Episode #49: Bridging Operational Excellence: Vessel’s Diagnostic Platform for Small and Mid-Sized Manufacturers
This episode of U.S. Manufacturing Today features Derik Ellis and Molly Lenty of Vessel, a platform designed to help manufacturers and the experts who serve them turn operational data into insight by unifying shop-floor systems with business outcomes through smart assessments and supply chain intelligence. Molly shares her transition from 25 years in corporate banking and economic development to helping manufacturers access resources, while Derik describes his path from the Air Force and software entrepreneurship to founding Vessel in 2018 as a consulting firm that evolved into a technology platform. They discuss recurring challenges in small and mid-sized manufacturing, including limited access to resources, trust-building with consultants, misaligned stakeholders, and the need for disciplined, organization-wide diagnosis before action (e.g., ERP adoption). Vessel supports MEPs and consultants with a library of 300+ customizable assessments, multi-stakeholder alignment, longitudinal tracking, actionable reports, and aggregated ecosystem visibility to inform workforce and regional strategy.
Links
- Vessel Website
- Derik Ellis on LinkedIn
- Molly Lenty on LinkedIn
- Navigating Trump 2.0
- Veryable Is Revitalizing U.S. Manufacturing
- Sign Up on the Veryable Platform
- Episode 49 on Spotify
- Episode 49 on Apple
- Episode 49 on YouTube
Timestamps
- 00:00 Show Introduction
- 01:24 Meet Molly Lenty
- 03:16 Derik Ellis Origin Story
- 05:20 Recurring SME Challenges
- 06:30 Access And Resource Networks
- 09:02 What Vessel Does
- 10:07 MEPs And Standardized Assessments
- 15:29 Why Consulting Often Fails
- 17:53 Diagnosis Before Action
- 21:29 Assessment Library And Custom Builds
- 23:31 Multi Stakeholder Alignment
- 26:23 Delivering Actionable Reports
- 31:34 AI As Expert Augmentation
- 33:05 Ecosystem Level Visibility
- 35:51 Workforce And Policy Gaps
- 38:06 Future Vision To 2030
- 42:09 Where To Learn More
- 42:42 Closing And Subscribe
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 we're talking about one of the most transformational yet underused challenges in modern manufacturing, bridging the gap in operational excellence, and the resources available across manufacturing extension partnerships. Orps and operational consultants with vessel. Many manufacturers talk about Industry 4.0 digital twins, M-E-S-E-R-P, but struggle to turn raw data into real operational insight, and our guests today are tackling that problem head on.
They're Derik Ellis and Molly Lenty at Vessel, A platform that unifies manufacturing operations through two components. A smart assessment system, along with a supply chain intelligence component vessel helps companies bridge the gap between shop floor systems and business outcomes, a critical capability as US manufacturers look to scale with speed and resilience.
Derik and [00:01:00] Molly bring both technical expertise and deep operational experience to this challenge, and today we're talking about how that data visibility drives competitive advantage. Supports reindustrialization empowers frontline and ultimately enables us manufacturers to compete on speed, quality, and reliability in a global economy.
Derek and Molly, welcome to U.S. Manufacturing today.
Molly Lenty: Thanks, Matt.
Derik Ellis: Hello, Matt.
Matt Horine: We are excited to have you on today and I think we'll just jump straight to it. Let's start with your personal journeys, and Molly, I'll start with you. How did each of you come to manufacturing and technology?
Molly Lenty: I dunno, I'm probably a little bit of the outlier in this industry.
I actually come from corporate background. I spent 25 years in corporate banking. I was a vice president of government and community relations responsible for community giving. Did a lot of work around economic development and working with small businesses, helping businesses to grow, to get connected to capital, help to work on [00:02:00] Department of Commerce initiatives and different things that each states.
Needed and the business is needed in their unique environments. And after 25 years, I thought, I really wanna do something different. And that's where I looked out to my network and people that I had met through the years boards I had served on, organizations I had been involved with. And Derek came knocking and said, Hey Molly, it looks like you're wanting to do something new.
I've got this thing that I'm doing, this business that I'm growing. Let's go grab a coffee. And that's where things really changed for me. And he shared the direction that Vessel was going in. And Derek will tell you, my first response was, I don't really know a lot about manufacturing. I don't know a lot about technology.
