295: Reindustrialization, AI Agents, and the Future of Manufacturing with First Resonance CEO Karan Talati

there was just such a belief that we can make this thing better. We can make it better every launch and we can build a lot of these. And by doing so, we can change the way that humans interact with the world, the universe outside of this planet. There was a very deep commitment to that and that was fun. Welcome to Manufacturing Happy Hour, the podcast where we get real about the latest trends and technologies impacting modern manufacturers. Happy, each week we interview industry experts that are at the top of their craft and give you the tools, tactics and strategies. You need to take your career and your business to the next level. And now your host, Chris Lukey. Hey, what's up folks? Episode 295. In the last live episode on our recent California tour, we've got Karan Talati on today's episode. He is the co-founder and CEO of First Resonance. First Resonance is developing the next generation manufacturing software platform for modern manufacturers. Maybe you have come across their ion factory operating system. We're going to get into what First Resonance is up to. But we have a lot of ground to cover before we get there as well. Today, we're talking about reindustrialization with Karan. We'll be talking about his experience at SpaceX and beyond. We'll cover why Southern California has become one of the world's most exciting manufacturing startup ecosystems. Plus, we'll touch on some of its innovation and manufacturing heritage. And then finally, we'll discuss how AI agents are poised to automate some of manufacturing's most tedious work while enabling the next generation of advanced manufacturing. All this and a little bit more in this special live edition recorded at arts district brewing in Los Angeles, California. Shout out to maintain X and sumitomo drive technologies who help sponsor this tour and who will be jumping on the stage at the very end as well. But hey, I just set the stage with the brewery and our guest has something to say about this place as well. So let's meet up with Karan Talati. Hey, thank you all for coming out tonight. Cheers, everyone. Raise those glasses. Thank you for being here for manufacturing happy hour live in Los Angeles. Our final stop on our golden state takeover tour. So as we get started, I'm going to share a little bit of backstory. So Karan, I think the first time you and I met was during the pandemic. Am I right during Zoom calls? Am I making this up? I don't think you are. I'm pretty zoomed out from that era. So it was another face. But then I saw you, I think it was two years ago in Detroit. Yes, we met for the first time or was it at IMTS? I think it was probably IMTS where we met the first time and we saw one another at reindustrialize in Detroit last year, which reindustrialization. It's a topic we're going to be covering here later in this conversation. But yeah, it's a bit of a homecoming for me to California because I used to live up in the Bay area. That's where manufacturing happy hour started. And you were one of the handful of early folks that were jumping on manufacturing happy hour virtual parties when we still did those. Rest in peace. Thank goodness we're actually hanging out in person now. But it's great to have you here on the show. So Karan, I'm going to ask you the typical manufacturing happy hour question. How do you describe what you do at first resonance as if you're having a beer with someone? Oh, man. How do I describe what I do at first resonance? Well, I am the CEO and co-founder of first resonance. And when it comes to building a startup, that could be wearing a lot of hats. So it depends on the day putting out a customer fire, working on a new feature, doing a podcast like this one. It's a little bit of a circus. Yeah. And another question I have to ask you because this is the first kind of classic manufacturing happy hour interview we've done on this tour. We've done a lot of panels so far. And we are actually hosting this event at arts district brewing right across from where I believe this was like your old stomping grounds kind of described this place and and what it meant to you leading up to this point. Absolutely. So a lot of fun on this one to be here in downtown LA and we'll talk about, you know, how big LA is and how many things that are going on. But I used to live in that building right over there with actually some of my buddies that are here right now, Tom and Steve. So this is a homecoming for me as well. You know, LA is a pretty big area and back in was a 2014 or 15. We moved over here. It was kind of the, you know, trendy but very sketchy kind of fun place to be. And then over the course of the number of years, this place opened up. A whole bunch of other places did and now it's, it's beautiful. And, you know, there's quite some nice shops around. So yeah, also awesome to be here. Pretty, pretty crazy. Just 10 years later. Yep, downtown LA, DT LA, specifically in the arts district for folks listening to this later that are all around the country that are tuning in. So, you know, we want to get to know you first because that's really where classic manufacturing happy hour episodes go. Let's dive into your career, how it led to you founding first residents. So let's go back and maybe I'm not going to go back as far as I need to. But one of the areas I really want to dive into is your role as an engineer at SpaceX. But if you think there's a different point where you need to start the story, I'm going to lean on you for that. But I'm very curious, how did those foundational experiences, you know, shape your perception of the industry and ultimately lead to you becoming a founder? Yeah. So I will rewind it back a little bit more, but I won't give you my whole life. Sorry, I've always been in manufacturing or