Amanda Del Buono: [00:00:06] Welcome to Manufacturing Matters, where we aim to get at the heart of automation technology and how it plays into the manufacturing industry today. I’m Amanda Del Buono, and today I’m lucky enough to have one of the Automation Ladies, Nikki Gonzales, joining me to co-host. And we’re joined by a panel of women in automation for a discussion about the growing role of women in automation and manufacturing and how we can engage more women into this industry. So today’s panel includes Julia Astrid Riemenschneider, VP of business development at Rethink Robotics and United Robotics Group, as well as Cathy Rinne, president of Flex-Line Automation. And finally we have Kirby Witty, CCO at ESTAT Actuation. Thanks for joining us today ladies. So glad that you could be here.

 

Nikki Gonzales: [00:00:55] Thanks for having us. Putting this together.

 

Amanda Del Buono: [00:00:59] So basically to start out, I just kind of wanted to overview what each of us do. Can you each tell me a little bit about your company and what you do there?

 

Cathy Rinne: [00:01:09] I guess you guys are looking at me like I should start. Well, this is actually my 40th year in automation. Flex-Line Automation is an integrator. We integrate conveyor systems, robotics, bowl feeders, any ancillary equipment. I’ve been doing this a while, so I look forward to talking a little bit about getting more gals into the fold for sure.

 

Amanda Del Buono: [00:01:38] Awesome. What about you, Julia?

 

Julia Astrid Riemenschneider: [00:01:40] Yeah, well, actually I started my professional career in a different industry. I used to work in the travel industry, and I joined the automation industry almost 10 years ago, worked for different robotics companies and now with United Robotics Group and Rethink Robotics. I’m in charge of all the go-to market projects. We have different product lines, different brands, and whenever there is something new, and we have a lot of new things, starting with definition of the milestones and one important one is IMTS here, where we are launching the new family of robots for Rethink Robotics.

 

Amanda Del Buono: [00:02:12] Amazing. It is pretty exciting up there. Do you want to tell us a little bit about where you’re from?

 

Nikki Gonzales: [00:02:17] Sure, yeah. I started my career about 15 years ago. I don’t keep exact count, but I started out as a sales engineer in factory automation with machine vision. And then I moved into marking, lasers, and then pneumatics and actuators and motion control. So if you can tell, I’m kind of curious. And I also have ADHD. And so it means that when I’m really interested in something, I’m really committed. But once that gets boring, I am not so committed. So automation and manufacturing is perfect for me because there’s always something upstream or downstream from what you’re looking at that you can continue to learn. And so that’s kept me engaged in the industry. I’ve also taken some detours to work for startups in AI and data and supply chain. And now I’ve kind of pulled all of that together, where I work for a startup in the supply chain part of the automation industry, helping distributors and systems integrators with e-commerce and updating some of their new go-to-market strategies and things like that. And then I started this podcast, Automation Ladies, a couple of years ago. And so that’s been just really fun. I need side projects to keep me engaged and busy. And that’s kind of what brings me here today. And I’m also co-hosting in the Creators Lounge here at IMTS, which is a space in the South Hall where we’re just having more conversations about the different technologies, the people, the things that are going on here, trying to kind of bring the physical trade show experience and enhance that to the digital space and particularly to people that didn’t make it to the show here.

 

Amanda Del Buono: [00:03:49] That’s fantastic.

 

Kirby Witty: [00:03:51] I’m Kirby Witty. I’m CCO at ESTAT Actuation, which means I’m in charge of business development. But before that I was VP of engineering, and I’ve spent the last four years translating my partner’s university research into useful products for robotics companies and aerospace. Before that, I worked for Intuitive Surgical as a surgical robotics designer, and prior to that, I completed a PhD in mechanical engineering at Carnegie Mellon University.  My thesis was building exoskeletons for athletic augmentation, so helping people run faster or recover from injury. My experience putting people in robots and robots in people gave me an appreciation for compact actuators, and that’s why I joined ESTAT Actuation. Our founder, Stuart Diller, is a good friend of mine, and I knew his research had potential to solve my problems as a robotics designer. Called him up. I knew he was starting a company, asked him if he had anything ready. He said no, but I’m hiring. And at that point I saw the power of what he had invented during our PhD, and I came back to translate that university research into useful products.

 

Amanda Del Buono: [00:05:05] That’s amazing.

 

Julia Astrid Riemenschneider: [00:05:06] Impressive.

 

Nikki Gonzales: [00:05:07] And the product is extremely impressive I have to say.

 

Kirby Witty: [00:05:13] Oh, we make electric glue. Glue that sticks when it’s on and releases when it’s off. And we build this into the world’s most compact brakes, clutches, locks, and latches. So if you need a brake that is 0.4 mm thick, we’ve got you covered.

 

Amanda Del Buono: [00:05:27] It’s very cool. So I guess this is a good segue into what brought you ladies into automation. Kirby, we can start with you. Like what initially sparked your interest as a young person or as you were switching career paths? How did you get here?

 

Kirby Witty: [00:05:48] I’ll try to make it short. I started as a business and film major. I took an internship at Walt Disney World during college, and I met an Imagineer who talked about engineering as being a creative endeavor and the only art form necessary for human progress. And I looked around the theme parks and thought that’s amazing and came home and changed my major. And I really loved Marvel movies, so I got into exoskeletons. Then I kind of told you how I got involved at ESTAT, and the product that we’re showcasing right now here with our partner Schneeberger, was actually developed for shape shifting wings for AFRL. But then we realized that there’s application in automation. So it’s been a windy road, and we’re as a startup always pivoting to see where there’s interest and where there’s a good fit. And it seems like we’re finding our home in automation.

 

Amanda Del Buono: [00:06:46] I think maybe something we don’t talk about as much is the creativity that is put into these things.

 

Nikki Gonzales: [00:06:54] It is an art form in itself.

 

Amanda Del Buono: [00:06:56] For sure. What about you, Nikki?

 

Nikki Gonzales: [00:07:01] So I am also a business major. My dad’s an electrical engineer, and by the time I was going to college, he was the CEO running his own company and probably also the CTO and a bunch of other things. But I really enjoyed the people aspect of things. I kind of thought that the engineering role was very much like behind a desk, and if you wanted to meet with people and talk to people, that that was a business thing. So I went to business school, but I gravitated towards problem solving. And I found just through the campus college recruiting, I was trying to find some sort of technical job that didn’t require an engineering degree. And sales engineering is one of those. And I just kind of lucked into it. I applied for a job with a company called Keyence that does a very good job training young kids out of college on the industry and the products and so on. And during the first interview, I had to do a demo of a laser sensor. And these are like toys, these are like adult toys that you get to play with and solve problems with. And I just fell in love with it right there. But that’s what brought me into the factory. And it was a world I didn’t know existed. I’ll be honest. My dad was an engineer, but he didn’t work in any kind of factory setting.

 

Nikki Gonzales: [00:08:12] He worked for small companies designing control systems and things like that. So I don’t know where I would have ended up if it wasn’t for this kind of serendipity. And I left the industry for a while. I was working for an AI startup in supply chain, and we did a lot with movie studios, and at first that was really cool. Like, oh, I get to deal with movies and go to the studios and Disney and this and that. But ultimately I missed the noises, the sounds, the making of things, you know? So I came back, and luckily I’m one of those curious, weird people that tries to do new things all the time. Our industry was kind of slower to move. A lot of the people I worked with had been doing the same thing, working with the same technology their entire careers. So every time I’d make a change, they’re like, what are you doing? This makes no sense. And now the world has changed so much. All those things I worked on that used to be separate and not connected, they’re all connected. They’ve all come together. And this world is going to keep me excited for the rest of my life, I think. I don’t think I need to go anywhere else.

 

Amanda Del Buono: [00:09:16] Absolutely.

 

Julia Astrid Riemenschneider: [00:09:18] I love listening to your story and the way you talk about it, because that sounds so passionate. And it really also describes the rush that the industry is in. And that caught my attention as well. Like as I told you, I’ve been working in the travel industry and during my master’s degrees, I thought, there must be more out there. And so I was applying for jobs, but everywhere in the industry I sent my application letter I was rejected because they were thinking I was a flight attendant, and they said, “No, we don’t need flight attendants in a manufacturing company.” So I had the great opportunity to join a consulting company, and we were consulting a lot of small and medium-sized production companies, and it was so amazing. Like the first week on the job, I’ve been to five customers. And for me, the best part of that job was every time we went to do the production walk and see what they were doing and literally crawling into the machine and see what they are doing. That was so exciting for me that it really caught my fire and I was like, yeah, I want to do that. And I was given the opportunity to join another company, a sensor company called Lloyd’s Electronics, which then brought me to the United States, which was a complete new world to me. So I had everything. I had an international setup, and I had the industry. And ever since I’m excited about it. And I love working with all these people because I also think in these people there are a lot of great women and a lot of great men who are empowering each other. So it’s the technology rush as well as the people who are always on the move and great teams. So yeah, that’s what keeps me in here.

