Watch the Episode: Mastering System Integration: Challenges and Solutions
In this insightful episode of the podcast, James Huysentruyt, Business Developer at PcVue, interviews Leo Grave from Mecha Solutions, discussing the complexities of system integration in various industries, particularly in manufacturing and automotive. They explore the challenges faced by customers, the importance of effective data management, the role of AI and IoT in modern solutions, and the integration of legacy equipment. The conversation highlights the need for collaboration among different stakeholders and the evolving landscape of automation and integration technologies.
Key topics covered in this episode:
- Mecha Solutions specializes in system integration for various industries.
- Customers often face challenges when implementing new technologies.
- Effective communication among stakeholders is crucial for project success.
- Data management is essential in today’s technology landscape.
- AI can enhance data analysis and operational efficiency.
- IoT can be implemented without relying solely on cloud solutions.
- Legacy equipment integration poses unique challenges.
- Cost-effective solutions can be developed for small to mid-sized businesses.
- Understanding customer needs is key to successful project execution.
- The automation landscape is evolving with new technologies and approaches.
If you’re interested in Industrial technology integration, manufacturing innovation, or AI in industry, this episode is packed with valuable insights.
Other podcasts
- Podcast – P1 | Mastering MES, SCADA & Change Management in Industry with Catherine Bouchard
- Podcast – P2 | Smart Manufacturing, AI and the Future of Industrial Simulation with Andrew Siprelle
- Podcast P3 | Mastering System Integration: Challenges and Solutions with Leo Gravé
- Podcast – P4 | Navigating the Energy Transition with Chris McKissack
Transcript
James Huysentruyt (00:02.542) Hello, everyone. I’d like to welcome you to the PCU podcast series, Let’s Engineer. Today, our guest is Leo Grave from Mecha Solutions. Welcome. Well, let’s just jump right into it. And why don’t you just tell us a little bit about yourself and a little bit about Mecha Solutions.
Leo Grave (00:13.122) Thanks, Jim.
Leo Grave (00:20.224) No, definitely Jim. Thanks for having me here. appreciate your opportunity to talk a little bit about Mecha solutions. Why would you? My principal role, I’m the lead solutions architect in Mecha solutions. We deliver different system integrations for different manufacturers, consumer goods and other facilities throughout the United States. We had a little bit of background in South America, but we are mainly operating here in the Midwest. We are located in Plainfield, Indiana. We are
constantly working with ISKEDA solutions and we, mostly of our systems, are fulfilling with ISA95, which is one of those new technologies or new standards that are coming up and everybody likes to talk about, but…
We do enjoy what we do quite a lot. We like to be wanted as known as like the weird guys that try to work with different technologies all the time, you know, so we’re not that standard integrator that everybody kind of knocked the door. Hey, we have this type of PLC. you have this type of many fact everybody works. We like to work with the solutions that deliver great results and solutions that we can leverage everything that a customer wants as but
of course, keeping significant amount of cost and be very cost beneficial.
James Huysentruyt (01:49.666) Good, very good. going down that line is, so what are some of the challenges that your customers bring to you?
Leo Grave (01:57.334) Well, mostly the customers like they have all these.
Cool and sexy ideas that they come over. Hey, we are implementing this type of solution they have an engineering house that they trying to build in and Sometimes they think they know exactly what they’re working in You know, it’s like those I like to reference that as the person that knows how to paint but he’s doing the hiring like a painter to come into the house, know, everybody has to pay but is that kind of Challenge that I see a lot of a lot of times but when they reach out to us is usually when they are
and figure out to implement the system and they got to like a huge wall of challenges and they don’t know how to overcome that. And when we started working with them, it’s usually, hey, identify most of the requirements they’re into and then if the project is like too far ahead, we need to kind of like revamp it and start specifying all the materials again or specify all the different devices we’re use and lay out the whole architecture. And sometimes that…
That can be very tricky depending on the stage of the project.
