L2L Acquires SwipeGuide - Discussion with the CEO's

Press Release:

In this weeks episode of The Manufacturing Stream Podcast, Eric discusses that L2L has announced the acquisition of Swipe Guide, a move that brings together two powerful technologies to enhance the connected workforce in manufacturing. Eric is joined by, John Devagian, CEO of L2L and Willemijn Schneider, CEO of Swipe Guide. The two CEO’s discuss that this merger aims to address long-standing challenges in the industry, such as labor productivity stagnation and the loss of skilled workers. Devagian explains that this acquisition aligns with L2L’s mission to improve workforce empowerment and efficiency by integrating Swipe Guide’s intuitive, mobile-friendly digital tools with L2L’s core capabilities in driving availability, performance, and quality.
Willemijn Schneider of Swipe Guide, highlights the value of simplifying knowledge transfer and process standardization across manufacturing operations. Swipe Guide’s user-friendly platform allows workers to create and share instructions easily, empowering frontline workers and improving training and efficiency. Together, the companies aim to bring a holistic approach to digital transformation on the shop floor.
With over half a million users, this acquisition expands L2L’s global reach, adding a European headquarters and offering solutions in multiple languages. The combined technologies promise to accelerate productivity improvements, support real-time decision-making, and enhance manufacturing processes, marking a significant step forward in the connected workforce space.

l2l.com
Youtube: @leading2lean

Transcript

Hey everyone, welcome back to the Manufacturing Stream podcast. I'm your host, Eric Whitley. We have some amazingly exciting news here today. The Manufacturing Stream podcast sponsored by L2L, the most connected, great, I'm gonna start that over. That was horrible. I'm gonna start that over, ready?

Three, two, one. Hey everyone, welcome back to the Manufacturing Stream podcast. I'm your host, Eric Whitley, the Manufacturing Stream podcast hosted by L2L. I am Eric Whitley, Director of Industrial Transformation for L2L, and we have some amazingly exciting news today. If you joined us on our podcast last week, I announced this, that we were gonna have some great announcements, some exciting announcements.

And I am pleased to have with me a couple of folks because the announcement is that L2L has acquired Swipe Guide. And we are really excited for this acquisition to bring this technology to bring these great people together with L2L. And I have with me today, John DeVagian, CEO of L2L.

and Willemijn Schneider, CEO of Swipe Guide. And so we are really excited to have them both here today. So welcome, thanks for joining the podcast. I'm excited to talk about this topic, excited to talk about the merger and the good things that are gonna come from it. So Willemijn, I'm gonna toss this out to you. Welcome, thank you. Welcome to the team. It's great to have you here.

Willemijn (01:37.172)
Awesome, no thank you for the warm welcome. I'm excited to get this conversation going. This has been long in the making and we're really excited too. We couldn't have found a better partner.

Eric Whitley (01:46.498)
Yeah, awesome. John, good news for us.

John (01:48.878)
Well, I'll say it right out of the gate, Eric, and we've talked about this a few times on your podcast is the future of the connected workforce is here and we're solidifying it. And I'm really excited about what the future holds for L2Alliance.

Eric Whitley (02:04.854)
Yeah, I agree. So let's kind of dive into that thought process right off the bat. I'm going to ask my first question. It'll kind of be for both of you. What does this mean for the future of the connected worker space? John, I'll start with you and then I'll let Wilmine join in. But what does this mean for L12? What does this mean for the connected worker space? How does this enhance and just make it all that much better?

John (02:28.986)
Well, first, before we dive into what we're going to do for the market, I think it's important, Eric, for us to zoom out and look at the last 20 or 30 years in terms of labor productivity across the manufacturing segment. And it's plateaued when you zoom out and you look at that. And one of the main reasons it's plateaued is skilled work. And we all know this. We've seen all the research. Skilled workers are retiring out of the workforce, and it's becoming more more challenging.

to train and empower the next generation of manufacturing workers and leaders to operate the plants with the same level of efficiency and continually improve the productivity and production and output. And when you think about the history and where we're going going forward, it's technology has enabled us in so many different ways. And I'm really excited about how we're going to be able to bring that training, the skills management.

the certifications to that front line, but not only are we doing that, we're doing it in an easy to use format. And that's where Swipe Guide enters. combining that with the core competencies of L2L make it a no -brainer for the connected workforce industry.

