Thomas Industry Podcast

The Advanced Robotics for Manufacturing (ARM) Institute's goal is to foster collaboration between those who create and maintain robotics and those who leverage it. This episode dives into how Chris Adams, a Senior Projects Manager with ARM, got into robotics manufacturing and how emerging technologies like machine learning and artificial intelligence are helping manufacturers augment factories and uptick production. Produced by: Harry K (harrykonline.com/) Directed by: Brooklyn Kiosow Hosted by: Megan Conniff

Over a decade ago, Travis Rosbach decided he was tired of using single-use plastic water bottles and visited a local sporting goods store in Hawaii to buy a reusable plastic bottle. When he found the shelf empty due to recalls of Nalgene’s hard plastic bottles due to potential chemical health concerns, he asked the store employees who was going to fill up the shelf. “They said, ‘Nobody. There’s nobody else doing water bottles,’” said Rosbach, the founder of Hydro Flask and the Tumalo Group. “And it just hit me in the back of the head. I said, ‘I will, I will do that.’ And I had this flash of down the road standing on a stage talking about this highly successful water bottle company.” His idea became a reality in 2009 when he debuted the Hydro Flask. In the latest episode of the Thomas Industry Podcast, host Cathy Ma chats with Travis about the manufacturing journey of the reusable water bottle and his passion for empowering entrepreneurs to realize their big ideas. Produced by: Harry K (harrykonline.com/) Directed by: Brooklyn Kiosow Hosted by: Cathy Ma

RAIN RFID — a wireless technology that connects billions of everyday items to the internet — is already connecting nearly 30 billion items every single year, according to Megan Brewster, the Vice President of Advanced Technology at Impinj. In this episode of the Thomas Industry Podcast, host Cathy Ma chats with Megan about popular use cases for RAIN RFID, how the technology works, and how its capabilities position it as the leading item to cloud connectivity technology for the Internet of Things (IoT). Produced by: Harry K (harrykonline.com/) Directed by: Brooklyn Kiosow Hosted by: Cathy Ma

"The problem is that we didn't see anyone in the marketplace accurately predicting industrial production and manufacturing," said Keith Prather. “So we set out on a study. We discovered 18-20 different economic metrics that allow us to predict industrial production manufacturing.” For the last two years, Prather and his partner have worked on developing a reliable and accurate forecasting model for industrial manufacturing, offering insight into sectors from aerospace to computers and electronics. In the latest episode of the Thomas Industry Podcast, host Cathy Ma chats with Prather, the Managing Director and Partner at Armada Corporate Intelligence, about what's in store for the manufacturing industry in 2023. While there is a mixed bag of economic signals this year, Prather explains that things are actually looking up for certain sectors. Produced by: Harry K (https://harrykonline.com/) Directed by: Brooklyn Kiosow Hosted by: Cathy Ma

Tele-manufacturing enables workers to operate functional equipment from a distant console to complete critical manufacturing processes like welding, machining, and inspecting remotely. “What we wanted to figure out was, can we use automation to allow somebody to control a robot remotely?” said Connie LaMorte, the principal engineer in the automation and tele-manufacturing group at EWI. “It’s not that you want to [just] control the robot — you want to actually do that in real-time and make the movements you would expect it to make if you were right there.” In the latest episode of the Thomas Industry Podcast, host Cathy Ma chatted with LaMorte about the origins of tele-manufacturing and how the technology could be used on the Space Station.

"As soon as we can quote, we can make," said Greg Paulsen, director of application engineering at Xometry. In this episode, Xometry's Vice President of Platform Growth and Engagement Cathy Ma chats with Paulsen about Xometry's AI-powered marketplace, the company's work with BMW, and why Paulsen is so passionate about additive manufacturing.

“We started validating [our] tool with CEOs, CFOs, heads of product, and they all said, ‘This is something we can use, and we need it sooner rather than later,’” said Tasneem Manjra, CEO and co-founder of Caravan, a vendor relationship management platform. Host Cathy Ma chats with Manjra about the key to managing vendor relationships and how Caravan is filling a gap in transparency for buyers.

"The question really is do we move back, or do we build new factories? I don’t really see the move back. I think what happens is there is additional production, and that additional production will be onshored," says Jens Gamperl, CEO and Founder of Sourceability and Sourcengine. Host Cathy Ma chats with Gamperl about chip shortages and supply chain disruptions, and how these issues may be addressed in the future.

"The thing that we've heard over and over and over again from our customers is 'Yeah, we've been planning to automate. We're right about to do it. We've been planning this project for the last five or ten years.' Well, why don't I see a robot over here?" asks Saman Farid, CEO of Formic. Host Cathy Ma chats with Farid about why automation is no longer a luxury for manufacturers and how Formic's Robots-as-a-Service (RaaS) business model is making automation more accessible.

This will be our last episode for the year as our production team takes a short break to gear up for next year’s lineup of new podcast episodes. Until then, have a wonderful holiday season, a happy new year, and we’ll be back with new episodes in 2022!