On this week’s episode of The Maintainers, join David & Jake as they have the pleasure of speaking with Nikki Gonzales, the Head of Partnerships at Quotebeam and Co-Host of the podcast, Automation Ladies. Nikki brings a slightly different perspective to the show, having always been primarily on the business side of operations, citing her long passion for wanting to match problems with solutions at a high level.
On this week’s episode of The Maintainers, join David & Jake as they have the pleasure of speaking with Nikki Gonzales, the Head of Partnerships at Quotebeam and Co-Host of the podcast, Automation Ladies. Quotebeam is a collaborative digital procurement platform for industrial automation and electrical components, partnering with industrial automation distributors and their customers to connect them with the parts they need.
Nikki brings a slightly different perspective to the show, having always been primarily on the business side of operations, citing her long passion for wanting to match problems with solutions at a high level. And, while she might not be running production lines, she still has a keen interest in predictive maintenance as she shares how her father’s business is aimed at providing key monitoring for grocery refrigerators and freezers.
David & Jake also find out more about the podcast Nikki co-hosts, Automation Ladies. Starting in 2022, Nikki and her Co-Host, Ali G, wanted to provide other women in the industry with content that resonated with them. In an industry that lacks gender parity, one of Nikki’s goals is to empower other women who might be struggling as they start their careers.
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Guest Bio
Nikki Gonzales started her career as a sales engineer for machine vision systems and mechatronics, where she spent 10 years in the field implementing and supporting automation solutions in a variety of industries. She then transitioned to the design side of engineering with multi-physics simulation for virtual prototyping and data analytics in the supply chain such as forecasting and inventory optimization. Today she is building an online marketplace and workflow automation platform for industrial automation distributors and their customers to collaborate and bring some sanity to the procurement process at Quotebeam.
When she’s not helping engineers and their procurement teams with Quotebeam, she’s probably out connecting with someone new on her podcast Automation Ladies or offering up her expertise at a live conference.
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Guest Quote
“It really does help to see someone that you can relate to in a position that you may be interested in. And there are a lot of great women out there in tech industries and manufacturing, but oftentimes, we are more reluctant to put ourselves out there…But through our network, we see that there are girls watching us that want to come into this as a career. And they feel empowered by watching our shows or hearing us talk.” – Nikki Gonzales
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Time Stamps
*(01:21) Ice Breaker
*(02:03) Nikki's Background
*(06:39) Segment 01: The Maintainer Mashup
*(07:13) What problems does Quotebeam solve?
*(12:11) Nikki's thoughts on predictive maintenance
*(16:39) Monitoring in grocery stores
*(20:36) Segment 02: What's in Your Toolkit?
*(24:29 ) The Automation Ladies Podcast
*(28:02) Segment 03: The Future of Factories
*(28:34) Advice for bringing more diversity to manufacturing
*(32:40) The importance of role models
*(36:15) Segment 04: Fix It Funnies
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Links
[00:00:00] Nikki Gonzales: Maintenance? Maybe we should call it maintenance. I'll fix it. I'm going to fix it. Concentrated. Maintain it.
[00:00:09] Jake Hall: Maintain control. Maintenance complete.
[00:00:14] Nikki Gonzales: This is The
[00:00:14] David Lee: Maintainers, a Bluecap Community Podcast. My name is David Lee, Director at Tractian, and your host for The Maintainers Show. And I'm Jake Hall,
[00:00:22] Jake Hall: the Manufacturing Millennial.
On today's episode, we're joined by a friend and colleague that I've known for a long time, Nikki Gonzalez. She's the head of partnership at QuoteBeam. You probably also know her from being a co host of the podcast, Automation Ladies. And she has an incredible background in story being in the manufacturing and automation industry for a long time.
So Nikki, thank you for joining us today. Thanks for having me guys. Fantastic. Before we get kicked in, a word from our sponsor.
[00:00:54] VO: 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.
It's artificial intelligence quarterbacking your maintenance.
[00:01:21] Jake Hall: All right, Nikki. So we're having this conversation virtually right now, but if you were to pick a place that we could have this in person, uh, where would it be? And what would it be doing?
[00:01:30] Nikki Gonzales: Probably be at my swimming pool. Uh, and we would be having a drink in the sun or hopefully maybe hiding from it.
Actually, it's been a very, very hot summer. But that was one of my main conditions when I moved back to Texas. I said, I'm going to have to have a swimming pool because it's going to be hot. And it has been hotter than I ever expected. And yeah, so I've been trying to spend as much time there as possible.
There you go.
[00:01:52] David Lee: All right. So jumping into it, Nikki, I would love to hear more about your background, kind of how you got from point A to point B. I'm sure the audience is wondering the same. So tell us a little bit
[00:02:02] Nikki Gonzales: about that. I moved to the U. S. when I was in middle school. I'm originally from Iceland and, uh, my dad's engineering job kind of took us a little bit on an adventure.
We moved to England for a little while and then we moved here to Houston and he was working for a British defense contracting company at the time, but about a couple of years into us moving here to Houston, they shut down their Houston branch. And so my dad was not done with his adventure and he decided to start his own business.
And I started working for him, uh, alongside with babysitting as kind of my first job in middle school. And I'm pretty sure it was before I was 16, so he used to just pay me out of his own pocket, you know? Instead of me doing chores at home, I got to come to the office, and it really just got me started. I thought everything in the business was fascinating.
I didn't quite, you know, start getting the bug for the engineering side of things. Um, and I've always kind of stayed on the business side, but... It was really watching him grow that business, you know, he was building a product as well as growing the business, hiring people, and, and he's an electrical engineer, and this company was focused on mobile resource management, so tracking trucks and boats and barges and things like that, keeping track of their fuel consumption, making sure that they were being safe.
Making sure that home office knew where they were at and could route them efficiently. Um, and starting to do things like automating forms, uh, bills of lading, fuel, tax forms, and, and different things like that. And so I worked through, for him every summer, every spring break, all the way through college.
And I worked basically every job there is in the business. Ending, coincidentally, with kind of making some sales. I wasn't really on purpose, but I picked up the phone one time. And, you know, it was a customer call and they just kind of let me run with it. It was a prospect. And they said, Hey, if you need any help, you know, ask for help.
But otherwise, you know, you kind of know how this goes, right? Give it a try. And this was, I guess it was coming up on the summer break before I graduated and. We went to the trucking trade show in Dallas, I think it's called the Great American Trucking Show. And I remember this, this prospect was from Washington State.
Um, one of the reasons they needed a tracking system was because in rural Washington, there was not a very good cell service. And these trucks would drive, you know, across the state, uh, as well as elsewhere, and they had no idea what was going on. And I did a remote demo. I think it was like desktop sharing at the time.
Because we didn't have these Zoom meetings or remote things so much at the time, but I did it from my hotel room in Dallas to the customer in Washington. And closed the sale, and then some weeks after, my dad got an email, and we didn't make it apparent that I was his daughter or anything, it was just like I was another, you know, employee at the business, and he got this email from the customer saying how happy they were with the solution, and that the sales process had been great, and it really solved their problem, and that they were really happy with the job I did, and that kind of opened my eyes into the world of sort of like technical solution selling.
It's not going out there and saying your product is the best, your product is the best, it's that somebody has a problem, and if you can correctly match that problem with the solution, and make sure that it meets their needs, and... You know, train them on how to use it. That was, yeah, kind of a wake up call for me and what led me into the engineering side of, you know, the business side of engineering.
Um, because I realized that I didn't want to be sitting in the corner, you know, making the drawings or specifying the system. I wanted to really be out there and solving these problems with people. So I ended up getting a job in factory automation, coming out of college. Grew up in that, just loved it.
Like you can't stop looking at a production line and see what else could I learn or what else could be done better. So I ended up in vision systems, motion, pneumatics, and then I ended up going into supply chain. Cause you kind of like look up and down the line and think, okay, now I solved this problem.
What if we solve it one step earlier in the process? That would save money. That would be, you know, cause less problems and so on. And so I've just kind of continually kept looking up and down, you know, wherever I'm at and see what's the next problem to solve. And yeah, worked my way into a variety of different situations that way, including where I am now, which is kind of bringing a lot of these weird experiences that I've had, um, or not weird, but just, you know, different parts of the industry, um, together.
That's awesome.
[00:06:19] David Lee: Yeah. What a cool background. Yeah. What a cool
[00:06:21] Jake Hall: background. What all, you know, a depth of experience that you've had. And, um, you know, now that we've got to know a little bit more about Nikki, we're going to jump into our first segment called the maintainer mashup, where we're Management and the teams and how you make maintenance more reliable.
Maintenance required.
[00:06:41] Nikki Gonzales: Listen, I maintain. Maintain the muscle. Maintain course.
[00:06:46] Jake Hall: Maintain
[00:06:47] David Lee: speed. I gotta maintain respect.
[00:06:51] Jake Hall: Now you have a more interesting perspective on it because you're not. On the end user side of maintenance, this kind of ties into a discussion about QuoteBeam. And I want you to talk more about QuoteBeam and what QuoteBeam does, but how are you seeing the trends with your experience at QuoteBeam on how maintenance and the manufacturing industry is shifting and moving forward?
Well, we didn't
[00:07:15] Nikki Gonzales: build our platform for the maintenance or, you know, the MRO buyer or technician to be our primary customer focus to start with. We really wanted to work on building something that would help, uh, machine builders and panel builders that have to work with complicated bills and materials.
Because we're out there doing what we do, a lot of maintenance people have found us, and the reason they found us is because they need a spare part, or their machine is down, and they don't have a spare part in their inventory. And then, what happens, right? They have to go find where they can get it. First thing first, they typically will go to their purchasing department and say, hey, we need one of these, or, you know, maybe they have a vendor that they bought it from before.
But with the supply chain issues the last few years, it was not guaranteed at all that your normal vendor would have this product stocked, and if it wasn't in stock, anywhere you're looking at maybe two weeks if you're lucky, four to eight weeks if, you know, normal, 52 weeks to we don't know, to it's never gonna happen, quote, on the worst end, and those people were coming to us, finding us on the internet, you know, Google searching for the part numbers of those pieces of machinery or equipment.
And, That they either, you know, didn't have enough spare stock, something unexpected happened, and anywhere from, hey, we, we got to replenish our crib stock because we just used this part and now, you know, we need to have it in case something breaks before 52 weeks from now, or my machine is down, my line's been down for two days, I really need this right now and I can't get it anywhere, you know, do you have it or can you find it for me?
And, and I felt worse in the cases where they didn't actually know the manufacturer's part number because the machine builder had obscured it, taken it off, replaced it with their own part number. And now they're not responding or not providing the parts. That's the worst because then we can't even help in that situation.
But what I am seeing and what I saw as a trend was unfortunately too many facilities. You know, they didn't have the foresight, or hadn't invested in the safety stock, or weren't aware that their machines were going to have this failure or downtime. Um, and then were caught in this situation of, you know, losing thousands of dollars, uh, in an hour, or millions of dollars over a couple days.
Because a small part of their machinery, you know, needed to be replaced or upgraded or repaired or something like that. But what we're doing at QuoteBeam is building a platform where anybody, whether you're a specifying engineer or, you know, maintenance person, trying to replace a part that's down is make the supply chain more transparent, make it easier to find what you're looking for.
Because again, if you have that very easy, I have a relationship from someone and they have it and you can buy it. Then perfect. But what happens in the situation where that doesn't happen? You need to have a reliable number 2, a backup, somewhere where you can go to find things. And unfortunately in our industry, it's kind of been this...
You know, siloed, uh, regional distributor relationships. And oftentimes, let's say you're a facility, you get a piece of machinery in and you didn't spec all those components, you may not have a distributor you already have a relationship with that sells that brand or those components. Or God forbid, it's something from, you know, machine was built overseas.
There needs to be an easy way to get the parts that you need, whether you need them in a hurry or you just need to make sure that you're, you know, constantly predicting, um, and stocking what you need. So with that, what we do is we build relationships with a lot of these regional distributors. Uh, as well as national distributors and international, uh, in some cases, because if you need a part, you need a part and you need to be able to find it.
We have this connected platform of authorized distributors. We know what they have in stock and what's available and you can order it through our e commerce platform. And we're building a lot of tools as well for companies to be able to collaborate and, you know, transact with each other where we don't need to be a middleman there.
Um, it's just a matter of being able to find the right vendors in the right situations and then work with them. I
[00:10:59] Jake Hall: think what's exciting about that is you're seeing how the impact of digital trends is affecting like purchasing as well, right? You know, for so long, people would have to go back. And then I remember there was companies that would literally write down on a clipboard with like a line item of, Hey, this is the part number.
This is how many I need. This is the description of it. And then they would go drop it off, put it in an envelope. And due to that, now we're seeing a trend of manufacturers, you know, buying online and buying digitally. I think it's just, it's exciting to see that transition.
[00:11:30] David Lee: Yeah, for sure. And you know, it's really interesting seeing these shifts and also hearing about your background and what QuoteBeam specifically does.
So you have this large set of skills and kind of these perspective from different roles, which is really cool. So you see these niche, these, this value chain from a niche perspective. So, now looking at that and seeing the logistics issues that you've been able to help improve, what are you seeing kind of like the trends with respects to predictive and preventative maintenance and how they're operating differently since you've been doing that role?
Cause you, you seemed like you would have some visibility on those shifts and things like that. Are you seeing it being more proactive? Cause it seemed like a steady state or what's your view on that based off of your perspective working at QuoteBeam right now?
[00:12:11] Nikki Gonzales: I feel like a lot more companies are seeing the value of implementing predictive maintenance and it's been on the horizon and been, you know, sort of a future promise and something that I think everybody has wanted to do over the last 10, 20 years, whenever we first started talking about, you know, machine learning and gathering data and then being able to predict things.
But there's a level of maturity to both the industry of solutions, as well as, you know, certain size manufacturing companies are just not going to be able to make an investment into something like that. Let's say you needed to replace all of your equipment with smart equipment, like you have a basic pneumatic actuator, right?
They do sell them now with all kinds of sensors and, you know, ones that kind of can predict their own demise for lack of better words. Uh, way to put that, but that's not necessarily feasible for most manufacturing companies, if they have a cylinder in place that works, A, they're not going to replace it for no reason, and B, with the cost of the extra smarts, oftentimes it doesn't make sense for them when they're doing routine upgrades and maintenance to, you know, take something basic, reliable, and inexpensive and replace it with something that A might be much better, but B, you might need a higher level of trained personnel to deal with it.
And then typically it's kind of vendor specific and pretty expensive. Uh, where I've seen the most growth and, you know, sort of adoption of these types of technologies are when they are very easy to retrofit and they're vendor agnostic, because unless you're building, you know, a whole new greenfield facility recently, and even then, I think most smart companies don't use, you know, one specific vendor for everything.
You're going to have a mixture of different machinery of different ages from different OEMs with different, you know, manufacturers, equipment, different types of technologies installed. So you have to find something that you can really get in easily. You know, you don't need a high level of expertise on the ground to be able to implement.
And you need something that you can, you know, can give you ROI pretty quickly. So the things I've seen the most. I guess increase in adoption recently have been a vendors that have solutions that will bolt on to other vendors solutions or third party companies that are coming in, not from a technology vendor perspective, saying I'm going to now, you know, try to increase the market share of my products by doing this, but by somebody that's looking at the problem and going, we can solve this and we can do it for all of these machines in here, um, and we can do it easily and in a way that's also digestible, you know, to, to the business.
So having, you know, a subscription model in addition to maybe a CapEx model that can really help with adoption as well, where you can kind of also start maybe bite sized with a department or a line, test it out, and then not have a whole lot of lock in, whether it's barrier to entry to buy the system or, you know, having to sign up for, let's say, huge long contracts at the outset without knowing if something's going to really give you that ROI.
But I am seeing a lot more companies now investing in having more foresight when it comes to planning. Both when it comes to maintenance and things like inventory planning and stuff like that. Right.
[00:15:11] David Lee: That's awesome. Yeah, Nikki, you are spot on as a director of predictive maintenance projects. You've basically gone down with all the challenges are, for example, like you said, that initial upfront investment.
So the approach that I typically use and that we use on these projects is we look for the highest return on investment, right? That we want to get you the highest cash on cash return. So we offer CapEx as well as subscription models, right? And then to make it more accessible. To the, I would say more mid market manufacturers and things.
So yeah, you really, you really hit the nail on the head and on a lot of different approaches that are working right now, what the challenges are. Having a platform that's agnostic, wise words. I love talking to you because you understand exactly what the needs are. And henceforth, you accidentally become a salesperson.
[00:15:57] Nikki Gonzales: You know, I tend to do that when I really believe in something. Also, I'm, I'm kind of the worst buyer in some cases. Cause by the time I contact sales, trust me, I've already sold myself. Like that sales call is for you to parent the things I say that are great about your product, and then like, I just want to give you money when I, when I like something, I tend to think through on a lot of levels on my own.
Yeah.
[00:16:19] David Lee: That's the engineer.
[00:16:21] Jake Hall: Absolutely. I think, you know, every engineer at one point in time, like just. By chance discovered sales. And like, you know, they were, they were going that from that technical to that people transition and like, Oh, I guess I kind of just sold something or I was doing a sale pitch and we kind of all just like walk into it without like saying, I'm going to go into sales one day, you know, I would love to talk more about actually what you and your dad are working on right now in the maintenance world.
So can you talk a bit more about this most recent project and contact about the launch and what you guys are
[00:16:49] Nikki Gonzales: doing now? Yeah, so, um, about 10 years ago, um, he started a new venture with some partners out in West Texas monitoring temperatures in fridges and freezers and grocery stores. So again, grocery stores are one of those things that I wouldn't have imagined needed any help with this.
But as it turns out, grocery stores can be a lot like factories. They buy, you know, different refrigeration equipment at different times. And all of these different pieces of equipment do come with typically some sort of sensor, but they have to be calibrated. You want to make sure that product that is supposed to be stored at freezing temperature, you know, doesn't just get left out and then, you know, wear the freezers down for days and then somebody buys it and gets, you know, food poisoning.
But it's not that easy again with these different manufacturers of the equipment. So he was brought in to tie these sensors into all the equipment and then bring that data to the cloud and visualize it in a way that made it easy for maintenance to be able to keep track of, basically do predictive maintenance, but with the people's expertise at looking at the data.
Because at the time as well, we didn't have this easy use of like AI models and things like that. It was really just bringing that relevant, usable information to the people, A, routing the standard service calls, then B, when they had an emergency service call, they could take a look at the data and have a pretty good idea of what they needed to bring to the site.
They built that system and worked with a refrigeration service company partner that would really go implement it into the store. So that's kind of the distribution channel because it's the maintenance company that benefits because they can be a lot smarter about their operations, not have to make unnecessary service calls.
They can route things better, right? And at the same time, customer also saves a lot of money, because if you tune up their equipment to work as it should, it typically starts off by an immediate energy savings, because a lot of equipment's working harder than it needs to. And then two, less emergency service calls, because they catch problems earlier on and are able to put them into the routine service maintenance calls that they would gonna be doing anyway.
And so everybody saves money. You know, that was kind of a side project that my dad was brought into because he had a lot of expertise with sensors, with cloud data, with visualization, and these sorts of things that he used to do for the trucks, right? And they ended up selling this, basically that this refrigeration service company I think sold the system into every single one of their stores, because why wouldn't they?
And just over, over the years, we've gathered more and more data. We know exactly what types of failures look like across this group of stores, different kinds. And so now after about 10 years of this, and it's such a success story. It's like, Dad, I told him, I was like, you gotta stop being the best kept secret.
People need to know that this is out there and available. And it's, you know, it's a small company, but they're not a startup because they've been running, you know, 20 something stores for over a decade. They know exactly what they're doing. So now he's kind of finally taking the company full time, and structured the partnership to be able to go out and expand.
He's bringing on a new website, it's called Uptime Intelligence. And it's really just very laser focused on uptime for fridges and freezers, and grocery stores, and convenience stores. What we've proven is the benefits are really there and they're very quick to get, like that ROI, like you mentioned, David, you find that, you know, high ROI use case.
And for us, it's pretty much any store that hasn't been monitoring this, you know, the immediate savings in just tuning things properly. Is right there. It pays for itself in no time. So I had a lot of parallels to that business when I heard about Tractian and, and, you know, learned about your system initially, and so many of them are the same, definitely
[00:20:24] David Lee: a lot of similarities when it comes to predictive maintenance and sounds like both ventures you've been pretty successful at.
So I love hearing about it. Our next segment is what's in your toolkit, right?
[00:20:36] Nikki Gonzales: We're going to
[00:20:36] David Lee: fix it. Get the tool.
[00:20:38] Nikki Gonzales: Pick the one right
[00:20:39] Jake Hall: tool. The right tool for the right
[00:20:42] Nikki Gonzales: job.
[00:20:46] David Lee: I'd like to focus on you specifically from a practical perspective, because you obviously have all this experience and success. When it comes to getting the job done, whether it be your business ventures or dealing with maintenance in these actual facilities. What's in your toolkit? What are you using from a practical perspective to help you do your job?
Whether that be finding the right customers or whether it be understanding their technology, their needs, et cetera. What do you use, uh, that you could share that may be beneficial to others? I
[00:21:16] Nikki Gonzales: think the simplest answer to that question would be my network because I don't have the tools for most things that I embark on.
I have a little bit of a crazy knack for wanting to do things I don't know how to A lot of I think my success with any kind of new venture is being very willing to admit right away that I don't know most of the answers and what I need to know is the right people that know the answers to my questions and to be able to respect and You know, I learned this early on being in sales for it with engineers, you know, when I wasn't the application engineer as well, or I had a technology that I didn't know well enough myself, I would always go to, you know, my apps engineers that had expertise in that particular area and the ability to relate enough to them and make them feel like they should help me.
Versus alienating them by pretending that I know better. I found that to serve me very, very well in any of the endeavors that I've taken on. And for instance, you know, being here on the show today, that is a result of what, a year and a half long relationship with Jake that started, you know, us being in the, or me being in the audience of one of his virtual events.
And, you know, striking up a conversation, me trying to add something to the conversation, some value. Because I've found is, yes, you know, when you go to a machine to handle a problem, or you go to a sales call to try to solve a solution, chances are you might have the tool you need in your tool belt. If you're well prepared, you know what you're doing, you're gonna have, you know, really good selection.
But, there's still always a chance that the right tool for the job isn't one that you have in your tool belt. Whether that's, you know, from the standpoint of your company and your solution just isn't the one for this particular application, or maybe you need a little bit more help, you know, whether it's bringing in some more engineers from, you know, your organization to solve the problem, or maybe going with something completely different, being able to kind of see that big picture and then know the right people that you got to know and be able to refer that business or bring in the right expert that I would say is this sort of, you know, my virtual toolkit anyway, is being able to recognize that I'm not.
You know, I'm not everybody's cup of tea. I'm not the answer to everything. I don't always know. I don't always have the solution, but somebody does. And I would really like to be able to point you in the right direction. And I think
[00:23:33] Jake Hall: that's, what's so cool about, you know, this idea of the toolkit, right?
Because we might have a set of tools that we have that we're able to apply. And instead of going to the store and buying another tool and get home, hoping it's going to work. You go and talk to your friends. You talk to your colleagues, you talk to the other professionals and you say, Hey. This is the problem.
What should I get? And because a lot of times instead of going out there and trying the tool and testing it yourself, it's phenomenal having that network. And in this case of, you know, Uniki building your personal brand. You've been able to hear a lot of stories, hear a lot of solutions, hear a lot of discussions, talk to manufacturers and then users and find out, you know, what works for them and, and that kind of ties into what you're doing with automation ladies, and maybe talk a bit more about your podcast and what you're doing there where you're also going around and hearing stories.
And I think that's how you and David actually met was, was through that. So can you dive more into automations, automation ladies a little bit and what you're doing
with
[00:24:28] Nikki Gonzales: it? Yeah, absolutely. And I'll take the opportunity as well to point out I'm wearing a blue cap today. I thought that would be fitting.
The QuoteBeam cap is, is dark blue, but it actually just, while I was on vacation recently, my team, which we have grown now, and we are 50 50 male and female on our team at this point, um, which I'm pretty proud of because it wasn't that easy to get there, um, with the, you know, just the talent pipeline.
There's not as many candidates. But they changed their color and the logo to purple. So, uh, next time you see me, I will probably have a purple cap on. And I do wear a purple hat sometimes because Automation Ladies, uh, my podcast is purple and we have hats now as well. So Automation Ladies was something that I started a little over a year ago, I guess.
And again, I first, when I connected with Jake and kind of saw that there was a little over a little bit more, uh, personal branding and networking and networking and I don't really like to say influencing or influencers, but there are just people out there having more conversations, creating more content in our industry than there ever had been in the past.
And I found Chris Luky's podcast, Manufacturing Happy Hour, which I thought was amazing, and a few more. But again, kind of, you know, typical story in this industry, I generally had not had that many women that I was working with, especially not, like, around my age or having things in common with me. I had one friend, Annie, at Keyence, who, we were both into snowboarding, so we, like, went snowboarding at Tahoe.
Um, but otherwise, it was, you know, not too common to meet other women that you'd get to kind of geek out with. And I thought to myself, people had been saying to me for years that I should have a podcast or do this or that. I always thought, no, you're crazy. I sound terrible. I sound like a 12 year old girl and who would want to listen to me?
Like, I know I say some interesting things sometimes, but they're mixed in with like 90 percent more talk that is not that interesting. But having just seen these people go out there and be brave and put themselves out there to, yes, criticism, but also support. Uh, and coming in with, you know, a new company that didn't really have a network, we were remote, it was right at the tail end of COVID.
How do I build a community and a network, A, for myself to feel, you know, like I have someone to work with, because I worked with two people and neither one of them worked with me, right? I worked from home. And I found my co host Allie G on LinkedIn. And she was posting a lot of, like, cool educational content, you know, how does this valve work, from YouTube, and turns out that we had both lived in the Seattle area, we were around the same age, we're actually born in the same year, and Courtney Fernandez and a few of the other women, we started a little group chat, and I thought, hey, there's probably a bunch of us out there, like us, that are on their own little island, at their facility, or, you know, in their hometown.
Where maybe they have a great community, maybe they don't, maybe they wish that they had other women to talk to that were into, you know, controls engineering and robots and the stuff that we are. And so we started the podcast for that reason, to try to A, get our conversations, our point of, you know, perspective, uh, out there.
Which is why we interview a lot of people that are on other podcasts. I just always say, hey, if there's two women interviewing you, it's going to be a different interview than what you did with, you know, this CEO or another person. But the other thing was really just to open ourselves up to be that community for women that are out there in these industries that maybe they don't have it locally.
[00:27:54] Jake Hall: I think that jumps into this third segment that I'm going to talk about and I'm going to go right back to what you're talking about. It's the, it's the future of factories.
[00:28:02] Nikki Gonzales: Meet the future.
[00:28:05] David Lee: To our futures. What
[00:28:06] Jake Hall: future? The factory. My factory.
[00:28:08] David Lee: Everybody's
[00:28:10] Nikki Gonzales: factory.
[00:28:15] Jake Hall: I love your factory. Technology. But I want to talk about the future factory of, of workforce. So what advice would you go out there and give women who want to enter the manufacturing and maintenance industry? And what advice would you give organizations to maybe bring more diversity?
[00:28:34] Nikki Gonzales: I would say, both sides, go for it, you're gonna have to work for it, okay?
So, it's not as simple as, oh, come join the trades, or go work in manufacturing, and it's all rainbows and butterflies and wonderful all the time. No, if you're into this stuff, and you're into it enough to want to make it a career, then it can be a really, really great career. But the way that things stand today...
Most manufacturing facilities or even just the industry supporting them, right? They're very male dominated and in some cases a little bit outdated in how they might, you know, handle you. And, you know, that's just the reality and not all of it, most of it is not meant to be negative. It's just, it can be tough for us when we are in the minority and a lot of legacy things are not necessarily made for us to feel comfortable.
But that doesn't mean that you shouldn't do it, or that you should be afraid to do it, or that it's not for you. What I would say based on my learnings as well is, if you end up in this, if you like the job, but you don't like where you're working, you don't like your facility, your co workers, your management, there is a whole industry out there, and there are great companies.
And just because you're not happy being, you know, a maintenance technician or a welder in plant A, doesn't mean that you couldn't be in plant B, C, or D, right? And the biggest way to find... Where you belong or where you can be happy, I would say is network, network, network. Inside your own company, find people that you can rely on, find people that can support you, but be in your industry outside your own company because if you can't make it work at your existing company or where you started, that doesn't necessarily mean that you're a failure or that they are, right?
It just may not be a good fit. But the best way to find another job is if you know what's out there and you know people that can tell you, hey, this is a good place, I work there, or You know, just applying for random jobs where you don't know anyone, it can be daunting and it can be, you know, it's exhausting on every side.
Uh, so if you have an in or you know someone, there are amazing companies in this space that care about culture, that care about bringing you in. And on the flip side, to say that, if you're recruiting and you realize that you are going to do better as a company by having a diverse workforce, make it apparent that you care.
Make it a point to be in places where you'll find more women, more different types of people than where you would traditionally recruit. And make it a point to tell them that you're, you know, that you want to do this. And they're gonna find you, especially if, you know, people talk, right? Your reputation means something.
Use it in your marketing, but also, you know, make sure that it's not just a marketing thing, it actually is true, because then your existing employees are going to be your biggest recruitment tool, because they're going to tell their friends, their family, their network, their co workers that, hey, working here is a good thing.
Uh, and you should come join me. Wise
[00:31:25] David Lee: words. Appreciate it. You know, there's a key theme here that I want to point out to all the listeners and it's about the network and community, right? We talked about the solutions that, uh, we look for to solve technical issues. We talked about even employment and the central theme there is community.
And this is the reason why we created the maintainers for The actual maintenance professionals to have that community so we can collaborate, bring solutions, bring opportunities as well. And overall that will help the community as well as really the economy. Uh, so we're definitely on the same page. I appreciate your words there.
[00:32:01] Jake Hall: Well, I think that's, what's so important is, is. When you create a sense of community and passion around what you enjoy doing, I think that's when true innovation happens. That's when, you know, change happens within the culture and then technology adoption and the workforce in the workplace. I think, you know, a lot of that we're seeing happening on platforms like LinkedIn.
So, you know, Nikki, to kind of wrap up this, this final segment, what do you see are ways that you can leverage this platform for, for future generations? You know. For the future women or women who are currently in the workforce that want to continue to grow their resume or grow their profession.
[00:32:41] Nikki Gonzales: I think part of why we have this trouble with recruiting is also lack of representation.
When women or girls see other women in those roles, if they don't have someone like, let's say their dad, right? For me, it was my dad, but I wouldn't look at some random male engineer that I had nothing in common with and no connection to, to go, oh, that's a role model for me, right? So it really does help to see someone that you can relate to in a position that you may be interested in.
And there are a lot of great women out there in tech industries and manufacturing, but oftentimes we are more reluctant to put ourselves out there to speak at conferences, to, you know, have our personal brand be out there. And there's, to be honest, a ton of real, real reasons. Like, one is we have way more caregiving responsibilities at home, generally, household.
You know, whether it's kids or caring for, uh, relatives, whatever. So oftentimes it can be more difficult for us to take time outside of core working hours to do something that, you know, is not necessary for work. So, the impact on, on, you know, the next generation and, and women, I mean, we already see there's some girls in our network, and again, because they have a dad or an uncle that knows us, we're not, you know, out there, like, pitching to elementary school kids directly ourselves.
But through our network. We see that there are girls watching us that want to come into this as a career, and they feel empowered by watching our shows or hearing us talk. You know, Jake, honestly, I hadn't thought about this, but like, a generation from now, obviously my stuff is recorded now. Like, it's on LinkedIn, there's LinkedIn Lives, there's YouTubes.
Uh, I will probably be very embarrassed by everything that I've ever done, uh, and put out there online. Oh my gosh.
[00:34:23] Jake Hall: I'll have to send you some, like, early videos of, like, when I was first doing content on LinkedIn, like, early, like, March 2020. Oh man, those videos are so cringe.
[00:34:34] Nikki Gonzales: Thankfully, I think, you know, we are all learning to have a sense of humor, that like, hey, we're all regular people, we come to work and we may be experts at one thing, but we can be total idiots at another.
And what I really want is to show people, in general, girls, minors, anybody that doesn't feel super empowered to do something. Um, and I'm going through this with my five year old daughter right now. She'll try something for the first time, and she'll be bad at it, and she gets really frustrated. She's like, I'm terrible at this.
