Curtis Hughes + IT in the Manufacturing Industry

So I'm gonna introduce our guests. We've got Curtis Hughes, who is currently the CIO at Midrex technologies based here in Charlotte, North Carolina. And I'm gonna start off with I'll let Curtis explain more and tell you a little bit about him. But I love Curtis's tag. He's got it on LinkedIn, you can follow him, but he says he's a digital leader with a passion for culture and people. Curtis, welcome to the show.

of collide. And there's there's everything today's digital, when we'll probably talk more about that. And every company is a technology company, whether they think they are or not. And it impacts our people. And we're seeing that across the board, whether it's culture engagement, how our how our teams can work wherever they are in the world, flex, Hybrid work, all that kind of stuff. So I really like to work on projects, work on challenges and solve problems where we're really impacts people.

in the last 10 years. So maybe, if you could share with our guests a little bit more about that, at that point in your career, what you were doing and kind of how you transitioned?

software, whatever it was. I was just always interested in more than just my, and for better, for worse, I think it's actually turned out better, where it's led me to all these different places, rather than just putting up putting a title on it. I'm a software engineer. I just love technology. I love how it impacts business. I love making businesses better. I love

growing businesses. And if I can do that with technology, if I can do that, as a leader of an organization, I just I go where I see challenges I like to build I like to I like to solve problems. And sometimes that's with technology. Sometimes it's not. So yeah, I took kind of my consulting 10 plus years consulting and growing businesses, turn that inward on

Midrex. I've been here for the last five years and just kind of pouring that into helping Midrex grow and helping veterans kind of transform from the inside out from a technology standpoint for sure.

variety of things. It helps you just understand when things come you see things from a different perspective and I think that's probably the best. That's where it is perspective, all my experience, up to this point, even though it looks like a winding road, sometimes I think it's been perfect for where I am today and I am an everything happens for a reason, kind of guy. So it's allowed me to have a unique perspective on growing

it. A lot of folks that are in technology, especially probably don't think like a business owner, right? How do I manage cost? How do I do, and having that and grown a company manage P&L, how to hire people, how to let people go, when you're starting a company, your HR, your accounting, your everything, right? And so you're just having that perspective has

allowed me to take that. And when I speak with our accounting teams, or anyone internally here, as a CIO, it's just helped me connect with those folks more and just understand kind of what the problems they are, they're having.

the guests. So, you're in your CIO, now, you lead the technology department Midrex, you've done consulting for technology, what is information technology to an organization at this point in time? And 2022? What does that mean?

huge. And when I think of information technology, I really do kind of center in on that information piece. And that was one of the reasons I came to Midrex. And Midrex has been around a long time but but wasn't leveraging all the information and the experience and all the learnings to take that and pour it back into the organization and do things better. And so I think we used to see data as, as maybe the exhaust like, hey, let's build all this technology. And all

this data comes out the end. And yeah, we don't know what to do it. Today, data is the fuel, right? We take that data, and we pour it into things to kind of to kind of drive it. So it's, it's a huge shift. And I to me, I think that's that's one of the most powerful things about information technology today in organizations.

information technology? How do they relate? And why is why are people so important to it?

matter? So what I've heard someone tell me asked me that before, like always, so what. Like, yeah, great. We've got all these KPIs. And we've got all this great. So what, what does that like? What do we do with that? Does that help somebody do something better? Does that give someone insight that makes them change their strategy on how they recruit new employees? What do we use that data for? And how

does it impact it? And that's what's powerful to me is I've got all these these tools over here, my garage full of tools. Here's the problems that we're trying to solve as an organization, as people as departments as a business. How do I go there and get my screwdriver, my hammer and come over here and try to solve that instead of just walking around with a hammer saying, Hey, I've got this technology, what problem can I solve with it? And the old adage, right? When you're when you're a hammer,

everything looks like a nail. So I really don't ever try to leave with technology and really try to understand, like, what are we trying to solve here? Like, what are we trying to do?

