The Single Source of Truth: Autodesk Fusion 360 Manage Implementation

MICHAEL BEST: Welcome to Autodesk University in 2002. I'm glad everybody is here, and we're all glad that we're all in the same location and not watching on a video or something that was streaming from somewhere else. So welcome. Hope everyone enjoys this class.

This is a trial-and-error that we went through in order to get our 360 Manage-- Fusion 360 Manage in place. And it's been a challenge and it's been an adventure all at the same time.

So part of my description is cheaper, faster, better, pick two. This is in engineering and most of anything else that is a standard. You can only pick two out of those three. But for us, it's, why not all three? When planning to tie the processes and data sources together there's no better option than using Autodesk Fusion 360 Manage. And couple it up with Vault Pro.

So we have everything in one place at that time. And this class will showcase the journey of a mid-sized company-- we're not very big, 380 people, something like that-- that had the audacity to create a global solution to unite resources and projects in one instance on a global scale. We'll walk through the steps and some of the missteps, but not many along the way, and cover what to look out for.

My name is Michael Best. I'm the Engineering Technical Manager here at ME Global, and I'm located in Tempe, Arizona, a suburb of Phoenix. I'm responsible for the mechanical design groups, coordinating support for high-profile projects, Fusion 360 Manage implementation, and as well as ensuring that design goals and objectives are robust and accomplished accurately globally.

I've been to AU 13 times in the last 27 years, so I've really enjoyed the camaraderie there, meeting people-- meeting new people and learning new things that are coming up in Autodesk software. I've also sat in some discussion panels, some focus groups, and I've presented six classes, and also assisted and aided in other classes.

I've got over 30 years' experience using AutoCAD and it's many renditions, and there's been quite a few, and some that occur in the same release. I've been using Inventor since it was codenamed Rubicon back in 1999 and 2000. And here's the email that I can be reached at if you want to follow up with any questions or anything else that goes with that.

So MF Global at a glance, we're a global company, as in the name. But we're also part of another group called The Electmetal Group. And with a billion in revenues each year, we do quite well. Our range of products are mill liners, crusher conclaves and mantles, grinding media, which is what this looks like. It looks like a great big steel ball. And this is a 3-inch diameter, we make up to 6-inch. And ground engagement tools.

Our services range from service centers to help with getting our customers to know what it is they need to do better when they are milling and grinding aggregate rocks. And then our engineering and our design services.

Globally we have over 1,000 employees. We have-- we do work in 40 countries around the world. And our manufacturing capacity is around 135,000 tons at five different foundries, and manufacturing capacity of 550,000 tons of grinding media-- the steel ball I just showed you.

So the locations we have around the world. We have two foundries in the US, one in Duluth and one here in Tempe. We also have two foundries down in Chile where our parent company is, Electmetal. And then we have the service centers down there that does a lot of the R&D and also helps with servicing our customers down there in that region. And we share that information around the world to our other centers.

We have a grinding media plant that's also in Zambia. And then a grinding media plant that's in Changshu, China, and then a foundry also in Changshou, China. And we also have an engineering division that's in China and another one that's in Chennai, India, which is not shown on here. So we have around-the-clock, around-the-world engineering going on every day, five days a week.

Now to discuss some of the things that we do, we do not build equipment, we only build replacement parts. So what our forte is is replacing the parts that are in a mine to break the rocks down so they can get them down to manageable parts and then extract the ore from those parts.

And what you see here is a rock crusher. Here's a cutaway on the right side. And then there's the pit here for dumping the rock and aggregate in there. This one here is probably one of the smaller size where they take the basketball size to softball.

But as part of the process in a mill-- or in a mine, you come down from the rock slides and the rocks that come in. So you take those things they dump into, one size to reduce it to the next, and then it gets transported down through there.

Rock crusher sizes. So you take rocks that are the size of a refrigerator, and then you break it down to a mini-fridge that would go through one of these crushers. And then that mini fridge rock size would go into another crusher that would also mill that down into the size of a basketball. And then from there, it goes from a basketball to the size of a softball.

After it's around that size and the dust and the dirt and the ore that's embedded in all of that, it all gets transferred by conveyor over to a mill which will crush it down into almost powder so they can extract the parts.

