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This episode, recorded live at the QAD Midwest Users Conference, brings together voices shaping the future of automotive supply chains. Hosts Jan Griffiths, Terry Onica, and Jim Liegghio sat down with leaders across the supply chain to explore the future of manufacturing, technology, and collaboration.

French Williams from Royal Technologies began by sharing how his company approaches automation. Rooted in a culture of “better tomorrow than today,” Royal has built a model where IT and supply chain work hand in hand, co-developing solutions that allow the company to scale and respond to customer needs.

Autokiniton’s Andy Amstuz takes the mic next. As VP of IT and president of the Midwest User Group, he explains why user groups matter. The community becomes a lifeline when challenges hit.

Autokiniton already puts real-time performance data in front of operators at every work center, proof that frontline visibility drives better decisions.

Fresh off his keynote, QAD’s new CEO, Sanjay Brahmawar, outlined his vision for ERP as a “system of action” rather than a “system of record.” He introduced QAD’s Champion AI, designed to reduce mundane work, tackle complex challenges like inventory costs, and accelerate implementations through “Champion Pace.”

For Sanjay, culture is as critical as technology. He points to Redzone’s track record — 26% productivity gains, 81% more engagement, and 35% lower attrition — as proof that empowering shop-floor teams changes the game.

Andrea Hyska and Jon Smith of Lacks Enterprises brought the conversation down to the plant level, sharing how their IT teams succeed by staying connected to the business. 

From extending QMS capabilities to implementing shop floor applications, they credit a collaborative culture and hands-on leadership with making automation practical and effective.

AIAG’s Fred Coe closes with where data exchange is heading. EDI is not going away, but APIs and Catena-X will complement it, which makes standardization and supplier voices at the table urgent. He reminds listeners that shaping the future requires participation, not waiting for others to decide the direction.

By the end of the conference, a clear theme had emerged: culture drives adoption, community accelerates learning, and technology is only effective when people are fully engaged. 

At this conference, the future of automotive supply chains didn’t feel theoretical; it felt like it was already being built, one conversation at a time.

Themes discussed in this episode:

• The role of company culture in driving collaboration between IT, supply chain, and operations
• How automation helps tier two suppliers like Royal Technologies scale effectively and serve customers better
• The value of peer networks and user groups in supporting manufacturers through industry volatility
• Why empowering frontline workers with real-time production data strengthens decision-making on the shop floor
• The shift from ERP as a “system of record” to ERP as a “system of action” under QAD’s Champion AI vision
• Why Lacks Enterprises prioritizes teamwork and floor-level engagement to ensure technology projects succeed
• The growing importance of APIs and Catena-X in shaping the future of EDI and supply chain data exchange
• The risk suppliers face if they fail to engage in setting industry standards for connectivity and collaboration

Featured guests:

Name: French Williams

Title: Director of IT at Royal Technologies Corp.

Discussed: [01:27] French shared how Royal Technologies approaches automation with purpose. Guided by the mission “better tomorrow than today,” the company uses collaboration between IT and supply chain to scale effectively, serve customers better, and stay ahead of change through partnerships with QAD and AIAG.

Name: Andrew Amstutz

Title: Vice President, Information Technology at Autokiniton

Discussed: [09:50] Andy talked about the value of user groups, the challenges of volatility and rising demands in the industry, and how Autokiniton empowers its frontline workers with real-time data to stay ahead.

Name: Sanjay Brahmawar

Title: CEO of QAD

Discussed: [17:21] Sanjay laid out his vision for QAD, introducing Champion AI to cut routine work, lower inventory costs, and speed ERP activation to 90 days, while stressing that culture and speed matter as much as technology.

Name: Andrea Hyska

Title: Applications Manager at Lacks Enterprises

Name: Jon Smith

Title: Director of IT at Lacks Enterprises

Discussed: [32:19] Andrea and Jon explained how Lacks Enterprises keeps IT close to the business by meeting people where they work, breaking silos, and driving projects like QMS extensions and shop floor apps that actually fit daily operations.

Name: Fred Coe

Title: Chair, AIAG EDI Advisory Group

Discussed: [38:10] Fred returned to talk about the future of EDI, APIs, and Catena X, noting both excitement and caution among suppliers. He stressed the urgent need for standardization and encouraged every tier to get involved.

