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"Smart Metals Podcast," hosted by Luke van Enkhuizen and Denis Gontcharov, offers a clear and practical look into the metals industry's journey through digital transformation, Industry 4.0, and the integration of the Unified Namespace. Listeners can expect in-depth discussions that break down these complex topics into understandable segments, actionable insights, and real-world applications. Luke and Denis bring their expertise to the table, guiding you through the evolving digital landscape with advice on leveraging technology for streamlined operations. Each episode aims to empower metal industry professionals with the knowledge needed to confidently adopt digital innovations and understand the impact of the Unified Namespace in creating a more connected and efficient production environment. Join us to navigate the future of the metals industry with clarity and confidence.
Denis Gontcharov: Hi, and welcome to
the Smart Metals Podcast, a podcast
in which we talk about digital
transformation in the metals industry.
My name is Denis Gontcharov,
and I'm here with my co host,
Luke: Luke van Enkhuizen
Denis Gontcharov: and today we have a
very special guest, Todd Abraham from
InnoVaas, and we're going to talk about
assessing the popularity of the unified
namespace in both Europe and Asia.
Hi Todd, welcome to the show.
Todd Abraham: Hi, guys.
to be here.
Thanks for the invite.
Denis Gontcharov: Yeah, it's our pleasure.
Why don't we start with giving a short
introduction about you and your company?
Todd Abraham: Sure.
So Innovaas Solutions we're based
in Singapore, of all places, and we
exist for the sole purpose of helping
small to mid size industrials through
the digital transformation process.
That means helping them to adjust
themselves organizationally to set
that transformation strategy and
help them look for points of data
collection within their environment to
take advantage of machine learning and
artificial intelligence technology that
everyone wants to talk about these days.
And yeah, so we're based in Singapore.
We've got members in North
America and Europe as well that
are supporting us in our, on
different projects with our clients.
Denis Gontcharov: First question,
have you attended just like Luke
and I did ,Walker Reynolds workshop
last week from 24 to 26 September?
Todd Abraham: I did, I did.
Denis Gontcharov: That's great because I
think what we saw there, there was a very
large representations of all the countries
Todd Abraham: I didn't notice percentage
wise where most of the attendance was
coming from, but if I was to hazard a
guess, I think probably mostly North and
South America and Europe, I would guess.
Not so much in Asia.
some some coming from Asia, but I'm
not sure that it is quite, Got the
traction that that it needs to have
in this part of the world as of yet.
Denis Gontcharov: Let's zoom in on that.
So Is it fair to say that the
concept of the unified namespace
hasn't found much recognition there?
Are people not aware of it or
is there a competing technology?
What's the situation in Asia?
Hmm.
Todd Abraham: So if we were to peel
off the name Unified Namespace and
look at the technology enabling this
architecture one component of which
is Apache Kafka, as an example, very
important component to that architecture,
well entrenched in this market.
We've got an application out here called
Grab, and it's a delivery platform,
right, for food delivery shopping.
And so for all of the transmission of
this real time data off of architectures
like that, it's well entrenched and
people are very familiar with it.
But when we come to talking about this
real time streaming data in an industrial
capacity, it becomes a bit different.
That's where the unified namespace
is really meant to serve.
There's work to be done,
to grow the awareness.
Denis Gontcharov: That's interesting
because Luke, if I'm not mistaken
in Europe, the concept is
slowly gaining traction, right?
At least at a small to
medium size manufacturers,
Luke: I think it's getting more and
more known, particularly for those
that are looking for the next stage
in the digital transformation, I feel
that it like, unlike with the point
to point integrations that Commonly
now implemented by ERP vendors.
I feel that if manufacturers reach that
next stage where multiple brands of
machines are coming in or multiple types
and layers of software of multiple brands,
or there is plans to integrate various
factories in a unified supply chain.
That's where they are starting
to feel the frustrations and.
Pitfalls of doing everything point
to point, and then they started
looking into alternative means.
So yeah, I do really feel in the last
two to three years, the momentum has just
been picking up and some of, if not, most
of my clients have maybe heard about it.
And I think some of them are
now actively investigating.
You can see this funnel is starting
to fill up slowly with people that
are making moves on this space.
Todd Abraham: I also think that
there's an interesting dynamic
that plays out culturally.