surrounded by manufacturing my whole life. My father worked at Motorola for 25 plus years. I grew up in the suburbs of Chicago for those that are listening, you know, the heritage of Motorola built the first, you know, car radio, first cell phone. And a lot of that was done in the, you know, Chicago area, all the manufacturing, was done there originally in the 90s, which is pretty cool to be around. You know, the factories were right there. My father was operating those factories. And then a lot of this started to move offshore. So that changed things and it gave me a different perspective on what manufacturing is. So that's, you know, that's early days. I'll always been in manufacturing fast forward a little bit. I actually, what I wanted to do was whatever I ended up doing, I didn't want to sit in front of a computer for my whole life. That's what I was thinking about in high school. And interestingly enough, we spent, we all spent a lot of time in front of our computers. Yeah, probably too much time. And so, so I went into mechanical engineering. I studied mechanical engineering at the University of Illinois. Interestingly enough, found myself back in front of a computer. I met a really good friend on a trip that I took out to California with the rest of the technology entrepreneur center there. His name is Jason Roslin, if he's listening, who told me about this really weird, quirky, interesting thing happening. He did an internship at this rocket factory the summer before. He said, you should come check it out. It's kind of interesting. They're doing some things. You know, they just got this deal to resupply the space station. And I was like, what like with the space capsule? He's like, yeah, you know, that's happening. Is this going to be a household name we lead to at some point or this rocket factory you're referring to? I'm very curious, not to jump ahead, but I think so. It's pretty crazy. And you know, Tom and Steve back there could attest to this. But back when we got here, a lot of folks, it was a time where it was just like booming. They were hiring interns like crazy. We were all in our young 20s. This is an interesting thing. And nobody knew what it was. So we're here in Los Angeles that had quarters of Hollywood and some of this stuff. You know, manufacturing was almost like things of yesterday when it came to like what was trendy and what was cool. So you get it. You know, we'd be going out there. We like, yeah, you know, we're doing this thing. It's kind of weird, quirky building rockets. And you get the typical questions. I'm sure some folks here probably ask these questions. Oh, so it's like competing with NASA, right? And so, you know, like that was, that was what, like 10, 15 years ago. Of course, that is very much turned into the household name that is SpaceX today. Yeah. Yeah. So what was, I mean, what was it like working there for someone? I mean, because that's for all our listeners, they're very familiar with the name, the company. It's certainly outer space is more in vogue than it was 10, 20 years ago. Now, what was it like working there? Paint the picture for someone that maybe has thought about it, dreamed about it. I'd love to hear your kind of inside insights as much as you can share, right? I'm not asking for anything confidential by any means. But what was just the vibe, the energy like working there? Yeah. I think a lot of this has actually become more public, but I think the stories are so important. I know it's changed a little bit, but for the most part, the culture has retained. One word I would use for it is intense, intensely challenging, intensely accountable, intensely fun. For some people, it was for me. I thrived in that kind of environment of just, you know, sharp elbows, getting things done, not worrying about it. about stepping on other people's toes, deeply invested in the mission. And at that time, in particular, so to give a few more specifics, there was a moment at SpaceX, 2013, I believe, where Falcon 9 V1.1, which is effectively the version of the rocket that is today, interestingly enough, not at all the same rocket as it was back then. - Sure, I believe it, yeah. But very intentional, not changing version numbers, is a feature to government sales. But 1.1 had just come online. It was Flight 6, the first successful flight of 1.1, which was at the Merlin 1D engine. And once that worked, it was time to go. And so everything turned from, hey, let's build this rocket, let's build it right, let's launch into, you know, this kind of like beautiful, chaotic mayhem of building a lot more. And really, what was unique at that time, nobody had done this in aerospace. Aerospace was this world of, you know, measured twice, cut once, do it perfectly, you only have one shot. It was a culture of perfection. And in many cases, over engineering. SpaceX didn't necessarily kind of take shortcuts or undercut that over engineering, per se. They took very seriously. What does it mean to scale up production while meeting aerospace requirements? And of course, the results have kind of shown that you can do that. You can absolutely build the world's most reliable rocket that is ever flown by statistics that is now the case. And have this level of intense iteration, risk taking, testing while you fly. It's hard to, you know, kind of point at every single decision that led to that being possible. But I think one of the things I distilled it down to is just the sheer, you know, kind of desire for it to be possible, right? The culture, this is possible. We will build that. Folks that were around that tried to slow things down and say, hey, that's not possible because this is aerospace or because this is hard or because we have to get it right. It wasn't really fun culture for them, right? Because there was just such a belief that we can make this thing better. And by doing so, we