VIDEO: HOW TO Stay Innovative

JACOB SANCHEZ: Jacob Sanchez here, welcoming you to a very special episode of How To. Even though I'm in front of the McCormick Place here in Chicago, this is not to give you a tour of IMTS. It's to tell you a story. Through those doors, you're going to hear tons of stories about perseverance, trial, struggle, success, failures, and many more.

Today's story is one of innovation and it starts with Mitutoyo. You may remember we were at their facility in Aurora, Illinois not too long ago, and I'm still in awe of the impact that Mitutoyo has had on the history of metrology. Established back in 1963, they've had plenty of time, trust me, to continue their advancements and innovations in their technologies.

And if you're looking for me to end this story any time soon, not only do I talk a lot, but Mitutoyo won't allow that because their innovations in the metrology world isn't stopping anytime soon.

So follow me in as you join the How To team as we learn a little bit more about Mitutoyo’s past, but a whole lot of their future in their booth. We're going to be understanding the importance of challenging the status quo, having a mindset like an explorer and always be designing to meet the changing needs of your customers. Together, we're going to be learning How To Stay Innovative.

Now I'm not one to let a good thing go. And that's why I'm here at the Mitutoyo booth. I'm looking for Patrick Sullivan, a man that's helped us out with quite a few How To episodes. Hey, Pat. How's it going, brother? Hey, thanks for coming over. Look, I promise you, this is the last time that you're going to see me, all right?

PATRICK SULLIVAN: Yeah. No, hey, any time Jacob. Love talking to you. We love talking about our products. And, you know, you do a great job highlighting it. We appreciate it.

JACOB SANCHEZ: All right, I'll hold you to that. So the last time that we were together, we were talking about the history of Mitutoyo. I mean, you brought me down this alleyway. That was just history upon history, of how Mitutoyo has affected the metrology world. Yeah. You've brought some of that history to the show, right?

PATRICK SULLIVAN: Oh, yeah. Absolutely. So we're celebrating our 90th year, and so we're bringing that history here to the show, talking about, hey, this is where we started. And now you can see all the cool tools. You see where we're going, see all this cool equipment, all the new technology. Everyone knows us for our hand tools, of course, but we're a technology company. We're so much more than just making hand tools and gauges.

JACOB SANCHEZ: A key word I think you said there, or a few of them you said, is see where we are going.

PATRICK SULLIVAN: Yeah.

JACOB SANCHEZ: This episode is about where you can go as a company, where you can take your employees and your business when you embrace innovation, embrace change. You guys, even though we're going to highlight some history real quick, you've brought some really big innovations to this show. On the AI side, I know it sounds like a buzzword sometimes, but you guys have also been doing some 3D scanning technology as well. Correct?

PATRICK SULLIVAN: Absolutely. So, those are only two of the products we brought here to the show. We have a bunch of other new products that we're highlighting. We don't have time, obviously, to do everything. But yes. We'll run you through those and yeah, I think you're going to love it.

JACOB SANCHEZ: All right, let's start with a little history lesson.

PATRICK SULLIVAN: All right. Cool.

JACOB SANCHEZ: So this is a little piece of Mitutoyo history, huh?

PATRICK SULLIVAN: Yeah, absolutely. So, like I was talking about, celebrating 90 years of being in business. Starting in 1934. This is one of our original mics that was originally made back when Numata started the company. And then also our brand new mics.

JACOB SANCHEZ: You got the new mics.

PATRICK SULLIVAN: Right? One of these days, we'll do a video on that. And then, you know, some mics from 1896. I think the other one was from 1876. Wow. So celebrating not just our history, but the whole metrology history.

JACOB SANCHEZ: You just said something about celebrating history. Not just about Mitutoyo, but history in itself for metrology. That got me thinking of the metalworking world. These machine shops out there, man. I've been to some places that are 50 years old, 60, 70, up to 100 years old. And because companies like you, because machine manufacturers, because you don't stop, because you continue to innovate, they have new products to engage with and advance with.