 

Cathy Rinne: [00:11:01] Well my story is a little different. I wanted to be a veterinarian, and I was recruited into founding a business with my husband and my in-laws. And it was a business that was completely foreign to me. My path was kind of similar to yours, Nikki. I am not an engineer. I too was a business major. That seemed to be the void that our company needed to have filled. Because my father-in-law was an engineer. My husband was an engineer. They had that covered, but nobody really knew the business side of the business. So that’s really what brought me into it. And I can tell you over the past 40 years I’ve seen so much change. And I tell people I have 40 years of experience. And when you really think about it, at least half of what I know is now obsolete information at the pace that our industry is really moving. And so it’s not really the last 40 years that define anybody. It’s pretty much the last 40 hours, because things have changed. But I am so excited to be in this industry right now, because I think we are really on the cutting edge of the next industrial revolution. And that sounds really cliche, but I feel that when I go out and I walk the floor here and you see how technology is really changing the face of manufacturing.

 

Cathy Rinne: [00:12:29] And it’s exciting. It’s exciting to be a part of that. It’s exciting for me to walk down an aisle at Target or go to my doctor’s office and see a product sitting there and know that, hey, I’ve been to that plant. I’m handling this product. I take a lot of pride in that. And so I think that this is the best industry to be in if you are passionate about change and you like that fast pace and you need some stimulation and different things to do, and there’s roles for everyone. I think that’s really important. I think a lot of people shy away from manufacturing, manufacturing integration, automation, automation integration because they feel like they have to be an engineer, and that’s simply not the case. There are so many roles in what we do that people can come in and really make a big contribution, and I think we need to, as a group, talk more about those roles and be less intimidating. Engineering? I’m married to one, I know. And, Kirby, no offense. You know, I know what it’s like to live with an engineer, and he’s not always the most . . . well, he’s not the face of Flex-Line Automation, and there’s a reason for that. I mean, let’s just be honest.

 

Amanda Del Buono: [00:13:53] Well he doesn’t have your social media presence.

 

Cathy Rinne: [00:13:55] But I think it’s important to talk about all of those different roles and how we all come together and we’re making things happen. And I’m so proud to walk out on the floor and see all of the things that are being done and the forward thinking. And I’m also really happy to walk out on the floor and see a lot more female faces, because 40 years ago, I was an anomaly. I would go to a trade show and I’d have the bathroom all to myself. I mean, there was nobody there. So it’s really fun to see that that is changing, and it’s really awesome to be a part of this panel with such powerhouse women as you guys. I mean, I’m humbled to be here and to share the stage with you because you guys are slaying it, and I am here for it. And I’m so incredibly proud of each of you.

 

Amanda Del Buono: [00:14:50] Well, you blazed the trail.

 

Cathy Rinne: [00:14:51] Yeah, thanks. But I am incredibly proud of you all.

 

Nikki Gonzales: [00:14:55] Thank you, Cathy. I have to say as well, you are one of the most approachable successful women in this industry that I’ve ever met, if not the most. This is not a question, but we’re here for a conversation, right, like you said. I have been intimidated earlier on in my career to really connect with women in this industry, because the feeling has often been more adversarial than supportive. There’s not a lot of us, and I think in some cases we’ve kind of had to fight our way to where we are. And there was a feeling of more limited seats at the table and that we’re all competing for them rather than there being just more and more. And it isn’t until the last few years that I’ve actually found more women like yourself who actually don’t have that attitude: “Well, it was hard for me; so it should be for you too.” Or, “Why are you complaining? It was harder for me when I was back in the day. So just be quiet.” And just to me, you are like the epitome of successful women in this industry that really supports the younger ones coming up.

 

Cathy Rinne: [00:15:56] Thank you. I take that as a big, big compliment, because that’s very important to me to be able to be that person that you can come to and talk with and just be genuine and authentic. Because in this industry, especially as a woman, one of the biggest things that we have is I think we all feel like we have this image that we have to maintain. And what I like to bring to the forefront is, yeah, I’m the president of a company. But guess what? You know I’m the person who looks for my glasses while I’m wearing them.

 

Cathy Rinne: [00:16:25] We’re all just real people. And I think being our authentic, genuine selves, we still are bringing so much. But we don’t have to maintain that image that was especially important when I was young in my career. I did feel like I had something to prove. And I’m at that stage in my career where I no longer feel that way. Not at all.

 

Amanda Del Buono: [00:16:51] Well, it’s nice to have somebody like you helping to guide young women who still feel that way. Or I’ve heard that before for sure. And I’ve always been curious if that might be a generational gap. I would hope that as more women are coming up, we’re starting to help each other more.

 

Nikki Gonzales: [00:17:05] And I’ll point out a stat that you guys may or may not know, but this year’s IMTS has, of course, the most women ever. But the number is, I don’t know if you can guess, it’s over 30%. Doesn’t that catch you by surprise? I thought like, oh, we’re doing great. We’re probably somewhere maybe closer to 20 than 10. But no, we’re actually over 30. The vibe here is totally different than I would say of shows past. I haven’t been to this except for last year, but just other industry shows in general. Like I can feel the shift happening, and it’s been very rapid. I think we’ve had a kind of a slow going at it for a while. And like you said, really like the last three decades went by, and now it’s like the last five years have had even more change than ever.

 

Cathy Rinne: [00:17:54] Absolutely.

 

Amanda Del Buono: [00:17:55] Kirby, from an engineering perspective, do you see that differently?

 

Kirby Witty: [00:18:00] I think I have just been incredibly fortunate in that  I’ve always felt very, very welcome. And I think I don’t have a good explanation for that except maybe I was working in biomedical and that may be a very welcoming environment. But I’ve also done a lot of work with the military these days. And during college, I was president of our motorsports team. And in every situation, I just felt like I was one of the team. So maybe that is a sign that there’s a big shift because I think I’ve just been very fortunate. I’ve always felt like just a team member who can fit in and get things done.

 

Nikki Gonzales: [00:18:40] Motorsports is another industry that’s very heavily male-dominated. And then yesterday I interviewed Alba Colon from Hendrick Motorsports, who is like the head of their partnership. I mean, she’s up there. She used to work for NASCAR. And there’s a women in motorsports club, and I met a young member of it today and it was just really cool. Yeah, that shift is really happening, and I’m really glad you’ve never felt that way.

 

Amanda Del Buono: [00:19:06] That’s how it should be.

 

Cathy Rinne: [00:19:09] I’ve been very fortunate in my career too. There have been a few instances, but I feel very blessed, but I’m a farm kid and I have a sister, and my dad never had the son, and so I was raised as the son that he never had. And from a very rural area where the women are out on the farm. I mean, we don’t have boy jobs or girl jobs. We just have jobs, and whoever is free to do it does it. And so I was raised that way, really. There was no gender limitations put on me as a child, until I got to high school, right, when my guidance teacher was like, well, Cathy, you could be a nurse or a teacher or housewife is nice. I mean, very limited in what direction I was guided to, because I could have been an engineer, certainly. I could have been a veterinarian, and I would have been a really good one. I’m going to just say that. But, surprisingly, in our small town, we try to to work with a lot of the schools, and we’re trying to get more kids involved and interested in what we do. And we ran across a teacher. We had some intern positions open, and we were like, oh, well, we have an accounting position. And she she looked at my daughter Lauren, who works with me, and said, “Oh, good, because we had some girls apply and we didn’t really know where to put those.” And I was just like, oh my gosh, it’s 2024. Seriously? And you think that these gals can’t program robots, these gals can’t do any of the other stuff? And so I want to tell you that in rural America, that is still alive and well, and we’ve got to do something to break that. And I’m not even sure what it is, but it’s still prevalent. And I couldn’t believe it. I mean, here I am, the female president of a company and we have lots of women that work in, and you’ll see me run an air line or turning wrenches or whatever. It’s not like I represent one small section of the business. It’s like, whatever has to be done. We all work shoulder to shoulder, and we do it because that’s just the way it works. I was just really taken aback that that’s still a thing in 2024.

 

Nikki Gonzales: [00:21:39] Yeah, same. During one of my early episodes of Automation Ladies, we talked with Aaron Prather, who used to at the time with FedEx. And they had a similar thing. They had a class of kids come in, for a tour I think it was rather than an internship program, but it was all boys. And Aaron asked the teacher, “Oh, where are the girls?” And they said, “Oh, well, we didn’t think that they would be interested.” They weren’t invited. So Aaron, who ran the FedEx innovation, I don’t know the exact title, but he was up there. At FedEx they got this. They wanted to attract more women, but it was the school that still had this attitude. So I’m going to throw in an unscheduled question, if that’s okay.

 

Amanda Del Buono: [00:22:24] Oh, of course.

 

Nikki Gonzales: [00:22:25] Do you guys have any thoughts or ideas about the role of popular media as it relates to our industry? Because I feel like I didn’t have a clue it existed when I was growing up. And I don’t think these teachers do either. And you saw something in movies that inspired you, and another person, Vanessa Loiola, who programs robots in Ireland, her inspiration was from the movie “Iron Man.” She was like, “I want to be like Tony Stark.” And nobody told her that she can’t. So she went and learned robots, right? But I would love to see more. “How It’s Made” is the only kind of reference that I really hear from people about what they know about the automation industry.

 

Amanda Del Buono: [00:23:06] Those are so dated, some of them.

 

Nikki Gonzales: [00:23:08] Yeah. It’s a big question to ask – you guys are probably not the people to answer – how do we get it more into popular media? But do you guys have any other examples of movies or music or anything that’s not industry B2B-related that you’ve seen that shows facets of what we do that we could share to inspire people?

