A Machine Tool & The Men by Bruce Tillinghast
Audio Stories of Machine Tool Leaders.
Historical and Respectful from our industry Brothers.
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A Machine Tool & The Men by Bruce Tillinghast
John Burg the gate keeper to Robots
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We have heard many people in our industry speak of automation to help enhance efficiency on the floor. John was a pioneer in this arena and he has machine tool background.
Hello, and from Cincinnati, the capital of metalworking machine tools, I'm Bruce Tillinghast, and welcome to the podcast, A Machine Tool in the Men, the audio recordings where we discover, share, and preserve the stories of the men who built the backbone of modern machine tools. I'm your host, Bruce Tillinghast, the vice president of Strategic Content. Each episode, we sit down with leaders, innovators, and unsung heroes of the machine tool world, capturing their experiences, their passion, and the lessons forged along the way. This is our industry's history, told by the voices who lived it. So let's get started. In this episode of A Machine Tool in the Men, we welcome Mr. John Berg, a 40-year veteran of the manufacturing industry, and retired CEO of ACEDA and a true pioneer of robotics. John's career spans decades of innovation and leadership, helping shape the role of automation and robotics and their place in modern manufacturing and machines. Today we'll hear his story and its perspective on where the industry has been and where it's headed. John, welcome to the podcast.
SPEAKER_00Thank you, Bruce. This is uh this is a real honor for me. Uh um I'm actually, as you well know and will discuss, um a big fan of the machine tool industry, spent a lot of time uh in the first 10 years or so of my career selling machine tools. Um, but uh after that I became very involved in robotic automation, and I still look uh I I probably have uh as many, if not more, machine tool uh uh friends as I do automation friends.
SPEAKER_01That's nice, that's good. So tell me how you got started, what uh from the beginning here.
SPEAKER_00Well, I'm gonna respond this way. My family had always been in the manufacturing business from the time I was uh certainly elementary age. And in in the late 50s, my my dad and my mother, Marlowe and Jean Berg, they purchased this small company that uh was really at the time a blacksmith shop, which many machine shops started as blacksmith shops. Absolutely. And so um they in then in the um in the late 50s, um, a gentleman showed up uh with a design for a hydraulic mobile hydraulic crane. And um uh my dad, they what his plan, his business plan was that he wanted to be the sales agent, and he wanted my dad's company, which was now called Berg Manufacturing, to build the cranes. And so um uh that relationship existed for uh several years, and um they developed multiple models, and then the gentleman, uh his name was Ralph Teal, unfortunately passed away uh in his early 50s, and and the his organization was really not capable of moving on after Ralph's uh death, and so um the sales manager, my dad, a um chief the chief engineer at um at Berg Manufacturing, and uh and a fourth party who was actually a very close friend of my dad's and a lawyer started a company called National Crane. And National Crane um uh became by far the dominant portion of the business. Eventually, Berg Manufacturing and National Crane merged and became one company. And um, my parents sold that business in this in the early 70s um uh at uh at the time to uh to a uh uh a holding company uh called Apache Corporation, but it was then sold many more times. And today National Crane is part of the Manitowak Crane Company out of Manitowoc, Wisconsin.
SPEAKER_01And and the National Crane uh branch is in Shady Grove, Pennsylvania.
SPEAKER_00I believe that's correct. I I I have not verified that recently, but I'm pretty sure that's where they are building that product line.
SPEAKER_01Good.
SPEAKER_00So we're making cranes and so we're making cranes, and my dad had, of course, sold the business. He did work for National Crane for a couple years, but eventually worked himself out of a job. And he had he had looked at several different facts, tried two or three different things, some of which uh met with mild success. But he and I had always thought about um starting a business. And so I was working for a company called Fuchs Machinery, which was located in Omaha, Nebraska, but ultimately ended up with branches in Sioux City, Iowa, and Grand Island, Nebraska, and Lincoln, Nebraska, and they were principally an industrial supply company. They also sold a significant portion of welding consumables, wire and and other kinds, along with Lincoln Electric uh equipment. And um they they went right along and and I was selling industrial supplies for them, but I became very interested. Now I started there in in 1975, and I became very interested in NC machine tools. And I was fortunate enough to numerical control, numerical control. Numerical control, keep going, which of course later became CNC, which is computer numerical control.
SPEAKER_01Thank you.
