E2: Nathan Brooks - Mercedes-Benz

Nathan Brooks is a Controls Engineer at Mercedes-Benz plant in Vance, AL.  Nathan describes his unique professional journey and the industry leading technology that Mercedes-Benz utilizes to maximize efficiency and productivity. 

Transcript

EPISODE 3

[INTRODUCTION]

[00:00:02] MH: You're listening to The Industrial Movement, where we discuss the people, the processes, and the equipment that drives American manufacturing. If this is your first time listening, well, thanks for coming. The Industrial Movement Podcast is produced every week for your enjoyment and the show notes can be found at our website at www.theindustrialmovement.com. 

Come back often and feel free to add this podcast to your favorite RSS feed, or iTunes. You can also follow the show on Twitter @theindustrialmovement, or on our Facebook page. All links to our social media can be found in the show notes, and also at the bottom of our website. Now, let's get on to the show. 

[INTERVIEW]

[00:00:42] MH: Today, we have Nathan Brooks with Mercedes-Benz joining us on The Industrial Movement. Nathan, thank you so much for joining us.

[00:00:50] NB: Thanks for having me.

[00:00:51] MH: Yeah. First of all, tell us a little bit about yourself and tell us a little bit about what you do at Mercedes-Benz and I think most people listening the podcast know exactly who Mercedes-Benz is. Tell us a little bit about what you do there, maybe a little history of the company here, it's in Florence? What town is it located in here?

[00:01:10] NB: It's in Vance, Alabama. The company is based in Stuttgart, Germany. I mean, we build the SUV here in Vance, Alabama for sale across the whole world, but nobody else builds it but us. It's here in Alabama.

[00:01:23] MH: Nice. Tell us a little bit about you, and how you got started? I know the story or kind of the story, but tell our listeners how you came to Mercedes.

[00:01:34] NB: I mean, I was working in Michigan when I was 20 years old or something. I was an electrician’s apprentice. It's actually an unconventional way to go through this whole thing. I didn't do a lot of schooling and things like that. I was just an electrician’s apprentice and I was stripping panels and rewiring old machines, Michigan industrial stuff for probably three or four years, till I was mostly just wiring machines and in debugging. I got a lot of exposure to actually seeing things, because this old equipment has all these relays and things on it that is basically the same concept now that we do in software, right? It's just, it's just physical, it's relays instead of software code, right? 

It's the same concept. I got a big advantage when I started doing controls. I actually saw it physically working where most people just see the software, they see the inputs and the outputs and all these things, the sensors come in. They didn't see the relays clacking and the giant machines, that I got some exposure to, so I really had an advantage working in industrial electrical, but I moved quickly to software, it's a lot better. I think, that was the future, so I ended up getting into automotive probably in 2000, I think 2004. 

[00:02:42] MH: Was that where you're still in Detroit?

[00:02:44] NB: I’m still in Detroit. Yeah. I'm moved from, I was an electrician. A little bit past apprentice, probably had five or six years into that and then we started just building – I was working for an engineering company that commissioned lines for big three. I went all over the country and commissioned new lines. Because they build, a new line has a lifecycle like four years or five years.

[00:03:05] MH: When you say line, you're talking about the manufacturing assembly line.

[00:03:08] NB: For bodies mostly, body shop. Body and white, they call it

[00:03:13] MH: You went across the country and help your company sold them, install them, service them. 

[00:03:19] NB: Serve like a tier two, tier three. There's like a, somebody the supplier that builds the lines like Canal, and like, you've probably heard of them and Cuca and companies like that, EBZ I guess, and then they they'll hire engineers to do the software part. I worked for the company that they hired, but they would, we would have to do that about every four years. We would we would install one, move to the next one and probably about the third or fourth install, because it takes about a year for each one, we’ll be going back to the first one and rebuild because they strip all this stuff out and sell it and build a new line.

[00:03:54] MH: They build a new line, because they're changing the, whatever they're building there or the process?

[00:03:59] NB: They change the style of the car – model your change, yeah. That would change every year and a half or something, but they don't have to re-do the whole line anymore.

[00:04:06] MH: Do you think they make the lines now to where they know going into it, they're going to change it, so they make interchangeable pieces or?

[00:04:14] NB: It's exactly right. Tool changers and things like that is way, way more flexible now. They have multiple life cycles usually on one assembly line, right? So it's a, yeah, tool changers are big thing, the robot used to have a big defector, or whatever they would have – it was just wasn’t cost effective to re-kit the whole thing. They would re-kit every once in a while when a style changes a little bit or when it changes dramatically it's just stripped the whole thing out.

[00:04:38] MH: God, that's got to be millions and millions of dollars.

[00:04:41] G:  I think, I remember right when we went to River Rouge plant, they said that, and that was massive. I don't know how big your facility is, but they said every time they change the model they would take everything out and re-do it. 

[00:04:51] NB: Yeah.

[00:04:52] MH: Yeah. That's an old plant, Rouge. Ford stuff.

[00:04:56] NB: We sell – Yes. I haven’t been to that plant, but they just, don't how they, I mean, our plant we just migrate from different areas of the plant just been through, I think, two or three life cycles. We had one place, we move it over next door basically and then they strip all the stuff out and sell it for cost, they sell for nothing these robots that are so expensive. You can see them popping up on different auction sites for five grand or something. 

[00:05:24] MH: No, shit. Okay. So electrician’s apprentice, you saw the old school way of doing things which I love. Yeah. You're talking my language, right? Ice cube relays, timers, contactors, overloads, just –

[00:05:38] NB: Walls and relays.

[00:05:39] MH: Yeah, yeah, yeah. You’re talking about context and magnetic coils that normally open, normally closed. Multiple sets of context. You can hear him click, click, click, click, click, click, and –

[00:05:49] NB: Especially that's electricians know exactly which ones to the ones that on site know exactly, which ones to stab in order to get the thing running again when something fails. 

[00:05:57] MH: Exactly. 