Asia is a highly capable
destination, right?
If we think about Japan, Malaysia,
Singapore, Hong Kong, China,
these are all destinations that
are highly capable technically.
They tend not to be industry
leaders, innovators so much.
So a lot of the growth that happens
in innovation is coming out of.
North America or Europe.
And it's probably going to be lots
of comments against me on that one.
But I do believe that a lot of the
innovation, I also believe it's
changing, but it's a slow change.
So usually the adoption happens first in
Europe and North America, South America,
and then as brands start to grow up and
get traction and recognition, then they
get the adoption in the Asian markets.
So there's also that dynamic,
I think, to keep in mind.
Denis Gontcharov: but what's
the root cause of this dynamic?
Is it a risk aversion of in the Asian
culture or how would you describe it?
Todd Abraham: Is it risk risk adverse?
Could be, could be that.
Yeah.
I think over the last,
let's call it 20, 30 years.
You know, If we look at the U.
S.
market as an example, there was
a huge outsourcing movement, of
all their production capacity.
They would, costs of
producing was increasing.
That's an interesting dynamic that
I think is different between the U.
S.
and European markets.
They both had a similar situation where
cost of production was rising, right?
But Europe didn't outsource Europe,
innovated Europe, found new ways to use
technology to manage the rising costs,
the reduction in margin, the U S
on the other hand, didn't innovate.
They outsourced, sent everything over to
India and China and, other markets where
cost of production was dramatically lower.
And so that's, I think how
that dynamic played out.
And so because of that, Asia hasn't
been a need for innovating market.
Yet it will become in the future, like
destinations like Singapore, Hong Kong,
even China now are the cost for them.
is rising a lot.
So they're now outsourcing to
destinations like Vietnam and Malaysia.
Philippines, Thailand.
It's this moving expansion that eventually
we're gonna run out of low cost.
Destinations around the world and
everyone's going to have to innovate,
or maybe it's that innovation happens
in steps as we're required to, because
innovating is probably more expensive
than shifting to lower cost destinations,
Denis Gontcharov: I guess so, it
depends on what happens to the
world's supply chains, right?
I don't want to get in or too deep
on that, but I think COVID really
made people realize that there's also
limits to this and certain risks.
Todd Abraham: Yeah.
Denis Gontcharov: But to get back
to your point about innovation in
Europe I tend to agree coming from
more of a materials metals background.
I saw that the steel industry that
remained in Belgium, for instance, was
really the high specialty steels, which
were just very hard to manufacture, but
all the common steels or most of them,
they did move to the lower cost countries.
Do you think they would use
the same building blocks of
the unified namespace, i.
e.
technologies like Kafka, protocols
like MQTT, or do you think the Asian
market is developing their own tools?
Todd Abraham: No, I think they will
use the same building blocks, you know,
and we know one of the, one of the
most innovative leaders in the MQTT
application space is EMQ out of China.
They've they've built a reputation
for themselves to be the best.
MQTT technology on the planet, so I think
HiveMQ and EMQ are vying for position one.
So I think they'll, they'll
be the same building blocks.
And yeah, plenty of opportunity for
adoption here in this, in this region.
Once it catches on, it's
going to go like wildfire.
In the training in the, in the workshop
that we did, one thing that just
really resonated for me that I did,
I didn't really click into until I
went through the workshop is the fact
that building the unified namespace is
essentially doing the work up front to
contextualize and normalize your data.
So that when it's time to feed
that into a machine learning model,
and derive insights from your,
from your data, it's ready to go.
And I don't know if you saw the follow
up video that, that Walker did after
the workshop talking about why machine
learning initiatives fail is essentially
because of that, because companies, they
don't understand the work that needs
to be done to prepare their data so
that they can take advantage of machine
learning technologies to enable analytics.
I thought that was for me, just,
that was my light bulb moment as.
In the in the training.
And so I think once people start
to realize that this is all
about really simplifying the
digital transformation process.
I don't know.
What do you guys think?
When I think about all of this digital
transformation effort, I think that
it's really about positioning yourself
to take advantage of that machine
learning technology and AI, right?
Because that's if we use that
technology correctly, Okay.
That's really what's going to give
us the most profound insights into
how we can improve operationally.
