AI’s Role in Greening Manufacturing – Alice Globus, Nanotronics

This is texturong TV. Welcome to techstrong TV. I'm Bonnie Schneider today.

We're joined by Alice Globus the physicist CFO of nanotronics a market leader in ai-enabled manufacturing. Alice is at the Forefront of revitalizing the US manufacturing sector today. We're going to discuss how AI is driving a green manufacturing Revolution Alice.

Thank you so much for joining us. Thank you for having me Bonnie. Well, can you tell us a little bit about yourself and your background with this company of physicist CFO title is unique and I'd love to hear more about how you've gotten to this position.

Yeah, so educationally a obviously had in physics, you know, when I was pursuing my PhD in physics. I realized that I didn't want to be eternally applying for grant money that I wanted to be on the Forefront of Science and what that meant and I initially thought putting money into a bunch of other scientists would be the best way to do that. So I worked in Investment Banking and private equity for a while and when I met the founders of nanotronics Johnson and Matthew, I just fell in love with the vision that they were creating my family this family business was manufacturing we manufactured cameras and other other things.

So I grew up in a manufacturing family and one of the things that I came to love and appreciate is all the intricacies about what manufacturing means for the people that actually work there, but for the environments that it's creating in the new technology is bringing Forefront and so that's how I initially got involved with the nanotronics about a year and a half ago. Well, tell us a little bit more about nanatronics and how AI is being applied to manufacturing. It's AI is the talk.

Everyone's talking about it now, but in this specific sector, it's interesting and and just in case people aren't familiar with nanotronics. We'd love to learn more about it. Yeah, so nanotronics is the first generative AI manufacturing platform and really what that means is that we help optimize systems for manufacturer.

Now, there's some you think of fully automated like you go into a Tesla facility and you think that it's 100% automated but when you look at each component part that's within the facility. Most of those are actually manufactured by hand. So you can't just look at purely optimizing all the all the tools that are within the facility, but you have to work in symbiosis with the humans that manufacture within the facility and ultimately what we look to do is optimize if manufacturing facility, whether it's a tootsie rolls or semiconductors to make sure that they have the most maximum yields and then reduction of waste scrap improve efficacy of the humans that are actually working there.

So reduce injuries and accidents that are happening there as well. Well, I read that AI can help reduce greenhouse gas emissions in manufacturing by up to 40% That's pretty impressive. Can you explain how this is achieved and what other environmental benefits AI has yes, so currently manufacturing is a pretty wasteful industry.

And this is something we advocate for that if you're publicly traded company or if you're accepting US government money that you should be before to publicly disclose your yields because what does that mean to the environment? Well, if you're nine out of every 10 widgets that you're manufacturing is bad, then that goes somewhere that waste go somewhere. There's resources that are consumed whether it's water electricity, whatever raw materials and that that waste has to go somewhere.

Sometimes it's recycled which causes other environmental issues as well. But most of the time is just not used so it's really one of the main ways to be able to optimize is to the the overall scrap and waste that's being processed in your process to being able to scale from R&D to production more quickly and overalls reduce the problems that you're having with your process. Well, and you know as I mentioned and I'm sure as you're well aware, everyone is talking about Ai, and of course, there's always critics of it people are concerned as AI replace humans, you know for jobs and there are other people that are criticizing it for widening the wealth Gap, but I was wondering if you could respond to the concerns and what measures nanotronics is actually taking to ensure fair and Equitable transition to AI enabled manufacturing.

What's a really good question. So one of the things that's a big concern about ai's the guardrails that comes into place when you're doing it so that it's not making crazy decisions. I know we've heard things about, you know being saying I'm a bad thing and this these types of things that people are fearful of now one of the big problems with tech in general not just artificial intelligence is that it's a pretty homogenous group of people one of the things that I think we do particularly.

