From the rise of AI to the implementation of 3D printing and robots, the world is changing rapidly and can leave some engineers questioning their place in it all.

Today we hear from an engineer who is not only adopting, but embracing these new technologies as the leader of one of Ireland’s top manufacturing research organisations. We learn about emerging tech that is changing the game in manufacturing and why although this change can seem overwhelming, adapting is the best way forward. 

Our guest has over 15 years Directing and Leading Organisations both in MNC environments and new organisational start-ups and is currently CEO of Irish Manufacturing Research, Barry Kennedy. 

THINGS WE SPOKE ABOUT
●    Keeping Ireland competitive with new technologies and automation
●    IMR connecting cutting-edge manufacturing technology with Irish industries
●    Creating a positive environment for innovation
●    Lateral thinking and problem-solving methodologies 
●    The benefits robots and humans working side by side 

GUEST DETAILS
Barry Kennedy is the CEO of Irish Manufacturing Research (IMR) and is responsible for setting the strategy, objectives, goals and direction of the company. He is responsible for the overall centre and staff.  He also owns modelling and setting of the company’s culture, values, and behaviour. He is responsible for building and leading the senior executive team and for allocating capital to the company’s priorities; for example, deciding where IMR spends its time and resources.

Barry has over 15 years Directing and Leading Organisations both in MNC environments and new organisational start-ups from working in the following organisational roles including; CEO of Irish Manufacturing Research, Director in IIOT division, Intel, CEO of both Irish Centre for Manufacturing Research (ICMR) Ltd & Innovation for Irelands Energy Efficiency (i2e2) Ltd, Department Manager and senior manager of Manufacturing Quality in Intel, Chair and Director on several boards including volunteer boards such as Chair of the school board.

Connect with Barry on LinkedIn: https://ie.linkedin.com/in/barry-kennedy-a9a127b 

MORE INFORMATION
Looking for ways to explore or advance a career in the field of engineering? Visit Engineers Ireland to learn more about the many programs and resources on offer. https://www.engineersireland.ie/   

Engineers Journal AMPLIFIED is produced by DustPod.io for Engineers Ireland.

QUOTES
"If we're going to survive and thrive over the next number of years, we're going to have to adopt these new technologies so that it'll drive efficiencies in our manufacturing organizations and keep ourselves profitable, or we're going to be left behind." - Barry Kennedy 

"It is important for companies and senior leadership to ensure that they're creating enough space for their engineering teams to be able to think about how to solve the problems." - Barry Kennedy 

"I have seen that in a lot of companies over the years, where they haven't resolved problems. They've band-aided them." - Barry Kennedy 

"I'd never seen the technology come in and transform so fast as AI has just done over the last 18 months." - Barry Kennedy 

"Engineers need to be prepared now to have lifelong learning. And that's the way life is going to be, because what we were doing today, in five years time is going to be very different, most likely." - Barry Kennedy 

KEYWORDS
#AI #transformation #engineering #manufacturing #technology #digital #robotic #3Dprinting #innovation

TRANSCRIPTION
For your convenience, we include an automated AI transcription.

Dusty Rhodes  00:00
Right now on AMPLIFIED, how engineers can thrive with rapid change. 

Barry Kennedy
I've never seen a technology come in and transform so fast as AI has just done over the last 18 months. Engineers need to be prepared, and that's the way life is going to be, because what we were doing today, in five years time, is going to be very different.

Dusty Rhodes  00:19
Hi there. My name is Dusty Rhodes, and welcome to AMPLIFIED, the Engineers Journal podcast. The world is changing around us as the web, weather, wars and more are rapidly changing everything in our everyday lives. In engineering, it's the same. How do you keep up with AI, robots, 3d scanning and printing and more? We're about to meet a man who does this on a daily basis, and I think he will inspire us to embrace change and advance our careers. His company, Irish Manufacturing Research, or IMR, connects cutting edge manufacturing technology and Irish industries, where they demystify, de-risk and deliver emerging engineering tech for manufacturers. I'm delighted to welcome the CEO of IMR, Barry Kennedy, how are you?

Barry Kennedy  01:05
Hi, Dusty

Dusty Rhodes  01:07
So listen, let me set the scene. How did you get into our wonderful world of engineering? What was that little spark in your formative years? 