[00:05:58] NB: There's literally thousands of,  I don't know how –

[00:06:00] MH: I remember watching maintenance. A good technicians, troubleshoot those relays. One of the most effective ways to troubleshoot is take the back end of the screwdriver and start tapping them, because even with a weak coil, will start the chatter when you tap. 

[00:06:14] NB: Or they get stuck –

[00:06:15] MH: Or they get stuck, yeah. 

[00:06:16] NB: You just whack it with the other side of a screwdriver, and we're good to go.

[00:06:23] MH: Here's the bill. 

[00:06:23] NB: Exactly. 

[00:06:25] MH: Then you move down to software, almost started going around setting up these different lines for different manufacturing companies. How did that bring you to Mercedes?

[00:06:33] NB: Well, first of all, software is different I think, when I was doing, they call it ET, Electrical Technician. That's what Kamal called it. But it’s a controls engineering job and we do software, mostly just manage the installation of the line. So like, when we're doing the commissioning part, all the pipe fitters and machinists and everybody that's involved, would basically go through to ET, because they're the ones commissioning the tools. It's a lot of management. 

I did Mercedes, a couple of times. Actually ended up, we ended up doing on-site support for a long time with Mercedes, because they just want to technical support stay all the time. They still do it, actually. I was actually responsible for those guys for probably five or six years, the same team like I joined Mercedes, and then I just, I was over that team.

[00:07:18] MH: The team, you were formally on? 

[00:07:20] NB: Yeah. Which, of course, there’s always complications there. 

[00:07:22] MH: How long have you been in Mercedes?

[00:07:23] NB: About 10 years now, actually in January. 

[00:07:25] MH: No, shit. 10 years, that flew by.

[00:07:29] NB: Yeah, I know. It’s crazy. That was a good job, though. They give me all kinds of tasks I can do. We will be creative and create all these really great solutions and there are a lot of flexibility, a lot of technology, so we can [inaudible 00:07:40]

[00:07:41] MH: Tell us about your role you currently have? What do you actually do day to day for Mercedes?

[00:07:47] NB: Well, right now, I'm responsible for the controls room. I just installed that as part of the project. I was able to design one, because we have this new really complex system, right? It's two lines, two complete manufacturing lines, double of everything, right. We run the same build stack down two lines, and has come out in the same order and we have put it back together, because they have this new just in time thing. We have the build stack. It's a little tricky, but our idea was to have two of everything so that we can just keep scaling that way, right? We can keep adding new lines. It added a huge level of complexity, though, for us. We had to install this big control room. We spend a lot of time and effort, because it's double. Double of everything. 

[00:08:26] MH: Yeah. 

[00:08:27] NB: That’s my responsibility now is to, I supervise the control room operators. I build all the solutions for the control room, right? We try to use whatever we can. I mean, this stuff is so specific, so proprietary, that it's really difficult to just drop in somebody else's solution and have it work as our SCADA, right? We had, so we just developed our own.

[00:08:47] MH: I was going to say, yeah. You have to develop all your own solutions in time. That's interesting, because that's been going on for manufacturing since the dawn of the Industrial movement, industrial revolution. You hear it all the time. Ford Motor Company, they created their own machining departments, because they had to fix their own machines or invent their own machines to do different processes and test for them, and you would have spin off companies of them producing these machines for other manufacturers. 

[00:09:16] NB: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. [inaudible 00:09:16] and stuff like that. Yeah. 

[00:09:18] MH: It's crazy. It's crazy. 

[00:09:20] NB: Yeah. Because it's just so fast, they turnaround on building new models, it’s so fast and they stay really high on the technology side of it, so they always install new high tech equipment. Then they have to create new solutions and they don't exist yet, right? It's a lot of opportunities. 

[00:09:34] MH: Do you think that Mercedes-Benz is really as far as manufacturers go on the forefront of the technology?

[00:09:41] NB: I think they always strive to be, that's absolutely right. I mean, they've always had been right. They invented the internal combustion engine, right? That was the Mercedes, a lot of about misconceptions, about who did that. They thought they're like, lot of people say it was Ford. Actually I think that's reducing what Ford did, be honest with you. He didn't just affect one industry. That guy affected all industries with the assembly line concept, right. Daimler affected or changed the industry for automotive by introducing or they created it, right? They built internal combustion engine for the car and then they built like airbags is from Daimler and valves on multi-valve piston motors, that that's from Daimler. They're always on the forefront.

[00:10:23] MH: That's interesting. Yeah. Daimler has an incredible history and then obviously, they came together. Is that what it was?

[00:10:30] NB: Daimler and Mercedes? 

[00:10:31] MH: Yeah. Do you know the history there? 

[00:10:33] NB: I don't really know the history there. I know, there's a lot of conflict every time I go to Germany, there’s Daimler people, and there's Mercedes people.

[00:10:39] MH: Really? 

[00:10:40] NB: It's really interesting, because they're very committed to their side of that fence. I'm not sure. 

[00:10:45] MH: Is there different cultures in each segment of the company? 

[00:10:48] NB: I think so, but I don't really know a lot about that part of it. I just know what they say on, I'm a Mercedes guy. Some people only call it Mercedes. Some other people only call it Daimler. I don't know what that's about.

[00:10:59] G: So in your, like when your day to day, do you work more on improving the current systems that are going on? Are you already planning for the next thing?

[00:11:06] NB: Well, actually, right now, it depends on that situation, whatever's hottest. Right now we're trying to, we're working for the new Evie, the new electric car, right? There's a lot of new technology going in, it's about the transition. I'm finishing up a project. I'm still building control solutions for our control room operators, but we're about to transition to a whole new product and we're about to go all electric. Mercedes is supposed to be electric by, or Daimler, I don't know which one makes the most sense. We're going to be all electric by 2030. Which is interesting, because Daimler Mercedes, they invented the internal combustion engine and they're going to be one of the first out of that market, they're going to know more in 2030. 

