Podcasts›Automation Ladies›The Future of Automation: Physical AI, Robotics, and What’s Next with Dennis GansenLike💬 Be the first to comment →AudioAugust 13, 2026The Future of Automation: Physical AI, Robotics, and What’s Next with Dennis GansenFrom Automation Ladies, hosted by Nikki Gonzales, Ali G, and Courtney FernandezDennis Gansen of Schneider Electric on physical AI, robotics, and changes in process automation.Play episodeSaveOpen the audio file TranscriptTranscript from the show's feedSearch the transcript0:00Welcome to Automation Ladies, the only podcast we know of where girls talk about industrial automation. So another episode of Automation Ladies. It's once again me, your host, Nikki. The other ladies are busy. Well, Ali's not feeling well today. And Courtney is 14. He's got all kinds of robot stuff happening today. And I told him no, don't worry about it, because this was actually meant to be my guest anyway. as you know, if you've been following the show this season, we're kind of doing a divide and conquer thing. We typically don't co-host episodes anymore.0:32And this worked out really well because I actually happened to meet Dennis at the EPC show here in Houston two days ago in person, and we already had this scheduled. And I am now, yeah, kind of like on the one-day post-show trying to catch up on sleep and emails and all the other things. But a great time to have this conversation. Dennis is fairly new to Schneider Electric, I found out. What, four months in? Four months, yep. I think officially four and a half at this point, but yeah, brand new.1:02Okay, well, welcome to, I guess not that I represent them in any way, but welcome to the new position. I seems like you like it. Dennis was on a panel at the EPC show on my track, and then also I attended their hospitality party, which was super fun, and I got to make custom leather luggage tags for my kids with their names on it. That's great. Yeah, they were super happy with that. We had a really great time, so thank you for that. And yeah, I'm looking forward to this. This is a standard episode.1:33If you've been listening in on we have kind of the automate mini series happening as well in parallel to this, little 20-minute episodes. This is just the regular old series, and we're gonna talk to Dennis and get to know all about his story and then what he's up to at Schneider, and we'll talk a little bit about the show and and that sort of stuff. So, Dennis, thank you so much for coming on the show. And I I I guess you told me this, but this is your first podcast episode, and I'm so honored to be your podcast. First one ever. Yeah, it's it's been a week of first, definitely. I I hosted a hosted that panel at the the the at the event we had on Tuesday.2:05So that was the first there, and yeah, my first podcast. So it's a week full of firsts for me. So yeah, Sarah who works for you guys in marketing told me that I think you were like, Oh, and I don't do public speaking, and she shoved you up on stage, huh? Yeah, so it was quite quite yeah, yeah. Funny, so I was probably four weeks in at Sarah week, and she got me onto a panel. And so, and then obviously I was on a panel at EPC and then hosted a panel at EPC. so yeah, so I I had to get on.2:36I actually interviewed she was one of my interviewees or interviewers when I was interviewing for Schneider, and I had to tell her that you know, you didn't mention any of this when I was interviewing. Better to hand much people with that kind of thing. I think absolutely, absolutely. So and I think more so what you have to look for in in somebody to do that is just their kind of innate in ability to talk about what they know confidently rather than necessarily being the person that wants the spotlight. I think she probably did it.3:15I think so, yeah, exactly. Not not that it would I would have not taken the job, but it was like, yeah, I made a yeah, because yeah, engineer at heart, right? And but yeah, I don't mind public speaking when you know in a closed room with customers, but now getting on stage and that's a whole new world for me. So but it's it's all right. That's why we like to keep the show informal. I tell people like just you don't have to be like you don't have to be nervous or prep too much because you shouldn't have to talk about anything that you don't know well enough to talk about or want to talk about.3:48So I'll start with our first standard question, and then we'll kind of take it from there, which is Dennis, please tell us how you got into automation and sort of like as much detail as you want to tell us about your career story. Because we find it like I just find it fascinating how people found out about this industry, how they decide to like get the degree that they got, and then many people's careers in the industrial automation industry are not necessarily like a linear ladder type situation.4:19And so I'd love to hear just how did you get to be doing what you're doing now? Sure, definitely. it's definitely not you're exactly right. It's not been kind of a step, it's been a lot of crossing over and around and a few circles. But yeah, so to go all the way back, so I I graduated West Point with a mechanical engineering degree, served on active duty in the US Army for five years and got out. I started working for GE, GE Energy, more of a project manager in pro in project management Six Sigma, stuff like that.4:53Kind of progressed a bit there. I got out in the field, I was a field service person for a while, and then got hired by a power gen company and was did more project management there. but you know, I I was kind of at a point where I was like, you know, I I'm good at the project management, but it wasn't exciting. but one thing I really loved when I was doing field service, I loved being in front of customers. Yeah, and yeah, I was actually co-located at a power plant, you know, and and but it was fantastic.5:26So I was like, all right, well, I had never really thought about sales, and so like how do I get into sales? And so leveraging my knowledge of GE and power, so I took a job covering the GE energy account for Alcoa. And so that was that was my first foray into sales. So I still, you know, that it tracked my career. You know, I was I was really still in power at that point. and I progressed a few more roles in sales, more strategic accounts you know in the power industry.6:01I had a little bit of renewables, but then I got a job at Honeywell about 11 years ago doing strategic sales, but in the automation space. so that was actually my first step into automation. So I was yeah, so I was about 11 years ago. but yeah, I I had you know a good technical foundation. So you know, I I was you know, you know, working at a power plant, every one of those power plants has a control system. So I was at least aware of what it does, right?6:32And then so with Honeywell, then obviously my you know, I I evolved, you know, now I know a heck of a lot more about automation and this automation space than I did when I when I joined. But that's how I ended up in automation was kind of following a career of strategic sales, and which landed me into Honeywell. and I ran a couple of I ran the Phillips account, Conical Phillips, and then later on I ran the Exxon account globally. then transitioned to regional leadership sales leadership.7:03Then, like I said, four months ago, took the role here at Schneider doing something very similar to what I was doing the last four years at Honeywells, running the US sales organization. So okay. So can you tell us a little bit about what that position is and and what yeah, what are you doing now with the Schneider? Yeah, so so you know our team, we we're kind of organized by technologies, if you will. So I run sales for process automation. So Oxboro, Triconics, we do some Audicon, some of our Aviva software, but more in the process automation world.7:39And we