The discussion with Todd Beckerdite, a Senior Manager of Maintenance Foundation at Ajinomoto Foods, focused on the integration of AI in maintenance and reliability. Richard Leurig highlighted the evolution of generative AI, emphasizing its seamless integration into workflows. Todd discussed the potential of AI in creating decision trees for maintenance, reducing downtime, and predictive maintenance. He also mentioned the importance of connecting older equipment to modern communication devices for data collection. The conversation also touched on the interplay of AI, IoT, and sustainability, and the need for accurate data gathering for regulatory reporting and energy efficiency.

Action Items

• [ ] Investigate adopting AI technologies to help with maintenance tasks like decision trees for troubleshooting
• [ ] Continue conversations on how emerging AI capabilities can be integrated into day-to-day work without users knowing they interact with AI
• [ ] Evaluate ability to connect existing equipment sensors to gather more operational data for predictive maintenance

Outline

In the News: AI and Facilities Management

• Eric Cook introduces the episode and the guest, Todd Beckerdite, who is an expert in maintenance and operations.
• Richard Leurig discusses the evolution of generative AI (Gen AI) and its seamless integration into workflows.
• Richard inquires if AI will become so commonplace that users won't know they're interacting with it.
• Eric believes AI will become part of daily life, with future developments still to be seen.

Challenges and Accuracy of AI in Maintenance

• Richard mentions issues with AI tools like ChatGPT and Google Bard, questioning how to ensure accuracy.
• Eric explains the evolution of AI models towards accuracy and the importance of getting information right in facilities management.
• Richard imagines AI tools helping with factory floor repairs, referencing Microsoft HoloLens.
• Eric agrees, noting AI's potential to summarize information from multiple sources and guide technicians.

Todd Beckerdite on AI Adoption in Maintenance

• Richard introduces Todd Beckerdite and asks about AI adoption in maintenance and reliability.
• Todd Beckerdite mentions limited AI use in his company but expresses interest in AI for decision trees and troubleshooting.
• Todd discusses the potential for AI to reduce downtime by eliminating guesswork in maintenance.
• Todd also mentions VR in oil and gas and the military, suggesting AI could interface with VR for maintenance.

Predictive Maintenance and IoT Integration

• Eric asks Todd about the interplay of AI, IoT, and other automation in predictive maintenance.
• Todd discusses the goal of true predictive maintenance and the current state of predictive technologies like SCADA, oil analysis, and vibration analysis.
• Todd emphasizes the need for AI to build its own upper and lower limits for alerts based on equipment performance.
• Todd highlights the importance of connecting older equipment to modern communication devices for data collection.

Sustainability and Energy Efficiency in Manufacturing

• Richard and Todd discuss the integration of sustainability initiatives with predictive maintenance and energy usage.
• Todd explains Ajinomoto's initiatives to reduce energy footprint and waste, including recycling and optimizing utility bills.
• Todd inquires about the impact of equipment failures and replacements on sustainability.
• Todd mentions the company's efforts to recycle materials and reduce wastewater and food solids.

Regulatory Reporting and Energy Consumption

• Eric asks Richard Lurie about regulatory requirements and sustainability reporting.
• Richard explains the global initiatives and mandates for energy consumption and regulatory reporting.
• Richard discusses the benefits of gathering data for regulatory reporting, which can improve equipment reliability and efficiency.
• Richard highlights the cost efficiency of proactive energy management and the integration of sustainability with predictive maintenance.

Rapid Fire Questions and Innovations

• Eric initiates a rapid fire question round with Todd and Richard.
• Eric asks about favorite innovations, with Todd mentioning CMMS and SCADA systems, and Richard mentioning the PC and mobile devices.
• Eric asks about innovations they wish would go away, with Todd mentioning smartphones and Richard mentioning excessive messaging.
• Eric asks about AI voices, with Todd and Richard sharing their preferences for authoritative and humorous voices, respectively.