[00:11:46] MH: Technology –

[00:11:47] G: Everybody's making electric cars now. I think, that's the future.

[00:11:50] NB: But no more internal combustion. I'm not sure about that. I'm really interested to see how that goes. But no more internal combustion and –

[00:11:57] MH: They're not the only manufacturers made that commitment. I've heard commitments from other manufacturers, too. I don't think 2030, that's pretty aggressive.

[00:12:05] NB: 10 years. 

[00:12:06] MH: That's crazy. 

[00:12:07] NB: We'll see how it goes. That's their objective right now. They're not doing any more research, R&D on internal combustion. We have no plans for a new model, which they always planned five or six years out for a new model for internal combustion motors.

 [00:12:22] G: Well I mean, you may not even be able to talk about this, but a lot of them are coming up with the options of the solar power. Is that going to be an option? 

[00:12:28] NB: Well, this is, I mean, actually, I don't know whether or not I can talk about that. But I don't know anything about it. 

[00:12:33] G: I got you.

[00:12:33] NB: I spend my time with body shop.

[00:12:36] G: Fair enough.

[00:12:37] MH: What are some of the challenges you face? Well, let me ask you this. What would your title be? 

[00:12:42] NB: Controls Engineer. 

[00:12:43] MH: Controls Engineer. As a Controls Engineer inside an automotive manufacturing facility, what are some of the day to day challenges that you face? How do you overcome those?

[00:12:53] NB: That's an interesting question. There's a lot of challenges. First of all, I guess, probably the biggest challenge that I had on this last project was, okay, so normally, when a machine fails, there's a fault or something, right? There's a fault that's generated turns red, and it tells somebody to come and fix it. Well, those usually are throughput impacts. They stopped the line from running. In our case, it’s not necessarily that way. We have a lot of faults that don't stop the line. A lot of things stopped the line, that don't have faults, right? It's really confusing, especially we start scaling to these, all these equipment, thousands of robots, to find where the problem is, where the actual problem is. When it's failed and it's not moving forward. 

So my latest challenge was to deal with that, because I have the control room operators and I don't know how they're going to escalate without knowing there's a problem. What we did was, we added this big fleet of PTZ cameras and we created a full stack application that monitors the whole plant, all the faults for the plant. We're using, we're doing big data now it's a big thing. All the data goes into one location, right? We're using that to graphically show where in the plant we have a failure, right? Then they click on it with this new application that we developed and it pivots all the cameras that are relevant to that location and zooms in, and then it's our control room will validate that that's a problem or not a problem. Then with the hotkey, they hit the button and it sends a text message or they call it on the radio or whatever. 

That approach or that problem, it also created new problems, like our way on in front of these, like in three seconds we can see a problem, literally three seconds, that's the time. The failure happens in three seconds. We're looking at it close up, right. That's way in front of when everybody is, like they're on their way to the problem. We can't see anybody around, but it just happened. We're in front of the technology there for another system, and we send them a text message and they get irritated, because it's like I was on my way there. So we're evolving to try to accommodate the system we developed and we have to change your staffing and things like that. Those kinds of problems happen pretty typically, like these or the technology changes or the requirement changes, it becomes more complex. We have to create a solution to facilitate or accommodate that. 

[00:15:07] MH: That's awesome. 

[00:15:08] G: Yeah, I mean, along those lines, I mean, what do you do as far as training or with the constant technology upgrades and stuff to keep up with that stuff?

[00:15:15] NB: Yeah. Training is an interesting one. We do a lot of training. I'm not confident training as, we spent a lot of time training, but we can also we do these things on the fly, we learn as we go. I guess, we have to take certain training classes, but training is a tricky one, though man, it really is. Because we spend so much money on it and people generally just learn better as they're doing things. I'm more of an autodidact personally, that's what I the way I solve things. 

[00:15:41] G: [inaudible 00:15:41]. 

[00:15:43] NB: Yeah, there's no doubt. 

[00:15:44] NB: I learned on the job. I guess the problem is, actually, with the training, I don't know, I would suggest a lot things like Udemy. But I just don't do a lot of it. I actually do have my guys do a lot of training. I scheduled training for them for software to try to improve in areas where they struggle, especially control operators and entry level positions. I have them doing things like software training to try to get better with the computers and stuff like that. Mostly, their responsibility is to watch for faults and know how to route it and maybe route product a little bit differently. So it's really difficult to find specific training solutions for them. I just try to fill gaps in their skill levels.

[00:16:22] MH: More generalized type training.

[00:16:25] NB: Yeah.

[00:16:25] G: You guys are probably developing most of your own software or whatever. 

[00:16:29] NB: Yeah, so the whole problem solving process, we're developing the training classes, basically as we go, that's the part of the process. When we're done, which training is that's the problem with problem solving, it's an experience in general, right? It's a collection of what not to do, what doesn't work. If that's the majority of –

[00:16:47] MH: It’s trial and error. 

[00:16:48] NB: It's like, all these things don't work, right? But this did. So that's my, that's experience, but most of it is just what didn't work. The problem is innovators and people creating solutions, they're solving all those reasons that didn't work. So we all get trained up. Then there's some co-op comes in and they try it a different way and like, “No, I tried it.” It didn't work for me, but it worked for them, because someone solved that problem. It's, already obsolete.

[00:17:13] MH: I love it. Everybody knows the famous Thomas Edison story. One reporter approached him and said, “Okay, you created a light bulb, but you failed 2000 times.” His statement was something along the lines of “No, no, I figured out 2000 ways of how not to make a light bulb, before I figured out the one way to create the incandescent light bulb.” 

[00:17:34] NB: The majority of his experiences is, what didn't work.

[00:17:37] MH: Failure. 

[00:17:38] G: Yeah. Failure than you do success, right? 

[00:17:40] MH: The fact is, if you think about it, what do you really learn during success? Or do you grow during success? If everything's going right in your life, or job or whatever, you're just rolling along. Are you growing or learning anything? No, you really only learn from when you fuck it up, right?

