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Roger Bassous has spent about a decade doing something most people would find deeply uncomfortable: walking into other people’s buildings and asking permission to watch. His software measures machines, which means it also, inevitably, measures the people running them, and Roger has watched more shops react to being watched than almost anyone alive. He did not start in manufacturing. He and his brother Richard were software guys at CompuWare in Detroit when Android launched, and they built a phone backup app that spent years in the top five of the Play Store. When that market crowded out around 2013, Roger opened a bar and started hanging around the mold shop where his middle brother Ed had spent sixteen years. One day Ed showed him the machine monitoring software the shop was stuck with, and it was so bad, so wrong, so slow, that a light went on. The whole city was buying this. The three brothers, two coders and a toolmaker, decided they could do it better. They went to a big Windsor mold builder, asked if they would buy it before a line of code existed, got a yes, and built RER. Roger learned once the software was running: machine monitoring is a people problem long before it is a technology problem. Roger and Jim get into the fear of Big Brother, the brother who made it personal, a story about eyebolts that shows how data changes a conversation, why your best machinist might be the one who looks like he is slacking, and why the owner who buys the bright shiny object without asking the floor ends up with a hundred-thousand-dollar paperweight under a dust tarp. Key Takeaways Monitoring is a people problem first. The hard part was never the software. It was earning the trust of people who fear being watched, which is why the brother with sixteen years on the floor was the key to the whole company. The utilization gap is hidden capacity. Shops that believe they run at eighty or ninety percent often run at thirty. That gap is not a failure, it is room to take on more work, and it is how reshoring actually happens. Data changes the conversation. A machinist complaining about missing eyebolts gets ignored. A machinist who logs the hours lost looking for them gets every bay restocked in a week. Numbers make the floor’s problems undeniable. The report card cuts both ways. Monitoring lets the real top performers prove it, and it lets owners see that the guy who looks like he’s slacking may be the one whose machines never stop. Chapters 00:00 Welcome and who Roger is 03:01 Icebreaker: a sci-fi movie 05:34 What culture means to Roger 09:27 Before RER: CompuWare and a top-five app 12:19 From a backup app to a bar to a mold shop 13:19 The bad software that became the opportunity 14:40 What Ed brought from 16 years on the floor 15:20 Idle reasons, and the pop-up that changed everything 17:45 What the early product got wrong, and finding the small shops 21:47 AI, hype, and garbage in garbage out 27:27 A people problem before a technology problem 28:38 You think you’re running at 90 percent 29:14 Capacity, reshoring, and the hidden headroom 32:31 The eyebolts story: how data changes the conversation 36:19 Walking over dollars to pick up pennies 37:32 The report card: career paths and pay for performance 41:44 The machinist everyone misjudged 43:10 What’s next for machine monitoring 45:36 What makes Roger proud 47:13 Why shops resist, and the $150K paperweight 53:02 Close Find Roger LinkedIn: Roger Bassous RER Software

We agree too much. We nod along at the same conferences, repeat the same narratives, and almost never say the uncomfortable thing out loud. So Jim grabbed a bottle of Fireball, a stack of NFL challenge flags, and the five-man team behind Covari, and borrowed the MakingChips booth to do the one thing manufacturing avoids: argue. This is the first episode of Fireball & Challenge Flags, a new, unfiltered, occasionally profane segment where disagreement is the whole point. The rules are simple. Somebody makes a claim, and if you disagree, you throw your flag and fight it out. Over forty-odd minutes and a shot, Jim and the Covari crew, co-founders Jackson Zartman and Anthony Giampapa, VP of Operations Josh Parker, CDO Arnoldas Kemeklis, and go-to-market engineer Jimmy Miklos, go after the questions most people in this industry are too polite to touch. They do not agree on much, and that is the point. Fair warning: there is cursing, there is Fireball, and there is a Lithuanian describing an AI-agent future so dystopian that Jim accuses him of writing for Black Mirror. The Fights What hollowed out American manufacturing. Jackson blames private equity rolling up and choking small shops. Jim throws the first flag and traces it to 1973 and the end of the gold standard, which turned offshoring into a tax play. We didn't lose manufacturing, we lost the cheap stuff. We stopped making toasters and started making jets. The real question is how much of it we even want back, when we can't buy the steel cheaper than overseas and still pay a living wage. The future of AI, and whether anyone asked for it. Arne paints an agent-run world where your phone and mine clink like Apple Pay and transact business on their own. Jim's response, roughly: this is not the future I want. The table lands on keeping AI away from the customer and pointing it at the repetitive work instead. Is AI-generated art actually art? Jim says prompting a box takes zero skill, so no. Arne asks how that is different from a painter choosing a brush. Nobody wins, but the Packers memes get a shout-out. No tech bros profiting off manufacturing by 2030. The hottest take came from the software company itself: Covari's belief that they should never make more than the people actually making the parts. The hills they'll die on. Josh: you can't automate DFM, so talk to the crusty machinist who marks up your page. Jackson: the tariffs did more harm than good, and only US shops and consumers paid for it. Anthony: AI isn't coming to kill small shops, but they're already years behind and need to start learning now. Jimmy: representation is what moves the needle on women in manufacturing. Jim: we created the skills gap, and the powers that be don't actually want to solve it. Chapters 00:00 Cracking the bottle: the premise and the rules 03:17 Meet the Covari team 04:00 What actually hollowed out American manufacturing 06:30 The gold standard, 1973, and the offshoring loophole 09:58 Toasters vs jets, and what we actually lost 12:08 The one-man-band shop as the rebuild path 13:40 Trade school vs college, and a round of debt stories 19:16 Hot take: the yellow pages are coming back 24:18 This is not the future I want 26:36 Tired of the slop 30:05 Black Mirror, Skynet, and guardrails for Arnie 31:10 Is AI-generated art actually art? 35:38 No tech bros profiting off manufacturing by 2030 38:39 Lightning round: the hills they'll die on 39:01 Jimmy on women in manufacturing 40:42 Josh on why you can't automate DFM 42:47 Jackson on the tariffs 43:21 Anthony on AI and small shops 44:20 Jim on who really created the skills gap 48:47 Wrap: thanks for letting us swear and drink Recorded live at the MakingChips booth. Find Covari Covari on LinkedIn, and connect with the whole team there

