VIDEO: TOOLING UP – Data You Can Be Sure Of

Narrator: This video is brought to you by Starrett, Trust In The Name. If you're looking for real world insights, tips from leading industry experts, the latest trends in products and technology, you've come to the right place. From MSC Industrial Supply, this is Tooling Up.

TONI NEARY: Hello and welcome to Tooling Up. I'm your host, Toni Neary, and we're so happy that you're here with us on the MSC YouTube channel. Before we get to today's guest, I'm going to go ahead and hit that pause button and I'm going to ask all of the newcomers to go ahead and click that subscribe button. Go ahead. We’ll wait.

You don't want to miss any upcoming episodes that we have of Tooling Up, so subscribing makes sure that you're always informed when those are live. So let's jump into today's guest. I'm so excited to have James Clinton here with us and James is the Inside Sales Manager for Starrett, and we're going to talk a little bit about some of that precision measurement and the data that comes along with it.

James, thank you so much for joining us today.

JAMES CLINTON: Glad to be with you.

TONI NEARY: I know you're fresh back from your honeymoon and jumping back into things. Congrats, by the way, from the whole team here at Tooling Up. But I want to talk a little bit about your journey that brought you to Starrett. So can you give us a little bit of your background?

JAMES CLINTON: Sure. So I went to college for mechanical engineering and business administration, and then straight out of college I came to Starrett where I worked as our tech support person for our force and material test department. And from there, about a year in to doing tech support for force, I started doing tech support on all of precision hand tools and then working with our special order department.

I was fortunate enough to be put in charge of tech support and special order, and then most recently I became the inside sales manager here at Starrett.

TONI NEARY: Fantastic. And Starrett has a very well known and very rich history in our industry and I think it's important that we touch on the fact that they may be known as the world's greatest toolmakers. And since you specialize in precision measurement and tools, I guess you'd be the one to know that, right?

JAMES CLINTON: Yes, I do love that tagline. There's a lot of people around here who take pride in the work that they do day in and day out and the tools that they put together, that's for sure.

TONI NEARY: And I think it has a lot to do with just who Starrett is as a company. Can we delve a little bit into the history of the organization overall?

JAMES CLINTON: Sure. So Starrett started in Athol in 1880, and it has slowly been expanding here in town, both in footprint and in people. And then it's been branching out. So we have facilities all over the United States now and across the globe.

TONI NEARY:  And I think we really have to talk about the fact that data collection is not something new. And while we have DataSure 4.0, data collection is not new to Starrett. You've actually been doing this for quite some time, right?

JAMES CLINTON: Correct. We've been doing DataSure for what, we've had 2.0 for a long time and then most recently, approximately two years ago, we launched our DataSure 4.0. The latest iteration of it.

TONI NEARY: Tell me a little bit about DataSure 4.0 and what is really the game changer here with this newest version.

JAMES CLINTON: So there's more or less three ways for us to collect data. We have our portable scheme, so that's going to be an iOS or Android device is going to be collecting the data from the tools. We've got our smart scheme, which is going to send data to your computer over what essentially looks like a little flash drive. And then we've got our large factory scheme and those are bigger antennas that'll be spread out across the factory and collect data from hundreds of tools if need be.

And then in terms of data security, we have the data that is encrypted and can only be sent from the tool and then read or interpreted by our receiver. That way no one can take that data or do anything with it during its transmission.

TONI NEARY: And one of the things when we're talking about scalability as well is this is not just something that's there really for you know, for the really big organizations. This is something that small shops can implement as well, right?

JAMES CLINTON: Correct. We see a lot of customers who just have one tool and that's all they need. And DataSure will solve that problem as well. And that's extremely common for us to see with the Android and iOS app or just with going straight to Excel for example.

TONI NEARY: So, James, our viewers kind of love the nerding out and the really technical component of what we do here on Tooling Up. So let's get into the nitty gritty and really dive into the features and looking at like what DataSure 4.0 is going to bring to your customers.

JAMES CLINTON: Sure. So at its heart, DataSure is going to be collecting data from the precision measuring tools and sending it to a computer. So that can be done by sending the tool, sending the readings from the tool, or pulling the readings from your computer. We had a great application where a customer had 18 indicators that they need to pull all at once.

So it was a great time-saving measure. In terms of scalability, we have what we like to refer to three schemes. So we have our portable scheme, which is going to send data to an iOS or Android device, and that's going to be up to eight tools. We have our smart scheme, so that's going to be sending data just directly to your computer through what looks like a USB flash drive that's going to support up to 20 tools anywhere from 30 feet to 200 feet away, depending on the tool you have.

And then we have our large factory scheme which is going to send it to remote gateways, and that will support hundreds of tools. So that's, that's a nice large factory floor solution for a lot of our customers.

TONI NEARY: And when you're looking at that, so you've got the iOS or Android, you can access that app on your phone. Are there any standards that you need to look at with really kind of storing and communicating that data back and forth?

JAMES CLINTON: Sure. So that data is encrypted. That's important to a lot of our customers. So that protects those readings while they're being transmitted. So only the tool and then our receiver knows what those readings are. And then outside of that, you know, once the data is received into the Android or iOS app, it's usually pretty common for customers to simply just email the data over to themselves.

TONI NEARY: So James, I think it's important to note that when you're looking at the data collection and when you're looking at DataSure, there may be small organizations that are struggling with costs and data management. DataSure is actually applicable with non-Starrett measurement tools as well, correct?

JAMES CLINTON: That's correct. DataSure is compatible with a wide range of our competitors' tools. And we do that because we recognize that a lot of our customers may have existing tools that they want to continue to work with, or they may have some specialized measuring solution that we don't currently address. So we try to make sure DataSure works with the widest variety of tools possible, starting with our own, but including a lot of our competitors as well.

TONI NEARY: And then is the app easy to use? Because I think that's something that we run into frequently, right, as we have all these great tools and this technology. But if it's not user friendly or really intuitive for the end user, what is it like when somebody is starting to use, let's say, DataSure 4.0 on an app on their phone?

JAMES CLINTON: It's really pretty straightforward. It probably takes 2 minutes tops to connect a tool, get it set up in a format that you're looking to use. And from there it's just when you pull out your tool, it'll reconnect again, maybe 10 seconds tops for that to happen, and then you can start collecting data.

TONI NEARY: And all of that is completely free.

JAMES CLINTON: Yes. Yep. The app and the DataSure program for your computer is free.

TONI NEARY: Fantastic. Thank you so much for your time and for joining us here today, James.

JAMES CLINTON: Of course.

TONI NEARY: So it was so great hanging out with James today. And if you enjoyed our conversation as much as I did, don't forget to go ahead and click that subscribe button so you don't miss any of our upcoming discussions. To find out more about DataSure 4.0, you can also go to www.mscdirect.com/starrett.

Thanks so much and we'll see you next time on Tooling Up.

Narrator: Want more insights and ideas to improve the efficiency and productivity of your operations? Check out the MSC Tooling Up video playlist to hear tips that can take your company to the next level. And subscribe to our channel so you won't miss out.