[00:17:57] NB: Well, you learn one right way to do it. I mean, but you learn a whole lot of wrong ways to do it, as you're like working through the process of figuring it out. Training is giving you the right way, to do it. That has value, I'm not I'm not suggesting it doesn't have value. It’s giving you the right way and gives you a place to start. It's hard to know when to stop taking things for granted and look at other options for a way to solve a problem, because maybe they've solved all these different reasons, it doesn't work. That's the way it works every day. I have to know when to turn off the experience, turn off the training and say, “How would I solve this if I didn't know anything?”

[00:18:32] MH: Interesting. I that like that –

[00:18:33] G: I look at it.

[00:18:35] NB: Yeah. It's hard to do. It's really hard to find that point. 

[00:18:39] MH: Is my turn? 

[00:18:40] G: I don’t know.

[00:18:42] NB: Sorry. Go ahead.

[00:18:42] MH: No, you're doing great. Yeah, this is a good one. What advice would you give to other manufacturing managers or leaders? This podcast is for the people, the processes and the equipment that drives American manufacturing, right? That's what the, so what we like to do is we'd like to, when we interview everybody is trying to pull out any advice that you could pass along or anything you'd to share with other manufacturing managers out there.

[00:19:10] NB: I think that's a really good question. I think, I have something an answer for that. The big thing that I think people shouldn't take for granted is, big data and how they're, like establishing that foundation for big data right now, because even if you don't have a solution for it, most people don't. They just, like we didn't. We created our foundation, right? We just make sure, there's a roadmap for this, right? We just made sure everything was going to our data link. How we're going to use that, that's secondary. But right now, if people get fall too far behind with big data, they're going to really be struggling to catch up, because in five or 10 years it's going to all be predicted. They're going to really be struggling to catch up with people that are able to predict problems really easily and really quickly, because they were in front. 

They have all the data in one place and they follow the roadmap. Now they can use it, they can now just apply in AI, build a model, build some predictive analytics into it. Then it just tells them when something's going to fail, right? Put your build model into your production schedule your strategy into the AI model. Then it tells you, this is going to fail in this amount of time based on the way you're building. That is not far off, I really isn't going to be very easy to predict shortly. Even if you don't have a solution for it, I think, building that foundation as you're putting in new equipment is important. 

[00:20:28] MH: That is great advice. It's all about collecting the data right now. That's all you got to do, like you said, “We'll worry about putting it to work and use it late down the road.”

[00:20:37] NB: There's a roadmap for it. It's not, they use this technology called MQTT, they move this stuff to a data link. There's a roadmap. I think people should get comfortable with that roadmap and say, “Okay, I don't know how we're going to use this.” But everything when I talk to a supplier and put a new technology, do you have some way that I can send data to use an MQTT to a data link? If you don't, then I need you to make sure you do. Almost every supplier has it. I mean, we have over 90% of our technologies, even old technologies, provided some MQTT interface. 

[00:21:09] MH: Wow.

[00:21:10] G: Where do you see yourself in 10 years from now?

[00:21:13] NB: I guess, wherever the problems are, that's my whole thing. I always want to follow the problems. If there's a problem, I want to be there to solve it, because that's for me, I'm not a screwdriver, I'm that guy is going to be turning a lot of screwdrivers. I'm the guy that's going to be solving problems that don't already have answers. That's where my niches.

[00:21:30] MH: Is there a reason you think you troubleshooting? How does it make you feel?

[00:21:35] NB: Well, exactly like I said, I really enjoy solving a problem. I've made sure of it. My big thing is, I don't feel in probably 15 or 20 years, most were automating everything, everything is being automated. We're adding AI now. So the only, you got to figure out what has value, like down the road, because most jobs are going to be gone. Troubleshooting and things like that, that's not going anywhere, that's always going to be a job that has value. 

[00:21:59] MH: Create a problem solving in general. That's always going to have value. 

[00:22:03] G: Agreed. 

[00:22:03] NB: I just, I really, I try to make sure I enjoy it. Even when it's difficult, I make sure we find ways to enjoy it.

[00:22:09] MH: We've talked about technology and AI and some different things coming up. Let's talk about the processes and maybe you could share, maybe you can’t of how you guys are using technology. Well, we've already heard a lot of that, but are you guys using AI yet in your processes?

[00:22:25] NB: Yeah. We developed our own. Actually, I have a, well, my group, our small group is, but that's what I'm saying the initiative for the Daimler in general is to move the data and get the data the foundation set, but we pull the head a little bit and we're doing some predictive. We're not doing the really advanced predictive models that are going to come. We're creating these profiles from these fault patterns for like robot may have a fault that happens consistently. That robot, it generates a pattern, a time between failures, right? Or mean time to repair or time to repair it, right? So we’re collecting these profiles on the fly, we're kicking out outliers and we're storing and when there's a countermeasure or something's failed, we're taking this, all these KPIs, we pick this time window, and we move it to a database. 

Then when we have a new fault, we start comparing it to the faults that have countermeasures, and start reducing the outliers for those datasets until we get a percent match. So we’ll say, it’s 80% of time that was that problem was a power failure or stunt failure or whatever. We just return some percent matches as a result so we can schedule work a little bit in advance. This is, I call it assisted machine learning. We help it. Right now, that's where we're at. 

[00:23:39] MH: It’s version 1.0. 

[00:23:40] NB: Yeah. Right. Eventually, the machines will be doing that and they are other places. But, yeah. It's got to start somewhere.

[00:23:46] NB: Where they have the machine learning and it's triggered from countermeasures that happen, and stores the profiles, but for us, we just have to massage the profile little bit. Okay, our window is not actually this big, it's a little smaller than that, this is when it started to fail. This would look like, we could see these patterns. That's the beginning. It's the beginning, but it's coming, it's coming really fast. 

[00:24:06] MH: It's going to keep faster and faster. 

