Episode #35: Navigating Tariff Shocks and Sourcing Risks with AI: with Timur Göreci of Orderfox
In this episode of U.S. Manufacturing Today, host Matt Horine explores the profound impacts of recent US tariffs on steel and aluminum imports from the EU on manufacturing supply chains. Joined by Timur Göreci, CRO of Orderfox, the discussion delves into the hidden tariff risks within supply chains that many manufacturers overlook. Timur shares insights on how AI-driven tools like Gieni AI and Partfox can help manufacturers identify and mitigate these risks. The conversation also touches on the fragmentation of the US manufacturing landscape, the benefits of adopting AI for strategic sourcing, and practical steps for manufacturers to bolster their sourcing strategies in light of shifting trade policies. Listeners are encouraged to adopt AI technologies to enhance their supply chain resilience and competitive edge.
Links
- Timur Göreci on LinkedIn
- OrderFox Website
- PartFox Website
- Gieni AI Website
- Navigating Trump 2.0
- Veryable Is Revitalizing U.S. Manufacturing
- Sign Up on the Veryable Platform
- Veryable Shop
Timestamps
- 00:00 Introduction to U.S. Manufacturing Today
- 00:23 The Impact of US Tariffs on Steel and Aluminum
- 00:37 Introducing Timur Göreci and AI Solutions
- 01:20 Hidden Tariff Risks in Supply Chains
- 02:48 Case Study: Medical Device Manufacturer
- 05:28 Challenges in Supplier Discovery and Management
- 07:35 Leveraging AI for Supplier Analysis
- 11:00 Steps to Implement AI in Manufacturing
- 13:29 Reindustrialization and Domestic Manufacturing
- 17:23 The Impact of Tariffs on Manufacturing
- 18:36 AI and the Future of Sourcing
- 19:12 Introducing PartFox: Revolutionizing CNC Networks
- 21:35 Addressing Skepticism Towards AI in Manufacturing
- 27:28 Strategies for Mid-Sized Machine Shops
- 31:23 Final Thoughts and Advice for Manufacturing Leaders
Episode Transcript
Matt Horine: [00:00:00] Welcome back to US Manufacturing today. The podcast powered by Veryable where we talk with the leaders, innovators, and change makers, shaping the future of American industry, along with providing regular updates on the state of manufacturing, the changing landscape policies, and more.
Today's episode is about a risk many manufacturers still don't see yet. It's impacting margins, timelines, and very viability of sourcing decisions. Since June of this year, the US has enforced 50% tariffs on steel. And aluminum imports from the EU and what looks like a straightforward trade policy has triggered a full blown sourcing crisis.
Many companies didn't know how exposed they actually were. Joining us to unpack this is Timur Göreci, CRO of OrderFox, which powers the Platform's PartFox, which is the world's largest AI driven CNC and contract manufacturing network and Gieni ai. An AI engine analyzing over 6 million company profiles and 380 million web sources to pinpoint sourcing risks, tariff exposure, and US supplier alternatives.
We'll ask, how [00:01:00] did you find hidden tariff risks that haven't been classified, and how does AI help trace origins materials and dependencies? And how can US manufacturers use these tools to regain control, not just of compliance, but of competitive advantage. Timor, welcome to US Manufacturing today. Thank you, Matt.
Thanks for having me. We're very excited to have you on, and I think we'll just jump right into it and set the stage here. I. Everybody this year has experienced what we could call the tariff shock and some of the hidden sourcing risks. If you're like myself, I didn't know where a lot of my stuff came from, but let's start with the basics.
Across 2025, and specifically in June, the US began enforcing that 50% tariff rate on EU steel and aluminum products, and on paper sounds pretty clear, but you talk about the sourcing crisis, what's really going on behind the scenes?
Timur Göreci: I think on paper it's very simple, right? You have 50% tariff. You find a domestic supplier done.
Yeah, that sounds super easy, but what's going on really behind the scenes is most manufacturers, they think they know their supply chain very well. Yeah. Because there was never a time where they really had to reevaluate or strongly audit them. They [00:02:00] can name mostly of the tier one suppliers in the sleep.
