In this episode of the MFGMonkey Podcast, we explore the intersection of technology, talent, and transformation with visionary leader Kevin Dean, CEO and Founder of ManoByte. Discover how these elements are shaping the future of industries and driving innovation. Kevin shares his insights on harnessing technology and nurturing talent to achieve transformative success. Whether you’re a tech enthusiast or a business leader, this conversation offers valuable perspectives on navigating the evolving landscape of the modern world.
How to Get in Touch with Kevin Dean
If you’re interested in learning more about ManoByte or connecting with Kevin Dean, you can reach him via the ManoByte website:
- Website: ManoByte
- Contact Through Website: Fill out the Contact Us form on the ManoByte site, and Kevin or a member of his team will follow up.
- https://www.linkedin.com/in/kjdean/
- kevin@manobyte.com
- https://kjdean.com
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Shaping the Future: Technology, Talent, and Transformation with Kevin Dean
In this engaging conversation, Dustin McMillan and Kevin Dean discuss the exciting prospects of 2025, the transformative role of AI in business automation, and the importance of integrating technology like HubSpot and ERP systems. They explore how embracing change, especially from the younger generation, can enhance customer experiences and streamline distribution and logistics. The discussion also highlights the significance of leveraging AI for knowledge retention in organizations facing workforce challenges. In this conversation, Dustin McMillan and Kevin Dean explore the transformative impact of AI on various aspects of business operations, including material management, job roles, and compliance. They discuss the evolution of job functions in the age of AI, emphasizing the emergence of new roles such as AI tuners. The conversation also delves into the importance of operational efficiency and cost savings through AI integration, as well as the challenges of maintaining compliance in a rapidly changing technological landscape. Additionally, they touch on the exciting possibilities of virtual reality in the workplace and the thrill of adventure in shark diving.
Kevin Dean, long time. What is up, my man?
What is going on? Dustin, my friend, love this. Glad to be able to just hang out and chat.
Yeah. Kevin comes to us from ManoByte, and we’re going to talk a little AI today and probably a bunch of other stuff. You and I connected probably four months ago, it seems like, and we had been scheduled to record a podcast maybe four times and our schedules just weren’t linking up. And I can’t think of a better podcast to kick off 2025 with.
Well, 2025 is going to be amazing partly because you and I get to kick it off, man. Like, get to hang out and do our thing.
Absolutely. That’s right.
Yeah, for sure. We’ve already noticed a big uptick in 2025, just with quoting activity and people pulling the trigger on some things. A lot more confidence in the market, and things like that. So, hopefully, you’re seeing the same thing.
You know, it is interesting. I think there are a lot of factors. Last year was an election year, a lot of uncertainties. I think, just with all that being behind us, fresh slate, I think everybody’s ready to now just, let’s get to work, let’s get to business. What does the future look like? Let’s just pave that road together. I think that’s where everybody’s heads at right now.
Yeah, I agree. We’ve just seen in the last 15 days of difference. So hopefully that trend continues and all that fun stuff. I don’t care what side of the aisle you’re on, as long as our economy is banging. Who cares, right?
Yeah. I don’t care about any of that stuff. I don’t bother with that. As owners, presidents, and CEOs of companies, we care about delivering results for our customers and ensuring that we’re doing what’s right for our companies and our people. So, the rest of that stuff, it’ll just wash itself out and come out on the walk, that’s where I think.
Yeah, I agree. I want to squirrel out just for a second. So behind you, there’s a diver’s helmet. That thing is awesome.
So, I started diving when I was maybe 13.
Wow. Okay.
Yeah. And I’m just, I’m a water dude, man. I’m in the water all the time. Like just get me in the water. I love it.
That’s great.
That’s my thing. So yeah, that’s one of my pieces that I love. You got the shark’s tooth above it there. And then you got the Kraken. So, I’ve been scuba diving in some killer places. My mom used to live in Hawaii, so Hawaii is just kind of like an old hat, even though it’s cool. My favorite place that I dove was in Egypt, Sharm el-Sheikh, the waters were absolutely amazing. So just crazy.
Wow.
That’s one of the things that I want to do is dive. I have a buddy down in Marathon, Florida. That’s diving again and he and his son got certified, and a couple of my other buddies and their kids got certified. So that’s definitely something on my shortlist to do. And I’m the same way. I love the water. I’m probably on a boat four or five days a week and either just riding around or fishing or whatever.
Yeah.
You’re in California.
No, Tampa, man.
Tampa, that’s right. I was just in Tampa.
Tampa Bay.
I wish I would have remembered that. I was just in Tampa last Monday.
Man, that was taking me out on the boat.