Eric Whitley (03:41.966)
I agree. I totally agree. Yeah.

Willemijn (03:43.394)
Yeah, I don't want to build on what you're saying, John. think like years ago, we started a swipe guide with a simple and clear mission, right? To simplify the way people work and learn at the manufacturing frontline. We did that because when you look in the day -to -day processes of the operations, we couldn't believe that everything is still sort of stuck on paper, you know, stuck in the last century. And we fundamentally believe that the generation that now enrolls in the workforce, they need to be empowered. They grew up on technology.

They have everything at their fingertip and all of that software is instant, it's real time and collaborative. And we've seen that if you involve people in the shaping of their processes, that really drives the productivity forward. So I want to build up on that. It's incredibly important that technology drives the enablement of that frontline worker.

Eric Whitley (04:34.636)
Yeah, we've seen this over the years where the just people are beginning to use more and more and more every day in their lives, their mobile devices, this technology. And we know that they walk into the workspace expecting that technology to be in the workspace.

And so it's really exciting to be able to be a part of something that actually provides that technology so that then when they come to work at a manufacturing facility, they are using the same technology in the manufacturing facility as they use outside of the manufacturing facility. And that's really key. And I know it's why.

Willemijn (05:09.949)
Absolutely.

Eric Whitley (05:11.936)
Swipe Guide is really, really good. I some amazing interfaces. So let's talk a little bit about what were some of the considerations? Why is L2L and Swipe Guide such a good fit together when it comes to the platforms, the customers? What are the synergies there that we have between the two that makes this such a good fit? I'll toss that to you, John.

John (05:38.838)
So one of the things when you look at L2L is we're really strong and focused prior to this acquisition in three main areas. Driving availability, increasing performance, and improving quality. And when we think about those areas, about driving availability, it's a lot of CMMS and EAM capabilities. Increasing performance is very production oriented. And then improving quality.

And how do we improve that over time to reduce scrap and waste? So what we're finding over the last couple of years and what we went out and looked for was a solution that could empower the workforce. So there's that fourth leg of the stool, if you will, and that's the workforce. If you can't empower them and train them and support them with the work instructions that they need at the time that they need to do it, and the certifications and the skill improvements,

that they need on a daily basis and a weekly basis, it's really challenging in a manufacturing facility for all the reasons that Willamine said. Because the next generation is demanding a digital environment when they walk into a plant. They want that engagement on a mobile device to learn and to do their job.

Eric Whitley (06:56.642)
Willem, why was L2L such a draw for you guys?

Willemijn (06:56.737)
And then I think from.

Willemijn (07:02.572)
Yeah, so, and indeed, when you look at Swipe Guide, Swipe Guide has transformed how the frontline workforce captures knowledge, standardizes work procedures, and then shares those back processes across teams, lines, and sites. But what we found is that at some point, you need to make that connection to the day -to -day operations. We lacked capabilities around task management, task scheduling, deviation tracking.

And we like that traceability of that data points. So when John and I got to talk, I think what is now 18 months ago over a cup of coffee in Boston, what we've really found is that those two combination would empower every frontline work, but also every frontline leader to make sure that the right task can be assigned to the right person at the right time, and that you could empower them in a way that you could never do with the digital and visual job aids that SwipeGuy provides.

At the same time, what drew us to L2L is the focus on A, the frontline worker as the gateway to digital transformation, and the focus on it's about that empowerment. It is about capability building of the frontline that's an anchor in that digital transformation.

Eric Whitley (08:22.988)
So this gives us now, if I'm correct, over a half a million users on the platform now. That's amazing.

What are some of those quantifiable, I mean, you talked about it, John, availability, performance and quality. We've always looked at those things. And now we're gonna start looking at, know, having on that fourth leg of that stool, the workforce and focusing in on that. So what are some of the things that clients, prospects and people that are looking to get into the connected worker space, what are some of the things that they

they can expect to improve metric wise for them because of using this holistic approach now on a connected worker platform in L2L.