Barry Kennedy  01:16
Yeah, well, it's quite funny. Actually, when I was in college, I actually started out doing science before I ended up finding my life in the whole engineering world. And I had attended fully to do biology after first year, and they were looking for volunteers to do physics. And the head of the department came along and said, I think if you really good doing physics, would you not think about doing that? So I ended up, in this more of a moment, making a decision not to go down the biological route, but actually to go in the physics route. And so I did my initial years in Kevin Street, before working, starting to work in Trinity College Dublin, in their engineering department. From then on, I've been working in engineering since I worked in the micro electronic and electrical engineering in Trinity College for 10 years at a master's degree there as well, while I worked. And then eventually, after running some courses for Intel, Intel came along and said, You need to be working with us here in the semiconductor industry. And so then I took up a whole variety of engineering roles in Intel and leadership roles. And before, eventually, after 18 years and making a very tough decision to leave and to go and set up this not for profit with other companies to help them on what we saw as the digital transition.

Dusty Rhodes  02:24
So why do you think it is important that people keep up with technology? What's wrong with doing it the good old fashioned way?

Barry Kennedy  02:31
Well, at the moment, in Ireland, if I look at manufacturing base, 37% of our GDP is dependent on manufacturing. So the manufacturing area is really, really important. And if you look at a metric that's that's quoted around the world's productivity, Ireland actually ranks as number one. And so you'd say, when you see that number, that Ireland is the most productive country on the planet, and 37% of our GDP should have done a great job. Why would we want to worry about doing anything else? We have it all sussed. But when we look out there across the world and see what's happening, if I looked at somewhere like, say, Korea, for instance, and I look at the way the adoption rate of technologies that they're going with now, they have about 1012 or so robots per 10,000 employees in their country. If you look at Germany, it's about 454 the UK is about 111 and Ireland is 55 robots per 10,000 employees. So just looking at number alone in terms of automation, these countries are way ahead of where Ireland is today. And when you look at Ireland in terms of our digital competitiveness, we're 23rd in the world. And that's on the backdrop of us being the ninth most expensive country from a salary point of view in the world. So manufacturing is 37% of our country depends on we're the night most expensive in the world, and we're not at the races when it comes to automation. That just doesn't equate. And so we as a country, and manufacturing in particular, if we're going to survive and thrive over the next number of years, we're going to have to adopt these new technologies so that it'll drive efficiencies in our manufacturing organizations and keep ourselves profitable, or we're going to be left behind.

Dusty Rhodes  04:06
So if we don't connect with new technologies, we're just not going to be efficient. And if we're not efficient, we're going to be too expensive, and then people will just go elsewhere. That's it. It's simple as that. That's why it's important. Okay, great. So listen, tell me, then, what are you doing with IMR? Because imr is very much a cutting edge manufacturing technology, and that's that's where you are, right? You try to demystify de risk and deliver, as I said in the intro. Tell me more about IMR.

Barry Kennedy  04:31
So yeah, IMR formed as a company over 10 years ago, although the cluster and community were together for about 15 years under a different, different heading. And so we approached the governments when we formed and enterprise Ireland in particular, and enterprise Ireland and agreed to fund us in the first mad phase at this they didn't know what we were up to. We were a bit unusual, because we were setting up as a not for profit. We were the first time just have a research center were set up outside universities. And. And we did that deliberately, and because what we wanted to do was to do what we call late stage research, not the research that's done in the universities, which is a little bit more earlier and it's kind of speculative. We wanted to do research where companies were coming and saying, Hey, I have a major problem in this area. Can you help me? And so it's late stage. And what we wanted to do was to be able to work with universe, all the different universities, and not be kind of locked into one, and pull the goodness that they're doing there to come out and to help us solve those really meaningful challenges that we're trying to address within our manufacturing world.

Dusty Rhodes  05:33
So somebody comes to you with a problem, and you go looking for a new, modern solution for that problem, which is often coming from a university, so you then kind of have to commercialize it, correct?

Barry Kennedy  05:44
Yeah, so we act as that kind of interface, and we're the first time in the country that we've had this, because that's what engineers do. We take things, we modify them, we make them work in different settings. So I pull together, what I like to think is the A team of engineers to come along and to take all that good stuff and convert it into real, meaningful solutions.