Final Thoughts and Takeaways

• Eric asks Todd about something unknown from his LinkedIn profile, revealing his love for travel.
• Eric wraps up the conversation, with Richard emphasizing the rapid pace of AI and predictive maintenance evolution.
• Eric highlights the importance of balancing technology with the human element in maintenance and operations.
• Eric thanks Todd and Richard for their contributions and concludes the episode.

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

ai, equipment, work, maintenance, todd, companies, reliability, information, technology, data, richard, years, piece, environment, technician, talking, voice, energy, utility bills, people

00:04

Eric, hello and welcome to Beyond Built. I'm Eric Cook, Tech Solutions

00:08

Strategist at Accruent, and I am Richard Leurig, Chief Product and Technology Officer at Accruent on

00:13

today's episode, we'll be talking with Todd Beckerdite about maintenance and reliability. He's the Senior Manager of Maintenance Foundation at Ajinomoto Foods, and has been an expert in maintenance and operations for 35 years. So this is sure to be an excellent conversation. Todd, it's great to have you here.

00:30

Thank you very much. It's great to be here. All

00:32

right, listeners and viewers, we like to start every episode with a segment we call in the news. Richard in our in the news segment today. It's all about a topic that's been making a lot of headlines lately, AI and its impact on facilities management. I know this is an area that you follow closely. What developments have caught your eye recently.

00:51

Yeah, I think the most interesting thing about AI, and specifically what people are talking about now, is the evolution of generative AI, or what you hear referred to as Gen AI. And I think what's really emerging is, how do you take this, this powerful set of capabilities, and embed it seamlessly into a workflow, into a process, into an application such that the users are not even really aware that they're interacting with a generative AI model, or generative AI technology, so it basically augments and improves what they're doing without them actually knowing or having to know anything special about interacting with it.

01:34

Do you think that that means that we're going to have applications and services and products out there that have Gen AI, and we're not going to actually know that it's Gen AI, or is everyone going to know and it's just going to be commonplace to interact with. I

01:51

think it's going to become so commonplace that you won't know you're really interacting with a Gen AI model or with something that's giving you Gen AI or AI type responses, it'll just become part of the day to day. And in fact, I don't even believe that the what you would refer to as the killer app, or the things that are really going to be evolving over the next two to three years have actually even been developed yet. So in a sense, the AI technology has outpaced our ability to incorporate it and integrate it directly in the day to day lives of facilities managers, of reliability managers of of people doing work across the board. Well,

02:32

that's interesting. So one of the things you know, because I've played with like chat, GPT and Google Gemini and you know, things like that, Bing search, and one thing that I've noticed is that it will often give me answers that aren't quite accurate. So what is it that we're going to need to do? Because I think most of the people out there who work in maintenance or work in reliability and operations management, they're not necessarily experts in this AI technology, and they're going to rely on the tools to be accurate. How do we keep them accurate?

03:05

Well, what you're seeing in those chat GPT, or the you know, the GPT models, is an evolution to towards accuracy that sits on top of a large amount of data, and how it learns and understands the data. Absolutely today, you see what are known as hallucinations, the desire for chatgpt or the Gen AI technology to give you an answer. Even when it doesn't have one, it tries to generate one. So what's very important when you're talking about Facilities Management, or, let's say, repairing an asset, is that you get it right. And so I think at first, some of the things that you're going to see are more like your interactive sessions with ChatGPT. They're going to be suggestions. They're going to be helpers that help you use a product or an application in an easier way. They're going to be summaries of information or suggestions on what a repair technician. I think that will evolve over time, though, into really a more perfect science as these models and as the technology evolves.