And he said, you actually know a lot more than you think that you do. And so it's been a great partnership and a great journey, and him taking me really under his wing, helping me teach the things that I didn't know, but also being able to apply the different areas of expertise that I bring to the table, to the work that we get to do in helping manufacturers.
Connecting the [00:03:00] dots in the work that manufacturers are responsible for as we look at the broader ecosystem as well. And it's been a ton of fun to get to grow our platform and get to really ultimately impact a lot of businesses and lives through the work of manufacturing.
Matt Horine: Manufacturing certainly does that.
Derek, how did you come to found Vessel and where did your manufacturing and technology background come from or did it come from there?
Derik Ellis: No, so lots of pivots along the way. Fourth generation, Idahoan grew up in a pretty rural community and a lot of farming, a lot of manufacturing is a focus. Went into the Air Force, I thought I was gonna become a US Marshal at some point, and instead was recruited to sell things.
I went into sales and was recruited into a technology company and after a couple of years that company was acquired and I recruited the pieces of the team that I really thought would be innovative and I started my [00:04:00] first software company, so that was 2008, and I had a lot of fun with that. For several years ended up going and advising other software companies around growth and go to market, and some of those companies were acquired and did some cool things, and along the way started getting involved in ERP and manufacturing technology systems.
Really found a passion in enablement around small and medium sized manufacturers and how they adopt new technologies or when they can adopt new technologies. And that really set the course or the way into vessel, no pun intended, around 2018, established vessel. And it was really a direct consulting organization.
We'd go in and help manufacturers with operational needs and efficiencies and technology needs. And it's evolved, uh, to where we are at today. And so I'd say my, my experience was really [00:05:00] software and technology adoption. On its way into manufacturing and just really excited and grateful to be in the manufacturing space now.
Matt Horine: It's a great space and one that historically has been challenged with technology adoption, specifically software, or we hear the horror stories about an ERP rollout or something to that effect, like the shop floor war stories. But when you first began working with small and midsize manufacturers, what patterns did both of you see that kept repeating?
Derik Ellis: I'll go first. There's a lot of trust to be built with a small and medium sized manufacturer. There's not a lot of time, there's a lot of effort that they go through in order to produce products and there are difficulties connecting them to resources, I think. So I think the patterns that I kept recognizing is there were resources and things around those manufacturers that could be very helpful to them and.
Those things weren't being organized in a way to connect those manufacturers to [00:06:00] solutions, whether it's workforce related or whatever it may be. Just finding new ways to bring that information in and build trust with those manufacturers. That's a place that became a passion for me.
Matt Horine: Molly, your background.
You mentioned in banking and working in the community, you probably saw a lot of small, mid-size manufacturers, which are the backbone of the manufacturing or the economy. 90 plus percent of those small, mid-size manufacturers with things as somebody stepping into the role that you see, that was the standout, that may have been a problem or kind of a recurring issue?
Molly Lenty: I think anybody that works with small businesses, midsize businesses, can tell you is. Every business has their own areas of struggle. It might be financials, it might be hiring, it might be any, anything really across the board. Everyone has their strong suits, everyone has their areas for opportunity, and they're only as good as their sphere of influence.
Right? Who do they have to reach out to? And even more [00:07:00] so for the rural areas, the states where they don't have those resources at their fingertips that they can reach out to. And one of the things that is really exciting about our platform and what our technology provides to these small businesses, these medium sized businesses, is access.
Access to this information. It really does expand their sphere of influence and their network of resources beyond much, much beyond what traditionally they had access to. Even exposing the level of questions that they might have otherwise thought to ask. And it's going through that full experience of participating in one of the, one of the, lack of a better word, one of the questionnaires as they're going through an assessment process.
They're understanding better what their own company strengths are and where [00:08:00] their weaknesses are. But even more so in that process, they are getting connected to the resources. Their resources might be in their home community, or it might be across their state, might be at the national level, but without having participated in a program like what our platform provides, they wouldn't otherwise have the awareness.
Or the, the roadmap to be able to access those types of resources. Working in banking, that was a huge part of what we were wanting to provide to our customers. But you're still limited in so many different ways. By not having access to the type of technology that our platform provides.
Matt Horine: You hit on something really important there.