can change the way that humans interact with, you know, the world, the universe outside of this planet, right? You know, that's what got us there over there at like 8 a.m., leaving at 2 a.m., regularly. Obviously, not very sustainable. Now that I'm in the 30s. Yeah, it's, but I do want to take that a step further. One thing you mentioned earlier on was you mentioned the intensity, right? You mentioned the work, the fun, like everything there was amplified, let's say. How has that shaped the way your leading first resonance now, maybe in a way that had you not had that experience, it might be different today? Yeah, it's a really good question because, frankly, I think about that decision, that key decision, I'm just like, yeah, let me take a shot. Let me get out there to LA. There's probably not a lot. I'm really interested in technology and data and kind of what that does, but so I probably won't stay there long. But that really changed. I've been here in LA for nearly 15 years. That intensity, I think, marries really well with that kind of level of intensity that is found in kind of Silicon Valley and tech, and that kind of risk-taking that we were just talking about here, maybe to a different extent even, because I think that level of iteration and risk-taking, it's easier to do when the stakes are low, right? And for everybody here, when we're in the physical world, that's not the case, right? When you're building products, it doesn't matter how much of it, it doesn't matter if it's as intense as a rocket or as simple as a valve. These have real physical world consequences. And kind of bridging those things, I look back, and I'm super grateful for that intensity. Personally, I thrive off of it. Startups are not easy. Innovation is not easy. Building teams is not easy. And I think more and more, as I have been building the company, I realize that attracting the type of people who go above and beyond and push themselves and view that as a privilege and view that as an opportunity to grow, to grow the people around them and have fun while doing it, that's a very narrow breed of people. And so the SpaceX experience really gave me, maybe in some ways, a very narrow view of what the world looks like, but it gave me a lot of, I would say, hope and optimism for what humans can do. And I'm really excited to just have started off my career in that way and to just bring that forward in everything I do. Yeah, and I think that's going to segue into a bit of our geographic discussion. I'm going to go to next because you mentioned you've been spending 15 years here in LA. You're based out, your company's in El Segundo right now, which I'm going to ask you about that as well as the greater LA region's impact on manufacturing. But you were talking about how in the Bay Area, right? You have your software, your data, that's you're typically what your startups looked like when you would have moved out here, right? Obviously we have the whole AI world now that's evolved since then. But as I understand it, as I've seen quite a bit first-hand, I know a lot of other people haven't. El Segundo, which is, over by Torrance Long Beach, the coast over there, has really become like the physical manufacturing startup capital of the country. How would you describe it? How would you describe that area? That's just my perception as someone that lives 2,000 miles away. But how would you characterize it? There's a lot there. So first of all, it's interesting. I think you were just up in the Bay Area for the tour earlier. That was the first stop of the tour. Yep, San Jose. So I like to think in California, the billboards that you see on the highways tells you everything that you need to know about the locale that you're in. OK, yeah. So when you're up in the Bay, and I was actually just there last week, you go up there, and all the billboards have changed. Agent infrastructure. All AI agent billboards up there, right now. And it's all these puns on your agents don't need to sleep. And it's all that one? Yeah, it's like, what does that mean? The layperson has no idea. In L.A., there's this interesting thing. You could be up in West Hollywood, and you could get all your Grammys and Oscars, billboards, drive 20 minutes south. And you'll start seeing billboards of what's happening down in El Segundo. OK. You could go an hour north and get some more kind of from the prime. So down in El Segundo, there's this interesting thing. So we just moved to our office at first residence down to El Segundo less than a year ago. We were just about 10 minutes that way in downtown L.A. And it became very clear, most of our customers are down there, and there's only more and more activity happening there. This is not by accident. There's a lot of legacy and a lot of heritage in the activity down there. So at the same time, you see new companies that are building really interesting products. Take, for example, Vargas-based industries building pharmaceutical manufacturing capsules-- space capsules in particular, right? They're doing drug manufacturing in space. Or companies like K2, building very large satellites, radiant nuclear building small modular reactors. All that is happening in El Segundo. But then you just cross the block, and you have all the old guard. You have Boeing. You have Northrop. You have RTX. And they've been there for decades. So I'm not going to get into a whole history lesson of post-World War II. Yeah, we need a longer episode for that. Absolutely. And there's probably better people to cover that. But the roads, aviation boulevard, Howard Hughes Parkway. There's a huge legacy in Southern California of the manufacturing that has influenced the manufacturing and really the trajectory of the company. And it's really interesting to see that that heritage we're pulling the thread forward for all of the new things that are happening