Nick Popa learned his trade at the Henry Ford Trade School under Henry Ford, then ran a shop called Epic Machine. A teenager swept its floors, worked his way onto the machines, survived a motorcycle accident that put him in traction weeks before his daughter was born, and eventually bought the company on a twenty-year handshake buyout. That daughter is Melinda Keway, and today she owns the place. Melinda never planned any of it. She studied journalism, wanted to be Barbara Walters, and was chasing a career on the police beat when her father called and said he needed a quality person right now, and did she know what ISO was. She did not. He told her not to worry about it. She got scammed, in her words, into manufacturing, earned her lead auditor certification, and was a few months into fixing the paperwork when her dad had a stroke and she became the glue that held the shop together. That was more than twenty years ago. Two years ago, she took it all over and told him she was taking Epic from five million to ten. Epic makes precision tooling for the foundry industry and ships it to twenty-nine states and twelve countries, but the reason to listen is what Melinda built when the skilled people stopped showing up. Tired of waiting, the shop opened its own school inside the building, an intense eight-week course where a student picks mill or lathe and learns to program, set up, and run it for real, smells and fork trucks and broken taps included. She trains for the whole industry, not just her floor, and tells her people to go find the work that means something to them. She runs an open book where everybody has to know everything, and she credits it all to the team on the floor, because she has never machined a thing in her life. On the shop screen is a question she wants everyone to sit with. Do you ever wonder if what you do matters? Key Takeaways Interview where people are comfortable. Melinda runs every interview out on the shop floor, not across a desk, because machinists open up around the machines and tooling they know, and both sides learn fast whether it is a fit. When the talent won't come, build it. Rather than wait for skilled people, Epic opened its own eight-week school that trains one thing well, mill or lathe, and sends graduates into the whole industry. Train for the industry, not just your shop. She tells people to go find meaningful work wherever it is, because the industry's need for skilled people is bigger than any one company. Open book beats top dog. Everybody at Epic learns to program, set up, and operate, and nobody hoards knowledge to stay indispensable. Independence makes the whole shop stronger. Lead from your gaps. Melinda has never machined a part, and she treats that as an advantage, depending on and empowering the experts on her floor instead of overriding them. Chapters 00:00 Welcome and who Melinda is 02:46 Icebreaker: a Parks and Rec mockumentary 04:40 Culture is the vibe 05:26 Why she interviews out on the shop floor 09:16 Her dad, the janitor who bought the company 13:14 From summer jobs to journalism dreams 14:12 Scammed into a quality job 15:59 Taking over, and five to ten million 18:53 A reality show, and removing the gatekeeping 22:30 Do you ever wonder if what you do matters? 25:52 Why Epic built its own school 28:11 Inside the eight-week program 32:05 Building people for the whole industry, not just Epic 35:07 Open book: everybody has to know everything 38:22 What makes her proud 41:37 The legacy she wants to leave 43:26 Lean manufacturing and a shout-out to dad Find Melinda LinkedIn: Melinda Keway Epic Machine (Fenton, Michigan)

Summary Anna Falcon's parents left the Philippines with two little girls and started over in the United States. That is the opening scene of the movie she would cast, and she will tell you everything else is built on it. The persistence, the resilience, the hard work she watched up close became the base for a career she has spent noticing the dynamics between people in every room she has ever walked into. She studied industrial engineering at Georgia Tech and took her first job on the shop floor of a Lockheed Martin plant, working operations and special projects on the P-3 and C-5 programs and helping carry a multi-year, enterprise-wide ERP conversion. It was there, early, that culture struck her, when leadership answered a program's performance problems not just with process and technology but with the biggest culture of accountability initiative the company had ever run, and she watched the trust and the motivation shift in real time. She has spent the twenty years since in enterprise transformation, a decade at Ernst & Young, a run as a principal, and now vice president of CX Transformation at MCA Connect, recently acquired by Grant Thornton. This is a conversation about the thing under all of it. Anna and Jim get into why culture is core to how a business operates and not the soft stuff around the edges, why trust and accountability have to travel together, and why most digital transformations fail on change management rather than technology. She talks about leading without a blueprint, about being a data point for the women coming up behind her who did not have many, and about raising four daughters who watch her do hard things and love it. She closes on the line that is her whole operating system: humans at the center, culture first. Key Takeaways Culture is core, not soft. Anna argues culture is not the perks and team bonding around