Yeah. Tier one, what I'm saying. But that if you ask them about tier two or tier three is actually sometimes blank stares that we're looking into when we have video calls with them. That's where the tariff exposure is hiding, to be honest at, at least from my side, from my perspective, yeah. What we're seeing is actually companies that are discovering that they're sourcing from tariff countries without them knowing it, and that direct supplier might be domestic.
Yeah. We do have a lot of examples of that in North America and in the US especially, but also on the other side, right on, on the EU where all of a sudden. There's no orders coming in, but the direct supply is domestic, but the supplier sub components could be EU aluminum, like you've said. It could be Chinese steel.
The tariff hits the cost, and all of a sudden the margin is evaporating. That's really a bad situation for that.
Matt Horine: I guess a really good way to start out here. Could you walk us through an example of a manufacturer who thought they were tariffs safe, yet they discovered some type of major exposure, like you just mentioned that you thought it was from here and maybe some Chinese elements or components.
Is there a big one that stands out in your [00:03:00] mind?
Timur Göreci: Yeah, I think there's a few ones. I probably can't really give the names out here, but we will jump around it a little bit. It's a medical device manufacturer in the Midwest, I would say, very sophisticated operation, so at least from an outside perspective, everything is up to par.
People working there, all certified, they have really good setup. If you look at it from the outside. They source precision machine components mainly from the West Coast California supplier. They have a, they, they're domestic, right? So everything is good. They even have an ISO certification, I think 13 4, 8 5.
It must be for the, for the medical devices. I would say They have a great relationship. They thought they were very insulated from TER EU tariffs. Uh, and then discovery hits June hits and they cross per unit jump 18-20%. Turns out the California supplier sources Rome aluminum, right? And from a distributor who imports them from Germany.
Actually very close to where my father grew up, right? So I do have a personal story to it. Three layers deep. No one, uh, nobody caught it. And then they have panic, right? Why this is a good example is because they do have to have [00:04:00] FDA documentation trails. It's not, oh, no problem are sourced from somewhere else.
They have to have paper trails. It's really problematic. And what do you do then? It's really tough. The market is huge for manufacturing suppliers in the us but you need to find the right one that could really match the specs, the FDA comparable documentation that you have to have and they have to have capacity.
At the same time, if you do Google calling distributors trade shows, that takes months. That takes months. They, and they did not have months in that specific case. So what happened is with a database like of 6.7 million companies that we have allocated within Gieni, you could just ask this question. You can filter down to the nitty gritty stuff and you can find a short list of 10-15.
We help them find a short list of five potential. They have qualified two, and in the end they ended up in a few weeks, though I'm not saying tomorrow, right? In a few weeks, they ended up getting the right supplier, so, so they can maneuver around that instead of 6, 7, 8, maybe nine months. I don't know. So that's actually a good case I would say.
Matt Horine: [00:05:00] No, that's a really good point. And I, in a past life worked through subcontract manufacturing, and this was prior to tariffs coming back on board, but we had to move our bomb to another manufacturer, and I was shocked at where a lot of the components came from. And we were working on all kinds of certifications at the time to include ul, but also there were some FDA components and some other things.
You don't just pick up a new part, you don't, after you've got things certified. Done that. It's not just an easy switcher source. There's a ton of blind spots there. Why are so many manufacturers unaware of where their sourcing risk really lives, and what are the most common blind spots outside of that example?
Timur Göreci: I think the obvious one is we're good enough, right? We know our suppliers, they're good enough, like the supplier base, they're maintaining the suppliers list in Excel or in the ERP system. It shows who they currently use, not who they could use. They don't do supplier discovery, and when the tariff hits or supply gold standards, they're starting from scratch.
Right. But they could afford it in the past. Yeah, they could afford it. In the past, there was not the pressure really, but if a supplier adds a [00:06:00] new five XACC machine and it's not in your spreadsheet, you're not considering it. Yeah, you're not considering them. Or if they have just upgraded your new certification or whatever, you're not considering them, so you're flying basically on an outdated map.
That's a huge problem. That's, I would say, a first blind spot. Good enough supplier base. And then the second one I would say is geographic bias. Yeah. If you have a Californian silk company that sources from Californian suppliers, because that's what you do, and then you have, I don't know, 15 or 20 supplier in your list,
But you're not considering Texan manufacturers that are much better fitted. They're still there, but you don't, you're not accessing them because you don't know that they exist. So you say, okay, it needs to be for my county, or it needs to be for my area, and then you just stick to that. But actually you should be open, open to that.
