Connect Together Podcast

Connect Together Podcast is home to Made Here, an interview series jointly hosted by the Industrial Solutions Network and Manufacturing Happy Hour. The premise is simple. Pick a region, show up, and talk to the people who build things there. Chris Lukey of Manufacturing Happy Hour does the asking, and his side of the conversation leans on short affirmations and follow-up questions that give guests room to think out loud. The Pittsburgh episodes center on a city working to become a hub for robotics, automation and AI, and on getting ideas from the lab to the plant floor. Mark DeSantis frames innovation through Henry Ford, whose real breakthrough, in his telling, was less the car than the assembly line that made it reliable and affordable. Each gain in production, he points out, let Ford lower the price. Jennifer Apicella reduces economic development to more companies, more investment and more jobs. She also explains why technology that is not an app or an e-commerce site needs customers, capital and a particular kind of investor to leave the lab. On the Thoro.ai episode, Patrick Mondi contrasts a floor scrubber that holds to defined paths in busy airports with a pallet jack that works out a new route when its way through a distribution center is blocked. He sets both against self-driving cars, and his parting verdict is that Pittsburgh is a place of substance. Central Nebraska moves the focus from machines to people. The Behlen interview makes a blunt case that a manufacturer hoping to attract the next generation has to be out in its community. Mick Yarkoski describes going from a workplace where he was a number to one where someone would ask where he was if he failed to turn up, and says that is what makes him want to come to work. Chris Lukey thanks both Behlen guests for tangible examples of how empowering teams feeds safety, hiring and retention. Norfolk gets its own portrait through Angie Stenger, pitched as a little-known town with plenty to teach. That talk drifts cheerfully to floating a river in a metal tank, a joke about waterproof microphones and live music downtown. Kansas City brings Shawn Hastings and the less glamorous side of food manufacturing. He explains how a central location and kill plants a couple of hours out suit sausage making, and admits he has seen people quit on the first day. Fittingly, that visit closes with burnt ends waiting. For a first listen, the Thoro.ai episode suits anyone curious about warehouse robots, and the Behlen interview suits anyone more interested in the people on the floor.