Denis Gontcharov: think we
had a discussion about this
last week, Luke, didn't we?
Luke: Yes.
I think you make a very
interesting point, Todd.
I think you're raising an
excellent observation there.
And I strongly agree with the argument
indeed, in order to do all the things
that truly represent industry 4.
0 as in using big data, machine
learning interacting with the current
state of the business, looking.
Back in time in history, what
costs certain things doing root
cause analysis in a digital way.
Let's not even talk about, you know,
process mining and all things around that.
These kinds of concepts, I've, I feel
they only can work if you do the work.
If you make the data.
It's clear everybody understands
how the structure is like.
Because you cannot just give to a BI
specialist, a business intelligence
specialist, a junk drawer and saying,
Hey, go make some conclusions out of
this, or a data engineer like Dennis and
say, Hey, can you make us a dashboard?
It doesn't really work like this.
And then it's very hard to get
a price to what it should cost
or how much work it takes.
And if you already have the
infrastructure in place.
It's then quite quite, it's, it's,
it's more doable to understand how much
work it would take to make a certain
insight or a report or an optimization.
So, yeah, I had a very similar, a light
bulb moment in that same training, as
you mentioned, where I also was and
credits to Walker went on from that.
I think that there was a
very similar insight for me.
What I also really stood out to me was
indeed that you think a little bit ahead
of how you want things to be structured
and that you can really, you know,
Publish this current state of the business
every time you are starting your day.
Like every time you're opening your
screen, you see what's current state
of the current business in this full
a width, in a way that I think you
can quite easily a dashboard or even
an MES app or anything like that.
And then, then looking at ignition is
one of the things that we looked into
compared for, for example, to what a
unified manufacturing up to us, UMH
and then looking at.
And again, like other players
like HighByte and stuff, I really
started to see that they are
all different, but very similar.
And you mentioned in the beginning,
for example, Kafka and data streaming.
I think they all share a very similar
approach, but they still have differences.
And I think the, the beauty of
this, this time right now is,
as you said, there aren't really
significantly established players.
I must say, of course, Ignition
is already significantly large.
It's still not to be compared
with the SAPs of this world.
And I think we will get in that world.
Do you think so too, Todd, that
we get to a world like that
where we have players that big?
Todd Abraham: I don't think so.
I don't think so.
I think that I watched a podcast the
other day and these, and I can't, I
can't, I can't remember I can't cite
exactly who it was, but I can find
it and I'll share it with you later.
They're talking about the concept of,
well, they, they use the analogy of
the dinos, the, the meteor event that
happened in the dinosaur era, right?
Where this massive event took
place, cataclysmic event, and
the biggest creatures on the
planet were not able to survive.
So, yeah.
Because of that event, it was the
small, as they said, furry little
agile creatures that were able to
adapt and adjust quickly and because
of their size, they could kind of get
out of the way of this huge disaster
and survive and evolve and thrive.
And so the reason for them painting
this analogy is that they're,
they're seeing that there's big
changes coming to our planet.
Economically and some of the biggest
players out there,, these, the big
behemoth monolithic corporations are
eventually going to struggle to exist.
And the agile, smaller organizations
are the ones that are going to thrive.
So, yeah, I don't think, I think the
days of, of the monolithic organizations
are, I think the playing field is,
is changing, is starting to change.
Luke: that's very
interesting to hear that.
Yeah.
That's very interesting
to hear that observation.
And there is maybe a parallel as
well to the how would you say it?
There's a parallel to.
The, how the unified namespace is
implemented in companies nowadays as well.
As in, you can start with the known
Ming stack, I would say, right?
So the open source stack
and that is all , low, like it's free or
like low costs low effort and can be done
by anybody, any hobbyist until enterprise.
It doesn't really matter.
It's the same.
Foundation.
And so,
Todd Abraham: I mean, how
did we start the workshop?
Right.
We, we started with a small Python script
that had the UNS built right into it and
fed that into a broker and we were off.
Easy.
But yeah, it's, there's, and and the,
the, the change and the, you know, the,
the rate of technical innovation, I think
is just coming at us at an exponential
rate now that you need to be agile.
And the reality is if like, let's take
an organization like SAP as an example.
They're like, they're like the Titanic
trying to avoid the iceberg, right?