the edges. It is how an organization operates, delivers, and shows up, and it drives quality and output on a shop floor as much as anywhere. Trust and accountability travel together. Accountability without trust breeds fear. The fun stuff without accountability breeds complacency. High performance needs both. Nobody hands you a blueprint. A mentor told her there is no leadership blueprint, and it freed her to forge her own way and to leave more data points for the people coming up behind her. Transformations fail on change, not tech. Roughly seventy percent of digital transformations fail, almost always on change management. Anna's teams treat change as end to end and business led from day one, not training bolted on at the end. Acquisitions live or die on alignment. Her company's acquisition avoided the usual attrition because both sides shared a vision, and MCA's homegrown, high-trust culture believed in the leaders making the call. Chapters 00:00 Welcome and who Anna is 02:56 Icebreaker: an epic period drama 06:00 What culture means to Anna 09:07 Culture as the alignment of values 16:07 Leaving the Philippines and starting over 19:37 The culture of accountability that changed everything 22:13 Finding industrial engineering and Georgia Tech 23:50 The first job on the Lockheed shop floor 25:22 Stumbling into consulting 29:43 Learning to lead without a blueprint 31:54 The mentor who shaped her 36:37 Raising four daughters who watch her work 38:52 On the other side of an acquisition 42:54 What she wants different for the industry 48:26 Why 70% of digital transformations fail 51:21 What makes her proud 52:24 Humans at the center Find Anna LinkedIn: Anna Falcon

Alex Gruebele sees cathedrals where the rest of us see trash. Hand him an aluminum can and he will tell you it is one of the most engineered objects on the planet, made by a company whose other, less profitable line is building satellites. That is the whole man: relentlessly curious, a little obsessive, and unable to walk past anything manufactured without wanting to know how it was made. He grew up in Champaign-Urbana, studied mechanical engineering at Illinois, and earned a Stanford PhD building soft actuators and sensory skins for robots that work alongside humans. Then, almost by accident, a classmate's wild idea and a pandemic made him co-founder and CTO of Mesli, a fully autonomous restaurant he and two friends built and dropped onto a lot in San Francisco. It served about ten thousand grain bowls at better than ninety-nine percent uptime, with customers asking for a monthly meal plan. It also could not raise the money a hardware company needs in a software investor's world, and it closed while it was still winning. That failure is the hinge of the conversation, and Alex is refreshingly honest about it. Today he is president and co-founder of Tau9 Labs, a semi-bootstrapped Bay Area company that builds custom, AI-accelerated software for manufacturers of every size. He and Jim get into why every factory is a snowflake, why he took the leap into a business he could control after swearing off investors, and the parallel he draws between mountaineering and building a company: calculated risk, exposure a little at a time, and a willingness to be in over your head because that is where you grow. He is also the guy painting Halo miniatures at his desk and bartering for rocks with strangers in Morocco, and he will tell you the hobbies are the point, not a distraction from it. Key Takeaways Curiosity is the throughline. From soft robotics to mineral collecting to the engineering of a soda can, Alex treats the whole made world as something worth understanding, and it fuels the work. Being right isn't enough to survive. Mesli won on food, uptime, and repeat customers, but hardware economics and a software-hungry investor climate closed it anyway. Technical success and fundability are different games. Every factory is a snowflake. Rather than force a one-size product, Tau9 builds custom software per shop, because AI-accelerated development finally makes bespoke work profitable for both sides. Ask people about their hobbies. Alex screens for the person, not just the role. Someone who goes deep on things tends to do the same at work, and a shared hobby builds real trust with a customer. Risk is a muscle, like heights. He beat a fear of heights by exposure, one climb at a time, and he runs a company the same way: calculated risk, a little more each time, comfortable being in over his head. Chapters 00:00 Welcome and the ask 02:34 Icebreaker: a Ryan Gosling action-comedy 04:39 Culture as The Office 07:11 From central Illinois to mechanical engineering 09:47 How the robot restaurant began 13:20 The shipping container that almost fell on him 14:37 Serving 10,000 meals with a robot 17:04 Why a successful restaurant still had to close 21:32 Soul searching, and the road to Tau9 Labs 25:35 The demo that became the first custom build 26:51 Who he builds software for now 29:45 Being in over your head, and missing flights 32:02 Why he asks everyone about their hobbies 34:44 Halo dioramas and collecting minerals 37:33 Overcoming a fear of heights 40:09 What mountaineering and startups share 43:33 Aluminum cans are cathedrals 45:28 What makes him proud Find Alex LinkedIn: Alex Gruebele Tau9 Labs

Charlotte Allen did not set out to make the food in your kitchen. She trained as a respiratory therapist, watched healthcare turn toward managed care, and decided she wanted to affect people's lives in a more direct way. Food was the answer she did not see coming. Kraft recruited her out of school, and she spent sixteen years there leading innovation and technology strategy across more than ten brands you almost certainly have in your house right now. What kept her at Kraft was the culture, a diverse group of people from all over the world who made each other better, the kind of team every other company tried to poach from. What eventually pushed her out was watching that culture change after the company was bought and merged. So she left, and after a stretch of consulting work that landed in her lap, she built Rebel Success for Leaders, the change leadership firm she has now run for a decade. The reason to listen is the framework she has been sharpening ever since. Charlotte calls it the judgment gap, the widening distance between an organization's