Dusty Rhodes  06:02
Can I ask you then about a couple of specific examples, then of things that you've done? I know that somebody came to you and said that they wanted to measure the wing of aircrafts, and it had to be done like anything in the aviation industry is down to millimeters, or even smaller units of measurement. Can you tell me about that?

Barry Kennedy  06:19
Sure, we were working with Airbus, and Airbus had a particular challenge where they wanted to get an inspection system so they can inspect the wings of the planes to make sure there's no damage done from from flying. And the way it was normally done, somebody would come in on a charity picker, and we could, often would inspect the wing to make sure everything was a okay. And so we worked as part of this European program, with other partners in Europe and in Ireland, and to develop a scanning system that would would inspect the wing and would be able to spot where any damages may have taken place. If there was a rivet, for instance, that had been a little bit damaged, you would be able to spot that and identify its location. And the clever thing about, you know, the solution that the team, the engineering team, developed in in IMR and put our partners, was that the the robot, we got a robot and a vision system, but that the robot had had an inbuilt some form of AI and and it could learn, first of all, and it would know where it was in the wing at any point in time. Because normally, for the robotic system in the old days, let's say it's all been to change. Now, a robot needed to know where it was. It needs to help what's called a 00, reference points, you know, zero point, and then geometrically, you'll be able to position itself and know where it needs to go. But that's kind of tricky. If you're trying to bring in a very big plane into a hangar, and it's got to stop exactly, you know, at that set point, so that the robot would know where there's it. That was going to make things a little bit harder. So bit harder. So the system that the team built, you can reel this robot in on a trolley, in essence, and it can know where it was instantly under wing. And we can do the scanning and the spot defaults. And we did that with a partner, a company called teg there in mullengar. And as part of that, they got a significant sum of money from the European Union as well to help them and to get involved in doing R D programs, and they did some fantastic work down there. And as a result of that, there now have become a tier what's called a tier two supplier into into Airbus. That means they can directly sell their products into Airbus and from them, from a business enablement point of view, this is really important, and that's just kind if I looked at kind of an Havana project in in in the work that we do with I am or dapoz, where we're solving a technical challenge and we're enabling business growth at the same time.

Dusty Rhodes  08:31
It's clear from chatting to you that robots are a very important part of what you do in the technology that you deal with now, when I think of robots, I think of the movies and I Robot and Will Smith and all that kind of stuff. When you think of robots, how do you describe them to people in an engineering sense?

Barry Kennedy  08:47
I would see them as, kind of, in my own simple mind, a mechanical aid to help you do things more efficiently and effectively. Okay? In our world, the robot will be more typically an arm, which has got, you know, a number of elbow junks and things on it, and a thing called an end effector on the end of it, which is like a gripping system for grabbing something and doing something with it. And our primary focus in our research and development that we're working on today is focusing what we call collaborative robotics. So it's robots that can work side by side a human being. And the reason why we're doing that, and why we think that's important in this country, is because we don't do a lot of the heavy engineering and automotive, aviation type engineering that exists in, say, Germany, where they'd be more inclined to use very large robots that's sitting behind cages in our case, where I've got a med device, medical device companies, and so typically, you know, the kind of component parts that we make are much smaller, and, or we've got the food industry where we're processing food and things like that. So in that environment, the robots don't seem to be as big. And in general, the payloads, the weights that they're carrying isn't isn't as heavy, and, and so we are looking for ways can we get these robots to be able to work site. But. Inside a human being in a safe way, and kind of be a lot more dexterous, if you like, for doing very fine tasks, like, for instance, if you're trying to do a stent assembly in an in a minute device company, and you're trying to push two tiny tubes, one inside the other, that can only really be done today. Effectively, with a human, it's very hard to get a robotic system to be able to do that. So we're working with robotic systems called haptic robot robots, for instance, and and that means that can feel so and an example of it as if you ever decided you'd like to condense the Air Facility, we could show you there sometime industry. Or if any of your engineering teams that are listening here today would be interested and do it, I tell them to please reach out. But the if we've got a joystick system down there that moves a robot, and if the robot rubs on a slippery surface, you'll slide with it. And if it goes across a rough surface, you feel that vibration coming back up through the up through the joysticks system. And so it's using these, that type of haptic robotics, to be able to determine if, for instance, you're trying to put one tube inside the other, if there's a bit of resistance there, and so that the robot then can make a slight adjustment to be able to insert one into the other a little bit better. So this type of robotic feedback systems are important with robots, we've got advanced vision systems now wrapped around those as well that look and see what's going on to make sure that nothing that the robot isn't heading towards your hand, for instance, as it's moving in in a certain work area, and that the robot will learn to move around you. And so we apply AI in the back end for the for the these robotic systems, to be able to learn from what they see happening in the environment. So for instance, if I walk in to an area where the robot's working and I am right handed, and I'm moving my right hand in around to grab something. The robot says, Oh, hang on a second. You know, Barry's right handed, you know? And then if, if dusty comes in and he's left handed, and he starts to put his hand and be just swinging in from the other direction, the robot says, oh, hang in a second. Dusty is left handed, I need to move my robotic arm around in a different direction. So that's what we're doing. We're working with robots with, you know that are haptic, that are that are small, they can work side by side a human being that have aI sitting on the back of them, that they can self learn, and looking at ways that this technology can be delivered and dropped into manufacturing environments safely so that human beings can work side by side and without getting injured.