SPEAKER_00In fact, it it pretty much was on that path when I uh became involved. And uh uh I was fortunate enough to to call on a couple customers who were pretty big users of numerical control equipment, and so they taught me a lot about that. And we continued on um and I sold their uh four Fuchs Machinery in a territory, and uh one day I was uh thumbing through uh Modern Machine Shop, which is a magazine based in Cincinnati, Ohio. Correct, and and uh um it was uh it was a very well-read magazine. Most of my customers, it was not uncommon to see a copy of Modern Machine Shop on the on their uh desk, and it had an interesting format. It was not a full 8.5 by 11 magazine, it was a smaller, smaller, so you you noticed it right away. But anyhow, uh I digress. So I saw this ad, and it was for a company called General Numerics, and General Numerics was a joint venture between uh Fanic Limited in Japan and Siemens uh in in Germany. And they both were making CNC controls and other products, but uh uh they had put together this joint venture called General Numerics to try and market or to market, I should say, the the controls from each company to U.S. machine builders. And um this particular ad, however, was showing some small industrial robots that FANIC had developed for use in their own facility. And they just they had made a decision to try and and and market those products through general numerics.
SPEAKER_01And so what year was this roughly?
SPEAKER_00Uh this was uh about oh uh 19 um uh 93, 90, uh 92, 93. Okay, and and so um again, back to probably starting a business with my dad. I I stopped to see him one day and I showed him this ad. And I remember very distinctly his first comment was, well, what is it and who wants one? And uh I said, well, I'm not exactly sure, but I said I have a I have this strong feeling and andor vision that it's gonna turn into a very large business and people will be using these robots. I'm not you know, I don't know exactly for what, but um, but I'm certainly very interested in it in investigating that, and I think we should start an organization to uh to do what's called robotic integration, meaning we buy a robot, and quite frankly, we always tried to buy as many of the accessories as we could from outside suppliers and then put those together into an operating system. Okay, and uh so he was he had sold his business, as I mentioned before, and he was willing to uh uh give that a go. And so uh interestingly enough, Fuchs Machinery, the Fuchs family, was interested as well. And so my parents, my wife Deborah, and Fuchs Machinery, and I formed this company we called Automated Concepts Inc. or ACI. And uh we actually used a trade name called Autocon. And about three years into the uh that we found there were many autocons, including a CNC control manufacturer called Autocon. And so we quickly uh started just using the automated concepts inc or automated concepts, and of course, people that was a mouthful, so people quickly started calling us ACI, even though we never really used that trade name.
SPEAKER_01I wanted to break in here and just say automated concept is is a very unique name that you came up with. The definition is the use of technology to perform tasks with reduced human assistance. That's right out of Gemini. But that that was an incredible name you came up with.
SPEAKER_00I'd love to tell you we we were that smart to look it up, we weren't. We uh we simply uh uh came up with the name and and it stuck.
SPEAKER_01It it's wonderful. Okay.
SPEAKER_00So, anyhow, we uh um we continued on and and the Fuchs uh family, after about three or four years of pretty disappointing sales and uh certainly no profit, uh what's what are the years here?
SPEAKER_01What what what do you think?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, we're talking that well, we incorporated in April 1 of 1984. Okay and and so by the mid-80s, um uh the they came to us and they said, you know, um we wish you guys all the luck in the world, but we'd really like to be bought out, and the sale price will be we just don't contribute to losses anymore. So that was pretty that was pretty easy. And uh fortunately the fukes family, uh Mike Fuchs and Jack Fuchs, and and my dad and I, and we maintained a relationship for many, many years. And uh and uh Fuchs today is is no longer uh under that name. They are now a company here in Omaha. Um I don't know if they have any branch offices, but it's it's uh it's called Blackhawk Industrial, and they principally are in still in the industrial supply business.
