AI or Magical Bunny?

Madi

Right?

Natan

Because I had Covid.

Madi

Locked down, Natan.

Natan

It was very depressing. And I did most of my meetings remote and uh, yeah. What did you think?

Madi

Well, I've produced a few Hannover Messes and I've been to the fairgrounds for MO, uh, but not since 2019. So this is the first in-person Messe...

Natan

Yeah.

Madi

That I've been at. And I have like, a mix of thoughts, a mix of takes.

Natan

Yeah. But it definitely feels like a real Messe again. It feels alive.

Madi

Yeah, it definitely feels alive. There's a lot of excited people.

Natan

Yeah.

Madi

And really interesting things happening. They're just a little distributed, I'd say across the fair so far.

Natan

Also, no masks.

Madi

No masks, and weirdly no mentions of chat GPT, is that the best place to start?

Natan

Oh man. Oh, it's a weird thing where the entire technology world is talking about, including our industry.

Madi

Yes.

Natan

People have opinions on chat GPT. Yes. No. Maybe. When? Now. Later. But then you actually see what people are doing and it's kind of not here.

Madi

No, it's not only that there isn't a lot of mentions of chat GPT, but it's also pretty light on AI, which...

Natan

Yeah.

Madi

Over the last couple of years has felt like a major buzzword across Manufacturing.

Natan

Well, it's like more, it's more specific. Cuz I think we're just seeing maturity if we're like, you know, less ranty on everything chat GPT.

Madi

Mm-hmm.

Natan

Because like it's a testament to our industry being excited about it, but at the same time, kind of like not the fastest moving industry.

Madi

Yeah, I'd say we're early for sure.

Natan

We're, we're early, so yeah, I, I agree. So we're early and all those terms like AI or machine learning and this and that just became pretty well understood applications that work. For example, if you have contextualized data, you can do predictive maintenance and there's a bunch of solutions that will do that for you. So you don't need to say, Machine learning and AI. Yeah, you just say predictive maintenance.

Madi

Yeah. Solution first.

Natan

Nobody cares.

Madi

Yeah.

Natan

Nobody cares that it's AI or if it's a, you know, a bunny doing that just works. And you know, the other thing is, did you notice like that there's a lot less Industrial IoT, X, Y, Z, and digital twin ABC?

Madi

I cannot recall a single booth that I passed by today that said anything about Iot or IIoT.

Natan

Yeah.

Madi

Which is a shock.

Natan

Right, because it used to be that you would walk Hanover Messe floor and every booth would have that somewhere. And I think that's another one that people are like, yeah, we don't need to call it that. Because you just connect things.

Madi

Yeah. Connected is everywhere, everything's connected.

Natan

Everything's connected. It's like done. Yeah, we're done.

Madi

Nothing's IIoT. It's all just connected.

Natan

Yeah, because you don't need to, again, it's the same phenomena. You don't need to tag it with a special thing if it just works.

Madi

Yeah.

Natan

So. Which is exciting cuz like you see good maturity on the things we care about. Open protocols, tons of MQTT offering all over the place. Awesome.

Madi

Good conversations around protocols, connectivity, and I'd also say partnership. So when people say connected, they not only mean like connect a thing or system to system, but they mean system to system in joint solutions with separate companies providing additional value to customers.

Natan

Yes.

Madi

Which feels very basic, but is novel for some of these vendors, especially the big legacy vendors.

Natan

Yes.

Madi

That are all about partnership this year.

Natan

Absolutely. The thing you see, you know, in what we love to call the new factory stack for operations for Manufacturing, you just see it implemented and it's encouraging to see it not just from the usual suspects like you know, companies the size of SAP or AWS, Microsoft, where we have our offering, and you just see it even with like smaller companies that bring their partners, which is nice. And I think it's just people are solving problem for customers and acknowledging that the day that like one vendor does it all or just they're over too. So that's nice to see.

Madi

Yeah.

Natan

And uh, we see our friends.

Madi

Yeah. We can give a shout out to a lot of our friends.

Natan

Yeah.

Madi

Uh, some of them in the AWS pavilion with us, like, uh, HighByte.

Natan

Yeah, HighByte is doing awesome work.

Madi

Some well-known friends that we exhibited with last year, like Software Defined Automation and, uh, ZeroKey.

Natan

Yep.

Madi

And then some potential new friends that we are having great conversations with in the show.