John (09:16.942)
When you look at the plateau in manufacturing and in terms of productivity, one of the reasons there's been a plateau is the ability to educate the new workers that enter into the workforce. And what this capability will enable us to do is to educate and provide the skills to the workers that are keeping the machines running, are checking in on the assets, that are

observing and improving the processes, whether they be quality or safety processes and other processes that within a manufacturing plant. And if we can speed that up and we speed the onboarding time of a new employee, if we speed the time at which it takes them to take action to make improvements on the manufacturing shop floor, then availability, performance and quality will improve. And one other way to look at this is

When manufacturers have folks that are retiring out of the workforce, a lot of that knowledge in tribal knowledge is in their head. And so how do you document that tribal knowledge? And there's a race to document that tribal knowledge. Swipe Guide is uniquely positioned with an application that can be used on the shop floor to easily capture that tribal knowledge. And when you capture that tribal knowledge, you now are able to take a step back.

and then improve those processes, but more importantly, pass them down to the next generation and the next team to jump in. It's really a unique opportunity for both companies.

Eric Whitley (10:54.37)
Yeah, Willem, talk a little bit about that technology. I've always said that I believe that the one thing that manufacturers are gonna start having to do here pretty soon is to create almost like a content creation organization with inside of their organizations in order to capture all of that information and capture that data so that people can access it in these digital platforms.

What is unique about Swipe Guide that allows that to happen? Tell us a little bit about that process.

Willemijn (11:26.636)
That's an excellent question because I think the key to Swipe Guide has always been that with Swipe Guide everyone can create an effective instructions. Right? So one of the things that we've done with Swipe Guide is to create very intuitive, mobile friendly content creation templates, not just any templates, but they're very user centered, task focused, they're visual. It is all sorts of digital media that you can incorporate. So what it has done, it it is...

Eric Whitley (11:34.669)
Mmm.

Willemijn (11:53.89)
build a capability for operators and engineers to pick up a tablet and simply document the process as they go through it step by step. And we have clients that do a changeover procedure and they lay it all out and they just run through that procedure at the hands of Swipe Guide. And following that, you publish it into an app and immediately it's available to any location that has that same piece of equipment, that same process. So what then happens is that you can give feedback on it. So you can comment, can upload pictures to make

recommendations on how to improve that. So what it helps, for example, customers to do is eliminate 50 different ways of doing the same thing. Because that changeover procedure that runs in Chicago, it also runs in Singapore and Mexico. And by making it open available as a collaborative document to users, you can capture and learn from any improvement throughout the world. Bottom up, what it empowers you to do is capture that travel knowledge, reduce training time, improve skills.

But when you look at an organization that wants to improve a safety standard, it also allows you to look into those digital libraries and say, hey, this is actually a best practice that drove down change over time by 22 minutes. Now I can push that out proactively to any other line that runs that same process. And I think that is really unique to Swipe Guide. It's very intuitive and simple to use for frontline workers. And with that, you don't have to build a content organization because that's a huge thing.

The only thing that you need to do is empower people with the right digital tools. It involves them in shaping up the processes and that gives them recognition as well. We see that the retention of frontline workers and clients that have been using this for years is higher because they feel they're making a difference in their job.

Eric Whitley (13:20.946)
Yeah.

Eric Whitley (13:39.391)
Yeah, and we know.

John (13:39.994)
Eric, there's some interesting points there. If we go back to what Willemijn and I talked about about 18 months ago is you take the power of Swipe Guide in the use case that Willemijn just took us through and put that on a mobile device and give it to a supervisor in a manufacturing facility. That supervisor is trying to orchestrate 10, 15, maybe 20 people across the shop floor to drive product out the door.

Now we put in the hands of that person how that machine is running, how that current line is operating, what's the current quality or waste that that line is kicking off, what next products are supposed to be run through that line, what preventative maintenance or what maintenance needs to be done on that line, but more importantly, who on the line needs to be trained with what skill so that they can safely and productively operate that line. Now when they have that

right at their fingertips, they're able to orchestrate their workforce to get optimal outcomes. We layer on top of that what we've done here at L2L with our AI capabilities and our automation capabilities, and we can speed up that flywheel. We can help that supervisor make faster decisions because now they have the visibility to what's happening across all aspects of that line and of that plant. And at the end of the day, they will get better outcomes.