capabilities and its people's capacity to know when something is wrong. Experienced judgment is disappearing as companies retire, thin, and flatten their ranks, and AI is filling the space with polished, confident answers that carry no judgment at all. She and Jim get into why the machine is built to stroke your ego, why the friction of a colleague telling you your work is junk is the thing that builds judgment in the first place, and what a leader actually does about it: name it, track the behavior you want, and reward the friction instead of shutting it down. Her definition of culture doubles as the whole point. It is the reason a person shows up and gives their best work. Key Takeaways Culture is why people give their best. Charlotte's definition skips the metrics: culture is the reason you show up, give up time with family, and bring your best. It is also why people stay, or run for the hills. The judgment gap is widening. As organizations retire, thin, and flatten, experienced judgment disappears, and with it the capacity to sense when something is quietly going wrong. AI answers without judgment. Generative AI is built to please you and is only as good as what you feed it. If you never prompt it to challenge you or find the failure modes, it just polishes your blind spots. Friction builds judgment. The colleague who says your work is junk is doing something AI will not. Leaders should reward that friction, not silence it. People love change they can author. Explain the why so it means something to the individual, involve the front line early, and you stop having to push. Chapters 00:00 Welcome and the ask 01:40 Meet Charlotte Allen 02:27 Icebreaker: a Marvel movie 04:04 What culture means to Charlotte 05:15 Falling into food and beverage 07:03 From respiratory therapist to food science 08:36 Sixteen years at Kraft, and the culture that kept her 09:53 When the merger changed everything 13:10 Leaving corporate to start Rebel Success for Leaders 16:19 Why every mistake is the fast path 20:29 Making the change actually stick 22:47 People don't hate change, they hate change they can't author 25:12 The judgment gap, explained 28:30 AI gives you answers without judgment 34:23 The 51-point gap between belief and reality 40:06 Name it, track behavior, reward friction 44:37 What makes her proud Find Charlotte LinkedIn: Charlotte Allen, Ph.D. Rebel Success for Leaders: rebelsuccessforleaders.com Newsletter: World's Top STEM Leaders (on LinkedIn, every other week) Book: Rebel Success for Leaders

Ask most people to picture the future of manufacturing and they will describe a slightly better factory. Ask Sunny Han and he will describe a self-replicating machine you launch into an asteroid belt, go to sleep for a thousand years, and wake up to find has built a communication network across the galaxy. That is the altitude this conversation runs at. Sunny is the founder and CEO of Fulcrum, a manufacturing technology company that connects more than 700 manufacturers with the digital infrastructure they need to compete. He did not grow up on a shop floor. He was a kid writing code at seven, certain he would spend his life playing StarCraft, who drifted into building software for manufacturers and got quietly hooked on the depth of it. The more facilities he toured, the more intoxicating it got: the operator who can feel a microscopic burr with a fingertip, the single crystal of metal grown to survive supersonic speeds. He kept coming back to the well. But the reason to listen is what Sunny has worked out about AI and trust. He is one of the clearest voices on where artificial intelligence fits on a shop floor and where it does not. He explains why classical computers are deterministic and the real world is not, why these new probabilistic machines are a gift and a hazard at once, and why the answer is deterministic guardrails and a human who stays in the loop, because in a medical device shop that last one percent is the entire world. Along the way he reframes change management, argues that people love change they get to author, and lands on the line that named this episode. The future isn't science fiction. It's manufacturing fiction, and his whole job is turning it into reality faster. Key Takeaways The real world is probabilistic. Classical computers give the same answer every time. CNC machines and AI models do not, and understanding that difference is the key to using AI safely on a shop floor. Deterministic guardrails make AI trustworthy. Let the model generate options, but when the answer has to be exactly right, it looks up the feed and speed chart or the tool database. Creativity where you want it, certainty where you need it. Keep a human in the loop. Even at ninety-nine percent, the last one percent can be a twenty thousand dollar mistake or worse, so Fulcrum builds evaluation and judgment frameworks that flag what still needs human eyes. Infrastructure was the missing layer. Fulcrum set out to do cool things with compute and found the orchestration infrastructure under manufacturing barely existed. Build a good one and people plug everything into it. Chapters 00:00 Welcome and the ask 01:20 Meet Sunny Han and Fulcrum 02:42 Icebreaker: life as a sci-fi movie 03:28 Making parts in space, and von Neumann machines 09:40 What culture means to Sunny 12:20 Why a company needs a mission, not just values 14:52 What he thought his life would be 16:23 Stumbling into manufacturing 22:29 What problem Fulcrum set out to solve 26:40 Becoming the orchestration layer 30:43 Breaking into a skeptical industry 34:53 People don't hate change, they hate change they can't steer 37:22 Deterministic guardrails, explained 43:38 Why you still need a human in the loop 45:12 Where manufacturing is headed 47:45 Manufacturing fiction 48:10 What makes him proud: perseverance 49:47 Where to find Sunny Find Sunny LinkedIn: Sunny Han (Fulcrum) Fulcrum: fulcrumpro.com Email: [email protected]