 

Cathy Rinne: [00:23:30] Well, we were asked to be on a couple of television shows. We did a TV show called “World’s Greatest,” and then another one, “Viewpoints” with Dennis Quaid. And even those, they were on Bloomberg Network or PBS or something like that. I mean, it wasn’t very mainstream, but their producers were actually out trying to get attention. But I’ll tell you what we all, each one of us, could do here that could make a difference. And that is do a TikTok. That’s where the kids are. I mean, let’s face it, they are not watching Bloomberg Network. So I think we have to reach them where they are. And that’s on social media. That’s why I shared my Snapchat with you earlier, you know. I think that’s where you actually get their attention and their interest. And then we can direct them to more traditional channels and things like that. But I think that’s where the kids are, and I don’t even know how many movies anymore that they really watch. But I tell you, they’re scrolling mindlessly through TikTok or any other social media platforms of the day with those guys. But I think we all need to do a better job trying to put our content out there and get their attention and let them know that, hey, there’s a fun side of business and there are roles available and come and join us. And that’s what I try to do with everything that I post, all of the stuff that I throw out there. I want to kind of dispel this myth that we’re a stodgy group of engineers who just look at numbers and that’s all we do. I want people to understand that we’re fun and it’s a fun business to be in, because you mentioned problem solving. Problem solving is fun. You know, looking at a project and coming up with the best possible solution for a customer is really rewarding. And I think that kids would really love the opportunity to do that.

 

Amanda Del Buono: [00:25:50] Kirby, you have something to add?

 

Kirby Witty: [00:25:51] Yeah, absolutely. Something that I’ve really been enjoying about being in a company that produces components and helps automation companies automate is that, prior to this role, we would work on a single system for five to 12 years. And that system was beautiful. But At ESTAT Actuation we have a potential to affect hundreds if not thousands of companies. And that is something that feels really exciting, that in automation in particular you have an opportunity to touch so many different businesses, make so many different products better and just make life easier for other people. So it’s a wonderful opportunity to meet people, learn about their problems, and come together as a team. And I think some of the best teamwork we’ve had has not only been within our company but between the companies we interact with. And I think that’s something that’s really unique.

 

Amanda Del Buono: [00:26:39] And that’s so rewarding to see your work in place and see it moving and see what you did. It has a tangible part to it. It’s not just in theory.

 

Julia Astrid Riemenschneider: [00:26:51] And to pick up on what you said, I think social media and putting ourselves out there and acting as a role model. But the next step for me is like, what is the call to action? Right? Because when I look at you, you’re not just extremely smart and ambitious, you’re also extremely beautiful because people will look at you and think like, wow, she got it all, right? So that is seeding a dream in young women’s thoughts, right? It’s like, I want to be her one day, right? But how can I approach her? And I personally made the experience, I met you earlier this year, and you were accessible to me, and we had a great conversation in Orlando. So I was very grateful that you gave me your attention and your valuable time. Now I mean it, and this is what I want to give to others. And that’s my call to action putting ourselves out there but also be accessible for those who reach out to us. And yeah, we get a lot of emails every day and requests on LinkedIn and Instagram. But every once in a while I take the time and I really read through them. And if there’s something, I’m like, I’ve got to respond to them. I can’t leave them hanging in there. And what I did this year was also I had two young women who were super ambitious, and they kept reaching out and I was like, okay, well, I got to give them my attention.

 

Julia Astrid Riemenschneider: [00:28:01] So I did, and it was also so refreshing to me to get their perspective. And I’m almost weekly talking to the one. She’s looking for a job in more laboratory automation. The other one was an extreme introvert, and I invited her to come to Automate. I showed her around, and we went to different booths and I said, look, this is this company. They are doing this. And she was just standing next to me. And then I said at the third person, “Now you talk.” And with every booth we walked, she got more power and got more confidence. And that was something I really liked to see. And I think that’s also important, beside the big communication and social media, to take time for those who reach out and really giving them the opportunity to learn from us and empower them. Because for me, it’s like you give the spark to one. She is then on fire and she gives it to another. And so this is the way I look at it, like to multiply and spread the word of mouth. And yeah, you started, and we’re carrying it further.

 

Amanda Del Buono: [00:29:00] Yeah. I think mentorship is a really big opportunity for bringing people up. Supporting each other.

 

Cathy Rinne: [00:29:07] Absolutely. And I would want anybody in this industry to know that: You know what? Send me a private message. I’m here for you. I mean, I’ve got your back, all of you. You know, and I’m at that grandmother stage of my career. Forty years. I think I’m entitled to be at the grandmother stage. And so I’m really taking time and appreciating those interactions and really enjoying meeting people and helping them figure things out and giving them that little bit of support that I didn’t have early on because there just was no one in our industry. But I’m having a lot of fun with it. And I think that is really key because spreading the fire, joy and laughter and humor and all of these things I think are very attractive. And face it, we all need to laugh a little bit more and enjoy. You know, I’m at the stage in my career where I realized that there’s a whole lot more road behind me than there is ahead of me. You know, and I realize that, and the pathway doesn’t necessarily get clearer but it gets shorter. And so if you’re not enjoying what you’re doing and really having fun every day of the journey, the destination gets here way too fast. And I am now mindful of that. And so I’m taking that into every relationship that I have. You know, I’m getting close to the end, guys.

 

Amanda Del Buono: [00:30:46] Hey, hey, hey, let’s no go there.

 

Nikki Gonzales: [00:30:47] Plus there’s going to be way too much innovation packed into the next 10 years. You’re going to live those three decades like three times again.

 

Cathy Rinne: [00:30:57] I’m totally here for it. You know, there’s no question I am here for it all.

 

Kirby Witty: [00:31:01] And I just want to circle back around to the idea of mentorship. At ESTAT Actuation, we partner with the University of Pittsburgh and a few other colleges, and we bring in a lot of co-op students that get both course credit and payment for working for us, and we put a lot of effort into training and mentoring and making sure that they leave ESTAT feeling more capable and empowered than when they came in. And this is true for all of our interns, male and female. And I think that being a strong mentor for male students is also a way to normalize the idea that women can be in automation, can be in engineering or anything.

 

Cathy Rinne: [00:31:38] Great point.

 

Kirby Witty: [00:31:39] So I love being a part of a team and helping bring younger people into the team as well. So I think that the best we can do is keep working with everyone. And it’s really been fantastic.

 

Amanda Del Buono: [00:31:54] I think that the point on men is so important because we can do everything we want, but it’s then men in the room. I mean, even now, 70% of the people upstairs at IMTS are men, and they need to be our allies. We need them to help us and see us as their equals as we progress through our careers.

 

Nikki Gonzales: [00:32:13] I love that, and I think a crop of new companies, like any new company starting today, unless it’s just a group of people that have operated the same way forever, they’re doing this differently because there isn’t a built-in machine of how the company works, with policies and procedures and not even written in stone but just the way things are kind of done. That’s harder to change, right? If you have a big organization, for instance. And so it’s exciting to see a crop of startups in the industry. And I wish all of them success, because we also need some fresh blood in how the organizations are run. Like when I was hired to my second job out of college, they didn’t train anyone. They expected you to have the prior experience from the industry. And I got hired and I was told, oh, you’ll get on-the-job training, and on-the-job training was, we’ll throw you to the sharks and good luck.

 

Cathy Rinne: [00:33:08] Sink or swim.

 

Nikki Gonzales: [00:33:09] You know, I can perform in that kind of environment, but it was interesting that their model was kind of like, well, we’re going to basically hire experienced people. But when they hired me, I was like, I don’t actually know your product. I know the production line. I’ve been inspecting the product after it’s been moved by your product. But I’ll be honest, I know how to solve problems and sell to engineers. But I don’t know pneumatics. I don’t know electromechanical motion. And they were like, actually, that’s good, because most of our people, they only know pneumatics, so they’re not really thinking about the electromechanical products to solve the problems, because they’ve had this 20-, 30-, 40-year experience with pneumatics. And they did see me as okay, well, that’s an opportunity to bring in some fresh perspective. But I think a lot of companies miss out when they’re not investing in those internships and really hiring younger people earlier on. And then also take the opportunity to learn from those young people because they have so much to teach you as well.

 

Cathy Rinne: [00:34:13] I think the younger generations get a really bad rap, and we had some young interns, and I loved having them at the office. You know it was like having puppies in the office. I mean, the energy was fresh and they were curious, and it was just so much fun, and it reinvigorated me. You know, I went in with like, “Oh, what can I teach them today?” You know, this is so exciting. And I think that it isn’t just gender; it is generational. And I think especially a lot of older companies that have been around a long time still operate on those generational ideas and things that are so outdated. And I learned so much from this last group of interns. It was so refreshing to have them there that I cannot wait to have the young guys come in. And because I think they have a tremendous work ethic and they’re intelligent and they’re curious and they’re all of the things that we need them to be, and we just need to appreciate them. And that’s really hard because I’m a Baby Boomer on one leg and on the other I’m a Gen X, but I seem to be more Gen X than Boomer at this point in my life. But I’m right there on the cusp. But I see within even my own company the generational divide and differences and things like that. And so I think we have to stop stereotyping and really appreciate what every individual brings to the table.

 

Kirby Witty: [00:35:50] So I liked Julia’s point earlier about what’s the call to action. So kind of surrounding some of these ideas, what are some of the things that companies that we’ve worked for or different institutions that we’ve interacted with that could have been helpful along the way?

 

Amanda Del Buono: [00:36:06] That’s a good question.