They just, they can
see the iceberg coming.
They don't have time
to get out of the way.
And they, if you need to be small
and agile as, and to be able to adopt
this new technology, an organization
like that, they can't bring on the
latest leading edge technology and
go to market with it very quickly.
Their shareholders will object immensely
right to any, whereas if you're, if
you're, if you're small and agile, you can
adopt the latest technology and you can
test it and you can get to market with it.
Very quickly.
Denis Gontcharov: That's true,
but you also have to sell it.
And that has been one of my, my
observations is that, I would say
SAP should be struggling, but because
they have this reputation and this
very strong brand, they inspire a
lot of confidence, especially from
the more legacy manufacturers.
And to me, it seems that the adoption
of the unified namespace struggles
because it doesn't have the same
level of trust that these so legacy
oEMs like SAP have, and that in that
reason, they actually often win the
bid for the project, even though their
technology may not be the best solution.
Todd Abraham: Yep.
Can be.
Can be.
But you, you know, do you know, Walker
Reynolds claim to fame that he always
tells when you're, when you start, when
you join the 4.0 Solutions Group, he
tells the story about his his success.
And me a second here.
I'm going to make sure I cite this
story properly because I have it here
Here it is.
, So, here's the story.
When they were getting started, I
think Intellic integration was his
system integrator company they were
competing for a project for, I think
it was a wastewater treatment project.
And that project was to be deployed
over 40, 000 devices, 14, 000
different sites, 2000 concurrent users.
All off of one server, one centralized
server, one point of entry for everyone.
11 million tags running through that, that
architecture and 2 million daily alarms
coming off that, that was the project.
The Wonderware was there bidding.
They bid 50 million for that project.
To deliver over five years.
And the next bid was from Rockwell
factory talk at 100 million
to deliver over five years.
And Walker and his team
won that project at 1.
6 million.
And they delivered in 18 months.
So to me, that just, when I heard
that story, I thought, okay, there's
something, there's something here.
And that's what caused me to
really become involved with the
Ford Auto Solutions Group and
start to learn their methodology.
Because that's a major disruption, right?
That's like, and, and
me talking about SAP,
I've got a few friends that work at SAP.
They're probably going to, if they
see this, they're not going to
like me very much for it talking
that way, but, but they still have
their, their place and you're right.
There are still the, the big legacy
organizations that want to rely on
that technology, they want to align
with that brand shareholders are
comfortable with it, so you don't,
you know, you don't, when you're,
when you're steering the ship of a big
publicly traded organization, you don't
want to make waves, that makes sense.
But then we have to remember that,
what is it of all industry worldwide?
It's small and medium sized
organizations that make up the majority
of the businesses out there, right?
Something to the tune
of 60 percent or more.
And they have to digitally transform.
They have to compete.
They have to stay relevant.
They can't afford SAP.
They can't afford Rockwell.
They can't, right.
Those are without other reach.
So.
Seeing these new technologies
that are coming to market that are
open source, a lot of them, right?
UMH as an example fantastic platform,
fantastic community behind them.
And, and it's available for
anyone to pick it up and adopt it.
And I think that's pretty cool.;
Luke: I fully agree
;
Denis Gontcharov: So I think
that's an interesting question.
It seems that the smaller companies
perhaps would be the more agile ones
and therefore the fastest to adopt and
therefore the ones to survive, if you
look at manufacturing size of companies.
Todd Abraham: Yeah.
Luke: Yeah.
I do think that's not to say the
size of the company would be the, I
think the primary filter, although.
I think it has to do with it.
Yes.
And also what is small, right?
Well, definitely speaking, I think,
because you can have a little job shop
of clients that I work with that have
maybe 20 employee, a little mom and
pop shops, or even, or you can have
like, you know, a hundred employees.
They are still relatively small
compared to the giants that
are in the industry out there.
Right.
And I feel that not to say the headcount
is going to determine the success or
the, the, I would say the maturity
level where they would start into.
But I think necessarily they would really
be about what their supply chain is
asking from them and where they stand
in that supply chain and what they need.
So I feel always that it has to come from
who do they work for that demands certain.
Information that demands certain
information input, or is there a
specific thing that they need to tackle?
And so, for example, back, bringing
it back to Europe, Europe is very
big on, on sustainability right now.