have it, I have a peer who does the same thing, but for more of the industrial automation, more PLCs and drives and things like that. And then then they then we have a whole other section of Schneider, which is all focused on electrical. Yeah, switch gear and the whole nine yards, which I'm still learning that portfolio, but the automation space though, I've I run probably you know half the US, and I have a peer that runs the other half of the US. okay. Yeah, the process automation stuff is is less like I don't I know less about that because I've been more in discrete automation.8:14I started as a machine vision sales engineer and then I worked in pneumatics and motion control and things like that. And I typically saw factories, certain parts of factories, certain parts of the line. And part of why I love doing the show and what like kind of I thought would be cool about it is to get to talk to all the different people that have different types of jobs in the industry, whether it's even automation specifically, but even within like a manufacturing plant, because I realized I've been into a bunch of plants with like a very narrow scope of what I'm looking at and who I'm helping and what I'm there for.8:49And then I was like, oh, there's so many other things that are going on around me that like I don't even really know about or how they work. And I'm a very curious person. My ADHD, I like to learn. novelty is important to me and my brain, apparently. So like I like you, could not do project management for too long. yeah, you know, I again I I was good at it, but it was like it got to a point where it's really boring. You know, like I really need to do something more dynamic. But in this kind of thing, it's it's like, yeah, you are you have the same job for like what while but your customers' applications and the challenges, like there's so much variety there.9:27Yep, exactly. And then just from a process automation standpoint, you know, you know, picture a refinery, you know. So it's it's all about yeah, continuous process. So like you're talking about you know a lot about discrete, like one, one, one, one. These are like you know, a continuous process, you know, at a refinery. It's just it just is constantly flowing, right? They're going through the reactor, all the different processes there, but it's it's just like one end-to-end process where you get the crude in and some product out the back end, whether it's diesel or you know, gasoline or whatever out the back end, but it's a continuous process all the way through.10:04And that's where you know the the the the what what I do we call process automation, it's more around the continuous processes versus like a a discrete process. Yeah, I've learned of enough or more about it now, having been also so Ali is like I said, not feeling well today, but she's really the the process person out of the three of us. she's a chemical engineer that then you know went into controls. Okay. And she's done quite a bit of process stuff, and then she came up with it also from a like cross-pollination kind of standpoint.10:38We she came up with this like training agenda that she wanted to put on, and we ended up putting it on as a conference. It's called OTCON. and it is actually happening if you're listening to this July 22nd through the 24th here in Houston, south in Pareland. But the idea there is that there are, you know, a bunch of people like us that kind of like are curious. We've got our niche of the industry that we know or or we have experience in, but we you know don't necessarily touch all the other related technologies or things. And so part of the way that she wanted to do this is like I if I if you do discrete and you don't know about process, like you should still have you should have a clue and you should know some people that do it because depending on whether it's career related, like you may have an opportunity to go into that side of things, you may find that it sparks an interest that you know what you're doing now doesn't spark for you, or you know, some people look for a change.11:32And the other thing is if you're if you're customer facing and you're helping people solve problems, knowing a bit about what is outside of your area of expertise, right? But having a good like Rolodex of people that you know that may help support that, or just the general kind of ideas, I think it it just makes you a more valuable partner. especially like a customer or just your ecosystem in general. Yeah. And I'm actually going to the automate show next week for that exact reason because I've got the process side down well.12:03Yeah, I mean, I know the industry players, I know how it functions, I know you know delivery models and features, benefits, all that. I don't know much about the discrete side, right? So, you know, what what makes a good PLC or a bad PLC? I I honestly don't know that. So one of the things going to going to automate next week is to contrast that. So I can learn that side, but also contrast that with the process automation side and figure out how how do they go together. And if you think about, you know, even yeah, I mentioned a refinery is one of the key customers of you know process automation, a DCS or safety system.12:38They also have a ton of PLCs, they have discrete processes there too. So how so you so for customer coverage, how you know, I want to be able to support the customer end-to-end rather just in one little focus area. Yeah, absolutely. It is hard to like know it all, but it's good to know a little bit, like enough to be dangerous, and then know who is the right person or or who is the right team in your organization to then like support that problem or that process. Yeah. have you been in so you in Houston this whole time?13:09So I moved down to Houston about five years ago. I was actually living in Kentucky. for yeah, we we had landed there 15 years ago. No, it was long 20 years ago. so raised a family there, but but I had been taken I took jobs where I could they didn't care where I lived. So that's even how I ended up at at Honeywell, I was officially based in Houston since 2014, but I finally moved down in 2021. once my kids got through school and out. Oh, okay. Yeah. But but yeah, so officially working here since 20 14, but living here since 21.13:44I think it, you know, those sorts of jobs, and the same goes for me. I live in Houston, but my employer doesn't have an office here or anything. It's about I think, you know, sales in particular, it's usually you as long as you travel to the customer, it doesn't really matter where you lay your head at night. lot if you can handle that, right? Yep. Yeah, I I had a ridiculous amount of hotel nights when I was living in Kentucky because I was constantly here or elsewhere. And and then finally once the kids are out and COVID was done, it's like, okay, we're moving to Houston.14:16I was getting sick of hotels at that point. So how are you handling the the humidity and stuff here? Are you happy with your decision? I I I am. I mean, the humidity I don't have an issue with. the heat, I don't have an issue with. I you know, you just make sure you do your your your if you're outdoor stuff, you do it from like 7 a.m. to 11, then go you know into air conditioning. The thing I'm struggling to get used to is the traffic. Oh my god. Oh, yeah. I mean, it's you have to time everything right and you know get into the office.14:47You know, if I leave before six, I'm pretty good. If I leave you know seven o'clock, you know, it it doubles or triples the amount of time to get to the office. So but no, I I love Houston, love Texas. but yeah, if if if there was a way to make the traffic go away, I mean My way of making the traffic go away is that I don't commute here to anywhere. In fact, it almost works better for me that we don't have an office here because I either am commuting to the airport or I am at