SPEAKER_01Blackhawk is nationwide now. Uh they they are the consumables, no machine tools, but they're huge. Uh they're everywhere, even in St. Cloud, Minnesota, believe it or not. They're a big uh clearinghouse like Granger, they're very big.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. So anyhow, we uh we continued on, and and um um after that in the in then by about I guess it would probably be in 86, 87, in that area, um, we we came to know um a gentleman by the name of Tim Kiltee, who has of course already been a part of your podcast. And Tim and uh and one of his associates visited us in uh Omaha, and uh they had signed up to be a uh fanic integrator in the Chicago area and eastern Iowa, and but they really were not interested in starting an integration business. And so uh they they were interested in talking in discussing with my my dad and I principally about uh would we uh work with them to provide systems for what they sold. And of course, we were very interested in doing that, and it didn't take very long before um that was such a dominant part of our business that um uh Deborah and I moved our young family at the time and two other gentlemen um uh uh and and actually our secretary to um uh the uh Lombard, Illinois, and moved into the Ellison facility in Lombard, which ultimately ended up moving into the Warrenville, uh, Illinois area. And uh and principally, of course, with Ellison, because of their strong presence in machine tools, they were interested in selling automation for loading and unloading machine tools. However, we had some large customers, uh Caterpillar being one of them, and uh who were very interested in in welding. And so um we had some salespeople at Ellison who were who were well entrenched with uh customers like that, and they took us into those facilities and we sold um a lot of welding equipment, a lot of welding uh uh as well. In the meantime, uh we had uh uh met with some people from a company called Bobcat in North Dakota. And Bobcat for is a probably familiar to many of your listeners. It's a principally white uh device called a Skid Steer, has four wheels and is literally capable of turning in its own in its own uh length. Uh today many are track mounted, uh, use tracks instead of uh wheels. But we had started to we had started to work with Bodcat and in 1984, uh or maybe a little later, about that time, we actually sold two systems to Bodcat. One was a welding system, and one, well, both had welding as a component, but the other system was principally a machine load unload system. And uh and between then and well into the early 2000s, we uh had a had just a wonderful, still have a wonderful relationship with the Bobcat company. And um they they became a major user of industrial robots and uh in North America. In fact, there was a period of time where the where there were some studies that said there were approximately 600 employees for every um uh robot installed in an industrial plant. And Bobcat had six employees for every uh uh every uh robot they had in their facility. Most of those robots were were from us. And so we had a uh we just had a I had a great time. I called on them for 20 straight years, and I was in their plant at least once a month.
SPEAKER_01And uh did this increase their production of units? I mean, if you're gonna buy a robot.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, the numbers are actually to some extent uh uh probably sound a little unbelievable. When I started calling on them, they were making 36 machines a day with 600 employees. Okay, and they were turning their inventories about maybe half a dozen times a year. And uh um uh 15 years later, 10, 15 years later, they had the capacity to make 200 machines a day, and they still had 600 employees. Okay, that's and they were now turning inventories three or four times a year.
SPEAKER_01That's a major statistic. That's one of the things that just floors me that the the efficiency that you you're showing here just for one company for automation.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it it they went 10 straight years into the mid, I know, I know at least to the mid-late 90s without a price increase. And and um uh they just became such a dominant part of the what's called the small uh uh construction equipment market that that uh and still are. Um very much they branched into other areas for excavators and small tractors and and several other devices, but uh but they are uh I don't know uh exactly, but I know their their sales probably exceed a couple billion dollars a year.
SPEAKER_01That's that's incredible. That really is. That that's the automation has really helped the efficiency in the US. So what are your best memories over the 40 years?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, um my best memories. Well, I think I think my I would say that it was and as many people probably say about their career, it was the people I worked with. They were not only from customers and vendors, certainly the people that were part of the uh uh of the um uh automated concepts organization, and then what became ACEDA, and um uh and they that um those people we have uh um people that have worked in our company that have gone out and started their own integration companies that have moved on to other integration companies. Um, someone asked me uh uh not too long ago, how many people did I think worked at uh at at uh ACEDA over the years? And it it's totally a guess, but I'm sure it's well over five, six hundred people. The employment today um we've now been uh purchased by a larger organization that has other companies, but the CETA, the original ACETA company employment is currently around 100 people. 100 and yeah.
SPEAKER_01How did we get to the name of ACETA from Automated Concepts? Uh gotcha.
