This week’s episode features Christian Olson, a mechanical engineer at Accuride Corporation, a manufacturer of wheels, wheel end, and braking components for commercial and passenger vehicles. Throughout his conversation with Jake & David, Christian shares his background and experiences as a young engineer, his passion for technology and constant learning, and how companies can attract and retain new engineering talent.
This week’s episode features Christian Olson, a mechanical engineer at Accuride Corporation, a manufacturer of wheels, wheel end, and braking components for commercial and passenger vehicles. Throughout his conversation with Jake & David, Christian shares his background and experiences as a young engineer entering the workforce amidst the COVID-19 pandemic. He discusses his passion for technology and constant learning, emphasizing the importance of adaptability and embracing new ideas in the field of engineering.
During the conversation, Christian emphasizes the importance of predictive maintenance and having a proactive rather than reactive approach to manufacturing processes. Christian shares his experiences and projects he has led, including soundproofing machinery and the inception of predictive maintenance. He shares the ambitious goal of achieving zero unplanned downtime.
Christian also highlights the challenges faced by young engineers, particularly the need to prove oneself and push for opportunities to contribute to their companies. He emphasizes the value of taking on projects that allow for personal growth and professional development. The conversation sheds light on how companies can attract and retain young engineering talent by fostering inclusivity, providing opportunities for impactful work, and supporting continuous learning.
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Guest Bio
Christian Olson is a mechanical engineer at Accuride, a manufacturer of wheels, wheel end, and braking components for commercial and passenger vehicles. His technical knowledge spans CNC programming, fluid system design, and product design. Fresh out of college during the pandemic, Olson showed remarkable resilience in his job search, a testament to his determination and perseverance in a challenging environment.
One of his notable contributions thus far is implementing Tractian into operations at Accuride. This project is aimed at reducing unplanned downtime and improving the company's operational efficiency. His quick mastery of a new discipline and its successful application demonstrates his exceptional ability to learn and implement new solutions.
Also notable is Olson's soundproofing project at InScape, which showcased his capacity to step outside his comfort zone. His tenacity in undertaking unfamiliar tasks and his success in resolving complex issues highlight his innovative nature and problem-solving skills. Even in his early career, Olson has shown an ability to address industry challenges with a blend of technical expertise and adaptive learning.
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Guest Quote
“A motor on top of a CNC, that no one's gonna touch or look at, it's just gonna keep going until it breaks. If it's not showing any outward signs of wear and tear issues, no one's going to do anything about it. They're just going to look at it and go, ‘Yep, that runs.’ And using Predictive Maintenance, you can see ahead of time and get a jump on it.” - Christian Olson
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Time Stamps
*(01:21) Opening Ice Breaker
*(01:57) Christian's Background
*(05:13) Why it's up to you to prove yourself
*(08:08) Segment 01: The Maintainer Mashup
*(10:50) How Accuride approaches maintenance and reliability
*(12:23 Why Predictive Maintenance adds value to manufacturing operations
*(13:43 ) Identifying which assets matter most
*(15:38) What solutions Tractian is bringing to Accuride
*(17:20) Segment 02: What's in Your Toolkit?
*(18:05) What you should be doing to attract young talent
*(19:49) The importance of finding opportunities for yourself
*(23:04) Segment 03: The Future of Factories
*(24:58) Proving the case for bringing in new tech
*(26:35) Where the industry can improve culturally
*(28:38) Segment 04: Fix It Funnies
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Links
[00:00:00] Christian Olson: Maintenance? Maybe we should call it maintenance.
[00:00:04] David Lee: I'll fix it. I'm going to fix it.
[00:00:07] Christian Olson: Concentrated. Maintain it. Maintain control.
[00:00:11] Jake Hall: Maintenance complete.
[00:00:14] David Lee: This is The Maintainers, a Bluecap Community Podcast. My name is David Lee, director with Tractian and your host for The Maintainers Show.
[00:00:22] Jake Hall: And I'm Jake Hall, the manufacturing millennial.
[00:00:25] Jake Hall: On today's episode, we have a really special guest, Christian Olson, who is a mechanical engineer at Accuride. And at 27 years old, we're going to hear a lot about an experience graduating, going right into the workforce right after the pandemic wrapped up. And we'll learn about his experience in production maintenance, fluid design systems, CNC programming, product design, and of course, much more.
[00:00:48] Jake Hall: Before that. A word from our sponsor.