home. Right. because yeah, it it is horrendous.15:18And I got reminded of that this week going down to the George R. Brown convention center for the EPC show, which is like a 45-minute drive, is not bad, but it heavily depends on when I leave the house. Right. and then it's been crazy rain this week. flash flood warnings, which we get a lot, and I usually think nothing of them. And then, of course, this week, out of all the, you know, all the times we've had flash floods, a flash flood flooded my brother-in-law's car right in front of my house. So, yeah, this morning was like my my daughter was like, Oh yeah, mommy, did you know Uncle doesn't have a car anymore?15:52And I was like, Yeah, I do. It got told yesterday by the insurance. Wow that there is some unpredictability with the weather here, that's for sure. absolutely. And I I I may I took the option to stay down there because I didn't want to deal with the traffic. I should, I should have. I'm not the best at planning things in advance, it's not my best skill set. And I do try to like, I just have this mentality of trying to save money if I can.16:22So I I but then I ended up having to take an Uber ride back and forth yesterday because my my brother-in-law needed the my car to pick up from school. So I don't know how much money I in the end I ended up saving my company on that. and then yeah, it was crazy also because we have the World Cup stuff going on right now. So like downtown is just crazy full of people. Yeah, there was a game yesterday while we're having the conference. So yeah, it was and an Astros game on top of that. So yes, and on top of that, there was at the Hilton right next door to where we were, there was a women in electrical kind of conference.17:01Okay, and so there were like 1,500 women from the electrical industry at the hotel right next to us, and I think it's a joint conference by NAED, which is the National Association of Electrical Distributors and the National Association of Electrical Representatives and the National Association of Electrical Contractors. Right. And they have a joint women's conference that I did not know about until recently. And it was funny because when we were at your hospitality party, somebody told me about it.17:32They're like, I went to the Hilton and they were like 3,000 lady electricians. I've never seen that many in my entire life. And I was like, Oh, how how cool is that? And then I got a message from one of my distributors, the automation manager is is a woman and she was down there. we tried to meet up, but it's crazy schedules with these conferences. Yeah, definitely. So I'm really glad we were able to schedule this conversation after because a lot of people are like, Oh, we're gonna be at this conference. Like, do you want to do a live podcast?18:03And like it can be cool to do a live podcast at a conference, but there's like so much going on and so many things to schedule. I think sometimes it's nice to just take a take a beat and then and then do this later. Definitely. So, what did you think of the conference? So this is my first time going to it. yeah, I personally I thought it was great. you know, a lot of connections we made. you know, this is our you know, Schneider was a headline sponsor this year. and it was so Snyder's first time as well as my first time.18:33It was also my first time. Was it okay, okay? Yeah, so I don't have a point of comparison. I liked it a lot. I came there because of the power generation data center kind of connection. Okay. So I don't do a lot in oil and gas. Although now having lived in Houston again for like the last four years, I realize I should I probably should. Right. Even if I don't do a lot of business personally day to day in that industry, it's the you know, it's the industry of the area. It is the industry also of like just like discrete manufacturing touches like everything that we use all day.19:07Like everybody benefits from the manufacturing industry. Everybody also benefits from and absolutely needs energy, right? So it like powers everything that we do. And I think it would be yeah, I don't know, irresponsible of me at this point not to learn more about it, get a little bit more involved. and I do have some, you know, good connections and obviously business in in the industry. And I happen to have this friend Ben Sellekson who runs a podcast called the energy trade show podcast or something like that.19:40With OGGN, the oil and gas global network, is a network of podcasts in the oil industry. And I don't know if he told me about it, but I I figured out that he was gonna be there podcasting. And so I wanted to come check it out. I just wanted to like go walk the floor, see this for the first time, see maybe what I could learn. and then it turns out that I, you know, I introduced myself and so on, and then they asked me to chair the power generation track, which was really perfect for me because I wanted to go there to learn about that.20:11And here I got the chance to introduce every speaker and be involved in like every panel and all the discussions in that. I generally don't when I go to shows like it's hard for me to justify sitting in on every session in a particular track, for instance. So this kind of forced me. This forced me to listen to every session on that track for two days straight, which was amazing for me because I get to I got to learn so much and like hear from different people kind of talking about the same things. But the I guess the the sort of overarching topic of that section right now is that you know power generation demand is just going through the roof, powered primarily by AI and data center demand.20:54These data center build outs. and they touch me on a day-to-day basis at work because we're we're selling a lot of you know HMIs into equipment that is going into the data centers or that goes into power generation. So for me, again, it's not critical for me to know everything about it, like the feed phase of permitting and things like that for data centers. That doesn't touch me as an automation vendor. but again, just being a person that wants to know more, be more valuable, be more able to make connections and you know, reason and and just have the context of things.21:25Right. it was it was really an incredible experience for me to get to listen to everybody from like the hyperscalers themselves that are building the data centers, and they're like, we don't want to be in the power business, but there's not enough power to go around, and so we have to listening to you know the utilities talk about what their challenges are and what they need to do in order to be able to get this, you know, power online and to their to these new customers while also protecting the ratepayers and people that live in these places.21:56And then I think one of the things that really hit home for me was. That you know, a lot of what we hear in the popular media and on social media about data centers and the power and water demands and things like that is just completely not true. Like it's not necessarily coming from a credible source and based in reality. There's a lot of fear, fear-mongering, and and maybe misinformation kind of about that. and one of the one of the examples I'll use is somebody sent me a TikTok video earlier this year about some guy talking about how you know, whenever you ask Chat GPT a question, it uses like so much water that and I almost started to feel like, oh my gosh, am I irresponsible for even like asking, you know, using AI.22:39And then it was like, oh, if you're polite and you say thank you, and it you know uses more tokens, now you just you know wasted an entire village's worth of water or something. It started to make me a little bit just uneasy about the whole thing. And then it turns out, you know, our technologies are so much further ahead now. Yes, we have old data centers that were not built for AI