Dusty Rhodes  12:18
Can you give me an example of something like that that you're doing right now.

Barry Kennedy  12:22
Oh gosh, there's so many projects we have going on at the moment. And I'll give you just an interesting one that we do for the company there in in the Midlands, uh, recently, which, which actually just shows the advantage of kind of robotic systems they came to us and they had, say, a certain size of cardboard box which their product needs to go out in, but all their product goes out in the same size box, but in every box and in every order, there's a different mix in the box, right? And so if we say, for argument's sake, if you can imagine saying nuts and bolts in in a small plastic bag, like a money bag that you would have had years ago, right for coins, and you have a certain number of nuts and certain number of bowls and a certain number of washers, and then, depending on the order, sometimes the bolts are longer or shorter, as the case may be, or there'll be a larger number of bolts or a smaller number of bolts, as the case may be. So the orders can be all different. Well, the way this factory were operating, they were trying to put the nuts and bolts into the bag, or into the box, should I say, shake down the box, try and get nice and flat so they could tape it, because he had to stack all these cargo boxes, one on top of the other, so that that was a job that was driving them mad. And so they came to us, and they said, Look, we really would like to try and get rid of this problem, and can you fix it for us? So we put these bags, if you like, all dropping onto a conveyor belt and to be moving along nice and slowly. And we set up a collaborative robot that would come along with a vision system on it, and would pick up the various bolts and washers and put them into the cardboard box. But every time you would drop a bag like that into the box, it would take a different shape, because it's a plastic bag, and until you drop it in, it gets all the different types of shapes. So using an AI algorithm and the vision system, we were able to look inside this box, and we were able to see what was happening at every time you dropped the bag into the box. And then we were able to make a recalculation, or the robotic system would make a recalculation so that we picked up the next bag, it would position it differently into the box. And then, using other little tricks that we had there at shaker deck and a few other bits and pieces, we were able to set up an automated system. That meant that the employee didn't have to sit there putting all these things into the into this box and banging it down and trying to tape it and so, so there was an example of us introducing the technology to solve a problem for for a manufacturing firm.

Dusty Rhodes  14:37
Just thinking about kind of past projects and everything that you've worked on, what would you say was your own personal most challenging project? Yeah,

