Marty Groover: 0:03

makes human more productive because the human only has to do the things the machine can't figure out. And that's really what industry 4.0 is. A lot of people think it's robots replacing humans. It's not it's really about driving the productivity of the human and use the human, where we need them to take the man on a loop where we don't need them. And then they're not overwhelmed, and have the system drive the results that we want by codifying processes.

Tom Raftery: 0:30

Good morning, good afternoon, or good evening wherever you are in the world. This is the digital supply chain podcast, the number one podcast focusing on the digitization of supply chain. And I'm your host, global vice president or SAP. Tom Raftery. Hey, everyone. Welcome to the digital supply chain podcast. My name is Tom Raftery with SAP and with me on the show today I have my special guest, Marty, would you like to introduce yourself? Yeah, Tom.

Marty Groover: 0:57

Thanks for having me on Marty Groover. I'm a partner and a chief technology officer for a company called C five EMI a little bit about my background. I'm a retired Navy officer spent 21 years in the Navy driving ships and working on weapon systems. And I used sap in the Navy, which was kind of interesting. I learned a lot about it and then transitioned over to Caterpillar I was a manufacturing engineer. And I spent 12 years in manufacturing different roles, operations, manager maintenance, and then facility manager and I deployed SAP again, so I got to learn SAP used it then went back to as 400 old green screen systems and then back to SAP. So it's sort of like going from Mac to PC back and forth. You know, it's kind of a mind war. But I did appreciate the SAP SAP GUI after I went back to the old system, but I complained about it enough, I use it my factory and we just turn things around. And they put me in charge of all SAP deployments in the Navy, or excuse me, all SAP deployments at Caterpillar globally. And I really learned a lot about the power of the core system and then we started doing industry for Dotto sort of Lighthouse projects in a couple factories, predictive maintenance, real time location tracking, things like that really leverage the core system, but started adding that foundational data. Lo and behold, I really love that found out I had a passion for it started in 2018, we started a company C 5am I and what we do for our customers is we install industry for Dotto solutions, sa P solutions, and really leverage that digital core to drive predictive maintenance digital supply chain. So excited to be on the show and looking forward to it.

Tom Raftery: 2:34

Fantastic. And where does the name si five EMI come from?

Marty Groover: 2:37

Well, that's, that's interesting. So one of the roles I had in the Navy, I was on an admiral staff and I was responsible for the whole strike groups computer system. So it stands for command control computers, communication, collaboration and intelligence at the time, we added management insights, because we really believe live data is the only way to have the situational awareness really drive business outcomes. So we took that name, and I love it because everybody always asked us what it means. But for us, it's creating that common operational picture that everybody can do better with and have the same single version of the truth.

Tom Raftery: 3:14

Okay, fascinating. And you just published a book, Marty, tell me about that.

Marty Groover: 3:19

Yeah, I'm excited. It's been a long journey. It's been in my head, you know, one of those things you just have to do is driving at me. And I really see myself as Marty McFly, I've seen the future in the military. And then I kind of got in got into the manufacturing, I went, Wow, I thought I was behind in the military. All those things I learned were really powerful. And speed of advance.

Tom Raftery: 3:42

For you to advance is the name of the book here you've published? Yes, sir.

Marty Groover: 3:45

It's the name of the book. And it's also a thing that you do in the military as a as also the deck. You know, we're always responsible for me making sure the ship was on time where it's supposed to be and we have to drive at the most economical speed. And so the captain will always come up and say, you know, what's the speed of advance and you never want to get it creeped up to over 20 knots, because it's hard to get where you're supposed to be. So you're always managing actual versus plan. And for me in manufacturing, especially is responsible for a p&l and a factory. Everything has to be measured in order to hit those numbers and hit those strategic goals and quality and safety and velocity, all those things you get measured on so it was a great translation. The key piece is you have to understand how to converge people process and technology to really leverage the new technology coming out. That's one thing I've learned over the last few years doing this.

Tom Raftery: 4:36

And why why did you write the book?