now. Interesting also in California, the zoning rules, allow for industrial operations in 5,000 to 10,000 square feet, which is perfect for a startup. Nice. So you get that in El Segundo. But you might not get that in West Hollywood. Yeah, it's been fun. We were in the Central Valley last night. We were just talking about how we were in San Jose at the start of the tour. I think we've been debunking a lot of myths about how it's like a lot of people that may listen to this thing. Oh, it's just hard to build or start a company or manufacturer, especially out here in California. The point you made about zoning, zoning, there are a lot of things that are actually very convenient for starting a company. And you have that heritage. It's interesting because I really do feel like that El Segundo industrial ecosystem has come up-- or it should not come up, but has researched just in the past decade, if even that. What about the greater LA area, right? I mean, you were building your company here kind of before that was in Vogue. I mean, what do you see about manufacturing in this region in general? I think folks that listen to this podcast probably probably realized this is one of the biggest manufacturing markets in the country. So we're not like debunking that myth that all this area is, is just Hollywood. But how would you describe it beyond just that El Segundo area if you had to? Yeah, absolutely. So hey, one more thing I'll say about El Segundo is with this resurgence and everybody kind of getting excited about it, just a culture of what's happening and people being able to cross the street. And for us to visit our customer right next door or just crossing the street, there's a lot of, you know, there's a lot of energy and a lot of ideas that flow in that way. But when it comes to Southern California and particularly the LA region, great book by Ben Rich, right? The skunk works about everything that happened up in Burbank during the Cold War era and those like buildings actually as you drive up and down Burbank now, if you see a brick building without windows, that's actually where the SR-71 Blackbird or similar airplanes were designed and even manufactured in big pieces. You want to be able to tell now because it's next door to an IKEA, right? So you have El Segundo, you have, you know, what happened in Burbank, one other thing that I'll call out and when we were starting the company, the reason that we put first resonance in downtown LA is that we actually wanted to be at a crossroads of some of these centers of gravity, of aerospace and manufacturing. You go up to Pasadena and there's a lot there. So Caltech is there, JPL, right? Is out of Pasadena. There's a huge robotics heritage up in Pasadena as well because of Caltech. So it's almost like you could go anywhere and there's some story in history that has to do with manufacturing. I mean, right here in downtown LA, actually a lot of these warehouses, the building that I used to live in, or actually, sorry, let me shift that over to the other brewery and I won't name them because we're at Arts District Brewing Company, but the other brewery right there was a cable manufacturing plant and that's why they have that shoot right there. I don't know what this building was, Steve would probably know, but. A brewery counts as manufacturing still to be correct. Absolutely. So new manufacturing in many ways, right? So it's pretty amazing. You just look around and it's like, oh yeah, I can see that used to be a place that we manufactured things and there's a lot of railroad track around here as well that's been covered up, which was, you know, the rail that was used to move the manufacturing materials. Maybe I want to say like 70, 80 years ago. So it's pretty cool to think about all that when you really, you know, when you really look in when you're in a city like LA for as long as I've been. Yeah, and it's kind of the way I describe LA to a lot of folks. It's, if you come here for the first time, you're just thinking it's this giant sprawling area and to get anywhere you have to drive an hour and a half to get there. That's true if you're traversing the city, but LA is really like a collection of a lot of little villages. And I think the way you described it from Pasadena to El Segundo downtown LA, these also have their own unique little ecosystems that form just this massive innovation, manufacturing, community heritage, et cetera. So as we wrap up our conversation, I do want to ask you about what you're up to right now. And we were talking about it. You drive through San Francisco right now. Every billboard is about AI agents. And you're working on that within your business. I mean, I kind of look at your reinventing ERP for manufacturers in a lot of ways. I was chatting with you before we started recording about this. What is your unique perspective around AI agents, right? Everyone's talking about it. A lot of people on this show are talking about it for manufacturing right now. You know, what are your takes on that that, you know, are not only shaping your company, but are novel probably to the industry right now? Yeah, it is such a big question. And I have so much to say about it. And the reason is this. This is the most excited I have been about building what we are building at first resonance and starting the company. And we have been building first resonance for about seven years now. And maybe just rehash what you're building at first resonance for folks that aren't familiar with it too. Absolutely. So at first resonance, we build a factory operating system. It's effectively an AI platform now that allows modern manufacturers to manufacture mission critical and quality critical products. It handles the day-to-day operations from defining work instructions to executing them, managing the quality non-conformances, which naturally and manufacturing things