Tiffany Bryson is one of Jim's oldest and closest friends in this industry, and she is also, as this episode reveals, the reason the Manufacturing Culture Podcast exists at all. Twenty drinks deep on a curb in Atlanta in 2022, she listened to Jim describe the handful of shops with great cultures who had written back to him, and told him he had to start telling those stories. Then she kept texting until he actually did it. But this conversation is Tiffany's story, and it is a good one. A recently divorced single mom selling houses, she took a job with the creative title director of first impressions, which was really the receptionist, at a manufacturing association. The first time she walked onto a shop floor, she saw behind the curtain, realized none of it just appears at Target and Walmart, and caught a passion she has never shaken. From there she grew the NTMA national associate program into a real revenue stream, took a leap into selling five-axis machines at GROB with no technical background, and found her footing by leaning on the one thing she always did well: connecting people. Today she runs industrial partnerships across the Americas for Blaser Swisslube, the Swiss family company that has made metalworking fluid, the liquid tool, not just coolant, since 1936, and she says it is the first place she can imagine hanging her hat until retirement. The heart of this one is what Tiffany does with the network she built. She mentors, especially women who were, like she once was, the only one in the room. She opens doors for people who do not yet know which door to knock on. And when Jim asks what she wants to be remembered for, she does not hesitate: she wants to be known for seeing people. This is a conversation about relationships as a career, about paying it forward, and about the friend who saw something in Jim before he saw it in himself. Key Takeaways Relationships are a career, not a tactic. Tiffany built every stage of her path on networking done with real intention, and it carried her from receptionist to program owner. You can learn anything. She jumped into selling five-axis machines with no technical background, and beat the fear by realizing nobody knows as much as you assume, and that you can learn what you need to. Ask for the tour. The easiest way into a shop relationship is to ask an owner to show you their shop. Nobody says no, and thirty minutes becomes two hours of history, pride, and pain points. Mentorship is this phase of her life. Tiffany lifts up young people and women in the industry, opening doors so they climb faster than she did, and she says it costs her nothing. Be known for seeing people. Life beats everyone up. Being the person who genuinely sees someone, personal or professional, is what she wants to be remembered for. Chapters 00:00 Welcome and why this guest is special 04:38 Icebreaker: a murder mystery starring Linda Cardellini 08:19 What culture means to Tiffany 09:56 From single mom selling houses to the shop floor 14:33 Where she and Jim first crossed paths at the NTMA 16:34 Building a career on networking and relationships 19:15 The moment she stopped feeling like a visitor 21:57 Taking the leap to sell five-axis machines at GROB 24:28 What the shops taught her about listening 30:23 This phase of her career at Blaser Swisslube 35:09 Mentoring the next generation 38:34 How Tiffany talked Jim into starting this show 49:05 What she would say to someone outside the industry 50:34 What she wants to be remembered for 53:00 Process in Pints at IMTS, and closing Find Tiffany LinkedIn: Tiffany Bryson Blaser Swisslube: blaser.com

Every glass of water you pour, every jar of baby food, every energy drink you crack open ran through stainless steel pipe that somebody welded. And if that person did their job right, you will never once think about it. That is Steve Feamster's whole craft: being invisible in the best possible way. The weld that matters most is the one no one will ever see, on the inside of a pipe, so clean that nothing can hide. Steve is the founder and owner of Sanitary Welding LLC in Novi, Michigan, where for more than sixteen years he has built the ultra-clean stainless steel systems that food, beverage, and pharmaceutical plants depend on. He came up the way he hopes the next kid will. He was an entrepreneur before he was a welder, hustling odd jobs as a teenager, and he tripped into welding under a teacher who told him something that stuck: with wood, cut it too short and it's scrap, but with metal, you can always weld it back together. You can always make it right. This is a conversation about the pride in unseen work, about carrying the weight of knowing a single bad weld could mean contamination, and about a man from the middle who can talk to the shop floor and the boardroom in the same breath. Steve is honest about the hard parts, the apprenticeship red tape, the grind of scaling with too few hands, and the fine line between automation and craft. But the through-line is a message he wants the nineteen-year-old with a torch to hear: the door is open. Steve did it, and so can you. Key Takeaways The best weld is the one no one sees. Sanitary welding is judged on the inside of the pipe, purged clean and finished to food grade, so nothing can hide and nothing can contaminate. You can always make it right. The lesson that pulled Steve into the trade is also his philosophy on mistakes: be proud of them, pass your inspection, and keep going. The door from welder to owner is open. Steve bought his domain while still working under the hood and built his own shop. He wants the next kid to know the same path is there. Culture is treating a welder like a thinker. His twenty-first century weld shop pays people to think and treats the place like a second home, which is how he competes for scarce, high-care talent. Red tape is part of the skills gap. Steve is trying to hire and train through apprenticeships and keeps hitting bureaucratic roadblocks, a piece of the workforce problem that gets too little attention. Chapters 00:02 The invisible weld, and what sanitary welding protects 01:01 Meet Steve Feamster and Sanitary Welding 02:33 Icebreaker: a boat and a sunset 04:13 What culture means to Steve 05:29 Finding welding: you can always make it right 06:34 The high school apprenticeship at a five-hour energy plant 07:22 An entrepreneur since thirteen 08:00 The road home from California and the new shop 11:05 What makes Sanitary Welding different 12:06 Be proud of your mistakes 13:34 Pride, grinding, and the line between craft and automation 17:55 What sanitary welding actually is 18:37 The weight of a bad weld 21:39 Building a twenty-first century weld shop 22:39 The red tape choking apprenticeships 28:02 What keeps him going 30:01 A Detroit point of view 32:01 Where to find Steve and who he's hiring 33:01 3D printing stainless and Project Diamond 34:08 The message to the kid with a torch Find Steve LinkedIn: Steve Feamster Sanitary Welding LLC: sanitarywelding.com (careers: [email protected]) Novi, Michigan