04:07

Yeah, I can't imagine that anyone isn't going to want to adopt that sort of thing, because I can imagine being on a factory floor, having to go out and repair a machine and then having all the details of the machines maintenance manual be already fed into the AI so it can tell me how to fix the problem. If I say, you know, this belt has snapped, and here's a picture of it. I think people have tried it with things like the Microsoft HoloLens and things like that. But this is going to be a much more consumable product, right? I mean, it's going to be something that everyone can use and

04:42

then. And the nice thing about generative AI is it can take specifications or information from multiple places that are put into a single location and actually summarize the information and pieces and parts. So if you know what the symptoms are of a problem, it's likely. We'll find the information in various manuals and specifications that will help you guide you through what is the most likely cause of the problem. Obviously, what we want to get to eventually is is more than that.

05:11

So I think this is maybe a great time to bring Todd into the conversation as well. So when we are talking about AI and how that's going to affect not only maintenance, but ultimately reliability and the operations of organizations. How are you guys currently trying to adopt that or investigating it? Today?

05:31

I've thought about that quite a bit. So the branch of the company that I work for their AI is being used, but in very limited places and for very limited reasons. From a maintenance standpoint. You know, Richard was talking about a few things that are absolutely the thing that I would like to see from just general maintenance overall. So a couple of things is one, a decision tree, right? So a lot of maintenance manuals have things that that both of you were talking about. There's it's troubleshooting. If this is broken, look at this. If this is broken, look at that. Ai, ideally would help build a huge decision tree that says, Okay, this piece of equipment isn't working. Is the power on, yes, no, and then you go from there, right? And I think that's entirely possible and and very probable. I'm hoping within the next five to 10 years that becomes a very realistic thing on a production floor. I wouldn't be surprised if the Amazons of the world are using it, oil and gas, things like that. I'm kind of crossing my fingers that that comes because if you have a comprehensive tool like that, your downtime likely would reduce, right? So it takes a lot of the guesswork out and from from a lot of maintenance and engineering standpoints, guesswork is kind of the thing that takes the most amount of time, even if a part is difficult to change out, and if you can reduce that overall, then obviously you're going to reduce the amount of downtime. And I've also seen, I think was even some some years ago, is, is VR on on a platform, and I've seen that in oil and gas. I've also actually so I see the military actually was starting to utilize that as well. I don't know how that would interface with AI as a reasoning voice that you could interact with. To Richard's point, I think that would be really powerful. The most work I think will occur in bringing this to a realistic standpoint from maintenance is, how do you pull old equipment into a new world, right? So it, it all starts from the start is, which is the manufacturer of the equipment. So if you have a piece of equipment that is being built right now, you know, are we going to reasonably expect that they are building a piece of equipment where in CAD or they're doing it in a 3d model, where they can explode it in a 3d model, as opposed to a, you know, black and white exploded view in a manual, which is a bad by the way, which is a good start, and then taking that, Loading that into an AI database and building it out, and then having that available for technicians. So however, it works, whether it's on a mobile device or if we ever get to goggles or something wild like that, they have it, and they start to learn how to use it, and it becomes a powerful tool. The one thing that I that I see a lot, is technicians saying, AI can't turn a wrench. Yeah, AI can't turn a wrench. But I don't see AI taking people out of the the equation when it comes to physical maintenance and troubleshooting of a piece of equipment, at least anywhere in our near future. But I do think that it has some great merits, and I think that the possibilities are there, so I don't know I want to adopt it, and I think that maintenance connection, in and of itself as a database has the right setup to help start building that internally.

09:47

That's very interesting. Todd, um, kind of very interesting take on AI and the other technologies and how they interplay, and when you broaden that out to the Internet of Things and the industrial internet of things and other automation. Um. How these may interplay with each other, not only to help once something is broken, but before it is broken, and how it may help to take elements of these different technologies and predict what's going to happen. How are you seeing that evolve over time? From your perspective,