And then there's a capability translation problem. Yeah, I think the sourcing managers or the procurement managers often just don't really know what it means if the technology is there. They are not, usually, they're up [00:07:00] to power when they have to order the same stuff every time, but something breaks. They need to find a new one.
They're not up to date with the technology. They're not up to date with the capabilities like I've mentioned before. And all of a sudden they realize, look, the new five XCNC machines in precision manufacturing, they can do almost everything. And if the, if the supplier is, let's say, automated and sourcing locally, also the raw material, they're not, they're not in their list.
So I would say capability, geographic base bias, and then a good enough supplier base. I think that's the worst one.
Matt Horine: That's certainly that confidence and we know where our stuff comes from. While the world has changed pretty quickly, getting into the specifics of the actual tools, and with Gieni AI six over 6.7 million company profiles, 380 million plus web sources, how does that scale help identify the dependencies that traditional audit or sourcing teams miss?
Timur Göreci: I would say the usual way of doing that would be you hire a consultant, they interview your procurement team, they audit the contracts, maybe [00:08:00] they visit facilities. Yeah, not too much. Usually they say they don't do that too much. It takes six to 12 months cost of fortune, and it's a snapshot right in in, in a frozen entire, and that's it.
Right. It doesn't improve over time. Now, so what we are doing is with the ai, we are continuously investigating data from all in Google Index websites, so everything that is available on the web. Ongoing. We do that for you. Imagine you would have a million interns. Yeah. That constantly are motivated in the same way.
Yeah. And then they do all of the research and you have access to all. You could speak to all of them at the same time. This is what AI feels in this world. Yeah. You could really talk to all of them at the same time. And the really important point is sometimes we get asked that, okay, if I have enough man manpower, I can do that myself.
Yeah, you could. Yeah. But you need to motivate your team. You need to mo imagine people coming to the job on Mondays. They might be motivated Tuesdays. Okay, Wednesday, go pa. Go past they say, so almost weekend. So they don't really do the same job in the same quality or at the [00:09:00] same time. So they don't aggregate that information.
With the 380 million web sources, we aggregate information about certification, trade registrations, equipment listings. There are hiring patterns, sometimes news mentions, trade show tendencies, materials that they're using. We do zero shot classification. We do semantic search. We do image classification.
So actually a really old technology, something that is in the front of your, of every car like the, the camera that you have in front of your car to see the speed signs and everything. We use that technology, tweak it, and we, we analyze the pictures that we find on homepages so we can actually tell you who is producing what, is there a part, is there a knuckle or visible, and we can aggregate that information, put it in the backend, and make it accessible for you.
You, a traditional audit team would never be able to find that amount of information if they started doing it. Yeah, so I would say the scale effect is really important with more than like 7 million. Currently more than 7 million, so 6.7 is a little bit outdated. Now we can map the supply networks that [00:10:00] a human just physically can't.
We can then see 2,800 manufacturers within your industry cluster, and then we can map it to aluminum, to material. And yeah, that's actually very powerful if you consider that to be used, if you use that accordingly.
Matt Horine: Oh, the really great point. I think one infinite unpaid interns, but edit the call. I thought you would pick that up, right?
Timur Göreci: It would be great to have infinite interns,
Matt Horine: but who's managing them? Who? Matt. Who is managing them? Not me. No, that's, we'll pass on that one, but it's a really good point because we've talked a lot about AI on this show and how it is actually something that uplifts the productivity of whatever team is using it, and there's the scare tactics around.
Yeah, and current economy right now, the macro trends are upside down. There's things that just don't make sense that are happening and people are saying, oh, these job losses or things that are happening are because of ai. It's not really because of ai. We'll get into that on another show, but it's most of the things that we've seen in the early stages here, helping people do their jobs better, which is something that I think your tool fits really neatly into.
But let's get a little [00:11:00] tactical with it. If I'm an in, if I'm an industrial supplier in Ohio or Michigan. How would I use this kind of intelligence in practice and what steps do I take to, to get started with that? Or how do I think about it?
