Behind the Ops

How would Santa produce and deliver presents to all of the good children around the world in a modern manufacturing environment, sans magic? He would face all of the same problems you do – an elf shortage, increasing consumer demands, quality management. In this episode, Russ and Madi propose an elf-centric approach to digitizing Santa's Christmas operations.

See ChatGPT's answer to the prompt "How would santa optimize his production processes?":

Glitter. It’s everywhere. But since at least 2018 there’s been a semi-dark corner of the Internet turning over a revolving door of conspiracy theories about shortages of the sparkly stuff. Lately, Tik Tok has been awash with armchair detectives trying to find out who the top buyer is. Nevermind that Boston-based podcast “Endless Thread” have already done a full investigation based on a Reddit r/UnsolvedMysteries post back in 2019 claiming to identify the buyer.

Assistant Host Russ makes the case that the vagueness and secrecy in Big Glitter might not be as rare (or mysterious) as it seems. Rather, a little manufacturing know-how.

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Join the conversation on LinkedIn to drop your theories on how glitter is made and where it's all going.

Things go wrong constantly in manufacturing. It’s a competitive environment and a lot of businesses have slim margins. Amazing manufacturing organizations are good at building relationships at scale, which is much easier when you have information close at hand and easily shared. Sometimes, you’re going to get rained on (metaphorically) so prepare the best you can and make your mind up about how you want to face it.

Madi coaxes a two-step plan out of Assistant Host Russ on how to accept and plan for everything being mostly broken, most of the time.

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Do your non-manufacturing friends think about where things come from? Or when? Or how much? In this episode, Madi and Russ discuss mainstreaming of manufacturing technology problems from supply chain management to skilled worker shortages. Manufacturing has accounted for less than 10% of all US jobs going back to the 2008 recession, which means limited reach for shop talk at the dinner table. But the 2020s have been weird, and these days you can’t swing a dead cat without hitting a manufacturing-related headline.

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Fresh out of the judge’s panel reviewing the 2022 Tulip Groundbreaker Awards nomination submissions, Russ and Madi could not wait to discuss the who, how, and why of the program. This leads to a discussion of the evolution of problem-solving in the digital era of manufacturing, and how this year’s nominees embody dynamic engineering thinking and the spirit of citizen development.

Follow Tulip on LinkedIn to see the recording of Tulip Showcase event and announcement of the winners on November 17.

Relationship building and maintenance is multi-faceted in business and in regular life. The hosts take a middle ground stance, but take it firmly. Old ways of selling heavy equipment are applied to a new crop of younger buyers, but hope springs eternal for virtual showrooms. Internet friends become once-a-year friends thanks to experiential selling, and an attempt is made to pry out the “versus” from “digital versus physical” and segue ways to an inadvertent indirect plug for Behind the Ops’ big brother podcast Augmented with Trond Undheim.

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Part 1: Pop Quiz!

Part 2: Community Service

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In this episode, we’re joined by Jean-Paul Moniz, Technical Services Coordinator at Cameco Fuel Manufacturing. JP talks about his 20+ year career in industrial automation, how nuclear fuel is made, and the rise of open source software and interoperability in manufacturing solutions.

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Special Guest: Jean-Paul Moniz.

In this episode, we’re joined by Continuous Improvement Engineer Sofiya Baran from Stanley Black & Decker. Sofiya talks about how she fell in love with manufacturing despite never learning about it in her mechanical engineering classes, designing transportation carts and tabletops to improve operator safety and efficiency, and the unique challenges of manufacturing custom storage solutions. Now that Sofiya has implemented Tulip apps in the Detail Fabrication department to digitize job scheduling, she plans to expand her digital transformation efforts across all departments and is rethinking her earlier manual process improvement projects. Once you go paperless, you never go back!

Connect with Sofiya

Special Guest: Sofiya Baran.

In this episode, we’re joined by Sam Feller, Product Manager of the Edge team at Tulip. Sam talks about teaching an engineering course with popsicle sticks, designing the Amazon Dash Cart, and his current book recommendations. He’s an eclectic guy.

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