We talk about access being just the critical path for everything, for labor, for us, at Veryable. We talk about that people entering the workforce or how they go about doing their day and not knowing. I think there's a famous phrase, the known knowns and known unknowns. You don't know what question to ask.
Sometimes it can really. Do something that can change or break your business out of some [00:09:00] cycle that you need to grow with that. And Derek, I'll go to you first. What is Vessel and what fundamental problem does it solve for manufacturers and the experts who serve them? Because that's a big component of it, right?
Derik Ellis: Yeah, absolutely. We're not just a smart assessment system or a platform, if you will. We're really trying to help manufacturers and the consulting experts around them. Understand the needs of that manufacturer at higher levels. So what we do is we create evaluations. They can use that build trust. We understand their challenges, we understand their priorities.
Faster. So we get through the discovery process, but then we're also looking at variables happening around them, not only in supply chain, but through partnerships and through education and through all these other things that can support that manufacturer. So what I'd like to say we're doing is we're creating a platform to diagnose the needs of a manufacturer, but also the needs of that manufacturer around them.
Molly could probably [00:10:00] describe that a little bit better than me, but, but an ecosystem tool. We use assessments to garner that information.
Matt Horine: Molly, in the early days talking about these manufacturers or consultants, what misgivings or misunderstandings do you think there were initially about as assessments, those diagnostics, and how did working with groups like MEPS and advisory organizations shape your thinking about standardizing this?
And for the benefit of our audience? I think most are familiar with meps. What are they?
Molly Lenty: An MEP is a manufacturing extension partnership. And there is one in every state across the U.S. as well as Puerto Rico. They are federally funded and they reside a little bit different in each state. Some are housed in their university system, some are embedded in their Department of Commerce.
Some are a separate entity that might be publicly funded, privately funded. [00:11:00] So they operate a little bit differently, but they all share in the same objective or mandate to serve manufacturers in their state, and so they're very similar in that nature. They work very similar to private organizations as well, that are focused on consulting with manufacturers to go in and best understand.
The needs of a manufacturer and connect them to available resources. So when you look at Vessel and the platform that we provide, we work both with MEP centers as well as with private industry associations. Private companies that would be doing are individuals that be, would be working directly with manufacturers or even specific industries or businesses.
So the way that our platform has been built out, we don't limit. Who we work with. It really is who has the appetite, the [00:12:00] expertise that would end an audience that they're wanting to serve. Because our platform is structured using the next code system, it does provide us with a deeper level of sophistication.
It's very useful within the manufacturing industry as well as other types of industries. So we have a leg up. Very different from other pieces of technology that don't have that level of sophistication, as well as the ability to look across some of the further diagnostics that our technology has. And we're not gonna get into all of that on today's conversation.
But once you do a demo of our platform and you look at ways that we can really dissect data and look into the information that those that are utilizing our tool, they get really excited people that are data gigs. We sit down with them and they like geek out. I'm a data geek too, so I love, love being able to, to get into our technology and be able to show the the capabilities that reside.
But for our conversation today, I'll just [00:13:00] share for an MEP center or an independent consultant being able to work with an individual, we'll, we'll stay on manufacturer, being able to work with an individual manufacturer that comes to them, or they seek out that manufacturer, sit down with them. The beauty is that our platform doesn't limit the expertise of the individual conser consultant that is delivering the technology.
We are human. We are a product of our own learned experiences and our knowledge that we have personally. Our platform does not limit by that. So you might be a consulting agency or you might be an MEP center that has a number of different experts. Reside within your center, and you're that much stronger because of that.
But the individual consultant that's delivering the experience with that manufacturer, through the process of participating and delivering the assessment and gathering that [00:14:00] feedback. They're able to then leverage tho all of the combination of tho those ex areas of expertise and the findings of the different resources to be able to provide a very boutique level, very specific level of recommendations that match that manufacturer's feedback to a T based on the findings of not just one response.
In many cases, they can structure it where it's multiple respondents from that manufacturer to have an aggregate of responses that provide a much deeper level of sophisticated findings and resources that can be very specific to the needs of that organization, as well as the ability to provide longitudinal.
Feedback where that manufacturer can take that same assessment six months later, a year later, to be able to look at how they've been able to progress in that specific area. There's [00:15:00] also a number of different assessments, and Derek can speak much more to this because he has been the, I kind of joke and say he's the nutty professor.