 

Kirby Witty: [00:36:09] For me, I had kids in grad school, and my lab mate and I were the very first two women to need maternity leave in our department. So I was at Carnegie Mellon, and the college was great. My PhD adviser was great, made sure we had appropriate time off. The National Science Foundation, who was funding my PhD, had a policy in place but had to get the college administration together and the NSF together to understand how my PhD funding would bridge that maternity leave. So I think that’s something that colleges can do at least is to do some preplanning. Have these situations kind of ironed out before they happen so that the transition is easy for their students, so that they can focus on their research, take their time off, have their family, and then have the freedom to complete their studies while also building up their families.

 

Nikki Gonzales: [00:37:07] From a company perspective, and I’ll speak to manufacturers as well as automation companies, but if you can have a shift that ends before the school day is over, you should. If there’s a job that you can think of that doesn’t have to be 40 hours a week. And other countries do this. They have kind of like a half-time-type job description, where they either complement that job with two people that have those half times that do the same job or they just have a shift that somebody can drop off their kid to school, go to work, and then go pick up their kid and be done. There’s plenty of jobs that can be accommodated with that, production shifts or bookkeeping. And I think employers are kind of thinking like employment is 40 hours a week or it’s shift that is whenever we say shift needs to happen. And a lot of women do leave this workforce, whether that’s engineers, we don’t get enough of them that graduate, but then they don’t stick around. Same thing in manufacturing. And pay is one of the lower things on that list of why it’s incompatible for them. It’s mostly about flexibility and the ability to have some of your main concerns heard or not necessarily concerns but your wants. And different generations or different people in different phases of their career have different things that matter to them. When your kids are young, you need flexibility. When you’re older, you may want to have a portion of your time that you can give back to the community and teach or mentor, right? And I think as we enter this age of the next industrial revolution with AI and availability of data, we finally have the infrastructure to have more personalized everything. And the more I learn too about neurodiversity and people with different strengths and weaknesses, it doesn’t have to be a one size fits all. I’ve taken detail-oriented off of my resume even though it’s been hammered into me since business school that that’s one of the things you have to be, right? I’m not, unless it’s something I’m hyper-focused on. But what I want to do is be on a team with someone that’s extremely detail-oriented so that I can use my strengths to shine and that person can use their strengths to shine. And together our team produces a lot more and we’re more innovative. And I think that if you’re not thinking about how can we think outside the box about what type of employment we offer, you’re missing out on a huge portion of the talent available to you and a lot of the innovation that results.

 

Amanda Del Buono: [00:39:44] Yeah, I think you kind of touched on something that I wanted to ask to Julia was what other countries do. How do you see this from an international standpoint? Is this a very American issue?

 

Julia Astrid Riemenschneider: [00:40:00] Yeah, as Nikki was talking, I had the exact same thought. I was like, how blessed are we in Europe because we have different rules in place. Especially when you’re pregnant. You know, I’m not a mother, so I can’t give you the details. But I think we leave work six weeks before and six or eight weeks after giving birth to the child. This is already a lot of time. And I’ve been working in the U.S., and I saw female coworkers where I was really scared about their health when I saw them two weeks before giving birth to the baby. Like, how can you still work, right? So we’re blessed. And also Nikki touched on the part-time jobs that we offer. And my sister, for example, she had a baby three years ago and it was super easy for her to say, like, I come back after that amount of time and we can actually stay home with the child for I think one year and you still get 60% of your salary, stuff like that. So it’s really, really good in Germany, especially when you’re with your partner and you have two incomes or 1.6. Of course it’s challenging when you’re a single mom. That’s a complete different situation. Sixty percent of your former salary is not enough to feed yourself and the house and the car and everything you have and the baby and everything. But this is all a good. And then you can come back to work. And then there are onboarding programs again and you can say, well, I want to start with two days a week and then you incrementally go back to your former role. So that’s all good. So I must say, yeah, Europe is ahead of the game when it comes to stuff like that. And I just speak of Germany here. The Nordics are even better.

 

Amanda Del Buono: [00:41:36] At Automate, there’s a lot of automation companies, right, robotics companies out there. You have a lot of women at your booth. Is that something that you see at the various companies you’ve worked for internationally as well?

 

Julia Astrid Riemenschneider: [00:41:52] Uh, yeah, I would say so. And I mean, I’ve been working for Universal Robots before. There are plenty of women. And yeah, of course, we are all the same company. But when it comes to rules and regs, the contracts are made locally in their entities. So unfortunately we didn’t have the same rules as Denmark, and the people in the U.S. didn’t have them either. So, yeah, I think there is a room for improvement in the companies.

 

Nikki Gonzales: [00:42:16] Yeah, I would challenge international companies that come into the U.S. or U.S. companies, you don’t have to do the bare minimum. You don’t have to go by what is legally mandated. And if you’re going to have discrepancies, like offer your German colleagues long maternity leave and your American colleagues not, be aware that that’s a challenge once your American colleagues find out. Like I used to be blasted in the face with the maternity leave of my colleagues in the internal system every time I logged into my calendar. So and so is on maternity leave for the next six months. And I know that I’m entitled to six weeks or four weeks. Actually my water broke at a conference because I was not afforded any time up until my due date, and apparently those are not accurate, like the weather.

 

Cathy Rinne: [00:43:10] I actually left work when my water broke as well, only I wasn’t working. I was working for a different company at that time. And so, yeah, I can empathize.

 

Amanda Del Buono: [00:43:21] How do you, as the president of a company, how do you look at that from your perspective? Because I’m sure that of course there’s a financial aspect to this. You have an employee out. How do you handle that? How do you see it?

 

Cathy Rinne: [00:43:34] I think coming from a family business that we have always been more in tune with meeting those needs and knowing. I would have employees that would be like, “Hey, I got to go pick my grandkids up from school. Can I just bring them to the office?” And so, sure and we would have toys and things, and I literally raised my daughter at work. So we’re very child-friendly and take them out in the shop and play. You know I built conveyors with my nieces when they were little. They thought that was big fun. And I think that we aren’t as financially focused as we are family focused, being a family business. And so providing our employees flexibility to go visit a school because it’s parent-teacher conferences. I was at work the other day and Lauren called and she’s like, “Oh, mom, our cows are out. Can you run home and help put them in?” So it’s not just kids. Coming from the farm, you have emergencies and you have to be able to have the flexibility to come and go. And we feel very strongly that you need to spend the time with your kids and with your family and with your parents and your grandparents. And Lauren would leave work every day and have breakfast with her grandpa. That was something that was important to her. And it was something that was important to him. And I think that you have to appreciate those relationships. And first and foremost, Flex-Line is a family business.

 

Amanda Del Buono: [00:45:17] I’m sure you’re in the room with other executives sometimes. Have you ever had these conversations with them? And how do you see other companies look at this?

 

Cathy Rinne: [00:45:30] Well, we’ve always been a little different at Flex-Line in how we go about things. I think a lot of companies are very income statement, profit and loss motivated. You know, I don’t make my decisions that way. And a lot of times I have colleagues that think that I’m really crazy because dollars and cents don’t lie, right? But they do, though, and so I approach business decisions with, and this is going to sound really weird, with a lot of prayer, a lot of times, to look for the guidance, to find the path that’s going to be the biggest blessing for everyone and not just beneficial for Flex-Line Automation. I mean, I want to do business and I want that business to bless not only our customers, my employees, my team. I want it to bless my vendor partners. You know, I feel very strongly that you should bring everyone together. I don’t often get the ear of colleagues because in business school, they don’t teach that. They don’t teach you to have any emotional intuition. In fact, that’s a weakness. You don’t go into a boardroom feeling decisions. That’s something that’s frowned upon. So it’s not a discussion that I get to have, but it’s a discussion that I would love to have because I think having that emotional intelligence and that intuitive, I think that really does have a place in our boardrooms. And I think we would do a lot better job as employers, as everything, if we did, if that became the norm, if we normalized that.

 

Nikki Gonzales: [00:47:27] It’s a uniquely human trait. And I just hope that with more adoption of automation and robotics, it becomes easier for us to see the value of us humans. And not just us acting like robots but now actually us being us. Because there’s a ton of value. And I think in the past we had to do the work of robots. And so at work we kind of played that one-dimensional role. So that’s kind of my nerdy hope for the future, as I’m super excited about automation and robotics and AI, is it can do the mechanical things and we can infuse a lot more humanity into our work lives.

 

Cathy Rinne: [00:48:05] Yeah, I think we need that. We spend more time making sure zoo enclosures are enriched for the animals than we do for people. How crazy is that?Somebody really takes the time to study that and to make sure that they have an enriching environment and that they have all of the stimuli that they need. I mean, when’s the last time you walked into a manufacturing plant and somebody cared about the operators? You know, that’s one of the reasons I was so excited about digital twin and all of the new AI technology that would give us tools that we could actually bring those people into the process and give them a voice. Because I don’t think that we have done that. You know, we’ve treated employment completely, like you say, we haven’t taken in the human aspect of it. And we’re missing the boat there.

 

Kirby Witty: [00:49:12] Kind of thinking in similar lines as you, is that we try to make decisions based on what’s going to make the best story. So as time goes on, how are we going to look back and feel good about our decisions? And that’s how we try to build partnerships. That’s how we try to build relationships with our employees. And we think about, hey, how are we going to feel about this decision a year from now? We have some partners recently who have given us a big break, and I think it’s a good story to continue working with those partnerships and growing both businesses rather than to switch gears and go with a company who may be bigger or have more money. And I think that building these relationships and telling a good story is going to be what makes our businesses very strong, and we can apply that on the small level of how we interact with our employees, all the way out to how we interact with other businesses.