Marty Groover: 4:40

I really I go to customers a lot and I start seeing everybody's trying to do something they know they have to do something with industry for Dotto. I mean you're in that business, you see it coming, but a lot of people don't understand they think they can just the technology is a silver bullet. It's not if you look at the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the end of the day Third, industrial revolution of silicon age, the chip, whatever you want to call, it kind of ended around 2011. And we've actually gone down in productivity. Why is that happened? Too much technology, too much data, but it's not converged properly with the people. And it's not driving the productivity. So what I thought was, is I'll write a book. That's not how to do industry for that. Oh, but how to think about getting yourself set up to really build the foundation to leverage the technology.

Tom Raftery: 5:27

Okay, and how does speed of advanced the Navy nautical term? How does that How do you translate that into industry for that, oh, what's the what's the connection,

Marty Groover: 5:38

the technology that we have now on the technology, we had the Navy, so at the end of the Vietnam War, air warfare got so fast that man, man in a radar trying to track a missile going Mach 2.5 was happening, more ships took missile hits, and things like that the Navy realized, we've got to have a new system that takes the man out of the loop, a system an engine, but also a system, measuring it. And with algorithms driving those behaviors without a human in the loop, for instance, tracking Oh, you know, so many tracks that a human can keep track of them. And what they do is they build a system by exception that drives the human, it makes a human more productive, because a human only has to do the things the machine can't figure out. And that's really what industry 4.0 is, a lot of people think it's robots replacing humans, it's not, it's really about driving the productivity of the human and use the human, where we need them take the man on a loop or we don't need them. And then they're not overwhelmed, and have the system drive the results that we want by codifying processes. And digitizing those things that a human doesn't need to do that can happen over and over. It's repeatable. We know what it is. So it's really about implementing that capability to drive that common operational picture and automate things that make sense to be automated and use the human at their best levels of performance.

Tom Raftery: 6:57

Okay, and did you ever in the Navy, hear gunners talking about them being afraid of losing their jobs to computers?

Marty Groover: 7:05

No, we did not. Because the the humans, I mean, we reduced the amount of people we needed. But again, it's hard to recruit in the military. So what we did is we created specialists, and I think I can, you know, we could talk for hours about the next wave of jobs. But what's going to happen is what I saw is we became operators, technicians, because you knew you had to know so much about the system, the weapon systems, people that worked on my radars, the gun system, the missile systems, not only they know how to operate it, but they maintained it, because it, it took that to do it. So when I look at manufacturing, when I look at the future, that's what it's going to be it's going to be operator technicians, and the automation and the ability to quickly analyze failures. And predictive maintenance is all built in all the systems redundancy, all of that. So it automatically because you can't go up, the captain said, I'm not ready to fire a missile, you have to be ready 100% of the time. And so the systems were built that way. And then humans were taught not only executed, but now they're more into tactics, and they can spend their time into really learning how to fight the ship. And then technology supports them. So it's kind of the chasm between, you know, where we're at today and Star Trek, so to sort of know, right in that sweet spot.

Tom Raftery: 8:21

And so, in manufacturing, how much of this can transfer I mean, the lessons you learned in navy, about you know, measuring, taking data, getting, you know, knowing exactly where you are, or at any point in time, how much that translates into today's manufacturing,

Marty Groover: 8:38

I think it translates really well because you can't just go out and a lot of people are thinking, you know, industry for Dotto IoT, you just go out and sensor eyes, everything and then you drive you, you have to have the codification of a process. And then you measure things that roll up into the process. So that you know and I know you're familiar with this term, but the digital thread horizontally through the process from end to end supply chain is one thing, but that vertical thread is very important to through the is a 95 stack. So things that happen at the lower levels, feet up, feet up, feet up and roll up into it, but they drive the right behaviors and how do we win in warfare, the quickest person that can understand the battlespace, the intelligence behind it and can make the faster decisions when and that's what's going to happen with supply chain. That's where AWS and Amazon AWS as a platform, and Amazon has built a way that they they're Available to Promise is so much faster than other companies. Why? Because they built the technology and they have sensors and data all the way through their supply chain. But it's not just having the data they have the right decision making off the top of that data. And they have that all built in. So it's a you just keep building it out if it makes sense. And then the next thing you want to measure is is this and predictive maintenance and it's all integrated. It's not separate maintenance of systems is that's separate. And pretty soon maintenance of computer systems and all of it will all be into one platform, it'll have to be to drive that behaviors and actually improve productivity and reduce problems in our supply chains.