James Huysentruyt (03:04.301) So basically it’s putting together a puzzle. yeah, as far as it goes. you’re working with, I mean, so you’re taking legacy equipment sometimes, right? Probably a lot of the time and then trying to bring it to, into their enterprise or at least trying to solve whatever it may be. It may be they have a new line they’re putting in, right? What are some of the industries you work in?
Leo Grave (03:07.136) Yes, that’s what we do all the time.
Leo Grave (03:29.57) Well, I mentioned like most of our industries are related to like manufacturing, but we end up being most of an automotive consumer goods warehouse. The last few years, we’ve been heavily on automotive. And when I say automotive, I mean, like you want to apply not specifically just like the car makers itself, but also the supplies for the car makers. can be just, yeah, if you want to, too. And that’s mostly other customers that we have and also engine builders as well.
James Huysentruyt (03:36.846) Okay. Okay.
James Huysentruyt (03:47.596) Right. Yeah, tier one, tier two, tier three.
James Huysentruyt (03:57.816) Okay. Are you working with robotics at all?
Leo Grave (03:59.862) Yes, we do. work with robots. And I like to say there’s not that many robots that I haven’t touched myself. I’ve touched, like put my hands on. I’ve worked with several different brands throughout my career. And we have a specific ones that pin you on the type of solution that we’re delivering. Some of them have a little bit of a higher end spec. Some of them are like, okay, that’s good for the job. That fits the bill. But we do work with several different brands as well.
James Huysentruyt (04:28.782) So with the robotics, you’re working with it, you’re programming the robot itself, but also interfacing to the SCADA.
Leo Grave (04:36.502) it depends on a project. That’s a good question. usually they have an interfacer or I’m going to call it like a midpoint guy, which is your controller. And that, depending on the, what you want to leverage to the SCADA, it’s something that it can be all managed locally and then shoveled in into the system. The reason I’m saying that is a lot of the controllers do not have, like
James Huysentruyt (04:39.448) Okay.
James Huysentruyt (04:51.662) Thanks.
Leo Grave (05:05.505) ready in solutions to communicate straight with a SCADA system. So we have to have a little middle guy over there to grab the data and shove it back to the SCADA. Yes.
James Huysentruyt (05:16.75) doing some of the interface on that side of it. So when you, I want to talk about people and then I don’t want to get back to technology because when you go into a, mean, you know, they’re bringing you in and obviously just so people know, Mecha Solutions has a great reputation. So most of your business is pretty much word of mouth, right? It’s like, you know, it’s from your reputation, which is great. But still when you get in there,
Leo Grave (05:24.332) North.
Leo Grave (05:38.679) Yes.
James Huysentruyt (05:44.62) You’re dealing with the different departments and different people. And how do you navigate that? Like you have the engineer who wants it done, but then you have the IT and then you have the enterprise group. You have the finance guys. I mean, how do you navigate through all those people?
Leo Grave (05:56.773) Yeah, It is a challenge that we see. We like to call them pods. So we have like the IT pod. We have the engineer pod. We have the technical. We like to divide like the technical pod and the management pod because everybody, I don’t know if you’ve seen those, like especially on the engineer field, they have all these like, they wants to solve problems that aren’t necessarily problems, you know, and then IT side, for example, comes over with all these, in quote, cyber securities, which is just to your concern. But sometimes like how,
you’re going to have a data from an IO block, right? And then how that IO block is going to be like cybersecurity compliance if it doesn’t have even an OS running, you know? But going back, wrapping up a little bit on your question, usually I like to have a kickoff call to understand like what are the pain points in all these different…
like pods and what they have it in or in their experience. So I can at least shovel their ideas where they have and bring them closer and closer. like sometimes people, know, we have a PC controller, IT person says that way, but for, you know, it’s not actually a PC, it’s a controller. So we’re trying to close that gap between the engineering and the IT. And that’s where we try to be a very good integrator where we close that gap between IT and OT, you know.