do go wrong. And also uniquely, we manage supply chain signals in real time. So what that means is, you know, for companies that are building quality critical hardware products like electric airplanes or nuclear reactors or satellites, you need an orchestration platform that helps people get the work that they need to get done, not just another kind of like con-bond system or a workflow system that helps you with that specific work center, right? It's the full orchestration of a complex vehicle. The reason I'm so excited this year is because when we started the company, we started it on the premise of understanding that the technology has really evolved in the cloud and in technology in a way that like, you have these big data systems, you have modern machine learning models. And in many ways, manufacturing and hardware have been left behind. I do have a quick thesis on why it was left behind because so much of the workflows were outsourced and an off-short. There really wasn't a reason to intensely focus on great, you know, digital systems to make it all happen. We just kind of got by. But the SpaceX experience showed me that actually things were going to change in the 2020s that people were going to get excited and build complex products again. Great point. And I think, you know, as a function of geopolitics, the pandemic and just everything, it was bound to be true that we would bring our industrial base back. I didn't know when. And it's become clear that we are doing it now, right? Yeah. Yeah, you were ahead of your time. Because what, like, 2018, was that the year you were founded? Am I making that? Yeah, 2018 was the garage. Let's think about some problems here, right? 2020 is really when we launched the platform. Yeah. But you asked about AI agents. And the reason that I'm so excited now is what's fascinating about manufacturing where a lot of people don't realize is that manufacturing, while there are a lot of machines and hardware, a lot of it is manual work. It's a lot of road work. And it's a lot of paperwork. It's a lot of paperwork, especially in some of the industries that a lot of the people in this room are operating in an aerospace automotive, biomedical, lot of paperwork. Yeah, I know we have more than a few companies in this room represented right now that know all the paperwork that goes into it. So yeah, continue. And that was a key experience of mine at SpaceX. I was at one of the hottest companies building such an intensely cool product. And I personally was spending maybe like 40% of my, we, dispositioning issue tickets, looking at problems that we've already had that we knew how to solve and just manually clicking the drop down buttons that needed to be clicked because of compliance and regulations, right? So when we started the company, we knew that the technology had evolved. We knew that there were better big data systems that there were machine learning systems. And so long as we organized the data in the right way, we could actually help people avoid that work that is so common in manufacturing. Fast forward here a few years. And we have been doing that fast forward to here a few years. We now have this amazing technology where you don't have to organize all that data where you don't have to be so structured where you don't have to train these intensive machine learning models. The agents can actually start doing some of this work for you with you augmenting, finding signals that you were going to look at maybe a week later and doing that ahead of time. So I think it's an incredibly exciting time because of the type of work that manufacturers really have to do when a lot of the people are very passionate about innovating on the hardware and the design, but they have to do these things. It was something that we just got used to. Yeah. Well, one one theme that comes up on this podcast when artificial intelligence comes up, there's a the president at a local technical college in the Milwaukee area where I'm from. He's like leverage AI for the things that you hate. Like don't like not not like we're going to leverage it for a lot of things, right? But focus on the things that suck first. Absolutely. Absolutely. And there are a lot of things that suck when it comes to operating a factory day to day, right? I think a lot of people here can can agree. So, you know, I'm really excited. I will say despite those billboards up in the Bay Area, we are so early. And by the way, I think that's why those billboards are up. I think a lot of them are talking about the infrastructure. I think a lot of them are talking about single agents. And I think right now the limit in which we've seen the deployment of these agents are these like very singular decision making things like a chatbot that might help you find information or resolve an issue. I think the real opportunity in manufacturing in particular, we're going to see over the course of the next six, 12, maybe 18 months, which is how do you orchestrate these agents to work with one another? How do you feed them more data? How do you make the machine data available? And do it in such a way that these agents actually know how to make use of them. And there's a lot of work that needs to be done there. So, I think we're still very early. I think we haven't even really scratched the surface. And we see this when we get out to our customers. We are working with some of the most leading-edge hardware companies that are out there, building the types of complex products that I was talking about. And when we ask about AI, because of regulations, because it so early. Usually what we're hearing is like, yeah, look, we're using that to accelerate this workflow or that workflow. But what we've discovered at first residence and what we are building is that by combining some of these agentic workflows, by really managing the context in which the