Manufacturing Happy Hour Podcast

When we talk about building a more productive and competitive manufacturing industry, talk of AI, automation, and other new tech usually crops up. But let’s not forget the basics – the way we power, staff, and build sustainable practices. That stuff’s also important.

We’re in an era of transformation right now, but it’s definitely not the first time the US has gone through this. In fact, we get a little history lesson in this episode from Ted Fertik, VP of Manufacturing & Industrial Policy at BlueGreen Alliance. With a PhD in Economic History, we hear how today's manufacturing challenges mirror our history and what we can learn from it.

As we look to the future, Ted talks about today’s greater demands on the electrical grid but also why a low carbon economy and electrification are the future. Ted gives us a breakdown on the work that BlueGreen Alliance is doing to make manufacturing more sustainable and attractive to fresh talent and investors.

In this episode, find out:

• Ted shares his background as a PhD grad in Economic History with a focus on industry
• Some stories from industrial history that inspired Ted to build a career, including the history of Brazil and the UK’s industries
• How industrial strategy has been successfully rolled out in other countries in the past
• What the BlueGreen Alliance does to help build a low carbon economy and a stronger industry
• Why focusing on investment into transformation benefits everyone, not just the economy
• The connection between sustainability and productivity and why they benefit each other and workers
• Why manufacturing is such a critical part of a healthy modern economy, especially in the US
• What a low carbon future could look like and why we can’t overlook the effect on the demand for electricity
• How manufacturing and industry can attract talent and the role of trade unions
• How to attract investment to a capital-intensive industry and the role of the public sector in making it economically viable
• Why we need to make sure that the benefits of careers and investment in manufacturing are widely felt across the population

Enjoying the show? Please leave us a review here. Even one sentence helps. It’s feedback from Manufacturing All-Stars like you that keeps us going!

Tweetable Quotes:

• "We need the benefits of the manufacturing economy to be really widely felt. And we need them to be real.”
• “There's a powerful link between making things with less carbon and the prospect of huge gains in productivity and in material wellbeing for people.”
• “As we're thinking about building out manufacturing, an affordable, stable, and reliable clean grid is an essential ingredient to a thriving, future-facing manufacturing sector in the US.” 

Links & mentions:

• BlueGreen Alliance, an organization that shapes US industrial policy with a focus on good-paying union jobs and environmental progress 
• St. Arnold’s Mussel Bar, serving an extensive variety of mussels, Belgian beers, waffles, and more in a ground-level, brick-lined space near Dupond Circle in Washington, DC  

Make sure to visit http://manufacturinghappyhour.com for detailed show notes and a full list of resources mentioned in this episode. Stay Innovative, Stay Thirsty.

Get ready for a front-row seat to Europe’s biggest automation event! In this bonus episode of Manufacturing Happy Hour, host Chris Luecke and Jake Hall – The Manufacturing Millennial – share their excitement and preview what’s ahead at Automatica 2025, taking place June 24–27 in Munich, Germany.

Chris and Jake discuss:

• What makes German manufacturing a global powerhouse in automation and vocational training
• What to expect from Automatica: major exhibitors, international tech showcases, and epic trade show booths
• Why this event is a must-attend for anyone in robotics, smart manufacturing, and industrial automation

Plus, they crack open a special "Stay Innovative, Stay Thirsty" IPA, brewed just for the occasion, and share some of their favorite Munich spots to check out between sessions. Whether you're attending the event or watching from afar, this episode sets the stage for one of the year’s most important industrial showcases.

🎥 Don’t forget: Daily video recaps and a full post-show episode will follow!

We’re seeing a huge leap in potential when it comes to what AI can accomplish in industrial settings. Not only can it catch errors, it can provide intelligent insights to prevent them in the first place, reduce waste, save costs, and improve processes.  

Recorded live from Automate 2025, we sat down with Alvin Clark, Senior AI Engineer at NVIDIA, to discuss AI agents in manufacturing and how they’re reshaping industrial inspections. We hear about all the different use cases of AI agents, including error detection and understanding the root cause of errors, saving costs, and even supplying training data to patch the gaps in “tribal knowledge” of manufacturing processes.  

You’ll hear real examples of how AI agents have saved costs and reduced errors drastically when monitoring SOPs and how they can provide multimodal maintenance assistance. Alvin also takes us through how NVIDIA’s Metropolis works at helping developers create visual AI agents and why the next few years will see visual AI inspections take off in manufacturing.  

In this episode, find out: 

• Alvin shares his background in the AI space and why he saw potential in AI earlier than most  
• Why 2012 was the real AI boom and how we saw a shift from the algorithm being king to data being king 
• Alvin’s explanation for what an AI agent does in four stages  
• How AI agents are evolving beyond capturing data to providing intelligence in industrial settings 
• How vision inspection can perform not only real time error detection but also real time failure analysis 
• Use cases for AI agents and examples of how Alvin has seen them most successful 
• How AI agents could also address the skills gap and replace the multimodal “tribal knowledge” we’ll lose when people start retiring 
• Alvin breaks down how Metropolis works to help developers build visual AI agents 
• How simulation, training and data transform what AI agents can accomplish 
• Alvin’s perspective on where manufacturers are in their industrial AI journeys 
• The role of systems integrators in leading the AI revolution 
• What the next phase of AI agents will look like   

Enjoying the show? Please leave us a review here. Even one sentence helps. It’s feedback from Manufacturing All-Stars like you that keeps us going! 