He's the genius behind the curtain.
Matt Horine: That's something really important to tie back to your earlier point about access to these types of resources and the level of customization that people are probably used to in your personal life or your speed, or I we, this might be a bridge, but kind of the Amazon effect.
You want results or you want to know what it is. You want to know what it is right now. It's probably something that has happened in most operating environments. And just from that standpoint, many manufacturers do work with consultants or they work with meps or some type of advisory firm, but a large percentage of them report some kind of initial dissatisfaction with strategic engagements.
And usually if you're in a mid-size firm or a larger firm, it's, oh boy, here come the consultants for whatever the problem is. And it's because they haven't, you know, the stakeholders aren't aligned, they just know they need something. Why does that happen so often? Do you think that the approach here, is that kind of tailored approach that [00:16:00] bridges that gap?
Or what is the reason for that?
Derik Ellis: I think, Matt, that it's steps towards trust building. I believe that if you've consulted and you go through that discovery process, it's not easy and you're coming with your own bias. Sometimes you are leaning towards the solution that's already being set in front of you by the person you're engaging with and maybe not the whole leadership team.
Team. So there are so many variables involved with consulting, and you're on the outskirts even. Even being that consultant on the outskirts, it's hard for people internally to believe that you're gonna be able to solve their problem. And how many times have they had a consultant plugged in for six weeks, eight weeks, or every four weeks, and in and out, and then another consultant's hired down the road.
So we see that a lot and we love our MEP network and our MEP partners, they are the boots on the ground that support helping these manufacturers. And so creating a way that we can serialize their approach in manufacturers is very [00:17:00] helpful. And also giving them a chance to conduct a self-assessment before going in with initial results that they can then assess deeper and then move towards a deeper level of result has been a process that we found to be pretty, pretty helpful for the meps.
But yeah, I just think the role of a consultant is difficult. And there are so many variables involved and why that's difficult. A tool like this just arms them with better information a, a better chance to move in the right direction with that manufacturer at that manufacturer's speed.
Matt Horine: That makes a lot of sense and I think you highlighted something, or at least even in my experience, a lot of these efforts or improvement efforts start with some type of an interpretation of outcomes versus actually measurement and diagnostics and the things that you want to get to the root cause of the customers and the markets that you serve.
We talk a lot on this show about we want to increase the competitiveness of small manufacturers, smaller size [00:18:00] manufacturers on a global scale. It's been pretty volatile the last couple years. How important is a disciplined organization-wide diagnosis before action? Because manufacturing growth doesn't come in a straight line.
Like it's not something like, oh, it's just this nice, steady even thing. It's usually a rush. It's usually a demand for a product. It's something that requires sourcing and thinking and timing. How important is it that's that a firm does this in today's global environment?
Derik Ellis: I think it's really important aligning a leadership team and staff aligning around what's most important, having a holistic view.
Of what's happening, because sometimes the thing that you think is the problem is not the problem. Things are moving fast. I think a really good example is adopting a new ERP system. If you're a small manufacturer, we see it all the time. You need your process strategy. Who's gonna manage this system? All these things need to be in place before you adopt this ERP system or even decide which one you're gonna use.
And so creating a level of assessment that. Can bring leadership together [00:19:00] and, and align you around that with the process in mind after. So you're doing a gap analysis, but you're also, you're building a level of recommendation around the steps to take. I just think it, I think there's a way to do this faster today and start off on the right foot.
So I think that alignment is critical.
Molly Lenty: In addition to what Derek said, and absolutely Derek, everything you said, and I know we hear this from so many of the consultants that we work with that are working with manufacturers, but also the competitive environment that we're talking about. There's such a focus on competitive environment here locally, and a lot of our manufacturers are working on that global scale, but also as we think about it from a workforce perspective.
And each of our home communities and our assessment platform, one of the use pieces that we've had, a lot of success that it's been used for is employer of choice. And we know how competitive it [00:20:00] is for manufacturers to. Hire, and Matt, you're working in this world every day, right? How competitive of an environment it is for hiring and being able as an employer to be able to do that 360 review and really understand their own environment and as a leadership team to be able to do that.
Look into who they are as a company to get that feedback. Also from their employees to have a really good understanding of who they are. And, uh, if their employees are saying, Hey, we would really like to have the opportunity to do more upskilling, to have more opportunity for our own employee growth, and then be able to have that map directly to resources within their local community, that maps too.