Tom Raftery: 10:15

It's kind of sounds like you're talking about an operating system for factories.

Marty Groover: 10:20

It is, well, I want to just take it past factories, it's really supply chain, I seen. One of the things when I was factory manager, I said, hey, guess what, everybody's supply chain here, I don't care. If you're manufacturing, manufacturing engineer, our one job is to bring in raw material, convert it and get it to the next step. So we're all supply chain. And there's a, there's the source, make deliver if you're a supply chain operational reference person. And that's kind of the way we think about things. There's common processes. So everybody thinks they're different. You're not you source some material. And I don't care whether you're a lawyer or whatever, you make something with it, and you deliver it. And you have some planning and some enablement, if you break it down into those simple pieces. Now, there's processes that can be connected and drive together to make a holistic or harmonized sort of picture.

Tom Raftery: 11:10

Okay, so if everything is in the one, as I said, operating system or platform, then everything can talk to everything. And you have total visibility of where anything is, at any point in time. Similar to you hadn't the Navy is up, you're saying,

Marty Groover: 11:21

right, yeah. And then you can, you can drive measuring it, which is DMAIC, define, measure, analyze, but then you analyze what you're measuring. And then you actually create diagnostics of why you didn't speed advance, why didn't I make what I was supposed to make today? Why didn't I get the quality I was supposed to make? Why did the parts get to buy lines when they were supposed to all of those key things that drive almost a firing train or critical path through your supply chain processes. Now it's measured, when it doesn't meet standard, you have the analytics and the diagnostics. And that's how you can have that continuous improvement, even to the system, get to the point where the system, the codification of the process, where it's prescriptive, hey, this didn't happen, do this, this and this, to fix it, and drive that those behaviors that you want. And the beauty of it is then humans are so much more effective. We really only use them, you know, you use their knowledge, but you use them to work on the hardest problems.

Tom Raftery: 12:22

Okay. And you mentioned the word codification a couple of times. No. Can you explain what you mean by that? Just for people who might not get it?

Marty Groover: 12:31

Yeah, that's a that's a great question. So there's a, there's a process, there's a physical process, I'll just say, I'll just take receding of material and you know, any sort of warehouse and supply chain you receive, there's a process from the time that truck hits the dock until you put it away until it goes to the assembly line or the process manufacturing, whatever manufacturing, that process has to happen repeatedly over and over and over. So you codify it, you say these steps are the key steps that happen, you measure them, and you say it should take me this long to do this process, then you measure actually how long it takes. And then you drive that visibility up to the people of how their performance is and then what do you have to do to drive those by exception events that prevent you from hitting your speed of advance, you know, what am I supposed to do today? And and if you can do that, and build a system that not only measures it all the way through, but you know, your past performance, and this is where AWS wins, they know every how long it takes to deliver something, they have so much data that now they can spin a knob, what if my demand goes up by this much? Or what if I do this, and they can drive improvements in their system continuously? And that's, that's really the codification of a process.

Tom Raftery: 13:43

Okay. And, I mean, you're out talking to customers now. Well, not right now. But these days, where are they on that spectrum of codification of processes and building that platform? Where are they and how do they get to where they shouldn't be?

Marty Groover: 14:02

Yeah, there's a maturity curve, we kind of look at, you know, in the process, are you even doing anything about your defects in your processes, so to speak? Do you even measure them? If you do measure them? What do you do about it is that digitize so there's a curve that we kind of do an assessment where people are at. And then what we try to do is we don't talk about technology we talk about capabilities and this is where supply chain operational reference comes in. What are the capabilities you need to create a competitive advantage to improve your business outcomes to improve the engagement of your people because again, I don't believe industry for that I was going to get rid of people I there's not enough people manufacturing go to customers right now. They're struggling to get people to work in manufacturing. So we're going to have to automate these things. But for the people that are in those jobs, how do you make do engage in they're all digital natives now they're starting to come off. They're, you know, they're born with a cell phone. They're used to having data in their personal life. How do you because we all have a common operational picture in our hand, it's our cell phones and our compute, you know, they're all connected. Why can't we have that in our work life, and that's where it's really going all of those things into one common operating environment and you know, like an Apple phone or Samsung, whichever one you love, there is a system and if something new comes into it, you easily adapt to it. Because you understand that platform and that system,