[Transcript]

[00:00:27] Jim Liegghio: I'm Jim Liegghio from AIAG.

[00:00:36] Jan Griffiths: The Auto Supply Chain Prophets podcast is on the road again, and we are live at the QAD Midwest Users Conference, and I can't wait for you to find out who we're gonna have sitting right here in the empty chair. Terry, what are you looking forward to?

[00:01:05] Jan Griffiths: Yeah. Jim, what are you looking forward to?

[00:01:22] Jan Griffiths: Alright, let's get to it.

And joining us with the mic today is French Williams. He is the IT Director at Royal Technologies. Welcome to the mic.

[00:01:36] Terry Onica: Well, we love Royal Technologies. Jenny Smith has been on our program a couple of times, and so we're so excited to have French here today, who's the IT Director at Royal Technologies. Tell us a little bit about what Royal Technologies and what you do.

[00:02:06] Terry Onica: So, French, when we had Jenny on the show, we know you're very big user of automation. For tier two, I mean, even at the tier one level, I think you would surpassed many. You really believe in it from an ERP standpoint, from a quality standpoint, every application that you would have tied into ERP, Royal Technologies is really behind it. So tell us about that. What's that philosophy and how do you drive that for your business users?

[00:02:41] French Williams: Yeah. I think it's largely because of the company and the culture that we've got. Our mission statement says: to be better tomorrow than we were today. And I think the collaboration that we have internally, whether it's between IT and the supply chain groups, or IT and other business units, it's really driven by that culture. And I think, as a result, we've been able to co-develop with our business partners within Royal, some great solutions. Over the years, it's really helped us scale over time and grow into the company we are today.

[00:03:22] French Williams: For us, we don't even really call it automation, internally. It is partially efficiency. For us, it's all about how do we scale and how do we grow successfully, how do we grow efficiently, how do we meet our customers' needs better?

And that's really where the conversation starts. And in some cases it's like, hey, we can remove this work by automating it or making it easier for us, which in turn makes it easier for us to serve our customer's needs. So, it's never been automation for automation's sake, it's always about how to, how do we become better.

[00:04:09] French Williams: I can't speak for Jenny and the supply chain team, but I can speak from an IT perspective and from where I sit, I'm glad that we've embraced AIAG and we're becoming a part of the group. Because I think, historically, we've been very reactive to changes in the industry, especially, automotive. And I think being a more active partner in AIAG, we can plan some of the things that are coming down the pipe, you know, be a part of the conversation on the changes that the tier ones are talking about.

When we first started our relationship with QAD, Terry in your role within QAD and AIAG were huge parts of our decision to partner with QAD, because of that and the fact that we can now join Terry as a member of AIAG and be a part of those conversations, I think is gonna allow us not only react, but plan to react better to the changes that are happening in the industry as opposed to just waiting for things to happen and trying to figure out answers.

[00:05:05] Jan Griffiths: Yeah, I hear two things coming from this interview with you and also when we interviewed Jenny, and that is you wanna stay ahead of the game. So, the mindset and the culture at Royal is very much looking forward, you're looking ahead, but I also see that you understand the value of collaboration. The fact that you're on AIAG encompasses both of those things, but also QAD, the fact that you are here in this conference today. It's all about collaboration and sharing best practices, and that really goes back to a cultural mindset issue within the company.

Because I honestly believe, as we're competing as a nation against the Chinas of the world and things like that. Having strong supply chain practices and professionals and collaboration, 'cause that's one thing I've read recently is that the Chinese tier ones are collaborating together and that's dangerous. If you know the automotive industry that we know today doesn't start breaking down some of the silos, which I know. Yeah, I read your book, Jan. I read your book. I mean, that is exactly I think what needs to happen and AIAG has a big role in that, so..

[00:06:53] French Williams: I mentioned the mission statement is to be better tomorrow than we were today. And that's not just as a company, that's individual development. It's the way we work together. You visually see it and feel it at the company. And at the end of the day, I believe we feel that in our business results and our relationships with our customers and our partners and suppliers.