Barry Kennedy  14:46
I remember, well, you know, certainly in in my days in the Intel, I had some very challenging technical problems to go there because, you know, they have, you know, couple of bit from a couple of million to a couple of billions. From. Sitting on the size of your thumbnail in these microprocessors today. And in essence, you need three small, little electrical connections to move to every single transistor. So you can imagine, and you know, the difficulty doing that. And as I often said to people, when you're making a microprocessor, how many of those millions and billions of transistors need to work for your microprocessor inside your computer to work, and people will be guessing, you know, but 50, 6070, I said it's 100% so they all have to work. So as the integration managers I was at that point in time, and I remember having some incredibly complex problems to try and solve, where we were doing electrical testing at the end of line that indicated there was something going wrong inside, in the in the factory, and but we have, you know, you could have two or 300 process steps, and you could have at any process deck, maybe 10 or 15 different machines processing those processing steps, and you have problems going on in the middle of this line, and you've got to go and figure out, Oh, my God, Where's, where's this problem coming from? And so they were, you know, I there has been times in the past where I would have spent three or four weeks sitting in a room, a war room, we used to call it, trying to isolate where this subtle problem was happening. And you know, you the problem could be and from something as simple as tiny dust particles, tiny, tiny and smaller than the width and the dimension of the human hair, if you can imagine dust that small and maybe just couple of dust particles, one or two dust particles, that's all coming from some machine somewhere in there was causing that problem. And we had to isolate and find that machine, because that was the difference between us getting 100% of those microprocessors working and not and so, yeah, that really, I tell it in terms of problem solving and being, you know, I don't know inspector more, so whatever, you know, just getting down there and trying to detect where these problems were. They were very challenging. Great, great times. Really enjoyed it, but from an engineering point of view, yeah, that tested me to the ability of my engineering capability. That's for sure.

Dusty Rhodes  16:56
Do you have kind of, like, a thought process that you go through? And I'm generally just kind of speaking like, you know, this, this enormous problem where you're being handed a piece of electronics that is only a couple of millimeters wide. It's got billions of connections in it, and there's one spot of dust that is mucking it all up. That's an impossible problem. Do you have a thought process where you kind of go, Okay, I'm going to go off into a dark room and think about it, then talk to other people, and then I'm going to try this. What do you do? You do?

Barry Kennedy  17:23
Yeah, no, we, sir. And that was the great thing about working in a company like Intel, they give you phenomenal training. And so I, I was taught and trained how to approach these complex problems. And so we, we'd have lots of different methodologies for doing it, but one more basic and obvious one was in cost, seven step problem solving, where, you know, you, first of all, you you contain the problem. If there's an issue going on here, try to isolate where the problem is. There's another capability called trees, which is the theory of inventive problem solving. And again, for highly complex, tricky engineering problems, to solve. This methodology was really good at being able to do it and and, you know, I can, I can tell you, you know, a story about, you know, of how trees works. But no, go on. They brought a group of of of engineers into a school in the US and to try and resolve this problem where, actually the females and girls in school, in in the bathrooms were had gotten this became a trend with their lipstick, drawing lipstick on the on the mirror glass in in the bathrooms. And they wanted to fix this problem, because the person, the janitor who was cleaning the mirrors, was finally very difficult to get this very waxy solution off of the of the glass. And so they bought the engineering team and said, We need to fix this problem. This stuff is very hard to get off. How are we going to solve it? And so all the engineers got together in a room, and they started to brainstorm, how do we going to do it? And they come up with all kinds of stuff about putting a film onto the onto the glass that would make it easy for the wax to kind of come off, or make it hard for the wax to go on. And so they come up with that. They spent, you know, half a day coming up with those ideas. They were brought back into the into the bathroom again, and they were told, okay, now we want you to fix the problem, but you're only allowed to fix the problem from items that are here in the four walls of this bathroom. So suddenly, so they changed the parameters and how they were to solve and fix this issue. And they fixed. The engineers fixed the problem and but it was, it was interesting the way they fixed it, because what they did was they got the janitor and the group of the girls from all the different classes to come in to see how he quite took him to fix this particular problem. So he asked him to go fix the problem. So on my mind, I thought that was all, you know, they take. They feel sorry for him and understand how difficult it was, and they might stop, but they realized that that wouldn't be good enough, because some people just, you know, that wouldn't matter to them, right? So he said, Okay, would you go show us how you clean the mirror? So he picked up the toilet brush, and he dipped it into the toilet, and he walked out to the mirror, and he just rubbed it on the mirror like this, and in. To be instantly the problem was fixed. Because word went across the school, don't do that. Now he, of course, he didn't agree with that, right? But it just planted that mental image in our mind. But it just said, wow, you know, talk about a way to solve a problem by thinking laterally, you know. And so, so trees, anyway, back to the trees itself. It is a this methodology. It gets you to think differently by challenging you slightly different ways, like I just mentioned there. And so yeah, there's those are examples of that where we've worked on trees to try and help us resolve some of those difficult challenges that we would have had in Intel and also in IMR, dunno.