They will get faster outcomes and they will achieve greater productivity. We like to say they'll profitably meet demand at the end of the day.

Eric Whitley (15:18.254)
Yeah, my mind immediately when Wilma was talking about that, my mind, you know, my background, my mind immediately went to the maintenance tech standing out on the line. You know, we know that pencil whipping of PMs is an issue. People pencil whip PMs because 20 % of the tasks are not even relevant that are on that piece of paper. 10 % of those tasks are wrong. So giving that person the ability to

make updates to the processes and the procedures so that it becomes more valuable to them. That's that's a big win, huge win for the maintenance folks out on the shop floor because they don't they want to do the right job. And that's kind of what I found is that people want to do the right thing. They just have to have the right instructions. And, and when you give somebody a checklist inside of a manufacturing plant, there is a there's kind of a legal

drive to make sure you check all those checks, even though they're wrong. And so being able to update those, make those things more valuable to them, that's just, that's amazing. So.

Willemijn (16:17.153)
Mm

John (16:23.588)
But take it a step further to Eric, right? We know that in L2L, traditional L2L, we can offer up suggested operator fixes, right? Just to use one simple example. Now we can offer up those operator fixes and speed that process, but give them an easy to use work instruction that they can launch right there at that time and get that line back up and running safely and fast.

Willemijn (16:25.15)
it.

Eric Whitley (16:33.922)
Yes. Yes.

Eric Whitley (16:41.484)
Yes.

Eric Whitley (16:53.324)
Yeah.

John (16:53.62)
And we offer up suggested parts as well. And just that it's endless in terms of the access that we can serve up, the knowledge that we can serve up to these workers.

Willemijn (17:03.926)
Yeah. And then to build up on that, John, what you said is because of the capabilities that L2L brings, you can offer up suggested fixes. And then you can look at who already has that skills qualification. And then you can assign that to the right person. following that, you empower them with the right standard operating procedure. So it's going to empower you to leverage the frontline workforce that you have in a much better way. Every time you do something that is

Eric Whitley (17:05.122)
Yeah, yeah, I totally agree.

Willemijn (17:30.623)
new, changed, irregular, or complex, that's when you need instruction. And the better instruction you give, the more variety of tasks a frontline worker can pick up on. And that helps also in managing that shortage of workforce that you have.

Eric Whitley (17:47.202)
Yeah, I'm.

My head is actually spinning right now of all the possibilities that our clients are gonna be able to use this with and all the processes that they're gonna be able to improve. And I think your thought process, John, around, and I think of the plan, do, check, act process, being able to quickly go through that PDCA process out on the shop floor, having AI help us do that quicker out on the shop floor so that you can repeat that process faster and faster and faster and get better and better and better.

Willemijn (18:05.772)
Yeah.

John (18:08.314)
Mm -hmm.

Eric Whitley (18:19.008)
That's really what happened. And I know you've referred to it a couple of times here in the podcast, but we're talking about the, think it's the Federal Reserve Economic Data Chart that shows how the output by operator has flattened out over the last 10 years or so in manufacturing. And I think back to my time.

when lean came in and Toyota production system came in, the ability of to get better faster, there was some serious rapid improvement and we really need to get back to that in manufacturing in order to be, you know, kind of take that next leap in manufacturing to get us back to where we need to be in manufacturing. and I really.

John (18:51.545)
That's right.

John (19:02.094)
That's a great point, Eric, and that's fundamentally what L2L has built around those principles. So when you think about those continuous improvement tactics, at its core now, there's so much data and so much information, so many processes that are on that frontline worker's plate. So how do we speed that up? AI enables us to be that copilot, and that's what L2L has done.