Their local workforce programs with community college or university partners. That's just another facet and an example of a use case of what our platform can [00:21:00] provide to participating companies that are wanting to leverage technology for an assessment process that connects it to real time feedback and resources that are specifically matched.
To the feedback that surfaces.
Matt Horine: That's something that is really important because we hear all the time from manufacturers about how to engage their workforce and provide those types of pathways and for upskilling and enhanced earning opportunity and all those things paired together. But you did mention it as an assessment and looking through your website and knowing you, y'all for a little while, there's a library of targeted manufacturing assessments and I think I saw over 300.
Please correct me if I'm wrong, but. How does, how many different variations of there are that and how does that process really get started? If I was a manufacturer today and I wanted to ask how to get started,
Derik Ellis: we have over 300 assessments in our library, and these are developed using expertise. We do have a lot of technology involved, [00:22:00] obviously.
These are very niche assessments from or general to niche assessments from general health, business health to go to market to industry 5.0 to quick surveying. We interchange the word assessment with survey and evaluation often as well. We've developed quite a few and we use those as samples or guides.
So when we're working with a new consulting group, they'll probably come with their own list of assessments and we'll recreate that with them. Because we are, some of our IP is the ability to rapidly rebuild an assessment that then can be used as an aggregate or at a higher level when you want to view the data.
But we can walk into an organization that has 200 assessments and recreate them pretty quickly. So that's a part of the technology. But what I will say is, yeah, we can take our sample or our library assessment and really cultivate it to be more bespoke to that group's needs, whether it's. Industry focused.
The size of the manufacturing they're working with for suppliers and [00:23:00] vendors, and then really their own internal recommendations, expertise and things that are around them all get built into this. During the assessment process, that's all surfaced, evaluated, and then deployed to the manufacturer. During a myriad of conversations,
Matt Horine: that's a really cool concept because it's taking kind of the institutional knowledge and what they think they need to assess themselves on, and maybe enhancing it in a way that actually provides some type of actionable insight or outcome, versus just a survey where it's just identifying a problem.
There are a lot of stakeholders within a business, and we touched on that with workforce. Molly made a really good point there. And what does a multi-stakeholder assessment actually look like inside a company? Is this something that you zero in on, like a specific group or of stakeholders, or do you try to do it across the board and what does that look like?
Derik Ellis: All of the above. We can single out management teams, sub management teams. We can single out employees. We can. Show how they score together. [00:24:00] We can even score how they actually are not in alignment through those assessments. And we can start with a very general assessment and it can waterfall into more specific assessments.
I think cybersecurity is a great example of that. You can take a holistic assessment and really see a gap or risk in your cybersecurity health and that could cascade into a deeper cybersecurity assessment. And. We do rely on the experts that we're working with, our MEP partners, our consulting experts, they're the layer that will take the feedback from the assessment, evaluate what they want to add to that, and of course we have a lot of technology that produces recommendations, so they become that, that layer.
Of governance.
Matt Horine: It does make a lot of sense from the standpoint of something we talked about earlier in the show, that people may have assumptions built in assumptions and the outcomes of a survey. Maybe you're uncovering something that somebody didn't know existed and it blindsides them a little bit.
[00:25:00] And so people probably receive these types of results in a lot of different ways, I'm guessing.
Derik Ellis: Absolutely. And then I think the assumptions are assumptions that can come with the consultant. Maybe I'm a lean manufacturing expert and so everyone of your problems gonna be lean manufacturing related. We wanna pull back from that a little bit to get more of a holistic view or assumptions by A CEO or the, the head of finance or head of logistics, because they're already coming to the table with the problems that they wanna solve.
And I think that we want to get a better view of, of what's really happening. And we've had tons of leaders come to us and say, we had no idea that this was. What was being felt or observed within our own manufacturing company? The same could be said about a supplier network. So evaluating a full vendor supplier network.
You want a, you want a strong relationship. You want to know that they're healthy. And so we see a lot of communication between suppliers, vendors, and their large manufacturing partners. In that regard,
Matt Horine: I bet that is probably a very assumed thing, that the [00:26:00] outcome is unexpected, right? Where people are maybe trying to solve for this big layer one problem, but it actually is layer C or D somewhere way below the fold.
