering intent. All right, Scott, welcome to the industrial talk podcast. We've had habit listeners, you're gonna like this conversation, just because we've been having a great conversation offline. In fact, we should have been recording it, Scott, because you were just dropping value bombs all day long. And I'm just sitting there going, man, I should have recorded that man. All right, before we get out again, but yeah, it's not gonna happen. So before we get really cracking and, and relive all our conversations, because that's what we can do. Give us a little 411 on who Scott is. So the listeners understand why you're such an incredible professional.

05:37

My name is Scott, Heidi, I'm CEO of engineering intent, I've been in the business of what we call engineering automation, or design automation, sales configuration for the past 30 years, and I've had a lot of experience with several different companies and with several different large scale partners over the years. Today, our company is a software company that makes a product called knowledge bridge, and we'll talk about that soon. This is interesting if you've been in the business, and I mean, your your, your cutting edge at engineering automation, I'm going to just sort of share with you every time that I had to go approach my engineering department, you know, what was was the biggest problem.

06:21

I would procrastinate and then I would probably go over and grab a cup of coffee. And then I would see, hey, there's some donuts. I would procrastinate to the end until I couldn't procrastinate anymore. And I'd have to have that conversation with engineering. And so the simple fact that you were already thinking about engineering automation, you're a trailblazer? Yeah, it's been it was pioneered in the late 80s. Actually, there was a company called icad, that kind of came up with the original concept of this kind of object oriented approach to design automation. And we've been developing it and growing with it over the years. The the key for us over the last few years is the proliferation of the the Internet of geometry that can be fast and interactive of some of the new technologies coupled together with that underlying ability to automate what people think automate, the engineering process has really brought it put us in a good position to help a lot of companies. Yeah. And you're you're a cloud based business. Right? Yeah, that's right. And that has its tremendous value. But

07:39

so what was the problem that sort of lay out that problem of what's your try this this knowledge bridge or K bridge solution? what problem are you addressing? So a lot of companies that do customized products, have to configure their products, but they have to configure them in the using engineering rules as part of what drives that configuration, they have to use geometry and geometric relationships. And they have to, if they're going to make a possible for their sales people and for their customers to be able to do the configuration, you need to be able to interact with it. And so the technology for doing the automation has been around for a long time, but it hasn't succeeded and rolled out the way it could to help these companies, because of this lack of these extra features that enable it to make it more effective. And what we're doing these companies that we work with struggle because they're trying to make a custom product for their customer. But because it's custom, it takes time, it takes expertise. They make mistakes, there's handoffs,

08:58

there's throughput, time, and so on. And so we're trying to help them streamline that process to automate it to capture the knowledge that's needed to do those steps in an automated way. And that's what we do. And so if we can make it so instead of taking two weeks to do a quote, you can take two hours to do a better yet do it in front of a customer with the customer better yet even have the customer do it themselves, then the communications just becomes much more efficient. And you're able to make a sale that you wouldn't be able to make it to do it with less resources. You're able to make fewer mistakes while you're doing it. You're able to understand your margins while you're doing it because we're rolling up the cost and we're doing calculations. All of those things become more effective for our customers. I think it's brilliant. And and you know, yeah, you're absolutely right. It's been around for a little while people have been talking about it.