And we do a lot of things
with energy monitoring.
We do a lot with checking the
carbon footprint of products.
We are tracking the supply chain and
we are having even more so integrated
chains where the lead times are
getting shorter because we try to
keep everything as you said, local.
So then we have to work with
local companies or maybe cross
border, but still very near.
And then it's not doable to go from one
purchasing department towards another
company, then requesting a delivery
date, then that person goes down to
the shop, ask for a paper traveler
to see if the project is on track.
Then he goes back to the office, sends
the email to the, that doesn't work.
You need to have that full
supply chain integrated.
And.
Yeah.
As you said, like smaller companies
that do really have this need, they
have a very clear business case.
They now get a technology that
is open and mostly free to start.
Can be significantly cheaper to
just buy and build your own thing.
If you want to go to the next level and
they can solve that problem without having
to buy a new ERP system or something,
you still need an ERP system, but you
don't, you shouldn't start at the ERP
system or the solution buying step.
I think so.
That's, that's my take on this though.
Todd Abraham: Yeah.
Yeah.
I think so.
And I, I think that approaching,
approaching digital transformation in
a agile manner, I think is imperative.
Absolutely.
If you try and boil the ocean,
I, I read an, an article from
Science Direct and it's why do so
many digital transformations fail?
And in there they say that 80 percent
of transformation initiatives fail.
And, and it's, funny.
I think if, when you think about it,
it is quite obvious, but it's a lot to
do with the culture of the organization
and the people makes or breaks the
transformation effort, which I also think
then ties back to the need for approaching
a project in a, in a, an agile manner.
Take a small piece of your, of your
organization, maybe something that's
causing you the most headaches at the time
and use that as your starting point and
create value as quickly as you can from
that first step and then continue on.
I remember in the, over the past
20 years, it's always been about,
let's drop this monolithic system
in helicopter, lift it in, right?
Strap it down and okay.
Now, everybody get on board and
figure out how to use it, right?
Those days are gone.
It's tough, it's hard to
approach projects in that way.
Denis Gontcharov: Unfortunately,
that's still what's happening.
I have a story just from last
week, a German manufacturer
had everything figured out.
They understood the unified namespace.
They knew what needed to be done,
but then we were about to start.
They were like, you know, we're still
doing the before and after analysis,
trying to write down the complete
finished state and we're struggling.
So we're going to postpone it by half a
year until we have it all figured out.
Todd Abraham: Right?
Denis Gontcharov: starting small and
it will just never happen this way.
Todd Abraham: Yeah.
But, and that's the other So, interesting
though, on that project, Denis,
was the ask for them to commit the
full value of the project up front,
Denis Gontcharov: Yes.
Because it was actually funded
project also by the government.
So they required this very
large five year plan, which is
Todd Abraham: Yeah, sure.
Okay.
Okay.
So that, that, that adds.
Yeah, right.
Add bureaucracy.
If, if, if you had, if you ever
want anything to go sideways, just
add a layer of bureaucracy into
it, that'll, that'll be great.
That'll get you on the way, right?
Yeah,
Luke: it's, it's, it's
so interesting, right?
It, it, it's weird, like it would have
worked if you would have said, okay, I'm
going to, let's go back to the solution
example, I'm going to buy this specific
software solution with a supplier and
a army of consultants and give them a
five year budget, and then they would
just start building and perhaps, you
know, Buy you a, the next software,
but then, yeah, where do you find them?
An interesting example, because I think
this would be something we could do in
this show right now, because I think
we all three are working in the space.
We all three have tangible examples,
probably just like this, as you mentioned.
So perhaps for the, the listeners out
there that either are Integrators or
maybe our manufacturers themselves, do
you want to share any words of wisdom
Todd, of how to then do it correctly?
How would you launch a successful
initiative that, that, that they want
to, for example, they say, okay, yeah,
we want to do this real time stuff.
How do we do this?
What in your experience are some
words of wisdom that you could
share to the listeners on this?
Todd Abraham: I think
that you have to start.
It's okay to start with
the big picture in mind.
And I think, again, we all know
what the big picture is, right?
It's how do we set ourselves up
so that we can leverage machine
learning and AI technology to
help us realize opportunities
for improvement in our operations
and opportunities for innovation.