Timur Göreci: Yeah, I think we can get to it in two steps, right? So the first step would be you map your current reality.
You find out, you export, you supply a list from your ERP, or you have it in your Excel file already. You create a CSV or you just type it in. You go to Gieni AI and then you run a dependency analyst. Yeah. You can write a prompt and say, okay, these are my suppliers. Could you find out for me? In within your network who is sourcing from the eu?
Do I, am I facing tariff situations if I'm not careful enough? And then you can ask it to flag tariff exposure or single sourcing risk. And then you can directly go into step two and say, alright, if you have analyzed your current situation, uh, can do your strategic supplier analysis with Genie or with OX as well, you could do that as well.
But, but then you go into step two, which is then the most important one because I'm pretty sure you're gonna [00:12:00] be hit by the reality and. Face the situation that a lot of your suppliers will be sourcing. Yeah. From, from tariff to countries. But then you go and then you say, yeah, build your alternative sourcing network.
Yeah. And then there's, that's really where the intelligence pays out. Step one already good, but the. To be honest, if it's not too many suppliers, you could do that yourself. You could go in there, you can GPT it. You can do whatever you want. You can really go in there. But in step two, if you say, show me iso, I don't know, 9,001 certified CNC shops within 300 miles of, I don't know, Columbus or with five Xs capabilities, like how do you fight that? Like you, I mean, you can do a desktop research in Google, right? But the results that you'll get are one or two will be good, but then the rest. Mediocre, and then you can filter for shops with the AS 9,100 aerospace certification, including laser cutting secondary capabilities, or maybe having free capacity.
This is all possible because it's already in the database. You can access that directly through ai, [00:13:00] and if you would not be doing that with that, it would take you weeks. And to be honest, you would probably feel bad afterwards because you need holidays.
Matt Horine: No, it's something that you'd spend a lot of time doing manually and probably some of the biggest challenges that small, medium sized manufacturers face today is that you don't have the time.
This, the environment is dictating where things are coming from. There's tool sets at your doorstep and you said something really important there, and a lot of what we talk about on this show in the space of Reindustrialization and the US supplier advantage, I think one of the conclusions. Your organization had, and what I read in your paper is that the solution isn't just about avoiding tariffs, it's bringing components back on shore as the end state.
And you state in the paper, replace important critical components with locally manufactured alternatives. Digging into that, how realistic is this for the US manufacturers today?
Timur Göreci: I think there's the truth that will hurt a little bit. Yeah. 'cause the capacity exists. Yeah. So it is there. The challenge is actually execution, I would say.
Yeah. Because what we do in mapping, when we did the mapping, we found out that [00:14:00] it's very fragmented. We all knew or had the feeling that it's super fragmented. Yeah. But it's actually very fragmented to a, to an extent that we say. All right. How can we make use of it? We all, we also did a research on if for semiconductor production, if there would be enough capacity if tomorrow China would say there's no computer chips anymore.
There's actually enough facilities. Then it's not talking to each other. You would have to consolidate everything. Yeah. I would say that the numbers that we hear here, or that we have in the backend is like 50, around 55,000 contract manufacturers operating in the US right now. That's huge. That is absolutely huge.
17,000, around 20,000 CNC machining centers, 10,000 LA and then we have around 5,000 laser cutting systems and they grow at A-C-A-G-R at of seven to 8% throughout 2030. So it's not a dying industry. It's actually growing and it's a very capable ecosystem. But the reality check, and that's what I said before, is like, reindustrialization sounds really great in policy papers, but on the [00:15:00] ground, like in OEM trying to replace like a Chinese supplier of they face massive friction.
Massive friction. And one of the points that you guys are already caring for is like the labor, right? The labor that you have. We have over 500,000 unfilled manufacturing roles. Yeah, we have. Wage inflation of between three to 4% in the US if I'm not wrong, year over year. And the shops with the capacity are maxed out on labor, right?
If they have skilled labor workers like your workforce, they, they're maxed out. But how do you find the right shops now that have capabilities that that actually match match to what you need? And you ask, what's the manufacturing reality today? Yeah, it's super fragmented. Yeah. The capabilities are there.
We just need to find right, the right execution layer on it, and then. The other friction points that are cost and discovery, they will fall in handy because to be honest, uh, a domestic manufacturing costs more period. I would say domestic manufacturing. But why is that? Like CS job shop in Ohio has a li higher labor cost than one in [00:16:00] Shenzhen.
That's reality. But, but the terrorists like they closing the gap faster. And if you are very honest here. The Chinese government is subsidizing a lot of things that they're doing. They don't speak openly about that. So in reality, the cost might be the same. So why wouldn't I high, high source from Ohio?
Why wouldn't I? Why is this actually a problem for me? It is actually because I don't know that you, Matt, have a job shop that is capable of doing that. So the discovery is the problem. So that's what I see.
Matt Horine: Huge point because I think that is something that most people don't realize in the framework of tariffs.
Most of these are reciprocal in some capacity because those nations have subsidized some component of an industry or something to compete with the United States where our products are tariffed. In China, they're Tariffed and Canada, there's huge sub subsidization of lumber. Those types of things. And so people that aren't on the level with that, they think it's just a potentially a tax or something to that effect, but it's designed to level the playing field.
And I guess from a policy and industrial strategy [00:17:00] perspective, are these tools, park, Fox, and Genie, are they helping the US transition from being a tariff target to being the real industrial advantage? Because that is a recurring theme we've seen is just this connectivity. They're not talking to each other.
They're very fragmented. You think that it could lead the way on something like that or get people over that first step of saying, Hey, what do we have? And kind of the known of what the current state of the industry is.
Timur Göreci: So I think tariffs will force reshoring. I'm very sure about that. Subsidies, they will build new factories and I think America will out manufacture China again at one point.
I think it's a great point. The more we fight about tariffs, it's reality. Like what is there to fight about? It's reality. And we have to face it. The tariffs, they don't create new jobs, right? They create cost pressure, they create immense cost pressure. They don't automatically create domestic alternatives.
They just make imports expensive, ridiculously expensive. And now we are facing the situation where we say. Alright, let's focus on the stuff that we actually are, I'm talking like I'm an American citizen, but I feel I love America so much, so I, I, I can really, I [00:18:00] can really put myself into that role. They just make exports, imports expensive.
Like I said, the real competitive advantage isn't tariff protection, it's speed and flexibility. So can you find a qualified domestic supplier within 48 hours when the tariffs shift? Again, can you model scenarios like if tariff hits country X, what are my 10 alternatives? You don't have six months time and you just don't have that.
Like I said before, the capacity will be there, like 54,000 manufacturing companies in the US right? You will always find someone that is capable of delivering for you. I'm very sure it shouldn't be a problem. And then the advantage, if you use then the AI systems, like stuff networks and marketplaces like.
You can map alternatives in seconds with Gieni or with pot fogs that traditionally the sourcing takes weeks. Then you have the resilience factor can continuously monitor without really having to do a lot of work. The AI is doing a lot of these things for you. And then the agility, like I said, like if [00:19:00] tariffs shift because there's an answer from Asia, there's an answer from Europe like.
New terms or whatever trade deals, and you can reoptimize with that. That's it's, it's really, I would say, beneficiary in that case.
Matt Horine: We've spent a little bit of time talking about Gieni, and I'm curious about PartFox, just because this is something that has also been a recurring theme on this show and talking about those job shops and PartFox is described as the world's largest AI driven CNC network.
What differentiates from the standard directory or RFQ board, which is what I think most people find themselves in. I remember when I was leading a manufacturing company, we were looking for RFQs, we were signing up for RFQ notifications from places that may or may not have been in scope for us looking to build our business.
What kind of separates it from that traditional approach to trying to just win an RFQ or seeing if it's in scope or those types of things?
Timur Göreci: So traditional platforms like I would say. ThomasNet or IQs directory, they're basically like yellow pages or closer to yellow pages, lemme call it that. I think ThomasNet [00:20:00] with xometry together, I think they're doing a great job.
I'm a big fan of what they do. It. But they have static listings. There's not a huge intelligence layer to it. So what, how OX works, the marketplace side of it is how OX is the world's largest AI driven CC network. So you upload a CAD file, it automatically route the qualified shops based on material tolerances, specifications, capacity, and, and here is the important part, machine listing on the machine park.
So it will match you right on the machine that is capable of doing it because you, if you match only all on technology and let's say say milling, right? Milling is not milling, right? You have three Xs, five Xs. You have Milton terminal. You have a lot of different opportunities. We analyze the part in a way that we actually know exactly what technology is needed in order to produce it, and we match it to the right machine park.
And that's why our database that is used in the backend is so powerful, right? Can speak to a company in hoping they'll be able to supply you with a quote, with a very competitive quote, but they only have a five x in a milling [00:21:00] machine. Your part could be produced on a three XXI milling machine. So there's a huge change because the, let's say he bought a, I don't know, a very expensive five XXI milling machine for precision machining.
That thing, of course, is more expensive to run than a very good rigid three XXI milling machine. Let's say you have a half VF two, right? That thing will just be so much more inexpensive than if you have a comp, a very complicated machine to run on it. So I would say that that's a distinguishing factor here.
So the intelligence layer, the AI layer of it, extracting the metadata, uh, and matching it into the right data graph in the backend.
Matt Horine: Yeah, no, that makes a lot of sense. I think it also leads to another question and something that we've asked often on this show in manufacturing circles. There's sometimes there's skepticism of AI or platforms.
I think we were talking about that a little earlier. People might see it as a boogeyman or the source of some kind of displacement. But really it's an accelerator. And to your point and the quote earlier, we know our suppliers anyway, but what's your response to those who trust old relationships over the data-driven platform?
Is it a [00:22:00] capacity thing? Is it access to market? Is it margin protection? What is the primary driver of that?
Timur Göreci: I totally get the skepticism to be honest. Right? Speaking to contract manufacturers around the world, it's a, it's an ongoing thing. No matter if I speak to a Swiss, Swiss owned shop in Europe, if I speak to an Indian shop or to the US contract manufacturers.
They're partially right. To be honest. They, what relationships like will do well is they have trust. Yeah. Because they will deliver, like there's some sort of like high level trust if you have direct relationships outside of the platform, of course. And then you have quality consistency. There's a proven track record communication.
They understand your specs within a few emails, I would say. Yeah. And then some sort of flexibility because you can just call them. Yeah. But what the relationships won't do for you is they cannot tell you about alternatives. They don't exist right for them. They give, they don't give you leverage and pricing, which is also not unimportant.
If you want to be successful, they can't scale when you grow. Like imagine a scenario where you actually, you created like this new and new [00:23:00] relationship with a new client and you wanna scale with that client, but the relationship won't be able to help you, and then they will also not protect you when you go under the single source of risk a bit.
If they're in a capacity and they can take your order, what do you do? So I think. You need to have, I would say a strategy to have both. Yeah. That, that, that will be a very healthy strategy. You cannot afford to not be working with platforms, marketplaces. You cannot afford to not do that. You should also don't forget that a local supplier that has a benefits.
Yeah. So having both at the same time is really good. But if I had to answer as a auto folks representative, yeah. I would always say I'd rather have the 54,000 US manufacturers within part, folks that it can. Always rely on than to have three or four that I only trust locally. Still, you have a really good logistics in the US If I'm on the west coast and I need to order from, I don't know, Indianapolis, that's not a problem.
It's just not
Matt Horine: No really good point. And something that again, I think [00:24:00] underscores your, your point of there is capacity, there is, if people are very fearful of this, if there's as if there's not, it is about access. And I think one other really big thing. You highlighted, and we don't talk about it enough. I think we're going to enter at some point a deflationary environment of some kind, whether that's demand driven or like a productivity driven demand environment where the productivity goes up because of tools like this, or maybe consumer demand falls because of tariff cost pressure, whatever that is.
But ultimately, in the early stages of this, you're right, tariffs do equal margin erosion if you're not quick on your feet. How does quick sourcing transparency pro protect that margin? And how much time does it save in practice?
Timur Göreci: If you're hit with, uh, with margin of operation, then there's not a lot of things other than diversification that you can do.
You need to jump on it right away, but I don't know if that anyone can survive 20% margin cut. I wouldn't know anyone. And if that's your reality, you need to act fast. And if acting fast means [00:25:00] Googling and then calling people and then waiting until they respond, and then waiting on an RFQ. While you could be jumping on a platform like OX requesting, like going on the RFQ feed, putting your stuff up there waiting, who is who is actively taking it, or directly targeting 16 to 17 perfect fitting suppliers on your long list and waiting on the supply on the RQs from them.
I think that is much more what you should be doing, and I'd really say that this is actually the way to go. If you're talking about efficiency gains, we have seen everything from between 20 to 50% of efficiency gains in terms of saving margins. When it comes to sourcing locally, the US is huge. It's huge.
You will always find someone that currently has capacity on the right machine. And thus can supply you with the right, with the right quality for a really good price. And I'm talking like really competitive price. And the US is also not un autotomized. Yeah. So you will find a lot of robotics included into machine [00:26:00] shops, into job shops.
I'm talking about five to 10 people job shops like they in the past. You would consider them conventional, but today they could be running like 10 robots or cobots, and they could be very cost efficient. Yeah. So from our perspective, everything between 20 or 50% is realistic. Yeah. There are cases where we see 70%, but that's really the edge cases.
But yeah, you have to run it, otherwise you will not experience it.
Matt Horine: No, that's a really good point and highlights a lot of the broader competitive advantages. It's not just winning in a tactical moment and protecting the margin. It is about efficiency. It is about effectiveness, and for us, what we see a lot of the time, it's about utilization, like labor utilization.
We have on the labor side, folks who are under utilizing the highest skilled labor that they have to take care of more general tasks. We talk about this all the time with machine shops. We're saying like a welder or a CNC machinist, they're not really hitting the floor.
Timur Göreci: No. But then again, they should be offering their services capabilities also on platforms.
They should be promoting it in order to fill them up more. Sorry to interrupt you on there, [00:27:00] but this is a discussion that we have frequently. We have frequently, no matter where in the world the job, the shops that have enough skilled, skilled workers. They're usually on max capacity. Yeah. If they're not, yeah, they're fighting for it.
They're really fighting for it. The ones that have always free capacity, they are usually running on old machinery, so they're not fighting for new jobs. They're fighting to survive, so it's actually a very competitive landscape there.
Matt Horine: Yeah, no, that's a really great point. If you're a mid-sized machine shop owner in the US somewhere, what's the first action they could take this quarter to plug sourcing risk or explore US supplier alternatives.
And part of that is of course, your solution. I think the nature of the conversation is what can you do this quarter? Because by first quarter next year, second quarter, we're gonna be on a totally different playing field in our perspective.
Timur Göreci: Oh yeah. The first thing that you should do is you should really analyze your status quo.
You should get into the data that you currently have and review it, and you should directly jump onto stuff like Gieni AI. Ask questions around your current [00:28:00] supplier portfolio, about your clients, for sure. The first thing that you need to do, and once you have understood like how big the risk is that you are, that you're facing.
Then you can fast act on it. Go to platforms like Ox ThomasNet, symmetry, like leverage them, try them out, try to find alternatives, and you should directly act on that while at the same time. Yeah, you should also go onto the platforms to find new clients for your, if you are contract manufacturers. It sounds very healthy, but at the same the other way around.
Companies in the US are looking for US suppliers. So why don't you advertise on these platforms at the same time? One, analyze your status quo to act on it. Start acting on it. Start diversifying locally and locally in the domestic. And then in the third place is look also for clients that fit your portfolio very well.
The fourth one that you probably can't do this quarter is. Check your machine stock, check what machines that you have. Are they outdated? Can I actually compete with what the demand is on the market? What should [00:29:00] I do in order to automate a little bit? This is also a level of sophistication that I would not underestimate.
Matt Horine: Sometimes it does take taking a step back and saying, what are our capabilities? Instead of fighting to survive on the floor every day, which is where the most operations leaders live is fighting from the day-to-day battle, but taking the good stock of what? Your potential future capacity is super important.
If I walked into your office a year from now, what indicator would tell me you've succeeded in helping us industry become more resilient?
Timur Göreci: That's a good question. So if you would walk into our office, then we would probably have a huge American flag hanging on the wall. Yeah. Because we help, we helped a lot of US companies to find new suppliers and to navigate the tariff risks.