10:00

This is like the, the, you know,

10:03

the the golden goose if you could do it for me being a, some people say that I'm impatient, some people, not everybody, but some people say that I'm impatient. This is like right in line with what I like. So if somebody came to me, and and I had a dream, I had a thing in my head and I said, I'm thinking about this, and I'm gonna, I want to talk to you about it, if you could take care of it right then and there. And we could communicate, and then ferret out all the challenges. Holy cow, you have a customer for life I'd like and then when they leave, I could just say, yeah, yeah, we got it going on. I just think it's such a tremendous value proposition. I mean, I might be, but I'm really impatient. But I think a lot of people are, yes, absolutely. Being able to interact with the customer and show them what they're going to buy, not just configure it and show them the price, but show them a picture of it, or a 3d model, or a rendering or a drawing and so on and have them be comfortable with it. And an immediate response is just the the value from a sales point of view is huge. And keep in mind, this all started. Because what the problem we were originally trying to solve was just, you know, I've got a bunch of engineers that are spending so much time on every individual design, it takes hours, it's, you know, the throughput, time, and so on. And it's expensive. We're trying to automate those engineers, but what we realized is if we enable the UI, in such a way that you can use it in a pre sales mode, just like you said, you get a customer for life, when you can show them what they want, and confirm for them that we're going to be able to make what you need. And do it quickly. It's just high super high value. high value is an understatement. Because you're sitting there having real conversations with your customer about a problem they're trying to solve. And you're going back and forth. For a level of clarity that doesn't exist, like hey, we make this thing but I'll be back in two weeks, and then I'll come with a drawing and then and then of course, it all breaks down hell in a handbasket. No, I didn't want that handle, I wanted this handle and whatever. And

12:27

I just think it's just damn cool. Yes. And and on top of that, you know, engineers don't like to be involved in that pre sales process, the company's not getting paid for that engineering time, you know, they'd rather be thinking about what the next new product is going to be, rather than just turning the crank on yet another quote for the same product over and over again, it really frees them up to focus on new product development, and it frees the sales guy up to make that, that sale with the customer. And give them what they want to be and be assured that it's been engineered properly. And it's a valid solution did doggone sexy, I love what you're saying. Now, the question I have. So if I'm, if I have, hey, I want to build a descriptor for cater no such thing. So listeners out there don't go Google dysgraphia cater because it doesn't exist. It's my word. I want it on a bumper sticker anyway, well, let's say I wanted to build a descriptor for cater. And it has, you know, materials of cost of materials and just just materials, right? Does does your product go out? And say, yeah,

13:36

aluminum is? Do we procure it at this point, whatever, you get the price right then and there. Yeah, so we often our applications connect directly to

13:48

the cost center for their the company, that's usually the RP system, where they have the materials, they have the purchase components, so they we can have access to availability, and costs. And then we can actually make choices for the customer based on trade offs. You know, some of the customers we we sell to, for example, in power distribution, use a lot of copper, the cost of copper can change tremendously from one week to the next. And you may choose a different design based on the evolution of that, that change and

14:26

evolution of that change in

14:29

the price of copper. And so that sort of dynamic decision making can be really effective. Yeah, especially, you know, I've been down that road and then it's like that material. Today was $5. Tomorrow $7. The next day is $10. And then of course, somebody comes back and it's like, how do you how do you narrow it down? To me is just a big, big deal. But I would imagine, I mean, are you let's let's just let's just

15:00

lead and put it out on the table.

15:04

If 100% let's say it's $100, right, here it is, it's $100. How closer am I, with your product with your solution? Am I to the $100? I mean, like, do I nail it? Well, you nail it a lot better than you would without the product. In other words, we, we roll up? Well, first of all, we ask the customer, how they do pricing. And sometimes pricing is done based on cost. Other times, it's not frankly, it's based on other parameters. And we can incorporate either pricing model into how we put together the cost and the price for them. Typically, for the kind of customers we work with, it's a, we're rolling up a cost. And that cost can be materials, but it can also be manufacturing steps, it can be an engineering factor, there can be delivery factors, and we can roll those into an overall cost. And then the margins, often there are rules about the margins as well, you know, if it's if this distributor gets extra margin, or this customer buys a whole bunch from us, so they get a discount, there's rules in there about the margins to those are all rules. And so our system allows you to capture that and, and

16:23

hone it and hone it and hone it. And I would imagine you get a little bit better as you continue to go forward. It's like, yeah, I'm tightening it up. I see where I've, yeah, yeah, yeah, they're really good companies keep track of what they quoted and what it ended up being and do the connection between to make a jump make those adjustments? fine