But overall we put everybody in the meeting then we do that traditional kickoff, know, see how the pinpoint What are the pain points in a project and then we start bringing them
as close as possible and we start working with them individually in different phases of the project. But at the end, we try to kind of wrap up and everything, do like a customer review and see if it’s like with everybody. the engineer guy is happy, if the IT guy is happy, if the engineer, if the, I like to say the manager likes to see all the pretty spreadsheets and the graphics on the screen. So we try to wrap up and everything.
James Huysentruyt (07:32.75) There you go.
James Huysentruyt (07:51.118) Well, if you can make everybody happy, more power to you. That’s how it’s been. find usually making the engineer happy is the IT guys sometimes that’s hard because they’re dealing with all these outside, know, it’s what’s happened yesterday, right? If we got a cyber attack yesterday, it could close you down. Do you do most of your work on site or do you do a lot of work like locally in your office and then bring it?
Leo Grave (07:53.526) That’s it. Yep.
Leo Grave (08:16.554) of the morning. It is a little bit of hybrid, right? Again,
It turns back to depending on the product, depending on the infrastructure that they have on site. So some customer, they don’t want to have everything local. So we try to kind of run everything as we can in our lab, put it all in the server, then replicate that in the local. And then eventually we start developing that locally. But sometimes when the customer have the, going back to the cybersecurity thing, they have that structure in place, it’s a little easier to remote as well as giving it the proper support. Sometimes they put a new machine in,
and they’re like, hey, the machine’s not responding properly. We lost communication with this, like gateway or whatever. It is easier for us to troubleshoot when it’s remote, but we do mostly hybrid.
James Huysentruyt (08:55.95) Right.
James Huysentruyt (09:02.338) Yep. That makes sense. probably get a lot more work done that way too. okay. Translating back into technology. First, I want to talk about the data. really what are your approaches to data? Cause it’s, I mean, it’s all over the place. I’m sure you get in and they’re all in different silos and you so maybe you can talk a little bit about your methodologies and just approach on bringing the data and consolidating.
Leo Grave (09:29.782) Well, I like to get a little step back in there because, I mean, everything is data nowadays. So you have a blob here, have a blob there. Everything you can put in a spreadsheet. We can put even our information here right now, epistalized and put in a spreadsheet. It’s going to sit in the cloud. I like to approach that, again, trying to identify what kind of information, again, the data translating to information, what kind of information the customer would like to acquire.
because I’ve seen things that everybody talks about data, they actually don’t know what they’re going to do with that data, right?
collecting another like 3.5 gigs of this database that okay what they’re gonna do with that you know just putting a lot of space and and putting more bandwidth on the network so we tried to identify what kind of information would be ideal for the project or ideal for the customer let’s say they’re trying to acquire some KPI specific with that machine they’re trying to track like you know they try come up with a new plan of predictive maintenance you can try collect specific trends of that machine so which
try to at least filter and gather all this information before actually translating that into bullet points. OK, that’s going to be the data. Like, we need to know what is the voltage that the phase that’s running this drive tube is coming up before an ironed out that. And that’s the little push that we have.
James Huysentruyt (10:55.448) Yeah. Okay. So, so I mean, when we talk about data, have just some of the specifics, right? You have the basics for on the skater side, right? You’ve got your trends and you got your, your alarm points, right? You’re, you know, and however, the, the traditional skater side of it. And then, then you have the data on the outside of skater, right? You’ve, you’re leveraging that data, bringing it up. And of course, data is coming from all over the place.
Like if you’re doing recipe management, bringing that down, do you tend to, do you use their databases first or do you bring in, do you come in with ideas saying, here’s, here’s basically our receptacles and what we are, or do you leverage what they have their enterprise?