So we can speed that up and we can give them the information that they need. And so you'll start to see those productivity improvements because we can point them to what they need to do now and what they need to do today or this hour to get the plant running more efficiently. So giving them that insights because there's just only so much data that a human can consume. There's only so many different siloed systems that a human could operate within. And if we simplify all that, which is what we've done, it's

Eric Whitley (19:38.818)
Yeah.

Eric Whitley (19:47.266)
Right.

Eric Whitley (19:52.268)
Right.

Willemijn (19:54.189)
Correct.

Correct.

John (20:01.53)
pretty impactful when you talk with our customers.

Eric Whitley (20:03.97)
Yeah, yeah, especially if they have slow, they have slow CPUs like I do in my brain that they can't really kind of take in that data, you know, so.

Willemijn (20:04.043)
Yeah. And that simplicity.

John (20:10.106)
Well, you can only take so much. You can only take so much. And I think that the graph that we're referring to says exactly that, that there's only so much you can do. The tactics that you went through and you talked about provided a tremendous amount of improvements and productivity improvements. But now there's so much process, so much data there that the decision making is really tough. Now, AI and solutions like L2L

Eric Whitley (20:19.043)
Yeah.

Eric Whitley (20:29.283)
Yeah.

Eric Whitley (20:35.011)
Yeah.

John (20:38.924)
enable you as a frontline worker to then make that decision much, much faster with this assistive technology. And now you incorporate swipe guide into it. Now you know how to do it, when to do it, and you're going to have the skills to do it. It's really a great opportunity going forward. That's why I say the future is here.

Eric Whitley (20:48.92)
Yeah, totally.

Eric Whitley (20:59.052)
Yeah, exactly. I agree. Go ahead, Willem. I'm sorry we jumped in there on top of you.

Willemijn (21:02.732)
Not totally fine. What I get, what I really get enthusiastic about is I think in the past we've been very overzealous with technology that we bring to the shop floor, right? We overdesign, we have a lot of information as John mentioned that we fire up to the frontline worker. But we need to drive simplicity beyond all of that complexity. You want to eliminate what you don't need. Because as a frontline worker, you have so many things to do and to focus on and your primary task is at the line.

Eric Whitley (21:13.43)
Mmm. Mmm -hmm.

Willemijn (21:31.264)
So how can you leverage technology to make sure that people take the right action at the right time and that you collect all the data to help them take better decisions? But the enthusiasm is really in that focus on simplicity and making sure an app is intuitive and really empowers that frontline. And that's why I get excited on the combination is, hey, just imagine you have your frontline worker, you check into the frontline.

Eric Whitley (21:55.212)
Yeah.

Willemijn (22:00.49)
you just, I don't know, you're either already logged in or you scanned this QR code and immediately you have access to all of your tasks, your instructions, your checks, your materials that you need to do throughout your day. And everything around it really enables you to do it better. That's what I get really excited about. And that's what this combination can bring.

Eric Whitley (22:12.952)
Yeah.

Eric Whitley (22:18.456)
Yeah. Yeah, I totally agree. Listen, I know you two are really busy right now. Today's a busy day for you, an exciting day for you guys, exciting. I don't wanna keep you much longer, but I wanna ask each of you, just give me your feelings. Give me your parting feelings on.

Willemijn (22:27.927)
exciting day.

Eric Whitley (22:38.434)
And I'll start Willem and I'll start with you. Give us your parting feelings here on what this means for Swipe Guide, what this means for L2L, what this means for the connected worker space, just kind of your overall sentiment on that.

Willemijn (22:51.832)
Totally. For Elto and Swipe get together, way that I look at it, is it's an exciting new opportunity to bring technology to our customers that actually makes sense. That's what I get really excited about. That's the excitement that I hear in the teams. We have customers that have been waiting for the capabilities that Elto has been building for years in the past. And we're really excited to bring this to our customers together.

When I look at, I'm outward looking, what I get excited about is that the opportunity this brings to the market, right? A company, a platform that is focused on empowering the frontline with just the right amount of information to make better decisions. And that we do that through intuitive applications, through the right guidance, that incorporate technologies that really focus on that simplification.

you know, this is the reality of today. And I get excited about how we can guide that digital transformation in the upcoming years. And other than that, I'm just really excited about working with this amazing team. Like the energy is great. I love the energy.