[00:07:36] French Williams: I'll tell you the number one reason I'm here is for the collaboration. QAD, for example, they're an enormous partner for us right now. Our success is intertwined. Sanjay, the new CEO is here. Very interested to hear what he's got to say, what his vision for the company is. We work with a lot of the QAD partners out there. So it's maintaining those relationships, just encouraging the collaboration, learning about what other best practices are in the industry that maybe we can take advantage again to become better tomorrow than we are today. That's the reason I'm here. It's collaboration, it's relationships, it's getting better.

[00:08:19] French Williams: Historically, I've been very conservative on technology. I've been around long enough, been at Royal 23 years, so I've seen a lot of technology cycles and I'm kind of waiting to see a little bit, but we're definitely seeing some of the value. Today, I see it as a tool.

We're a Google shop at Royal. We did release the Gemini chat bot to the organization, and we've noticed some really interesting things. So, after about a month or two, we took a snapshot of who was using it and, I would say, it was small subset of users compared to the whole that have access to it. And then, we looked three months later, and the number of people using it didn't increase, but the people who are using it doubled. Like they are using it twice as much as they were using it before. So, that tells me there's value there.

People are finding utility and it's helping them. So then, for us, knowing that now, it's like, well, how can we then take those best practices and show other people in the organization and help magnify and multiply that improvement or that value that we're seeing out of it. We're definitely gonna be very reliant on our partners QAD and others as far as like, well, how can we leverage this new tool to add some of those efficiencies and those automations that you know that we wanna make and make those things better using Agentic AI.

And joining us at the mic today is Andy Amstuz. He is the Vice President of IT for Autokiniton. Andy, welcome to the mic.

[00:09:55] Jan Griffiths:  Autokiniton, what do they do?

[00:10:09] Jan Griffiths: So you are hardcore manufacturing.

[00:10:14] Jim Liegghio: It's a noble calling there, I would say. Yeah.

[00:10:25] Andy Amstuz: Yeah, so I also serve as the president of the Midwest User Group Board. The board of directors for the Midwest User Group meets year round, plans two conferences a year. Engages with industry that is around the QAD-ERP system, as well as the other QAD ecosystems, the products, and it's a lot of fun.

[00:11:05] Andy Amstuz: I think it has a lot to do with having a community of support around you. And I think it's very similar with AIAG, right? That like having that community of people that you can rely on, that you can call upon, that you can say, hey, I'm struggling with this. Like, how did you solve this problem? Or what are the new things that I need to know are coming up? How do we engaging with partners and things of that nature. Really, it just forms that ecosystem of people that you can engage with.

[00:11:47] Andy Amstuz: Yeah, that's great. That is absolutely the environment that we wanna produce.

[00:12:00] Andy Amstuz: It's a tough world out there, for sure. I think that you see a lot of variation in volumes. A lot of increase in requirements and in quality requirements. I think that the pace, the volatility, the unknowns that are in the industry right now. There's a lot of struggles.

[00:12:31] Andy Amstuz: Yeah. Well, it's not an easy task. And for any technology person in a manufacturing company, right? You're looked at as the expert, like, well, you're in charge of IT, you must know everything.

[00:12:44] Andy Amstuz: Yeah. And oh, by the way, when is that gonna be fixed, right? It's a struggle to keep up on it. And I think that's part of why the community becomes so important, because no one of us knows it all, right? We rely on one another as a team to understand what's happening between our things that are changing in our infrastructure, things that are changing in our ERP environment, right? As well as things that are happening in the AI front. It's things change very quickly.

[00:13:26] Andy Amstuz: So, it's really pretty amazing in terms of how far things have come just in the last year and we're seeing that in a lot of different areas. I think that, in the beginning, AI was very much a solution looking for a problem. Now, when companies that specialize in certain areas like manufacturing, like safety, really are now utilizing the tools and embedding those tools within their products, now we actually have things that we can give to a manufacturer that they can make use of.

[00:14:30] Andy Amstuz: We're definitely always looking ahead. Our customers are always pushing us to do better. Our customers are certainly pushing us from a quality standpoint, from a reliability standpoint. When we talk reliability for IT, a lot of times we're talking cybersecurity. We're talking about the impact of the supply chain with how do we make sure that our IT and our OT environments are secure, right? And so, it's interesting in that, a lot of times tier ones have to act very entrepreneurial. And we have to really be looking at how do we take advantage of ensuring that we can build that reliability into our environment?