Natan

Yeah, we saw Litmus. They have a very fancy booth.

Madi

Very impressive booth.

Natan

Yeah. We are jealous.

Madi

Really leaning into influencer marketing here in a way that's interesting and fun. So some cool marketing stuff there too.

Natan

Yeah. Kind of wondering about what's your take on it cuz they, it used to be that the software plays, they were kind of all over the place, but now they have this new digital hall thing. What is that all about?

Madi

The digital halls are super interesting. So it looks like, just based on how full Hall 16 is, like the intention was to have three halls for digital.

Natan

Mm-hmm.

Madi

And 16 didn't sell through. And I see a ton of companies, so I wonder if this like lean into partnership and co-exhibiting kind of scrunched the halls, but leveled up the amount of companies and quality of any one exhibit.

Natan

Yeah, I think you're right. But the other thing it did it just put it all together.

Madi

Yeah.

Natan

So like when you are walking around, you're seeing a lot of things that do different things but could connect together. So, you know, SDA can give you virtual PLCs and then like Litmus can grab the data from them and then Tulip can give you, you know, the process around it. And it's kind of fun to see that stack becomes... it's like walking inside our deck. It's like a physical version of our deck.

Madi

Yeah. It's this move away from like modules controlled by one vendor.

Natan

Right.

Madi

That has eaten a lot of companies to these independent, best-in-breed solutions.

Natan

Yeah.

Madi

That a customer manufacturer can choose and build their own...

Natan

Yeah.

Madi

Staff...

Natan

And something that fits their actual need, not solutions over feature set, I guess.

Madi

Totally. And it's like a value shift, right? A value from how do I maximize and kind of lock in customers to companies thinking, how do we maximize value for the customer.

Natan

Right.

Madi

Even if they don't choose to do that section of offering with us.

Natan

Yeah. And you know, very dear to my heart, we have a vision solution.

Madi

Yes.

Natan

And we're practicing what we were preaching.

Madi

Yes.

Natan

So it was like fun to see customers coming to see Inspekto today.

Madi

Yep.

Natan

At the mTEC.

Madi

Yep.

Natan

The mobile TEC, which is an awesome van with a lot of Tulip demos inside that was parked here today.

Madi

Yep. You can see your visual inspection tools on the go with our Hungarian van, but yeah, like you said, we, we have that vision solution and we're still showing like, well, this is what vision could look like with another...

Natan

Well, it's not only that, it's complimenting our solution and while some degree, you know, we're also doing quality inspections and all that kind of stuff, but the world of what customers need is so wide and so different, and it's just you can't solve everything, and that's where ecosystems will win time and again.

Madi

I wanna talk a little bit about demos though, since you had brought it up.

Natan

Oh my God.

Madi

The integrated demo.

Natan

Oh my gosh.

Madi

I feel like the demos are missing a little bit at Messe.

Natan

Oh yeah.

Madi

Like where are some of these demos? Can't even see a screenshot of a product in some of these booths.

Natan

So it's like if you're a big company, like there's the required robot doing like some interesting thing with a conveyor belt. So, okay.

Madi

Yes, robots are here. Check for sure.

Natan

Check. And then there is like some vision at the edge is here. Okay. We saw a lot of vision, demos, a camera doing this, did that. Okay. They're getting smart, connected, okay. That's, that's also done. But man, like how many flat screens with like PowerPoint can we survive? That's the real question today.

Madi

Yeah. There's like so many digital vendors and I, I want them to do better so that people respect digital demos more because walking through a hall that's like, beautiful, great cardboard setup with meeting calls and no view of the product is just not why someone would come to a physical show.

Natan

That's true and I think that it's also what customers want because operations people are, show me how it works. Don't, don't tell me stories.

Madi

Yeah.

Natan

Type of people. I don't know. That's maybe something we'll, we'll look for tomorrow.

Madi

Yeah.

Natan

And we'll find more, I think, uh, demos.

Madi

We'll, we'll send some people some, uh, MIT media lab-esque words of encouragement where it's demo, demo or die.

Natan

And, you know, we changed it to deploy or die. That's like the thing that happens after your demo. So...

Madi

Yeah. But hopefully we'll see more of those day two.

Natan

Oh yeah. Here we come day two.

Madi

After you said that Germany does hotdogs and sausages the best in the world. Do you remember this?

Natan

Yes, I do.