Jim Goerges is an accountant who fell in love with a machine shop, and then fell in love with the one job in that shop nobody else wanted: keeping the coolant right. He was so obsessed with it that when he could not buy the tool he wanted, he built it himself, and that turned into a whole second company. His shop in Brainerd, Minnesota started with four products in 1993 and now has around six thousand, and odds are good it had a hand in the glasses on somebody's face right now. The heart of this one is a simple idea Jim has spent thirty years proving out: the best robot you can buy is the machine that makes the part. Precision Tool Technologies runs lights-out, nearly around the clock on a single labor shift, because Jim chased unattended manufacturing back when the industry still thought a mill was a mill and a lathe was a lathe. When coolant became the weak link that stood between him and a true 168 hours, he invented a full-shop coolant sensing and top-off system, now running in shops around the country. But the number that tells you who Jim is has nothing to do with spindles. He has never laid off a single person to a technology improvement, not once. He took hand deburring off his people because it hurt to do, not to cut heads. And for a crew of 23, the company 401k will clear five million this year. This is a conversation about automation done with a conscience, about a dad who came from Germany with nothing and instilled a work ethic in ten kids, and about why the unglamorous work, done with pride, is the work that builds something noble. Key Takeaways The best robot is the machine that makes the part. Jim's whole approach is to buy equipment that runs unattended rather than bolting automation onto old habits. Automation without layoffs. In thirty years he never cut a person for a technology gain. He removed the jobs people dreaded, like hand deburring, not the people. Necessity invented a product. Coolant was the weak link in running 168 hours, so he built a full-shop coolant sensing and top-off system that now sells nationwide. Culture is telling people the truth. Good news or bad, Jim tells the whole group, so his people are part of the solution instead of blindsided by it. Do more to get more. The accountant's logic underneath it all: every incremental part spreads your fixed costs thinner, and affordable automation is how you get there. Chapters 00:00 Welcome and meet Jim Goerges 02:36 Icebreakers: your life as a movie, and what culture means 05:05 The accountant who fell for a machine shop 07:30 The PettyEgg and inventing to help people 11:41 Four products in 1993, six thousand today 15:30 Learning lights-out before the industry figured it out 20:08 Why the company is named 168 Manufacturing 22:37 Changing your thinking to change your outcome 28:58 Automation without a single layoff 31:40 What he is most proud of, and his father's story 37:35 The sprint car and working hard the right way 39:26 The future of PTT and the coolant automation story 47:10 The future of American manufacturing 53:09 Say yes to a great idea, and closing thoughts Find Jim LinkedIn: Jim Goerges Precision Tool Technologies: Brainerd, Minnesota 168 Manufacturing: 168mfg.com

This episode was recorded as part of a paid partnership with Structify. Ronak Gandhi grew up in Fort Worth, where Memorial Day means fifty people in the backyard, dinner cooked by friends who brought their own coolers, and a clock that somehow reads midnight before anyone notices. He explains the difference between that and a New York Memorial Day, all brunch reservations and itineraries, and in doing so tells you most of what you need to know about why he built Structify the way he did. His grandfather came to this country in the 1960s, took his first job at a fish processing plant, stayed thirty years, and retired there. That story, and the values under it, loyalty, integrity, and showing up in person, shaped Ronak's decision to leave an isolating skyscraper job and build a company for the people he calls the backbone of the country. Structify helps manufacturers find real ROI for AI, lays the foundation to implement it, and captures the institutional knowledge that walks out the door when a key person retires. The promise is blunt: a path to ROI in sixty days or your money back. Recorded in person with Jim at ATD in Phoenix, Ronak and Jim get into why Silicon Valley gets manufacturing wrong, why you cannot serve this industry from a desk on the coast, why 65% of digital transformations fail, and why the problems on a shop floor are the most exciting part of the work, not the thing to hide. It closes on the line that could be Structify's whole reason for existing: he does not want the industries that built this country to get left behind in the next technological leap. Key Takeaways AI fails without a foundation. Most digital transformations fail because people rush to the solution. Structify maps the business first, then finds where AI actually drives ROI. Capturing institutional knowledge is the real win. The workforce crisis bites hardest when a key person retires, and their knowledge leaves with them. Day one is about capturing it. You cannot serve manufacturing from the coast. Ronak lives on the road, and he argues every shop is different, so no off-the-shelf solution works for everyone. Change is not the enemy. People do not resist change; they choose it every day. Give operators the tools to build their own solutions and adoption follows. Relationships beat transactions. The values he learned in Fort Worth, loyalty and integrity, are what he says the coast gets wrong and what manufacturing gets right. Chapters 00:00 Meet Ronak: two Memorial Days, Fort Worth vs New York 01:47 The moment he knew manufacturing needed Structify 05:01 The isolating skyscraper and why he left 08:39 His grandfather's fish plant and the pride in making things 11:30 Why build for a physical industry Silicon Valley ignores 16:02 A hidden industry and what outsiders should know 19:28 What Silicon Valley gets wrong about manufacturing 22:45 The workforce crisis and two narrative battles 26:21 The shop that detonates bombs to fuse metal 28:03 Why 65% of digital transformations fail 31:50 What Structify actually does 33:05 How it differs from a consultant 36:20 Why people actually love change 38:22 Finding real ROI, not AI for its own sake 40:17 What day one looks like 43:56 The five-year vision: make manufacturing badass 45:36 What he's most proud of, and why Structify exists Find Ronak LinkedIn: Ronak Gandhi Structify: structify.com