Well when you if you were Mentor facility is that we have people from all walks of life everyone from social different socioeconomic backgrounds different cultural backgrounds. And these are things that are really matters because when you have a different process of thought, you know, whether you went to Harvard or the local Kuni College here you think of approach problems differently and you're trying to approach problems differently depending on where you went to school or where you grew up and this is a really important. We require all of our software engineers and engineers in general to work within our facility because you know, sometimes humans are not that optimal when you're in a manufacturing setting and they do things that don't seem logical and being able to think out of the box and have those out of the box conversations of how to approach problems is one of the main ways we're we're tackling this issue.

As the CFO of nanotronics, how do you assess the return on investment of AI adoption in manufacturing? So there's several ways. It really depends on on the industry that we're looking to you know, our customers are actively servicing.

Sometimes their goals are to increase their yields. Now some Industries are more wasteful than others. So there's a larger Gap that we could be able to create immediate immediate efficiencies within others that are a little bit more streamlined and more automated that even though we'll say a five percent increase in your yield could be billions of dollars like the semiconductor industry is a perfect example.

It's a one of the more efficient Industries, but just increasing their efficiency, they want to five percent can equal billions of dollars in increased Revenue that they're having and decreased waste and scrap and that all comes down to what's affecting the bottom line of the company. Now a lot of people that are watching us are really interested in digital transformation in general and they might be intimidated to some degree of you know, how far and do we invest how much money do we put into this? Can you give some just general advice for any other CFOs watching or financial Executives or even those that are watching that are on the tech side that may influence those financial decisions that maybe are considering investing further in AI I think it's pretty widely known that this is a very hot topic to invest in but there's still maybe some trepidation.

Yeah, I think one of the biggest issues that's affecting manufacturers right now is the loss of generational information. There's a lot of people that are retiring in these industries that are the Baby Boomers and it is one of the big issues is how to pass on that generational knowledge to the Next Generation in a timely and efficient manner where you're not losing large portions of your production time. And this is something where art AI could really come in and help and not only is it able to help it's actually able to optimize your process, you know, one of these things when if you spend a lot of time in a manufacturing facility, you always have this machine Whisperer that he might hear she might not know what he's doing but then all the sudden one when it's when they're on the production floor, you see an increase of whatever you're you're looking for.

Usually it's increased quality or product productivity and you know, you talk to like well, you know when I hear this noise and then I add the Catalyst to to the the centerfuge but like that's based on actual physics that's happening. So we're able to identify what they're doing and then Decipher that information to other people that makes it a usable form that they could use and where are you doing that through a combination of augmented reality or just through tele, you know screens that they're using to help guide them in the process and one of the things that's been in the past that people haven't found particularly helpful for actually they don't like is there people don't like to be told that they're doing their job poorly if they are doing their job poorly they like to be given advice and how they could do better and this is really where AI can help pass on that Knowledge from your experts your true experts and master assemblers and help pass that On to the Next Generation. It's really interesting with your background as a physicist.

I'm wondering now that AI has become so it's prominent in conversations from a physicist perspective. If you can give some of your opinions inside some anything that particularly intrigues you about it. You know, I think one of the things is that it I feel the capability of solving some of the world's hardest problems is almost at our fingertips now, I think that's really what's exciting because one of the things that especially generative AI That's able to do that.

No humans are actually able to do in real time is that when you're optimizing for your end game which in most manufacturers increasing their productivity and yields, you know humans might not make a change in their process that AI will because it would be one in 45,000 humans to have that end income and that's that's really exciting to me because what what that means is that it'll of free us up to do other things make be more creep better products and have more creativity and what the future holds for us. That's a sound exciting. I'm looking forward to chronicling your journey at nanotronics Alice Clovis.

The physicist CFO. We really appreciate your time today and kind of giving us some really helpful insight on ai-enabled manufacturing. Thank you Alice.

Thank you. Pleasure to have you on alright, we'll stay with us. We're going to have more on Tech strong TV coming up.