data streams in, as well as the rigor that needs to be applied for the agents to go out, that's really the alpha and the industry has not gotten there yet. I'm super excited to talk about some of the things that we're doing to, for example, autonomously schedule and reschedule a factory multiple times in a day, with AutoPlan 2, which is something that we are just getting into. Scheduling is one of the topics that comes up very frequently where we're talking about artificial intelligence. Absolutely. Absolutely. And, you know, what we've seen in factories historically with scheduling is like, "Oh, okay. We have these orders. We have this demand. What are the machines that are available?" That's basically kind of it, right, what are the constraints, but imagine now with these agents that can make so many more decisions at such a high resolution, knowing when, you know, not just knowing how many people are at the factory, but knowing with their vacation schedule, tracking, shipment, tracking codes for POs that you expect in order to build the next product. And if that, if that PO is actually late, rerouting the actual factory schedule, I mean, the sky is kind of the limit when it comes to scheduling, and this is like, you know, one of the first areas that we're unlocking, let alone, you know, quality in some of these other areas. Yeah. I appreciate the overview. I appreciate you sharing your perspective, what you're doing specifically. Last question I have for you, and this is a very typical manufacturing, happy hour question. Of all the things we've covered, we talked about, you know, the LA region and El Segundo's role in reindustrialization. We talked about your background. We talked about agents. Is there anything you wish I would have asked you that I haven't yet? And I'll preface this with. There will be ways to connect with you in the show notes on manufacturinghappyhour.com. So all those things will be there. But is there any topic that you wish would have come up yet that it has not? We covered such a large breath, right? We covered geography, we covered culture, right? We covered AI agents. You know, one thing I will say that I'm particularly excited about is, I think especially for this audience, is AI meeting physics. Okay. Yeah. It's a physical AI or something different. Physical AI. And I think if physical AI is actually scratching the surface, and I think it's a great buzzword that's being used, right, perception and, you know, some of the autonomous part movements and things like that. No, but I actually mean physics. What does it mean to discover new materials by understanding like core, like physics models and combining physics models with some of the things that we're getting out of AI right now. And like we talked about, we're just at the surface of AI. The big benefit in AI right now in manufacturing in particular is just take care of all that busy work. Take care of the stuff that you don't want to do, which is what you mentioned from that professor. But where does, you know, what does the world look like in a few years when the, when the AI is actually talking to the physics, we're making new discoveries and materials. Maybe unleashing a lot of like, you know, opportunity for the people working in these factories to be like in discussion with the factory. And then final thing I'll say and maybe I'm answering your question in a different way. But like one thing, you know, I mentioned earlier, intensely fun. How do we make manufacturing intensely fun is something, you know, I wish you would have asked me about it. That's a great way to wrap it up. You can riff it on this for a while. This is a great, by the way, there's no wrong answer to this question. Potentially ask it so that way you can go any direction. Yeah. But talk about making manufacturing fun. Yeah. Intensely fun. Intensely fun. Sorry, I missed a very key word there. Intensely fun, right? You know, I have so many ideas on this, but I think, I think the main thing is like, it's so cool to see just how much attention across the entire economy. People are putting now into the, you know, you started the baseline level, the existential nature of our industrial base. You move up and you talk about re-industrialization, how cool that could be. You talk about these new products, et cetera. I'm deeply passionate across that entire stack. I do believe that one, these things are a lot more existential than we really even understand what we're talking about. And at the top of the stack can be so much more intensely fun than we're talking about. So hey, look, this is why I get up every single day. This is why I've been doing this for, you know, now decades and why I will probably going forward. And I think what you've been doing, Chris, with the manufacturing happy, we were talking about this in Detroit is getting so, getting started so early, you know, across the United States bringing together kind of like a niche group of people who are passionate about this stuff, like beyond just this is my job. And so that's what I do. But passionate about this, you know, where that goes, I think it's going to be, like I'm very, very, very excited about where that goes. I think we're just getting started in many ways. I agree. I'm excited to keep, you know, sharing voices like yours on this show. You know, if you hadn't thought of an answer for that, I was going to ask you, what's the best beer to get here? Like, what's your go-to beer style at Arts District Brewing? You know, every single time I walk up to a bar, it doesn't matter what time of the year it is, I ask, hey, what's good on tap right now? Yeah. What's fresh? Yeah. What's fresh? What's the season? They'll take me through the whole list and I'll always say, you know what, I'll stick with the IPA. There you go. Hey, there's no wrong answers when ordering a beer either. Well, Karan, thank