 

Nikki Gonzales: [00:50:11] And I’m seeing a lot more collaborative spirit in this industry recently than before. It was very much like, “Oh, they’re my competitor. I can’t talk to them. Don’t bring up their name.” And now it’s like, “Oh, they’re collaborating on this.” Or now that you see all these machines, a lot of these machine tools out here, they have to bring in. They’re not going to build a robot arm from scratch themselves, right? They’re going to bring in a robot to partner for their tending solution or whatever. You’ve got an AMR and you want to stick a robot arm on it. You’ve got a company that does both, but many don’t. And even your company is a collaboration between different groups and things. And I think that we’ve seen that accelerates innovation. And so we’re a little bit more open to that. But I feel like in the past, it was a lot more like we have to protect ourselves and our market share and everything by being closed. And I think that, from my uneducated opinion, has contributed to just the lack of visibility of our industry. We’ve been so closed. Everything is under NDA. You can’t look into these facilities.

 

Kirby Witty: [00:51:22] As a startup, we have a large number of customers who are doing really cool things with our tech, but it’s all under NDA.

 

Nikki Gonzales: [00:51:32] You can’t show anybody, right?

 

Kirby Witty: [00:51:34] So this is part of what we’re so excited about this year is that we’re starting to have public partnerships, and it’s these partnerships that are willing to go public with us that I think we’re developing the strongest relationships with, and we want to continue that story. But please, if you’re working with a small business, be willing on some level to work outside of an NDA, because those case studies are really powerful and can help get small businesses up off the ground. But sorry, that’s a tangent that is not really related directly to this conversation.

 

Kirby Witty: [00:52:11] So I’m curious, being at a company that does so much integration and working across companies, how have you managed these scenarios where you’re working with two competitors, you’re under NDA with both of them, and you end up with ultimatums. This may be something that as a small business, as a startup, we may be approaching. What do you do if a customer says you need to be exclusive? Have you had this issue on your end?

 

Cathy Rinne: [00:52:40] Do you want to answer that or do you want me to?

 

Amanda Del Buono: [00:52:42] Have either of you?

 

Cathy Rinne: [00:52:43] Please go ahead.

 

Julia Astrid Riemenschneider: [00:52:45] I do it all the time. So if I answer this now, there’s like an eight-hour talk here. So please go ahead with your answer.

 

Cathy Rinne: [00:52:54] You know, I’m kind of like you. I don’t even know how to to really verbalize it. We don’t work with a lot of ultimatums anymore. Only because we’re at a point now where I can – I don’t want to sound like we pick and choose who we want to work with – but we do pick and choose who we want to work with. I don’t feel like I’m held hostage as much as I used to be when we were early on, when you needed every project, right? And you had to meet the demands. And I honestly, true story, had a phone call with a former customer, and I said, “Look, I’m pulling the plug on your project because I have a strict policy against negotiating with terrorists, and you guys are just really acting like terrorists.” I really firmly believe that there are some customers you can’t afford to have or you’re best if you don’t have. And so I would say, be leery if you’re getting bullied. And are those projects you really want? Those relationships, you’re not going to have a good story and you’re not going to feel good about them. I don’t look back at that and feel good about that at all. You know, it’s kind of funny to say it now, but at the time it was very excruciating. You know, we wanted the project. We had bought a bunch of equipment, and I made the decision as the president of the company that I was willing to scrap it on principle. And I feel like you can’t be bullied out of your principles. And so you have to hold those and hold that line, as difficult as it is. And as far as the line between competition and collaboration, NDAs do blur things quite a bit. I mean, there’s such cool innovation and stuff that we’ve done that I can show you on my phone, but I can’t throw it out on the internet anywhere. You know, you have to pretend you’ve never seen it. And that’s really sad because I get where you’re coming from 100% with that. But I just think you have to hold your principles. And if that means walking away from a potential customer, that means walking away from a potential customer. You know, I’m not going to be bullied at this stage in my life. I mean, come on. Nobody should be bullied.

 

Nikki Gonzales: [00:55:40] And I think secrecy, there are certainly certain things that need to be kept under wraps for competitive reasons or whatever, but secrecy as a culture in general also, and to bring this back to the women in automation, it also hinders people from speaking up when something happens or when things are not right. Like I think that same type of mentality flows across departments, and I think it has unintended consequences as well. It’s kind of this MO. And what I’ve seen on my end with sort of the distribution channel, and the companies that seem to be the most stuck in the past are the ones that think that they can keep their customers and their business and their competitive advantage because their customers don’t know where else they could go, right?

 

Cathy Rinne: [00:56:31] But this 2024. We all have Google.

 

Nikki Gonzales: [00:56:37] The customers may not be finding the thing that you’re trying to keep under wraps, but you know what, they’re finding some other company out there that’s out there everywhere talking about what they’re doing. And culture-wise too, if you’re not showcasing good culture, women in leadership diversity at your company, your company adopting new technologies to make your workforce, to make work better, then there is somebody out there, your competitor, somebody’s going to be out there doing that, and they’re going to be attracting the next generation of innovation and you’re not.

 

Cathy Rinne: [00:57:08] I think attraction is much better than bullying. I think that’s a much better way to go. You know, in forming those relationships, it goes back to what you said, Kirby, about the relationships. You know, I have vendor partners that are competitors on a lot of levels, but they’re partners too because I realize that it’s not advantageous for my company, my team, to reinvent the wheel. And so if we know somebody that is an expert at this, collaborating with them will bring the best possible solution to our customer, which at the end of the day is my goal. You know, I want that customer to think back about Flex-Line and be like, you know what, they brought me a project that really checked all the boxes. And so if that means working with other people, that’s the best possible solution. As an integrator, isn’t that what I’m supposed to be doing? I’m supposed to be bringing this whole project together as a facilitator, really, and going out and finding the cream of the crop and bringing those people together, because that gives the best possible solution for the customer, which is at the end of the day why we’re all in business.

 

Julia Astrid Riemenschneider: [00:58:23] That’s what it’s all about. And I mean, I’m walking on thin ice when we talk about NDAs here because my compliance officer might listen to the podcast, but the thing is, yeah, talking to competitors is one thing. Naming customer names is another thing. We should not do this because it’s for the protection. But ultimately it’s for the best of the customer solution. And again, I started without an engineering background and I had to find my way from seeing a process, seeing all the components. And I was happy to join other associations where I was introduced to not direct competitors but also suppliers which were contributing or were part of the machine or a solution. And I had the chance to talk to people from SIG or Phoenix Contact or some other PLC suppliers. And I had conversations with them and I was like, “How do you approach this?” And this was where I was always happy that there were men who said, like, “Okay, she’s not an engineer. She just may not know it.” And I was so happy that I could ask, for me, the dumbest questions to these people who have done it so many times. So this is why I’m also so happy to be in this industry. There are people who have years of experience, and you can just approach them and ask them, and this is how we should do it. Like really be open. The call to action that I would put on this one is just be open, of course, for protecting your business, protecting your customer, but collaborate to come to the best solution. That’s the way to go for us.

 

Kirby Witty: [00:59:55] I agree. We’re kind of paving the way with this startup, trying to figure out, navigate all of these different relationships. And we’ve found that really transparency is the best thing. And we’ve actually learned that asking for advice is a superpower.

 

Nikki Gonzales: [01:00:10] Yes. Asking for help.

 

Kirby Witty: [01:00:12] One of our investors said, if you want money, ask for advice, and if you want advice, ask for money. And since realizing this, since realizing we are experts in electric glue, electric adhesive, brakes, locks, and latches. We are not experts in linear motion or other things. So the best thing we can do is just ask those questions, even if they seem straightforward. We have never once had anyone be offended or be insulted. And in fact, asking is the biggest compliment you can give because it tells the other person that you respect their opinion. So I think, absolutely, just asking questions, being transparent has been really key to our success in the last few months. So absolutely.

 

Nikki Gonzales: [01:01:00] Bringing this back to the women in automation theme here, I think as we grow more diverse as an industry, there is more room to ask questions and not have to pretend that you know everything. I’ve seen that kind of hesitance to ask questions because it looks dumb and that you will be judged for not knowing enough. And I hear from my engineering colleagues that that’s a fairly common prevailing attitude in a lot of engineering schools. My co-host went to Rose-Hulman, which is a technology school in Indiana, and they didn’t accept any women until the ’90s. And they have very stuck-in-the past more than other schools attitudes. But that was very much prevailing: if you ask a question, you look like you’re dumb. But the way I found a lot of success in my career was finding the application engineer that I know that knows this the best, and usually that person doesn’t like salespeople. And I realized it’s not that they don’t like salespeople, they don’t like people that don’t know as much as they do pretending they do. And in that sales relationship, you have to translate. You can’t quite bring the engineer total transparency or total black or whiteness to that table. So you end up translating. But some of the salespeople that have the more traditional “I’m going to sell this whether it’s the best solution or not. My goal is to just close the sale.” Those people often gloss over details that the engineers really care about, and it comes across as: I don’t care about your expertise. I have an ego that’s bigger than yours. And I just found my success was to go and pretend I know nothing and say, “I know you’re the expert. Can you please help me?” And nobody says no to that. Everybody’s very, very willing to help. But I think how you approach it, how you ask for it, whether you ask for advice or help, is very important. And maybe that’s something as women we’re a little bit more accustomed to having to do.

