Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
[00:00:11] Speaker B: Welcome back to the Control Alt Manufacturing podcast. Resetting and Rethinking Manufacturing. This podcast is helping explore some of the people, technologies and strategies that are driving the digital transformation of manufacturing. Today we're coming to you live from the CSIA conference in Baltimore and I'm very excited to have a guest sitting in the room with me, Darren Diehlman, Vice President of Business Development at Interstates and Chair of the CSIA Board of Directors. Darren, welcome Stephanie.
[00:00:41] Speaker A: It's great to be here.
It's great to be in Baltimore. Great to be at the CSIA conference again this year. Really excited about the opportunity to network, collaborate and talk to you all today.
[00:00:50] Speaker B: I'm so excited to be here and I just want to say that my co host Gary Cohen is here in the room with us, but that I am doing the interview today, so lucky me.
So Darren, I just want to introduce you really quickly. He's been with Interstate for 14 years and has spent most of that time leading the industrial automation business. He's also driving company strategy and partnerships. Before joining Interstate Steering served in a variety of manufacturing operations role. So he's got a lot of knowledge to share. So let's start here with the first question.
[00:01:22] Speaker A: All right.
[00:01:23] Speaker B: All right. You helped kick off the conference with the welcome and the update to the membership. What are the biggest messages you want members to.
[00:01:30] Speaker A: Yeah, I think. Thanks for that question, Stephanie. So as a board, the landscape of system integration companies has really been changing quite a bit, especially since COVID What I want people to hear and understand that as a board and the staff and the association management firm, we're really doubling down and focused on member engagement, member retention, member value. I think that hopefully came across this morning in the opening.
So that means looking at all the different programs and things that we offer, making sure basically everything we do is centered in points towards the mission of CSIA and making our member help our member companies run better businesses. So that's really what I want to hear. I don't have these big reveal of three or five or seven new programs. We understand there's value in collaboration, peer groups and networking and all those other things are really important. The special interest groups, we know there's a lot of side meetings going on here at the conference this week, so we understand the importance of those. And so really to be leaning into and listening to members over the next year especially. And we're adding a new role which we're excited about to focus on member engagement.
[00:02:37] Speaker B: And so when you talk about listening to your members, you're Balancing the leadership at interstates with serving as chair of the CSIA board, which I mentioned, what are you hearing most often from integrators about the challenges they're facing right now?
[00:02:51] Speaker A: Yeah, so a great question again. So people challenges are kind of constant for, you know, especially coming out of the COVID period. It was a highly competitive environment for people. I think it still is. I think leadership as well is going to be a critical piece and then, you know, navigating the change of, you know, AI. And what is going to be the impact on AI, on the type of work that we're all doing as system integrators? What's the impact to manufacturers? We know integrators in many cases are in those conversations with manufacturers. So just those to me are two things right off the top. You know, the people challenge, which is kind of an age old thing, and then the more recent thing with AI, then there'll be other emerging technologies certainly down the road as well.
[00:03:34] Speaker B: So the challenges that you mentioned, Darren, from your vantage point, does that also represent the biggest shifts that are happening in system integration today?
[00:03:44] Speaker A: That's. Yeah. The only thing I might add, I think what we see is a lot of, you know, there's a lot of consolidation in the industry as well. There's a lot of system integration firms that have been around since the late 80s and 90s. There's, there's owners that are transitioning into retirement. And so you kind of have, you have some of that going on as well. So you have. And we see that at the conference and you know, the demographics of those registrations. If you go back, even pre Covid, it was a lot of owners and founders and now we have a lot of elite junior leaders moving up into senior leadership roles, some even now taking over as CEOs and potential owners.
We see that transitioning happening quite a bit as well. So that's one thing that I would say is maybe new or different besides just the technology piece.
And I've said that I say this a lot.
It's a really exciting time in the world to be doing what we're doing.
So our company does electrical construction, electrical manufacturing as well as system integration. And just whether it's electrification for whatever reason, there's just a ton of opportunity and I think that's drawn a ton of even outside of the industry interest in, into what our companies are doing. And so that all plays a factor as well. When you have outside investors, you have folks outside of industry looking to figure out how to get into this space
[00:05:05] Speaker B: as well, do you want to talk a little bit about interstates and what your specialties are?
[00:05:11] Speaker A: Yeah, I can touch on that just a little bit. I don't want to make this all about interstates necessarily. So our company was founded back in the 1950s. A guy named John A. Franken was selling TVs out of his basement when TVs in the home was starting to become a big deal.
Entrepreneurial roots way back to then.