[00:00:53] Voiceover: This podcast is brought to you by Tractian. Tractian offers streamlined hardware and software solutions designed to make maintenance more reliable and profitable. Their AI powered condition monitoring and asset management solution predicts machine failures and unplanned downtime, allowing clients to save an average of $10 million every trimester.
[00:01:14] Voiceover: It's artificial intelligence quarterbacking your
[00:01:17] Christian Olson: maintenance. Well, thanks for joining
[00:01:20] Jake Hall: us, Christian. First off, how's your year going so
[00:01:22] Christian Olson: far? Doing pretty all right. It's getting a bit colder here, uh, up in, I live in, in North, Northwest PA, so it's getting, starting to get a bit chillier now.
[00:01:32] Jake Hall: And you know, the summer's been busy so far this year.
[00:01:35] Jake Hall: Uh, we went out to a lot of places. What was your, what was your favorite activity for the summer so far? Got a good story
[00:01:40] Christian Olson: for us? Ooh, I spent a lot of the summer going to, um, I'm a nerd at heart. I went to a lot of conventions and things all around in Texas. It went to some out in Ohio, Pittsburgh, all over other than that, running, swimming, a little bit of boating.
[00:01:57] David Lee: So Christian, tell us a little bit about your background and essentially how you got started in the industry just
[00:02:03] Christian Olson: in general. When I was younger, I, I pretty much, uh, my father was a, was a CNC programmer for a facility here, here in Northwest PA. And I grew up, you know, with him, kind of seeing him do his work and, and what he did, and by the time I was out of high school, I was like, I, I think I want to do engineering.
[00:02:23] Christian Olson: It wasn't, it didn't seem like the, the thing I wanted to do, but the more I learned and, and did more math and physics and things, I, I realized, I, I'm good at this, I, it's what I enjoy, I, I love technology and learning new things, and that's an area where you can just constantly be learning. New and new things because the science is developing as time goes on.
[00:02:45] Christian Olson: Eventually ended up at Penn State Behrendt in Erie, Pennsylvania. Thought I was gonna go for chemical engineering, but ended up switching to plastics engineering before eventually settling in the mechanical engineering technology program there, which I absolutely adored and after that I Graduated just prior to the pandemic, actually, and...
[00:03:12] Christian Olson: That was an experience in and of itself, graduating, going, Alright, let's get into the workforce, let's, let's start the career. And then just, a big ol stop sign, right in your face, as, as March rolled around, and all of a sudden, no one, no one was hiring. It just, just grinded to a halt. I, I, I applied to, you know, went through and applied to jobs for, for months, and months, and months.
[00:03:37] Christian Olson: But I, I kept on, you kept on that train, kept going and eventually was able to land a, uh, a production engineering, uh, position at InScape in, uh, Faulkner, New York, uh, the U. S. branch of the company. And did a lot of CNC programming there, much like my father did. Uh, as well as doing product design, uh, different projects, tooling design, until...
[00:04:02] Christian Olson: Eventually, unfortunately, the company, back in January of this year, unfortunately liquidated. I was lucky enough that I actually, my current now, my current position at AcuRide Wheels in Erie, Pennsylvania, I applied to it two days prior to that happening, and... Ended up landing the job that I'm currently at, getting a, you know, a higher position, a mechanical engineer too.
[00:04:28] Christian Olson: I have been, as much as I enjoyed the previous job, uh, feeling much more involved in what the company is doing. Feeling like I'm able to challenge myself and learn new things and, and push the company that I'm working for forward and make big changes, uh, in the place that I work, which is all you can really ask as an engineer is to, to not just have busy work, to get that full experience of being the one that improves things and, and really makes a change.
[00:04:59] Jake Hall: So as one of the younger guests that we've had so far on the podcast, what has been. The perception of what you thought going into this industry was like. Versus what it actually was. And, and I know there's been a little bit of a shift. What were some like the biggest, like, I guess you could say mind changes that you had with your own, you know, your own growth in that area?
[00:05:20] Christian Olson: Definitely that. And I, I've seen this watching some of my other peers that also graduated around the same time I did. Sometimes it's really is up to you to prove yourself and to push yourself to do more things for your company. Cause I, uh, when I started at the, at InScape originally. I came in and they were like, We are making a whole new product line.
[00:05:43] Christian Olson: We need you to program all of it. My boss at the time was our only other person that could program CNCs and had basically been told by upper management, You are no longer an engineer, you are a manager. And so I came in and only having my CNC programming skills that I had basically learned in maybe two or so classes in school.
