00:03
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
00:21
go once again, thank you very much for joining industrial talk a platform that celebrates industry professionals all around the world. If you're out on the video I'm pointing at you see right there. Because you are bold, you are brave, you dare greatly. You are changing lives, you're changing the world, you're collaborating or solving problems. That's why we celebrate you on this podcast. And as you can tell by the little buzzy buzz in the background, we are on site at the SMRP to 30th annual SMRP conference here in Raleigh, North Carolina. And if you're in the maintenance or liability space, and you want to get connected, come to this conference, you will not be disappointed in a hot seat. We have Mason McNally. And it is RDI Technologies. That's motion amplification for you guys out there. Let's get cracking. Hey, Scott, how are you? Thank you for asking you. Are you going to interview me? No, I'm just so pleased man. Just my interviewer asked me any question. I'm an open book. I'm open shallow book, and I'm probably about maybe a half a page.
01:29
Well, I know you're excited to be here. So I'm always excited. That was my next question. Are you are you enjoying the show? Yeah. Thank you. For us. It's been a good one. I think
01:38
I well, I was here last year, and it was sort of what sort of postie is interesting. Oh,
01:45
yes. I was stressed. It was my first show for RDI first time meeting some of our sales team. And in a very strange post-ish COVID environment. Yeah, it was weird
01:58
way of putting it and then this year when I went up to the conference, whatever the main ballroom, okay. It was massive. A lot of people. Yeah. So that's good. That's fabulous. That's a proper trend. Yeah, I like that. Yeah. Measurable. All right. For the listeners out there. Again. Give us a little 411 on who Mason is. 411. If you're a young guy, that's means information.
02:26
Oh, me. Yeah, I thought you wanted the listeners to give some 411 Okay, oh, no, it's,
02:31
it's you. Yeah,
02:32
I got it. I am in an interview seat after all. So, ya know, I'm the product manager for RDI. And we, you know, we do, we're doing some cool stuff, exciting projects, but, you know, my role day to day is sort of interface with every part of this business and understand what they need out of the product I really enjoy interfacing with, with our customers and being on site because I learned a lot my my background is not traditionally vibration. So you know, I'm, I sort of get the privilege of having a fresh perspective and not truly been ingrained in this industry. So, you know, I make a fool of myself sometimes, but ask a lot of questions. Because I really, truly want to understand the pain points and challenges and how our, our particular solution can kind of help solve and overcome some of those are you
03:23
bit by the passion bug, because every time I go around to these, these conferences, the the vendors, I hate to say vendors, vendors, and so I don't want that. Anyway, the people representing there's a passion, you passionate about what you
03:38
absolutely, I mean, I was a fanboy of what we do. Before I came to work, I was actually a vendor for RDI, I didn't do anything illustrious, I provided cases and foam. And there's nothing glamorous about cutting squares and circles and a piece of foam and putting it in a case. But what the technology and the people behind that technology represent to me has always been fascinating. So I was already like on board before I came on. And then once I got in here, into RDI and into the industry. I mean, the people are what drives this industry and the people it's I mean, it's always the personalities and the perspectives and the challenges and, and the creativity, which is that's the part that really kind of lights, my fire is like, they have all these problems. And all of us kind of have similar versions of the problem and the same problem. But you go to one, one place, and it's like they're solving it in this way. And you go to another one down the street and they're solving it in a completely different way. And you're like, gosh, I never really thought of that.
04:39
That that always. That's unsettling for me. And the reason it's unsettling. It's because it never you can never sort of grab that tiger bites out. You can't control it. It's always changing. And there's a speed. Like there's this philosophy that Oh, yeah. You go to bed one night and all of a sudden You know, something else happens, you know, I didn't see that. And that's, and you're, you're right in the middle of it, you guys have a fabulous, innovative technology out there that and I remember Jeff, when you really sort of started out and and you guys have grown dramatically, but it's, it's, it's how you just keep on pushing the envelope you'll never it's like RDI is gonna come out with something new, different, constantly. You're sitting around, you're doing that and you're just constantly pushing it and I guarantee come next year or whatever, year and a half, whatever it is, it's gonna be no way. Really, I didn't see, I didn't see that would come in. Because that's what you guys do.
05:43
Yeah. But you know, what's interesting about that is a lot of it is driven by identifying all these all these super creative, talented individuals that are solving all type all kinds of problems. And you can imagine my challenges as product manager and being sort of involved in some of the development of this technology is like, how do we predict your need in your plant in your environment? And honestly, the answer is we we can't, but yet, all of our customers and the people that we interface with every day, are saying, Hey, have you guys thought about doing this or adding this to your technology? So that's truly what drives our innovation? For all these cool things that we're doing? Well,
06:21
that's a good, good sort of way of improving your technology, your listened to the problems. Yeah. And then the other thing about it is that, you know, we understand COVID, we understand all the channels, we I got it, right. But one of the things that I that came out as a, as just sort of a byproduct is this necessity to collaborate this, I need to talk to somebody, and I can't just do this in a vacuum, I've gotta, I gotta figure this out. But what helped me compress that time, because I got this pain here. Somebody's got to help compress that time. That to me, it's an interesting component, and you're talking to and you're working with clients, that's pretty important. Sure.