Madi

I made it a mission to go and have a hotdog stand hotdog for lunch the other day.

Natan

Mm-hmm.

Madi

So setting the scene, hotdog, pickles, bread crumbs, ketchup, no sourkrout.

Natan

Mm-hmm.

Madi

Um, and it was fine.

Natan

Fine.

Madi

But I will also say it was a fairground hotdog, so we'll see.

Natan

But in Germany.

Madi

Fairground hotdog in Germany.

Natan

Is it actually a fairground hotdog or a fairground sausage?

Madi

No, this one was a hotdog. It, it tasted like a dodger dog.

Natan

Because we need to get our baseline together. We got a lot of feedback on our benchmarks that we, we are mixing up benchmark and baselines and, uh, you know, I have to get it right.

Madi

It's fair. It's fair feedback.

Natan

Yes.

Madi

Well, speaking of the fair and fair foods...

Natan

And fair feedback.

Madi

And fair themes, I wanted to see how you felt about a Hannover Messe history lesson. In the context of the themes this year.

Natan

As you know, I love history. If we don't know our history, we can't build the groundbreaking companies. So.

Madi

This is fair, and Messe has had a very interesting recent history.

Natan

Mm-hmm.

Madi

So 2015 theme is integrated industry, join the network. Uh, what does this make you think of?

Natan

What year was that?

Madi

2015.

Natan

Wow. It makes me feel like Sun Microsystem in 2000 that said the network is the computer.

Madi

It does feel very like there's an internet.

Natan

Yeah.

Madi

Um, all about standards, universal standards was still in discussion. Yeah. Machine to machine.

Natan

M to m.

Madi

M to m.

Natan

That's like the great-grandfather of IoT.

Madi

And whether or not IT companies should participate in the fourth industrial revolution.

Natan

I guess they did.

Madi

They, they decided, yes, that was the answer.

Natan

The answer is we should.

Madi

2016 USA sponsored, so every year there's like a big country.

Natan

Yeah.

Madi

And Barack Obama and Angela Merkel opened the show.

Natan

That's amazing.

Madi

Major year for Americans coming to Hannover Messe and Chinese. Uh, 25% of attendees were from the US or China, which was big diversification. And that was all about industrial automation, R&D, and um, they started talking about environment a little bit.

Natan

That was 2016.

Madi

2016. Yeah.

Natan

I kind of think that was like our first Tulip Hannover Messe.

Madi

Okay.

Natan

And I think we were in the US Pavilion.

Madi

Oh, okay. That's a good entry point. It's a good year to start coming.

Natan

Yeah.

Madi

So you were, you were part of that American contingent.

Natan

Yeah, we got it. Booth we can afford. Thanks Obama.

Madi

There you go. 2017, the theme was adding value with Industry 4.0 and having robots that are as simple to operate as smartphones, machines that are self-learning and human-centric industry 4.0, which I think is like really important.

Natan

Yeah. None of that happened, not in 2017, at least.

Madi

Well, I, I feel like there's a little bit of of a trend where the themes almost earlier, they seem kind of predictive of industry trends two years later.

Natan

Yeah.

Madi

So let's see moving up closer if we feel like that's on the mark.

Natan

Yeah. I think in general, industrial operations technology, including automation, like that that has its own curve.

Madi

Mm-hmm.

Natan

That comes from like what customers need, you know?

Madi

Mm-hmm.

Natan

They need more connectivity to different types of machines. They're coming out with new protocols and if you don't implement them, like just doesn't work. You can't ship your product. But software space is just so lagging what we're used to in, you know, day-to-day work. I don't think that's really changed that much. You know.

Madi

Yeah. That, um, people have innovated faster than the tools could.

Natan

Yeah. Because they had to.

Madi

Yeah.

Natan

On one hand, and, and I guess it's because like outside of industrial X, Y, Z, there's just different forces that, uh, millions of developers just like push a million, uh, things to get up and open source and like changes technology so fast.

Madi

I think that's a good consumer release cycles kind of speed of people understanding software.

Natan

Yeah.

Madi

2018 standards, again, Industrial IoT. Your favorite.

Natan

Yeah.

Madi

And then IT teams and automation teams becoming software experts. So that's 2018

Natan

Renaissance.

Madi

Renaissance is New World.

Natan

Right there. Almost like the emergence of the PC, bringing software to the center, putting personal computer that's, that's like technology renaissance.