That really is the, and supply chains are certainly something that people have been exposed to over the last, we wanna say a year because of terrorists, but probably like half decade, because it's basically been a supply chain war. So it's something that, unexpected outcomes, I'm sure. Are there often, Molly, what do you generally see in proofs first after these types of engagements?
Is it clarifying the gaps? Is it internal alignment? Is it confidence in the scope of either the consultant? What usually is the first order of effects on outcomes?
Molly Lenty: We work directly with the consultant, not with our job is to equip the consultant. It's to equip the expert with the tools that help provide them with the efficiency.
They've got that area of expertise. We're just providing them that, that technology that really helps them to [00:27:00] broadcast it further or to further hone in and better meet the needs of the manufacturer that they're working with. I'll tell you, when we are able to sit down and share our technology with them, they're just blown away with how much we can simplify the process for them.
Instead of them doing time intense research using a multitude of different technology tools, word PowerPoint itself, uh, researching and just all of that stuff. Some people love doing that. Most of the people that we're talking to that are experts in their field, a lot of them are engineers by trade. They really wanna get in, roll up their sleeves and maybe walk the floor of the manufacturing company that they're working with.
They wanna sit across the desk, they wanna help. They don't wanna be stuck behind their desk in their computer screen. And so we've just freed up a lot of that time for them. And where they get to spend the time is really [00:28:00] with their client. It's spending the time to provide the solution. They get to now walk in and provide a very comprehensive solution, a very comprehensive report that's not like consultants like we think about if we've participated in any other consulting contract and years prior, it's probably looked like something that we already have in the back of our minds.
And I've participated with many in my prior careers and most of 'em have gone very well. It's typically one, one construct already in mind. This is something that is very boutique and very specific to the findings from participating in the assessment. So they get to bring them this, where they roll up their sleeves, they're walking through all the findings, and they've got the very specific matched recommendations to offerings that are just matched perfectly to the responses that have been provided.
And then they get to dig in on the what's next, the next steps. The follow up [00:29:00] and the let's tackle this project together. So they're excited and it really becomes that relationship. We don't call them our clients, they're our partners that we get to work with, and that's the best thing about Vessel.
Everybody that works with Vessel, it's so much about our culture and you know who we are and what we do, and we're all about being able to help people. That's the core of our mission. And we, we all signed on to this lofty goal to create this technology because we truly care about these small to medium sized businesses that don't have access to these resources.
Otherwise, a lot of them live in rural states or they live in areas that they're so busy. Every small business owner that I know. I'm married to one, and my son's a small business owner, and I mean, all know small business owners, right? They're doing a million things. They're moving a million miles an hour.
They don't have time to be doing a lot of the things that [00:30:00] our technology pulls back the curtain, and it provides those resources at their fingertips. So we get to come in every day and we know that we're a part of the solutions team, even if we're just constructing the technology and providing it to the experts that then get a handover and be a part of the solution and the package delivery.
Derik Ellis: I do wanna touch on something too. I love that. And, uh, something you said a little bit ago about the report that these consultants will deliver. One thing that I do love that we see over and over again is that there's an actual path. There's solutions, there are things that can actually be tangible or actionable for these manufacturers to take part in.
Even if they don't end up working with the consultant, and so we're seeing this over and over again. Matt, you were saying earlier about, you know, conducting a survey and maybe you get a Starbucks gift card or something out of it. I don't think that's enough. If you're giving your time and your team's giving your time, you really need something value of value given back.
I think that's one thing that [00:31:00] we've really embarked on, is making sure that the report recommendations, I'll just say the report. It comes back to the manufacturer through the expert. It gives them a gift. It gives them something they can, they can do something with it. They can take it, they can operationalize it themselves.
Often it's easier to work with a consultant, but I've heard over and over again that the manufacturers are impressed by what they're able to take from that. And in most cases, our partners aren't charging for these assessments. In most cases, this is added value for participating with them and giving them a chance to work with you.
So. I think that's just really cool.
Matt Horine: It is. I think that's something really important to highlight is that, would it be safe to say that the platform and the concept and how you, you go through these assessments and diagnostics, it supports expert judgment rather than replaces it?
Derik Ellis: Absolutely.