Yeah, no, I’ll be back there again.
We should just podcast on the boat next time.
There we go. That’s great. I don’t know why I thought you were in California, but I was in Marathon for a week and a half and then stopped in Tampa and visited a potential customer and came back to the blistery cold with four inches of snow.
Sorry for you, man. It’s nice up here.
Yeah, I absolutely love Florida, and I love the snow too. So, we’re headed to Montana on Monday to ski and ride snowmobiles.
Yeah, I see the snowshoe behind you.
Yeah, that was just a gift this Christmas.
Wow.
I got another one on the other side of the fireplace.
Yeah, love it.
Yeah, fun stuff for sure. Well, I mean, we could probably talk like this all day, but just to let our audience know a little bit about what we’re going to talk about. Business-wise, because I’m sure there’ll be plenty of this fun stuff in our conversation. But we’re going to talk about AI automation and manufacturing distribution and logistics. Your company works in IT space and retail energy and utilities. So, tell us more about that, buddy.
Yeah. So ManoByte, we’ve been around 18 years. And we’ve kind of had this evolution with technology and leveraging it to help businesses be much more successful. And we just, you know, over the past several years, I’ve been really diving into AI and how that can help businesses be much more successful, automate their processes, and get better results. And lower operational costs. And one of the things that we’ve been doing for a long time is we work with companies that sell through a channel or through distribution, right? Manufacturing world, as you know, you’ve got your manufacturer and that manufacturer will sell to maybe a wholesaler, right? That wholesaler sells it out to a reseller that reseller gets it out into the hands of a consumer or maybe it’s a builder that’s getting it right and that builder gets it into the hands of the consumer right and so that process of how do you ensure that your product actually makes it all the way through that cycle? The best way from a distribution perspective is that there are so many intricacies that AI can help you understand better and then help automate some of those processes that are involved. And making that. And we’ve been heavily thinking about this for like a very long time because as you know in the manufacturing space there’s this disconnect between the manufacturer and the end product, so we’ve been looking at ways to help leverage technology to help solve that.
Yeah, well, I think there’s a great opportunity to leverage AI on the front end with quoting and things too. So, there’s a great company out there, Paperless Parts, kind of revolutionized the industry and the machining and laser-cutting world. And then in our world, I would love to automate the quoting process online. I mean it’s pretty in-depth for us to quote a five-cent item that we may cut a million of. But it takes a lot to put that quote together. It could take days and then you’re looking through a spreadsheet, making sure you don’t have any errors, and all those things were just recently I took our whole spreadsheet and dumped it in the chat and said, hey, what am I missing here? Check my formulas and things like that. It was pretty impressive.
Yeah, so we’ve done a lot of leveraging CPQ configure price quotes using AI, right? And so, because one of the things that a lot of companies struggle with, just like you’re saying, is in that quoting process. Especially like in the manufacturing world, you have got to put together all your specifications and all this other stuff and it’s just like it takes forever, right? So how do you leverage technology to make that better, quicker, faster? We do a lot of stuff like that. One of the things that we’re doing right now is working with another manufacturing company. Well, actually they’re a distributor, they’re not a manufacturer. They work with lots of other manufacturers, which is even harder. So, if you imagine like you’re the manufacturer, you’ve got two or three, five SKUs and you’ve got all this process. Now you give it to your distributor, and they’ve got like 100 different manufacturers that have got to go through that process. And so, we are helping this one company use AI, CRM, and CPQ to do a one-click quote generation type of process which makes life significantly better. And the thing about it is. Once you standardize, you can do those things, right? You know how involved it is. You have to get this person to do that, that person and so. And there are all the errors that you’re talking about with AI. All of that type of stuff, so it’s pretty cool. It’s fun stuff to geek out on.
Yeah. And I just love it. And I’m going through your website. I was going through it a little earlier today and you guys are working with HubSpot. Did I see that?
Yeah.
So, you’re integrated with HubSpot. Are you coding or working with them to do quoting through HubSpot or tell us a little bit more about that?
Yeah, so we do a lot of work with HubSpot. Probably 90% of our work is through HubSpot and in HubSpot we do have the ability to generate quotes like automatically right through HubSpot. So, it’s all in one platform because you get your customer information. You got your product information. You’ve got tools for AI to go through and understand and personalize those quotes. Make sure that you’re getting all the specifications that you need to be done and then it’s just a couple of clicks, and you’ve got that quote generated. Then it’s tied to the customer. You’ve got that dollar amount. So, you can see that whole cycle, you know, cash to revenue right in one spot and just continually completely manage that, which is pretty cool.