Now the parts and this crusher that we replace and sell would be the mantle here in the middle, and then these concaves on the outside. The rocks come pouring in. This here has a little jig mechanism that moves it around to break it down to a certain size. So this is a rock crusher that we replace the parts in.

Now this here is the internal at a mine where there are several mill liners here. This is the inside of one. And if you look at the liners in here, they are worn. And you see media down in here to help impact the rocks to break them up against the liners themselves. So this is a really nice shot, this fisheye view here of looking at that.

And this here is actually a liner that is designed and built to fit in one of these. So many of us grew up breaking rocks with a hammer on a sidewalk. Sometimes it seems like something to do on a bad day at work, is to go out and do that. This isn't Gold Rush. We don't do the equipment that you see in Gold Rush. That is after all of this to extract the ore out of that aggregate.

It takes a large mill to break rocks down and material to retrieve the ore, and that all comes flowing through here as it gets broken down, and then at the end is where the pulp or the ore gets extracted out of there. The bigger rocks move out and go into another mill to get them broke down even further.

And these mills can be longer than 28 feet and larger than 34 feet in diameter. So these are big, big washing machines. Technically if you really think about it, you throw tennis shoes in a washing machine or in a dryer, it tumbles around. Now amplify that a hundred times in one of these mills as they are spinning and breaking down rocks.

And the replacement liners that we cast can be as short as 3 feet long and up to 12 feet long weighing as much as 11,000 pounds, and that's a lot of steel in one piece.

So this here is a typical mill assembly that we would create for a customer so that we can replace all of the parts in that mill. And it takes about anywhere from three days to 10 days depending on the size of the mill and how many parts we're replacing. So this was a full reline for this mill here in this customer.

Now another thing that we make are the crawler pads for NASA. And I'm sure you've seen this crawler on TV as it's moved the rockets and the over to the launch pads from the assembly facility. And this is what the trackpad here looks like. This is actually what it looks like on the crawler itself. You can see how tall it is with a man standing there, and these are all in there.

So we replace these for NASA about every five to seven years depending on use, and it's becoming more prevalent now because of the velocity of these rockets that are getting produced and sent up into space.

What you see here-- and this is Artemis one rocket which is going to be fired in I think August 29, that will be fired to test manned space missions back to the moon and further into Mars. So this is on a crawler pad. About a month or so ago it was brought out to fit up against the launch mechanism and then brought back into the facility for some changes.

This thing runs at 1 mile per hour when it's loaded, 2 miles per hour when it's empty. And the distance one-way from the assembly to the launch pad is 4.2 miles. So these things have been around for about 40 years, and I think the last count is it has about 2,400 miles on it, 4.2 miles each direction.

So the learning objectives for this class is to unifying multiple sources into a cloud-based implementation. And that's going to be important. We're also going to go through managed projects, ECOs, Vault, and other resources that are going to be located in one location in that cloud source. And then learn about connecting those aspects of business in real-time on a single platform.

And the last thing is going to be multiple options to grow the business, the company, and the employees with 24/7 access to all the information in just a few clicks. But first, we're going to go through a little bit of history here. Many of you in PLM have probably heard some of this, but if you haven't, it's a recap on that.

PLM was first developed to streamline the processes to manufacture parts and products faster. And it was developed to try to cut out a lot of silos between different engineering departments. And the idea was to reduce the costs, faster concept to sales, manage or improve the quality and cost of those products.

And American Motors was the first to implement it in 1985. They were purchased by Chrysler in 1987 and Chrysler took all of that and started to produce their cars much faster before the other automotive companies realized that they were able to design their components or their parts in 18 months versus 36 months on a typical design scale.

And the first product that came out of that 1985 was the Jeep Grand Cherokee. So NASA has tried it. Since I had the trackpads on there, I gotta bring up NASA. They tried it, but has there ever been a launch that was on-budget and on-time? So it did not work out well for them, but they took the extra care to make sure that those rockets, even the space shuttle for all the launches that it had, that it was safe and that it was reliable.

So no rocket's really reliable because of the fuel that's in there. But it works out well and they've developed really well on that. So anybody from NASA in this class, sorry, but reality.

So now the objectives one-by-one. Turning clouds into resource centers. So here, we're going to talk about multiplying sources-- multiple sources into cloud-based implementation. Can I get my tacos on Taco Tuesday from the cloud? No. Initial thinking is to try to do things that are going to come from nowhere.