[00:15:24] Andy Amstuz: So I think that one of the best ways to do that is to really just be engaged with the business leaders, right? So we have cross-functional teams, as well as corporate teams, corporate materials, corporate quality that help to drive our manufacturing plants. And from an IT standpoint, we're engaged with each of those teams, right? So, they're helping to drive standards across the organization and we're helping to prepare those standard processes.

[00:16:06] Jan Griffiths: I like the cross-functional approach. Yeah. But something that just struck me listening to Sanjay's keynote earlier, is the depth that we're now going into the shop floor, into manufacturing. No longer are we just, how do I say it? Not really investing or paying that much attention to our frontline workers. We're talking about bringing data to our frontline workers so that they can make decisions. How do you feel about that?

[00:17:06] Jan Griffiths: There it is, Autokiniton ahead of the curve. Andy, thank you so much for joining us today.

[00:17:16] Jan Griffiths: And joining us at the mic is the brand new CEO of QAD, Sanjay Brahmawar. Sanjay, welcome to the mic.

[00:17:25] Jan Griffiths: It's great to have you. Now, you are fresh off the stage from your keynote, and one thing I learned about you and our listeners might be surprised to know, and that is you are not the typical tech CEO now are you?

[00:18:05] Jan Griffiths: Yeah. I love that you're able to bring that deep perspective.

[00:18:18] Jim Liegghio: I really enjoyed your presentation, Sanjay. I really identified with your career progression and kind of understanding what you're trying to do in the world of ERP, so I gotta dive right into the tough questions. What needs to change about traditional or legacy ERP systems in your first 180 days impression?

So we want an ERP that is adapting, act, and decides. Can define and identify issues, can recommend decisions, and also automate certain tasks. And that's the kind of ERP that we are building, which is gonna be a lot more engaging.

Also, when you think about attracting talent, and in manufacturing, as I can tell you, it's a pretty big challenge bringing talent into manufacturing. We want systems of engagement that actually allow the next generation manufacturing, shop floor worker to be able to be a lot more proactive and a lot more predictive in a sense.

[00:20:00] Sanjay Brahmawar: You're spot on. Manufacturers have very limited choices, right? You can either retrain or re-skill, which is not that easy. You would deploy robots, which is also very capital intensive, quite rigid. But the third option, which is actually I think the most human centric option, which is to leverage AI to be able to really raise productivity and raise the engagement of your workforce. And I think, that's where we are focused, particularly with RedZone and Adaptive.

So for those listeners out there that are on the journey, that maybe are using more manual things, all their data's not in the system yet, how would you recommend they get on board and kind of move through and quickly get to AI?

But I think with Agentic AI, there's an opportunity now to sort of leapfrog, not worry so much about the UIs, and can we have 10 more features? But actually go to agents that can make the working, the engagement, as well as the productivity gains more significant.

And I can tell you, the way we are launching Champion AI, which is our agentic layer, is with a very clear idea about impact and outcomes. We're not talking about actions, and PowerPoints, and sales gimmicks but actually agents that are in three buckets.

And so bucket one for me is productivity agents. And in some ways, I look at it's take the mundane out, really. So you've got different personas in manufacturing, production planner, inventory planner. For each of these personas, we have built a set of agents and these agents take the mundane out because there are so many mundane activities or routine activities people have to do in the ERP to get to a production plan and then make decisions. So we want to get that base work done with an agent and then help the person make the decision faster, make a better decision, a more value-based decision. So that's number one bucket.

The second bucket is in fact very specific problems that are complex to solve. And we are building agents like reducing inventory carrying costs. Not an easy problem to solve, but you have an agent that looks end-to-end and can help you do that.

And then the third bucket is implementation agents. Often, people are troubled with long lead times in implementing projects of two years or just continuous deployments that don't go well. And we are building an agentic way of implementing, which we call Champion Pace, which is a 90 day implementation. And that's, again, implementation agents that help you move configuration, move customization, and to bring data in faster.

[00:23:26] Sanjay Brahmawar: Well, first of all, I think, we are looking at it from a different point of view. We are thinking not implementation. We're thinking activation. So it's, in fact, we want to take out this long amount of time that's gone through, goes through iterative sessions of configuration.