Tom Raftery: 15:23

you know, and speaking to customers, no, are you seeing any patterns? You know, that there? There's one particular aspect of manufacturing or whatever it is in the supply chain that they're not getting? Right? Or is it? Is it a broad spectrum? You know, what are you seeing there?

Marty Groover: 16:13

What I see a lot of times is there's a lot of pockets of data, there's still siloed, they're there, there's a lot of data there, but there's so much of it, they and they don't know what to do with it. And there's so much work with that data. But companies are realizing we have to do things, I think the the COVID situation and supply chains, people are starting to come to the table. Now. They know they need to do something they they go anywhere from I need to measure stuff at, say level one, level two, you know, on is a 95 stack. And there's that whole war of where it's gonna come from it to OT. And where's that line demarcation so dependent on the customer is dependent on where they're at, and that stack, so to speak. And then what we do is go in and what business capabilities do you need, start a pilot and start building the architecture that will support it, because every place we go, everybody says, Oh, we've got data. But a lot of times when you start trying to pull that data together, harmonize it and make it work as a master data for the platform. That's where we spend a lot of the time integrating things for

Tom Raftery: 17:15

them. Interesting, interesting. And that learning? Is that something you're bringing to new customers? And is, you know, what kind of challenges are you are you facing? And are they facing and overcoming those.

Marty Groover: 17:28

So our company C five, and my this is why we're different. We're all functional people that have run, p&l run factories, been manufacturing engineers, or supply chain engineers, or whatever they have learned it. So we bring a different approach. And what we do is look at the customers and understand where they're at on the journey, and help them develop capabilities that they need and roadmaps. Because this elephant is too big eaten one bite, you have to think about where can I find one factory that wants to win work. And I find people that want to do something different work, and I leverage technology I have, and then expand it. So build a pilot, build a program, build a concept that this is going to be a long term journey. It's not one and done. It's continuous as you build that platform out. And that's why we try. That's why this book is so important. Because if you think about it, this is not a one year two year thing, right? This is going to be many years in the future, this industrial revolution. And the technology today may not be the technology tomorrow. That's why it always has to be open architecture, a platform and think about what capabilities will drive competitive advantage, improve business outcomes. And then you just keep growing that based off from continuous improvement.

Tom Raftery: 18:43

Yeah, I think I think you're absolutely right. I think that's something that people don't appreciate enough is that this is this is a journey. And it's a long journey, in the same way that when we started to computerize manufacturing, you know, that started in what the 50s and 60s and continued until today, and it continues. And now the whole Fourth Industrial is going to go for another 50 6070 years and beyond as well. So it's yeah, the sooner you get started in this kind of stuff, I think the better right.

Marty Groover: 19:10

You know, I love whatever you think of Jeffrey ml. I mean, he was really forward thinking on this, you know, he tried with GE Digital and all of that, and brilliant factory. And I did a lot of reading on him. But one of the things and there's a there's a clip out there and talking about it, if he says if you're a CEO today, and you're not already thinking about this, or how you're going to do it, there will be come a time when you will not have the choice or the latitude as he says, to make those decisions, you will be forced. And I think there's there's a true piece of that, that the compression will get so big that there won't be enough people like us to actually help companies do it no matter how much money you throw at it. So when you look at just do a little research in the last three or four years, how many retail companies have gone bankrupt because of the Amazon wave and things that happen? I do believe there's going to be Lighthouse companies. There's you know, if you look at World Economic Forum, Mackenzie out there, there's Lighthouse groups that are starting to figure this out. If these people use technology get far enough ahead, they're going to leave a wake of you know, the whole retail bankruptcies because there's you won't catch up. You just won't be able to that you can throw every bit of money you have at it and just you won't get there.