10:17

that is so that's a really good place that most maintenance departments want to get to is is as close as you can to true predictive maintenance. There are systems out there that can get you fairly close already. There's SCADA systems, I know that accrued is actually working on some bolt on software for maintenance connection that I've been working with their developers on and saying, Hey, I think you could apply this more in some other places and broaden your scope. There are predictive technologies to your point. There's oil analysis, which still has to be done by hand and sent off to a lab, but there's vibration analysis, there's mammography, there's even what's term looking for. It is airborne vibration analysis, which is essentially like listening for air leaks in a facility. I feel like that's something that can happen in relatively short time. What I would love to see ai do is take the information and build its own, you know, upper and lower limit. If you go above the upper limit, that triggers a an alarm. Say, Hey, you go look at this or below the lower lower limit, same thing to where you're not setting them yourself. You, all you say is build your baseline over this period of time and then give me what you think is appropriate for the specific technology. In this specific place, there's already quite a bit of predictive technology out there. It kind of depends on the company and how advanced the company is. Aerospace, obviously uses that as much as humanly possible, especially when you're talking about transporting humans anywhere, when you're talking about manufacturing, especially food products, some companies are good about it. Some are, you know, I will just say this out loud, slow to adopt doesn't mean they're not going to they're just not sure how it works yet. I would personally love to see a moto get to that point. There's so much you can do just from connecting to the equipment itself, through the internet of things. The other technology that that is, and I will reference old equipment again, is handled equipment be connected to, you know, an external communication device that effectively provides information, if you're talking about a press that's 70 years old, can you do it? Sure is the company willing and able to invest in the technology to bring that piece of equipment into the world that we live in today. It's it's really up to them. But I don't think that you would have a difficult time doing the ROI on that. It's only pretty quick. I'd love to get there. I'd love to get there. It's been a it's been a few years since I've been in that environment, and I I really think it's a lot of fun, because it, admittedly, from a from somebody that used to be a technician at one point, is it just kind of saves you a little bit of strain and heartache. You know, when you're a technician, when you're on the floor, when you have a wrench in your hand, all you want to do is fix it the right way. And you know, if you have more tools to help you do that the first time around, you get to leave work at the end of the day saying, knock. Did I have a part today instead of saying, Well, I hope that thing doesn't break down, they don't call me at midnight. So there's a lot of opportunity there. It's,

13:58

it's interesting that you talk about, you know, IoT, and especially, even when you go beyond to older equipment, you know, because we've seen the sensors that are meant to bolt on, so to speak, you know, whether it's to do vibration detection, which is one of the more common ones, or or flow detection, you know, somewhere in the in especially in the food manufacturing and oil and gas, as you've mentioned, right monitoring the the flows of things, and making sure that things aren't aren't being slowed down anywhere. But one of the things that I always wonder about is how many sensors are out there that are already in people's environments that they're just not tapping into. Because if you have the data, you can learn a lot from it, right? Maybe there's a temperature sensor, or you've got some sort of moisture sensor, or something like that, and you look at a problem, right? When you say you even have the AI or machine learning, go and say, I wanted you to look at the data and tell me what, as you had mentioned, the high and the low points are, figure out what's normal, right? So that you can alert me when something's abnormal. Do you think you can also use that data at the at the actual machine when you're making a repair, to look at maybe the history so you can make other decisions about how to repair it, how to replace it, and things like that. Do you think that those sort of things come into environments like yours, or is this something that is is far off still, for most companies, I don't feel like