Dusty Rhodes  20:38
And kind of, when you play with things like that. It leads you down to discovering new things and changing the ways that you do things. When you approach it as a game, if you like, yeah, like the engineers in the bathroom and be told, and then all of a sudden, it's like an escape room kind of a thing. Like, you know, you know, you said it's about, in fact, a good word to use gamification of it absolutely right. Give people a challenge and excite them by the challenge is the best way to help resolve problems like this. And if you and this is something we worked very hard with within I more when we formed it, we wanted to create a challenging, positive environment from employees and the engineers that work there. And because I recognized years ago, if you put pressure on the human being in and put them under extraordinary pressure to deliver and execute, until they'll execute and deliver, but they won't think, you know, to get into a kind of an auto mode and execute on the task. If you want them to come up with creative ideas and solutions, they've got to be relaxed, you know. And Einstein used to say, you know, the best time for him to come up with his ideas when he was relaxing, having a bath. So we tried to create that environment and so where you can challenge people in a fun way, where you say, Okay, let's give this a go. Let's come up with some creative ways to approach it, and you get better ideas coming from people. So we would have you do when we're trying to solve problems like brainstorming ideas, and where every idea is accepted as a good idea, even though some of them could be daft ideas. And it's funny often I found over the years, the daft idea, although in itself, might have not been the right solution, but it was the seeding that brought us down a certain path to come up with a really good idea. You know, it gets you to think slightly differently and look differently at the problem, but, but it was very important. It is very important that you're doing that in a way that people are kind of excited and challenged, you know, in a kind of a, almost a fun way, and versus feeling under pressure and being shouted at to get it fixed. You know, it just doesn't work. So do you think, then, that that is a challenge for engineers who might be listening to the podcast now? I mean, it sounds great, and we've seen all these pictures of Google and the big technology companies like you go to work and you're playing snooker like you know, but you do need that time to play and to think and to stuff like that. But if you're in a job where it's like, boom, boom, boom, I need boom, boom, boom, how do you for yourself as an engineer, get that sense of play and wonderment and gamification back again.

Barry Kennedy  23:01
So I think the way we work today is slightly different than we find enough a lot of engineers managed to get a day or two at home a week, you know, maybe three days in the offices, kind of a thing that's kind of typically happening we see nowadays. And I think on that one day there's, there's opportunities for, you know, engineers to, one get some of the heady load of emails all done and out of the way. But then after trying to struggle and sorting it some, you know, technical challenge that they get a bit of reflective time to think about it, and I can just speak for myself, as, you know, running this operation, and I am more I value the days where I get it home and think of strategy and what we need to be doing, I get just space. I'm in my own zone, and don't have somebody knocking the door saying, Could I just disturb me for a minute? And yeah, so it can really get some momentum. Going on, on things. So I think that can help and but it is important for for, you know, companies and and senior leadership there to ensure that they're creating enough space for their engineering teams, teams to be able to think about how to solve the problems. And if you don't create that space for them. You're going to struggle, and you'll Band Aid solutions, you know, as opposed to fixing solutions, and I have seen that in a lot of companies over the years, where they haven't resolved problems. They've band aided them and lived with them, you know, these tape around the leaking oil pipe, instead of, you know, disconnecting into redesigning the part so and it but it is important, and it needs to be done. Yeah, if you, if you want to get good engineering ideas there to solve problems, you've got to create that space.

Dusty Rhodes  24:31
The world is changing always, and it just seems to be changing in a faster space at the moment, where do you think the skills gap is at the moment for engineers in the market?