Leo Grave (11:38.792) And if they have…
Going back to the ISA95 that I mentioned in beginning, we tried to incorporate as much as we can and created a unique integration system fitting the industry 4.0 standards. It goes back to depending on the project, depending on the customer. Like if you got Mr. Joe Moe that has a facility with 30 people and they want to just have a little system that gathers all the layer there, CNC machines, lathe machines, or machine tenny, you’re probably going to bring up your own.
system, your own database, and we try to leverage other cloud services. But when you go to enterprise levels, we have a multi-million dollar manufacturing that has all the architecture in place, or already have all the structure, it is easy to work what they have already, and just complying with their policies.
James Huysentruyt (12:29.614) Right. now you’re working even more with their IT groups. So that’s always fun. That’s always fun. Well, I have to ask this one because the topic of the hour, of the minute is AI. And really, your experience with it, where do you see it? mean, this could be quite a conversation. I just want to first, your experience with it, and then I’d like to get your views on where you think it’s going.
Leo Grave (12:32.937) Yeah, more of the RT people,
Leo Grave (12:46.398) we are.
Leo Grave (12:57.922) No, well, I think like the Terminator’s gonna come over and start like shooting us and everything. You know, I’m kidding, not at all that.
James Huysentruyt (13:04.333) Well, that’s why I’m always nice to Alexa and to Siri. I’m always very nice to those two. Okay.
Leo Grave (13:10.4) Yeah, never know. They collected data, know? Jokes aside, I see AI being leveraged in a very, they are going to be very well receptive of AI, right? And our experience is mostly with Genitive Prompt AI, which is a lot of Microsoft co-pilot come out with other non-
other brands I would say start kind of involved, but the traditional, know, like Chat GPT they always call. DexTap, the AI, the generative prompt that you, like the little bot that we have when you go on the website and like type in a question. So we tried to integrate that a little bit in a few projects we did in the past. It’s not like a full down solution that we tried to put it in, but it’s actually kind of.
custom breed or inbreed development that we’re trying to put it out as You know leverage some of the information that we get out So instead like looking at the reports like say we have a little 300,000 alarms and we like okay, you’re gonna put the filter you’re gonna set up the filter for this or that data is usually should ask the bot like okay, hey Report from like February 1st or February 2nd, know at this time it put it out there So we would like to leverage that a little bit
And there’s more of the AI, again, the denative prompt AI that we mentioned, which is the most common one everybody uses, translating documents, not translating documents, sorry, transcripting documents and giving that type of information. But I like to mention the AIs that analyze some trends. So for example, we are collecting specific graphics. We’re trying to see, let’s say we have a specific vibration in the machine. We’re collecting a pressure switch. And that pressure switch tends to go
down a specific amount of time or depending on the process that the machine is doing, of like cross-reference data like, hey, you’re losing efficiency here. Hey, there’s a possibility of a break here. That’s where I think the AI could be leveraged, at least on the skated systems. We tried to implement that, but I think there is a long way to get to that level.
James Huysentruyt (15:21.902) Yeah, so we still have a little bit to go.
Leo Grave (15:24.418) Yeah, there’s a little bit of it to go. It’s just a voice, but I’m sorry for talking over it, but it is, kind of, as you mentioned, like everybody just want to talk about it. Everybody thinks it’s cool, but at the end of the day, like when you see what it actually does, it’s just data gathering, foot in your face filtered. think that’s the best way to describe it.
James Huysentruyt (15:43.726) Yeah, and again, talking about the data side of it, because I think you’ll see where AI is going, what you can do with it. when we’re talking about interactive AI, where we’re putting it into automation. And really the question is, where your customers are, how much will they trust it?
Leo Grave (16:11.986) You’ve actually got a good point about the trust. We also have to be compliant with St. Paul’s, especially the big companies. have the confidential information that they have. You have an aerospace facility that has some trade secrets that needs to be kept that way. So you don’t want to put that in everywhere.