15:24

it's that far off. We have equipment in our company that most of it's domestic, though, but there is some equipment that comes from Japan, and it was built in Japan, shipped overseas to us and and it's implemented and running. And a lot of that equipment doesn't necessarily live off of a processor. For example, it might be something as simple as relays. It's an on off relay. However, even from that one, that one relay, you can pull a lot of information. You know, on off, for example, or a start button, start, stop. Just those two data points can give you so much information over a 24 hour period. How long was power applied? Right? What time was power applied? How many times during that power on scenario was the start button and the stop button depressed, right? That starts to give you availability, that starts to give you reliability. I mean, just those two metrics alone are incredibly powerful. And you can also pull amp draw from a piece of equipment, for example, right? So if a piece of equipment starts to draw more power, there's a reasonable expectation that something in that piece of equipment is starting to degrade. So just those, those three things, for example, in any piece of equipment, nine times out of 10 are already there. It's just, how do you connect to those things? And I think that's very reasonable. There are some companies out there that are starting to realize that marketing to manufacturing equipment or manufacturing companies saying, hey, it doesn't matter how old this piece of equipment is, we've got this little thing. It costs you $300 but if you plug in here and plug in here, it connects wirelessly to your Wi Fi, and now you've got all these data points to pull and then, and even some of them are so hungry to get their foot in the door that they'll like try it out for a period of time things of that nature. That's the sweet spot right now for those older pieces of equipment. Is saying, is there something out there that can connect and without having a human right down, I started the equipment. This time I stopped the equipment at this time, this thing happened when I stopped it. Nothing against humans, by the way, because I'm one of them, there's bound to be error in in that scenario, and and error, you know, the quality of your data in will equal the quality of your data out. So when it comes to that kind of information, you want it as accurate and as unbiased as possible. I

18:31

think what's interesting first of all, you're getting me very excited about talking about data and data and gathering data, right? I love data. Data's King. Yeah, there's so much that you can do with data. And I think what your your example illustrates, though, is you can also take those data points and string them together to look at trends and correlations. You can determine where efficiencies may get be gained, or to the point we were talking about earlier, where reliability issues may be coming up. You can also look at things like energy consumption, and it bridges the gap over to sustainability and energy usage and some of the things that a lot of companies are struggling with, right? And I'm just curious, from your perspective, that sustainability has been a big initiative globally energy usage, which can be gained by looking at everything that you just talked about combined with other sensors and other other meter information. Do you see these things working in concert with one another or working against one another? In other words, gaining efficiencies looking at predictive maintenance and reliability of an asset, plus how much energy is it consuming, and what is kind of the footprint of the environment or the manufacturing facility. Do you see those things working together or as separate initiatives, from your perspective and from your company?

19:55

I do think that they work hand in hand, but I'm not sure I. How many different entities consider those interlinked? So for example, in in the environments that I work in, got a lot of piece of equipment, there's a lot of conveyors, freezers, steamers, you know, fairly large pieces of equipment. Anything on the grounds of a facility should be considered energy usage, right? If a facility is not operating, and it's not in a wash down environment, or it's not in a you know, we're shut down, but doing maintenance environment, now you start to think about, okay, well, we want to reduce our energy footprint. How do you do that? Shut off pieces of equipment if you're not using it. To Richard's point, now you're just, you're you're pulling more juice, right? And companies have to pay for power. And when you get to that point now, you start to say, Man, our utility bills last year were way higher than the year before. What happens? Well, you can start to look at downtime as a whole over the plant. You can start to look at availability. You start to look at well, did we leave the lights on, even though everybody went home, what is what's going on there? I know, for my company, this year, we've got some pretty large sustainability initiatives going on, and that is one thing that we are looking at, separate from mechanical breakdowns and things of that nature. And Ajinomoto as a whole is very big on having these small footprints from an energy usage standpoint across all of our facilities around the world. And I think they've got some pretty, I'm not going to say aggressive, but I think that they're, they're decent initiatives this year looking at things like natural gas. How, you know, we use trucking? How can you reduce the amount of trucking that you have? Because trucks burn fuel and A, B, C and D, right? So there's a lot of different things that that come into play, and I very much believe, to Richard's point, that they are intertwined. They shake hands constantly, whether people realize it or not, and that's going to be a very interesting thing that comes up this year. When equipment works as it's supposed to. It should. You should have a reasonable expectation that's going to bring down your utility bills when equipment not work well, you should have a reasonable expectation that your usability bills are going to go up. All of these things are intertwined, where you say, now you've got aI that's helping you troubleshoot and bring that downtime down, you should reasonably expect to see your utility bills come down. So if you're not spending as much, can you take some of that business profit and pump it back into the company to better improve technology and things of that nature. You're constantly trying to get more efficient, and then you take some of that efficiency dollars and pump it back in, more efficient, more efficient. It takes a while to get there, but it can happen.