Tweetable Quotes: 

• “Metropolis is a combination of models and tools that are used to build what we call vision analytics. So anytime you're looking at video images and you want to extract information from that, these are the tools that can help you do that.” - Alvin Clark 
• “It's not really the ability to catch the error, it's the ability to, as quickly as possible understand the genesis that caused the error.” - Alvin Clark 
•  ”If I had to kind of describe an AI agent, it is a collection of one or more models that can perceive, reason, and potentially plan and then execute.” - Alvin Clark 

Links & mentions: 

• NVIDIA Metropolis, automating physical spaces and infrastructure with interactive visual AI agents and services 
• AlexNet, a convolutional neural network architecture developed for image classification tasks, like identifying a cat 

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Imagine having a tireless teammate watching your back 24/7, never missing a beat when it comes to keeping you safe. That’s exactly what AI agents in manufacturing are capable of today.  

Spot AI uses cameras and AI agents to spot safety issues, send alerts, and collect data that can improve safety training in the future. Yes, a human could do all that. But who wants to spend 8 hours a day reviewing footage? In this episode, Dunchadhn Lyons, Director of Engineering, shares a real-world example of a safety manager freeing up time and reducing safety incidents by 40%.   

He joins us at Batch Brewing for our Automate afterparty, along with this episode’s co-host, Jake Hall, aka The Manufacturing Millennial.  

We explore how AI agents are transforming ordinary security cameras into intelligent safety monitors that can spot forklift near-misses, missing PPE, and operational bottlenecks before they become costly problems. Plus, we chat about how these "AI teammates" can capture and preserve the invaluable knowledge of experienced workers before they retire – addressing one of manufacturing's biggest challenges. Tune in for the full story and don’t forget to subscribe! 

In this episode, find out: 

• Dunchadhn breaks down the basics of what an AI agent in manufacturing is and how they’re designed to make our lives easier 
• How Spot AI uses cameras as “AI teammates” to monitor for potential safety issues and use data for training   
• How an AI agent could be used to fill in the gaps in knowledge after people start retiring in manufacturing  
• Where Dunchadhn sees the future of AI agents headed and how Spot AI could expand beyond using cameras  
• The best use cases for AI agents and Spot AI’s solution in manufacturing  
• Dunchadhn shares an example of one workplace where they achieved a 40% reduction in safety issues  
• How manufacturers can get started with improving safety with AI and why adopting Spot AI’s solution is simpler than you might think 
• How to get buy-in from a team to use cameras for safety monitoring  
• How Spot AI can also help businesses make operational improvements, with one example of a company avoiding millions in lost revenue 
• Where can AI agents go in the future? Dunchadhn shares his predictions for the future of AI agents in manufacturing 
• The best way to get more people onboard with AI agents  

Enjoying the show? Please leave us a review here. Even one sentence helps. It’s feedback from Manufacturing All-Stars like you that keeps us going! 

Tweetable Quotes: 

• "A 40% reduction in safety incidents means that people are safer. It means you can go to work, get your job done, and you can go to your family without having a fear of ending up in the hospital for a couple of weeks."
•  "AI agents can serve as training mechanisms for other new human employees so that tribal knowledge is not lost."
• "These AI teammates are really about supporting humans, making humans safer, making humans more efficient, and augmenting human abilities. There's definitely no notion of replacement or monitoring." 

Links & mentions: 

• Spot AI, video AI agents for the physical world 
• Batch Brewing, brewery and restaurant located in Corktown, Detroit, MI

Without customer buy-in, even the most innovative robotics automation products can fall flat. But the approach most manufacturers take with new products is to build them first, then get feedback. In this episode, you’ll hear how one company flipped the script and did robotics product development the other way around.   

Joining this episode is Anthony Leo, President of IPR Robotics, a robotics automation company, to explain how a customer advisory board became invaluable for uncovering exactly what customers need – before they even built the product. You’ll also hear Mandy Dwight, Founder of Dwight & Company, a marketing and sales company that works with automation companies to tell and sell their story to customers. 

While they come from different areas of the sales cycle, both Mandy and Anthony share great insights into how products are transformed from ideas to implemented solutions. We hear about how to avoid customer prevention and friction in the sales cycle, how larger companies can act like startups, and the secrets to selling based on value, not just technical specs.  

In this episode, find out: 

• We talk about all the important food places and bars in the Boston and Detroit areas our guests come from   
• How Anthony and Mandy first met and decided to start working together 
• Why companies need to fully support those in R&D to drive product innovation  
• How IPR’s Sawyer robot brought something new to the market at the time as a two-armed humanoid robot  
• The different strengths that Mandy and Anthony bring to the manufacturing and product innovation space   
• The top lessons they’ve learned from their previous experiences in the industry that they still use in their roles today  
• Why the most important lesson Mandy learned as a marketing business founder is to listen to customers  
• The importance of telling a company’s value story and selling beyond the tech spec sheets  
• Why all stakeholders in the sales cycle need to understand the value story and how that can look different for each one  
• Why Anthony built an advisory board of customers to get feedback and insights before starting development 
• How large companies can use startup style tactics to fast-track product innovation 
• What a “customer prevention team” does to remove friction from the buying process  
• Why you sometimes need to build an ecosystem of partners to reduce friction  
• The secrets to a great product innovation team and why silos in a company should be avoided 
• Mandy explains more about what IPR Robotics does from her perspective as a marketer 

Enjoying the show? Please leave us a review here. Even one sentence helps. It’s feedback from Manufacturing All-Stars like you that keeps us going! 

Tweetable Quotes: 

• "Instead of burning a bunch of cash trying to go through development, let's go find three to five customers that we think fit in the wheelhouse of the problem we think we found and ask them if they wouldn't mind being involved in the development of the product." – Anthony 
• "A lot of founders tell the technical story... But a customer wants to hear value. How is this automation going to show up in my facility and really be a game changer." – Mandy 
• "People buy from people at the end of the day. Some people are willing to spend more money with people they trust and solve problems... compared to saving 10, 20% and dealing with headaches the whole way through." – Anthony

Links & mentions: