Today, David & Jake are joined by Walt Harrison, Controls & Automations Engineer at Swarco Reflex LLC. Walt shares a wealth of knowledge today, with topics spanning from how he transitioned into the manufacturing space after starting his career in IT, how he and the team at Swarco think about predictive maintenance, why he believes in always training your replacement, and what industry leaders need to focus on as we pave our way into the future.
Today, David & Jake are joined by Walt Harrison, Controls & Automations Engineer at Swarco Reflex LLC. Swarco is an industry leading manufacturer of retro-reflective marking systems which guide traffic, keeping road users safe. You probably see their tiny glass beads embedded in road paint each night you drive home as they steer you in the right direction. Having been with the organization for almost two years, Walt is leading the charge on their predictive maintenance practices and commitment to “downtime on their terms.”
Walt shares a wealth of knowledge today, with topics spanning from how he transitioned into the manufacturing space after starting his career in IT, how he and the team at Swarco think about predictive maintenance, why he believes in always training your replacement, and what industry leaders need to focus on as we pave our way into the future.
One of the key takeaways you’ll gather from today? It might be how after Walt examined each piece of equipment and graded them based on how critical they are to the entire operation, he learned that every piece is critical. Or it could be that something as simple as transparent communication can increase productivity and allows the people around you to share in the tricks of the trade you use everyday. Regardless, this episode is packed full of tangible advice.
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Guest Bio
Walt Harrison is a Controls & Automations Technician for Swarco Reflex, LCC. Swarco manufactures reflective glass beads for road markings and has been around since 1969. Their tiny beads (<2mm) are applied directly after road paint and are found worldwide. Having been with the company for nearly two years, Walt has been instrumental in the upkeep of the manufacturing floor. Prior to Swarco, he has been with organizations such as Dematic, the City of Waco, and Kforce Inc.
Before entering the manufacturing space, Walt’s first passion was computing technology, which began after his time in the military. Graduating from Sam Houstin in Texas with a business systems degree, Walt dove headfirst into IT and managed over 2,000 computers alongisde the entire fiber optic and copper networks for the Mexia School District. Following this role, Walt took a position of Senior Programmer Analyst of IT Automation Systems at XTO Energy.
Working at XTO for almost a decade, Walt slowly transitioned from the IT world into controls & automations…with absolutely 0 prior experience. Crediting his leadership at XTO for the collaborative, detail-oriented attitude he holds today, he installed and setup SCADA systems for automated well testing and setup Lufkin Well Manager for Talco Oil Field. He also supported the DeltaV Distributed Control System for three natural gas treating facilities including upgrades, programming and industrial networking.
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Guest Quote
“When we did an analysis of, 'where are our critical points of failure?' It came up to: It's all critical. So our goal is to stop the devices from failing on their terms. We can detect a device that is out of spec and have a replacement ready. Downtime on our terms is really what we're looking for.” – Walt Harrison
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Time Stamps
*(01:43) Ice Breaker
*(02:09) Walt's Background
*(06:51) How to navigate career transitions
*(08:06) Segment 01: The Maintainer Mashup
*(10:48) Swarco’s process of manufacturing glass beads
*(12:28) The reliability culture at Swarco
*(15:34 ) Ways Walt ensures consistent uptime
*(19:42) Segment 02: What's in Your Toolkit?
*(22:08 ) Finding a great mentor
*(24:07) The simplicity of strong communication
*(28:27) Segment 03: The Future of Factories
*(30:41) Is the industry ready for new technologies?
*(33:31) Why digital security is critical moving forward
*(36:38) Segment 04: Fix It Funnies
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Links
[00:00:00] Walt Harrison: Maintenance? Maybe we should call it maintenance.
[00:00:05] David Lee: I'll fix it. I'm gonna fix
[00:00:07] Walt Harrison: it. Concentrated. Maintain it. Maintain control. Maintenance
[00:00:11] Jake Hall: complete.
[00:00:15] David Lee: This is The Maintainers, a Bluecap Community Podcast. My name is David Lee, Director at Tractian, and your host for The Maintainer Show.
[00:00:23] Jake Hall: And I'm Jake Hall, the Manufacturing Millennial, a advert person who likes to highlight all the amazing stories in manufacturing.
And today we're joined by a special guest, we have Walt Harrison, who is the Controls and Automation Engineer for Swarco Reflex LLC. Uh, we're going to talk a lot about his story, his background being in the military, talk about the transition into maintenance and why he joined the team. And also talk about some really cool applications on what they're doing their product for.
But before that, a word from our sponsor.
[00:00:55] Walt Harrison: This
[00:00:55] Voiceover: 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
[00:01:18] Walt Harrison: your maintenance.
[00:01:22] Jake Hall: Well, thanks for joining us today, Wal. Uh, first off, how are you doing today? I'm doing great. Good, good. Summer, summer going well. Are you ready to
[00:01:29] Walt Harrison: roll into the fall? Well, it's Texas. We're running about 80 days this summer that have been 100 plus, so...
I'm looking forward to anything that's not a hundred plus. Okay. So, so
[00:01:42] Jake Hall: let's, let's roll with that then. So if we're not at your location, we could be recording this in person and be anywhere in the world that has like a past memory of a place that you've enjoyed going to, or a place that you want to go to, uh, where would we be recording this podcast right
[00:01:57] Walt Harrison: now?
Well, I'd be weaving a hat on the beach of Belize and we'd all be unemployed, but happy. You
[00:02:04] Jake Hall: know, that doesn't seem too bad for me. I'll take that. So tell
[00:02:09] David Lee: us more about your background and how you got started in the industry, transitioning from the military. And basically, how did you get to where you are today?
[00:02:17] Walt Harrison: Well, I joined the military not long after high school. Um, I was a 14 Juliet early warning system operator trained on a radar that never existed. They handed me a pair of binoculars and away we went. I later, during the military was brought up to our headquarters unit, which was a, an initiative started by the department of defense.
This was 94 and we had this brand new operating system that the civilians didn't even have, and it was called Windows 95. And at that point, uh, we created the first tactical integrated operation center, uh, which was. A lot of training and, uh, really kind of caught my, my attention on the, kind of the IT world and it was good because I learned a whole bunch of systems and it kept me from having to fill up generators.
So, uh, yeah, it was, it was nice, but after the military, I decided that, you know, relax a little bit and I did my junior college tour of Texas, uh, you know, made a, made a few appearances at, uh, Blinn college, Navarro college, Hill college, Tyler junior college. And finally decided that I was going to graduate, graduated from Sam Houston with a management information systems degree in 2002.
Decided that I really wanted to go into database administration, you know, stay in the whole IT world. But at that point we were kind of at, uh, the end of the dot com era and we had a lot of five year, uh, database administrators who were unemployed and that nobody was really looking for, uh, You know, a green hand to come in and train.
So ended up starting in the IT, sure enough, IT support, worked for a small school district here in Mahea. We had about 1, 200 computers and 200 software packages and, you know, being from a small school district, we didn't have a network group. So I was the network group. I was the server support group. I was the IP telephony group.
I mean, we, uh, yeah, we did it all. It was me and me and one other gentleman. And we had a good time, uh, definitely learned a lot of stuff, learned how to be as efficient, as efficient as possible. But after that, a colleague of mine turned me on to a small, uh, oil and gas company called XTO Energy. They later became the largest independent producer in the United States that were bought by Exxon.
So that was, uh, that was a fun trip, but I was with them for about 10 years, uh, did IT for a year and got in. I was helping this, the, uh, the SCADA group. And the skater group was looking for a person to help support the Eastern Division, which goes from Monroe, Louisiana to Hearn, Texas. It's a long and big area.
The supervisor of that group was a gentleman named Steve Bertram, who I met on my day one indoctrination at XTO and I was really impressed by him. And I just said, I kind of want to work for this guy. I don't even know what they do. And so I literally Googled Skada before I called him and said, Hey, I want to work for your group.
He said, well, that's good. He said, my group wants you to work with us. And so I started working with it, not knowing anything, but unfortunately I had a great mentor and he instilled a bunch of really incredible values in how I look at my career. And he, you know, he always would say, don't be the last man with a secret and always be training your replacement because you don't know when you're going to get moved into a new position or maybe to a different area.
But you know, the more people that know how to do your job makes it a lot easier. And that way, if you get hit by a bus. The company still goes on, but, uh, oh, at the same time, you don't have that dependency from your company that you're the only guy that can do it. I mean, you've taken the time to train other folks.
Uh, so anyway, he was a great mentor, uh, and I really gravitated toward our, our plants. We had, uh, three natural grass treating plants here in the, the limestone, freestone area. It was known as the freestone trend. And that was very interesting. Uh, we upgraded two of the plants to an Emerson product called Delta V, which is controls.
And I, uh, really enjoyed that. So I did a lot of training and did a lot of work with that. Uh, I was always told that, you know, you're not really a controls guy until you shut down a plant. And we can circle back to that. Cause I got a funny story about that. So, what was
[00:06:52] Jake Hall: that transition like going from military to IT to natural gas to, you know, where you are now?