[00:06:11] Christian Olson: You know, covering the basics of, of, you know, G code and things like that. Programmed an entirely new product line. Uh, but that was, when I, when I came in and got that, and, and I did all that, and I was working on that for months. And, I was starting to get close to the end, and I, I come to them and I ask, Hey, what am I doing after this?
[00:06:30] Christian Olson: Because, I, you know, I'm programming it to be variable. So, once it's done, it's done. And then, you know, what's my job after that? Because at that point they hadn't given me anything else to do. And they're like, we'll figure something out for ya. And immediately I'm like, oh, okay, well, I'm gonna start coming up with ideas then.
[00:06:51] Christian Olson: I, I need to be providing. I need to be doing something. Uh, that thought of just taking in the paycheck, not, not for me. And I do think, going forward, you're probably going to feel a lot more fulfilled putting in that work and making that difference. I mean, you'll say, here's the things that I've done. And I've had multiple projects that I've been able to do.
[00:07:12] Christian Olson: In my internships, but prior to graduating, as well as... Uh, in my job at InScape and AccuRite, I've had projects that I'm like, I am, I'm proud of this, and I'm very invested in what I did here. That's a really good point,
[00:07:25] David Lee: and I want to see if you agree with this, because there's been a lot of studies recently that come out about happiness in the workplace and burnout, and it, they found that it's not actually being overworked or underpaid, it's actually impact, which causes people to have that, that uh, what we define as burnout, and just have unhappiness in their role.
[00:07:45] David Lee: Uh, so it sounds like you're basically alluding to that and you're, you're proof, right? As they say, the proof is in the pudding. So good words there. Good words there. And so now that we know a little bit about Christian, uh, it's time for our first segment, Maintainer Mashup, where we're going to dive into equipment, management, Teams and find out what makes maintenance more reliable.
[00:08:08] David Lee: Maintenance
[00:08:09] Jake Hall: required.
[00:08:10] Christian Olson: Listen, I maintain. I maintain the muscle. Maintain course. Maintain speed. I gotta maintain
[00:08:17] David Lee: respect. And so, Christian, working at Accuride, can we hear a little bit more specifically about Accuride in your day to day there? And for the audience, Accuride manufacturers. Automotive parts like wheels, wheel ends, and brakes for commercial and passenger vehicles.
[00:08:36] David Lee: So tell us a little bit about Accuride and kind of how things go there. We obviously see that you're a hard worker and you're, you're looking for that impact, but, uh, let's break it down to a day
[00:08:45] Christian Olson: to day. So our specific plan, uh, only does, we do aluminum forgings and machining of truck wheels. We've got quite, quite the process.
[00:08:57] Christian Olson: Uh, our, our forging process is not like any other process. For, for this specific thing. So with our, with our forgings, uh, we actually only do one movement to, uh, forge these wheels. If you go to just about anywhere else, uh, that does, does aluminum forgings or, or forgings on our size. They don't do it in one movement.
[00:09:19] Christian Olson: They're gonna do it in at least two or three. Two or three different, uh, like, forms. Or parts to form it into its base shape. And that is a complex process. But we do the foragings to get the wheels in a, uh, somewhat, if you were to look at it from the side, like an hourglass shape for the inside of the wheel.
[00:09:42] Christian Olson: We spin them to put a bit more of a divot in, so it ends up like a curve. It's a tighter curve in. Slider curve out. After that, it goes on to our lathes and machine, our machine lines for lathing to clean it up after it's been heat treated. And then to add hand holes and, uh, bolt holes. And then some, some of our foragings go to our other facilities, uh, in North America.
[00:10:08] Christian Olson: The majority of them end up just going straight out to consumers and our facility makes thousands of wheels a day. So it's, it's a very big operation, uh, runs 24 seven. So
[00:10:21] Jake Hall: when you're doing this process that has a lot of heat, it's running really fast. There's a lot, you know, there's a lot of, I guess you could say, you know, strength and pressure being applied to it.
[00:10:30] Jake Hall: When you have those, you know, really unique pieces of equipment on the floor, how does Accuride think about maintenance in terms of keeping machines up and running, right? Because there's probably a risk if there was a failure to happen, it's not just like the machine just turns off. There's a, there's a, or probably a pretty big safety factor risk as well.