did. I focused on computer science and went to school got a computer science degree from here in Charlotte, UNC Charlotte and came out at that time, most folks that came out with a computer science degree, you're basically a software engineering writing software. And so that's how I started is building software, but thankfully got in at a company that was a small growing startup. And so I was able to, like we talked about wear a lot of hats, and that led

me to things. I really think it's really a benefit, to see what you really enjoy. I enjoy this. And so I moved from, from writing software to architecting, to designing, UX and interfaces and things like that. So I've done everything from user interface design, to building out full product to writing software across and then leading teams and then growing from there to leading teams of software engineers.

to sit right in the middle. And I think it's a it's a perfect role for that. So it kind of just evolved, and I knew what I enjoy it. I knew myself, I knew what I was good at and knew what I enjoyed doing.

an important function? Why is it going to continue to grow in importance at Midrex?

about removing jobs. It's about putting that unique talent of those people on other creative work that a computer maybe can't do and automate, right? But the things that happened the same way all the time, how do we automate those things and make us more efficient so that we can scale and grow our company, maybe without having to add a lot of headcount sometimes, and we can grow and do new things. So I think that's a big piece of

it. But also, one of the areas I'm really interested in is really that intersection of people so how does technology help us engage with our teammates more? So whether it's internal enterprise social network kind of stuff, even looking at things like sentiment analysis. And how do we stay at the pulse of our teammates, and especially with hybrid work, and how do we bridge that gap and stay connected with our teammates, when they're halfway around the world and we don't

see them that often or ever? How do we use technology to close those gaps. And I think that's been one of the amazing things to see over over COVID When people couldn't, then they adopt a team zoom, all these kinds of things. We were using teams before COVID hit, thankfully. But I think there's a number of ways and I talked about the data

piece, too. And we're doing a lot more with data now, where we're getting data from, from plants, and looking at that and helping us develop new products and our r&d and how we design these plants and do it differently.

time. It takes a person almost full time building those things out, staging them up, automating that so going to things where these automated builds go. And it deploys our software based on who you are in the organization. So if you come in, you're in accounting, you get this software. And then there's ways we can do that. Another area, we're using it a ton is on the

security side. So with security, and a small team like ours, all the threats that are out there, just because we're small, doesn't mean we don't have the same threats. The bad guys don't care what size you are, they're

just coming after anyone. And so how do we look at, threats and things that come through and sift through the noise and so automating some of that, and even using things like artificial intelligence machine learning to figure out what's, what's good, what's bad, so that we can quickly sift that out and say, yep, we know that that's not something to look at, or yeah, this person never does that on their computer, why are

they accessing that server? And so we've used automation in that way, so that from a monitoring standpoint, and security standpoint, so that we can see kind of what's going on within the organization?

consider this? What would it be?

connect the dots. And that's something that I really try to do a lot of here we hold town halls, we hold tech cafes every month, my team and talking about new technology and and why it matters. So we talk about these things. And I think that's probably one of the best places to start is to talk about it. Don't make it some black box over in the corner, where it's just no one knows what kind of goes in and out of it. Why does it matter? What are the things

we're doing? Why are we looking at data and launching new dashboards? Why does that matter to accounting or whatever. And I think it really impacts them and helps them do their job better if they know why we're doing certain things, it certainly helps change happen better, right? When someone knows the why and kind of what's in it for them. But I think also just, if I had to sit down and let them know about, things that IT is doing. Really my goal, my team hears it all the time is

invisible IT. I don't think IT should be something that's visible, like the best technology is invisible. It does work. We all use things and whether it's iPhone, or whatever it is. And I actually have a KPI and measurement. And we actually measure and kind of like an invisibility index. So based on tickets and things like that, like how visible is technology

to our teammates. And I use that to kind of gauge and we change directions and do different things because no one comes into the office to use Excel or Outlook. They come in to solve problems and to do certain things in their group. And for me, technology should get out of the way and just help them do those things better. So I think trying to try to make sure that we were always as invisible as possible, I think is one of the things that I like to do.