And I'm like, you just tried that for the first time, of course you're gonna be terrible. You're gonna be very bad until you do it a lot, and then you get better and better. And that's how you learn. And I think we've kind of had this corporate polish on us for a long time. Work and personal are separate, you know.
You gotta show only your achievements, and only, you know, the things that... Make you great and an expert and you know everything else it happened behind the scenes, right? We're in this age now of like people can see the bloopers and the b reels and it's okay And they kind of like it because now they realize that you're real and they can relate to you, too And and so I'm just yeah, I'm hoping that like 30 years from now I'll look back at this material or maybe not and just be like hey we did something good here If I could hear like one girl graduating from a, an engineering school and she's stuck in the industry more than five years.
And part of that is because, you know, she knew that it can be that way because she heard it on Automation Ladies and that it's okay. Like, I feel like I'll be successful then. That'll have met my goal.
[00:36:02] David Lee: Definitely. I think you absolutely are having an impact and we'll see that as time goes on. I'm very confident in that.
So. Before we transition to saying goodbye, let's jump into our next segment, Fix It
[00:36:16] Nikki Gonzales: Funnies. Fix it. funny noise. Fix it. Make it funny would be great, if you could make it funny. Make sure it's funny.
[00:36:27] David Lee: And so... What we'd like to do is ask things like we started, your favorite summer spot, but winter's right around the corner.
So, if we were to do this in the wintertime, snow on the ground, where would you like to have this conversation, uh, in December,
[00:36:42] Nikki Gonzales: for example? Oh, we definitely wouldn't be here in Texas because there wouldn't be any snow on the ground, at least in Houston. Um, I would, I mean, I would go to Tahoe, really, if I get a chance.
Uh, it's been a while. But we would probably be up in the lodge somewhere having a beer after having some runs, uh, and then having this chat, happy hour style. Yep,
[00:37:02] David Lee: Lake Tahoe. Once you go once, you'll think about it for the rest of your life, right? Yup.
[00:37:08] Jake Hall: For sure. Awesome. So Nikki, if you weren't in manufacturing, you weren't doing automation ladies, what industry would you want to
[00:37:15] Nikki Gonzales: be?
Oh, I want to be everywhere all the time. I, I'm kind of one of those people that like, I see things and I get interested in most things that I don't know about because they're interesting to me until I find out all, all about them. So I think I would probably continue to play in what I call startup land, which is just trying, you know, to solve problems or do things that other people haven't tried or gotten right, or, you know, there's something new and novel about it, and it's Always hard, and you're always trying to do too many things with too little resources, but that's kind of where I shine, and so I would probably be doing, I don't know, maybe a startup in real estate industry, David and I have talked about this a little bit, I've dabbled here and there, um, but I, I kind of love the, the intersection of technology solving problems in any kind of, you know, setting, and I will say, and I thought of this before the podcast, not because you guys asked a question about this or anything, But I would really love a predictive maintenance system for my home.
Like, I'm not the type of, like, my household does not have Alexa, we don't do smart stuff at home, like, I don't really want to tell these companies everything that goes on in my home all the time, or having Roomba, like, map my house for Amazon to sell me stuff. But, at the same time, being a homeowner, there's a lot to maintain, there's a lot of systems.
A lot of them I don't know that much about, and we're, you know, Learning about each and every one of them, you know, doing your own repairs in a lot of cases, uh, trying to upgrade, you know, we remodeled a lot of stuff. But just recently we ended up with an HVAC, you know, problem that we had to, you know, spend a lot of money on and same thing with our pool pump, you know, we didn't know that it was broken enough to end of life and we needed to replace all of our pool water in a new pump right, right over the 4th of July weekend.
Like, who wants... And so if, if I had a clean slate and somebody to fund me, right now I would make a home, like... Predictive maintenance for your home as a service company.
[00:39:16] David Lee: Nice. What an idea. Awesome. And then
[00:39:19] Jake Hall: final question. If you were to work on any dream piece of equipment, what
[00:39:24] Nikki Gonzales: would it be? Piece of equipment.
Um, I think at my house, it's, it's a robot. Um, I would build a household chore, you know, producing whatever home helper. Um, and I know there's a lot of smarter people than me working on this. So this is just, like you said, if as a dream, I don't think I would be useful working on a home other than maybe like beta testing a household chore robot, um, I would probably be good for, but if I had unlimited.
And, you know, just in my imagination, I, I would build a robot to help me at home.
[00:40:00] David Lee: Awesome. Nikki, it's been absolutely wonderful and a pleasure to have you on the show.
[00:40:05] Jake Hall: Awesome. Thanks so much, Nikki, for being on with us.
[00:40:08] Nikki Gonzales: Very cool. Thank you guys. All right. We'll see ya.
[00:40:11] David Lee: Bye. This has been another episode of The Maintainers, a Bluecap Community Podcast.
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