 

Cathy Rinne: [01:03:05] Definitely. We have humility is more hardwired in to us and again that intuitive way you can read a room. I mean, you know what your toddler wants. They don’t have to speak. You know you have that.

 

Nikki Gonzales: [01:03:21] And engineers have feelings too. They don’t like to admit it, but they operate largely on feelings just like everybody else.

 

Amanda Del Buono: [01:03:27] You know, Nikki, I think that you’re point here, as we’ve all been talking about, asking questions, kind of leads into where I wanted to take us next, which was when you enter the industry, whether that was five years ago or 40 years ago, what would you tell your younger self now if you got to sit down and say, okay, you’re going to do this. Here’s what you need to be prepared for. I handled this situation this way, but looking back on it with my experience, that was kind of silly. I should have done this. What would you tell your younger self? Or a student, a young student who’s not sure about this?

 

Kirby Witty: [01:04:05] I feel like a broken record, but it’s really just always ask and ask at the moment you need to ask. I tell my interns, we make our products out of three things: carriers, electrodes, and dielectrics. Your first day on the job is a great time to ask what a dielectric is. Three months down the line is a bad time to ask what a dielectric is. So always if you have the question, just ask. I’ve never, ever had a negative reaction. And I think that making a transition from business and film into engineering, I wish I had spent more time just asking rather than writing something down and going to Google it later. And I feel like in grad school, that’s when I learned just always ask, and it’s the best way to show confidence too, is just to admit: “I don’t know this. Please explain.” And that has been really helpful.

 

Amanda Del Buono: [01:04:58] Yeah, and there’s some things that Google just can’t answer. I have a journalism background. But either way, there’s a difference between having a conversation with a person and asking follow-up questions and being able to say, “Okay, I don’t really understand that. Can you rephrase that?” I just think that it allows a lot more learning, and engineers, and I think anyone else, when they’re asked about their expertise, they’re usually excited to share it because it’s something they love to do.

 

Cathy Rinne: [01:05:30] There’s passion there.

 

Amanda Del Buono: [01:05:31] Absolutely. So what about you?

 

Julia Astrid Riemenschneider: [01:05:34] Yeah, I would say I was never scared of asking questions. I was a type of child, this annoying child which always said, “And why and why and why?” And so that was never really my issue. Even when I ran into engineers who said, I don’t have time for you, I usually went to the service engineers because they were happy if they didn’t have to fix what I sold wrong in the first place. So this would be my advice to go to the service people, because they want to help you sell the right things so they don’t have to fix it later. But looking back, I would always say like, okay, of course, in the first place, we always have to prove ourselves. We have to deliver and we have to perform. And oftentimes we have to go the extra mile. That’s just the thing. And it’s gonna last like this for the next 20 years I guess. But once you’ve made it, embrace it and embrace the feedback that you get. Celebrate your successes. And once you’re at that point, you say, well, I deserve it, because I’m at an age right now where still keep fighting and I pick on every challenge. But there is a time for everyone at some point to say, “I made it. I’ve proved it. I’m good enough.” Keep reflecting on yourself, keep reflecting your on performance. Every once in a while, take a break to be proud of that. Embrace or surround yourself with the right people and grow from there. And don’t try to run too fast. Because the industry is fast, opportunities are big., but take your time because there is also a life out there.

 

Amanda Del Buono: [01:07:11] Celebrating your successes is something I think a lot of women, we’re too humble to really do.

 

Cathy Rinne: [01:07:18] I still have imposter syndrome a lot. I mean, honestly guys, there are a lot of decisions that I make that I feel like totally not qualified to make. I mean, 100%. And I’ve made my fair share of mistakes. But I think the thing is that having that humility to be like, “Okay, guys, well, that was the wrong decision. We’re going to pivot.” And being accountable for those wrong decisions, I think is really important. So if I had a message to my younger self, it would probably be: Don’t be so hard on you. Because I think I am probably – I know for sure I’m my worst critic. I know for sure I’m the one that overthinks every little thing. And that would be the big message. The big message would be: You know what? Just do your best and things will work out. You know, don’t overanalyze and overthink every decision or every thought. If you make a mistake, you know what? Have the grace to own it and bring that grace and humility more into the center of who you are instead of trying to pretend and worrying so much, and be kinder to you. I think that would be the big message, because I haven’t always been very kind to me. I’m still not always very kind to me.

 

Amanda Del Buono: [01:08:43] I think we all are guilty of that a little bit.

 

Nikki Gonzales: [01:08:46] Yeah. I guess from my perspective, I would say your first job is probably not going to be your dream job. Your second job might not be. It takes some time to also figure out what you want, where your strengths are. It may change. But I do hear from some colleagues that are hiring young grads that they kind of want the job to be the dream job right now. And, Julia, like you said, you kind of have to go the extra mile if you want to not just work but if you really want to make an impact. Or if you want to be part of leadership, if you want to keep growing and you want people to take you seriously when you ask them for help, all of those things, you have to start with adding value first. So try your hardest, and if you can, sign up for maybe something that’s a little bit above and beyond. I know as women, we tend to oftentimes take on extra responsibilities that have no actual career impact, like putting out food when there’s trainings if it’s not my job. Like cleaning, doing somebody else’s dishes in the office. I’ve realized that maybe I don’t need to do that. But at the same time, I tried to evaluate every opportunity to do something with more than one angle in mind. Not just what does it pay or how does it pay me today, but also what can I learn? Who can I connect with? What value can I add to someone else that maybe later on, not with the quid pro quo in mind, but just in general. Your network is really important for success, and the more genuine relationships you build and the more you put yourself out there and let people see who you are, the more opportunities will come to you. Because I used to think like you, Cathy. Like imposter syndrome: I’m not that good. But what I do is I try really hard. I’m smart. I learn quickly. And the work ethic that I have that I used to think was normal, once I started showing it to everyone, I started hearing like, oh, that’s really great. And I realized that not everybody does that, and something I thought was not impressive at all I eventually realized, that is impressive. The fact that I do work that hard, and I take that much pride, and I make sure not to leave things undone, and I go above and beyond, that actually is really impressive. That is something that not everybody has, and I should be proud of that. So, yeah, it’s a tough one to say, like, “Do extra stuff, but don’t do too much!”

 

Nikki Gonzales: [01:11:14] I feel like that’s kind of my life motto after being in the engineering side of things. And I learned this when I was integrating machine vision, because people would ask me, “Oh, how much does a vision system cost?” And my answer is always, well, that depends. And I’ve realized that is now my answer to almost everything in life. I need more context because it depends. There are inputs and outputs in systems. Systems are complex. And systems dynamics, you do one thing and it affects something else. And we were talking earlier about the PNL, looking at numbers. Even that is not that simple. An example of, like, if you don’t invest in good lighting and you’re in a manufacturing facility and you’re looking at your line item: I don’t want to spend more money on lighting. But your workers, it’s affecting their eyesight and they’re having to retire early. That’s costing you a lot of money. You just don’t see it in the line item of lighting cost, right? So I think we as women, we have to generally juggle so many things, we’re maybe a little bit more adept at knowing that there’s a bigger picture to look at and that there’s factors that affect everything.

 

Nikki Gonzales: [01:12:22] So I guess advice to my younger self, that’s the part I did right. What I didn’t know is that I was actually getting somewhere with it. And if you have anxiety every day going to work, for instance, I know a lot of women that have had this, like they are in a job and it doesn’t feel good for whatever reason. Either the work isn’t fulfilling or your environment is hostile or your management doesn’t appreciate or understand how to support you. You don’t have to leave the industry. Just leave that job and find a new one before you leave, right? Go network. Go find people. Talk to people that work at other companies. And guess what? You’ll probably find other companies that need your skill set, where you can find out ahead of time from someone that works there, from people that work there, that it’s a good place to work, right? Because HR will always sell you the job. And HR is not always your friend. That’s something also that I had to learn. But if you’re in a company that treats HR the way that it should, HR should be there for you, right? But I think there is a separation of companies that get it and want to do better, and companies that say, no, we’re fine. And the good talent needs to go to the former.

 

Kirby Witty: [01:13:37] Yeah, I think to kind of boil down what you’re saying is, you’re saying build value. And if you’re building value, go where you are valued.

 

Amanda Del Buono: [01:13:44] So kind of on your point, I was also wondering, to everybody, was there a person throughout your career that kind of helped you and guided you the way we were talking about mentorship? You know, is there somebody that you look to? I mean, half of this room is looking at you, but I’m sure you have someone you look at. Was there somebody that’s kind of helped you figure out these obstacles in that mentorship vein or has this been up until this point very much every woman for themselves, trying to figure these lessons out? Anyone?

 

Nikki Gonzales: [01:14:29] For me, up until two years ago, it was me on my own. And I thought mentors were whatever boss was actually willing to try to help me out or wanted to see me advance. I mean, I’d heard of mentorship, right? And I went to a women in engineering conference when I was still a sales engineer, and I was the only woman in my office, and I requested budget to go to this conference because I thought, this will be great. I’ll meet other women and I’ll get to network. And I went there and I was berated by a woman during lunch for not knowing something and then for not asking for her business card. And I just thought a lot of the presentations were coaches selling their coaching services to empower women. And I just thought, what a racket, you know? These women talk about mentorship and then they don’t really want to mentor. And they talk about all these opportunities, but they’re not really there unless I pay for them. And I left that and I was like, screw these women things. I’m not doing that. I’m perfectly fine with my male colleagues. And I have never had an official or any kind of mentor. And when I started the podcast and started talking to other women in the industry, I’ve had what I would call more informal small mentorship opportunities. And they kind of go back and forth, and that’s something that I’m a lot more interested in doing more of, not necessarily like one single person mentoring my career, but I come to Cathy for certain types of things. And now that I know more women to talk to, I feel a lot more supported. And I realize that I was probably missing something in my career. But yeah, I was going at it alone. And a lot of the women that I talked to on my show are the same.