Matt Horine: Yeah. It's something that's, it seems, has been a big concern for a lot of folks with artificial intelligence and people thinking that they're just plugging jobs into the system at this point, and we see it every day.
There's something new every day that's coming out. [00:32:00] And it hasn't been exactly what everybody thought it would be, which is this wholesale replacement, but it's more of an augmentation. And it sounds like you're at the forefront of that for consultants and being able to provide value right upfront.
Derik Ellis: Absolutely. Our platform is built foundationally, very solid. It is a multi-tenant platform. We protect people's data. It's all that's very important for us. And when we do bring ai, and we do use AI on our product, but when we bring it to the product, it's really on the surface of the product. The product itself is not built from AI from the floor up, so feel pretty confident that we'll be able to evolve with how AI is evolving.
At the same time, keeping a lot of the confidence and the structure of the technology independent, if that. It's hard to know what to do next with ai.
Matt Horine: The great news is that you're now at our show and our guests we're batting a thousand on this approach to people's real world experience with artificial intelligence not being some dystopian [00:33:00] thing that has taken over shop floors and taken over financial reporting.
It's augmented and helped in so many ways. And I thinking about that and because it is such a big macro trend, zooming out a little bit and looking at this from a reindustrialization competitiveness scale. If dozens or hundreds of manufacturers used a disciplined diagnostics approach similar to this, what kind of ecosystem level visibility becomes possible?
Where's the world of the possible, which is something that you both are building every day.
Derik Ellis: If you've been through our system, you've taken a survey or an assessment, we're able to visualize that. We're able to start making decisions based on that, and we're able to pull the aggregate data up. So in real time, we're getting feedback from the assessment takers.
We know this is coming from actual manufacturers we're, we do rely on bringing other levels of intelligence in, but we're able to create a whole view for an organization that maybe they didn't have before when it comes to where's the aggregate [00:34:00] workforce understanding for aerospace manufacturers in North Idaho, or whereas these things aren't necessarily as easy to come by and we're able to, through this process, start giving them some tools that they can collect that data.
Molly Lenty: And then if you look at that from a whole ecosystem perspective and predictability around, um, economic development factors and cottage industries and deficit around recruiting companies, upskilling, working with higher education, or even that full continuum of education, there's so much visibility. Data.
Data provides so much in way, as we all know, so much in way around. Predictability and investment in people and infrastructure and there's just, there's so much that can be done with just being able to get ahead of understanding
Derik Ellis: and we love the source being directly from the manufacturing. You, you think about [00:35:00] things that AI can CR recreate and create today where you can interview 20,000 people that look like X, Y, and Z and get a response and understand them so much better.
We still want to be asked. And that's the other piece of this. I want information to come from me, uh, especially if you want to interpret what I want or what's happening in my world. So we believe that's very important.
Matt Horine: That's foundational that human in the loop mentality. And we were talking with, I think we, we have a mutual connection, Andrew at Red Balloon, and we were talking about artificial intelligence.
The hiring process and how it's basically generating the job requisition and then the candidate is using it and they're just talking to each other and nobody's getting hired in the meantime. So you just have, you have this kind of overshoot of great, here's some really great data sets, but there's no human to act on it or to infer what that means and to act that out.
Which Molly, maybe this is a little bit more to what you've worked on in your history, but how can. Regional leadership use these aggregated insights [00:36:00] to identify systemic gaps. So if we're zooming all the way out now and looking at it from state level, a federal level, because we talk a lot on this show about, hey, there's some industrial policy taking shape, like a national industrial strategy.
There's a little bit more to it at the state level. Some states are more ambitious than others, but do you see this as bridging that gap as well?
Molly Lenty: Absolutely. Look at automation if we know that certain. Certificates. Let's just, let's say on upskilling, if we know that is going to be required as part of automating certain technology, manufacturing of certain types of products, and we are absolutely going to have to upskill existing workforce, but then also ensure that it is integrated into the continuum of education.
We look at it from a K through 12 perspective as well as higher education. How are students being in exposed to, introduced to that type of [00:37:00] technology? We're assuming it's taking place, but in our rural school districts, if that is not being surfaced as a need in manufacturing and how are students going to have that opportunity ahead of them, it's, there's so much of that's taking place.