Now are you tying in the ERP system as well, tracking cost and so forth?
Yeah, 100%. So, a lot of times we’ll take what we’ve gotten HubSpot from a CRM perspective. You’ve got your quote, and then we push that over to your ERP, whether it’s like a NetSuite or Acumatica. And that way you’ve got all of your billing, all your pricing, everything right there tied together, synced together.
Wow.
A lot of times companies will keep all of their products in their ERP. And so instead of manually taking those products and entering them into your CRM, you just have a two-way integration where it’s actually connecting and pulling and pushing information back and forth so that you’ve got this whole connected system.
Wow, that’s pretty impressive. I feel like we’re ahead of the eight ball until I talk to somebody like you and I’m like, we’re behind. We’ll keep that a secret though, right? No, I think just with where the industry’s going and how impatient all of us have become, especially with the younger generation. The younger generation is even more impatient than we are, and we expect things right now with all this new technology, it’s just becoming better or worse however you want to look at it.
Yeah, it’s a new way of thinking, right? It’s a new way of doing things that I think we all have to take a lesson from the younger generation, right? Just because they’re the ones that the truth is, right? They’re the ones that are leaving the next chapter, right?
Yep.
That’s soon here that everybody’s talking about. So, and really, I think about it from a customer perspective, right? Customers don’t like lengthy processes either, right? And so, the quicker that we can get a quote, a solution into the hands of a customer, the happier they’re going to be, the happier the customer is going to be, the more money we’re going to make, right? And so, all of that really ties together, and leveraging technology the right way allows you to service your customers, and get things done quicker. And so yeah, are there costs associated with it? 100%, right? But the benefits are going to well outweigh, right? You’re going to see a return on your investment in year one, right? I mean, if you buy a machine, you’re not going to get that return on investment in year one, right? You’ve got a five-year plan out for that, right? So that’s the way you got to think about it.
Yeah. Well, if you’re getting a one-year ROI, that’s a no-brainer in my book. If you know, like you’re talking about a machine, if we can pay for a machine in one year, there’s really no discussion. We just bought the machine.
No discussion. No discussion. Yeah.
Yeah. Same thing with this and it’s like marketing or anything else, as long as you make your decisions when you return and if you’re not getting a return, you scrap it. And if you are getting a return, you keep throwing money at it. Hopefully, it keeps getting a bigger return.
Yeah, that’s the way, right? And I think what a lot of people struggle with is, like in the manufacturing world we understand machinery, we’re engineers, we understand all of that, right? Now when it comes to some of this technology and how it works and how it’s supposed to go together, we don’t understand that.
Right.
And so now we trust somebody else where we’re used to making all those decisions because we understand it, we’ve got it, we know it.
Yep.
Now, I said, wait a minute, I don’t know this. And so, I think that makes it a challenge for a lot of folks. It’s like, man, I’m not used to doing it this way, right? I got to think of a new way of running the shop. But I’ve been doing this for X, you know, 20 years, right?
Right.
I think that’s a big challenge that people have to get over is that mindset of you got to think differently, right?
Sure. Yeah. And if you’re not thinking differently, you’re not moving forward. And we try to change every day if we can. And I challenged my folks because I was challenged to use chat from one of my buddies that I was talking about. And then he challenged me to have our other team members to use chat and they were pretty resistant at first. And then the feedback has been positive because it improves their productivity, improves their accuracy. It’s just another tool in your toolbox. And if you can do that, then why not? And then you get into the question of colleges. And colleges don’t want you to use anything to do with chat. It’s like, well, let’s pull the reins back here. Maybe we should embrace it because it’s a tool. You know, it’s just like anything else. Well, you can’t use spell check. You have to know how to spell on your own. Well, what is that? I’m probably one of the worst spellers on earth. And I lean on Grammarly.
Yeah.
It’s like, why wouldn’t I use that? And it’s not cheating or maybe it is, you know.
No, it’s not cheating at all, right? It’s kind of like we’re about the same age. So, you remember the time when we were in school, they’re like, no, can’t use a calculator.
Exactly. Yeah.
I mean, it’s like, of course, you use a calculator, right?
Right.
You know, it’s like, I think it’s just even educators are trying to catch up with how do you educate this new generation to do things differently? Like my son is 14, right? And he uses the chat GPT all the time for school, right?
Yeah.
And he understands it even better. I own a technology company that focuses on AI, and he understands a lot of this stuff better than I do, right? It’s just because they think about things, they don’t have to get rid of baggage to think about a new way. Their brains are just automatically firing.
Right.