SPEAKER_00That's uh that is an interesting uh uh story, very quickly. Um Automated Concepts, as I mentioned before, was commonly known as ACI. That's what a lot of our customers would call us and uh call us by or talk about. And and um uh of course, later on, since we had and that we kind of skipped over this point, but I let me back up to it real quickly. Eventually, my dad and and or uh my parents and and Deborah and I sold the business to Ellison Technologies, and so we became the automation uh company was called Ellison Technologies Automation or ETA. So and Ellison had sold out to Mitsui Limited out of out of uh Japan. And in in 2014, uh Mitsui decided that they should separate what was called Ellison Technologies Automation from Ellison Technologies. And uh and so uh we needed a new name. And so we there was a group of us that would sit around and we'd talk about names. And and uh uh I said, how about a CETA? Automated concept. Inc. Ellison Technologies Automation and would just make an acronym out of it. And uh oh, everybody thought, well, that that that's not a word, John. And I'd said, well, I know, but it, you know, we can, and they wanted to add, well, let's make it a CETA robotics or a CETA automation. And I kind of stood my ground, and um, and they said, Okay, we'll we'll go with you. And and uh that's been a really uh good direction for us. Interestingly enough, we're listed in several different directories, and and uh what's really interesting is you get right at the top of the list when your name starts with AC. In fact, I had a competitor one time that said, John, I think that the robotics industry should flip the list every once in a while and start with the last letter in the alphabet. And I knew this gentleman very well, and I said, Well, I'll tell you what, why don't you just change your name to be something that starts with A B and you can be top of the list? But he agreed not to do that. But I have to tell you, Bruce, about a very interesting part about ACEDA. I my son at the time was a professor at a university in Moscow, Russia. And he was uh, we were talking one evening, and and I was telling him about uh ACEDA. And he said, Oh, I get it, Dad. Automated concepts, Inc., LSM technologies automation. He says, I like it. And so we continued our conversation, and pretty soon he said to me, By the way, you owe a seat, you own acida.com. And I said, What are you talking about? He said, Well, we've been talking, I went out and bought it for you. And I said, I said, Well, what's that gonna cost me? He says, It's ten dollars, Dad. He said, I could, I'll float you on that. And so, of course, a couple months, a few months later, the Mitsui lawyers are deciding, okay, Acida's the name, and they're filing paperwork, and they find out that someone in Moscow, Russia, owns the trade that owns the URL, acida.com. And oh, the email started flying, and they were sure that this person was gonna just charge us an unbelievable amount of money to sell it. And in it being a little, I don't know, devilish or whatever, I just let it float around for a while before I finally told him that it was my son that actually owned uh that that URL. And so we've laughed about that multiple times since. But anyhow, I I think you you asked me what I what I uh think of the highlights or uh or yeah the best thoughts about the business. And you know, I've always just gotten a huge uh um uh you know, very positive feelings about helping people uh and their companies be more productive. And um uh just a very quick story. Very early in my career, we we had a customer that uh became a job shop, was a job shop, and they were making a snowblade to go on the front of an uh of an ATV. And the the demand was just going kind of through the roof, and they couldn't keep up. And and the gentleman that owned the business was a little elderly, and but he just couldn't get his arms around buying a robot. And so finally I said to him, Walt, I'm gonna, if you'll okay it, I'm gonna bring a robot and a power supply up here, welding power supply. We're gonna set it up and we're gonna make some snow blades. And uh, well, he said, I guess so. And he knew what it was, and I said, So I said, but if it works out for you, I said, I trust you, Walt. And if it works out for you, I'm gonna trust you're gonna give me an order. And uh he said, Well, let's try it first. And so I loaded it up in a U-Haul truck and I brought it to this facility in Sioux Rapids, Iowa, a very small town in Northwest Iowa, and we unloaded it and things went very well. And it literally in a couple, three hours, we were welding, we were welding snow blades. And Walt would come out and he'd check on us and he'd go back and he'd come back out. And about mid-afternoon, he comes walking in the back door of the building, and he's got like half a dozen people with him. And uh, so I walked over and I said, Walt, uh, who are you know, what are all these people's interests? He says, John, I I drink coffee with these people. And he said, We meet at least every morning and sometimes in the afternoon. And today I told him what that I had a robot welding parts in my in my plant. And he said, they didn't believe me. So he said, I told them they had to come over and see it. And uh, and uh so I said, Well, that's just great, Walt. I said, I'm assuming you're probably gonna keep this robot. And he said, Yeah, I probably will keep it. And he ended up buying three more before he was done. Walt unfortunately has long since passed away.
SPEAKER_01John, what year was this? This was very early. This was 8485, something like that. 8485. How many robots are sold today?
SPEAKER_00It's been a while since I've gone out and checked, but in in North America, I think we're we're selling something like 60 to 70,000, maybe 80,000 a year. And that would include Canada and probably Mexico. But I remember being with a uh a group of other integrators and people from the industry, probably in the I don't know, early to mid-90s. And we we were talking about if the industry ever got to 5,000 machines a year, that that that that would be the end. That's all we ever needed to really sell to have a very successful business. Of course, we went blasting past 5,000 uh within a year or two. And uh I had years, I had years where I where um I had customers that were buying 50 a year by themselves. And uh today um many integrators sell 100, 200, 300 machines a year.
SPEAKER_01So uh that's quite a growth. That's that blows by the machine tools, really.