is one of those. But every ticket is not obviously something that's visible, something maybe just be a question like, hey, where do I find something or whatever it is. They can be all kinds of questions. So certain types of tickets. Yeah, we try to track that and say, this is something that shouldn't have been there, right? It's something that was visible that should have just worked and so we try to track

that. I wouldn't say it's perfect by any any stretch, but half the time and half the battle is just the intentionality around, let's start using this terminology. And let's try to understand and let everybody on the team try to work to make technology invisible to our teammates and it changes your behavior when you just even think that way.

considering big projects? So like, take a product officer or take a plant manager right now where you're at, like, 10-20 years ago, I assume decisions were made, IT was sort of an afterthought, go do it, make sure this works, blah, blah, blah. I feel like Today things are a little bit different, you have to consider the technology aspect of it. So how has that changed from what you've seen from your consulting days? where

you're at now? Like, how do you have someone who might be in charge of something who doesn't have a lot of technical expertise? Consider IT well, like, what do they do? Well, to make sure that it goes that the technology behind it is thought through properly?

the technology. Now, there's so many aspects to it, and especially how it impacts the people. And even today, we hear the term you can call it whatever you want to, but your retention and hiring and those kinds of things as well. But I think to me, it goes back to solving the problem, and what do we try to do to solve the problem? What new problems do we have that we didn't have before? And companies have to keep a competitive advantage, and they have to continue to grow and

adapt to that. And I think technology can help them get there, get there faster.

easy part. Like anyone can do technology, you can implement certain technologies, find someone to implement technologies for you. But understanding how it impacts your people, short term long term, what processes need to change? How do we need to do things differently? Do we need to change our business, because of certain things that are happening and those kinds of

things? To me that's like, when an organization comes in, tool first, technology first kind of thing versus someone that thinks about how it's going to impact the people, the processes, how we do business, all the things around the edges. I think they do it better for sure.

see the rest they don't. I think it's a great practice to help people understand this is what's happening in the background and in allowing people to see oh, this is actually what goes into this, ,but to your point, the planning behind it, the impact of it, but what problem does it solve? And how do we become more efficient before we move into like trends? I guess I'm curious in your personal life, because you've spanned across a number

of industries. What technology personally do you I guess, what technology do you like the most what technology has changed your life the most? And why?

amateur photography. You can do so much on the camera on the iPhone now and don't even need like the larger cameras. So I think the iPhone for sure. But from a software standpoint, I think one of the things that I love everybody tells me I'm maybe weird about it, but OneNote. I'm a huge, huge believer in Microsoft OneNote. I've used Evernote and some other tools like that, but I've been using OneNote since about

2009. I would call myself a pretty heavy power user of OneNote and just organization brainstorming all kinds of ways to use that tool. And then I think the last one is just the new things that you can do with voice. Whether it's Siri whether it's Alexa, we kind of go with the Alexa. It's a love hate relationship right now with Alexa, because some of the updates I think they push out on Alexa don't always work the way we want them to. But, it's great

tools. it's got a lot of promise that things you can do and driving down the road and speak to my phone and put something on my to do list for tomorrow while I'm thinking of it and not have to write it down or try to remember it. That's pretty powerful stuff, the ways we can use some of the technology.

manufacturing industry? What trends are you all seeing in IT that are going to matter now and in the future? And I can guess one? I think from what you've said data a number of times, but I'm curious to dig into these a little bit more?