That I always keep those resonating in
my mind as the, usually the end goal.
Because in doing that, then
you inherently probably end up
reducing costs of manufacturing.
You realize opportunities for more
sustainable operations, right?
Power reduction, everything
that everybody wants to do.
Because.
Otherwise Six engineers capturing,
capturing data on sheets and then
dumping it into, into what's the
platform that everybody uses for
Six Sigma statistical analysis?
I want to say Matplotlib,
but that's, that's that's
Denis Gontcharov: Yeah.
I know what you mean.
Todd Abraham: in Python.
But you know what I mean?
It's, it's.
You know, you're running your statistics
and and doing the same thing, looking
for opportunities for improvement.
So again, that I think is the end goal.
So realize what the end goal is, and
then boil it down to simple steps,
taking an agile approach to you know,
maybe look at the one thing within the
organization that's causing the most pain,
maybe the bottleneck, whatever it is.
And focus on that and solve that problem
incrementally, and then grow along the way
and realize that digital transformation,
it's not a product you buy off the shelf.
It's a strategy that you
set for your organization.
We are going to digitally transform
because it's you're changing.
It's almost like you're, you're
changing the whole structure of your
business by digitally transforming.
Everything that you do
is going to somehow.
So, but don't try to boil the ocean,
just break it down into small, small
steps because that means it's easier
for everybody to wrap their heads
around what you're trying to do.
It's easier from a
financial point of view.
You don't have to allocate
and commit a massive capital
expenditure for the project.
You can just pay for it as
you go along and have those
small winds of value creation.
for listening.
And and move forward toward the end goal.
So that's that's one bit.
I also think that culturally you
need to align the people within the
organization to be ready for the
change, to get on board with it, to
understand what it means to them.
As you change.
And I think well, the key to doing that
is to, to have an internal champion that
everyone can relate to that understands
the vision and keeps everybody is, is a
fantastic communicator and keeps everyone
in the loop as to what we're doing.
We're every, every time there's a
company meeting, they're the ones that
are bringing everybody up to speed
on what's happening with, with the
digital transformation initiative.
Denis Gontcharov: And can you comment on
the role of external providers like us
either like vendors or system integrators,
data engineers, what would their role
be in assisting the manufacturer?
To complete their
transformation successfully.
Todd Abraham: Yeah I think about that
one a lot because that, that means
the existence of my business, right?
But we're, we're like the, we're
like the geeks in the space, right?
We're constantly looking for what are
the, what are the newest technologies
that are coming on, coming online?
Who are the new companies that
are coming up to deliver services
in this, in this space, and then
we get across that technology.
We understand that technology
and we help our cousin.
We bring it to our customers.
Want to make sense to help them through
their, through their journey, because.
They've got a lot on their plate, right?
And they, and maybe they don't,
they're not, they don't, they
don't have their own internal I.
T.
engineers that are, that are spending
all their time trying to stay, stay on
board with how the space is developing.
So we can take that on for our clients and
then make sure that their journey is, is
moving ahead as they, as they need it to.
Denis Gontcharov: Yeah.
Todd Abraham: As their
partner, we're their partner.
Denis Gontcharov: partner, or
I would say even like a Sherpa.
We help them guide them up the mountain.
We can carry some of the load for them.
We can navigate the way, but
we cannot do the road for them.
They will actually have to walk the walk.
You know,
Todd Abraham: It's funny you mentioned
that because I almost, instead of
Inovas, I almost went with using
the word Sherpa in my business name.
Denis Gontcharov: that's interesting.
Todd Abraham: Yeah, but
it is like that for sure.
For sure.
Luke: Yes.
Todd Abraham: We know, we know
the route right to the top of
Everest and we can carry the load.
When you need an oxygen
bottle, there you go.
You got it.
Yeah.
Denis Gontcharov: Yeah.
Todd Abraham: I think, I think that's,
that's our role is to be the trusted
advisor and the trusted partner.
With our, with our customers,
Luke: Yes.
Yes.
Very well said.
And avoiding also because of that, the
pitfalls that can exist, because there's
going to be a whole lot of snakes oil
salesmen around and going to say that
they will take your data, put it in
the clouds and do some magic with it.
But that's not really
what they should be doing.
Right.