Oh, I need to do it this way. I need to put in this, I need to do that, right? It’s just like, it’s second nature to them, right? And I think what we’ve got to think about is how do we allow these tools to become second nature to us in order to help us get to where we need to go.
Yeah. Well, and I think a lot of it is we can know how to do something one way and we can get there pretty quickly. And then learning a new way may take twice as long or three times as long the first time until you internalize it like you’re talking about with your son. Doesn’t have any other way. So, he just figures it out, and then every time after that he just becomes faster and faster at it.
Yeah, that’s it.
With MFG Monkey, we’re really interested in manufacturing distribution, and logistics. Talk to me a little bit about distribution and logistics and how you’ve helped those companies.
Yeah, we help a lot of distribution companies really connect their entire process in that customer journey, right? Like from the sales side, helping them make sure that you’re thinking about who the customer is, what products they need, and how to then just take that through into another customer. And now how do you continue to service them, right? And in the right way to ensure that they’re getting help, right? Because a lot of times there’s this disconnect between once they make a purchase and now, they need to be serviced. Like there’s a big disconnect trying to figure out where things are in the process. When are things going to arrive for me? What’s the next step in the process? It has always been a disconnect. So, using tools like HubSpot, put together built solutions that allow that whole buyer’s journey for the customer to be seamless, creating this better customer experience. And the other thing is a lot of times when we’re working with most of the time, you probably know who your base of customers is going to be, right? You know, everyone in the market that you’re going to go after generally. Right. And a lot of your sales are repeat customers, right? And so, understanding those cycles is really important, right? So that things don’t get messy. And so, we have a lot of companies to say, okay, we know that customers A, B, and C are going to want to buy these products around this time of year. Automating that buyer’s process helps with our sales guys who forget, it’s not the squeakiest wheel, so they’re going to have them on the back burner. And so, leave cash on the table by ensuring that you’re automating that sales cycle. We’ve helped a lot of companies with that process.
Yeah, well, there’s a lot of repetitive actions in all of our businesses. And yes, I agree, the more you take them out, the more accurate you are and faster you can become for sure. What’s one of your favorite projects that you’ve worked on in the industry in the last 12 months?
Man, one of my favorite projects that we’ve worked on in the past 12 months. So, it’s a little bit of a toss-up here. I think one of my favorite projects is, I’m not going to name the company, but they’re a well-known brand that has also an arm where they help with projects. Like you’ll get a big project on a construction site, right? And you’ve got all of these things that you need to take. Make sure that you show up and get there on the construction site, right? And in order for that all to get there on time, right? You have got lots of people bidding on these projects and let’s just say that they’re building a multifamily residence, right?
Okay.
I have to make sure that I have all of my kitchenware and all of my everything within this utility that I need. And so, we really helped this process with this one company for them to streamline how they’re bidding on all these projects so that they can get the best quotes. Because they had to get quotes from the manufacturers in order to get it out for the project. Then once you get the right quotes done, make sure that you have the highest margin, ensuring that it gets to the bid on time, right? That’s a big process. So, it was really cool to be able to take that process. Here’s the project that we’re going after. Here are all the things. Let’s make sure that we find the best manufacturer to make sure that we’re getting the highest margin and ensure that we get that quote that bids in for this project on time. And then once you get that bid in, make sure that you get everything to push back so that you can now go out and purchase everything to get it to the customer, the project site all the time. So that was pretty cool because it really touched every single element. We were able to automate that process and really not just automate the process, but then prove and show, here’s our margins, right? Like now we’re increasing our margins, right? And even when you increase the margin by half a percent on some of these things, that’s big money, right? And so that was a cool project.
Yeah, and it is unbelievable how many moving pieces and parts are on a construction site. We were talking about that last Thursday in our Visage meeting. One of our members have a big development and investment company. And they’re building out hotels and just the whole customer experience. And some of these properties that these guys are building out are just unbelievable.
Yeah.
And you think about everything from the dirt to the sky that has to happen, and all the moving pieces and parts and the people involved and the regulation and permits and it’s there’s millions of moving pieces and parts to make a project like that happen. And then with the builder, it’s just a dumb downscale of a giant hotel or whatever. But it’s still so many moving pieces and parts. It’s unfathomable.
Yeah, there’s so much to it right and a lot can easily get lost if you don’t have it the right way. And then the interesting thing about some of these projects is that let’s say that to your point. You’ve got a project, it’s one project, but that one project has multiple sub-projects within it.
Oh God, yeah.