We all dream that food falls from the sky and it's hot and ready to eat. Well, that's not going to happen. But the reality with Fusion 360 Manage is we can put all those resources into one space, one place, and tie them all together so that they are unified and accessible.

And I'm going to be using those words many times in this presentation because that's the key to all of this, is being accessible. So we're going to do that, and then we're going to function on all of this.

Typical mantra, most companies have mantras that they try to live by, we're no different. And I've been at two other companies that did different things, too. Evolve or die. Embrace the chaos. Adapt, evolve, compete or die.

And in our business, that's a fact. If we can't compete and evolve or adapt, steel companies get cut down and we've lost a few in this country. Innovate or fail, and that's also what we're looking to do, and 360 Manage is going to help us get there.

Keep moving or risk getting caught. Lead, follow, or get out of the way. So all of these are mantras that companies have used to try to keep people engaged in moving forward. Now in the beginning we were using Vault Pro, and we've been using it since 2015.

So this was our workflow. And this is a typical workflow, but it's highly structured and not very flexible. And we would have issues sometimes where things would get stuck and the Vault admin would have to go in and either change it, move it, or do something different with it in order to get it back in the flow and working correctly.

After several meetings and discussions, this is what the proposed workflow to build in Fusion 360 Manage, this is what it was going to look like. And this is where we started with, but as we started developing our 360 Manage product, this is what we ended up with.

We have a few more gates in here to manage, but we have complete reliability on everything. Nothing gets stuck. The correct people are notified regardless of where it's at in the workflow so that projects can continue to move and there's updates on how those things move and what we're doing to keep them up to date and efficient.

Now as I started with the cheaper, faster, better, you're going to connect all of that? Good luck. Well, again, things we've all heard. And typically you can only choose two, because you lose something if you try to do three. So we're going to do all of that to try to reduce our time and make things faster, better.

Well, we're going to utilize the workflows that we've created in Fusion 360 Manage to improve the efficiency of the drawing, design, checking, reviews, releases, and always keep the account managers up to date on their projects. They really like it when you do that.

And then cheaper. This can be tricky to define, but when your work product is improved and released to manufacturing, the overhead cost is reduced and can be extended to the customer initially. Hopefully. That's always-- it's always a struggle.

But now we're into hoarding as to why we're looking at Fusion 360 Manage, is unification is hard. Everybody wants to keep their own stuff. People inherently are hoarders even if they say they're not.

When it comes to technology, no matter the scale, notepads, Post-it notes, Microsoft Notepad, Word, Excel, emails, we're all used to gather information for tracking projects, processes, sales, and shipping, but it could all be connected and located in one place. Or input in one location for all access, and to the parts in the project. Sounds like blasphemy, doesn't it? Well, it's not.

So our first steps in stepping into Fusion 360 Manage, again, was we had to clean up our Vault. Our Vault was extremely pristine like everyone else in this class who's watching this. No it's not. You have stuff everywhere, things-- projects are not in the right order, they're not in the right ECO folder, they're not in the Items Master folder in the right place.

So we had to go through and make sure everything was cleaned up and in the correct place for management. And then we went through and evaluated several different PLM systems for flexibility, accessibility, simplicity, and connectable to multiple resource. And that's important.

Because we use a lot of external other software that's not Autodesk or that's not Microsoft to maintain a lot of our processes and do that. So we had to find a partner who had already had those tools that we could do that connections, and that was Jitterbit.

Jitterbit has a lot of their information already done, their jitter packs are already built, so it's a matter of connecting those things together to be able to do that.

So this is currently what we're doing in our first phase. We've connected our Vault to Fusion 360 Manage with Jitterbit being that connector source and software. Now in the next section, I like having my information in several locations so I don't lose it. I have actually heard this before and they kept things-- duplicates in different files, different folders, and in different locations on the servers.

But the thing is is when you make a change on one thing, it's out of date on the other three places that you stored it. With 360 Manage, we can have everything in the cloud, one location, one version, one revision, accessible, up to date at all times. So in this section here, to manage the projects, the ECOs, the Vault, other resources all in one location.

But first, you have to have a toolbox. And everything in one location? Really? That'll never work. You're just asking for trouble. Well, every man wants more tools. Every time you go to the store, one of the things you do when you go with your wife, she goes off looking for bed clothes and pillow cases, the guys go into the automotive area or into the hardware area to look around. You seldom see a guy looking to smell candles while he's with his wife.