How does that feel? To be honest.

PATRICK SULLIVAN: That's great. I mean, as technology advances, you know, we come out with new technology, new equipment. There's tighter tolerances. So now manufacturers can go to the next level, right. Make more accurate parts. You know, you think about the cars back in the day, how they used to, you had to wear them out a little bit before they actually were operating correctly. Probably way before your time.

JACOB SANCHEZ: Okay. I didn’t know that.

PATRICK SULLIVAN: Yeah, you had to actually wear your car out a little bit for it to actually work. Now they actually do that before you get your car. So all kinds of great technology and it's great being a part of that.

JACOB SANCHEZ: And so another question I had specifically when it comes to helping out these shops out there, these metal workers out there, look, just because they've been around for 50 to 100 years doesn't always mean that it's because they're doing the latest and greatest. Honestly, a lot of the time they're scared. I feel like it's okay to be scared of these new technologies, because you don't know what it's going to do to your business.

How would you, as Patrick, from Mitutoyo, encourage these shops to advance, to innovate?

PATRICK SULLIVAN: You know, sometimes you've gone in and offered a solution and they've been a little scared and have a little anxiety about what we did show them right? But you don't have to be scared of that. You're improving your process, right? Making better parts. So, also you have to make technology work for you, right?

You can't just leap years beyond where you're at. You know, just do baby steps and get there and you know, and it'll all work out. Trust me.

JACOB SANCHEZ: Make technology work for you. Don't overload yourself with the technology that is out there. And at the end of the day, embrace it. Play with it. Find out things that you didn't know yesterday. You're about to show me something I didn't know today. A 3D scanner and an AI inspector.

PATRICK SULLIVAN: Yes, sir.

JACOB SANCHEZ: What do we start off with?

PATRICK SULLIVAN: Let's do the AI INSPECT first.

JACOB SANCHEZ: Should I be scared?

PATRICK SULLIVAN: No, it's not Terminator. It's going to make everything a lot easier.

JACOB SANCHEZ: Take me there.

PATRICK SULLIVAN: Yes. Go ahead. Yes.

JACOB SANCHEZ: All right Patrick.

PATRICK SULLIVAN: Yes, sir.

JACOB SANCHEZ: Teach me how to not fear innovation.

PATRICK SULLIVAN: Oh, gotcha. Okay. So super psyched about this product. Doing something different here, right? You know, when you think of Mitutoyo, you think of dimensional measurement, you know, calipers, micrometers, hand tools. What this is actually doing is looking for physical defects, right? So this is our AI Inspector software. You got it hooked up to a VMU microscope.

And as the turret is turning here, we're getting pictures. And you can see is it good or bad?

JACOB SANCHEZ: For defect detection?

PATRICK SULLIVAN: Yes. Just looking for physical defects, not measurement.

JACOB SANCHEZ: So this isn't really tailored just for the metalworking world per se for a machinist to use. This is actually for an OEM to use for their product.

PATRICK SULLIVAN: Absolutely. Yeah. Instead of doing visual inspection manually with, like, having a room full of people all doing that inspection, you can automate that process and have it happen in line. You could hook it up to a camera system like here, or hook it up to a vision system, have it do its measurement, and also have it look for physical defects.

JACOB SANCHEZ: So you're really trying to push innovation outside of maybe a comfort zone for Mitutoyo, where you guys focus hard on the machine shops of the world. You guys are really trying to expand into OEMs, even in the metalworking world where after they get their products from those machinists and they start assembling things. How does that all still stay nice and precise? 

PATRICK SULLIVAN: Yes. And automating that process and just making it faster.

JACOB SANCHEZ: Right. And is AI just a buzzword for Mitutoyo like it is at a lot of other companies? What's the AI aspect of it?

PATRICK SULLIVAN: It's way more complicated than it already is. It's a software that learns. You show it 50 parts and it figures out what defects you're looking for with those 50 pictures. And then from there you start showing it new parts. And if it didn't apply, parts might not pass inspection. And then those get separated from the rest of the pile.