[00:24:08] NB: It'll get better as they go. As they're building new profiles as they're collecting more data, it’s just going to eventually you'll be able to predict easily and within 24 hours when something's going to fail and then schedule and schedule the work when it's convenient.

[00:24:21] G: I mean, your facility now, are you guys doing mostly assembly? Are you doing manufacturing? Are you doing both?

[00:24:27] NB: Well, we have assembly and manufacturing. We have two different facilities. We build a three, we have a paint facility also, but we manufacture the car, put the car together, and weld everything together. We send up, we call a body and white. It's just a body with no paint, with doors and everything and a roof and we send it to paint. They do some crazy stuff. They dunk it in these big vats. It's really cool actually. They sometimes, they forget these hooks and the doors stay open and it turns into a big mess and these vats crazy. 

They put these hooks on the finish line that holds the doors closed and there's a while back when we first started that they kept forgetting to put these little hooks on. It’s like, when they dunked it, it just got. Anyway, there's always a problems like that. These are what do they call opportunities, right? 

[00:25:09] MH: There you go. 

[00:25:09] NB: Yeah. We do manufacturing and we do this assembly. Assembly, is where there's thousands of people in our body shop. There's hundreds of people, I guess, mostly automation. 

[00:25:18] MH: How many cars do you guys manufacture each day? 

[00:25:21] NB: I can’t. 

[00:25:22] MH: You can’t. Yeah, that's fine. 

[00:25:23] NB: I mean, there's just there's some things that we were not supposed to talk about that. 

[00:25:26] MH: No, that is not a problem. Okay, let's move on to a quick –

[00:25:32] G: I got a question. This sounds [inaudible 00:25:33]. I just want to know if there’s a publicized race to the flying car maker.

[00:25:43] MH: Is Mercedes involved in the flying car?

[00:25:45] G: It’s your first one.

[00:25:47] NB: I actually like to know that answer to that too, to be honest with you. I mean, that's got to be in the future at some point.

[00:25:53] MH: The problem is –

[00:25:54] G: It's so expensive. 

[00:25:55] MH: It's almost like solar. Solar is a great concept, but there has no breakthrough in the technology to make it efficient. It's the same thing with the concept of a flying car. The problem is the fuel. The fuel is the issue. You have to have so much thrust overcome gravity plus the weight you're carrying, and there's no way to store all that fuel and batteries. Batteries would be gone like that.

[00:26:20] NB: Tesla's actually working on that. You probably have to edit this out. Tesla is actually working –

[00:26:25] MH: Elon and I are good friends. He's totally okay with sharing. 

[00:26:28] NB: I love this guy. But Tesla is actually, he's on top of that. He knows exactly what the thrust to battery power ratio is. He was explaining that recently. He was like, it's not quite there yet, but more recently he said he's about to create his first airplane, I guess, but the thrust to battery capacity. He has a very specific target for that to make sense. So he has something right now. I don't know how good it's going to be. I'm interested to see though.

[00:26:52] MH: Yeah. That's just it, right? It's all about how can you create more power with less weight, that's what it is. I mean, there's been all kinds of –

[00:27:01] G: Concepts effective –

[00:27:02] MH: Yeah, there's been all kinds of great concepts of like best fuel would be hydrogen. We all know, we all know, how that is. The Second best is a helium assisted. The helium is at such a great, there's such a short supply of helium right now that it's an issue. So people are so scared of hydrogen, they're not even interested.

[00:27:23] NB: I don't understand why, I think the technology is not quite there yet. 

[00:27:26] MH: Everyone keeps seeking the Hindenburg and it's –

[00:27:29] G: That’s very volatile. 

[00:27:30] MH: Yeah. It is very volatile and so as gasoline –

[00:27:35] NB: Hydrogen is the most abundant resource in the universe, right?

[00:27:39] MH: It is. I mean, water is h2O, right? The air that we breathe, it has a lot of hydrogen in it naturally. 

[00:27:46] G: Hydrogen. 

[00:27:46] MH: It has 78% nitrogen, 24% oxygen, and the rest is inert gases. But even that small percentage, you can pull the hydrogen out of the air, it'd be incredible.

[00:27:57] NB: I've heard that it's the process of separating the hydrogen is that's not quite there yet. Takes more energy to separate to hydrogen properly, so it doesn't compete well with electric right now, but eventually, it should. That's the technology they hopefully they advanced at. 

[00:28:12] MH: And they use electricity to separate the hydrogen. 

[00:28:15] NB: Yeah. I'm not sure about technology. 

[00:28:16] MH: Yeah. It's kind of, you're using the electricity. Why don't you just use the electricity for that? Anyway, it's complicated. 

[00:28:23] NB: One of these days, they're going to have the hydrogen powered cars. The hydrogen fuel cell, it’s what they call it.

[00:28:27] MH: It's incredible. Well, if they could make it safe enough to sell it to the public, that's what it is. I mean, let's be honest, batteries can explode when that happens. It's going to be bad. When they short out and people start getting fried in their cars, it's going to be bad.

[00:28:40] G: There’s been a few Teslas on fire and fuming – 

[00:28:43] MH: Yeah. But I mean, how many –

[00:28:43] NB: Early on, I remember what those means.

[00:28:45] MH: How many car-beques do you see –

[00:28:47] NB: All the time. All the time.

[00:28:51] MH: Those were electrical.

[00:28:52] G: Car-beque. 

[00:28:56] NB: I see those in the plant, actually.

[00:28:58] MH: That's nice. We can’t talk about that.

[00:29:03] NB: It’s the little sealer that they put on when they go and finish the launch, they end up catching fire, because we had to squeeze out or whatever from well slag and stuff like. We always flag those battles.

[00:29:13] MH: Interesting. Okay, let's move on to equipment. That's the third section. We talked about the people. We talked about the processes. Let's talk about some of the equipment that you use. Is there anything in it already sounds there is. Is there anything cool and unique that Mercedes-Benz is using as far as equipment that most companies don't?