So we wanna think more AI activated, driven setups. We are thinking of pre-configured industry templates that we have built, and we think about faster AI driven ways of bringing data into. And also AI driven testing for the solution. And that basically condenses and reduces the amount of time and effort that you have to do.

And hence you take the complexity out. You actually build a lot more standardization, and therefore, a faster path for a client to get to outcome. So 80, 90% of your core processes are operational and running in a mid-size manufacturing plant within 90 days. And we believe that we're the only manufacturing focused ERP that can actually really make that claim.

[00:24:37] Sanjay Brahmawar: Absolutely. We are obviously launching it officially at our Dallas Event, Champions of Manufacturing, but we've already got clients that are working with this new methodology and should be getting up on stage and being able to share their experience.

[00:24:51] Terry Onica: So, one of the things that you said this morning that I thought was fascinating, you've been here 180 days and you've visited 75 customers. Wow. My question is, of the automotive suppliers that met with, what are you hearing for them? What are they saying that their concerns are right now? What's the heartbeat of the auto industry right now?

[00:26:00] Jim Liegghio: You mentioned the risk of inaction in the space right now, and that really hit me this morning, the way you explained that. And people don't realize, I think, the risk of standing still in any industry, but especially in this industry. Can you talk a little bit more about that, Sanjay?

What can it give you in terms of competitive advantage? And I think Agentic AI and what we are building with Champion AI, particularly, it is a way to be able to do speed to value, low total cost of ownership, and absolutely better and more powerful engagement on the shop floor. So, look, I think, personally, in manufacturing, speed is no longer strategy. It's actually super critical. It's a must have.

My question to you is this: How important is culture to being able to fully adopt the speed, the level of speed, and I love your terminology, champion pace. So to get to that champion pace, how important is culture?

And I think that is, to your point, a more engaged workforce on the shop floor is a lot more productive workforce. When we look at Redzone, we've deployed Redzone in 1700 plants. There are 600,000 people that are using Redzone on a daily basis, making priorities, making decisions. We've done 6 million runs, production runs, and they tell us, you know, we have the data which says these manufacturers are achieving 26% productivity gains, 81% more engagement on the shop floor, and 35% reduction in their workforce attrition. So if you combine that, you can figure it out is culture important? Absolutely. It's super important, but it's very important how you address it. Just talking about culture is not enough, right?

[00:28:57] Jim Liegghio: Yeah. It's a powerful combination. Like you said, that retention piece, there's probably hidden factors there that benefit. If you can retain somebody, lot less money to spend on training the next person, that kind of thing. So there's I think there's hidden savings there too, in a way. Right? So..

[00:29:10] Terry Onica: And speaking of results, share with them the results of the inventory Agentic AI that we're doing and what we're seeing already with our customers.

So this is a very delicate balance, and what we've done is we've built an agent that basically looks at this end-to-end chain, and then comes up with recommendations how to adjust the replenishment levels. And we run this now with a couple of our customers, and what we've identified is that if you look at six months back data, you can reduce the inventory carrying cost by almost 30% for a particular plot. And I can't name the customer right now, but I can tell you that at Champions of Manufacturing in Dallas. We will have the customer on stage sharing their experience. And I think this is game changing.

This is not about we need lesser people. This is actually making our people 10x more powerful, maybe even a 100x more powerful. And this is what I think the message is very important about Agentic AI. There's a lot of noise about people reduction and I think one has to even think about it, an average system user with Agentic AI with Champion AI will be almost 3x to 4x more powerful.

A super user can be anything between 10x to a 100x more powerful with Champion AI. So that's another way of looking at it and how much more. And think about the productivity gap and the number of open positions we have in manufacturing. So we are not talking about reducing, we're actually talking about how do we fill that gap.

[00:31:40] Sanjay Brahmawar: And that's core to our strategy, terry. I want QAD to be known as deep in manufacturing. And the way we get the depth is obviously our talent and our people. But leveraging AI, we go really deep to be able to help our clients with that. And then the second thing is, well, how do they easily use this technology and have a much more engaging experience? That is exactly what it's all about.

[00:32:03] Jan Griffiths: And that's a beautiful way to close today. Thank you for so much for joining us at the mic.

[00:32:09] Jan Griffiths: And joining us at the mic is Andrea Hyska and Jon Smith from Lacks Enterprises. Andrea, welcome.