23:22

You mentioned something about the sustainability initiatives that Ajinomoto has. So how is that coming downstream to you? So for example, is it affecting not only energy requirements, which which you've noted? Do you have to do any sort of upward reporting on that? Or does it at least require reporting on equipment failures and replacements? Because obviously when we talk about the environment, we usually think of energy usage as being the primary but when you're talking about very large manufacturing environments, machine replacements can create a great deal of of of non recyclable material as well. You

24:01

bring up a great point. So that is part of the initiative. Is saying, We recycle materials, right? We try to recycle as much as we can. We have what's called waste solids that come out of the plant. So that's waste, you know, food waste solids. There is waste water, there are packaging materials. What do you do with it? You know, you want to recycle it instead of throwing it away. And one of the things we're saying is, well, start looking at just these areas, for example, and saying, do you have to have someone come pick it up once a week? Can you wait every other week. Can you wait every third week if you're not getting it picked up as much? How do you reduce the amount that you're causing right? So how do you reduce wastewater? How do you reduce food solids? And those are, you know, when you're talking about a food manufacturing facility, those are very. Realistic things, even, even if you're producing just tiny, tiny and mouse, they still have to be dealt with. So that is a very big part of what we're doing this year. And we're looking at, we're actually looking at utility bills, different things, and negotiating with local utilities to see if they can, you know, say, hey, you know, we're a pretty decent user. It all comes down to, what can we do to be better without compromising what we do on a daily basis?

25:33

That's interesting. So Richard, when we talk to customers about sustainability, especially, there's a lot of regulatory requirements around that, and those are becoming more and more stringent in different places around the world. What is it that you think about when you try to figure out how to help solve that problem? Because I know it that you work on quite a bit. What is it that you actually think about as part of your process there. When it comes to specifically regulatory requirements,

26:07

you're absolutely right. Globally, there's huge initiatives and huge mandates and regulatory reporting requirements that exist, but they exist country by country, the EU, the UK, the US, other countries have different standards and mandates, right? So from our perspective, the key thing is trying to gather all of the data and the information to help us inform that reporting. Typically what you require is a lot of reporting around things that we've already talked about, energy consumption, overuse of energy, that ties in directly, though, and what's very interesting about it, not to take it too far off of that question, but what's interesting is, if a refrigeration door in a retail store is open, if there's an air leak in a compressor that we were just talking About, these things draw huge amounts of energy when undetected. But the other side effect of that is the reliability, or the issue on degradation of some kind of service being performed. Todd earlier said looking at lower tolerances and upper tolerances of how equipment is functioning, how the plant is functioning to produce whatever product is being produced in that plant, in a retail store or other places. It's storage of, you know, perishable items and things like that. In pharmaceuticals. It's, it's big, perishable items, right? But at the end of the day, what's driving all of this is, how is the energy being consumed? You know, we worked with companies where we took data and information off of the temperatures outside, inside and in different places within the environment, and actually did proactive alterations of temperatures to reduce energy footprint and usage in summers where it was very hot in certain locations because they Were not only trying to meet their ESG or their sustainability mandates and their regulatory reporting requirements, but there's a cost efficiency to it. So I actually see these things all tightly bound together, which is why I think in a certain respect, replying and providing the data for regulatory reporting actually benefits most companies, because it actually improves reliability of the of the equipment and the assets, and it improves the efficiency. So these things are are really tied together. You know, obviously energy costs have gone through the roof, especially in the last couple of years. And so there's more to it than just the regulatory reporting requirements. People think of that as a cost burden, but actually the data that we're gathering, the data that I see being gathered, is really helping on all aspects of running the business.