things for these plants. Some of these plants that we have running for 30-40 plus years, so we don't own and operate the plants, we build them and design them and for other customers, but using that data to help us know how certain components that we designed from an engineering standpoint, function and certain locations and geographies around

the world. And we just, using data to do that, what about predictive maintenance, knowing when a component may fail or something based on it's in the Middle East in the desert versus some other place that's very cold, or whatever it is. So, I think using that more to really understand and learn more about the data and the plants and how

they kind of operate. And then kind of going into that there's a term, people probably heard it, but this concept of a digital twin, right, so you have a digital version of a physical automotive and using it, manufacturing, steel means steel is always a little bit slower to change, but really in steel and manufacturing, as well like having this this virtual model, that's the exact counterpart or

twin of a physical thing. So while we've got the physical plant, and we used to send people over to look at the plant and see where something was leaking, or whatever it is, now how do we take that get get real time data, overlay it on the 3d model of the plant, and we can see this living breathing like plant here in Charlotte seeing it on a screen and how its operating and how its functioning and what's going on and being able to see how it reacts and run simulations,

that's one of the biggest things is hey, what if we change this or reduce the diameter of this pipe? Well, that makes it you can do all that in real time, because you've got to fill it, the virtual representation. So that's, that's a big piece, I think, especially around what what Midrex is trying to do that's changing a lot of a lot of what we're doing.

whatever it is. And then what's nice is once you have that, and you have real real data coming in, then you can run like what if scenarios, like I just talked about, where, hey, what if we change this or reroute something here because this new plant needs to do something a little

different? Well, how's that going to change how this thing runs, you don't have to guess and try to go through it set up big, you can do it all right there, because you've got data and you've got the digital representation and you can see how the hell that will function in automotive. Like I said, I've been using this for for years and you take wind tunnel data and they can take the digital twin and shape the car, all kinds of stuff like that. But um, you don't need to travel as

much you can. You can be a much more proactive around how you make design changes, predictive maintenance, like I talked about. So I think that's one of the powerful things about it, for sure.

interesting. I think the latest latest Gartner stat as of 2021, was that it's great, but only 11% of businesses have really deployed digital twins at large scale, right. And so it's still some of the larger organizations, obviously, are doing it and doing it well. But it's still, what 10, 11% of organizations out there that are that are implementing stuff like this. So I think that's a pretty big thing that's going to help us in the future for sure.

that's a big plus. But also, every magazine I get on iron and steel, huge sections in there around AI, machine learning digitisation sensors, just like what you talked about, like data, and predictive and all the ways that we can help things run smart, and they can learn. You can have assembly lines, and steel mills, change how they run based on, no one having to program them that they just

learned. They learned that when this happens in this time, that whatever it is, and it's pretty powerful when you can have, technology start to learn from itself and start to start to change how it operates.

start now? And how do they learn about AI and digitization and digital twins? How do they get there to have that knowledge to properly do this for an organization like yours?

all that. And data analytics, like I said, when I came out, it was either a software developer, or you're building the hardware, you're like a computer engineer, computer science, and you build the processors, or you build the software kind of thing. And now there's so many areas, whether it's machine learning AI, like I said, data, still writing software and user experience. There's full jobs that are just designing the interface, if you

like, the marketing. So for me, it really is true, they say, do something you enjoy, find the things you enjoy. And honestly, there's a technology element to nearly everything that we can do these days, if you're on marketing, and designing and drawing, you can do that technologically, you can be on the front end of designing, take your pick, right and anything you want, whether it's software or not, and really finding out what you're good at. What things

are hot right now. But there's also so many more ways to get learning and certifications, whether it's LinkedIn learning or these other ways, like there's so many ways to get up to speed on stuff that just didn't have all those options back when I was coming out. It was, literally, you grab your book that looks like this off the shelf, and you're reading it a night or whatever it is to try to get up to speed now so much is on the internet learning.

People can people can get certified on AI and machine learning in a short period of time or date or whatever it is so, I think probably for a lot of people, you got to try things out. That's why I like wearing a lot of hats. I got to see what I liked. And what I didn't like is things really quickly that, Yeah, I didn't like being on the front lines and supporting and help desk ticket stuff. I like building and kind of creating behind the scenes. Everybody's going to be different.