James Huysentruyt (16:29.719) Thank
Leo Grave (16:36.438) You know, you cannot put that literally just put in an online database that everybody has access to it. So there’s all these different strategy that need to be implemented before or even like policy regulations that need to be in place before even implementing the governance. I think that’s the right word to say.
James Huysentruyt (16:56.46) Okay. Okay. So I, so change the subject a little bit is, you know, IOT, cause IOT was, but nothing but the talk, right? From just pre from probably 2016 to, I mean, it’s still now to a certain, it’s, but, can you tell me a little bit about what you think about IOT and how it fits and where, where that’s going?
Leo Grave (17:21.686) yeah, Well, I like to give a little bit of a brief background of the IoT because everybody thinks like, IoT is like RFID or IoT is like everything that has a little tag, you know. I’ve mentioned before, like sometimes the customers have that mentality or they already know what they’re talking, but it is just kind of like…
ruffling the ideas or they are touching the surface of the topic. So I like to make sure that IoT is, it could be implemented with any device that can be like at a small peripheral, you know, or a small device that can be, usually they don’t have that internet capabilities and we start leveraging that. And that’s where we start getting the data. For example, we mentioned a robot, right? Usually the robot doesn’t have a internet capability, know, or leverage that information that they have, but we can enable those.
functionalities using edge devices or using smaller devices to collect the data and make that IOT enable. But also we have other devices that already IOT enable that can get all the data that you want. We can see that in our houses, but I know we talk mostly about manufacturing, but we can see an outlet. An outlet that have a Wi-Fi capability or a lamp.
James Huysentruyt (18:36.622) Right, right.
James Huysentruyt (18:43.118) Right. Turn on off. Exactly. Yeah. Your meter, your meter. I mean, there’s so much in the house now. It’s like your sprinklers, right? Yeah.
Leo Grave (18:49.426) It’s immediately helpful. Yes. And that can be very helpful, not necessarily just giving the, not commodity, the.
the comfort that we’re looking for above as well as we give a completely different perspective of like how deep we can go into it. You mentioned the mirror in the house, but now like with the data you’re collecting, can, I know, try to see the different trends that we can use, you know, like, I’m sure a lot of energy companies already do that. hey, we use more in the summer, we tend to use like there’s a lot of load.
know, winter we try to use this amount of load and over that trace a little bring to you the user level is identify like, hey, where you can save money, you know, that can be bring to the manufacturers for sure, too.
James Huysentruyt (19:36.278) Yeah, because I see that now. I’m on the West Coast, so I’m PG &E out here. I used to be Southern California, so SCE, but in both places, getting your monthly statement and in the back, it tells you your trend and tells you where you are and where you’ve been. You get all those little analysis points now. I could see doing that internally. Another thing with IoT, because one of the things I think,
I think customers still don’t quite understand is that IoT doesn’t have to be in the cloud per se. You could have it on your intranet, right? Because the technology works and work within your umbrella, within your organization where you have your you know, your own internet, your internet, just your local, right? It’s your local internet under your umbrella. And that’s just one thing I want to point out to some of our audience that does.
Leo Grave (20:28.61) No, that’s good. And just not because of the IoT, we say internet. It doesn’t need to necessarily be connected to everywhere, the internet. can just have a, let’s call, network capabilities. I think that’s the best I could describe. As long as we can pull out a data connect to an IP-based system or an ethernet system, or even using other industry protocols, we could be able to leverage that information for sure without accessing the internet.
James Huysentruyt (20:43.502) Right.
James Huysentruyt (20:58.734) OK, nice. OK, so I’m going put you on the spot here. want you to, just with some of your experience, you don’t have to use actual customers or whatever. But I want you to give me an example of a real challenging situation that you’ve been in and kind of go through how you navigated it and how you solved it.
Leo Grave (21:04.118) Bring it on.
Leo Grave (21:21.154) Okay, well, you want that skater specifically, system specifically, there’s no…
James Huysentruyt (21:27.38) And you know, this is is this is yours so you can answer anyway. mean, skate is always good, but you can do however you want.