you so much for jumping up on stage. Cheers to you. Hey, everyone, give it up for Karan. Thanks, Chris. Thanks, everyone. Thanks for being a part of manufacturing happy hour. We've got two quick segments here to wrap it up. So next up, I'm going to bring Greg up here, so we're going to swap out. And then Nick, start making your way up here as well. I want to get you on stage because it's not every day, I have a fellow podcaster here in the audience. So Nick, let me pull out an extra chair for you so you got some space up here. We got a mic ready to go for you. We're going to be in tight quarters up here, but that's okay. We can fit him in there. We can. Nick is making his way up here, Greg, you host CMMS radio. So how do you describe what your show is about as if you're having a beverage with someone? Well, there you go, beverage in hand. Yeah, I get the beverage, right? CMMS radio is a podcast about computerized maintenance management software, but it's really focused on the two M's in the middle. That's maintenance management. It's about people in process. So it's not really about the technology, right, Nick? It's about people. And really what I like to do is stay connected to the industry, being a former co-founder and no longer connected directly with a company. I like to help people hear the real stories from the founders, the companies that are getting it done, the manufacturers, the maintenance and reliability professionals, facilities, all of it. I just want to put out good messaging, keep it real, no scripts, real raw and kind of unhinged. All right. Well, I'm very curious. I wanted to bring our tour sponsors up here before this tour wrapped up. And I realized I had a very unique opportunity since maintain X is a leader in the CMMS world. Nick, you and your team are here. And I'm like, you know what? I've already asked Nick some questions earlier this week. Why don't I have Greg ask Nick a final question of the tour? So we were chatting beforehand and I'm like, Greg, you just, let's listen to the first part of the podcast. You can come up to the stage with whatever you want to ask Nick as we wrap things up. All right. So obviously at the heart of all of this is manufacturing. The products we make, the things we rely upon, we all take it for granted in one way or another, your cars, your beers that get brewed, the tables that get made. Nick and maintain X, they handle one critical component of that that we all tend to take for granted as well. And that is maintenance. And Nick and I have talked extensively over the years on Mike, off Mike, you name it. So Nick, when it comes to maintain X, who I consider to be the juggernaut in the space right now, considering all the ground that has been covered, the team that has expanded, and the way you're incorporating the basics and why maintenance is so critical to everything we do. Where do you see it changing in the next few months because you're pretty up to speed on what's coming next now? You don't have to share any like insider stuff, but what are we missing that's coming next that you see coming? Well, I think it's a question of who's missing it and who's not ahead of it. You all are just talking about this on the podcast, what AI is going to do for the industry and what it's going to do across the whole ecosystem. But when you go and you actually speak with folks on the ground across the average manufacturing plant in the United States, they're still not using AI. They're still not playing, you know, let alone chat GBT or automation for that, more automation. So for them, this is going to be a big wave and a big shift. Much of the way that the cloud was a big shift and it took them a long time. So I think what's going to be different this time around is how quickly they get to see value for AI and ways that they might not even realize that it is AI. They're just going to see that their workflows and their tools they're using are helping them do their jobs and save more money, save more time, give them the information they need a lot faster and the folks that are able to serve that information to them in a way that requires the least amount of training and just follow. is the most intuitive path, I think you're going to be the ones that help them get there. So essentially, the takeaway from that is that they are focused on empowering the front line that maintains the machines that the operators run to make all this cool stuff that we all rely upon, and the AI is going to augment that process, not by necessarily telling them what to do, but saving lots of additional time, because maintenance is about eliminating waste, keeping those machines available and ready to run, and rock out all those products. Is there anything that I've missed, though, when it comes to-- Ooh, that's a good manufacturing, happy hour style question. Oh, I've been watching. So you have to learn from someone that's been doing it for a long, long time, and that's why it's important to be here, I feel so honored. And what I'm wondering about what's missing is there's a bigger picture to all of this, just ERP systems, CMS platforms, and all the different things in between AI or not. Is there something coming that goes beyond the data orchestration layer that you can talk about? I'm teasing you here. You know what I'm talking about. Well, maybe, we've got a huge labor shortage coming, that's not a secret, there's a lot of data out there that suggests there's going to be three million open jobs and manufacturing by 2030, but it's been validated by a lot of different industry analysts. That number just keeps getting bigger every time someone mentions it. Yeah, it's 3,000,000. 