Barry Kennedy  24:40
I've asked this question twice recently, and I was at a talk there in Galway where the person who was speaking was talking about AI, and I was struck by an engineer from a software coder, should I say, from a from a large multinational walked up, and he said, Put AI my job as a software coders. Now gone, and where should I go? Where should my career be? And he was probably in his late 30s, to say, early 40s, and and he was quite stressed about it, and he was, he was a person who saw, I'm out of work now. So what do I do? The fact of the matter is that some of the old traditional forms of engineering are still important, but we may not need as many people as we did in the past, but having those people available on understanding the principles, the fundamental principles, is critically important. And if you look at the emerging ones, and the whole area of advanced robotics, and now, in particular, AI is the next wave, right? And so I would see, you know within the colleges over the next few years that they'll probably be a less of an emphasis on the software coding side of things here, but more of an emphasis on an AI and AI tools and how engineers need to be able to work with and utilize these new tools. And I call AI a tool to drive improvements. You know, anyone who's in the kind of education side of it, we do a lot of training courses like that. We're looking at it very carefully at the moment. At the moment. But if you ask me, you know, three years ago, I'd have been talking, yeah, doing a little bit of AI. Now today, it's kind of, oh my god, this thing I'd never seen the technology come in and transform so fast as AI has just done over the last 18 months. I'll give you another example industrial treaty printing, that whole game is now being transformed. And are large scale industrial treaty printers that can print full component parts that go inside jet engines today. And so it's been transformative. And I was working with a company there recently, a medical device company who builds prosthetics, and they have an old traditional way of doing it, and they have craft people who would put plaster Paris around the point where the person's lost their limb, and they will, from that Plaster of Paris, they'd make a mold, and from that, they'll make the prosthetic to go over so does the person we have to walk again, for instance, if they lost their leg. And we went down, spoke to them about this idea of industrial treaty printing. And they said, Well, look, thank you, but we've been doing this from for 40 years, and this is the way the business is done. And we said, Yeah, but we could do this with you, and just to show you what's coming, and we think it's important, so they agreed, and we worked with a Galway farmer who lost his leg, and we brought down a scanner, and we scanned the joint, and then we using it just to the printer, printed at the prostatic for that person, and that person put that prostatic on, and it fit first time. Now, normally, with the traditional way, it could take three or four times to do it, because when you put plaster of paris around the joint, and then you take it off to plaster of Paris, because its water base will shrink, and then you have to, so you have to be able to make your judgment call. Hence the reason why I say, you know, craft based people were able to make judgment calls around the singer. It was, it was a difficult thing to do to make a prosthetic. But the CEO looked at that and said, Oh, my God, this thing could absolutely white me. Do you know this, this new technology? And so we said, Yes, or you create a whole new world. You know, of opportunity. So we went on a journey for that with that company, and they we helped them upskill and train some of their employees to show them how you use the technology and and they were able to take the goodness and all the expertise that they had from the old way doing business as an employee, if you like, into a digital world so that they could now offer this as a service. So they do both today as a company, but when we were talking to him about that, I was explaining to them in the dental industry, when it came to dental implants, it took 18 months globally for 80% of the market to flip into 3d printing. So it's fast. These technologies are coming at such a rate of nuts, it's fast, and so engineers need to be prepared now to have lifelong learning. And that's the way life is going to be, because what we were doing today, in five years time is going to be very different, most likely. And so we have to be continuously learning, continuously looking at all these new technologies, and continuously thinking of ways how we can adapt them and introduce them into our work. And I'd have to say engineers, broadly speaking, were good at doing that. But if I looked at these technologies, the two that are, you know, exciting me most at the moment will be what's going on in AI and how that can be applied in inserting into the manufacturing world. And similarly, what I'm seeing happening with industrial printing is phenomenal. And I think the one that has the single biggest opportunity and need for us as engineers is the whole area of the environment and climate change and how we can create products that are carbon neutral. You know, let's throw that challenge on the table to engineers and say, Okay, go solve that. So how can we make the things we need to have today without causing damage to the planet. That's a challenge in its own right. And so, you know, it's no longer good enough for us as engineers to take raw materials out of the ground, purify it, design products, make products, use it, and then dump it back into the ground again. We've got to have become much more surfer in nature. And at every stage along the manufacturing process, engineers need to be involved in figuring out if I'm going to make it the. How do I dismantle it when it's finished use so I can reuse all the component parts? Again, that's key and important. And so where I would say, in the next five years, I think you're gonna see an awful lot more jobs being created in that space for engineers.

Dusty Rhodes  30:16
Barry, your work has been recognized as an exceptional contribution to engineering through the Fellow of Engineers Ireland ward. So congratulations to you. Can I ask you, how do you keep fresh and coming up with ideas as your career progresses?