And I think I really, I already
actually see this now in the industry.
Thank you.
Get my own clients that are getting like
now these kind of emails or like brochures
of companies that just say they will
take all your data and we'll show you
everything and, and that is not the way.
And I do want to emphasize this as
well, that there are significant
pitfalls, either buying a solution
or signing up for some massive
cloud subscription for something.
You don't even know what you
need it for or things like that.
It's, it's, it's quite risky as
well to just say, okay, let's just,
just go for the first next person.
You do need to understand the
technology and the principles behind it.
If it's open, ready for the
future and it puts you in charge
of your, of your own ship.
Todd Abraham: Yeah.
And, and their, their awareness as they
go through the journey is going to change.
I know it happens to
me all the time, right?
I will see a new bit of technology
or I'll start learning something new.
And you know, at first pass, maybe
you think you kind of have an
idea that of what it is, but the
devil is always in the details.
You suddenly you make a commitment
to that platform or that solution.
And then six months down the
road, you realize that, oops,
this isn't quite what we needed.
And you're, and you've already
spent a lot of money and a lot
of time to, to bring it in.
So yeah, I think it's, it's a great
opportunity for us to help them.
If they can trust us and if we deliver
the right results to them, then that
helps, helps them avoid the pitfalls.
And I, I also like, like, like for us at
Innovaas, we're not, we're not aligned.
We have partnerships, many, and I think
that's the key, many, because we're not
aligning with, let's say just one vendor
and we're going to go with their whole
suite and that's all we're going to do
because now we end up with blinders and we
can't see what's happening in the market.
We suffer maybe penalties if we're not
selling the right amount of that vendor's
solution and, and we end up in this
economic relationship that doesn't really
serve the customer in the right way.
Denis Gontcharov: Maybe in that
spirit, Todd, could you tell us a
bit more about where the listener can
find out more about you and InnoVaas?
Luke: your customers
also, how you help them.
Yeah.
Todd Abraham: Sorry.
Luke: how you help your customers
as well, particularly like what,
what, how you really help them.
Who should talk to you if they
have a certain challenge and how
can you help them particularly?
Todd Abraham: Right.
Well, I feel,
I feel a little shy plugging my,
my own business, but it's you know,
we're, we're really there to, to just,
Aligned with our customers, I when
we when we first started, we were
very focused on manufacturing.
Now we're adjusting a little bit to
say that we're out there for the for
for the industry for the industrials,
whether you're in oil and gas or power
or manufacturing, we're there to help.
Navigate the journey toward true, becoming
a true digitally led organization.
And that's what the
digital transformation is.
We're Inovas the name Inovas is, is, is
because it's innovation as a service.
That's what we're trying
to do for our customers.
We're trying to help
them uncover or unlock.
new opportunities for innovation
within their organization.
And we start our engagement with customers
in a consulting capacity and to help them
to unders for to help us understand What
it is that they're trying to achieve.
If you listen to the guys at 4.0
solutions and, and, and we experienced
the same thing, often customers think
they know what they want to, what they
want to do, but when you get into it
with them and when you start to get
into the discussion and learn about
their business, what they end up doing
is something completely different.
And if you start and if you approach
it in an incremental way, creates an
environment for that possibility, right?
To be agile and just and dynamic and
change as you're starting to journey
through this digital transformation.
So, yeah, we, we engage
with our customers.
We understand what they're doing today.
What it is that they want to achieve.
make suggestions or proposals
for as to how to support them
along that, that journey.
Denis Gontcharov: Luke, Todd, any closing
remarks before we part with the listener?
Luke: Yeah.
The last course, where can we
read about the thoughts and
in of us and that was all.
Todd Abraham: Or you can find,
you can find us on LinkedIn if
you want or you can find us at
Inovas, I N N O V A A S dot I O.
Or drop me an email anytime, Todd
dot Abraham at Inovas dot I O.
Denis Gontcharov: Great.
We'll put the links in the description.
In that regard, todd, I want to
thank you a lot for your time
and your insight on workshop.
Thanks to my co host Luke
and thanks to the listener for
listening to another episode
the Smart Metals Podcast.
And we'll see you soon for the next one.
Todd Abraham: Thanks a lot, guys.
It was a pleasure.
Luke: Thank you.