3,000,000? Yeah. I was quoting 2.1 million by 2028 most recently, I think. Wait, no, it's going to get worse before it gets better. And so the reality is that all of this, if you're looking for a Y, and why does this matter, I think 60% of manufacturers in the United States are still running on pen and paper. The vast majority of their processes. So there's not as much of a wave as it feels like coming to cars are making, there's still a ton of opportunity. And a ton of folks that need to understand the value and impact of what digitization means for the future of their business. If they can't find ways to become more efficient, they're going to be in a lot of trouble because they're going to have less people. And the none of this is going to be digitized and they're not going to be able to take advantage of some of the benefits that I bring them and that's going to be a problem. So I think that's something that's coming down the pipe that's definitely worth following closely. Nick, I have one more question for you. Based on our interview with Karan, what are you doing to make manufacturing intensely fun? What would be your answer to that question? I mean, one thing we do is we like hosting events like this, or are you sponsoring events like this and hosting events of our own that are fun. Great segue. That are fun. Like, when customers come to our events, they're like, "I didn't realize we were allowed to have fun after the presentations were done. I didn't realize we were allowed to have a drink. I didn't realize we were allowed to meet other people." It was always like, you know, manufacturing is not an industry where you're supposed to have a lot of like goofing off. Like you can get hurt. It's a lot of serious processes. And so if you can give them a space to actually, you know, have a little bit of fun, let their hair down if they have hair. I'm going to make a t-shirt. I'm going to make the next manufacturing happy hour t-shirt say manufacturing, goof off, stay safe. I think that's like the new slogan. Yeah, because bringing people together that don't have the opportunity to network and learn from each other, I think it's something that we're doing that is really important for the community. We've got EDU program, things we're doing with schools now where we're helping sponsor educational programs so that we can bring that next generation in to help them be more come more digitally savvy with respect to manufacturing technologies. So those are a few of the things that I think are important. Well, hey, give it up for Greg and Nick, shout out to Maintain X for sponsoring this whole tour. Cheers, gentlemen. Thank you for jumping on stage. I have one more guest to jump up here. Sherefa, would you like to join us on stage or I should say swap out on stage, sir? Sherefa, we were chatting before this instance. This is the wrap up of the tour. I have a bit of a different question for you and that you've been traveling around with me and Ashley from Maintain X, I think that you're, I mean, your whole team from Sumitomo has been on all the dates so far, so we have a few people that have been on this entire tour. I'm very curious, what has your take away been about manufacturing in California throughout this journey? Great question. I will definitely say there's more here in Cali than we thought. California is a big state for manufacturing and there's all type of industries here. Yesterday in Central Valley, we learned there's over 4,000 manufacturing companies here and all of them are expanding so there's a lot of opportunity here and I learned that there's a lot of effort here on building up the perception of manufacturing for the upcoming generation. We're all facing kind of the same, you know, the gap right now, people are retiring out and we need to bring in like the new generation but we need to get them excited about manufacturing. Yeah. So I think events like this is really pushes that. So that's definitely my big takeaway from it. It's been a blast. Yeah, and for context for everyone in this room that wouldn't have been there last night, a big theme of last night's conversation. We had a bunch of educators from tech colleges, state universities, as well as large. Like we're talking huge end user manufacturers making everything from wine to tomatoes. We had them all on stage last night talking and a lot of the conversation was around what they were doing with their K through 12s, their respective tech schools, university programs, to, you know, I'm going to steal Karan's line again, make manufacturing intensely fun, right? And start showcasing that at an early age show. So Sharifa, thank you so much. Shout out to Sumitomo Drive Technologies for making this whole tour possible. Let's give it up for Sharifa and her whole team that and Sharifa has been with me every step of the way, planning out this tour shout out to Ashley from Maintain X as well, who's also been doing that. So these tours would not come together without great partners like that. And shout out to Arts District Brewing for hosting us tonight. The bar is still open. Grab your drink. Give 'em a round of applause. I know it. I realize I kept talking and cut that short. Grab drinks. Plenty of appetizers still available. We'll wrap this up the way we wrap up all our episodes. Stay innovative. Stay thirsty. Enjoy the rest of the night, folks. Cheers. Hey folks, thank you for listening. That's a wrap on the 2026 Golden State Takeover tour. You know, I did all of my thank yous there at the end of the episode. So I'm going to wrap with a call to action. If you want to come to a live show like this one, if you want to attend one of our parties, you can always learn about the events that manufacturing happy hour has going on by going to manufacturinghappyhour.com/tour. With that, we are going to wrap things up. Thanks for listening to the episode. Thanks for coming out to the parties if you've made it to them. And I hope to see you on the road very soon. Cheers. Thanks for listening to Manufacturing Happy Hour, powered by the Industrial Network.