Barry Kennedy  30:33
And do you know, I tell you, I feed off other people. That's a terrible thing to say, right? But that's where I get, personally, my energy, you know, I look at the research center that we have built today, there's a team, a phenomenal team of people that have made this happen. And I get energy from them, you know, I think, you know, human beings were kind of pack animals and and we work well together. And hence the reason why, even when I'm talking about remote working for my own employees. I'm trying to encourage them, not mandating it, but trying to encourage them to come into into the office, you know, a few times a week, because you get energy from other people, and you learn and see good ideas, but, but I think today, at this stage of my career, I really feed off looking at the enthusiasm of those young engineers coming in trying to solve all these highly technical problems that exist for manufacturing firms and doing things with robotic systems and AI and industrial 3d printing and are trying to solve the whole issue of the carbon footprint in manufacturing and the ideation that are coming up with I just find that, you know, inspirational, and that's what puts a smile on my face when I go into work every day. You know, yesterday was speaking to one of our senior team, and, you know, he was going through, I suppose, a bit of a, you know, a crisis of thought in terms of what direction he wanted to go in his own career. And I just enjoyed that chat with with him for the hour and a bit as he's trying to, you know, grapple with his own career and where he's trying to go with it, and, and hopefully it helps and, but, yeah, that's where I get my energy from, is working with people like that, seeing what they're doing, and then trying to help them be the best that they can be.

Dusty Rhodes  32:10
I absolutely, I couldn't agree with you more in that situation where you're giving advice to an engineer and career and stuff like that, generally, what kind of advice do you give? I mean, for people listening today who are looking towards the future. What would you say to them?

Barry Kennedy  32:22
Well, the first thing is, how people actually, and this is going to be, you know, like probably sometimes somebody might say to you that's really against, against yourselves as an organization, and because I've lost people, very good people in my organization, based on the conversation that I've had with them, but and I've told them, you know, life is way too short and to be in a job that you're unhappy with, and I said, the single most important thing to do in life is to figure out what drives happiness for yourself and where do you get the most satisfaction. So as an engineer, you need to look at that and not be afraid to make the change if that's what is the right thing for you to do. But I was lucky enough to have spent some time with Maureen Gaffney. You might not know Maureen Gaffney, excuse, a psychologist here. Fantastic person. But she was talking about, you know, human beings and what makes human beings happy? And she said, it's very important that you find projects that are bigger than yourself. And so for engineers, I'd say the same thing, you know, look for that challenge that's bigger than yourself. In other words, like if I looked at my own team who are working in the circular economy, it's about driving forward to do something for the planet in a really important area. Or if I looked at the team in the medical working in the industrial treaty printing, it's about finding solutions that that make it easier for people who have lost a limb, for instance, and developing prosthetics and things like that. And things like that for them. Or, if I'm looking at in the in the in the world of the robotics and the digitization, where we're sensorizing systems and machines and doing all kinds of things like that, it's it's looking for ways to maybe take people out of dangerous environments, or so that robots can do the job in their place, or making their job a lot easier. And it's about finding those projects. It could be also working with a basketball team and and helping some young kids, you know, do better in life, and or it could be looking after a sick child, you know, it could be all those things here, but if it looked in the context of a professional way, I'd be always trying to encourage our engineers to find that project that's bigger than yourself, that's motivating you. So when you're getting up on Monday morning to go to work that you're doing something that you know makes a difference.

Dusty Rhodes  34:26
That's a great point to end on. If you'd like to find out more about Barry Kennedy and some of the topics that we spoke about today, or indeed, if you want to reach out and maybe take a visit down to IMR and visit Barry in person, you'll find notes and link details in the description area of this podcast. But for now, Barry Kennedy, CEO at IMR, thank you so much.

Barry Kennedy  34:44
Thank you, Dusty.

Dusty Rhodes  34:46
If you enjoyed our podcast today, please do share with a friend in the business. Just tell them to search for Engineers Ireland in their podcast player. The podcast is produced by dustpod.io. for Engineers Ireland. For advanced episodes, more information on engineering across Ireland or career development opportunities, there are libraries of information on the website at engineersireland.ie. Until next time from myself, Dusty Rhodes, thank you for listening.