[00:29:30] NB: Well, I mean, it's a lot of stuff I probably shouldn't talk about, but I'm pretty sure I can talk about AGVs and things like that. I think this latest project we did was changed the way we do, shops or assembly lines. Usually we would transfer cars or product between lines on conveyors, right? We have buffers in between. Now we're using these little AGVs automated guided vehicles that –

[00:29:52] G: Well that’s actually cool. 

[00:29:53] NB: Yeah. It's pretty cool. We just walk right through them. They have all this, all this technology attached to them that they just there's big aisles. The interesting part about that is we used to be restricted about how we design these plants, right? We have to design the engine compartment near the rear floor, near the main floor. All the there's a specific layout that you just had to follow. Well, you don't follow it anymore, because it doesn't matter, you can put all your rear floors in one place and on the other side of the plan, you can put all your engine comps, where you can have a different plants, it's just a matter of adding AGVs more AGVs and backfill in those spots. 

So a lot of flexible, we haven't used that flexibility yet. We still lay the plan out exactly how we used too, but it's going to change. That thing is going to change, they're going to just, I mean, it doesn't matter. I mean, sky's the limit, you can have like I said a whole shop just for engine compartments.

[00:30:41] G: So that mean, as those AGVs do those make it easier when there is a model change or change out there on everything you can just –

[00:30:48] NB: Yeah. That's what we just did. Yeah. We just did that. That’s exactly right. We installed another plant, another zone one, right? Actually, that's exactly the purpose of a – across the other side of the plant. Now we just commute these parts into the zone two in to our new plant. It used to be we had to build all kinds of conveyors and things to attach that. Now we just have a bunch of AGVs programming new route.

[00:31:10] MH: Wow, that's incredible. Do the AGVs and this is getting specific. I've seen some that have to follow a track painted on the floor with some magnets in there, something then others are just completely self-driving. You program the path in and it sticks to that and it has different types of lasers and different – sensors it's using to stop when somebody walks in or something changes, it can recognize it. Do you know how they work?

[00:31:39] NB: Well, I'm not a guy inside my control room, there's couple of guys that are responsible for that. I'm not over that technology, but I do know some of how it works. They have some software that runs holding. They do actually do run on these magnet grid, but they run completely. The magnet gets them back on track. If they start to get off track, they use the magnets to get back on track. So basically it's wide open inside the magnet grid and they can just commute through. We just set the routes up and then if it loses signal or whatever that uses the magnets. But they have sensors and everything like PLS or these lasers that they use to detect presence. So far has been completely safe. When you walk in front of these things and they stop and then they pick right back up and go so when you when you get out of the way.

[00:32:22] MH: They played a nice little musical chimes as they move. 

[00:32:25] NB: No. We don't have any of that stuff. 

[00:32:27] MH: Yeah. The Japanese use that. 

[00:32:28] G: That's the Japanese thing.

[00:32:29] NB: Maybe a lot of chimes because we have literally hundreds of them. 

[00:32:32] G: We can play like polka music or something.

[00:32:35] NB: Yeah. 

[00:32:36] MH: I've been interested to –

[00:32:38] G: O like polka music.

[00:32:40] MH: Some German polka music. It’s Oktoberfest. 

[00:32:44] G: We drink beer –

[00:32:46] MH: Absolutely. Okay. 

[00:32:51] NB:  They do a little –

[00:32:49] MH: I like some sausages.

[00:32:50] NB: They used to do it in Germany in the plant. They had a vending machine, I guess.

[00:32:53] MH: Really? Well, how many times have you been to Germany?

[00:32:57] NB: About five or six times. I guess we haven't really done a lot of traveling lately because their making all that. But I've been there quite a lot actually with it's a pretty good relationship with Germany, the fly us over there often.

[00:33:10] G: Maybe you said this earlier what city are they in, in Germany?

[00:33:12] NB: Stuttgart.

[00:33:13] G: Stuttgart.

[00:33:13] NB: Stuttgart is the main, we actually got a single thing in Stuttgart, Bremen, they have a lot of plants in Germany. 

[00:33:19] G: Yeah. Germany, is so bad. I can't stand it. 

[00:33:22] NB: Oh, yeah. I went for Oktoberfest, it was great. Not Oktoberfest –

[00:33:25] G: I’d probably drink so much beer I’d die. 

[00:33:29] MH: I still go. Still doing it.

[00:33:30] NB: It's very deceiving. They give you those big huge. I don't know why it is those – 

[00:33:33] G: I’ve [inaudible 00:33:33].

[00:33:34] NB: Oh, yeah. They go down way smoother in Germany for some reason.

[00:33:37] G: I bet they do.

[00:33:38] NB: I had six or seven of those big pints last time as my boss was helping me back to the, I don’t know that project – 

[00:33:45] MH: No, let’s not talk about that now.

[00:33:51] NB: We don’t normally talk about that. 

[00:33:54] MH: I have an NDA. I can't talk about when we get hammered –

[00:33:57] NB: I'll tell you one thing. They really do enjoy having a good time over there. They're all business at work, but they enjoy having a good time.

[00:34:02] G: That's awesome. 

[00:34:03] MH: Our industry is their biggest show is in Hanover. So it's only every two years, it was this year, of course they skipped it because of COVID. The next one won't be until –

[00:34:16] G: That’s 2023. 

[00:34:17] MH: Is it this year? Was it last year? 

[00:34:19] G: No, it was this year. 

[00:34:20] MH: It was this year. So 2023 would be our first opportunity and every time it comes up, we're early on, we didn't have the money to go, right? By the time we earned the money in the last five or six years, we have plenty of money to go. It's always something comes up. Oh well, we got this initiative. We really need to stay on track and get this done. Then we're like all right, 2021 we're fucking going and then COVID –

[00:34:43] G: Then you didn’t have it.

[00:34:45] MH: Well it’s virtual. – a virtual tradeshow.

[00:34:50] G: [inaudible 00:34:50]

[00:34:51] MH: I want to get your compressors online? 