Everybody's going to kind of figuring out what they what they enjoy most.

blank blank. And he said, The phenomenon that went through my mind and in what raced through my mind about how little I knew what he just asked, was so much more severe back then, because I couldn't just go to Google and type in what he asked and figure it out. I had to literally think through it, ask colleagues, go find a book, or just admit, I didn't know it. And so the amount of like, you can only fake it so far, if he didn't

know it. Whereas today, I think we can go out and Google read a quick article and become an expert. I agree with you, it's really do what you're passionate. One of our last guests, his whole, his whole mantra was, you have to have passion for what you're doing for what you do. And I think that applies to any industry. If, let's say, the CEO of your organization, or you're making a prediction, I want you to look five years, 10 years out, right?

And someone says, Hey, Curtis, what is our IT department going to look like? What are the things what changes are going to happen in 10 years? And what like, you could talk about the trends that will get us there, and the why, obviously, this is just a prediction, but like, what do you think will change? And where do we think IT departments will be in 10 years for like a manufacturing organization? For example?

right now. But even with some of the topics we talked about, machine learning and things like that, you could have a machine that that answers 50, 70, 80% of the tickets that come in, because you've already moved most of them, you've answered before, right? Most of them are repeat things or something, a

continues to learn. So what about a bot or a series of bots out there that these software bots that answer tickets and get rid of the helpdesk and put those people towards other things that are, like I said, more creative and kind of the building of things versus the the tactical, that's really a big focus of mine is like, if it's something that's just very, very tactical, we can automate it, let's automate it, automate the administrative is kind of what I say a lot of the times,

like getting rid of all the things it takes someone. because it's not only take time, but it also, people that enjoy building and they're doing all this administrative work kind of grinds on them too, and can lead to burnout and some other things too. So I think letting the automation kind of take hold, I think is a big, big area that we'll see. And then in general, I think we'll see things become more and more connected. So getting data, we're already

seeing it. We get data from machines, and we can see things early and detect them, where we couldn't before. So even, telemetry from some of the laptops that we've got out there and stuff that we've deployed, we can start to see problems and see things going on, before someone even knows it's an issue and stuff. So how do we connect all these pieces to, again, get back to invisible IT and just helping things run better and get things out of the way? It'll be interesting to see how hybrid

and this work anywhere? And whether or not that that sticks, and are we going to swing back? And everybody's going to come back in? Or is it? Is it really gonna go? I don't know, this depends on who you ask. I think these days.

wife and I did it. And I said there's only 20 or 30 devices connected. It was a lot higher than that when we ran the actual test. And it was kind of crazy to see how many things were connected. So fun game for all the listeners. Curtis, I really appreciate you being on I want to ask you one final question that we ask all of our guests, and this is really your State of the Union. Curtis Hughes giving a State of the Union in front of a million people and you are leaving your best advice.

Whether it's about career advice, technology advice for those don't know, any kind of advice as it relates to technology, what would it be? What would you say?

I think the more rigid we are the the worse off we're going to be in the future. I think we really have to bake flexibility and everything. We're everything we're doing. I talked about it already. But starting with the tool first mindset, I think that's me really I say a lot people that know me have heard

it a ton. But don't start with the tool, start with the problem, start with the people and and really try to understand that first and honestly, even when I'm hiring, looking at people, technologies are gonna change skill sets are gonna change what I hire somebody for today, they're going to need to know something different in five years, 10 years, whatever it is,

or even sooner. So hire for culture, hire for people, hire for the ability for someone to kind of think creatively and solve problems outside of just technology. And then the last thing is just always keep in the back of your mind and or the front of your mind, the impact that whatever you do has on people, I think sometimes we just forget that we just solve problems and technology and we don't think downstream like, how is this going to affect someone that uses this or someone on my

team? Or how do we support it, whatever the people impact may be think about the people impact of what you're trying to do. It'll be much more successful when you do that, and it'll make you think differently.