And if we're not all working together in the same direction, we're doing a disservice not only to our employers, our manufacturers, but also to our future workforce. And we know that our workforce, it's going to become, it's decreasing. We've got the workforce cliff that is ahead of us. That's a real thing, and it's going to be even more competitive across the different industries.
For available talent. So the more information that we have, the more that we can be, the more that we can be creative and that we can be strategic, and that we can just get ahead of this and be really thinking about unintended impacts, but also how can we be sharing information and being really [00:38:00] thoughtful about what is needed from a workforce perspective.
More that we can be making smart decisions.
Matt Horine: Alright. That's the big theme for this movement, especially when we talk about then not just the workforce participation, but even small mid-size business ownership, that transition to new ownership and. What people are looking to do when they step in the door, when they take over that business, or how you find those pathways into manufacturing as a worker.
This is the part of the show where we look into the future a little bit, and I don't know why we still have the benchmark year 2030. It's getting closer. We always talk about like 20, 30, like we're getting a little closer. I might have to move that window out a little bit. So a little bit. Sad, we're just, we're just in February, so I'll get over it.
But by 2030 or within the next five to 10 years, we'll just call it that. What would success look like in terms of how small manufacturers are diagnosed, aligned, and developed across the United States? And Derek, we'll start with your prediction there.
Derik Ellis: Our mission, and this is my prediction, is a more coordinated intelligence for regional [00:39:00] manufacturing ecosystems.
With all the buzzwords out of that, uh, just more coordinated intelligence where we're not all competing in, in that regard and just. Our goal is to strengthen small manufacturing, and maybe that turns into other things like, uh. Trading environments and some other things that we don't talk about very often, but just strengthening that manufacturing base regionally, I think is my aspirational prediction and need,
Matt Horine: hopefully that is the case because it seems to be showing up fast and things are moving in that direction.
Molly, in the next five to 10 years, what kind of transformation do you see taking place across the industrial space? In the same way,
Molly Lenty: I'm gonna think about it more holistically because I, I think, talked about some of those positions as we're thinking about. The workforce cliff, and specifically for manufacturing roles, those roles that are going to need to be backfilled or even upskilled in order to meet the needs.
As it pertains to automation and manufacturing, [00:40:00] but there's also a cottage industry around manufacturing that we're gonna need to make sure that we're solving for. We are going to need accountants, we're going to need marketing folks, we're going to need healthcare. We're going to need all of those additional role, and we're going to have to ensure that we've got leadership that's looking across all of our workforce industry perspectives.
And manufacturing, in order for it to be resilient is going to need to ensure that it's got all of those other roles filled as well, and leadership is going to need to be the key. As we look at the strength of the industry and as we look at the strength of our US economy and making sure that we're using technology to really bolster that, and when I think about the role of Vessel, that's where we're in a really exciting moment and time.
Because we are looking out, we're wanting to make sure that we're serving manufacturing. That's where we started. [00:41:00] That's Derek's background. Really working in the trenches, understanding the needs of manufacturers. That's why we started, that's why we pivoted to making sure that we had technology to meet these needs.
The more that we created our platform, knowing that we would be doing a disservice not only to manufacturing but to these other industries if we didn't branch out and ensure that our platform was there to, to help support all industries that support us, our US economy. And so that's why we are looking.
We took off the blinders and we said, we've got this technology, we've got this platform, we've got a lot of expertise. Across our country. We need to make sure that we are providing this and equipping those experts that are helping our small to medium sized businesses and are helping our US economy because we are at a critical juncture that we need to make sure that we're doing everything that we can to be helping each other right now.
Matt Horine: Absolutely. It's a rising tide lifts all kind of scenario where every sector and [00:42:00] fortunate for this group on this podcast, it's historically manufacturing has led the way for big economic booms. So I think. That's a pretty exciting prospect over the next couple of years. Where can our listeners go to find out more about Vessel and maybe get in touch with you if this is something that could be the right fit for them?
Derik Ellis: They can go to our website, contacts to their website, our phone number's on, you can go through LinkedIn to get ahold of members of the team. We're pretty accessible.
Matt Horine: Excellent. We will be sure to link all the contact information in the episode. Derek and Molly, thank you very much for shining a light on all of this today and it's a fascinating thing to that we're seeing this digital transformation taking shape in manufacturing.
We appreciate you coming on.
Molly Lenty: Absolutely.
Derik Ellis: Thank you, Matt.
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