06:59
You know, that's interesting, because you can kind of go two ways with that one, you can kind of keep it all in and protect in the name of protection, and what, uh, you know, whatever construct you create around that, but we really, we really focus on, you know, how do we get feedback? How do we get in front of people how to how do we let them sort of be part of this of the solution. So that we can, we can keep innovating. That's what drives us. So because it's easy, it's easy for us to sit in an office or a chair, and predict the problems. But if we just go meet you, and try to work to understand and ask questions. That's, that's really where the collaboration I think really comes alive.
07:40
So with that said, because I think it's it's the technology is the technology. And I think it's there's a lot of dual ability there. I don't even know if that's a word, but I could, like there's that dual ability, that okay, we can we can get there through technology, it's it's really that conversation, how does RDI make that happen? Do you do you go on site? Do you have little do you have working groups? How do you start to take market information and start to consume it in such a way and, and make your tech better?
08:14
Sure. So we do a number of things, the best one is still going to be the users of our technology. They're out there every single day in their environment, using this technology. And if it's, if there's a benefit to their, their process or challenge, they're more likely to say, hey, RDI, you know, have you thought about adding this new technology, so we kind of compile that in that way, sort of in an organic way. We also have a network of distributors that are also service providers. So they're out there using this and selling the product. And they're oftentimes our test our testers so we can send a unit or a new technology or new idea to them, and say, Hey, will this work? Is this viable? Is this solving problems? Did we miss the mark? Did we nail it, you know, did we nail the nail on the head, but so that's another way and then we also train all of our all of our users. So they come through training with fresh eyes. They've never seen it, they're outside of their environment. So they're sort of you know, the the playing field is level and we get a lot of great, great ideas from training class, just watching them use the software in training. It's like, they have frustrations or challenges. It's like, oh,
09:36
I didn't see it before. Now. I see it now. Yeah, exactly. That's, that's great. What do you you know, in without divulging What do you see it going? I know you got spot out there. I know you have a lot of things that that definitely are percolating back there. What do you see it going? I've seen it at the beginning. Where do you see it? Go? Oh,
10:01
that's a tough one. That's deep man.
10:03
Yeah, I'm worn out for a month. Yeah, here I tapped
10:07
You know, what's interesting is is our first challenge was, you know, we created kind of a troubleshooting tool, right? But how do we how do we? How do we keep that and stay a supplemental tool to all the other tools and vibration systems that are out there? Yep. But how do we leverage it to, you know, that is that maybe that's your go to maybe that's your first you know, maybe that's your first thing you pull out of your pocket. Spot is one of the ways that we can do that, because we've, you know, we want to reduce the burden that that that's required to operate this technology. And so sometimes walking around with a camera and a tripod and a laptop, and it can be challenging, right? It's not, it's not applicable for all use cases. So spot, take some of the the manpower, the legwork out of it, we can we can automate routes, so we can, we can set spot up on a route and run through that, and it frees up labor to go do other really important work. So, you know, that's sort of the next layer of it. And then and then after that, we start talking about how do we just make this more accessible? How do we get this in front of more people? How do we take you from a user of this technology that is maybe using it an occasionally or maybe even a semi frequent basis to how do we get this all every time? You know, we would really enjoy it? If you know, we're we're your go to Now certainly, there's a gold standard. There's, there's gaps and limitations to every single piece of technology. So we can't really encompass every single use case. But how do we start adding stuff to our platform or to our products, product line that that can also start to solve different challenges that maybe we haven't thought of before,
11:52
one of the areas that and I can appreciate that and you talk about spot, you talk about routes, you talk about the ability to leverage technology to allow the human component to do the work that they need to do that's good. Let's say let's take the spot, let's take that, that that routine, where you're trying to automate those that analysis? And does the system provide us a spot or whatever robot goes out there? Snaps has a route. You Is there a way of highlighting or identifying problems that get escalated? Right? It's one thing to run around? And I'm over here taking whatever doing over this. But does the system provide that ability to to compress the time and say, Hey, SPA was out here? Take a look at that. Yep, another fan over there telling me I'm number one. Anyway, and does that
12:51
system do that? I mean, look, you put anything on the back of a robot, and you can increase the amount of data you get. But it's all of that data needed. Or useful? Maybe, maybe not. So we've set the system up in a way that if if if the robot walks up to an asset, and the camera is pointed at a pump, or a motor fan, or whatever, and it doesn't meet a certain set of criteria, we don't take the data, or let's
13:18
say, that's how you deal with that tsunami thing.