I would say we grow. Yeah. We have much more people in the office working on topics. We do have a US subsidiary in, in, in Chicago. It would be nice to have that operative again. Yeah. 'cause currently there's no one really sitting there. Everything is since COVID, everything is trying, everyone is trying to centralize again a little bit.
But I would love to [00:30:00] have opened the US office again. And in total, like if I say I wanna grow with a team and to help more and more contract manufacturers or more companies out there, AI enables us to do, to be so effective on many things. So do I really want to grow Massively? Maybe I would like to leverage the AI potential just much more.
Huh? But a huge American flag, please.
Matt Horine: Yeah. A flag for every factory that's uh, that would nice. Something nice. We've seen a lot. That would be nice. Yeah, they should have one. Absolutely. Where can our listeners go to find out more about OrderFox and Geini AI and how to potentially maybe get started with you?
Timur Göreci: You can start off with order fox.com and research our two products there. So we have ox.com and genie.com. Geini lives actually in Microsoft ecosystem. We are, since a year now, we are a strategic global strategic partner of Microsoft. We help develop manufacturing copilots with them, and we build our own agent that lives within Microsoft ecosystem.
So in Teams in copilot, you can just type in Gieni. And fight a Gieni agent. It's free to use, like there's a free version of it. Hardly anyone [00:31:00] really hits the limitation. If you have a user, you're very welcome to use the premium version. I would be, I, I would feel very, very happy about that. But uh, you can just start using it.
Ox as well. There's a free version of power folks, you can just start using. If it works out for you, jump on the paid version. I'm happy about that. But yeah, you can. You can go there and you'll find anything. Or you can hit me up on LinkedIn or wherever. No problem. I'll answer. Excellent. That's
Matt Horine: great. And so the last question that I have, and this is something we ask of almost every guest, you probably paid for this type of consultancy and advice that you provide, but we'll ask for a free version of that.
One piece of advice for manufacturing leaders listening today. What should they stop doing right now and what should they start doing?
Timur Göreci: The major factor is really that they should start creating a budget for AI technology because a lot of people are talking about it. Yeah, but you also have to walk the walk if you are talking about it.
You need to start trying out new things. You need to allocate a budget and please. Don't make the, uh, finance director the budget holder of that, find a person in [00:32:00] business development that actually wants to do something. Give this person a budget, help them to try out a lot of things. Stop doing things because they feel right, because you have been doing them for.
I don't know, 10, 15 years times have changed so fast. COVID hit tariffs, geopolitical changes, politics in general. There's a lot of things that that happened since then. Embrace the change. Try to find ways out of it, but stop doing things 'cause you've always been doing them.
Matt Horine: And that is the biggest and greatest piece of advice is the way we've always done things right.
That's it's something that's very comfortable.
Timur Göreci: I think there are some situations where this is true, but you have to understand the environment that you live in. If your environment is not changing, why would you change? You should always have an eye on things that could be changing or where you think there's too much dependency.
But in general, if we look at the manufacturing landscape, everything is changing. You need to jump on that boat. You need to change as well. You need to start funding, finding new opportunities. Do it now. Don't wait.
Matt Horine: Absolutely. Timur, thank you for coming on US [00:33:00] manufacturing today and really inspired by your optimistic message.
There's a lot of uncertainty out there and you provided a little bit more clarity today, so we were really happy to have you on the show. Thank you for having me met. Thanks, Timor's Message today was clear sourcing risk isn't lurking in the obvious places. It's hidden in components, materials, and regions you didn't even know you were exposed to.
But the good news is that with the right data. The right network and the right mindset. This isn't just about surviving tariffs. It's about reshoring real capability, securing margin, and restoring American manufacturing strength. To stay ahead of the curve and to help plan your strategy, please check out our [00:26:00] website at www.veryableops.com and under the resources section titled Trump 2.0, where you can see the framework around upcoming policies and how it will impact you and your business. If you're on socials, give us a follow on LinkedIn, X, formerly Twitter, and Instagram. And if you're enjoying the podcast, please feel free to follow the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube, and leave us a rating and don't forget to subscribe. Thank you again for joining us and learning more about how you can make your way.