 

Amanda Del Buono: [01:16:15] That’s why it’s great that we have so many women in automation and manufacturing events starting to come up, right? We had discussed, at Automate, they had a breakfast, and it was a full room. You were speaking there. And I think it was the first time they ever did something like that. And that’s just in 2024. That was just a few months ago.

 

Nikki Gonzales: [01:16:42] Sorry to hog the air, but I’m also a member of AHTD, the Association for High Technology Distribution, and they just started maybe two years ago a women in automation subgroup within AHTD. So we have a meetup and all the meetings and we have monthly Zooms. And they just now started a mentorship program about a month or two ago for the women. That if you wanted to sign up to either mentor or mentee or both, they’re now facilitating that through the organization. And I think that’s really great.

 

Kirby Witty: [01:17:13] There’s two sides to every coin though. For example, Kat Steele’s a fantastic researcher, and she was coming to Carnegie Mellon to give a talk, but she was coming on the premise of being part of a women in STEM event. And one of my lab mates was super-stoked that she was coming and wanted to be there and to take in her expertise, but he felt unwelcome because it was a women in STEM opportunity. But this was a rare opportunity to speak to a phenomenal researcher. And so I would really love to see more events that are really targeted at being coed. And I think that largely comes from my mentors were men in college. Charlie O’Dowd ran senior film departments and supported me as being a producer for our senior film. And then Dr. John Russell was the adviser for our motorsports team in undergrad, and they both just treated me with respect and passion and told me that I was good at what I was doing and to keep going. And I think that’s really just something that we should all do for young people is that when they’re doing a good job, just say, “Keep going, keep working, and you’re going to do great. Don’t worry. Just chase the dream, whatever the dream is today, and the dream can change.” So I’d like to see more events just focused on being all inclusive and knowing that your mentorship can come from anywhere.

 

Amanda Del Buono: [01:18:45] Yeah, I agree. I do think that we end up kind of speaking in a bubble, right, at these women and automation events, we’re talking to ourselves, and while we need to build each other up, like I mentioned before, if men are our allies, they need to be a part of the conversation.

 

Cathy Rinne: [01:18:58] We don’t want to be polarized, but we’re polarizing.

 

Amanda Del Buono: [01:19:01] Well, and if they don’t understand, how do we tell them? If they’re not experiencing these things?

 

Cathy Rinne: [01:19:10] Well, I think they really are much more in tune. I’m like Kirby: my mentor was a man. Also, my ultimate mentor was my daddy, you know? But then in business, I learned a lot from my father-in-law, working with him. And a lot of my values were passed to me from him. But I feel like we shouldn’t alienate the men because they have a big contribution. And I have felt super supported by a lot of the males that I work with, my husband being one. He’s never once told me that I wasn’t smart enough to do something because I was a girl or I didn’t have the ability to do something because I was a girl. We didn’t raise our daughter that way. And so I think even in my LinkedIn relationships that I see, I’m seeing men come in and try to be supportive of us, and they really do want to do better. And so I don’t know if as much of the problems that we perceive are our perceptions based on our past or if those obstacles are really still there. I mean, I don’t feel the ceiling as much as I used to. You know, I’ve seen a big shift in that openness and that willingness to be supportive of us regardless. But I also see another side to that coin, yet again, is I think that they can appreciate as women what we bring to the table. And face it, guys, we do have some highly specialized skill sets, being mothers, being nurturers, being sisters and aunts and daughters. We have a whole different perspective that we bring that they don’t have. And I think if anything, they’re very appreciative of that, and I think they value what we bring to the table. I’m going to tell you, nobody has been meaner to me in my career than other women. Nobody’s going to be judgier or anything than other women. I’ve never felt that for men. So I think that we’re making progress. We really are.

 

Nikki Gonzales: [01:21:51] But everybody’s story is different, and different experiences make different impacts. So I would say also the majority of my career, I’ve mostly had great interactions with men. I took AP physics in high school and I was the only girl in the class, so I’m used to that. I thought girls were drama and I wanted to stay away. They cared about clothes and popularity, and it wasn’t my thing. But I’ve also been told when I walked in with my full demo, “Oh, where’s your engineer?” I’m here to solve your problem. Like I am the engineer. Granted, I don’t have a degree, but I have just as much application experience in this area as the other colleague. Or I’ve had to fire a customer for not leaving me alone. You know, paying me a inappropriate personal attention when I’m there to do a job. And those things, unfortunately, they just stick with me. They had more of a psychological impact on me than many of the positive, normal, day-to-day interactions that you have in support from people and mentors or people that teach you things and support you along the way. Traumatic experiences, they impact us in a different way. And it’s harder to not let them have have an outsized impact on how you feel at work. My podcast, it’s called Automation Ladies. And a lot of people don’t look past that. They’re just like, “Oh, that’s a woman’s podcast.” And it’s so funny because I personally am so not into all women things, and I don’t like it to be exclusionary.

 

Nikki Gonzales: [01:23:22] It was just the name of the podcast because I was inspired by a podcast called Office Ladies, which is Pam and Angela from “The Office.” They talk about “The Office” and they’re best friends, and I was like, I have this friend that I like to talk about automation with, and I would love other women that may not have that friend at their facility or in their department or whatever, to be able to maybe hear our conversations and say, “Oh yeah, I can have those.” But we invite men on the show all the time. We’re not for ladies only, but I think that people have been conditioned to think if it says “women” in the title, it must be only for women. So we threw our own event called OT SCADA CON, which was a technical training conference for operational technology and PLCs and things like that. And we called it OT SCADA CON, and we didn’t put Automation Ladies branding on it anywhere, because we didn’t want people to think it’s a training only for women. And we had mostly men sign up. Of course, because that’s our industry. That’s the demographics.

 

Kirby Witty: [01:24:24] But then being run by women then just creates more normalization.

 

Nikki Gonzales: [01:24:27] Yes and when I looked at the photos of the 70 people at this place, it is the most diverse group of people I’ve ever seen at an industry event.

 

Amanda Del Buono: [01:24:36] That’s amazing.

 

Nikki Gonzales: [01:24:37] And it felt really good because it wasn’t any kind of inclusion or exclusion, right? It was just an event that happened to have a bunch of women involved in it and other types of people, and that attracted more people of all kinds.

 

Cathy Rinne: [01:24:52] It was organic, and that’s important I think.

 

Nikki Gonzales: [01:24:56] But I know if we had put the Automation Ladies Conference on it, it would have been very, very, very different. So I agree with you, Kirby. I feel like letting people just, yeah, just not being exclusionary. If you want to support and you want to be involved, like you’re welcome anywhere.

 

Julia Astrid Riemenschneider: [01:25:14] And I think “organic” or “natural” was the word that I’ve been thinking of while you were talking. We shouldn’t force anything regarding inclusion. We talked about female and male mentorship, and I think there is value in both. I had male mentors all my life, and sometimes I feel like I lacked a bit of female mentorship. And this is why I look up to leaders in the industry like Marina from ABB, where I’m like, well, I would like to sit and have a coffee with her and just talk about all these things that she’s going through. But there is times in your life where you sense I want to have a male guide, and then sometimes you need a female. We have talked about our families a lot, and we said like, oh, I’ve been raised from a strong father or my husband is an engineer. I heard all these things here. There is a time where you just naturally feel, I want this or I want that, and then you just just go for it and ask for it. And again, there is not a playbook that we can use and give to someone and say like, oh, when you have this question, go to a guy and this question, go to a woman. I think it comes very natural. And what is important is you got to know who is your network, and you got to know who’s your go-to person and who’s the person on your phone you call when you have a need to talk about X, Y, or Z. So that’s how I look at it.

 

Cathy Rinne: [01:26:30] The most important thing that you need to know how to do in this age is use resources. And so sometimes they’re going to be guy resources. Sometimes they’re going to be gal resources. And I don’t think that it really matters. And I think you make a great point. That is important.

 

Nikki Gonzales: [01:26:51] Yeah and maybe a tip, another unrelated to my experience up until now, but with LinkedIn, so we have a young woman here, who is a machinist and she’s early in her career. But what she started doing is she posts on LinkedIn, and she’s gained traction and a following because there’s just not a lot of young women on the B2B platforms at all creating any content. And I saw her today and she was so like, “Oh, kind of awestruck to meet you.” She’s like, “This feels so crazy. I’m here and I know all these people.” And I said, yeah, “because you’re just brave enough to go out there and be on social media in what is currently a very small pond.” Really, this industry is kind of new to putting out more genuine content and on social media, not just the highly produced “My machine does this and the highest-tech thing.” So yeah, as a young person, like in this industry in particular, if you make an effort, you can build a high-value network pretty quickly. If you make the effort and you show value to people. I have a lot of people come into the DMs or just like you made the point earlier, Julia, about being accessible, we can’t be accessible to everyone all the time. But if you’re persistent. If you ask for help and nobody replies to you, that person’s probably just way too busy. Keep asking for help or start offering some value and that person will eventually get back to you. And as a younger person in your career, it’s hard to know what busy people’s schedules really look like. I underappreciated it before I got so busy that I can’t get back to everyone. I used to think like, oh, this person doesn’t want to talk to me, when the reality is, right now was a bad time and that got buried. So just be persistent. Try to add value.