Like, what, what are some of the biggest, I guess you could say, experiences or like surprises for you from doing that? The
[00:07:08] Walt Harrison: hardest part about going from IT to say, my role here, Is most people don't speak IT. And so if it is a technical issue, you know, we have to kind of break it down Barney style and be able to communicate what you're trying to do.
But at the same time, it's, you know, it's, it's like David did in the military. You're changing boxes and, you know. You have that ability to be able to break down something a little bit further. They always say RTFM and, you know, you can get a lot out of reading the manual, you know, same time, uh, you also got to understand what you're doing.
So it, it's just, it's just different thing. I mean, you wouldn't dive off into a, an IT project without understanding that the technology you're working with is the same thing. You know, maintaining your equipment, you, you got to understand your equipment. So
[00:08:01] Jake Hall: now that we know a little bit more about you, I think it's time to, to jump into our first segment, which we call the maintainer mashup.
Maintenance
[00:08:09] Walt Harrison: required. Listen, I maintain. I maintain the muscle. Maintain course. Maintain speed.
[00:08:16] David Lee: I gotta maintain respect. Dive
[00:08:20] Jake Hall: deeper into, you know, the equipment, the management, the teams that you work with around maintenance. So. That kind of leads to my first question. So you spent time in the military, uh, the gas field, IT side, but now you're at a company called Suarco Reflex.
And can you talk about more about your role there, but maybe to start with what, what does Suarco do to kind of set the precedence of, of everything involved with it? Right. So
[00:08:44] Walt Harrison: Suarco Reflex here in Maheo, we make a glass bead that is injected into road marking surfaces. So when you're driving down the highway at night and you can see the reflection in the stripes, the white stripe, the yellow stripe, that's probably one of our products.
Um, there are other companies that make them, but we make them better.
[00:09:08] Jake Hall: Walk us through the science behind it. So we have inside, they're putting down paint. And inside that paint is the material that you guys are manufacturing,
[00:09:17] Walt Harrison: right? As the paint is applied to the road surface of our beads are injected second.
So the paint goes down, then our beads are injected on top of that. So it allows the beads to adhere to the, the road surface via the paint. And, but you have more exposure to that, that glass, which, you know, again, Uh, we want perfect spheres, and the perfect spheres are what allows that reflection. So we're sprinkling the
[00:09:44] Jake Hall: sprinkles on top of the ice cream in a sense of, of our doing it.
Now what, what are the size of these, of these balls? Can you tell us like that? Like what's the, what's the size that we're talking in terms of, of this grain of sand or smaller than a grain of sand?
[00:09:58] Walt Harrison: Uh, we'll say bigger than a grain of sand. I don't know if you can see this.
[00:10:06] Jake Hall: Yeah. It looks like salt, you know, on my screen.
So yeah. Okay. And the, and the, and their, and their, their actual bulk. So it's not like a little shavings or breakup or they're fully cylindrical and that, and
[00:10:15] Walt Harrison: that we actually run them through an instrument called a camsizer, which takes. Thousands of photos and grades the, the beads based on their roundness and will give us a percentage and our goal is, you know, 90 plus percent, uh, roundness.
Uh, so they're perfectly spherical. And you go back and look at the pictures, you can see the, the spheres. And what,
[00:10:39] Jake Hall: what's the type of equipment that like goes into making that? Cause I think you mentioned a lot of this is recycled material, right?
[00:10:47] Walt Harrison: a recycled glass. And
[00:10:51] Jake Hall: so what, so going in from that recycled glass, can you kind of walk us through that, that process and, and
[00:10:56] Walt Harrison: share what you can?
Well, we use, uh, a combination of some raw materials that are just normal things that are found naturally. We had a, a glass doctor is what we called him, uh, who helped us formulate our, our glass formula. And he, uh, basically dialed it in to where we have the best mix of recycled plus raw materials to give us the lowest cost.
So we use that, that raw, uh, call it as, as we refer to it, which is just plate glass. And then these raw materials, they're mixed and, and we have. We actually have a, an equipment, it's a, an X ray fluorescent spectrometer, and we can take our glass and run it through there and it will give us an exact chemical composition of what our glass is.
Uh, it's pretty fantastic. And then we also use a visible light spectrometer and we polish a glass sample and we shoot visible light through it. And it also can determine. What your, uh, composition is. So we're, we're looking at it from two different angles. Nice.
[00:12:08] David Lee: And so now for the rest of my life, when I drive on an American highway, I will think about Walt in Suarco.
[00:12:15] Walt Harrison: Well, you can think about that wherever you drive in the world, because Suarco has 67 companies throughout the world and our products, uh, even from Mahea, Texas are shipped all over the Americas. Wow. That that's
[00:12:29] David Lee: amazing. Awesome. So getting a product like this internationally out to market, uh, with quality, like you all do, there has to be a, a strong culture behind that.
Right. Uh, so I'd like to kind of frame that culture in how you all think about that. So let's talk a little bit about the culture and what you all are striving for as it relates to SWARCO.
[00:12:52] Walt Harrison: Some of our customers, actually, a lot of our customers have their own specifications that we have to meet. So. We have an in house quality assurance program to make sure that our product is matching their specifications.
In some cases, we have to send them off to third party labs to, to verify that. But, you know, our goal is to make our customers happy and, you know, to get them the product that they want in a timely fashion. That way, right now, this is peak season. You see road construction everywhere, so. Uh, we're, we're in a very busy time of the year for, for the glass bead business.
Right.
[00:13:30] David Lee: And one of the most important things for these customers, right, is that consistency and that reliability, essentially. So let's talk a little bit about how reliability ties into this, and we can talk about the culture as well. Uh, but any, anything that you would like to kind of mention from
[00:13:45] Walt Harrison: that perspective?
One of the things as far as reliability is ensuring that. You know, there's product for our customers. And so part of that goes to our operations. We have to make sure that our equipment is doing what it's supposed to do, because you walked through and did a critical analysis on, from the front end to the back end, from raw materials to finished materials.
I mean, down to the forklifts that are moving our product. There's a lot of critical points. So we have to make sure that we have that uptime and we're a 24 hour operation. We have shifts that run all day long. Once we fired up our melter, it won't stop until the melter refractory is, is. Complete, uh, used, so being 24 hours, you know, there are, I mean, it's hard on equipment and it's a melter.
It's hot at about 30 feet. It's approximately 125 ambient temperature. So it's a very harsh environment for equipment. So maintenance is top priority. Right,
[00:14:54] David Lee: and am I right about this? I heard that you all have the largest melter in North America. It is the
largest
[00:15:01] Walt Harrison: direct melter in North America. What
[00:15:04] Jake Hall: makes it a direct melter?
Can you walk us like, what's usually like a melter and like a direct
[00:15:08] Walt Harrison: melter? As we have a large tank that is molten glass and we are adding our product or our raw materials in a batch, uh, which is all, you know, continuously adding, um, and it adds that to that. So, and we're applying the heat to that chamber.
And that makes it direct melt. So,
[00:15:35] Jake Hall: you know, early on, you mentioned about uptime and this being like a 24, you know, hour operation. I can't imagine when you're, when you're getting the high temperatures, right, you're, you know, you're in a critical state of, you have to then accomplish, you know, a certain amount of tasks when a certain time, otherwise all the product that you have.
You know, is going to, is going to go, you know, I feel like there's like a, a sense of time urgency when it comes to things, what are you doing to, you know, ensure that all of the pieces are in place, ready to go? You know, you mentioned you've, you've had a SCADA background, so you're getting, you're getting this like real time information, but like, what are you doing to make sure?
That, hey, we just put, you know, a ton of material inside of the smelter and we have all of these processes now that are going to be needing to happen in a critical state. And the next, you know, 30, 60 minutes, three hours, six hours, what are you doing to ensure that those pieces of equipment are, are ready from like a,
[00:16:30] Walt Harrison: from a maintenance perspective?
Well, we did an analysis of our critical equipment and we decided to go with a product from Tractian. To monitor our devices. And so we're in the initial stages. We passed our two weeks on some of our equipment, which, you know, basically builds a timeline for your equipment and gives you some, I guess, a baseline is more, more specific.
Gives you that information about that equipment and then how it's supposed to look when it's normally running in the case that something develops. This system has alerted us and, you know, we can jump on it. Uh, it's so from a maintenance standpoint. It gives us a lot better transparency to our machinery.
[00:17:21] David Lee: I want to hear a little bit, Walt, about, uh, your goals and what do you see this project evolving to with respects to your actual facility as well as your sister
[00:17:30] Walt Harrison: facility? Like I said, when we did an analysis of. You know, where are critical points of failure? It came up to, it's all critical, right? There are some that are more critical.
There's some that are less critical, but it's all critical. So our goal is to stop the devices from failing on their terms. You know, we can detect a device that is. You know, out of spec and have a replacement ready. And, you know, if it's possible, we'll go ahead and pull that equipment and have it serviced.
You know, if it's electric motor, we'll send it off and have coils rewound and rebuilt just so that we don't have that failure because it's a lot easier for us to. Take something down when we know, because we can make the changes on both ends of the motor, you know, whether it's coming or going to, you know, allow for that downtime.
So downtime on our terms is really what we're looking for. And I know our maintenance supervisor is just beside himself with this system right now. So when you look at,
[00:18:35] Jake Hall: I'm curious, you mentioned, you know, sister, sister facility, you have two buildings. How much of a similarity is there between the two, the two buildings?
Are they the same processes going on, or is one a secondary operation coming from the first one?
[00:18:50] Walt Harrison: Well, some of our, uh, we at this plant make Megalux beads. The, our sister facility makes the standard beads. Some of our customers want a blend of standard and Megalux beads. Uh, so what they do over there is entirely different, but they do have critical points of failure that they want to do the same thing.
So. I'm not as versed because most of their systems are, are not automated. Uh, and so we have a variety of PLCs that. You know, run this plant. So I'm not over there as much. Uh, but you know, we still are making glass, uh, glass beads. All
[00:19:33] David Lee: right. So transitioning to our next segment, we're going to talk about what's in your toolbox.
[00:19:42] Walt Harrison: We're
[00:19:42] David Lee: going to fix it. Get the tool,
[00:19:44] Walt Harrison: pick the one right
[00:19:45] Jake Hall: tool, the right tool for the right job.
[00:19:51] David Lee: So you have excelled in our field and in our community as well. So tell us a little bit about what you utilize from a technology perspective, maybe your tech stack, what, uh, what type things help you, uh, personally that you're utilizing and approaches and things what's in your toolbox essentially, uh, helping you as we speak.
Start
[00:20:10] Walt Harrison: with the basic stuff and I have a Fluke 789 process meter. I have a Fluke Megger for testing, uh, insulation. And of course, I've just got my regular old multimeter with ohms. And, uh, after that, and I started looking at data, uh, we have our, uh, SCADA system on these, on these, uh, processes, and I can pull up and harvest data from there.
And matter of fact, we're currently harvesting data and putting it in a report so that our supervisors can view. You know, how much material did we use and, you know, when did they do it and are they doing it? But looking at all of my historical data, the first thing I do is I look at all my alarms, I look at trends I'm looking for.
You know, any anomalies and amperages and temperatures, and are we running, uh, on this machine when it's supposed to be running? And how much downtime do we have on this machine? So that's the type of tools that I have that makes the world a lot easier.
[00:21:17] David Lee: Awesome. Yeah. So having these type tools, obviously it makes things scalable, consistent, and all the above, I would say positive characteristics that we're looking for here.
Um, and so also with, with this toolkit. In your background, you must have a, I would say, a box of tools that you utilize, whether it be leadership, uh, approaches, tenets, and things from the military, um, and your experiences. Let's talk a little bit about that. I'd like to hear about, about your actual experience more and how that applies to what you're doing, uh, from a leadership perspective and a technology perspective as
[00:21:49] Walt Harrison: well.
I want to make sure that anyone that I'm working with understands why we're doing what we're doing. And can, can they do the same thing? And then the answer is yes. Uh, when I'm done, I want to make sure that they understand fully what we just did and why.
[00:22:08] David Lee: And so we've heard this a lot, not only from yourself, uh, from previous guests, but also you'll see this, this theme of having a mentor.
As someone who has benefited greatly from mentors, I definitely would like to talk a little bit about that before we move on. How would you advise the people who want to get to where you're getting with this type of guidance? How should they seek to find a mentor, for example, or like someone wanted to reach out to you that may be getting out of the military and know they're starting their first maintenance or reliability job?
[00:22:38] Walt Harrison: It's pretty easy to figure out who knows what's going on. And, you know, it may be the crusty old dude that's been there for 30 years, or it may be somebody who just arrived, but, uh, people have the ability to broadcast their knowledge and seek those people out. The guys that, you know, are, are the ones that they call in the middle of the night, uh, those guys, and just ask questions.
I mean, Obviously there's a timing issue. If you're in the middle of a fire, you're not, you know, it's not time to train. Keep your eyes open, keep your ears open and watch those guys and mimic their behaviors. And one of the things that doesn't cost you anything, it just showing up to work on time and keep your eyes open and be willing to do the job.
I mean, that's, that's free. It doesn't cost you a dime to do that. And that's how you learn.
[00:23:30] David Lee: Yeah, that's really good advice. Uh, one of my, let's say, not mentors, but he was someone ahead of me in our career. He once said to me... I have mentors and they don't even know that they're my mentor because they just follow what they do.
And of course, this was a former army veteran, right? So, um, so it makes sense that mentality is definitely there intact. Uh, so
that's
[00:23:51] Jake Hall: really good words. I love that phrase, you know, there's... A lot of people were mentors that annoyed, I could, I could reflect back to, you know, four or five people in my life as well, where they had no idea they were one of my mentors, but man, did they make an impact on my life to, to get where I am today.
So, so driving back to, you know, the, the, what's in the toolkit. Um, the question I always like to know on, on operations that are happening there, right? You guys are a 24 hour operation, but you know, while you can't be there 24 hours a day. So what are you doing to ensure that processes run when you are not on the floor?
You know, what are, what are some tricks of the trade? How are you, I guess you could say, designating responsibilities? What are, what are some things that we could learn
[00:24:37] Walt Harrison: from that? I think a lot of it is just communication. You know, speaking with the shift supervisors and operators, you know, ensuring that, that they know what's going on and be able to identify and detect a problem before it's a problem.
Uh, usually, you know, if, if, uh, operators in tune with his processes, he knows when a motor's doing something that's not supposed to do, or he knows if a. If a material conveyor is, you know, making a squeak, you know, not all operators do that, uh, some of them hold that information to themselves and then it becomes a problem.
So it's, it's just train and train and continue to train and just, you know, you may say it 10 times, but you know, if that's what it takes for an operator or someone to understand that, you know. It's not wasting time, you're not getting called out. All right. So
[00:25:37] David Lee: Walt, you actually mentioned earlier that you have a really good story that you'd like to tell.
So can we double back now and, uh, and talk about that? Cause I'm
[00:25:46] Jake Hall: super interested
[00:25:47] Walt Harrison: in hearing this. Absolutely. So we were in the process of adding, this was when I was with XTO, uh, we were in the process of adding a refrigeration. portion to the gas stream, which takes the natural gas down to negative 40 and knocks out the heavy C chains.
So basically knocks out propane and, and butane, basically makes us a product that can be held at atmosphere. It's a kind of a, a gasoline type substance that comes from natural gas. So we hadn't brought on the Refridge, but we were just bringing the plant back up. It takes a while to get all those systems to A mean and glycol.
to heat that up to a certain temperature. And we were in the process of heating and, you know, everything's looking good. And I'm working on the Refridge module and I went to download a portion of the Refridge to enable a couple of instruments that we had added. And when I did, I didn't go to that unit. I went to the whole plant and as I downloaded, it took the plant down and it got real quiet and then a, and I look out and it was, it was nighttime or early morning, um, I look out and all of a sudden the plant is.
Even more illuminated. And so everything had gone to flare, which I call the devil's cigar, a cigarette lighter, because this flame is shooting up about 200 feet in the air because the whole plant is purging and it was, you know, there's 900 pounds of pressure on this plant. And so there was a lot of gas that went out in a very short period of time.
And that's when my mentor said, well. You're a programmer now. You shut down a plant. So, so
[00:27:37] Jake Hall: I would assume that's part of like a safety process, right? If they need to go out there, they need to push all the air out. They open up a couple valves and pressurize the air.
[00:27:44] Walt Harrison: No, it does it automatically. It just, I mean, everything went to...
Emergency shut down and blared out. So yeah, there was, there was no stopping that. I mean, it was, so we had to start back over on, we had to repa, pressurize the plant and start firing up burners and yeah, it was, oh man. Needless to say, the operators were not happy with me. Yeah, that
[00:28:07] Jake Hall: kind of would kill off Any, uh, any plans for, uh, the rest of that shift?
That's for sure. Yeah. ,
[00:28:12] Walt Harrison: so, so as we talk
[00:28:13] Jake Hall: about. The future, you know, this next segment is the future of factories, maybe not necessarily the future of mistakes that we've made in the past. Um, you know, but we're going to cover, you know, the new trends that we're seeing in our industry and, you know, what we want to look forward to, you know, going forward.
[00:28:29] Walt Harrison: Meet
[00:28:31] David Lee: the future. To our futures. What future? The
[00:28:33] Walt Harrison: factory.
[00:28:34] Jake Hall: My factory. Everybody's
[00:28:35] Walt Harrison: factory.
[00:28:35] David Lee: My laws.
[00:28:40] Jake Hall: When we think about the future of factories, we think about a upcoming workforce that needs to be trained, to be excited to work, you know, with these jobs. So what would you give, you know, advice, Walt, for, for people who are wanting to either crossover into the industry to looking, you know, for their future career, or, you know, they're just graduating from the military and they're exploring what you're doing.
What would, what advice would you give? Them who want to enter this industry.
[00:29:07] Walt Harrison: Well, one of the things right now is we are living in the digital age. More and more technologies are becoming available, such as our product with Tractian. Data is the key. So you have to have almost a hybrid mechanic. You have to have somebody who can understand the physical process and the mechanical process of this, but also understand this data side and how to interpret.
The data that you're receiving from this, that is what it's going to take. And it, so it takes a smarter workforce. Um, you have to be diligent about your training. Uh, it doesn't hurt to, you know, to take up a couple of, you know, a PLC course or, you know, just the introduction. So you can understand that technology and that way you can't communicate with somebody and say, you know, is this a.
Is this a mechanical? Is this a, uh, you know, an electrical? Or is this a control? That being said, uh, our workforce has to be diligent and you have to take care of yourself. So, you know, again, you have to get the training and you have to put forth an effort because... I mean, nobody wants an untrained hand come in and, you know, start from nothing.
They want somebody who can hit the ground boots running because, I mean, we're looking at a capital expense, you know, when you have an employee and so you're looking for a return on investment and, you know, Hey, we're going to pay you this amount of money. Uh, what can you do for us? You know, I want to keep your plant running.
That's really good
[00:30:40] David Lee: stuff to touch on. As things evolve, as we get more technologically advanced, there becomes more challenges now, right? So let's talk a little bit about the challenges that come along with wanting to become this actual. High tech hybrid worker. Uh, do you see us being able to find those people being a challenge in the future?
And then also, do you see it to be a potential challenge for that person to become this needed, uh, employee that we have now?
[00:31:11] Walt Harrison: I'm looking at you wearing a gaming headset and Jake sitting in a gaming chair, um, yeah, the, the technology and the people are, are well versed in it. I mean. It, it, it is almost like a video game when you're staring at a, an HMI and you're looking at the plant process, um, because you move your mouse and click a button and a motor starts or it turns off or a belt moves or elevator turns on.
That part's pretty easy to get. So you're already comfortable with holding a controller in your hand. What's the difference between holding a keyboard and a mouse? So, I believe those people are out there, it's how do we equip them and how do they equip themselves. There are lots of resources out there, uh, and a lot of the stuff that I've learned is self taught just from watching videos.
There's lots of... You know, training videos on, you know, how to test a motor, you know, how to understanding the electrical wiring basics stuff. I mean, it's, it's all out there and it's free and it's, you know, incredible resources. The YouTube diploma is what I call it. Yes. Yeah, but we laugh at it, but it's really does help.
Oh, I mean, all the
[00:32:27] Jake Hall: experiences, like in terms of like video editing and sound editing. Or setting up my 3d printer behind me or fixing my cars. I mean, everything I learned now is, is access to free information. And I think. You know, I always, I always laugh. My, my father told me, he says, Jake, get off your cell phone and go learn something, you know, and that's what was told to me 10 years ago when I'm in high school and I'm thinking, and I literally now, now I'm literally doing all my job on my phone, my, my entire job, it's completed through, through emails, through cameras, through video editing, like all the tools are on here.
And it's just what a transition that we've seen where, you know, we get the future, we, we, we, we want to bring in the future generation of people. It's like. They're, they're digital natives, they love this technology, embrace it,
[00:33:14] Walt Harrison: don't, you know, don't, don't try and shut it. All right. All right, so
[00:33:19] David Lee: before we move on to our next segment, Walt, is there anything else that you'd like to talk about?
Like how you imagine the future of factories, uh, even if it's in the distant future?
[00:33:31] Walt Harrison: Well, I'll just say that. The, the modern factory now has to be just as concerned because as we start bringing on these computer systems that control our, our system, and we start wanting people who want that data, we have to be diligent about our obscurity between the data that's in the plant and controls are in the plant and, you know, those bad actors out there who are trying to manipulate and, you know, cause.
Problems. I mean, we've, we've already seen in the last year, a pipeline and electrical grid, things are being attacked. So it is important that modern manufacturing facilities have to have that cost of, and it is a cost. I mean, it's a significant cost, but you have to include that in your operation budget because there is somebody out there who wants to shut you down and just because they can.
If you don't spend the time to secure your networks, you know, whatever it takes, firewalls, demilitarized zones in between, you know, operations and IT, uh, whatever you have to do, you have, you need to do it and this is an initiative. And a lot of sectors right now, especially oil and gas, to make that as secure as possible because of what they do, if we shut down, we're not going to cause any, any problems in the town, other than the fact that our, our board of directors are going to be really upset.
But if a, if a gas plant shuts down, it could get explode and you can't put out a gas plant, uh, or you see chemical fires and things like that, that are. Absolute beast. And, you know, they take special training and that's why they have special fire departments down along the coast that can manage that stuff.