And you get this order to that part of the project, this one over to that one, I mean, that could be a logistical nightmare if you don’t have the right tools and systems in place to manage all that, and then like the cost associated, right? This one customer that we’re working with would have different suppliers delivering different pieces to different parts of the same project because there are different places, right? And then multiple business units within their organization being in on different things, it was a mess, right? And so, you can see how that really needed to be organized, and we were able to help them put together a solution that really managed that for them and gave them better visibility and higher probability.
Sure. And with the workforce the way it is, it’s not a really sexy thing talking about replacing jobs. However, when you can’t hire people and you can’t hire the right people and you still need to get the job done, I would have to think that these tools are helping with that issue that we’re having with employment.
Yeah!
And if it takes 20 people to manage a project or whatever that number is, and you can only hire 10, I will have to assume that would help that situation.
Yeah, for sure it does, but I think this is where AI plays a huge, huge role. So, one of the challenges that a lot of our customers face is not just hiring new people. Well, first I’ll talk about why they’re hiring new people. They’re hiring new people because everybody’s out. That’s a lot of it, right? So, you’ve got these senior folks aging out because they’re now at retiring age. And they have all this institutional knowledge that’s in their head.
Right.
They know exactly how to get this here, this part there, that one here, all the logistics, who to call. Like they just know all this stuff because they’ve been doing it years and years and years. Now you bring in a new person, they don’t know that. They don’t have that information, right? And so now what AI does, AI gives you the ability to level the playing field. So now a new person coming in, they instantly can have all of that knowledge that allows them to be as productive as the person who’s been here with your company for 20 years, right?
Yeah.
That is a game changer and a lot of the manufacturers that we work with. That’s a huge value for them to be investing in AI because you’re going to have institutional knowledge walk out your door within the next couple of years. Now what do you do, right? So, these AI tools help you to alleviate those knowledge gaps that are coming up.
Yeah, if you can harness tribal knowledge and record it some way like you said, that is a game changer because that’s a scary thing as an employer. If you have one or two key people leave for whatever reason, and they have this tribal knowledge, and it’s not recorded and nobody knows where to get it. Even as a founder, if people are coming to you, they’re messaging you 20 times a minute. Where do we get this? How do we know that? Where, and what vendor do we call for this? I can’t find that. If you can put all that in one place they can go and ask AI, hey, we need to order this type of material. Who have we bought it from in the past? Instead of searching a database, that’s a huge thing as well.
Yeah. That’s a huge win, right? And you take it a couple of steps further, right? I think we were so stuck in the way of thinking, right? So, you just have a conversation with AI, right? First, you have to build your knowledge store, right? Well, if you’ve got knowledge in lots of places, the challenge has been historically that that knowledge wasn’t in a structured format. Well, now we don’t need it to be structured. So, you’ve got your knowledge, you get it there. You just allow this new employee to come in and talk through what he needs, right? It can have a conversation and then you build out AI to take action on that new employee’s behalf, right? It’s like, hey, we’ve got this new project. Here’s what they’re thinking about. Show me the best project, and the best parts at the best margin. Boom. I got it. Okay, thanks. Those are the best parts. Give me the best supplier. Boom, I got the supplier. Now you tell it, create the quote for me. Boom, created the quote for me, right? In the balance of that employee having to do all those manual steps. It’s not that they just get the knowledge, but they also are executing the command at the same time, right? And it’s really in a conversational manner. And now all of this is happening in like literally minutes, right?
Yeah. And you do need somebody that has the wherewithal. I just found an error that Chat made yesterday for me. I had it calculated. I had a part size, and I wanted to know how many I could nest in a certain envelope. Before I would have needed an engineer with a drawing to actually nest that part out. And I could just go on and say, okay, the general dimensions are this. I want to separate them by a quarter inch. My envelope is 12 by 16. How many parts this envelope can I get? And then that tells me how much material I need. Well, it does all this. And I’m like, oh, that’s not right. Just simple math, if we can get X number of parts per foot, it should be this literal foot of material, and it did come up with the wrong answer. So, I put in, well, let’s second check this with these many parts per foot. And it was kind of cool how it came back. I forgot. Let me find it because it admitted that it made an error.
Yeah.
Like it has the wherewithal to say, oh, sorry. I kind of messed up. I’m trying to find this real quick. Oh, you were absolutely correct to ask that if it is possible to make so many parts per foot, the calculation needs to be this. And then it made the recalculation. I was like, wow, that part really impressed me that it is like, oh wait, I’m glad you asked that because we did make an error.
Yeah, and that’s great too because one of the things we talk about like, will people lose jobs? I don’t think that necessarily people are losing jobs, but they have different jobs, right? So, you take some of your seasoned experience. You know staff members and you have them be AI checkers, right? A job that didn’t like hey fact check this right? Then you tune the model, right? And so, the more that you tune the model, the better, the stronger it gets, right?