[00:10:49] Jake Hall: When it comes to handling this, how do you, how do you as a company or how have you seen the culture around this type of process? When it comes to like, reliability and predictive
[00:10:59] Christian Olson: maintenance. Yeah, so that is, that is, that is a, that is certainly something that, uh, companies can struggle with, is, is getting that maintenance and that reliability when you have something that runs 24 7.
[00:11:13] Christian Olson: Uh, because we are, you know, not only do we supply ourselves with our own foragings, we also supply our other plants with their foragings. And so, we really need to be on top of our production. Things can't stop, things can't go down, because not only will we be behind, they'll be behind. And it just can cascade.
[00:11:36] Christian Olson: And that is one of the things that I've, I've been working on, the big project that I've been working on since I got to Accuride and how I met David. I was working through Tracian to get predictive maintenance. And during my interview to start at Accuride, my, my previous engineering manager, that was what he wanted was, was in my first interview was, Hey, I want to do predictive maintenance.
[00:11:59] Christian Olson: Here's the technology. Is this something that interests you? And I said. Absolutely. Like, I've never heard of this. I'm in. Like, absolutely, I'm in. I, I, I want to learn about this. I want to see what it can do. And I want to use it and improve our facility and our manufacturing process. And
[00:12:18] David Lee: so... What specifically about predictive maintenance in general excited you?
[00:12:23] David Lee: So I know it, if you could see it in your eyes, right? The moment you got involved with reliability, it was something that sparked the interest and obviously you are the tip of the spear, getting things done, getting projects actually inked and getting, uh, sensors on different machinery. Projects done and things of that, of that nature.
[00:12:39] David Lee: So what's, what actually excited you? What was that spark?
[00:12:43] Christian Olson: To be quite honest, just the fact that the general description of what my prior engineering manager had given me of seeing issues before they happen, you know, there was a specific issue, I believe it was a bearing in one of our, our big forges that uh, had gone down a few weeks before my interview to work there and that had gone down and I think he said our forge was down for like a week.
[00:13:09] Christian Olson: Because of this one bearing, because we just, no one, no one goes up there. These forages are three, three stories high. No one goes up there unless they have a very specific reason to go up there. Which I actually, with, with installing Traktion sensors, actually had a reason to go up there. And it's not fun going up there either.
[00:13:29] Christian Olson: Uh, it's a, it's a climb and, uh, it shakes a lot. Right. You feel like you're in an earthquake.
[00:13:34] Jake Hall: You know, it's, it's interesting, Kaya, how you talk about that, you know, when you're installing the sensors, I think there is probably like, um, there, there's ways that you have to ensure there's uptime, right? Are there certain pieces when you were looking at getting more preventative maintenance, getting more information on the entire system that, like, you focused on specifically?
[00:13:52] Jake Hall: You know, what was, what was the low hanging fruit that you went after to start
[00:13:57] Christian Olson: this process? I mean, immediately the low hanging fruit was I went to maintenance and said, Hey, what do we have issues with the most? You know, out of stores, what, what motors do we replace the most? And then you look at some of the, the big sort of, uh, funnels in, in how everything processes, like your factory, or like the, the compressors for the entire factory.
[00:14:20] Christian Olson: Some things that, if this breaks, and if this goes down, it's, everything goes down, or multiple things go down, and, and, you know, are, are harder to fix, and puts a big halt in the process. Those, those are how you kind of have to... Decide what to prioritize and what to focus on and getting those can be very hard when you've just gotten there two weeks ago, uh, figuring out, uh, what, uh, what is most important.
[00:14:49] Christian Olson: I haven't even figured out how to get where I'm going. I remember when I, when I first started the project, I found where, what I thought were our main compressors. And wrote those down as, as, alright, here's what, here's where we want to put, we'll want to put sensors on. And then later on, I was showing someone else, and they were like, those, those are the backup compressors.
[00:15:07] Christian Olson: The main compressors are in the other building. I'm like, oh, okay, good to know.
[00:15:12] David Lee: Now, with this project, obviously there's things like access to heights and things where we're not wanting to go
[00:15:17] Jake Hall: in dangerous areas
[00:15:18] David Lee: all the time to kind of run these routes, right? What are your biggest, I would say, hopes with respect to this predictive maintenance project?
[00:15:27] David Lee: Whether it be run times, reliability, improving mean times between failure, things like that. What, for you, is like, that's our big win, that's our home run, and this is what we're going for?