[00:34:53] NB: I can do that anytime. 

[00:34:54] MH: Yeah. Great.

[00:34:57] NB: No, listen, I kept it going. I'll tell you one thing, when we're over there, everything. It really is a different culture. I think that it's worth going over there. Especially, I bought the same exact beer whenever I came to the US that I drank when I was in Germany, for whatever reason, it's just like better over there. I think, they don't put preservatives in it or something. So it doesn't.

[00:35:16] G: Do they serve at all warm?

[00:35:18] NB: It doesn't matter. It's all warm. But it tastes great. It's worth going. 

[00:35:22] G: Well, I think a lot of times with a lot of beers for refrigerating them or cooling them, actually, they lose flavor.

[00:35:28] MH: It's a fact. It's the same thing with wine. You have to serve at a certain temperature and then the flavor – yeah.

[00:35:35] NB: I don't really have these. I'm not sensitive to this stuff. Beer is beer to me. But it is better for me smoother and tastes better –

 [00:35:41] MH: It’s amazing, the more you drink, the more you can start –

[00:35:43] NB: The better it taste too. 

[00:35:45] MH: Here goes now. 

[00:35:48] NB: They can trick terrible.

[00:35:48] G: That’s I told them years ago, I went to this huge wine tasting. I loved every one of them, after the first three, they're all amazing. Great.

[00:35:58] MH: Very good. Okay, as far as equipment, if you could have one piece of equipment automatically approved in your budget for next year. What would that be?

[00:36:07] NB: That's tricky. I don't know. I think it would be something server based. It would be the use a lot of computers. I'm just not that interesting. Unfortunately, I'm not, I don't deal with a lot of equipment, normal equipment that probably you're familiar with or you're used to talking to people about. It's all software based stuff for me, I guess it would have to do with AI and predictive analytics and servers.

[00:36:30] MH: Listen, the listeners who don't know about that, don't use that, like you said, that's coming.

[00:36:35] NB: Yeah, it's coming. Whether you it or not, that's coming. I need to stay competitive. That's –

[00:36:39] G: Start learning it.

[00:36:40] NB: Yeah.

[00:36:40] MH: Innovate, innovate, innovate, you have to stay at the forefront. If you don't, somebody else will. It's all about making more for less. That's what technology does for us. If all manufacturers don't keep that in the forefront, they will go out of business eventually. If you don't believe me, look at a –

[00:36:58] G: Blockbuster. 

[00:37:00] MH: Well, that's not manufacturing. 

[00:37:01] G: That’s not manufacturing but –

[00:37:02] NB: But they didn't stay with the –

[00:37:03] G: Time pivot. They didn't adapt.

[00:37:05] MH: Yeah, that's exactly right. 

[00:37:06] NB: Yeah. I mean, I'm almost certain in five or 10 years, 95% efficiency in manufacturing lines is going to be just normal. Like they're going to be running at 95% of the time and if you're still running 80%, you're not competing.

[00:37:18] G: What about any kind like just diversity countries experienced, supply chain issues?

[00:37:23] NB: Right now we're having supply chain issues. Yeah, this is pretty common, but luckily for us, we're a high margin product for Daimler and Daimler is a big company. They have a lot of like, A Class, B class cars. They're really getting hit right now. Especially with the chip shortage that's a big problem. But we haven't really felt it in our area, like in SUVs, because they're making sure they route as many as they can to us. 

[00:37:46] MH: They're allocating the resources to the moneymakers.

[00:37:47] NB: Yeah. S class, and –

[00:37:49] G: Is the SUVs are a big seller now? 

[00:37:51] NB: S class, the S class is probably their biggest seller. Then this is what I understand from, I don't have too much into that part of it, but I do know that we have a high margin car with SUV and S classes. Those are the two that they keep running all the time.

[00:38:03] MH: Interesting. What do you know about manufacturing 4.0 or the smart factory? We've already talked a lot of the elements. What else do about that? How is Mercedes going to tap into that?

[00:38:14] NB: Well, that's the big data. That's the big data in the AI. That's a predictive analytics. I mean, it's, like I said, they have roadmap for that and that's top of everybody's list. Right now, when we start talking about anything new or making sure it integrates properly with industry 4.0 or, what are they calling it? Manufacturing 4.0. This is the cloud based revolution, I guess, what was the first one was steam or something? 

[00:38:36] G: Industrial Revolution was 3.0, 4.0 overhead. 

[00:38:39] NB: Yeah. It was 4.0.

[00:38:40] G: 4.0.

[00:38:41] NB: 3.0 was like the computers with PLC –

[00:38:44] MH: Correct, that’s correct. One was, steam, no one, I think, it had to do with steel or raw materials or something. 

[00:38:52] NB: Well it's basically when the manufacturing started. Probably this is all –

[00:38:55] MH: Two is electricity. I can't remember. 

[00:38:58] NB: Well, okay. So Henry Ford probably created the assembly line. That was probably the beginning. Then that was the assembly line concept. Then the lead when it became electric or whatever, there's electricity. I think they said steam. Somehow steam is relevant. 

[00:39:10] G: Yeah. Yeah, I think that is one. 

[00:39:13] NB: I mean, 4.0 is big data. 

[00:39:15] G: No, doubt, AI.

[00:39:17] NB: I guess, that there are a lot more to it, but the basis, the foundation of it is going to have, is going to be all the data on the cloud.

[00:39:22] MH: Yeah. All right, here it is. I had to google it. Industry 1.0 was late 18th century. It introduced mechanical production facilities to the world, water and steam. So you nailed it. Industry 2.0 is a beginning of the 20th century marked the start of the Second Industrial Revolution. The main contributor of this revolution was the development of machines running on electricity. 3.0 was brought about and spurred by the advances in electronics industry in the last few decades of the 20th century. 

[00:39:50] NB: This is PLC.