[00:32:21] Jon Smith: Thank you.

[00:32:28] Jon Smith: Well, we are primarily an automotive supplier. We supply both tier one and direct to the OEMs. We are primarily located out of Grand Rapids, Michigan. Have probably over near about 20 manufacturing facilities in that region.

[00:32:50] Jon Smith: Lacks has been there a long time, third generation, you can read about it on the website. And I've been in manufacturing myself about 30 plus years, so..

[00:33:03] Jon Smith: I do. I'm the IT director.

[00:33:29] Andrea Hyska: Sure. The session today is focused on QMS or EQMS. It's actually kind of highlighting some of the team because they did a lot of the work behind the scenes for this project, but it's related to needing documents translated. We're highlighting some of the no-code extensions that are available in QMS and how we tailored those to fit this project need.

[00:33:51] Andrea Hyska: Yeah, the quality management system.

[00:33:54] Andrea Hyska: No problem.

[00:34:08] Andrea Hyska: Yeah. I'm happy to be on the board. I think it's been really a positive experience. Tracy and I serve on the liaison committee, so we work with the vendors and sponsors to make sure that they have a great experience at the conference as well. One of the things that came out of the survey that we did last session was a more interactive evening event. And so, we're gonna trial it out at this one and hopefully it's a success.

[00:34:31] Jim Liegghio: Yeah, that piqued my interest, Andrea, we were talking just before the recording here, what is the peer-to-peer networking? What's so important about that? What do you hope to get outta that? What do you hope the other peers get out of that this time?

[00:34:56] Jim Liegghio: What's the continuity behind that after the show ends? After the conference ends? Is there a regularity to those meetings then you hope to establish?

With the board, we do.

[00:35:22] Terry Onica: At Lacks, I really respect what you two do. You're very much behind automating your processes. You're both in IT very much understand the business. And Lacks is always to me, when I think of making sure that you're automating throughout the whole organization, you're always at the forefront. What do you two both just attribute that to? What's your culture like that really drives it? 'Cause I have to say I work with a lot of companies, QAD, non-QAD, and it's rare to really see the embracement of IT and technology. And so, what's your secret at Lacks to make that happen?

[00:36:41] Terry Onica: How do you break silos at Lacks? How do you get everybody talking, communicating? How do you do that? Any secrets there?

[00:37:12] Terry Onica: What has been one of the most exciting projects that you've implemented?

[00:37:20] Terry Onica: Yeah. Or just within the QAD suite or outside of it, but what's been something, one of your initiatives that you've been really proud of?

[00:37:53] Jim Liegghio: And there you have it. Jon and Andrea from Lacks Enterprises, thanks very much for being on the show today. Enjoy the rest of your conference.

[00:38:00] Jon Smith: Thank you.

[00:38:19] Fred Coe: Thank you for having me back. I'm getting comfortable in this seat now. I might be applying for a full-time role here.

[00:38:25] Fred Coe: I did not.

[00:38:26] Terry Onica: So, Fred, what did you have to share today in the session?

[00:39:05] Terry Onica: And we were so grateful that Jim was in the audience because. He was our expert on Catena X and taking a lot of questions, but it's great for you to see the..

If you're wondering, if you're listening and you're wondering what Catena X is all about or some of the use cases, definitely go to AIAG.org to take a look. Ava is our new virtual assistant, AVA.

[00:39:41] Jim Liegghio: Yeah, it's really cool. She walks across the street.

[00:39:44] Jim Liegghio: She looks at our resident knowledge about AIAG publications. And first one's free kind of thing, you gotta take a look and take a cue on what Ava's gotta say. So, ask for what Catena X is and what it means for the future of automotive, for sure.

[00:40:08] Jim Liegghio: Yeah, I would say, there was a little bit of apprehension over what's changing with EDI. I think people love and are married to their traditional EDI systems and they're one eye open on this Catena X thing, right? So I think, my takeaway was people are a little bit cautious maybe, but they were definitely interested to hear what you guys had to say up there. So, really, great session.

[00:40:31] Fred Coe: I heard the same thing about standardization. They want standards, not guidelines. There's some fear that with Catena X, with APIs, that the OEMs and the tier ones will come together and say, yep, we're gonna do one thing, and then it ends up splintering off. So that seemed to be their biggest concern with both the APIs and with Catena X.