So a mechanic needs tools. In today's changing world, everything changes in three to six months, so you're always looking at tools. And like most companies, we have tools, we have plenty of tools, but do we really need them all when most don't connect to other resources?

So with Fusion 360 Manage, the idea is to reduce all that noise from the many other tools and place them all in one location in the company and for everywhere use. Now here's a guy, he's changing-- he's listening to a battery, I don't know why. And then we have the Snap-on toolbox over here. I don't have that, that's not mine. I just took the picture from Snap-on.

So when we started, insanity abounds. Starting a new project company-wide, there are always-- each department need to be considered.

Everyone wants their pet spreadsheet that they like to use to keep their information on, a Word format that they want to use, or everything that they use today the same in the new project. How many times has new software being released and the guy says, well, I want it just like I've been using for the last three years? Well, you're not progressing if you don't change.

So with 360 Manage, we decided to try to use it as a clean slate, to project and streamline what everyone else is comfortable with in a simple way. We can still have our bold in our approach. So how bold are we? Well, insanity abounds. Eight workspaces, 21 subworkspaces all connected to start right out of the gate.

Again, insanity. Most companies use two or three to start and then build up from there. Here it is, we're blowing out eight workspaces and 21 workspaces. We're going to release incrementally with training staggered to bring the groups up slowly in the new system.

And the reason for this is we don't want to train everybody all at once and then all of a sudden we have dumpster fires that we're trying to fix and delegate and replace and modify all at once. So we're going to do it incrementally to bring these guys up, but they're going to have eight workspaces in 21 workspaces-- subworkspaces to work with.

And then supply chain and quality will be right out of the box. We don't have to make hardly any changes to those, there's going to be a few things we're going to modify, but it's already built in to Fusion 360 Manage, so it's already there, and we're going to use what we have without any modification to that.

And here's what the start-- what it looks like. Again, I mentioned the eight workspaces and 21 workspaces-- and this is how they're all set up on how we're going to create our new workflows, our new work, and everything that goes into what we're going to be doing with this company.

And they're off. Well, additional workspaces will be released in phases. The first three workspaces and subworkspaces are all connected to the Vault Pro. So if I go back and look, you're going to see the crushers, the mill liners, and the other one, they're all connected in.

Creating ECOs and connecting files from the Vault Pro for reference, they'll go in once we create an ECO-- especially if a customer is existing, we'll be able to connect that customer to the previous files if the sales engineer or sales manager wants to be able to bring up what was used before as a reference, and then we're going to make subtle changes to it to fit what their new design needs to be. So we'll have access to that.

Additional files we're going to place into Fusion. Pictures, sketches, scans, rough quotes-- and when I say scans, I'm not talking about taking a piece of paper going to the scanner and putting in there, although that will be done. But we do a lot of 3D scans on the site. FARO scanning and Creaform scanning we use for parts, and on the sites we'll do a whole mill with a scan.

So we're going to start storing all of that in there. Right now it's either OneDrive, Box, somewhere else that these are stored, or on a network. So now we want to put them all into 360 Manage so we have one source for everything.

And then we're going to remove the pain and suffering. Those sales guys can be delicate, sometimes, so we want to try to make it easy for them to use Fusion 360 Manage to-- maybe they'll buy us a meal some time. And then the additional processes will be added after initial phase or released in phases.

So we're going to dump all these out, but we're going to drop in additional workspaces for other areas in the foundry and in the company.

So this is a typical manufacturing ECO creation by the sales guy. Keep it simple and try to keep these guys entertained at the same time. So we have a simple form for the account managers. The asterisks in there indicate properties required. So they won't be able to save this like they can in Vault without making sure that the proper property is put in as they are filling this out.

Future connection to Salesforce. We're going to be deploying Salesforce in about eight months. So we will have an interface in Salesforce.

When they are putting in their information, that will Jitterbit connect over to Fusion and start to create this workspace in here in order to-- this instant in order to be able to start filling this out so when they get done in Salesforce, they'll be able to jump in here and finish out the rest of the information that the foundry needs in order to get started on it, and as well as engineering.