SPEAKER_00Oh, yeah. And and one of the most interesting things is in the relatively comparatively to the to the 80s, which we've been talking about, um, in the last 12 years, 10, 12 years, uh robotics in packaging and palletizing have become very, very popular. And those applications use uh because of the volumes, can use a lot of robots. That it's not uncommon for those installations to have um you know 20, 30 robots in one system. And so uh, but what's interesting, and and I challenge whenever I'm talking about this with people from the industry, what's interesting is the um uh uh the Chinese are buying about 300,000 robots a year and applying them, so they're significantly more automated than we are.
SPEAKER_01So that's telling. That's telling. Well, moving from what's the funniest story you're willing to share with your group? Uh we've we've had a pu a couple wiping ones on the episodes here that I had to cut out.
SPEAKER_00But well, I I I have thought about this some, and and um um I have several, some of which I I I probably wouldn't remember or unless someone reminded me, but probably the one that's a quick one is uh in the in the early 2000s when we would we well let me preface it for just a minute. We were seeing significant growth in the use of robots in job in machine shops that were job shops. They they were they didn't make their own product, they were machining uh parts for somebody else's product. And and so they in many cases um had had trouble keeping up with the demand. And and so they would it was very common that if you'd put a robot on two machine tools, it it would produce what three manually uh loaded machine tools would produce. And sometimes it was even quite a bit better than that, but uh um and so we had a we had a process where about six months after we would sell a system, we would send a very little short survey with half a dozen questions to the customer, and we'd ask them questions about their, you know, how was the sales process and how was our proposal, was it uh well done, and and we ultimately we would also ask them if the robot had made them more productive. And we had a we had a gentleman from Louisville, Kentucky, who sent his survey back and it was very complimentary. And when he got to that question, he said, Oh my god, he says that robot's here every single day. It doesn't care if its brother-in-law bought a new bass boat or whatever, it just sits there and makes parts day after day, and we all got a chuckle about that and stuff, but there's been several others, so good, good.
SPEAKER_01Can you share uh with the uh the audience uh the the award that you received, please?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, uh it was a big honor. Um in the in 2000, I was nominated for what's called the Engelberger Award. And if if uh your audience probably is not as uh familiar with the name Engelberger, but Joe Engelberger is uh uh was from the U.S. And Joe is pretty much considered in the industry the the founder of a modern industrial robot. And uh he he uh had a company called Unimate, which ultimately he sold to Westinghouse. But Joe was a was a yeah, I I had the pleasure of meeting Joe two or three times, and he was just kind of one of those bigger than life people in our industry. And the Robotics Industry Association in the U.S., along with the International Federation of Robotics, developed the Engelberger Award in the oh gosh, it probably started up in the early 90s. Um and uh but they would nominate uh up up to four people every year, and and they were in different categories. One was for research and development, and one was for um uh applications, which is the which is the one I won. One would be for for um uh uh education, uh the educating people, and I'm trying to remember the fourth one. It's it's uh I apologize, but anyhow, um they would present this award um to at the International Federation meeting, and that particular year the meeting was held in Stockholm, uh uh Sweden. And so uh uh they were kind enough to provide an honorarium, and uh uh Deborah, my wife, and my two kids, and uh actually my parents, we all went to Sweden for uh, and my mother was pure Swedish, and so that was a big thrill for her. And uh we not only toured the Swedish area, went to the ceremony, of course, and uh and but also uh went to Norway where my mother or my wife's uh family has a lot of Norwegian descent. So but the Engelberger Award has been awarded to many, many people since then, obviously, and uh I'm I'm honored to be in the in the group of people who have won that award.
SPEAKER_01So good. That's great. Congratulations. So uh Finux, a big player in robots. Uh I guess names Kooky or Kuka. Uh Kuka, yeah. Who who like what are the size? Who's the big players now in the heavy stuff?
SPEAKER_00Well, the the for in d for the uh since this group is probably principally interested in in automation used in in the manufacturing, uh including machine tools, certainly FANIC is is is probably the largest player of uh uh uh of selling robots for the loading and unload of machine tools and lots of other applications in a in a manufacturing. I I tell people we principally do business with customers who make something from metal. So they machine it, they cut it, they grind it, they weld it, they uh form it, whatever. But um uh so Fanic is a major player and is the major player in in the world, actually. But there are some there's uh three other companies that come to mind. One is Kuka, out of Germany. They produce uh uh they also have facilities making robots in China now. They produce a broad range of products. ABB is probably one of the earliest uh uh providers out of uh uh the uh the the uh Sweden and um and uh then Yaskawa, which is uh uh many people know them as Motoban because that was the trade name that they sold uh there today. They principally label their product with yes with the Yaskawa name on it. But Fannec uh still probably has, if not 50%, close to 50% of the world market, and uh certainly in North America. And uh the uh I don't know that there's any other organization that's much over half of that or so in North America.