Leo Grave (21:34.786) I like to say the like since we’re like the topic there would be like in skater like industry for a dollar integration I think the biggest challenge when we’re trying to work with multiple customers and in different places And when I say places I mean internationally, so I mean like we work a little bit South America We have people like in North America people like from Australia to Europe and then now they want to have that like everything
reside in the cloud and they think it was just like, just open a browser, you know, and open up. And there’s a lot of like data governance that needs to be considered confidential stuff. So these are a challenge that is hard to overcome, especially if you have a lot of people that they do not understand. don’t understand. They see everything kind of, I’m going to mention that.
Like pop war or the popular view they see is easier to access or it is easier to, bring that into works, but it is not. So, I mean, I’m kind of like.
bouncing back and forth here, but what I’m trying to bring it over is when I work as a manager in another facility, not a facility, I’m sorry, in another project, we had a problem where a lot of the customer, not a lot of customer, this specific customer would bring it over to us and say like, we’re gonna bring data from Europe, we wanna bring data from all these different parts of the economy, but they have to be everything in a confidential, in the same environment. And I said like, okay, hey, this is not gonna be that easy, you know? Oh, but everybody has access to the internet, I said yes, but.
James Huysentruyt (23:09.986) Right.
James Huysentruyt (23:17.166) Yeah, come on. It’s the internet. Just bring it in.
Leo Grave (23:17.284) Like, yeah, but like, just put the machine in and like, look at the internet and say, now there’s a little more. So it was quite interesting to discuss these things because again, thinking of end user, like you have a laptop, you read a laptop, you plug in the cable, X, Y, five, boom, you have access to Google and everything on a website. So I think that’s the perspective they’re having. And then you understand like how the levels of, again, an ICA 95 could be, have to stack up.
you know, and you still get the data governance because I mean, I can just put in the machine and bring all the data to the whole internet to see it. But is that something safe to do? Again, the IT would probably grab my neck. It’s like, are doing? You know, guarantee and yes, that would everything. And, but that was a little of the challenge again. It was, it was not a project that ended up.
James Huysentruyt (23:58.028) Yeah. Always comes back to IT. Always comes back to IT. They stop us from doing everything.
Leo Grave (24:10.154) going for it, you know, but was a little bit of the consulting phase where we’re still discussing how they want to do and they were starting to get a little bit of information, but it was a little challenging to like explain to them that they can just not plug a cable. They have all these like step by step that needs to be achieved, you know, until we started seeing something from another place.
James Huysentruyt (24:34.21) Right, right. And again, always dealing with their policies, you know, bring in. What about…
Leo Grave (24:38.678) Yes.
James Huysentruyt (24:43.426) bring in legacy equipment. When you bring in legacy equipment, because there’s stuff out there that is, there’s, you know, right now how they start it, they push a button, they stop it, they push a button and they want to bring that into, you know, in the fold in automation. Yeah, that’s what I do.
Leo Grave (24:58.594) You are opening up a can of worms here, Yeah, like I understand like a lot of customers have like, there is always a customer that they have the machine that is running. Oh, have this machine has been running for 57 years. We never have a problem. Can we collect some data there? like to analyze some KPIs, know, and they don’t want to do any major investments and everything. One,
James Huysentruyt (25:19.982) We want the data, but we don’t want to any money.
Leo Grave (25:22.79) What a bodyhead, that’s what it is. And I just schooled in a project for a customer of mine. And they do different chemicals. So it’s like the whole automation. They’re trying to collect all the data from all these different instruments. Pressure, high levels, low levels. think we have roughly 80 devices.
just like on the instrumentation level. And they tried to bring everything. So I made a quote and they were like, but this is too expensive. We’re not expecting to spend that money. So like, just asked what you want to do. Unfortunately, I mean, we can start like, do you really need to have 80 sensors connected to the…
James Huysentruyt (26:02.656) And I think that is, and I find this with my experience too, is they’re starting like this, or sorry, you can’t see the other end, but they’re starting what? And you have to go down that path with them and then bring in, but what do you need every piece? What do you need? What’s the critical pieces? And getting them to think more critically of what do you really need to start with? And then add on to it gradually.