Yeah.
I think that’s a new job that we’re seeing arise in the marketplaces, AI tuners, right? They’re the ones who are looking to say, this answer was incorrect. Here’s why it’s incorrect. You tell it why it’s incorrect, just like what you did. And now the next time it knows not to make that error, right? So that’s a cool thing.
Yeah. Well, and just the AI programmers, my buddy was talking to me about AI programming jobs and the dollars that they’re paying those folks. I mean, it’s unbelievable. And who would have thought that we’d be paying programmers half a million or a million dollars to program?
Yeah.
That’s a whole different level of employment there. It’s great. I mean, I think it’s bringing a lot of good things. I had a conversation with somebody a few months ago and he was an older gentleman, but he just wasn’t a fan at all. And I was excited to have that conversation and have this conversation with you. You know, it’s just both ends of the spectrum. And I feel like I fall somewhere in the middle. I’m just trying to learn it and learn how to harness it and learn how to make it work for our company. But like I told you before we started talking, I’m a big fan. It’s allowed me to do things that would probably take me four days to do, I could do in four hours.
Yeah. I mean, it really does flip the script, right?
Yeah.
It really does. And now as leaders of organizations, we have to just think about, yeah, it’s not all bad, it’s not all good, right? Where’s the in-between? I think you’re taking the right approach, right? And I think when you’re paying an AI guy half a million dollars, let’s just say. Okay. You’re going to that value back right, because of the speed in which you’re going to get to the next level, the operational costs that you’ll save. A lot of companies think about what’s your cost per ticket, right? If you have a service ticket, how much does it cost for you to service a company, service somebody right? And you can easily see that we can bring that cost per ticket down exponentially. That money just goes away. It’s totally worth it. I think it’s like again, where can you see the ROI? You just have to know where you’re looking for it and then use those areas for going after ROI for those key use cases. And now where you’re getting your money back quickly, then you shave off some time for this AI guide to look at things strategically for the future for visionary, right? So, you don’t necessarily pour all your money just into the vision of the future. First, here’s how I’m going to save costs. Okay, great. It’s worth me to save costs here. And now I’m going to shave off some of those cost savings that I got that paid for to look at the future.
Yeah, I agree. My wheels are turning for sure. So, I was excited to have this conversation and now I’m excited to have the next conversation probably offline about how you can help us and things like that. I’m a big user of HubSpot and have been for many years. We do have an interesting podcast coming up where it’s a CRM, that’s an AR AI CRM. So, it’ll be really interesting to have a conversation with him and what he’s done in the CRM world. Because CRM is only as good as the information that we put into it and salespeople are not good CRM users.
They’re not. They’re not, right?
I know.
I think AI is only as good as the knowledge that it has as well. And I think both are really good things to think about. But as we start giving our tools more latitude, now we can give ourselves people more time right? Why do you make a salesperson due date entry? That’s just always if it’s time in your money, right? And that’s why they don’t do the things. And so, I think it’s a new world you have to think about, I’m going to allow these tools that complete access to my email. They now have access to my time. They now have complete access to where I’m going.
Well, yeah.
I think taking all that data and pushing it into the tools gives us the ability to free up a lot of what the salespeople are doing. And we think this sounds a little bit brotherish. Well, maybe. But I think the truth is that this isn’t new. All this stuff has been there anyway. It’s been being tracked anyway.
Yeah. And that brings up a very interesting question when it comes to compliance, right? So, we, in manufacturing, distribution, and logistics. In our world, we play in the ITAR world where MCMILLANCO isn’t necessarily ITAR certified, but we are ITAR compliant. And there are a lot of things that we have to comply with, and our database is one of them. So, I wonder how this is going to be. The chat GPT and other AI tools, how’s this going to be affected by staying compliant when we can’t even have a virtual assistant that lives in another country in our database? It’s a whole different ball game when you start talking about artificial intelligence in your system.
Yeah, so that’s a great question, right? And that’s a fun question. This is kind of where we like to start diving in and geek it out, right?
Right.
And so, what you now have is what’s called edge AI, right?
Okay.
Edge AI is an AI system that doesn’t live in the cloud, right? They live right on the edge of your systems.
Okay.
So, you think about times and a lot of that stuff. And so, what it’s doing is it’s only using your data, your models within the confines of your pieces and only getting information externally that it needs without exposing your data, your systems, whatever else you’re doing. It’s obfuscating that one little piece going out. Okay, great, and then send it back to you. So that’s a cool way of ensuring that you’re staying compliant and that everything is the right way.
Yeah. Have you been involved with companies that do a self-assessment for NIST or anything like that?
