Behind the Ops

Increasingly, companies are choosing to bring manufacturing back to the United States for a variety of reasons, including increased labor costs in other countries and supply chain disruptions caused by events like the COVID-19 pandemic. The Chips Act, renewable energy, and geopolitical tensions with China are additional contributors to the reshoring trend.

Companies need to carefully consider their reshoring strategies, as it can involve various approaches, such as setting up new facilities in the US, diversifying manufacturing locations, and partnering with local contract manufacturers. It's also necessary to discuss the importance of incorporating digital technology and adaptability into new facilities to avoid repeating past mistakes.

In this week's episode, Madi and Natan discuss manufacturing in the United States, with a focus on reshoring and its potential impact on workers and our economy.

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Have you come to subconsciously dread the sound of a Slack ping? In a world where you're constantly being bombarded with notifications coming from apps, emails, instant messages, and other channels, it's easy to feel like you're paying for less work with an influx of distractions.

In this week's episode, Madi and Natan reflect on the role that a constant stream of alerts has on our cognitive load, discuss how the right technology can empower people to have more problem-solving capacity, and introduce Automations — an exciting new Tulip capability that enables you to run logic in the background of your manufacturing operations.

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Have you ever thought about how government espionage is not all that different than corporate sabotage? We have! (Consider tactics along the lines of "let blades go dull so people can't sharpen their saws"...)

In this week's episode, Madi and Natan reflect on how the CIA espionage manual relates to the ways in which many big corporations create a bad work environment, discuss Natan's "obsession" with "The Fractal Company," and break down how to build a corporate structure that encourages innovation.

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Vroom vroom.

In this week's episode, Madi and special guest Kyle Oberholtzer, program manager of the Tulip Experience Center, discuss all things Formula 1.

Madi quizzes Kyle (a Formula 1 fan, though a bit of a "Netflix newbie") on racing terminology (what in the world is a pole sitter?). And they reflect on the many ways in which the Formula 1 space is relevant to manufacturing. After all, the fact that these cars exist in the first place is a huge manufacturing achievement, right?

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Are buzzwords a necessary evil, or do their costs outweigh the benefits?

In this week’s episode, Madi and Natan dive deep into this question — exploring the difference between useful buzzwords and those that obscure the meaning of evolving concepts. They also discuss how Industry 4.0 and IoT have mutated into new terminologies, and play a fun game to identify popular buzzwords!

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Hallo from Hannover! In this episode — recorded on-site at Hannover Messe 2023 — Madi and Natan provide a breakdown of everything they saw and heard (and ate!) on the show floor. (P.S. Madi says German hotdogs are just “fine.”)

Listen in to hear our co-hosts discuss the history of Hannover Messe, break down trends from this year’s event (in case you were wondering, the cloud has become like “khaki pants and polo shirts for our industry”), and reflect on the surprising lack of physical, interactive demos. As Natan points out, how many flat screens with PowerPoint can we survive?

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Sources, and data, and insights, oh my! We live in an information era, but how do you know that what you measure actually means anything if you don’t start with a baseline?

In this episode, Madi and Natan discuss their love of benchmarks, highlight the challenges of knowledge sharing in the manufacturing industry, and reflect on the growing need to break out of the limitations of a paper-based world.

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Happy International Women's Month! Did you know that this holiday is only 36 years old? If it were a person, it would only be a millennial!

While we’ve seen some progress for women in the manufacturing and tech sectors, we still have a long way to go.

In this episode, Madi and Natan discuss historical challenges for women in these fields, dive into the latest career advancement trends and data, and reflect on the ongoing pipeline and retention concerns in a world where women are over-mentored, but under-sponsored.

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We talk about AI a lot on this podcast. So, who is better to bring into the studio than Head of Artificial Intelligence at Tulip, Dr. Roey Mechrez? In this episode, Dr. Roey brings expert insight into how consumer-focused AI tools like ChatGPT and Dall-E 2 work, examples of industrial use cases of Computer Vision, and plays a game of "Can AI Fix It?"

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Special Guest: Roey Mechrez, PHD.

Happy New Year! In this episode, Russ and Madi reflect on the past year by presenting categories to each other and having the other choose and justify their favorite winner from a pre-selected list of nominees. Hear why people are the true unsung heroes of manufacturing in 2022, how retargeting algorithms once almost ruined Madi’s engagement proposal, and the predicted frontrunner for Category of the Year in 2023.

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