 

Cathy Rinne: [01:28:40] I probably received 300 emails in the time that we’ve been talking here.

 

Amanda Del Buono: [01:28:44] Are you getting nervous?

 

Cathy Rinne: [01:28:46] No, because I have 37,000 unread in my inbox. I’m okay with that. You know, make your subject line count.

 

Nikki Gonzales: [01:28:53] Don’t be afraid to try to break through the noise and just be persistent in what you want. And another thing that I say, talk about what you’re wanting to learn. You know, you don’t have to be good at it yet. While you’re learning, somebody else is three steps behind you and they’re going to learn from you. But what you will do by sharing what you’re learning is, people will see, hey, this person has desire and they’re trying and they’re on their own and they’re trying to figure this out. I might want to help them or I might want to pull them into my organization. I found a lot more help not necessarily asking for it but just talking about what I’m doing or what I’m trying to do, and I see that from other people. And I think there’s a huge willingness. It’s just obviously you can’t expect busy people to jump at your first ask.

 

Kirby Witty: [01:29:41] I like what you were saying about there’s always something that you’re learning and people behind you learning and people ahead of you that can help you. And something that we do at ESTAT is we do a retrospective, and we all, at the end of a large project, get up and present what we’ve learned. And so rather than a mistake being something that has dragged you down, now it’s empowering because you get to share what you’ve learned with the rest of the team and help the team avoid those same pitfalls. So this is something that I really encourage everybody to do. And there’s two different kinds of mistakes. There’s mistakes that are made through carelessness, and mistakes that are made because you haven’t learned yet. And our product manager, Max, put up a slide of a bunch of slices of cheese, and you’ve seen it a lot back during the pandemic, where you have your mask, you have your social distancing, all of these things, and it’s a slice of cheese where there may be some holes, but if you have enough slices of cheese, you can block whatever hazard is coming in. So whenever we’re working in the office, if we have a co-op student working on something, we can just say, hey, I’d like to add a layer of cheese here. And it’s just a really polite way of saying we’re working as a team to reduce the risk that is occurring. These retrospectives are part of that. So we try to add a lot of layers of cheese so that if something slips through, it was a team slip and nobody has to carry that burden alone. So I like the idea of working with the people who have learned before you, helping the people who are learning behind you and kind of pushing that forward.

 

Amanda Del Buono: [01:31:14] The retrospective is really an awesome thing that you do as a team. And it builds up I’m sure that there’s just a whole team-building aspect of being vulnerable in front of everybody. And then, yeah, the only way to learn is through mistakes, right?

 

Kirby Witty: [01:31:30] Absolutely. And I think that in the context of teaching, you almost don’t even have to be vulnerable. You just say, this is something that I learned, and you don’t even have to say, “I made a mistake.” You just say, “I learned this.” And we built our first linear system for a customer. We are electric glue experts. We are not linear system experts. Yet we’re learning a lot very fast. But we can call them up and say, “Hey, something’s not working. How can you help?” And they have helped us tremendously moving things forward. And then we also learned that some materials are more compliant than others, and we need to account for that early on. And the next time we build systems like this, we’re going to do much better. But don’t sweep it under the rug, because other people will make those mistakes. Just own it and get it out there, and no one is going to think that you’re silly for making that mistake. They’re going to be grateful for you sharing that learning.

 

Amanda Del Buono: [01:32:29] And I once heard and I think that it’s so true is teaching is the best way to learn. And I think you learn so much more from teaching. So even just doing that: “Here’s what I learned,” you’re gaining so much from that too. I wanted to kind of close out just by asking you all, what in the automation space are you most excited about right now? We’re at IMTS. There’s so much going on upstairs. What are you guys excited about?

 

Cathy Rinne: [01:33:01] I am super excited about AI and how AI is being combined with robotics. And I saw a robot at Automate that wrote her own code. She was called cognitive, because you spoke to her like Siri or whatever. And I thought that was the coolest thing, because one of the things that stops small and midsize manufacturing, especially rural manufacturing, where I am, is workforce not being able to really come in and take care of a robot after it’s been deployed. And I thought, boy, cognitive robots using AI to be able to make it more like a cell phone than a robot. That could just totally revolutionize small and midsize manufacturing and make that technology accessible to people who really need it. And they just haven’t had the assets or the resources to be able to use it successfully. And that’s what I’m most excited about, how that’s going to come together to make automation more user-friendly and more available to these manufacturers that are overlooked and underserved.

 

Julia Astrid Riemenschneider: [01:34:26] I would also say AI. I would rather reflect that on more social robotics or service robots, like for elderly care or rehabilitation. You know, with United Robotics Group, we have also humanoids in our portfolio. There are plenty of humanoids coming to the market right now. How can they really help us in industrial applications as well as in our daily life? Elderly care is a big, big topic. We all have grandparents or older parents where I sometimes think, I wish I had a humanoid who could check on my parents’ house and see if everything is switched off and I could even go in my mom’s bedroom and make sure the blanket’s covering her body. So these are all things that I’m excited about and I can’t wait to see the results in the field.

 

Nikki Gonzales: [01:35:14] Yeah, I’ll have to say AI as well, but I had a great interview with Google Cloud about this today, but there’s just so many layers to it. It’s not any kind of magic button. And we’re not going to have cognitive robots tomorrow. But there’s a lot of steps that are being taken that are getting mainstream. For me I’ll reflect on the workforce. I see a lot of these companies, manufacturing companies, they have people that have been around for a long time, and there’s kind of a gap in the middle. And then there’s a lot of new workers coming in. And the average turnover in the manufacturing industry for these operator-type positions is really within two years. And it’s really hard to take that institutional knowledge and translate it to this workforce that’s constantly turning over. You constantly need to be training people. And these are very specialized skills and in some cases outdated skills like ladder logic and PLCs. It’s not something that’s exciting to learn anymore today. So the ability for AI to help us get more granular in how we serve our employees, being able to take employee feedback and give praise and things like that, that just we didn’t have the infrastructure to be able to do efficiently before. AI is enabling that. But then also it attracts — getting to come work with the robot is something that younger people want. You know, the older people were like, yeah, we don’t know about this. This is kind of creepy. But for them, they’ve been seeing robots in movies and shows and stuff. And my kids, they’re 4 and 6, they don’t really know that Big Hero 6, that type of robot, isn’t real. It doesn’t exist. Yes, there are robots, but they don’t help us like that. Like to them, they’re ready to go to work with the robot tomorrow.

 

Cathy Rinne: [01:36:55] I grew up with the Jetsons, and here we are.

 

Amanda Del Buono: [01:36:58] I was thinking of Rosie when she was mentioning at home. I mean, what’s to be scared of? That would be great. Who doesn’t want Rosie?

 

Nikki Gonzales: [01:37:04] So I think the ability to attract a younger and more diverse workforce and then help them be engaged and continue upskilling so that they don’t necessarily have to leave a facility after they’ve been bored of operating the same machine for two years. That’s kind of what excites me a lot.

 

Kirby Witty: [01:37:19] Uh, lately I have been finding a lot of passion in the details. I find that components that I kind of looked at and said, oh, this is a machine base. Suddenly, as we’re working with more and more customers, we’re learning more about what that machine base actually means to them and the performance of their system. So I’m really excited to be diving into more and more robotics hardware, understanding how the small hardware choices change things while also seeing that in actuator hardware in particular, there hasn’t been a whole lot of advancement. So from a very maybe selfish perspective, I’m kind of excited to see that people are paying top dollar for motors that have a little bit higher torque density or a little bit lower mass or a little bit better battery life. And so being at ESTAT and having these new devices that are 1,000 times more energy efficient than previous options, I’m seeing just a lot of opportunity to get into the details and make hardware improvements to make robots lighter, cheaper, faster. And then all of these things that you’re talking about can make it into the homes, because hardware is expensive and it limits battery life. So we’ve had huge leaps forward in sensing. We’ve had huge leaps forward in control with the advent of AI. Battery technology is being pushed forward by EVs and various mobile devices, and we’re really waiting for hardware to become cheap and accessible and be able to support the advances that we’re seeing elsewhere. So I am excited to hear about all the ideas that people here at IMTS have for creating better hardware together, and that’s what I’m looking forward to.

 

Amanda Del Buono: [01:39:05] That’s awesome. Is there anything we didn’t touch on that you ladies think is important that we should talk about?

 

Julia Astrid Riemenschneider: [01:39:13] Food and sleep?

 

Amanda Del Buono: [01:39:16] It has been a long week already, hasn’t it?

 

Nikki Gonzales: [01:39:18] You know, it’s okay to cry sometimes.

 

Amanda Del Buono: [01:39:20] It is. Sometimes you gotta. Well, that was a great conversation. I appreciate you all for being here today. For the listeners at home, if you have any questions, you can reach out to us at manufacturing-matters.com. Submit your questions and we’ll get them to the panel to get back to you right away. As always, you can catch up on our past episodes at manufacturing-matters.com or on your favorite podcasting app. So until next time, remember, manufacturing matters.