Hi there and welcome to What I Wish I Knew, a
series where we uncover IoT implementation
lessons, advice and the occasional regret
from the innovators leading the way.
I'm Jenny Cady
And today I talked with Sudhi Bangalore of
Stanley Black and Decker, an innovator using
IoT solutions to build more agile factories.
Sudhi shares the importance of getting
standards right up front, embracing change
and the value of elegant, simple design, all
things they learned and wish they had known
sooner, as they scaled from proof of concept
to a viable solution.
I'm Sudhi Bangalore.
And I am the chief technology officer for
Global Ops, Stanley Black and Decker.
I love manufacturing and I love the business
of how technology can enhance what we do with
people on the factory floor.
And I've been at it for almost twenty five
years in there at varying levels.
I would have wish to spend more time planning
those standards better because now what we
have to do in some cases is unwind and go
back and fix things because standards were
not properly set.
So it's hard to have a global team coming
together and engaging on it.
Let's be if standards are not well thought
out. Let me pick on some of the things that
did go wrong in this case.
And so, for example, one of the things that
went wrong was we couldn't even get access to
the program that controlled this island where
we bank disarmament.
And so there's a lot of things that we had to
get done before we could get the data and
before Microsoft's partner could actually
engage on the data to do all the cool things
that solutions do.
And they were right there with us and along
with Microsoft.
So those are some of the things that you get
when you do your selection right.
Because you prepare for scenarios like this.
But at this point in time, when we explore
that solution, we are about six people and so
we didn't have the bandwidth that I do now.
We have over a hundred and fifty people and
experts that's helping my program.
But coming back, going back to where it was.
So we had to rely on partners in both with
their passion and capabilities to take this
take this vision forward.
So one of the things that was critical for us
is the selecting a partner.
And in this case, it was a Microsoft partner
that we wanted to make sure that, one,
they're passionate about manufacturing.
They understood and and and understood the
language and the culture of manufacturing.
And third that they have done this before in
other factories because it's it's a very
different environment like any other business
environment. So so there is a lot of
applications, especially high speed
applications, if you're assembling something
or you're adding an operation, adding a part
on, let's just say, a handle of a tool.
All of those are high speed operations that
is being performed by machines and some
people. And so when you have a scenario like
that, being able to catch quality defects
before it gets developed and then permeated
down the line can be avoided.
Picking the right leader and picking the
right people at the right in the right line
and the right cell in the factory is
supercritical.
So that's where it starts.
And the next aspect to that selection process
is to make sure that we avoid the issues that
I talked about, which is how do we make sure
that we don't spend inordinate amount of time
addressing data acquisition issues.
So we actually solve that.
So we make sure that we had contracts in
place with every plant that we read.
So all of those lines and cells, et cetera,
those programs were already available.
And third, we wanted to make sure those
bandwidth issues so there was a standard
remediation process that we set up.
So when we do that, go to those plans.
There was a team that went ahead of us that
would actually basically to mediate both the
network infrastructure and the computing
infrastructure and so on.
So those were really the basic hygiene
aspects. But the other cool aspect was, what
about the design thinking that went into
enhancing the user experience?
So that's a really important
topic. So we have spent a lot of time coming
up with the best user experience for all of
these interfaces that we're developing,
because end of the day, we want, in my
opinion, having the most simplistic design
and is the most elegant and exciting design.
It's not about anything that lowers clutter
and anything that simplifies the use of the
information and insight is paramount.
Thank you for joining us and be sure to check
out other stories from IoT innovators so that
you can turn your vision into reality with
secure, scalable and open access to cloud
solutions. To learn more about the solutions
that Stanley Black and Decker implemented.
Be sure to check out their case studies and
other resources linked here, or visit Azure.com
to explore additional IoT solutions
and services.