Again, we'll be creating ECOs on the fly and the Vault as well because it's going to connect to Vault at the same time. And notification to others responsible on the team of what is coming. So everyone will be responsible, everyone will know what's going on.

And then engineering notification for early planning, and that's important to me and my group, because we need to know what's coming up instead of going in and searching in the Vault to see what's coming up.

And this is a typical addition to just putting in the base information into the workspace, is, they can add the attachments, as you see here. They can also review the project from start to finish. They can always open it up and look at it.

We can attach sight pictures. Again, scans, notes. Additional tasks can be created. If we have a customer who has some stuff and we're scanning it and we put the scans in there, we can send it over and have our simulation guys go through and review that based off what the initial-- or the original part was that went in the mill and then see how it wore. And then we can simulate how we can try to make that better on the next product that we shipped to that customer.

And then we can create the task and the managed items there, which is if there is a previous ECO that was created in Fusion, we can go back and grab that and attach it to it as well. So different things like that we can maintain Fusion. Again, one location.

So copy and paste rocks my world. How many people have you seen where they will work on a project, they'll fill out a form, put the information in there, and then 25% of that information they take and put into another form that's going to go to another department, fill that out, copy some of that, and then paste it into another one that goes to another department? I see it all the time. We are no different.

We have a department in the foundry who has six Excel files when they're done, four PDFs, and then there's another three or four sheets that are handwritten with the parts that went through, the amount of steel that was poured into that casting and everything else instead of being able to have a tablet, put that in, and it goes right to the cloud, it goes right to that source so those guys in planning know exactly where everything is and how it's going to be done.

So simple connections. I need to copy and paste everything from one application, how does that save time? Well, like I said, some companies, that is saving time because that's all they've ever done and that's what they're used to doing. As technology increases, so does the opportunity for more applications to use.

Our focus is to reduce the application and standardize the information we use. So what else can we put in Fusion other than connecting to the Vault? Well, I mentioned that we're going to be connecting Salesforce. That's going to be coming up, as I said, in the second quarter of next year. We're also going to be connecting SAP to Fusion 360 Manage, and it will also be connected to Salesforce as well.

So we'll have that triangle there of information that is always stored in Fusion 360 Manage for the engineering side. And we have to remember, this is an engineering tool for us, so we have to utilize it from that standpoint.

We're also going to integrate Microsoft Office into Fusion. How many times do you get quotes or whatever you do in Excel or in Word? And it stores on your laptop, it stores on the network, it stores on a thumb drive. We're going to be able to put that information into Fusion 360 Manage with that ECO or that proposal or project so it's always stored there. Same thing for emails.

We all get emails every day. Different groups get different things about the same project, but not everybody talks. So we're going to be able to store those emails also into Fusion 360 Manage.

And we're also going to connect to SQL Server. All of our existing and historical data, we're going to build a connection to connect to SQL server so we can pull those old projects up into Fusion as well, too. Nothing gets lost. We're going to be able to import and use everything in one location.

I know I sound like a broken record when I say one location or a single location. It's paramount, that's what we're looking at doing and that's what we will be doing-- or are doing.

How many times does files from a customer or from even your own people get stored into Box or OneDrive? We're no different. We have that same problem. We have people storing stuff everywhere. I can put it as an attachment in Fusion 360 Manage, it stays with the project.

So what else can we add? Well, here's a list of what we are looking at doing after we do this initial blowout. So here it is. We have items and BOMs, which is already included. Project management, we're looking at massaging another app that's already in Fusion to be able to do that.

Custom KPIs charts for the projects. So the account managers can look at the dashboard and see those. We're going to include R&D so that we can track all of that. Foundry workspaces, sampling material, quality molds, patterns, and reviews that they do internally that we can put in there without having to pull up two or three different data points in the server.

Shipping will be able to use this so that they know when they're shipping stuff out, and then we can let our customers with an email or just show them a screenshot of something and when they're going to get it.

Maintenance, there's maintenance on equipment all the time. We're going to try to put some predictive maintenance modules in there so that we can maintain stuff and make sure it's on the correct list for updating and review-checking, looping, the whole thing.

Automation projects will be added into this. So we are currently doing some automation in the foundry. I know this sounds odd for castings, but it is a process and it is working out well. Vendor access for quoting. I'll get into this more later. Customer access to view anticipated delivery dates, that's kind of iffy. Usually you don't want your customers to know when it's coming or if it's going to be late. So I should have put an asterisk or a question mark behind that one.