13:21
Or if it crosses that threshold, we can immediately send notification out so hey, look, we've got a, you know, an unfavorable amplitude level or the turning speed is is off or dropped, or it went too high? Since send the notification, you know, that way, we can turn this data into actionable work much, much faster. Because otherwise, like you said, if we just let this thing walk around, and take everything, yeah. Do we need it all?
13:49
Yeah, no, that makes complete sense. And I am. And definitely, because the reality of many of the Technologies and what we're talking about here in the world of reliability and asset management, is the compression of time is identification of the problem is saying, Okay, it's yellow, right, whatever, whatever dashboard. Identification you used, typically, it's green, good, yellow. Hey, Red, bad. So with that said, you just sit there and you say, Okay, it's yellow, get something out there, develop that plan of attack, move forward, whatever that might be. Does the situation also say hey, here's a here's a yellow situation out here. Let's contact a technician. Get them out there, validate what the the information is, yes, thumbs up, it's bad, whatever. It doesn't affect change you
14:43
got Sure. Yes. And the other thing kind of the next layer of that for us is we can we can be a little bit flexible and adaptive. So you know, maybe, maybe I set a specific threshold at a lower level. So So I am yellow lion. I get that Alert pre yellow or at yellow. But but maybe there's not really a true action that can be taken. So we can actually move that threshold to the next kind of next phase of alarm level and kind of work our way up until you have the ability, you know, so so maybe maybe you're a week out from shutdown. Right? Yeah. And you're in yellow, are you almost
15:21
okay, we can, we can make that tactical decision as well. Right. So, one last question before we wrap it up here. I know that you've got this sort of 3d camera set up. Yeah, new double barrel, whatever. Oh, there's two questions. So I got that. Explain a little bit about that. And then to the cameras are small. The built in durability, and that are they're pretty, pretty rugged.
15:47
So that's actually the same camera that we use in our single camera system. That's an industrial camera. very rugged. It comes. I don't wanna say virtually indestructible because I'm not that foolish. But I've got a camera left. Denson
16:06
said it was indestructible in the forklift broke it.
16:09
Yeah. I've got some camera with some dents in it. And it's still every bit as accurate as it was, you know, when it was when it was new. So it has limitations. But for the most part, it's like the acid tool. It's designed to be in these environments. So that's, that's that question. But the stereo vision system. So basically, right now the single camera systems can can measure x and y, we get x and y axis data. So to get Z, I've got to move the camera. And so my new X would be busy. So I'm taking two datasets. stereo vision allows us to get X, Y, and z all in one single data capture. So now I'm less time compression. You mentioned earlier now I don't have to take another data. I can stay here. Yeah, Chewbacca, same asset and I get x, y and z. Yeah, we'll get to all three axis.
17:04
I like it. By the way, you go out to your website. I don't know what it is. I just like looking at the pictures. My pathetic when it comes to that no,
17:14
never gets old man. I, I see that. I've seen the same videos over and over again. And it's like, it's like watching
17:20
fire. Just sort of stare at it. I've seen fire before. But
17:23
it's I love it. It's amazing. And I like to
17:27
this is what you see in which is not good. And this is what you know, what is really happening? Yeah, to me, it's always it's fast. All right, how do people get a hold of you and
17:35
catch us online or the AI Technologies.com?
17:39
Well, that's easy. Come on load. So I was hoping you can stretch it out a little bit more.
17:43
You can email me, Jason dot McNally at RDI Technologies, find me on LinkedIn, check our website.
17:51
That's what I'm looking for. All right, we're gonna have all the contact information for Mason and as well as RDI technology out on industrial talk.com. We are once again, broadcasting from the 30th annual SMRP conference here in Raleigh, North Carolina. We're gonna wrap it up on the other side. Stay tuned, we will be right back.
18:10
You're listening to the industrial talk Podcast Network.
18:15
All right, thank you very much to Mason McNally, RCI Technologies that was a crackin conversation, motion amplification put that down? What an incredible solution that has been offered up by rd AI Technologies. And if you're saying yourself, Scott, you can go right ahead. You're saying Scott, how do I get involved SMRP Go to the next event. Go to a chapter SMRP If you're a maintenance reliability professional right there, SMRP. And I'm telling you put their their next event, I think it's in Orlando next year, and you will not be disappointed you get to find people like Mason and others. And you're going to have great conversations, and you're going to be better because of that because that's what they're all about. All right. Remember, hanging out with people like Mason, you're gonna change the world, because you're bold, you're brave, and you're daring greatly. Thank you once again, as always, for joining industrial talk. And once again, put SMRP on your calendar. So we're gonna have another great conversation come from that event shortly. So stay tuned.