[00:15:38] Christian Olson: I mean, the perfect world, the ideal, is no unplanned downtime. That's the dream is, is to have it so that, uh, you know, you don't have a motor shut down.
[00:15:50] Christian Olson: You're able to plan these, uh, cause, cause, you know, you do preventative maintenance. That is, it's, it's something that needs to happen. You should be doing it. In general, we try to do all of our machine lines and everything every once every 30 days, at least. At minimum, do, do it once every 30 days. And even in that 30 day window, you can definitely have something that seemed fine before that all of a sudden isn't.
[00:16:16] Christian Olson: And, using preventative maintenance, a motor on top of a CNC that no one's gonna touch or look at, you know, it's just gonna keep going. Uh, until it breaks, you know, until you're making bad parts and you're losing money. No one's gonna look at it outside of a p. m. And, uh, using predictive maintenance, being able to know ahead, Oh, hey, definitely look at this very specific thing during the next opportunity we have.
[00:16:48] Christian Olson: Because, for the most part, if it's not showing any outward signs of wear, tear, issues... No one's going to do anything about it. Uh, they just go look at it and go, yep, that runs. Right. Uh, and, and using the predictive maintenance, you can, of course, see ahead of time and get a jump on it.
[00:17:08] Jake Hall: So we've heard about how AcuRide operates and the systems they're using and solutions for predictive maintenance, but we want to dive more into the individual, which is you.
[00:17:17] Jake Hall: So what is an. Christian's toolkit.
[00:17:23] Christian Olson: We're going to fix it.
[00:17:24] David Lee: Get the tool. Pick the one
[00:17:26] Christian Olson: right tool.
[00:17:28] Jake Hall: The right tool for the right job. What are you doing? You know, you're, you're still really young in your career. You're 27 years old. You're on that cusp of millennial and Gen Z. What are you seeing as, you know, some of the, the things that.
[00:17:45] Jake Hall: Manufacturers could be doing in general to make more young people like you be inspired to join this industry. You know, you had some time at InScape. What, what do you want to like share with, with other potential young generations or people who want to bring younger
[00:18:01] Christian Olson: people on board? I actually, I've spent, uh, in preparation for this podcast, I actually talked to some other young engineers.
[00:18:08] Christian Olson: And got a lot of feedback in terms of, uh, you know, other experiences that people have had. Men, women, trans women, uh, LGBTQ. And got a lot of feedback in terms of what the experience has been. And, in general, positive. Very positive. Uh, for, for young engineers right now. There's all sorts of, of jobs out there in, in engineering to get.
[00:18:29] Christian Olson: It's not, you know, outside of the pandemic area. You can definitely find engineering positions in all sorts of... Uh, different fields, uh, whether it's exactly what you went to school for, or, you know, trying to branch out and do, and do other things, and that's, that's something that I've, I've personally tried to do, is, is I love...
[00:18:51] Christian Olson: New ideas, and learning new things, and expanding my skill set as much as I can. Because, as one of my other peers put it, In five years time, there will be someone who can do what you do as good, maybe even better, for cheaper. Either because technology has improved, and you never learned. Uh, what the new tech is, or you've somewhat started to settle, settle into your own, your own groove of how you do things and how you solve problems.
[00:19:22] Christian Olson: And expanding. Uh, what you're able to do, uh, whether, I, I've done CNC programming, I've done tool design, I've done product design, and just whatever, whatever projects and anything I can get my hands on, uh, whether I'm, you know, the expert or not, if it's something that you can get your hands on and you can learn about and, and prove that you can do that.
[00:19:45] Christian Olson: It's incredibly important to get that opportunity for
[00:19:49] Jake Hall: yourself. Well, I think it was one of those stories that you shared, right? Where like, you went out and you had to soundproof walls? I mean, normally soundproofing walls isn't, you know, a description that an engineer does, but that's something that you had to learn
[00:20:02] Christian Olson: that you've never done before.
[00:20:03] Christian Olson: Yes, that was, that was at InScape. Uh, we, I started there and we actually switched facilities. We, we moved a few blocks away to a, to a new facility. InScape made aluminum extrusions for glass walls. Uh, so basically the framing for glass walls. Customers would send us their layout for what they wanted like a floor plan to be.
[00:20:24] Christian Olson: And then we figured out all the parts, like all the sizes of everything, and then mark everything with the appropriate numbers and just ship it off to them and go. Here's the lego parts. Here's exactly where they go. Put it together. And we switched facilities. And we had a big stamp, die machine, or, is it die machine?