Madi

Yeah.

Natan

So that's a good thing. Yeah.

Madi

And I think that was kind of the wave. So 2019 was making digital transformation tangible. So let's like theoretical to practical. Yeah. And then, um, more AI, like so that moving into the theoretical robotics and 5G.

Natan

Yeah. We forgot the cloud, but I guess it's, we kind of talked about it, but the cloud is like, it's like a non-topic. I feel like it's like talking about last season's, uh, trend or something like that. You know, it's like what happens after fashion becomes like a necessary thing that you need to have?

Madi

Uniform.

Natan

It's uniform.

Madi

Yeah.

Natan

So you gotta have it.

Madi

Yeah.

Natan

It's like you're not, is it cool? Do I try it? It's not for me.

Madi

The cloud is just like, I don't know, khaki pants and polo shirts for our industry.

Natan

Right, from J Crew.

Madi

There you go.

Natan

Or from Zara. Cuz we're like, we're in Europe.

Madi

That's true. And I, I don't know if we're feeling like industrial little like maybe it's Dickies and Carhartt we're, there you go. We do have Carhartt hats. Big hit. Big hit.

Natan

Yeah. We love our Carhartt hats.

Madi

2020. 2021. Nothing.

Natan

It was Covid.

Madi

Covid.

Natan

We were home.

Madi

Covid pauses, everything. 2022. Sustainability and circular economy. And 2023. Before I tell you, based on what we've seen at the show, what do you think the major themes are? Pop quiz.

Natan

Oh my god. So, you know, I spend most of my time locked up in, uh, meeting rooms, and I would turn that at you, but if I have to, add one thing to the pile. It's uh, human-centric technology, software and, um, tools and the integration. Like you, you walk the, the floor and you see signs and signs. It's just that keep saying seamless integration. Seamless integration. I think human-centric, that would be the one theme.

Madi

You're right. Like all over the floor. The like pioneers, the people getting involved in industry.

Natan

Yeah.

Madi

Especially younger people. Joining industry is...

Natan

Can't wait for student day.

Madi

Yeah.

Natan

That's the most fun day.

Madi

Subtext: all over 10 years ago is when Messe introduced Industry 4.0 and started using that language and this year they started talking about industry 5.0 and how Industry 4.0 inspired young people to join Manufacturing. And now they're like, well, what's next? And I think there would be some debate on if the next of Industry 5.0 is a lean into human-centric or a lean into AI, or maybe it's both.

Natan

Well, before we go back to the rabbit hole of AI...

Madi

Rabbit hole.

Natan

Let's stay kind of grounded for a second. Like you drive in to the fair every morning and there's like this ginormous sign on the building in the north entrance that says something like, for the creators, for the techies. And that's like messaging I've never seen in our space. That's like Maker fair.

Madi

Mm-hmm.

Natan

That's like hackers. So it's kind of fun to see it. It's like putting the people who do the work and those are the engineers, front and center, sort of giving them the responsibility. It's not like your head of engineering operation CIO comes around and says like, that's what we're gonna implement, this, this, and that, and solve our problems. Like you just see people going around trying to solve problems and they kind of pick what works.

Madi

Less inspiring messaging, maybe like for the decision makers and the C-suite.

Natan

Yeah for the decision makers.

Madi

The executives.

Natan

Know your analytics.

Madi

Walk the floor.

Natan

Yeah.

Madi

I love what you're saying there. And I think the best example, um, that we got to see was, uh, Luis, who is a Tulip champion, but also like, just generally very cool engineer at Laerdal.

Natan

Yeah.

Madi

Uh, presenting at AWS.

Natan

Yep.

Madi

How he built, I think it was 60 different vision and kitting use cases across three facilities. Managing a team of 10 people now.

Natan

Yeah.

Madi

Like. Learning vision systems, even no-code vision systems, and then how to orchestrate across an organization that provides value. We should be celebrating the people who are doing that. And I think that connection to like, this is why people are joining industry was very smart of the Messe team.

Natan

Yeah. And I think there's lots of Luis's out there.

Madi

Mm-hmm.

Natan

You know, and they are kind of solving their own problems and getting their own information and I think they're putting pressure on vendors of all sorts of walks of life to open up. And we kind of touched on the ecosystem, you know, so it's, it's so powerful when it kind of emerges and, and it's like the genie is outta the bottle.

Madi

Yeah.