loads, they were built for you know cloud computing and all kinds of other things, like a decade or two ago, that are inefficient and they do use a lot of water. But it's been a you know, we've been developing this technology now for a long time, and these new data center builds, they're not using the technology that just hogs resources, you know, and stuff like that.23:17It's actually quite efficient. The cooling is pretty efficient by now. but yeah, it does, you know, of course, a lot of power is required to power these giant computers and and the you know, entire cities of them essentially that are living inside these data centers. But power generation was not something I knew too much about until this year, as I got some customers that are working on those technologies. And so that's kind of what piqued my interest. But sounds like power generation is something that you've been involved with for a long time. I I was, yeah. So I yeah, like mentioned my first what 10, 12 years of my career was power generation.23:51So I was you know, you know, worked at a power plant, I sold gas turbine, and then I sold two gas turbine vendors, you know, and wind turbine vendors, you know. you know, so so yeah, I've been involved in power for many years up until really when I transitioned to to Honeywall so 11 years ago. That's really when it's was you know more oil and gas focused. But but now with this power gen build-out, and now that I'm over here at Schneider, we actually have quite a few installed-based coal plants throughout the U.S.24:21We do have a couple combined cycles, but but given the boom, yeah, we we are very focused on pursuits of you know you know life extension of where we already are. even we we're even doing turbine retrofits on on legacy turbines, gas turbines. And then even new builds. we're we're involved with several new build combined cycle plants. so yeah, so our Foxboro control system, it's very versatile. So it can definitely go it can go on a refinery, it can go on a gas turbine, it can go lots of different places.24:58Really it's again talking about continuous process, right? So what are some of the new the new features and functions and technologies that that system brings to the table now that you know back in the day when these things were being built last time around weren't available? So I think the biggest thing is the availability of of data and and information. So you know the the old school of building a control system, it went from you know a device to controller to on up, and then but it was very expensive because you're pulling wire and copper for for everything, right?25:32So you limit you you were limited by the amount of information you wanted to bring just by the cost of how much copper you had to pull. Now with with modern control systems and being able to you know have different methods of of capturing the data from a device all the way up, you can you now have all this information that's available that can then be fed up into the cloud or to the historian, and now the engineering team and there's there's tools that they can use, AI, whatever, but now all this data is now available where they can then do a lot of optimization or you know predictive analytics on maintenance.26:14So instead of you know changing out a component just because it's been 12 months and I have to change it every 12 months, or it broke, you know, what's the happy medium in there? Because you you don't want it to run until it breaks, but you don't want to just change it every 12 months or whatever is prescribed just because. So you want to maximize the the component life, but and then replace it just before it fails. So now the data is available that allows you to predict when something is gonna fail and and have a much better maintenance plan.26:48And then optimization of the facility, of the process, right? So now all that data is available through you know, you know, APC has been around for many years, and so that has been kind of one of the first generation of how to do kind of real-time optimization. But now you actually have AI tools that are coming into play, and it'll be interesting to see how those evolve and how they get married into the control system and actually have like real-time optimization that's across you know the entire facility, you know, from process from power to process, you know, yeah, that includes the entire facility.27:29You know, the the you know historically the control, you know, the the APC has been around just the process, you know, optimizing my process. But now you take into account the power side, and actually Schneider said we own both sides, right? So we've developed EP and P ecostructure power and process. And so with that, you now have visibility across the entire layer. So you can optimize not just on the process side, but the whole entire plant, power and process together, because you now have all that data available to you.28:05So it's there's a lot that's been being enabled by modern control systems just because of the availability of data to where you need to use it. Do you have any idea of like how much percentage like optimization you can get as a just just by the fact of you getting that information now into a system that can synthesize that? Like I feel like a lot of times when you have technologies like that where it's been kind of very siloed, right? And then all of a sudden you get the opportunity to connect them and and run modeling exercises or whatever, you know, some things is like, oh, you can get like, I don't know, 20% more efficiency just by like balance.28:43I mean I've heard a very a whole range of different numbers. So I'd hate to just land on one, but yeah, I I mean I've heard numbers in 20, 30 percent of of savings, and and it depends on what you're measuring, right? So I think one of the things like with the the EPMP mindset is okay, so you know, rather than optimize your process, if your goal is to reduce your utility load, you know, because you you don't you don't you you know electricity is a huge cost of these manufacturing facilities or these processes. Well, if I can optimize my the electricity side, you know, I may have huge savings come out of that plant that and without even affecting the process whatsoever.29:20So it kind of defend depends on where you focus once to be, but but with this availability of data, you can actually optimize the whole thing. So yeah. I think I also may maybe remember you saying on this panel, or maybe it was somebody else, but with retrofitting a lot of these old facilities, like yeah, it was me, definitely. Yeah, you're not changing the the technology that the facility is running on, but if you up like if retrofit the control system, now you start collecting this data, now all of a sudden you have this huge window into the entire operation that you never had before.29:50Exactly. Because what you know, as I mentioned, you like the the old control system, you know, had but you you we're not changing the underlying you know you're not having to go turn screws and take or take out IO or all this other stuff because that's hugely expensive. But with the modern control system, we've actually developed it where it fits in the same slot, right? The same card slot, but now enable it it connects to the modern controllers and it contextually connects to the modern system. So now you have all of this available to you. without it without the expense of having to do a complete rook and replace.30:22So but yeah, that I did bring that up on that panel because I think that is bringing huge opportunity, especially to some of these legacy plants, you know, the the coal-fired ones or even the the the the ones that are converted to gas, but they're still you know traditional steam turbine plants, right? Yeah, these were built, you know, 70s, 80s, 90s, you know, when control systems were were old. you know, you now have all this data available where you can actually optimize your your power generation and and find that you know the the most optimum efficiency for whatever load you're at.30:56And I guess another point too is that now having all this data available, you can have a much much better control and setting where your upper limits are. So traditionally you're like, okay, I you know when you engineer it, you say, okay, here's the the max limit that before this thing blows up. Okay, then you back off of that, you got f your factor safety, and you go here here's my upper alarm set point, and I can't go above that. Well, with more data available, you can get closer and closer to that edge without and without crossing over it to a failure mode.31:30So you get much more pr production or efficiency or whatever it is you're looking for because you know more about your process now. that makes a lot of sense. I know in the compressed air world, which I used to work for Festo in like in pneumatics, there's a we had an episode, this was maybe like two, three years ago, with a woman that she's like a PhD in pneumatics and she's all about efficiency. And she was telling me that like the the way that pneumatic controls or the pneumatics are are oftentimes spec'd, it's just kind of like you overspeck it.32:06And you do that for standardization and you know, and you don't want to get not have enough power, right? So enough air, and so it's just kind of like a general practice to oversize cylinders a bit, yeah. And what they really don't think about because at back then it was also less important, power wasn't as expensive and things like that, but you know, you had less fidelity, I guess, in kind of the design, and so but you end up with tons of wasted energy because there's it's using way too much compressed air, and it really doesn't need to be. And then you have to use more size compressors, and then just like a kind of a cascading effect.32:40Absolutely. So with better information, better engineering, better design tools, you can actually get closer to what the real design limits are rather than the engineered design limits. I mean, yeah, I I I went through got my degree in mechanical engineering 30 plus years ago, right? So back then it was you know finite element analysis, that was you know a newer thing. And but yeah, you're still like, okay, you design it, this is what it needs to be. Then you throw a factor of safety or two or three or whatever on it. And so you're basically right away making it three times bigger than it needed to be.33:15Yeah. But again, yeah, as we come smarter and and more digitization tools or more tools are available. I mean, we just you know get more and more exact with what's needed. I mean, it doesn't you know you can't take the engineer out, but at least you still need the engineer in there to apply common sense, but now you have these tools that can help you get closer to that limit. Yeah, they have more sophisticated tools so they can do a better job with what they've you know, that with their time, right?33:45Like they you end up with more value out of that person, right? Applying their human judgment, applying what they've learned, but now having these tools that it give them also more information to work off, right? I actually used to my my this is not my episode. My career story is a bit varied. I worked for a company that did finite element analysis and other mostly we focused on electromagnetic stimulation. So taking a CAD model of something and then meshing it and running like map Maxwell's equations at every node of the mesh and then seeing how that electric field is going to behave.34:21And so it was used a lot for things like antenna design and optimization, like let's think about in your iPhone where do you put the antenna and what type of antenna? And depending on what the placement is, you know, how where are we gonna get the best signal? And for components, like let's say capacitor complacent placement. You used to go by these rules of like, okay, we have, you know, we gotta put this capacitor here and this one there, and maybe we do it again kind of on a, you know, I wanna just use the same one as much as I can. And so you maybe oversize some of them. This software would be able to, you know, just take the design and run every scenario imaginable within some constraints, and then give you kind of the Pareto curve, right?34:59Like the optimal output. And there's always gonna be trade-offs. What are you trying to solve for? What's the goal? What's the most important goal? And then you pick something, you know, along the curve, right? Of maybe performance versus price or what whatever kind of your trade-offs are. But it was really, really cool to see somebody go from like a standard old design to then being able to simulate it and run these optimizations on a and this was when GPUs were just starting to like high performance computing being used, or it wasn't just starting, but it was just constantly getting better.35:30So at that time, I think this was like 2012, we finally got to a point where we could use multiple GPUs and split a large model across multiple GPUs and then bring that information kind of back together. And so it was for the first time ever we were able to simulate, for instance, like the lightning strike on an entire airplane. Oh wow. and see like exactly how when that lightning strikes, like how how does that affect the components and and you know, the shell and all that kind of stuff. And then you can put a human body model in there to see how the human body is affected.36:03Because we are obviously one large, like organic computer. and and this has always been kind of fascinating to me. but at the time I was like, man, there are so many things in this world that are so suboptimal because we don't have the number crunching ability or the ability to take in all of the factors and really run these intense like computational processes to get to this end answer. And now with AI, it's like the the amount of information we can synthesize all at once to come to be able to do optimization is just astounding.36:44And then of course that feeds into like we're building all these data centers because we all know when it uses the AI. So it's a visitor circle. It is, it is. And part of me is like, dog, save the water and don't use the AI. And then like I just tried perplexity computer. And oh man, why did I like I've been messing around with different models myself for different things. I use ChatGPT for one thing, I use Claude for something else, because they're all good at, you know, they all have their kind of areas that they're good at. Well, then of course you have, you know, now just the ability. There's I mean, sure, multiple platforms that do this, but that orchestrate all the different models together.37:20And so to run a certain type of process, it'll be like, okay, I'll pull, I'll use this foundational model for this, and then I'll take that, and then I'll run it through this model for that. And it can do these like complex processes. I know a lot of people like there's naysayers to all this, and all kinds of doomsday scenarios about the world, whether it's our environment or our energy or you know, the ability of AI to destroy us. I'm just such an optimist and I'm so curious, and I find this to be such a fascinating time to be alive.37:50But yeah, that's why like learning all about the power and stuff like that, like that just goes behind this. to me, honestly, I I mean, I love helping customers solve problems, which is why I'm also kind of sales adjacent in what I do because I like bringing people the aha like moment. If they didn't know that they could do this or I solve a problem, like that's that's how I get my dopamine hits. But I will also say, like, just if I could go to conferences like that and listen to smart people talk about what they know about all day like that, like I I don't know if I could get bored of that.38:33As long as it's not the same people saying the same thing over and over. And some shows and some conferences you realize you're like, okay, I've been here three times and people aren't saying anything new, so this is no longer interesting. Right, right. So I yeah, with EPC, again, it was all relevant to me because it was new. I don't know if they talked about the exact same thing last year, but I yeah, it wasn't there. But yeah, exactly. So maybe next, yeah. We're we're definitely going back next year. We're excited. I'm excited about get back going back, but hopefully there is new relevant content next year. I mean, I will say everything they talked about in all the panels, all the discussions, it was all relevant to what's going on today, the challenges we're facing, not just the the power demand, but then okay, we've got all these power plants that we need to build and all these data centers that need to be built and all this other stuff that needs to be built.39:19The bottleneck was and it still is really gas turbines or the or the ability to get power, but there's also bottleneck of craft labor. I mean, you've only got so many humans in this area that can do the craft that they can do, like weldpipe or do whatever, you know, pull wires. You know, so so all these different projects are gonna be competing for the same people to do the the the work to build the stuff. So yeah, some of the takeaways I really got to was things are also moving so fast, and there is so much demand for this power, and it's not gonna stop.39:56And it involves physical supply chain items, like the turbines being the most visible, they're the biggest piece of the equation, they're the most back ordered item probably out of and what's going on. So there's also obviously people are using retrofit, you know, old old retrofitting old turbines, you know, refurbishing, renting things, using bridge power, other things while you're waiting for your you know order to arrive. But these are huge, like complex problem projects that involve the community labor, they involve permitting, and you know, a lot of now with all this misinformation, some of these communities like the counties can have veto, right?40:40So even if everything comes through, if people decide to have a community meeting and they hate this data center and they don't want it, they may just put a stop to it. So it's a very multi-dimensional problem to be solving. the labor part is interesting. I mean, and a lot for a lot of different reasons. We've obviously had this skilled labor shortage already for a long time, right? Without the demand for this stuff. We've been, you know, building a lot of logistics stuff over the last decade as everybody orders everything from Amazon, right? And I know I a friend of mine runs a company called Ajava Automation, and she is a is a master electrician and she does a lot of that type of build.41:19And they're just crazy busy, they can't get enough people, right? And they're not even touching data center projects, right? And they're already overbooked for this year. And then you have other things like there. this came up recently while I was at PMMI executive leadership conference. Mike Rowe was speaking there and from Dirty Jobs, so he has a foundation and he gives people scholarships to get educated like blue-collar education. And he mentioned the Blue Forge Alliance and asked, like, if in that room full of packaging people, if anybody knew what it was, and nobody did, except for turns out I do, because of my friend Drew Crow, who does a lot of education to communities about these jobs and why they should want to go into blue-collar work and how lucrative it can be, and you know, how it's a great pathway out of poverty.42:13And just you know, it's it's a it's a career path that isn't glamorized very much, right? And I think for a long time we kind of told people not to do those jobs. and Mike his his thing, he remember he told a story of when he was in high school, there was like a poster and his guidance counselor's wall that said like work smart, not hard, and it showed somebody like working on a computer instead of with like and then somebody with a hard hat. And the idea was like go into computer science and like don't do manual labor.42:46And we've overcorrected so much on that that now we realize like crap, we really need people. And so he made a new poster and it says work smart and hard, and it's a person with a computer and a hard hat. But also, these these blue-collar jobs now are technology related, even if you are you know pulling wire or whatever it is, you're there's engineering involved, there's all kinds of tools you need to know. but yeah, the Blue Forge Alliance is a an initiative. They're trying, they need to get they need to hire thousands, hundreds of thousands of welders to make submarines for the Navy, and that's on the East Coast.43:28So one of the things that they were mentioning, kind of like the Gulf Coast and Texas and like out to Louisiana is really where a lot of the skilled labor exists for these types of power projects, right? Because we have that sort of we've had that energy industry down here for a really long time. And then they were like, yeah, and and so locating these data centers, you have to think about not just you have to think about the availability of power, you have to think about the weather, you have to think about how close you are to transmission lines, how close are you to gas pipelines, how close are you to water, but also how close are you to skill labor.44:01And I I just thought about this while they were saying it. I was like, yeah, the skilled labor is down here. But there's a lot of skilled labor also like on the East Coast, and they have a lot of you know initiatives now where they're teaching this to people. But we're com I mean, you're competing with other industries that also need to be. Absolutely. Absolutely. So it's it's definitely definitely something we gotta correct. I and I do think, yeah, I actually I hadn't heard of that alliance. That's so that's great. but yeah, so so I growing up, my my dad was a high school metal shop teacher, and so I yeah, I learned early on you know how to weld and work on the car and things like that.44:37But but through his you know classes, I mean there are several local business owners that have created their own welding shops and things like that from what he taught them. So yeah, so yeah, I mean you can have a great career you know do do doing craft, yeah, craft labor. I mean, it's it's essential, yeah. Especially now with this whole and I don't know, I don't necessarily agree with the idea that AI is going to take certain jobs away completely. I think it takes tasks out of jobs and then changes how those jobs work.45:10Umce an AI is capable of doing a task that a human used to do, like logically that human then directs the AI to do that task, unless you're in that very menial labor kind of job where you're doing something super repetitive that doesn't require any kind of you know human ingenuity or like thinking. but I don't know. I guess my take on it is more so that the jobs will just evolve rather than disappear. Correct. Yeah, I mean AI can't weldpipe. no, and those jobs will not disappear anytime soon.45:42Now the argument may be made, and I'm curious, I'm gonna be curious as to what you think going to Automate next next week. One of the things that is brand new at Automate, because I've begun now four or four or five years in a row. Okay. and I kind of similarly was like, yeah, there's not a whole lot of like, ooh, super new. Like I've been seeing the same stuff, and we're kind of showing you know variations on the same demos and they're getting better. But year after year, you know, reporting on the show, I wasn't like, oh, this year just blew me away with something completely new.46:14Okay. This year there's a humanoid robot pavilion at oh wow. sponsored by NVIDIA. Okay. And you should definitely go see it. It's actually very close to the Schneider Electric Booth. Okay. I am also very close to the Schneider Electric Booth. So those of you that are going, definitely just go down the main aisle, the 2000s aisle. Schneider will be up on there on the left, and so will I with WinTech USA. And then just shortly after that, kind of towards the end, is the humanoid robot pavilion.46:47But the idea there is obviously physical AI, and that comes in many forms, but tying AI with actual robots and then what we're talking about at Automate the last few years is more physical AI in the sense of like a traditional robot robot arm that is maybe trained with AI rather than explicitly programmed. You can tell it what to do, you can train it without having as much programming ability or training, which is super cool. I think that kind of lowers the barrier to automation.47:18And I I actually talked to Jensen from NVIDIA earlier this year at a conference that was here done in Houston called 3D Experience about that. And he said that he really sees that physical AI and the the change from explicit to implicit programming as a huge unlock for smaller businesses that you know haven't been able to afford kind of the capital investment of specifically designed automation. if they can buy something that's a little bit more generic and it can function without being programmed for a specific job, that should really like unlock prosperity and you know productivity to smaller businesses, even but the so that was kind of like how we've seen physical AI evolve in the shows over the last few years.48:09The humanoid thing is definitely new. Like I have not seen many of them in person. And they're very like the capabilities are not there yet for most actual, you know, value commercial applications, but there's so much money being poured into them. Like I think it's inevitable that they will get good enough eventually. It's all about the training data too, and then just the iterations, right? It takes a lot of companies have invested a lot of money building all the little components, like all the little gears, and you know, these these are very different from kind of like the traditional automation components that that we're used to.48:41But that will be something like completely brand new, and that is maybe the path, and I just have no idea how quickly we will be able to have a humanoid robot pulling wire or doing a job that right now we're like, oh, there's no way AI can do this, right? AI can't dig a ditch, AI can't you know, do a lot of these, like they can't weld pipe. I mean they can in some cases. They're my my brother-in-law is a mechanical engineer and he works for a company that makes welding bugs and they crawl on the outside of a pipeline and weld automatically.49:18But what that horizon looks like, so right now everybody's like, get into skilled trades, you will have a well-paying career for a very long time. but I I I'm just I'm not one of those people that likes to make predictions because I find that I'm usually wrong. but I don't know what are your what are your thoughts on that? How long do you think? And this is a completely unrelated topic to what you do and why you're here, but now I'm just curious. from the mind of Dennis, what from the mind of Dennis? Oh my gosh.49:48I I'll be honest, I'm excited to see what the next 10 years brings. I mean, because the the the last 10 you know has been a huge evolution, and but now we have all this AI, like you were talking about, all these different things. There's in my mind, or I'm thinking there's got to be a consolidation into functionality, right? Getting it to scale to functionality, and in and possibly doing that welding pipe or pulling wires. I honestly don't know, but I think the next 10 years of evolution, you know, we're you know, if we're talking in 10 years, it's not gonna look like anything that we're doing today.50:23And how that how we get there and and what it's gonna look like, I have no idea. I mean, to be honest with you, I I mean, there's there's I mean that panel that I was on, there's a gentleman at the far left. actually as far right is my left, young gentleman. he was CEO of of a startup company. And oh yeah, I remember him. Yeah, well, got a lot of good insight to that panel.50:53Yeah, so I'm looking for like, you know, okay, who's the next Elon Musk or whatever? You know, who's the next one that's just gonna completely invert how we're doing things? you know, even from the automation world. I mean, we've been on the Purdue model since you know for the past 40 years, right? And it was done for you know reliability, security, everything. But there's gonna be one of these people that are probably in college now or even high school now that completely reinvent everything and it's gonna work. And so I'm just I'm waiting, I'm waiting to see who that person is and and what it what it's gonna look like.51:28So I mean the tendency to use our past experiences to try to predict the future. And I think in our industry, things have been so slow to like we don't have a lot of leap changes, and it's part of because when you're operating a plant, you just A, you can't like overhaul everything all the time, right? It has to be super reliable, it has to be proven, like so you don't jump into innovation too much and too quickly in the type of industry that we're in, and and when it's safety critical too, you can't just be playing around with like the coolest thing that you can think of.51:59It's like it has to be very proven, reliable, and and work. but I think we pigeonhole ourselves a little bit by constantly using that. Well, I've seen it all and it's not gonna work, and so I'm not even gonna go there. And like you said, there's some student out there that hasn't been told it can't happen, hasn't been told it can't be done, and they are gonna blow us out of the water somehow. Yep. yeah, I guess we're getting close here on time, but do you want to talk about software-defined automation?52:31Because I feel like that's one of the things that I hear so much coming out of Schneider Electric. Sure, yeah, I can definitely spend a couple minutes on that. So Foxborough has been our our control system for many, many years. Rock solid, tried and true. you know, it's a great control system. So this is the next evolution of that control system. And it's still, you know, it's still under the Foxborough umbrella, but Foxboro software-defined automation, Foxborough SDA. And yeah, I I believe personally that this is kind of the the next phase of unless somebody else reinvents the whole thing, but for as our vision, yeah, this is the next evolution in in process automation.53:10It's really creating you know, creating kind of an open architecture, if you will. So we're still gonna have you know design standards or design guidelines to make sure it's still rock solid, still the same reliability or higher reliability, but it there's an openness to it, right? So it doesn't necessarily have to run on our controller. It doesn't have to run, it can run our controller, but it could run run somewhere else. Or you can introduce third-party software in that environment that to get the best of that software, you know, that that and it runs seamlessly, you know.53:45And I'm not hugely technical on software and how that works, but you know, but you know, from what I understand, you can containerize the software and then create and and it you know, it it runs in the system, you know, it's got parameters to keep it secure and safe. Yeah, like like an iPhone, right? Yeah, each app has a standard and it has to meet the standard of security and all that, but it runs. you know, so I do see that taking off as the next evolution. A lot of automation companies are saying, hey, we're software defined.54:15The key in this key in there is open. Yeah, are we really open? you know, my prior company, yeah, they they do software-defined automation, but as long as it runs on their own controller. Yeah, as long as you buy it from us. Exactly. So I would say you know, going through the supply chain issues in during COVID really gave us a flavor of why I think this is also so important. Because when you're constrained completely, held kind of like to one piece of hardware, one vendor, yeah, if they have an issue in their supply chain, and there's a number, I mean, tons of different reasons and different ways that supply chains can be disrupted.54:53Right now we have an issue with chips because there's so much demand for chips for AI. You know, people are basically, you know, A, they're getting more expensive, B, it can be hard to even buy them if you're not a high priority customer, you know, you don't have a lot of good relationships directly. You know, we saw this with certain material shortages during COVID. If you were a vendor that private labels, white labels a bunch of stuff, you know, your manufacturer is gonna sell to their own customers first before they give you the product to sell it white labeled to your customers. Yeah.55:24And so on in critical industries where you can't just sit around going, oh well, my item is back ordered for two years, or I don't know when I can get one. You know, you have to do something. And and so that is to me when it was like the first time that for me it kind of clicked, like really, like we have to do something about this because we can't control everything in the world. We can't control geopolitics, we can't control, you know, the weather, right? And and the supply chains for our automation stuff are complex, they are worldwide, they require materials that you know we can't get easily here, for instance.56:01So, you know, reshoring and everything is is really great. but you can't reshore materials that aren't available here, for instance. Like if you don't have a source of metal, you can't mine for it where it doesn't exist. then the idea that yeah, you can kind of decouple the software from the hardware in a sense that there's more flexibility. You can architect systems that are a little bit more open. And I'd say from you know, selfishly from my side as well, you may want to be able to source one of the components of a system from a best in class manufacturer rather than have to go from, hey, I gotta go with one company that does everything, even if this part of it is not their expertise, or it's not really where their you know center of excellence is.56:44That's not really their where they care that much about it. And then as a customer, you can kind of look at okay, or or maybe it's it's production capacity, right? Yeah. so that I think is really cool. I've been a fan of the idea and how you guys are executing it since I did a demo of EcoSructure Automation Expert last year on our show. and they showed us like just it was pretty mind-blowing and pretty cool how like reusable, how how the design, how quick the design is, and then how you can run it on these different things.57:16So I I I'm glad to hear that that's that kind of extends across. I just didn't know too much about your DCS, you know, in your process. Yeah, so so Foxboro SDA is actually using EAE as the engine, right? so that so it's it's similar, it's but it's more of a a full-on DCS. And and I do want to caveat that we are not walking away from our our Foxboro brand in any way. I mean it's what we've sold for the past you know 30, 40 years, we continue to support, and we will always support that you know forever, just with modern technology.57:53Is really just the next step in that evolution. So it's not you know, we're still 100% supporting what we already got out there. Well, I think that's also really important because again, you can't you can't force your customers to change. Hey, like we all know, if it's oftentimes if it's working, you know, it's they're gonna keep it until it's not, or you know, just the life cycle of the ability to upgrade or change these things, it can be in the decades at this, you know, in in these certain industries. And so yeah, I agree.58:24It would be very irresponsible as a vendor to say, Oh, we have a new thing now, like we're done. Or you're on your own. Some of my competitors actually do that, but we're not doing that in any way. Yeah, we we we have we have a history of supporting our our installed base, and we will continue to do that in the same way we've always done it. and I respect that a lot. I think it is really important. we don't, you know, we try not to talk negatively about anybody on the show, but I do I certainly have you know certain principles and things that I think are important in how you support a customer, how you bring technology to the table, how you can be a good partner.58:58And I think that those are all well, you know, some of the reasons that I've been pretty impressed with everybody and everything that I've I've seen from Schneider Electric in the times that we've gotten the chance to talk and get to know people. So yeah, we're coming up here on the end. I'm gonna ask my last question. Well, I guess I'll ask you first. Is there anything that we didn't cover that you want to talk about before I ask you my last question? No, I think I'm good. Bring it on. Last question. So my last question should be an easy one for you. But tell people if they want to know Dennis Ganson, if they want to do business with you or they want to learn from you, where should they find you and follow you?59:32Other than our website, automationladies.io, you will have a guest profile that should have some links. But tell people where they should find you. And then if you have anything exciting or noteworthy coming up that you want people to be aware of. So where to find me? LinkedIn probably is the best place to find me. I I am on there. obviously, you know, Schneider Electric, we had our website and all that. But yeah, I mean if you want to reach out to me directly, LinkedIn's probably the best way to get there. And sorry, you had a part two of that question.1:00:05Yeah, where if there's anything that you have coming up, like conferences, talks, events, people are like, oh, I'm releasing a book next month. So I'm just giving you the open like opportunity to plug anything you want. Sure. God, I wish I had the date in front of me. So in in August, we have Automation Day South, which is I would we'd love to see you know many customers or potential customers to come. we have it hosting it in San Antonio, Texas at the JW Marriott, north side of San Antonio.1:00:36And I don't have the the dates off the top of my head. I know it's in August. That's okay. Well, in August, we'll go ahead and try to make sure that we have a link to that in the show notes. So if you're listening to this and you want to know the exact dates and you want to find out you know how to register, how to get involved, we'll have our team put a link in the show notes for that event. I'd love to try to make that actually. That's a drive, you know, drivable event for me to go to. Three hours from here. Yeah, it's great. All righty. Well, thank you so much for joining me. Thank you so much for braving your first podcast.1:01:08I hope it was a decent experience. It was good. It was good. Thank you so much. I appreciate it. It's been fun. So I appreciate it. Absolutely. Well, and I will see you next week at Automate. Fantastic. I will see you there. All right, bye-bye. Bye-bye. Thank you for listening to Automation Ladies. If you like our content and you want to stay in touch, please connect with us on LinkedIn, follow the show page, subscribe to our YouTube channel, and you can send us a message or a copy on our website, automationladies.io. We look forward to getting to know you.