Bob Teska describes his life as an underdog movie, Rocky by way of 8 Mile, opening on a kid getting picked on, a dad who disappeared, and a mother who told him he would not make it through his first semester of college. He turned wrenches for ten years, went to school at 26 with a newborn at home and three jobs to pay for it, and walked out with a near-perfect GPA and a path to becoming a CPA. He spent fourteen years as an audit partner advising family businesses, and then did the thing most advisors only talk about. He took the operator's chair himself. The company he chose is Dalen Products, a third-generation, 100% family-owned lawn and garden manufacturer in Knoxville that just crossed 51 years. It started when Neil Caldwell raided his kids' college funds and took a small business loan to build inflatable snakes and, later, the plastic great horned owl you have probably seen in a garden. Dalen has sold 9.3 million of them, and in 1995 NASA bought eighteen to guard a space shuttle from woodpeckers. Bob's real work is the culture. He walked into a place that felt frozen in 1982, time cards written out by hand, morale low, a wall between the office and the floor. His answer was to learn every name, take a lap on the floor every single day, and lead by one rule he states plainly: he worked for a lot of assholes, and he tries hard not to be one. He hires out of halfway houses, has kept six of the seven people he has brought in that way, and is bringing production back from China, now 85% made in Knoxville. He calls the whole project Dalen 2.0, building the next fifty years without breaking the first fifty, and he frames it not as ownership but as stewardship. He did not build this. His job is to hand it back stronger. Key Takeaways Stewardship over ownership. Bob did not build Dalen and does not treat it as his. The goal is to hand a stronger company back to the family and the next generation.Culture is what happens when leadership leaves the room. He rebuilt a broken one by learning names, walking the floor daily, and tearing down the wall between office and shop.Second chances are a hiring strategy. Building relationships with halfway houses gave him loyal, motivated workers and a six-of-seven retention rate.Reshoring is a decision, not a slogan. A new injection molder brought 15% of production back from China, moving Dalen to 85% made in the USA.Nobody wants to work is a myth. People want to work, they want to be treated like human beings, and they want to be told they belong. Chapters 00:00 Welcome and Bob's unconventional road 03:07 Icebreaker: the underdog movie 05:50 Success is the only option 06:53 What culture means to Bob 08:42 A hard start in Syracuse 10:03 College at 26 and the two teachers who believed in him 15:13 Becoming a CPA and learning to network 19:01 What ten years of turning wrenches taught him 21:02 From advisor to operator 23:02 Finding Dalen 26:13 Walking into a broken culture 30:47 Leadership is stewardship, not ownership 33:07 Dalen 2.0: building the next fifty years 33:50 Hiring out of halfway houses 42:23 The owl that saved a NASA launch 48:07 Bringing production back to Knoxville 49:25 On the front page of the New York Times 53:40 The next five to ten years 55:39 What he wants to leave the next steward 57:21 Dream big Find Bob LinkedIn: Bob Teska Dalen Products: dalenproducts.com

Alex Huckstepp has spent his career where new technology meets the people who make things. A mechanical engineer out of USC who graduated into the wreckage of 2010, he spent the next decade running commercial strategy at four hardware startups in a row: 3D printing, metal additive, robotic forming, composites. All of them fundamentally new ways of making physical things. Then he and his co-founder Benny got tired of begging investors for money to build complex hardware, and went looking for a problem they could solve with software. They found it inside the tens of thousands of small high-mix shops across the country. Before writing a line of code, they spent three months inside twenty to thirty machine shops, trying to be flies on the wall and failing, because curiosity got the better of them. What they learned shapes the best part of this conversation. Shops don't dislike software because they're behind. They dislike it because software has never served them. And work doesn't leave the country over the labor rate anymore. It's energy and materials, it's tariffed machine tools, it's the two or three people in a nine-person shop tied to a desk doing paperwork, and it's the friction of getting a quote out of your local shop when someone overseas will answer the phone. Alex and Jim don't agree on everything, and the episode is better for it. It ends where Alex's work lives: a barbecue and a cooler of beer in a square mile north of the San Jose airport that holds more than a hundred machine shops, most of which have never met each other. Key Takeaways It isn't the labor rate anymore. The gap has narrowed to two or three times on skilled labor. The real drivers are energy, materials, equipment, and overhead.Speed is the product. Engineers source overseas because someone answers. Responsiveness and a firm lead time often beat a lower unit price.Overhead is the quiet killer. In a nine-person shop, two or three people sit at a desk doing paperwork, a ratio you do not see overseas.We should not be tariffing machine tools. If the goal is a domestic base, equipment should be incentivized, not taxed.Ecosystems beat isolation. A hundred shops sit within one square mile near San Jose and most have never met.You can't argue people into the trade. Kids follow visible, successful people in their own communities, not campaigns. Chapters 00:00 Welcome and who Alex is 02:19 Icebreaker: if your life were a movie 03:43 What culture means to Alex 06:30 Why culture is an alignment of values 08:22 Choosing mechanical engineering 10:03 Graduating into 2010 and the first job 12:43 Four hardware startups in a row 14:55 Why some people are wired for startups 17:49 How Uptool started 22:54 Three months inside thirty machine shops 25:35 Building software shops will actually use 26:20 Why US shops lose work to Asia 29:24 Energy, materials, and tariffed machine tools 30:52 The overhead nobody counts 33:42 Where the hollowing out really started 35:15 The workforce problem underneath it all 37:46 You can't convince people to care 40:42 Why Uptool shows up in person 42:57 A hundred shops in one square mile 45:11 The future: a lot of little SpaceXs 47:30 Where to find Alex Find Alex LinkedIn: Alex Huckstepp Uptool: uptool.com Shop map: usamachineshops.com Catch Uptool at IMTS in September, their first show as a startup, in the software section