Eric Whitley (24:03.343)
Yeah.

Yeah, we've had a few meetings over the past week or so and it's been really, really exciting. So, John, final thoughts on this?

John (24:15.898)
So I'll go back, you know, 18 months ago when we were sitting in Boston, we had coffee and we got to know each other. I think we sat down for an hour. We spent three hours talking. We talked about the market. We talked about our families. We really got to know each other. But there was a common thread here, Eric, and the common thread was manufacturing is really hard. It's really hard. And to be a worker in manufacturing, it's hard. There's a lot asked of you.

Willemijn (24:22.379)
Yeah. Yup.

Eric Whitley (24:25.563)
there.

Willemijn (24:29.142)
Very, yeah.

Willemijn (24:38.113)
Heart. Yeah.

Willemijn (24:43.521)
Yeah.

John (24:45.304)
And there's a lot that goes wrong, you know, during the day and you have to persevere. And so what we agree is that we need to simplify this. We need to simplify what the worker needs to do, the systems that they interact with so that they can do their job. And that's what our mission is to empower workers to manufacture better together. So if they can share information, whether it's work instructions, whether it's the status of a machine.

whether it's how a line is performing at any moment in time. And if you have access to that information, you want to win, you'll make the right decisions, you'll take the right actions and you'll do it fast. So we are very much aligned on that and the products together do that and the future is going to be great. On top of that, I'll say this is a big milestone for L2L. We now with our partners, SwipeGuide, we have an

Eric Whitley (25:33.624)
Yeah.

John (25:43.162)
an office in Europe, so we have a headquarters at European headquarters. We've added significantly more headcount with this. As you mentioned, our number of users is over 500 ,000 users. And we're into almost 1 ,000 plants worldwide. The products are in multiple languages. We're really, really excited about the adoption of our products in the future of this industry.

Eric Whitley (26:08.824)
Yeah, truly. And it's amazing. And I've been with L2L for, I mean, my 11th year to watch the growth, to watch where we're at. It's just really, really good. I appreciate you both being on here. Yeah, it's totally fun. We've had a good time. We really have had a good time. Yes.

John (26:21.858)
It's fun, isn't it, Eric? It's fun.

Willemijn (26:25.759)
It's a really fun industry to be in. There's so much meaningful difference that you can make for this overlooked workforce. So yeah, let's keep rolling.

Eric Whitley (26:33.539)
Yeah, it's really exciting. And we're happy to have all the people from Swipe Guide on the team now and they're great people. We've got to meet a lot of them. The amazing, the amount of chats that are going on in Slack right now and people introducing everybody where everybody, I mean, we literally have employees all over the globe now. There's no doubt about it and that's exciting. So from...

from an internal L2L standpoint, I'm sure from an internal swipe guide standpoint, it's just really good, really exciting. So we're excited and can't wait to see what the future holds and how things evolve and what our clients think about it. I think they're going to be really excited. You know, I've dealt with clients for a long time and I think they're going to be excited about the capabilities and just that next step, that next level of...

know, capabilities out on the shop floor to help them manufacture their products. And I think it's just good. thanks for joining me today on on the podcast. I really appreciate you guys. Thanks a bunch.

Willemijn (27:40.097)
Thank you for having us. Thanks.

John (27:40.324)
Thank you, Eric.

Eric Whitley (27:41.164)
Yeah. Yeah. All right, everybody. Thanks. This has been the manufacturing stream podcast. Big news. L2L acquires swipe guide. We're excited to announce that today. And please go follow us on LinkedIn. Go follow us on Facebook. You can go follow everybody on swipe guide on LinkedIn, on Facebook, all the all the social platforms.

You're welcome to go follow Wilmine and follow John on LinkedIn. I know they're both on there. You can reach out with any questions that you have about that. Don't be afraid to go to L2L .com. There's going to be plenty of information there as well. And we'll be talking about this I'm sure on future podcasts and about the new things that are coming. So thanks everybody for joining us. This is the Manufacturing Stream podcast. I'm Eric Whitley. And until next time, thanks. Appreciate you.