Leo Grave (26:32.886) Yes, you start adding gallery or at least have like architecture that you can start building on. But going back to the legacy that you mentioned, usually we see it being working out pretty well. We use the edge of devices, like a…
James Huysentruyt (26:37.76) Yeah, exactly. Exactly.
Leo Grave (26:46.942) small sometimes we try to have a little bit creative we don’t need to use any something out of the shelf you know we try and create our own little devices that we can read a specific type of data so let’s say there is only like a bullion signal you know just like in it all on off you know there’s a little oscillating signal they’re coming over and you should be an analog depending on the type of the data we just bring that like Mecha device we’re gonna call and we’re gonna bring that that connects to like our database
or the customer database and we can start collecting that. And sometimes, especially for small mid-sized businesses, it’s been working out pretty well. I’ve seen a lot of trends coming over there, so it doesn’t need to be super expensive. Let’s say you want to have nice graphics of how many cycles your machine is running.
You can just put that little edge device that is like every time the operator press a button, you know, sends a pulse that pulses register in the database. Now you have a data like how many cycles you’re having throughout the day. So little solutions like this seems to be very helpful for leg sick women. But now if you want to go ahead.
James Huysentruyt (27:53.496) So, sorry. No, was going to, I was going to ask having the, because when you bring this data in, right. And, typically now how many people are looking at how many people are, because before it was like, it was the guy just on the, I mean, going way back when it was the guy at the machine, right. And then they brought it out and maybe the supervisors were looking at it now. But, you know, so how many people are looking at the data now from your experience?
Leo Grave (28:20.576) Hmm, let me I’m gonna take this I’m gonna ask a different question I think we’re gonna have an answer afterwards like what the data is you talk about like more in the back end or like when you say what data is gonna be on the front end like
James Huysentruyt (28:26.04) Okay.
James Huysentruyt (28:34.398) Right. the thing is when you talk, the data, you know, basically right at the machine, you have that data, right? And then you have the trends and the alarms and the events and things like that, you know, keeping in the skater world. Yeah. Where before those were just looked at by the process guys, right? Now, are you seeing that?
Leo Grave (28:44.919) Yes.
James Huysentruyt (28:59.052) that data is being looked at, like, especially with trends and stuff, is being looked outside the process, or is it still, you think it’s still kind of siloed where that data is looked at? I mean, obviously the money is a different story, but I mean,
Leo Grave (29:10.036) No, I understand because I asked you that way because there is the data that I’m going to call the backend data, know, like that. law, I don’t know how many logs or how many, you know, different types of like cycle. I I’m going to call the raw data, right? That is like a CSV, you know, like a database.
James Huysentruyt (29:24.43) Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that. Yeah.
Leo Grave (29:29.25) Matter of fact, sometimes I see more people looking at that kind of data. actually, the fancy, not fancy, the fancy graphic or trans and you have that. again, going back to the question is because I see a lot of more people with the IT looking at those because they’re gonna be the one leveraging, like bringing to, I know Microsoft platform, putting like in a Power BI.
James Huysentruyt (29:36.942) Yeah.
James Huysentruyt (29:48.502) Right, right, because BI, I was gonna say, because now that it takes, if you put in XML or CSV, BI could bring it in.