Standards, training records, documents, timekeeping projects, other things that will be added into Fusion 360 Manage. And this is just the short list. We're consulting out some additional things to add to that as well.

So a single source available to all connected worldwide. This is our overall goal and this is where we are going to be. So we're going to learn about multiple options to grow the business, the company, and the employees with 24/7 access to all the information with just a few clicks.

And that's important, because clicking the mouse, going through, searching for stuff, some people don't realize how many times they do that, and then if you ask somebody who really likes to be joking or whatever, somebody asked me one time, what's this what's the strongest muscle in my body? It's my index finger from all the clicks and picks I have to do all the time to try to find stuff and to use in CAD as well, too. So it's not your heart, it's your index finger.

So the connections. Fusion 360 Manage is a product lifecycle management platform that connects your people, processes, and data across departments and geographies. It gives you the flexibility to start today, expand tomorrow with PLM that adapts to your business. And that's from Autodesk's website. So that's the can thing there.

But it's true. We can do that across the world with the implementation that we're doing. So we're going to overcome boundaries and borders because Fusion 360 Manage doesn't have a timeline. It doesn't go to bed at night, it doesn't have to wake up in the morning. It's always on and it's always there.

VPN is questionable in some countries. So we have issues where it drops out while they're trying to put in ECOs in the Vault. If they have Wi-Fi or internet, they can go right into Fusion 360 Manage from any electronic device that's capable of an internet.

Different languages. This is a good one here because most countries all teach English, and this will be managed from the US, so it'll all be in English. But there are modules where you can change some things to fit a language. Different time zones, we don't care. It's up and on all the time.

Various communication options. Well, you can always use a phone, you can use a laptop, you can use a tablet, or you can use a computer. So that's how you can communicate with all of that and actually put in notes in Fusion 360 Manage that other responsible engineers or people will get notifications when something changes or there needs to be a change. And again, we're using one cloud to do all of this.

Sharing is caring. Well, here's a little graph here that shows all the obstacles that we're going to include in Fusion 360 Manage. Right now we're looking at the account managers and engineering, but we're going to expand out to those others. And we're going to talk about those a little bit.

So most companies have many groups or subbusinesses within them, and most of these companies' units create their own silos. Nobody does that, do they? They keep their own stuff and they don't share it, and when they do, it's just piecemeal, little bits here and there, and you never really get the full picture. Fusion 360 Manage is going to take that away.

ME Global is no different in that regard. We do have silos here. Although we've been working to try to break them up a little bit and then make them all inclusive, so we're working on that. But with all those units, the opportunity to share across the board is going to be working well with 360 Manage.

Fusion will allow us to connect anywhere, anyone, to the same information around the world. And I've said this probably three times now. So with a laptop, Wi-Fi, Fusion 360 Manage is easy to connect. So we have Wi-Fi, a laptop, we have an iPhone and an iPad here-- no, that's not an iPhone, it's a Samsung, sorry.

So we have options here that everything can be used. We can use the tablets in the factory or in the foundry to be able to do that. If you have a factory, you can use it there, too.

So we're going to get into the account managers. What are we going to gain by them using 360 Manage? Well, they'll be able to put it in easily. A proposal or an actual order or a manufacturing option that we need to put in, and they can access it anywhere.

From customer site, they can pull up previous designs to show the customer what we did in the past. And we can show them designs that possibly we can make changes to and they can put that in there for a proposal with those changes and notes to show how they would work.

And then you can also check on a delivery. Again, customer always wants their stuff last week or last month, so they're probably going to want to know that, so that's an option there.

Engineering-wise. Well, we get an early notification when a proposal or a manufacturing or a new order goes in where there's changes. So we're going to know that's coming down the line so we can start to prepare for that. And again, we're going to prepare and schedule to work, staffing ahead of time to do that.

And we're going to identify any design issues early on. That maybe a customer wants to change how a design is because they think it's going to work better with what they need to do. Well, we can address that by looking at that design early when it's put into Fusion 360 Manage and we get a notification and we go ahead and pull that up to identify that.

And then we can also coordinate with the foundry on the lead times. Now if you've ever worked with a foundry in steel, it's never a couple of weeks, it's usually several months before that gets delivered. Because you've got to build the pattern, you've got to get the steel, you've got to get the alloy-- you've got everything together and then pour it and then cool it, finish it, and then ship it. So nothing like that ever happens quickly in a foundry.