Natan

What are you gonna do? Like, uh, tell, oh, by the way we're go, we're gonna go back to the old ways.

Madi

And I like this idea of ecosystem as a connection to Manufacturing finally getting best-of-breed stacks.

Natan

Yeah.

Madi

Like no more walled garden.

Natan

On the AWS booth, uh, we were just staring at this and so, so there's like all these cool booths and demos and whatnot, and robots and race cars, the talk MQTT, all the things. We broke them. So, so it's great. But like you see this hoard of people staring at like, pretty, I don't know, generic slide.

Madi

Also, hoard is not an exaggeration, right? We could not get a photo of this.

Natan

We could not get photo. So many people, we'll try and get it and show what that means and, but when you think about it, it's like you're staring at a wall. There's like a nice print out, very beautiful slide. It's all icons and lines and things like that, and it's a reference architecture and they're like, wow. Only took us 20 years to get reference architectures like we had in the internet to operations and...

Madi

And on a wall. Right.

Natan

And on a wall.

Madi

It's not even like people are, oh, here's some slideware, but it's like this is up for print for people to contextualize. And the other thing I thought was interesting about the reference architecture is that there were a bunch of them across...

Natan

Yes. Different ones.

Madi

Across the facility and vendors fit in different places based off the use case and company type, which is exactly what you wanna see when you're thinking about stacks and functionality.

Natan

Yeah. And we would tell anybody who would listen to us that, uh, the factory stack is changing and then you see this stuff and they're not even like the big infrastructure players like AWS and Microsoft and Google, they're, they like, can, it seems like in a mindset that they're not even trying to push their stuff. They're trying to tell customers, hey, choose what's good for you.

Madi

Yes, customer first.

Natan

And, and then procurement patterns in the, in the architecture patterns that come classic from IT. They just emerge in operations and that's nice. No longer like get this big box piece of software and that will solve all your problems.

Madi

And I think it'll make everything higher quality cuz there's better competition and collaboration.

Natan

And, and faster.

Madi

Yeah.

Natan

And to a degree, like more experimental. So I can tell you an anecdote like that's actually from the floor.

Madi

Mm-hmm.

Natan

So, um, this year I saw for the first time, Snowflake at Hannover Messe.

Madi

Mm-hmm.

Natan

What are they doing there?

Madi

I don't know, but they're little teddy bear things that they had obsessed.

Natan

Yeah. So I was like, wha, what's going on? And of course there's like the generic stuff that they're talking about, you know, ETLs and...

Madi

Mm-hmm.

Natan

Data warehouses.

Madi

Mm-hmm.

Natan

And all the great stuff that they do. And obviously they're very good at that. It's great. Then, uh, of course there's a robot and some stuff.

Madi

Mm-hmm.

Natan

And charts. And I was like, what? What are you doing? And there are these people from, um, DXC. So that's the system integrator.

Madi

Mm-hmm.

Natan

XHP.

Madi

Okay.

Natan

And they're there in the booth. So you kind of see it in action. That they know operations.

Madi

Mm-hmm.

Natan

Snowflake's built streaming HTTP interfaces like they do in their internet cuz they need to move a lot of data anyway.

Madi

Yep.

Natan

And MQT becomes mature and now you can stream all your data directly to Snowflake.

Madi

Mm-hmm.

Natan

What does that do to the historian space?

Madi

Mm-hmm.

Natan

You know how I love buzzwords?

Madi

Yeah.

Natan

You know what I love more than buzzwords? Corporate speak.

Madi

Yes.

Natan

That's, that's even better. There's nothing better than corporate speak. That's convergence.

Madi

It's convergence.

Natan

It's convergence. I was like, wow.

Madi

You found some synergy there.

Natan

There's some synergy there. I'm like, if this is what's happening to Messe, the future is bright.

Madi

I think that's a great note for us to end on in this hotel lobby on site at Hannover Messe 2023.

Natan

Yeah.

Madi

All right.

Natan

All right.

Outro

Behind the Ops is brought to you by Tulip. Connect the people, machines, devices, and systems used in your production and logistics processes with our frontline operations platform. Visit Tulip.co to learn more. This show is produced by Gaby Elanbeck, and edited by Thom Obarksi. If you enjoyed listening, support the show by leaving us a quick rating or review. It really helps. If you have feedback for this or any of our other episodes, you can reach us at behindtheops@tulip.co.