28:54

When I think that you know Todd, you've definitely pointed that out, that that there is the ability to reinvest those efficiency gains into the business itself, to make things more, not even more, not even just more efficient, but also to maybe work in innovative ways you haven't before. So we find that quite interesting. Sorry, let's switch topics for just a second. We're going to do a rapid fire question round Todd with you, if that's all right. Richard, I don't know if you want to, if you want to jump in on some of these as well, but we're going to ask some questions. What I want to kind of understand is what your take is on a few things. But we start off with a question that we like to ask people, what's your favorite innovation and why? My

29:36

favorite innovation is the advent of the CMMS and SCADA type systems. So there may be people out there that don't remember that not that long ago, a computerized maintenance management system was was a futuristic thought, and most medium to large size companies have them. Place. Now you have a database that essentially, in some aspects, tells you what you need to do, and in some aspects, at the very least, takes information from others and informs you that someone, someone is saying that there's something that needs assistance and needs a set of eyes. I just think that that's phenomenal, and I am a massive fan of SCADA systems. So for those out there listening that don't know what SCADA is, it's supervisory control and data acquisition. So essentially, it's a database that takes some predictive technologies and it will alert you. So it's not it's not waiting for you to go see something. It's telling you this piece of equipment's telling us something's wrong. Let's go look at it. The ability to interface with them and use them with upcoming AI. I think that's just, again, from a maintenance standpoint, kind of nerdy. I think that that's really just kind of a fun little pool to jump into, Richard, you got one?

31:01

Well, my favorite innovation probably isn't in our workplace. I mean, I think I used to think, why do I need a cell phone that a mobile device that actually does email and everything else on it? I'm going to have to go with, I'm going to have to go with that close second to that is the PC itself. You know, the origination of of PC, followed by Windows and Apple, and all of the things that came from that obviously completely transformed things. So

31:30

I assume you're not, you're not one of the people who's going to go in on this new trend of dumb phones. I'm not

31:35

going to dump phones. What I want to dump is tech the so I'm going to jump to what's the innovation I wish would go away too many text messages, too many teams messages and too many emails. So my my side career at home, is trying to come up with my own AI product that helps me sift through all of the information that I receive on a daily basis and tells me what, only what I need to know love.

32:00

I love that I wish I had an AI that would respond to every time I have a cousin who has a birthday, just says, Happy Birthday cousin. It's not that I don't want to respond. I just, I just don't have enough hours in the day. So that's great. What about you, Todd, what's an innovation, just in in general, again, that you just wish would go away? Well,

32:18

I, as much as I love phones, I sometimes wish that they would go away, just because I think that we as human beings have become leashed to this little metal square in our pockets. I think it's very handy, very powerful. I mean, to Richard's point, you know, you can get text messages and email and you can chat with someone. I can be on the other side of the world and someone's like, hey, I need to, I need help with this. Okay, hold on. It's a second blah, blah, blah. You can jump on a team's message and literally see what's on their screen. I think that's very powerful. I also think that we, just as human beings. We haven't taught ourselves what's good and what's not necessary. I guess you could say

33:09

that's great. Okay, so this one's This one's one that I thought of actually while we were talking about the in the news segment. So you guys have probably seen that open AI's chat GPT has a voice mode now, right where you can do a bot chat and that apparently it sounds like Scarlett Johansson, so my question is to you and Todd, I'll get yours first, if that's all right. If you got to choose your AI's voice, whose voice is it?

33:39

Oh, I would have to find something that obviously doesn't drive me crazy. I Well, let me ask you this, can I change the voice depending on the scenario? Sure. Why not? Okay, so I if it was aI giving me directions in my car, for example, maybe I'd want something like Hulk Hogan, for example, like you take up to your brother. But then also, if it's if I'm in the office, I'm probably gonna want something a little more soothing, a little more personable, like Dame Judi Dench or Meryl Streep, you know what I'm saying, something a little more, little more matured, a little less, you know, let's jump on it right now.