Tom Raftery: 20:23

Okay, Marty, if I were a supply chain manager, listening to this podcast, what, three or four pieces of advice Would you give me if I wanted to start out on this journey?

Marty Groover: 20:36

I would really think about what do you need to improve your business outcomes? Do you need real time tracking material inside your facilities? Do you need to measure every process down to almost like a process capability measurement of time, think about capabilities you need, don't think about technology, everybody gets enamored with shiny objects, you get a lot of sales, people come in and try to sell you everything. And then the problem that you have is if you not think in platform, you're going to buy a bunch of little systems. And then you're going to have this and I had this caterpillar, you have this technology, debt, or technological debt, that is unbelievable, because you can't unravel that furball of all these little siloed systems. Well, this is best in class. And this is best don't buy best in class. By open architecture, think about what capabilities do you need, keep it simple. Keep it very simple. Don't get too complex to begin with. And really think about that convergence. What do you need the people to get out of? What What can you do, for instance, MRP exceptions, a lot of those, you can automate those, take them out of the people's noise and lower the noise for people, and then just keep building the process. So it's, uh, you know, really thinking about things differently. Instead of, hey, I'm just going to go out and buy the silver bullet.

Tom Raftery: 21:52

Pretty good. Very good. Marty, we're coming towards the end of the podcast. Now, is there any question I have not asked that you wish I had, or any aspect of this that we haven't touched on that you think it's important for people to be aware of,

Marty Groover: 22:05

you know, the biggest thing I'd like to get across, and this is why I tried to keep this book, very non technical, is that don't be afraid of the next industrial revolution, I hear this all the time I listen to podcasts, you know, humans, we're just going to have to give everybody a you know, a income because they're going to have no job. I don't believe that. I don't believe that at all, I think we're going to evolve as humans, this is going to make us better, it's gonna overcome trade deficits, cotton of consumption will really drive the improvements, this is the only way we're going to get the efficiencies that we need. We've sort of shipped everything over to China to have reduced labor cost, this is going to allow us to overcome that arbitrage. And reduce the reliance on one country for suppliers. So it's going to democratize I think, production cuz you're gonna have very distributed manufacturing smaller, smaller pieces. So it's don't I guess my, my whole thing is, don't be afraid of it, embrace it and figure out how to converge people properly. Because we're never going to get rid of the people. I don't. We never got rid of the people. We could automate things in a navy, but we still needed that person to manage the power of that system. Right. Right.

Tom Raftery: 23:18

Right. Makes a lot of sense. Cool. Marty, if people want to know more about yourself, or about sci fi of EMI, or about speed of advance, or any of the things we discussed in the podcast today, where would you have me direct them.

Marty Groover: 23:31

So first, the book will be released on the 22nd of February on Amazon. So you'll be able to just, there's nothing else on there called speed of advance. So it's an easy search. Okay, did my work on that I've set that up. So you get the book there. And then www C five. mit.com is our website and you can see about our digital supply chain, and our asset management services that we provide and consulting.

Tom Raftery: 23:56

Okay. And in the prep for this, you mentioned as well that there's a discount on Amazon for the book initially.

Marty Groover: 24:02

Yeah, thanks for remembering that. So for the first week, we're offering a 99 cent discount for the e book just to try to boost the sales and get get the book out there and get it known to people we're trying to hit our you know, a number one seller on Amazon bestseller so I appreciate any help on that I can get.

Tom Raftery: 24:20

Excellent, excellent. Marty. That's been fantastic. Thanks a million for coming on the podcast today.

Marty Groover: 24:26

Hey, Tom was great seeing you again. Thanks a lot for having me. I really appreciate the conversation.

Tom Raftery: 24:31

Okay, we've come to the end of the show. Thanks, everyone for listening. If you'd like to know more about digital supply chains, head on over to sa p.com/digital supply chain or, or simply drop me an email to Tom raftery@sap.com. If you like the show, please don't forget to subscribe to it and your podcast application of choice to get new episodes as soon as they're published. Also, please don't forget to rate and review the podcast. It really does help new people to find the show. Thanks. catch you all next time.