SPEAKER_01And these robots, quickly here, they're much more reliable now than what years ago when I was watching them at uh uh tool shows, they're flying across the room and bashing into fences and they run now.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and in in in fact, uh I've had many customers tell me that that uh in a system the robot is the most reliable uh device in the system. And and um, and I've seen that over and over again. Our our uh over the years, our spare parts sales have been relatively insignificant, uh, especially compared to machine tools. And of course, I always try to explain to people, you know, the machining process, the the turning and milling, and and where there's chip making, grinding, that the the process itself is wears on the machine tool, and and requires that that uh uh uh portions of the machine itself should be will will require repair just because the machine gets machined along with the part. Yeah so yeah.
SPEAKER_01Well, that's great. Okay, what do you want people to know about you, our industry, and your career to close this out?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, what do I want people to know? Um well first, of course, um I would uh uh uh as I mentioned early in our discussions, um the being associated, the strong association I had with machine tool people is just a big, big um uh part of my career and and the people I know today and I consider uh good friends, the people that worked with us, and and um but um when I was when I first got into, as I mentioned, the machine tool industry, I would be with people who have no background in machine tools, and they don't they don't realize how basic machine tools are to everything they use every day, from lawn mowers to automobiles to washing machines, all of those, all these products start on a machine tool in some form or fashion. And most of them would listen for a few minutes and then they'd kind of go on to some other topic because they I don't think they really uh were knew what I was talking about. And then I got in the robotics industry, and I would mention, uh, they would say, Well, John, what do you do? And I say, Well, I sell industrial robots, and oh my god, the questions would just never stop. And it was always amazing to me that they probably would in their lives would uh would know or understand less about robots than they could about what a machine tool does. But it was a it was a fancy word, it was intriguing to them that that uh that I was in the in in the robot business. So what I you know every once in a while I have young people who ask me if if I if they should get into the robotics industry, and and I of course tell them, of course they should. They should at least strongly consider it. I but I I usually tell them to just get into manufacturing, that there are so many really rewarding careers in manufacturing, whether you're in engineering or sales or or uh service or uh whatever, that that uh there's just something very uh uh uh uh great about uh seeing a manufactured product delivered on a on a regular basis at precision and and uh that makes a profit for the manufacturer, etc. So yeah.
SPEAKER_01That's that's very interesting, John. I I the reason I seeked you out here was uh I I feel that the automation uh robots or automation along with AI and the and the the ability of the CNC controls to be more reliable in the future is really going to help in the United States in production. I think it's it the growth is gonna be huge for efficiency.
SPEAKER_00Would you agree with that? Of course. And and uh because of the the things we've just been talking about, the machine tool industrial and related automation and and uh robotics and and those areas, when you look at the number of people directly involved in those industries, it's a relatively small industry. Yes. And and you know, there's certainly many retailers, uh uh Amazon and Walmart and others that have many more employees than our whole industry has. And and so, but it so I um it it's very natural, I think, that people look to other careers before they look at manufacturing. It also used to be that if if if parents had any background on manufacturing, they they probably thought it was pretty dirty and oily and you know, not a great environment. But those days are long since gone. Today, you walk into a modern manufacturing facility where there's machine tools, it's it's like walking into an office. There's there's uh um uh in very rarely are there uh parts of it that people really do uh uh you know it's relatively quiet and it uh uh most cases air-conditioned, and and um the precision at which is going on in in the machine tool industry and and and and actually aided by robotics is uh it's it's it's just unbelievable. So good.
SPEAKER_01I I completely agree, and I really enjoyed having you on today, John. It's been fantastic, and uh we'll talk again soon, huh? Thank you so much.
SPEAKER_00Thank you, Bruce, and your endeavor here with these podcasts. It's just it's just really a great idea.
SPEAKER_01I'm uh I'm gonna get to the bottom of the industry one way or another. Thanks. All right, bud. I'd like to thank John Bird for joining us today on a machine tool in the men. Follow the podcast for more stories from the leaders who shaped our industry. I'm Bruce Tillingcast. Please look forward. Forward to the next episode.