[00:20:44] Christian Olson: Uh, plastic, thin steel. A
[00:20:46] Jake Hall: continuous
[00:20:47] Christian Olson: stamping press or something. Yeah. Yeah, basically. And it was, we had gone from a very large, you know, a much larger open facility to a much more condensed facility that had been, it wasn't a manufacturing facility before, it had just been a storage facility. And the echo and the noise was atrocious.
[00:21:07] Christian Olson: We were way above OSHA standards for what was, you know, what was safe. To be in that environment, you could hear it from the office, like, the offices easily. Like, it was just a constant noise. And they wanted me to figure out a solution to this. And I was lucky enough to have a, an old family friend that worked as a, that worked as a sound engineer and I was like, Hey, can, give me some ideas, like, I, I need to learn about this.
[00:21:35] Christian Olson: Like, let me know everything that you can give me in like a, a three hour period that it, to at least get me started. It basically got the, the descriptions of, you know, you've got to look up these specific, like what these materials are for how they react to echoes and, and reflect noise. And the best is like, you don't need to seal it in, you just need to make sure that the echo doesn't hit a hard, heavy wall.
[00:22:05] Christian Olson: Because that was the issue, it was just bouncing back and forth in this small location. And so, using just old materials that we still had laying around from the previous facility and the previous product lines that we had stopped making. Uh, was able to, I, I looked up what, what the materials were, the, the different specs about them and was able to basically make these soundproofing walls that we placed around three sides of it, uh, of this, of the stamping machine and was able to get that decibel level below OSHA regulations, which saved our company money because we no longer had to go through, uh, you know, the necessary sound, you know, Uh, sound safety and, and a whole bunch of other things that were, that were going to be an extra headache that we were going to have to spend extra money on.
[00:22:55] Christian Olson: Well, you got
[00:22:56] Jake Hall: to be flexible in a lot of those areas. And I think that's kind of why, you know, we need, we move into our third segment here, which is where we talk about, you know, the future of factories.
[00:23:05] Christian Olson: Meet the future. To our futures. What future? The factory. My factory. Everybody's factory. I love your factory.
[00:23:13] Christian Olson: My factory.
[00:23:16] Jake Hall: My walls. We always think of the Trends are changing, the way we're doing business is changing, and the way we need to, you know, look ahead is constantly changing as well. Especially when, you know, the industry wants to bring in younger generations, they want to bring in different ways of how they're working, how they're learning.
[00:23:34] Jake Hall: So, what do you see, you know, has been the biggest challenge with, you know, older teammates, older people in maintenance, you know, who've, I guess you could say, the industry veterans of the company? And how, I guess you could say, change has been affecting them as new technology, new trends, new people
[00:23:57] Christian Olson: join the internet.
[00:23:57] Christian Olson: Yeah. So, so that, yeah, that is a, that is a big, big thing. I mean, that's, that's, that's a tale as old as time of, of, uh, just in general, new things aren't always, uh, the easiest to come. You know, just with, with age, you, new things aren't as. Simple, or not always as accepted, uh, and I feel like that's just a natural part of life, like, you know, that goes back as, as, uh, back to things like, you know, rock and roll being the, the speech of the devil, and, you know, it, it's just, it's a natural part of the human experience, and that can seep its way into you.
[00:24:35] Christian Olson: The actual industry and manufacturing things like that, in terms of technology, where you've got, for example, like a guy who's been on the floor, uh, doing maintenance work for maybe like, basically his whole life, since his 20s, he's been at the same, you know, been at the same facility, maybe 30, 40 years, uh, still there, and totally comfortable, wants things how to stay how they are, and getting those people on board is often, um, Uh, with new technology and new ideas is going to be the hardest thing for you to do.
[00:25:09] Christian Olson: Especially as a younger engineer, if you don't have all of your bases covered for all of your reasoning and why you do what you do. Uh, and that especially can become an issue, uh, you know, with management. Uh, not necessarily because management is negative or they don't know what they're doing, uh, but just because, uh, they really want to see.
[00:25:36] Christian Olson: Proof that things will work correctly. They don't want to, you know, they don't want to spend money on something that is just a flight of fancy. Which is totally understandable. That's, you know, that's how industry works and how you make money. And in terms of tech and pushing those sort of things, and especially once a facility or a facility gets its own sort of work culture in terms of How everyone acts, what, you know, like the general feel of like, how do the guys that work on the floor talk to each other about work when they're in the lunchroom?