Material properties. This is tricky on this because you have several materials and alloys and they have various uses across the board. It depends on the aggregate going in, it depends on the mill type or the crusher type machine that is there that these will fit in and work with. So that's where we have to know how they're used.

And then what type of aggregate is used. We can anticipate knowing the type of aggregate running through these mills and crushers what type of material an alloy to use to better increase the longevity and life of that for the customer, and make sure the proper mix to ensure the stability of that product.

We don't want it to crack or break after it's been in for a couple of months. We want our liners to last six to nine months, and that's what we designed to. And we also do a lot of sampling with our products. We want to make sure that they are going to hold up and last. So we run through a lot of those scenarios to make sure that's going to be there.

Now back to foundry management. You saw this in a previous slide where we're going to try to put in production schedules. Rotations. Most people are cross-trained so they don't get stagnant in one location doing the same thing all the time.

And we want to be able-- if we have a sickness or we have storms where people can't get in, that we can actually move people around to accommodate what we need to do. So we can manage that from the rotations in there.

Property-- or project management and the material flow. So you want to make sure that you're melting down material enough for five molds, not come up too short, and not come up with a lot that is going to be thrown out.

So you need to be able to manage that and knowing the amount of steel that it's going to go-- that's going to be poured into these, we can predict that and make sure that we melt that down to fill five castings or six, however many that are going to be able to do with a full slurry pot.

And be able to track casting patterns repairs. We call patterns, but most people call them molds. So over time these things need repair, so we can track that. If it gets repaired too much, then we need to replace it and order a new one. So we can also track the patterns going through the workshop when they get prepped for the new casting and for the new flow.

So we can try to set that up and help them manage that so we get a good proper flow and we get things turned around and out in time. Maintenance schedule, again, on the repairs. Again, if we've had one that we've had to repair many times, well, we need to replace that.

And then the foundry supplies. They go through a lot of things in the foundry. You'd be surprised how much stuff breaks, wears out, or just gets worn down. So being able to track those supplies and try to predict when we're going to need more rather than wait till the box is empty and then we have to order it.

Vendor engagement. So on this, we can work with our bolt suppliers. We also pack and send the bolts needed for these relines. And these things are anywhere from 16 inches long to 28 inches long, and they are made of hardened steel, and they will take a beating and stay in place.

Some liners have rubber backing because they're trying to cut down on the sound or they're either trying to cut down on the wear and tear of the drum, remember, this thing looks like a wash-- or like a dryer that these are mounted to.

So if you figure the paddles that are in a dryer and throw tennis shoes in there, these liners look similar to that except they're all the way around and there's a lot of them. So sometimes we have to apply rubber depending on the customer and the mill that it's going in.

Material suppliers. We're always looking for steel, we're always looking for rubber, we're always looking for other components and different alloy types that goes into that.

And we have wear parts. We have to make sure that we keep that up to date and we have suppliers that we can put an RFQ out to see who's going to give us the best deal and the best delivery. Same thing for shop suppliers. So if we need materials, rags, any of that other stuff, we can get that and get it pre-ordered and in place.

And we want to protect the planet. So we do accept a lot of recycle. So we work with multiple suppliers to get that recycle to bring in to-- and then mix it in with the alloys, and then we test it again to make sure that it is going to work as it is designed.

Now the operations, this is not surgery, but it could be. So this encompasses all the previous areas that I just listed above in this. And it's a matter of getting all of those workflow processes all in place, all working together, all talking to each other, but they're all in one location. Remember, we're going to put this in the cloud, everybody has access, so it's going to be in one location for all of that.

We're also going to have plant KPIs. And this is important so they know the production that they're doing. And how much material is moving through, how many patterns are actually flowing through the foundry, getting filled, getting ground, getting checked, getting quality-checked, and getting tested to make sure that the hardness is where it's supposed to be.

And all of this affects their bonus. So the idea there is to make sure that everything moves quickly, effectively, accurately, and the quality is at the utmost top of what we can do with what we have. And then we can also see customer deliveries. So we can know when we're delivering on time. And that's the important part. Like I said, nobody wants their stuff a week late, they don't want it a day late.