But you know, again, it's, it's operations security. That's, that's where the future has to go. And, you know, again, I spoke about the digital age, you know. There is so much, I mean, everything is getting connected, you know, it doesn't surprise me now, when I, when I purchase a new device and it has an Ethernet port on it, I mean, it's, it's pretty much standard.
Oh my gosh, you know, I, I,
[00:35:45] Jake Hall: uh, I got a new stove a while back, and there's a QR code I can scan on my stove, where now I have an app where I can literally go in and preheat my oven, you know, remotely on my phone, it's like everything. Is connected. You can't find one new appliance that you're buying these days that you, it's not Bluetooth enabled or Wi Fi enabled.
Oh my gosh. Um, I, uh, I went out there and got a new, um, thermometer for my, for my smoking, uh, briskets and meats and stuff like that. It's like, you know, here's a Bluetooth monitor. You connected it and it syncs to your phone by plugging in via USB. See, it automatically syncs up. I'm like, geez, we're living the dream here.
[00:36:24] Walt Harrison: Yeah, it's,
[00:36:25] David Lee: it's pretty cool. Definitely. Alright, so, we're coming towards the end of our episode here, so, but before we say goodbye to Walt, uh, we're gonna jump into our final segment, the Fix It Funnies. The fix is in.
[00:36:41] Walt Harrison: It's funny noise. Oh, fix it. Make it funny would
[00:36:43] David Lee: be great. If you could
[00:36:44] Walt Harrison: make it funny.
[00:36:45] David Lee: Your fate is fixed.
That's what makes it funny.
[00:36:48] Walt Harrison: Make sure it's
[00:36:50] David Lee: funny. And so this is where we ask things like, uh, for example, we talked about your favorite summer spot, but where would you like to go in the winter as winter is around the
[00:37:00] Walt Harrison: corner? I've been, I've been to Cuba when I was in the military and I would love to go back because I went swimming in December and it was spectacular.
Nice.
[00:37:11] David Lee: Nice. Yeah, that's a, yeah, that's a good one. The Caribbean, you always want to, uh, I think everyone wants to snowboard or at least get out of Dodge once that, uh, once December rolls around in North America. So I'm there with
[00:37:22] Jake Hall: you. So with, uh, you've been doing a lot of different industries before, but if you were to pick a new, brand new industry to work in.
[00:37:29] Walt Harrison: What would you want to do, Walt? My high school guidance counselor told me that I should be a fire watcher. You're a
[00:37:38] Jake Hall: watcher. Is that, uh, the person like, what, six of those things, like the Rockies or something like that, or, or the No,
[00:37:43] Walt Harrison: no, no, just somebody sitting there watching a fire. Oh, okay.
I don't think she had a lot of confidence in me.
[00:37:56] David Lee: Awesome. So, when it comes to, for example, uh, content, right, like, right now what we're doing, uh Where are you consuming your content and what are you looking at nowadays? What are, when you get off work, what type of content are you, are you consuming just in general?
[00:38:12] Walt Harrison: My favorite funny is, is, uh, Rockster is the guy that does overdubs for dogs.
He's looking hilarious because I know my dogs are thinking that.
[00:38:26] David Lee: Absolutely, absolutely. Yeah, I'm definitely familiar with that. Um, I'm a dog guy also. So all this is all any social media, it's stuff like that
[00:38:35] Jake Hall: everywhere. So final question you have, uh, you, you currently work with the largest direct melter in the, in, in the U S but if you were to do any other type of dream piece of equipment that you were able to work on or a piece of machinery.
What would you want
[00:38:50] Walt Harrison: to work? There is a recycling plant in Waco, Texas, and it's called Lipschitz. They take metal, and so people bring all kinds, cars, frames, I mean, raw steel, I mean, everything. But they've got this machine that they pick that metal up, and they drop it in, and it comes out as like little metal dust.
I want to run that machine. I mean, and I just want to see how big of stuff I can put in there because it don't, it don't hesitate. You can watch that thing just spit out metal all day and I want to operate that. It's
[00:39:26] Jake Hall: just a massive, it's just a massive smasher grinder.
[00:39:29] Walt Harrison: Yeah. It's gotta be the coolest thing in the world.
[00:39:35] David Lee: That's awesome. Well, Walt. Thanks again for coming to our show. It's been absolutely wonderful to have you. And it's been a pleasure as always. So for everyone out there, this has been the maintainers, a blue cap community podcast, don't forget to subscribe wherever you consume your content. As we are on most major platforms, so you can be notified the next time an episode goes live.
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