Leo Grave (29:54.882) And they can do everything. So that’s the raw data, right? And I see a lot of people using this because they kind of gonna, they’re not necessarily consuming that data, but they are using that in somewhere else. But frankly, if I tell like the person that is looking at the screen and the graphics, sometimes like I, I’ve seen like two people or three people, like they are basically the,
the one that were driving all the implementation of project and they just look at, that’s nice. There’s a graphic here. Okay, great. let me explore this and put it in my spreadsheet. I’m sorry, I’m in my power point. And it’s frankly, because here’s all that much data and they, okay, what they gonna do with it? It comes back to the, we already discussed, so.
James Huysentruyt (30:24.588) Right. Right.
James Huysentruyt (30:34.446) Yeah, you’re just right. It’s, it’s, let’s show last night’s trend at the eight o’clock meeting and then that’s it. Right. I never look at it again. Okay. So I think, you know, before we wrap up, I want to ask you, just kind of a general question for, especially for, for really for Mecha Solutions and, and, know, where do you see things going? Do you see it? Cause it’s been, you know, what kind of changes do you see in the, you know, basic or big?
Leo Grave (30:38.753) Yes.
Leo Grave (31:07.724) I’ve seen different players and different trends coming out on the market, especially for, I’m gonna call the big brands and the not so new big brands. There’s some saying like a lot of major players, they’re very good at hardware, they’re very good in…
James Huysentruyt (31:21.752) Right, okay.
Leo Grave (31:28.162) You know, they’ve been doing this for 30, 40 years in the market. They’re very good at controllers. They’re very good at all these drives. They’re trying to get into like leverage their share of their market share and to bring all these like scathing solutions and they’re failing drastically. And when I say that is, it’s because like the customer, they already have their heart implemented. Oh, let’s put it as the same ecosystem, right? Everything’s going to work. And they kind of, they just.
I to say bad words like that, but they…
James Huysentruyt (31:59.474) Do you think it’s because they’re just not that flexible because their system is kind of rigid or maybe it’s their thinking?
Leo Grave (32:03.506) It is the like, no, it’s that they try to not, they try to leverage so much what they have throughout that many years so they don’t have that innovation leverage that other companies have.
So they’re trying to use that platform as being working for 20 years. And you kind of just put it like a fancy, you know, rap on that and they think it’s going to work, but it’s not. And then it creates like a very bad user experience. It creates a very bad integration, you know? So I see a little bit of the trends where like the past three years, a lot of people migrated from these like top market dogs and bring up to his more or newer systems because they work better.
James Huysentruyt (32:24.046) All right.
Leo Grave (32:47.908) It’s not because you are very good in the OT space, like say you’re gonna be actually good in IT space or on the skater space.
James Huysentruyt (32:54.968) Yeah. And I find that they’re very cost effective too. The newer system. I mean, it’s just so yeah. Okay. Anything else you’d like to add before we wrap up?
Leo Grave (32:59.83) Yes, they are keeping very cost effective.
Leo Grave (33:06.882) No, Jim. Again, I really liked the opportunity. It was nice to talk to you. It was nice to…
James Huysentruyt (33:11.31) And it’s great with, yeah.
Leo Grave (33:12.258) to discuss this, not everybody that I like to kind of get ins and outs of the skater systems, know, like she’s talked about the goods and the bads. So I like to speak a lot sometimes and it’s something I’m passionate about it. And I just will, as you mentioned, like our audience sees that there is the different options out there. It doesn’t need to be what is like putting on LinkedIn or put it out on whatever media that they’re consuming.
there is definitely a lot more options that can be very well suitable for the applications. And that’s where we like to bring the Mecha Solutions flag and say, hey, we’re the kind of people that we don’t need to be playing with the main guys. We don’t need to spend thousand and thousand dollars just to make this. We can make something work for you using different people as well.
James Huysentruyt (34:04.824) Yeah, well, I definitely appreciate you. Come on. Thank you very much. This has been very informative. so I thank you and PCD thanks you. So you have a great rest of your day and hopefully we’ll be talking again soon.
Leo Grave (34:07.874) You’re welcome.
Leo Grave (34:17.89) Have a day, you too, sir. Bye bye, Jim.