You have to let your voice be heard. Because you can't just say, I don't have the standard. They need to hear what you need to have at a IG, and that is the best place to do it.

[00:41:33] Terry Onica: And I've seen it work many times. And Fred, you have too.

[00:41:53] Terry Onica: Absolutely.

[00:42:02] Terry Onica: Sure. In our November release, we are going to put out standard OEM messages and we're starting with Honda first, and then the others will follow, so we'll have a library for our customers to go grab Honda

and be able to use that in the product or whatever OEM that they're looking for. So that's starting in November and we're starting first with Honda, and then the others are gonna be released after.

[00:42:45] Terry Onica: You know, I have a question, speaking of bolstering through the supply chain, and this is kind of Catena X, but it's also OEM and it ties it back to Jenny. One of the things that Jenny had said, Jenny Smith, she was on our podcast, she's a tier two. She was mentioning, when information comes down with a 'why' it's so much more helpful. So here she is sitting at tier two, I need to know what happened, why, and that helps me to respond better. And I was wondering, would that be something Catena X could do? Take the OEM bulletins, put 'em out there so that anybody that needs to grab it could be able to get it because I was always thinking about that communication, 'cause you would probably start with a bulletin. If a plant was going down or if on demand really changed one day, but do you think Catena X could do that? 'Cause you hear that all the times, the lower tiers are craving for that information.

[00:43:44] Terry Onica: It's the 'why' right? That needs to be passed down the supply chain.

[00:43:55] Terry Onica: Yes. Yeah, I'm really excited about Catena X and really truly being able to get something down the supply chain, 'cause you can get it one tier, but you can't get it all the way down. And I think that's the huge promise of Catena-X.

[00:44:20] Fred Coe: There's so much about QAD I've learned, in the short time I've been in the libraries that Terry, that you were talking about and the ease of doing that. I'm hoping that tomorrow you hear more questions about Catena X and what effect that might have.

[00:44:42] Fred Coe: So, I guess I would say thank you for having me out here. For me, I really want to help get EDI to whatever it's going to be next. My personal opinion, the more I learn is APIs will be there to augment and compliment. EDI will still be here when I retire in 10, 15, 20 years, depending on my plan. But I think APIs are really gonna start playing more of a role as we move forward and helping our industry get there. And the more we're out here and talking about it, I think the faster and easier it's gonna be for the industry.

[00:45:24] Fred Coe: Thank you.

[00:46:08] Terry Onica: I think the biggest takeaway for me is to see some of our guests that are so far along with automation and technology. Sitting back, I think, we all observed culture really means something.

[00:46:22] Terry Onica: It really means something. Listening to all of them that are doing so well, they've got that positive culture that breaking the silos down, not being afraid of having to make a mistake. That really came across with all the guests we had today.

[00:46:47] Terry Onica: Yes, absolutely.

[00:46:49] Jim Liegghio: Yeah. For me, it was kind of witnessing the sense of community and the sharing among the peers, right? I think it's got its own dynamic, a conference like this and seeing kind of the users and super users of the system, sharing best practices, talking about the sense of community. But Terry's point's valid, it's cultural too. Like some of these best in class organizations, I see a culture of promoting cross-functional learning and understanding of each other's needs, and that sets them apart. I think even the IT department, collaborating with quality and supply chain, it's all one well-oiled machine. But definitely, what struck me about today was the sense of community within this user group.

[00:47:24] Jim Liegghio: Yeah. Up to 2 million manufacturing vacancies by 2033, right? So getting people excited about manufacturing, getting 'em back on the shop floor. And part of that's empowerment, sanjay talked about the tools that empower the operator to make smart decisions faster, right? So you drive that empowerment down to the lowest level. So yeah, it's a huge problem, the manufacturing talent shortage, for sure.

[00:47:50] Jan Griffiths: Yeah, that's a big number.

[00:47:52] Jan Griffiths: If that number doesn't get CFOs and CEOs excited, I dunno what does.

[00:48:00] Jan Griffiths: It was indeed. And that's a wrap from the QAD Midwest User Group Conference. We'll see you next time. We love to hear from our listeners, reach out to any one of us, our contact information is in the show notes. And if you want to dive deeper into our content, check out our website at autosupplychainprophets.com.