No, we haven’t done anything yet.
Okay. And now that’ll be interesting because we were on that path, with NIST, and it’ll be interesting how AI is evaluated. And the NIST and I forget what the all the acronyms are but the short version of it is it’s a self-assessment. And then the long version is the government comes in and audits you, especially when you’re handling government drawings and things like that that have sensitive information. And not that we don’t have anything that’s interacting with our servers or anything at this point. But if we were to have something interacting where it’s quoting and it’s talking between our CRM and our ERP and our WMS system. And there is that AI aspect, how does NIST interact with that?
Yeah, there are some cool tools out there that allow you to have some greater visibility. To see what’s going on in those processes. Not all of it can be tracked, but there’s a lot of that out there. I was speaking this fall at the Forrester Conference in Austin, TX and there are a lot of government agencies there trying to try to figure it out just like everybody else is right?
Oh sure. Yeah.
There are some tools out there that allow for compliance, and transparency, where you can report that transparency.
Yeah. Interesting. So earlier you were showing me a new device that you have. Show everyone this thing that you’re bragging about. I don’t even know what it is. I’ve seen a picture of it one time and this is how old school I am. You showed me this thing and I’m like, what is that? You’re watching TV on that thing or what?
Yeah. So, now it’s on. This is my Apple Vision Pro like you and I are now.
Okay, Apple Vision. Okay.
And so now what this does is this allows me to have complete visibility into everything now so I can see my computer like I’ve got all sorts of pieces of things going on here in this virtual world. This is like a total game-changer, right?
I think it’s awesome.
So now I can just go out. Yeah. man. So, I’ve got my computer here. I’ve got my messages here, right? I’ve got anything that I want there. I can do any and everything. And so now I have the virtual space that I’m in. It’s a pretty awesome tool and yeah, it’s pretty hot. I love it.
And you can interact with it and actually work from it.
Totally. I can do all my work. Anything that I can do on my computer, I can do it here.
And how much do you use that on a day-to-day?
I use this now. I’m now getting to the point where I use it. Probably 75-80% of my day.
Really?
Totally.
I’m jealous.
It is a game changer. I don’t know if I want to spend four grand on this little thing, but like once I got it, why didn’t I buy this sooner?
Right.
This completely makes working better. More effective, easier. I mean, there’s like a million benefits from it. So, I’ve always had big monitors. I have multiple spaces, but one of the things is when you have a big monitor, you always get that neck thing, right? Because you’re always looking up and you’re looking here.
Right.
And so now this gives you perfect ergonomics. Because now I can have this huge monitor and at this position that is kind of funky because it’s kind of like this diagonal thing where I’m like looking at the perfect way and I can do all my work, and I’ve got all these workspaces, and I can put things here and there. It just makes life so much easier and it’s all like in my Apple Vision device.
That’s cool.
Yeah.
I have so many expensive hobbies and things that I want to buy. Like you just added it. I mean, now it kind of went to the top of the list rule real quick.
Oh man, I’m telling you this is a total game-changer. Actually, it’s funny because I go back to my son. My son became my tech consultant. About 9 months ago, my son said Dad, you should go and buy this thing, I’m not into VR, I’m not going to need this virtual reality thing.
Right.
And he’s like no, no, no, no, no, you can work from it like you can connect it to your computer. Okay. So, he finally talked me into going to the Apple store, and like, dude, this is a game changer, like a major game changer.
Wow.
It’s awesome. If my wife has to come in and tell me, take that thing off. You look stupid.
Yeah. What are you watching there? I just have this envision of a whole office full of people with this mask on and everyone’s just in their own world and probably unfortunately not really interacting unless there’s a way to interact in the office with other people that have this VR on their face.
Yeah, I mean it is cool. Because I can see out. If people can be walking around me, I can interact with them. I can see them, it just like told me but at the same time, I got everything else going.
Gotcha.
But when me and my wife were talking about, what the movie nights look like in the future?
Sure.
Because I’m telling you, I’m watching a movie on here. We’ve got a hundred-inch TV downstairs.
Right.
I’m not watching on the hundred-inch TV. I’m watching it here because it is totally immersive, right? It’s like crazy.
Yeah. It’s got to be like a 3D movie times 12.
Times 12. So, one of the things that was really cool, was they’ve got this dinosaur thing, right? You put your hand out and it will sniff it around and it sees your hand and it’s going to come over and it’s going to go at. When you move, it’s following you where you go. That’s pretty awesome, man.
Yeah. Don’t do any psychedelics and do that.
Oh, man. You think about the entertainment industry is going to be changing forever, right?