Got into electrical contracting. I don't know the exact year, the late 60s or 70s. Started doing power engineering as clients were like, hey, can you design this as well as wire this? Hired our first programmer, you know, when you had relay logic and stuff back in the 80s. Officially incorporated the System Integration Business Unit 1996. Got involved with CSIA shortly thereafter. We've been certified with CSIA eight times now. I think our first certification was in 2000 or 2001. We're preparing for another audit with CSIA later this year.
So we've kind of been on this journey as an industrial service provider and now more recently have expanded into industrial manufacturing with like skids, modular units, E houses.
We've been doing panel construction. We've really expanded that as well and then got into more, I'll say, advanced things on the technology side like cybersecurity, data and analytics and obviously, you know, in addition to industrial automation that are, you know, we're playing around with and doing a lot with AI. Like probably many people are so sure,
[00:06:31] Speaker B: you know, speaking of AI and navigating change, what impact has AI had on system integrators ability to do their jobs?
[00:06:42] Speaker A: I'd say at this point not a tremendously material impact. If to be really honest, I think there are different industries that are adopting and will adopt at different rates. We know that it's a topic for almost every system integrator. It's a topic for many industries. It's a topic for many of our clients.
People are really, I think, experimenting with AI most from what we're hearing and seeing internally.
Well, how do I use it to make my processes more efficient?
We're doing the same, we're looking at the same. But yeah, it hasn't necessarily shifted fundamentally the way we work. Although there are certain areas, whether it's contract reviews or proposal development or marketing materials. There are ways that we've seen our work shift a little bit with AI, but it's not like we've stopped programming PLCs and those sorts of things. But that's as the tech as we figure out.
You know, Matt, Wise in his to reference his session even earlier today, talked about leading edge, fast follower or getting run over by the change curve. This is an area I think as system integrators we got to really pay attention to make sure we're not so lagging in adopting AI in X, Y and Z use cases that we get run over by that when it comes. So yeah, that's my maybe long answer to that question.
[00:08:04] Speaker B: Well, I didn't see Matt's presentation, but we have had Mapwise on our podcast before and I think we talked a lot about digital twins when we had them on.
Other than AI, Any other technology initiatives out there that you think are important to understand embrace for system integr to get behind?
[00:08:23] Speaker A: Yeah, so you know, security is a constant thing and so that's always a topic. Especially with AI, it's become even more of an important topic. I think other technologies, you know, there's a lot of talk around software defined stuff and containerization and so I think those are things that you got to pay close attention to.
It's interesting we didn't get a ton to my background or you mentioned manufacturing, so I can't. I studied accounting and finance. I was in manufacturing. So I understand, I think I can empathize and understand with the challenges people in operations face. But I'm not the technical guy that can necessarily tell you what. Here's the next whiz bang technology we should be digging into. We have some great people that do that, but those are just a couple things that come to my mind. Certainly cybersecurity, software defined containerization.
You know, there's a lot of advancements kind of going on around in that space as well.
[00:09:19] Speaker B: Well, for a finance guy, you have all the lingo, you got all the terms.
[00:09:23] Speaker A: But 14 years, you know, I had this. I think we said it was like I needed to know enough to be dangerous and I'm hoping I'm at least getting to the point where I'm knowing enough to be dangerous. And then you know what you knowing what you don't know and then knowing who to go to is kind of the other superpower with that, hopefully.
[00:09:37] Speaker B: I mean it's about the people, right? The people that you surround yourself with, the organization with. I mean it's really important. We talk about this technology all the time and how it's changing the way we do business, but we also have to factor into the equation that people are important to the, to the whole process. And I think that gets left out a lot. But you know, just the importance of System integrators coming on site and doing the work. Right. That, you know, maybe a manufacturer has a smaller staff and maybe they're great at what they do, but they just don't have the bandwidth to do it or they're integrating some new project.
So all, I mean, all good stuff. But I guess that leads me into my next question.
[00:10:18] Speaker A: Sure.
[00:10:18] Speaker B: Customer expectations and how they changed and what do successful integrators need to do differently now to meet those expectations?
[00:10:28] Speaker A: Yeah, that's another good question.
Customer expectations. I think we, we continue. I think the expectation of understanding, you know, I was sitting with a client about this was about six months ago and we were talking about kind of their digital roadmap. They were talking about a roadmap to what's the plan of the future look like.
And then they, you know, they wanted, they were looking to us to, well, what do you guys see how, what, what role is AI going to play in the process that we're doing? So I think the expectation that we, that we listen, we understand their needs, but we bring expertise from different industries and things we see to the table.