[00:39:51] MH: Yeah. The invention and manufacturing of variety of electronic devices, including transistor and integrated circuits, automation and machines substantially that, well, yeah. Then 4.0, the boom in the internet and telecommunications industry in the 90s revolutionized the way we connected and exchange information. It also resulted in paradigm changes in the manufacturing industry and traditional production operations merging the boundaries of physical and virtual world.

[00:40:17] G: Cyber Physical Systems, that's a term I hadn’t heard before. 

[00:40:20] MH: I've never heard of that term. 

[00:40:21] G: That's what they're calling it, is to share physical systems, CPSs

[00:40:25] MH: To share, analyze and guide intelligent actions for various processes in the industry to make the machines smarter.

[00:40:32] NB: Yeah, so the idea is to get the data in one place on the cloud, everything transmits data. Usually it's a MQTT. There's other ways to do it, I've actually done it different ways, but MQTT is really is the common way that everyone's doing it, you get it up to the cloud, and then people are going to use it in different ways. Also, there's a lot to do with these edge devices and the small computers that they have on the line that's transmitting data continuously. This is, I mean, that's another thing that we haven't really tapped into yet, but the big data is the beginning.

[00:40:59] MH: Very good. Do you have anything else you wanted to add or talk about?

[00:41:03] NB: I appreciate the opportunity to talk to you guys. This stuff is really interesting to me. I don’t know if –

[00:41:09] G: I think, a Iot of the people will find it very interesting too.

[00:41:12] NB: I hope so. I hope it helps. I like to see.

[00:41:14] G: That's the part of this, as you know, a lot of people don't realize what goes into manufacturing their product in this country. They have no clue, because they're not in that world.

[00:41:24] NB: Their consumers a lot of times.

[00:41:25] G: That's exactly right. 

[00:41:26] MH:  A lot of life situations. I'm a consumer also. I find this stuff interesting too. 

[00:41:30] G: With what we do, we get to see all kinds of different stuff every day. It's pretty cool.

[00:41:34] MH: Nathan, if our listeners want to get in touch with you, is there any way they can get in touch with you maybe email or?

[00:41:39] NB: Through, Morty Hodge. 

[00:41:41] MH: That theindustrialmovement.com. I’ll forward you Nathan's information. 

[00:41:47] NB: Yeah. You can also get a hold of me nathaniel.brooks@daimler.com. 

[00:41:51] MH: Very good. 

[00:41:51] NB: Actually, I’d like to –

[00:41:53] MH: No. You don’t give out that e-mail

[00:41:55] NB: I mean, [inaudible 00:41:55].

[00:41:57] G: Very bad.

[00:41:58] MH: Yeah. Fuck him. Want to get all the Nathan. Go fuck yourself. 

[00:42:03] NB: Talk to Morty Hodge.

[00:42:04] MH: Right.

[00:42:06] NB: No, I –

[00:42:06] G: You just call him on his cell number, that is –

[00:42:09] MH: No. Nathan, thank –

[00:42:11] NB: I know, I might help people out, I especially like having dialogue about this thing. It’s interesting, I don't like being sales pitches for people, and I have a – 

[00:42:18] MH: Yeah. I mean, no, no, this is not for sales pitches, or at least I hope it wouldn't be, right? It would be for other manufacturing managers to say, “Oh, my gosh, Nathan is talking about exactly what I want to learn more about, I want to tap into that.” Or I have a couple of questions. Maybe I'm having some issues. What he's talking about, he probably has already been through the same stuff. 

[00:42:35] NB: I love helping with this stuff, especially bouncing ideas off of people. 

[00:42:39] G: I think, that's the whole concept of this, we use to try and build a community of people who can help each other.

[00:42:45] NB: We've already seen it. 

[00:42:46] MH: We've already seen companies start to make connections with each other. Really, we haven't even published the podcast yet. There’s not even out there yet. It's not going to launch till January and we've already talked to people who know people and the one thing we've always heard is, “Yeah, I don't know anybody else maintenance manager. I don't really know any other maintenance managers, maybe one. I used to work with.”

[00:43:06] NB: Yeah, because we live in our silos. I mean, we all have –

[00:43:08] G: That’s exactly –

[00:43:09] MH: Yeah. It's like, “Dude, you got to talk to this guy, a total USA, he just fixed his hydraulic issue. I can't remember what he did, but here's his name, give them a call.” Dude calls them and fixed – He’s like, “You just revolutionize and fix my biggest pain point, with one phone conversation,” and we’re like, “Why isn't there a network or community for people to get together in the manufacturing sector to get to know each other and bounce ideas off each other?” That is exactly the purpose of this podcast.

[00:43:37] NB: That's an excellent point. To that point, I think that most things these days that knowledge really, for the most part has gotten pretty cheap, right? With Google and Siri and fast access to it, YouTube's we're all pretty used to being able to Google and find our solution really quickly. But a lot of these problems that you're talking about, there aren't solutions on Google for it, that we're trying to solve the problems as we go. Yet other people are probably have similar issues, but there's no connection like Google for that.

[00:44:04] MH: That's exactly right. That's the whole purpose of this podcast, to listen to the pain points and the wins, the lessons learned from other manufacturing leaders in different industries. Nathan Brooks, thank you so much for joining us today on The Industrial Movement. We really appreciate you. It was an absolute pleasure to hear about you, and your process and your progress with Mercedes-Benz and we can't thank you enough.

[00:44:28] NB: No. I appreciate it. Thanks for having me, guys.

[00:44:30] MH: Awesome. Thank you. 

[OUTRO]

[00:44:32] MH: Well, folks, that's it for this week's episode. Be sure to visit our website www.theindustrialmovement.com to view today's show notes and get more golden nuggets of value that we have collected from manufacturing and industrial professionals in our archived episodes. 

On our website, you can also sign up for our newsletter and find links to join The Industrial Movement Community on Facebook. The Industrial Movement podcast is where we discuss the people, the process and the equipment that drives American manufacturing. I'm your host Morty Hodge wishing you, great success.

[END]