And then those you look at manually. And just to make sure the software is on its right track, you’re doing the right things.

JACOB SANCHEZ: You're pushing innovation to more metalworking industries, to OEM. I like it. You got something else for me that I think a lot of machine shops can actually use. That 3D scanner?

PATRICK SULLIVAN: Yes, we'll get to that. But one thing I want to hit on real hard I'm sorry, is the speed of it. Right? So this can process 150 images in a second. So, think about that. So the time that you save by having that visual inspection component usually takes a long time. You can speed it up tremendously with some cameras and AI Inspector.

JACOB SANCHEZ: And so does that change with the size of your part as well? Does it get slower I guess, as you get bigger?

PATRICK SULLIVAN: Possibly. It depends on the camera. If you get it all fit in and you got high enough magnification.

JACOB SANCHEZ: Sure. And maybe faster as you get smaller.

PATRICK SULLIVAN: Yes. Interesting. Yeah.

JACOB SANCHEZ: I really need to find this booth. Hey, Browning? Jacob Sanchez. I'm looking for a 3D scanner. I think this is you, correct?

MIKE BROWNER: Yes. That's right.

JACOB SANCHEZ: I've just been hanging out with Patrick all day long. We were going over the AI Inspector. We're going over more of the history of Mitutoyo. I want to see what you got going on today and why it's innovative and why it's cool.

MIKE BROWNER: Sure. All right. Today we're looking at the Surface Measure 1008 S. It's a 2D, 3D, non-contact, line laser sensor and profilometer. What it really does is it uses this laser to get a 2D image, and then they use those 2Ds to build a 3D image of the part, and then you can go back to do an inspection either using two dimensional or three dimensional.

JACOB SANCHEZ: So you’re doing that, you're doing that 2D top scan. And that's going to give me an actual 3D shape that I can move around in here. And, that's pretty interesting. I don't know if I've seen a lot of that before. At least in the CNC world, I haven't seen that in a lot of machine shops, you know.

MIKE BROWNER: No, no, we're really, it seems like a lot of these sensors are just getting into the machine shops right now, and they're really just starting to play with automation. So a lot of the ones that are seeing this, they're very interested. It's new, it's exciting, and they're really looking how they can develop it into their line.

JACOB SANCHEZ: What do you think, so you were just talking about that excitement that they're feeling, which are the customers out there–all of you out there. How can this be useful to them?

MIKE BROWNER: Really what they're looking at is being able to inspect things as they're coming off the line right away. That's going to help them make adjustments and improvements as soon as they start noticing problems. And then if they're taking the data from the sensor, they can run it into like a data collection system, or they can start looking at things on a big picture scale and seeing where, when, why, how, figure out when tooling needs to be changed, finding the downtime, all kinds of little benefits that come in with actually using the data and using sensors.

JACOB SANCHEZ: So it actually looks like it's taking a little bit of a workload off of those inspectors that have a lot to do with FATs, first articles, all kinds of things. And it also, I don't know, kind of empowers the machinist to step up their game of metrology, of inspection. Would you agree?

MIKE BROWNER: Absolutely. They're going to see the measurements and the dimensions and all that right away. And then as soon as they start seeing errors and problems, they can immediately go there and make the adjustments that they need to do and then get back running.

JACOB SANCHEZ: That's sick. I think I got what I needed, brother, I appreciate all the insight that you gave to those machinists out there.

And there you have it. Getting involved with cutting edge technology in this industry isn't a nice-to-have. In manufacturing, it's a need-to-have. That  AI Inspector, how awesome was that? And that 3D scanner. That's how you stay on top of your game, with things like that you need to continue to problem solve. You need to proactively go after R&D advancements.

You need to never stop engaging with emerging technologies. And that is How To Stay Innovative.

Narrator: For more metalworking tips and industry best practices, stay tuned for the next How To episode and subscribe to the MSC Industrial Supply YouTube channel, a source of original manufacturing content Built To Make You Better.