I don't know if that's totally new. I think it depends on your relationship with the client. Some relationships with clients can be transactional. And then certainly like our company and many other companies, your goal is to be where you're really plugged in and you're doing things ongoing and you're able to do strategic planning. So when you're proposing on work or whatever that looks like it's not this transactional. Hand a scope of work and hand a bid number back.
But I think, I think clients do expect you to know and understand their business well, what matters to them, not just, hey, I've got this set of tools in my toolbox and so how do you want me to use these tools? No. Well, here's my problems.
I want you to help provide expertise, maybe work alongside of our team or they may not have a team at all. So I need you to be my trusted partner or trusted advisor in this process. I think the expectations just continue to elevate, but a lot of it's still the same. If you've been doing it well for a lot of years, it just means making sure you're advancing and innovating so that you're not falling behind and not able to add value to those clients.
[00:12:14] Speaker B: So creating that trust, creating that value from both the interstate side and the CSIA side, what leadership traits are most important for the next generation of leaders in automation and manufacturing? In Your opinion?
[00:12:29] Speaker A: Yeah. Most important leadership traits. Well, this is more probably macro level than maybe specific to system integration. I think humility is one of the most important leadership traits one can have, especially in this industry when there is so much going on and we've got a lot of very smart people being willing to come to a conference like the CSIA conference, even if you're doing a lot of things great, not just assuming you've got everything figured out, humility, to know and understand there might be a better way and being open to that. So I think that's really important in leadership. I think empathy, understanding, listening skills.
I shared, we just were, we had a table discussion about what's one of the biggest challenges that we see. And we talked about people and specifically leadership.
The need for leaders to be able to lead technical teams, to be able to lead and walk alongside a client, to take an idea or a concept and understand the client's challenge and bring that to life.
I think, yeah. Listening, humility, the ability to understand and articulate, connect with and lead people, Connect with different generations of people. We've got, you know, different generations entering the workforce now than my generation and there's the generations before work differently. So I think those are all important leadership traits that those leading in this industry need to have and probably beyond.
[00:14:01] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, it goes back to the people skills. Right. We talk a lot about workforce shortage, skills shortage, but we also have to get back to the basics of listening and humility and all those things you noted.
[00:14:17] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:14:18] Speaker B: So, Darren, as chair of the CSIA board, what do you hope attendees leave this conference understanding or doing differently?
[00:14:28] Speaker A: I hope attendees leave here feeling like they left with one or two or three or ten ideas that they didn't have and that this becomes an indispensable part of their year. Coming to the CSIA conference, that this is a valuable event.
And, you know, certainly I want people to make great personal connections. And I know that's happened. It's become like almost like a big family, if you will, for a lot of people that have been involved at CSI over the years. So I want to, I want the leaders and those that are here to walk away from this conference feeling that. Feeling like they have a place, they've got a community that they can go to. Maybe they can even bring that back and engage some other leaders at their company in the CSIA in different ways, whether that's a committee or a special interest group or at the conference next year. That's what I want.
[00:15:18] Speaker B: Yep. There's a lot of energy here, I'll tell you that. It's great. The welcome party was great. The sessions have been wonderful and we're enjoying ourselves. We're so happy that we were invited to podcast record our podcast live here.
So, Darren, I just want to say thank you for sitting down with us today on the Control Alt Manufacturing podcast, as I don't know if there's anything else that you want to close with, but I think, you know, we've covered a lot of great stuff and just making sure that people understand the importance of the CSIA conference and the organization itself.
[00:15:53] Speaker A: Yeah, I appreciate the time and thanks for having me on. I think the last thing I'll leave you with is we again, in our small group, when we're talking about the Idea Exchange Hour, we talked about or the question was around what's kind of the most important leadership trait. And I talked about having a growth mindset. You know, that's a concept. It's a bit buzzwordy, but at the same time I'm transitioning roles. I've been leading in system integration and now going to be leading our business development team, which includes our construction group and our manufacturing group.
You know, when's the last time you really stretched yourself to take on an assignment that might have been really uncomfortable? There's parts of this that are uncomfortable for me, but I know that anytime I've taken on and done something that is different, that is stretching, I've ultimately been better for it. Now I may learn some things that I need to do differently, but that's the last thing I'd kind of note and kind of challenge everybody listening today.
[00:16:42] Speaker B: Great advice.
Well, thank you again. Just a reminder to our listeners, you can find this podcast on Control Engineering or anywhere and you like to listen. Thanks everyone for joining us today. Thank you Daring for sitting down with me. I'm Stephanie Neo signing off from Bombs. More. Have a good day.