Most manufacturing conversations are about the machines. This one is about the building around them. In this episode of the Manufacturing Culture Podcast, host Jim Mayer sits down with Todd Drouillard, licensed architect and principal at HED, one of the country's top science and technology design firms. For twenty-five years, Todd has designed the places where manufacturing actually happens: clean rooms, hydrogen test cells, semiconductor plants, robotics labs. A Detroit native whose father and grandfather worked the steel mills, he explains why lighting and daylight change a shop floor, why a warehouse is usually the wrong home for a production line, how architecture becomes a retention strategy, and why the best factories are buildings that work like machines themselves. Key Takeaways The building is part of the process. Purpose-built factories, labs, and clean rooms are engineered around what happens inside them, and the best of them function like machines themselves.A warehouse is not a factory. Wide open space does not mean it's right for production. The first question is always the process, then the power, the slab, and the steel.Small moves change a shop floor. Lighting, color temperature, painted white structure for light reflectance, and any daylight you can introduce cost little and change how a place feels to work in.Architecture is a retention strategy: safe design, a clean, quiet place to step off the floor, a cafeteria, closer parking. Small things signal that the people inside matter.The building tells the story. A well-made facility gives employees a reason to say I work there and I build things there, and pride follows. Chapters 00:00 Welcome and who Todd is01:59 Icebreaker: If your life were a movie4:36 What culture means to Todd06:43 Wanting to be an architect at ten years old10:12 The road to HED12:14 Detroit roots, steel mills, and the draw to manufacturing17:04 Buildings as machines17:41 The first thing he looks for on a plant floor18:52 When the building is wrong for the work21:57 What a building does to the people inside it24:07 Detroit, the middle class, and what a factory builds27:27 Architecture as a retention strategy30:12 Doubts, waste, and the things that drive him crazy33:20 The future: robotics, AI, and keeping the human connection36:55 What makes him proud38:04 Defense tech, drones, and R&D spaces40:40 Where to find Todd Find Todd LinkedIn: Todd Drouillard, AIA HED: hed.co

Anoosheh Oskouian came to the United States alone at fourteen years old. She had convinced her father to let her leave Iran before she finished high school, the same way she had once convinced her parents to change her birth certificate so she could start school early. She landed in Denver, finished high school at George Washington High, and then the revolution back home turned Iranians into targets overnight. So she did what she has done at every hard moment since: she set her own rules, kept her focus, and moved forward. Decades later, that same resolve is the foundation of Ship & Shore Environmental, the Long Beach company she has built and grown organically for more than twenty-five years. Today, the firm designs and fabricates custom air pollution control systems for manufacturers across the country and around the world, and Anoosheh sits on the South Coast Air Quality Management District committee that helps write the very rules her machines are built to meet. This is a conversation about grit, reinvention, and what it costs to be the only woman CEO in a room full of men. Anoosheh talks about the people who underestimated her, the young engineers she now mentors, the planet she is trying to leave cleaner than she found it, and why, after everything, she still believes the American dream is real. Challenging, of course. Difficult, of course. Impossible, never. Key Takeaways Resilience is a discipline, not a moment. From arriving alone at fourteen to building a business overnight, Anoosheh's story is about deciding to move forward and refusing to be derailed.She bet everything on herself. Draining her 401 (k) to cover payroll and rent for two months, she insisted on doing it on her own, and 25 years of organic growth followed.She writes the rules and builds the solution. Sitting on the SCAQMD committee, Anoosheh helps shape air quality regulations and then engineers custom systems that enable manufacturers to meet them.Clean air has no borders. Her work spans the US and China because pollution migrates, and the goal is a cleaner planet, not a cleaner zip code.Representation changes the room. As the only woman CEO she knows in her field, Anoosheh mentors young women, opens her shop to interns, and proves what is possible by standing in the room and speaking her mind. Chapters 00:00 Welcome and what this show is about00:59 Meet Anoosheh Oskouian and Ship & Shore Environmental03:30 Icebreaker: if your life were a movie05:47 What culture means to Anoosheh08:59 Leaving Iran alone at 1411:31 The revolution, being a target, and going it alone14:25 University of Colorado and a love of chemistry15:49 Fluor Daniel and the road to Long Beach18:30 The overnight bet that started the company20:33 Growing the team and opening in China22:32 What Ship & Shore designs and builds26:58 Inside the process, from assessment to clean air30:39 Writing the rules and building the technology34:57 Being the only woman CEO in the room38:13 Mentoring the next generation41:23 A tour of the shop floor44:03 The future of American manufacturing49:38 Where to find Anoosheh Find Anoosheh LinkedIn: Anoosheh Oskouian Ship & Shore Environmental: shipandshore.com