[00:26:14] Christian Olson: If you can hear one of those conversations, you can have an immediate idea of how. That facility runs and how easy it is to get people to do things and to feel fulfilled in their job or feel like they want to do a good job. And that can, you know, the, the mental game makes a huge difference. All right. So
[00:26:35] David Lee: in light of that question here, what can we do more as an industry?
[00:26:43] David Lee: To make things more inclusive for all types of people, to attract more workers to come in to help. Um, I understand that you definitely spend some time speaking with some of your peers and things. So, give us a little bit of, uh, of knowledge there on what they're thinking and kind of what your, uh, your perspective is on this so we can improve this really as a community and as an industry.
[00:27:05] Christian Olson: Well, at least from a social aspect, especially for young engineers, I mean, you've got, we, we live on for, you know, unfortunately we do live in a very political era where people have very, very strong beliefs and, you know, as new parts of culture pop up or become more accepted, older generations have a hard time, can have a hard time adjusting to that.
[00:27:28] Christian Olson: And that can especially be true in areas like LGBTQ, trans employees. Or even just women employees, unfortunately, uh, women engineers. I have several, you know, a good amount of peers that I went to school with that I still, you know, I'm in contact with and still friends with, that I've spoken to them about their experiences since they started in their careers.
[00:27:53] Christian Olson: And while it's very generally a very, you know, positive, they're all very, very strong willed and hard workers. They've still had very, you know, very specific, sometimes very specific, very negative situations. Sometimes outright, but a lot of the time subconscious sort of reactions from older, older, uh, men engineers.
[00:28:18] Christian Olson: Absolutely.
[00:28:18] Jake Hall: I think the thing is, right, if the industry needs to grow, so does, you know, what the people in the industry look like as well, right? We're not gonna have growth if, if we're stagnant. And what it currently is, you know, so, so as we kind of wrap things up, we're gonna move into the final segment, which, you know, before we say goodbye, we call it the Fix It Funnies.
[00:28:38] Jake Hall: The fix
[00:28:39] David Lee: is
[00:28:39] Christian Olson: in. It's funny
[00:28:41] David Lee: noise. Fix it. Make it funny would be great.
[00:28:45] Christian Olson: If you could make it funny.
[00:28:51] Jake Hall: Your fate is fixed. That's what takeaways that we have right now. So, I guess, if you were in this industry, if you were in manufacturing and maintenance, What industry would you want to be a part
[00:29:00] Christian Olson: of? If I wasn't in engineering, I want to say I'd still probably want to be in a medical field. That was, that was still, even though I, I veered away from that a little bit, uh, as I got older, uh, the idea of, you know, helping people, that, that was still always, uh, you know, whether it be straight up, you know, doctor, nurse, anything like that, or...
[00:29:22] Christian Olson: Uh, EMT worker, like psychologist, uh, counselor, any anything like that. Uh, of just, anything that could help people. Like, that that has always been my my primary, uh, drive as a person. Is, is improving lives. So
[00:29:35] Jake Hall: is there any, um, piece of content right now that you're consuming, like Netflix or Disney Plus or reading a book?
[00:29:42] Jake Hall: Is there any, uh, show that you're enjoying watching right
[00:29:44] Christian Olson: now? To be honest, I don't watch a ton of TV. Okay. Uh, I'm, I've always just been more of a read, read books or, or games and stuff like that. I'm not usually much of a, a passive. Experienced type of person. So,
[00:29:59] Jake Hall: final question. If there is any piece of equipment that you could run or you could work on, what
[00:30:05] Christian Olson: would that be?
[00:30:06] Christian Olson: I wish I could go back and, uh, run the equipment that I designed for, uh, my senior project in the industry. Uh, the fluidization system that I designed for my senior project for a company. Uh, I was able to, you know, make the design and everything and push that onto them by the end of the summer. But I was never able to actually, I was able to see some of the prototypes we made in action, but never the proper system.
[00:30:33] Christian Olson: And I, you know, that's, that's something I really wish that I could, I could have seen in person. All right.
[00:30:39] David Lee: Well, thanks again for coming, Christian. It has been absolutely wonderful to have you. This has been The Maintainers, a Bluecap Community Podcast. Don't forget to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts, as we are on most major platforms.
[00:30:52] David Lee: So you don't miss it. Uh, episode when we go live.
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