34:30

Okay, Richard, how about you?

34:32

I would either want a voice that is, that you think of like as an authoritative type of voice that is, you know, not too high pitched or low pitched, but I don't know, maybe Winston Churchill, or the old time actors and actresses, you know, the Cary grants, the Frank Sinatra singers like, you know, they just had, they didn't try to, to to, you know, create. Voice patterns that were just the same across the board.

35:03

So when I'm when, when I think about that, I kind of go probably with a little more pop culture reference and a little more funny. I want Ryan Reynolds as Deadpool as my AI voice,

35:19

as long as it's not out loud. He's,

35:21

he's definitely gonna have to get bleeped a lot, though, but that's all right,

35:24

yeah, yeah. Might

35:26

be a lot of I could see that. I could see Ryan Reynolds, um, talking about Wrexham and then interspersing, like, what he wants me to do.

35:38

I could get on board with Sinatra. That's a good one. Or even now you brought that up even like a Johnny Carson has an AI voice? Yeah? Because there's plenty of actual voice there where you could build an AI, an AI, off of all of his Tonight Show rhetoric.

35:54

That's true, that's true, and they've got voice training now. So last thing I want to ask you, Todd, before we before we wrap up here. What's one thing that we wouldn't know by looking at your LinkedIn profile, I

36:05

like to travel a lot. When I went in the military and I got to travel around the world, I have been around the world at all 360 degrees of globe in one form or another. And for whatever reason, that kind of sparked something in me. The perfect opportunity came up. I would want to work overseas for just a handful of years. I'm not sure about my significant other, whether or not she'd be on board with it, but I think that would be so interesting. It would really kind of force me out of my my space, even, you know, especially if there's another English speaking country, still, I just think that there would be such a cool thing to help broaden me as a person, even more

36:57

well as an American who lives and works in the UK, I can highly recommend it. It's, it's amazing. And just being able to access other things that aren't necessarily available quickly in North America, like, you know, it's, really, is just a 45 minute flight if I want to fly to Paris, right? I mean, it's having access to those sort of opportunities is also, you know, really cool. So Richard, I think I want to sort of wrap up with you and maybe get your final thoughts on what we've been talking about, especially when it comes to reliability, predictability. AI, what do you think that the takeaway is from today's conversation, there are things

37:39

that are available today. You can put us a sensor on a on a switch and tell, tell whether it's on or off, whether it's started or stopped. You can look at a lot of different energy and a lot of different data and pull it together. Clearly, there's a pathway to better predictive maintenance and reliability through generative AI and AI capabilities. But I don't believe all companies are there. And I think that as companies are assessing older equipment, newer equipment, and how they want to interoperate with all of this, I think the real takeaway from all of this is this is moving at a very rapid pace. Things are evolving quickly, and I think what we're going to see is that killer app. In other words, the thing that's going to revolutionize or change how manufacturing, how plants operate, isn't here yet, but I think the pieces and the foundation of that are being put together. I

38:35

think that's incredible. And I think, you know, as as part of a company who creates technology to solve those sorts of problems? It's a very exciting time for us, but it's also a very hectic time, because everybody wants to go fast now. And as you said, The technologies are emerging, but no one's put all the pieces together. But I think it's a really exciting time as both someone who's spent most of his life as a technologist and someone who's really interested in how that's going to impact companies like Ajinomoto and how we're going to be able to make a difference for them without also losing the human element. Because that's always something that I that I keep in mind is that the human element is the most important, because at the end of the day, Todd said, at best, we are all humans, and we have to be able to work with technology and not let technology rule over us. So thanks again, Todd. I really appreciate your contribution today, and thanks so much for coming along. Thank you, Richard. We want to continue to have these sort of conversations, and I really want to thank our sponsor, Accruent. Learn more@Accruent.com and we'll see you later. Thank you. You.