Yeah.
So, you have this movie where you’re a part of the movie. You’re not just watching it.
Yeah.
You’re literally immersed in the movie.
Yeah. What was the movie Avatar with the blue avatars, I guess?
Yeah.
I remember when I watched that for the first time, I was blown away. My kids wanted me to go see it. I’m like, this is going to be dumb. I mean, really a 3D movie like old school. You put those little glasses on and then you go to that movie. This is the real deal. And how many years ago was that?
That was a while ago, right?
I mean, 15. I mean, easy. And now we’re to the place where the old ride on our face.
That’s it. That is it, man. Yeah, go check it out. So, here’s what I tell you. Go down to the Apple Store and ask for a demo. They’re going to give you a demo and I’ll give you 100 bucks if you don’t walk away with one.
I mean, you don’t even need to go do any, sounds like if you wanted to go scuba diving, you could just plug that thing on your face.
Yeah. There is a shark dive on here.
Is there?
You can do a shark dive experience here totally.
So, have you been shark diving for real?
So yes and no.
Okay.
Yes. So, we’ve been shark diving, we did it at Discovery Cove. Discovery Cove, they’ve got that tank where you can dive with the sharks was not really a tank, but yeah, so we haven’t done it out in the wild with uncontrolled sharks. That’s on the bucket list.
Barracuda freaked me out. I mean, you snorkel with Barracuda and they’re just cruising and they’re soulless. And you’re like, is this thing going to dart after me and eat me, or is it just going to leave me alone? And to see a shark in the wild, that’s a whole another level of insanity. It’s like the lady, there was a post where the lady was sitting on the dive ladder, and she sticks her face in the water to clear a mask.
Yeah.
And the shark comes up. Have you seen that video?
No. And it’s right there.
So yeah, you have to look it up. The shark comes out of the water, and she picks her head up out of the water. And this great white, I think it’s a great white is like right in her face. And she just takes her hand and pushes its nose back into the water. And then she gets in the water. And I’m like, you are crazy. Like, there’s no way I’m getting in it. One, I’m getting back on the boat. 100%, I’m taking off all of my gear. There’s no way I’m getting in that water. And this chick just like nonchalantly pushes a shark back in the water and then crawls down the dive ladder and gets in the water and I’m like what happened next, is she still with us?
Yeah. Yeah. The cool thing though, I mean, I love the water. I love sharks. Look at my shark right there. So, sharks are not aggressive. It doesn’t matter what people are, sharks aren’t aggressive, right?
Sure. Right.
So, you can see sharks all day long, right? They’re just not aggressive. The people who get bit are surfers who look like a seal, right?
Right.
I mean, looks like they have terrible vision.
Sure. And they’re hunters. Yeah.
Sharks have terrible vision, horrible vision. So, anybody that gets attacked, they get mistaken for food. If you’re with them, they don’t care. They’re not going to bother you.
Right. And it is interesting when you are underwater and you’re swimming with stuff, you’re just a part of the ecosystem and it’s crazy. Fish are swimming around you. You could be on a boat fishing in there. It scatters. But as soon as you’re in the water with them, they’re like, hey man, what’s up?
That’s it. Chilling’.
Yeah. It’s so cool. Next time I’m in Tampa, hopefully, I have my license and search by then and we’ll have to get out for sure.
All right, man, we’ll get you out on the water.
I love it. I love it. Anything else you want to talk about?
Man, this has been awesome, man. This is good stuff. So, we’ll have to just do it again.
Yeah. I agree. I think we can keep chipping away at different conversations and keep this going as things evolve. And I have a ton of fun talking with you. And it was one of the, you’re definitely one of the people that things just kept getting drawn out. I’m like, man, this is the wrong guy that I want these podcasts to get drawn out because I was so excited to talk to you. And we just, you know, between us traveling or being busy, it just got pushed, but I’m glad we finally got on here.
It finally got done. This is awesome man.
Yep. Well, before we jump off, we’ll put all this in the description, and all that. Tell everyone how to get ahold of you, LinkedIn, and all that fun stuff. And then if you’re driving or whatever, we’ll have it in the description. We’ll have it on our website. So, if you go to info@mfgmonkey.com, you can go right to our blog and see all of Kevin’s information there as well.
Yeah, you can get me on my personal website, kjdean.com. You can check out my company at manobite.com. And of course, Kevin Dean on LinkedIn, you’ll find me. KJ Dean, you’ll find me there. So, good luck, you guys have to connect.
Yeah, absolutely man. Well, thank you so much and it was as fun as I thought it was going to be.
Oh, I loved it. Have a good one.
You too, buddy.
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