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The Doing Business in Bentonville Podcast
Ep. 106 - Download the Minds of Operators: The AI Solution for Generational Knowledge Transfer
Artificial intelligence is transforming manufacturing, and Squint stands at the forefront of this revolution with technology that preserves critical expertise while empowering operators to achieve unprecedented quality standards.
When Andy Wilson met Devin Bhushan, CEO of Squint, he immediately recognized the transformative potential of Devin's approach to industrial AI. As factories face a generational workforce turnover, decades of institutional knowledge risk disappearing forever.
Squint's solution? Using AI to effectively "download the minds" of experienced operators before they retire.
The technology works by recording operators performing complex tasks, then instantly generating comprehensive standard operating procedures through AI analysis.
New operators receive step-by-step guidance through augmented reality, with the system overlaying instructions directly onto their physical environment. When mistakes happen, the system provides immediate, discreet correction, preserving operator confidence while ensuring quality standards.
Perhaps most revolutionary is Squint's approach to quality control. For a century, manufacturers have relied on statistical sampling methods developed in 1924. Squint's AI visual inspection capabilities enable 100% quality verification rather than partial sampling, making inspections instantaneous, objective, and consistent.
As Bhushan explains, "For the first time, you can have that impossible combination of better, faster, and cheaper."
Unlike traditional industrial systems that prioritize efficiency over user experience, Squint creates consumer-grade interfaces that consolidate complex systems into a single, intuitive platform.
The results are remarkable – one chemical manufacturer eliminated all operational errors within three weeks of implementation. Operators even develop personal connections with the AI, giving it nicknames like "Lil Bro."
The philosophy behind Squint echoes Sam Walton's belief that happy employees do better work and stay engaged. By focusing on the operator experience, Squint isn't just improving quality and efficiency – it's creating a more satisfying work environment where people feel confident and valued.
Connect with Devin on LinkedIn or visit squint.ai to discover how AI can transform your manufacturing operations.
Hello everyone and welcome to Doing Business in Bentonville. My name is Andy Wilson and I'm your host today, and I want to thank you so much for your wonderful support of Doing Business in Bentonville. Because of your support and sharing our podcast around the world, we're now viewed in over 100 countries, so thank you for that. It means so much of your great commitment and loyalty to doing business in Bentonville. I have a special guest today that I met recently in Bentonville, Arkansas, at an event, and I will tell you you're going to need to really just lean in If you can just stop driving, pull over. This is how important this podcast is, because it's so relevant to where retail or manufacturing or the world is going today in AI, and you're going to enjoy hearing Devin Bouchard from Sprint. He's the CEO of the company. He's located in the San Francisco, california area and, as I said, I met him a few weeks ago. Devin. Welcome to Doing Business in Bentonville.
Speaker 2:Thanks, andy, for having me on. I'm excited to be here. I know we did an episode a while back and this one's going to be fun.
Speaker 1:It would definitely be fun. Now, devin, before we get into depth of what we're going to talk about, which is so critical and urgent, as I said, in the space of AI and AR, let's talk a bit about your company, and in my research and in visiting with you, I think you're on the cutting edge of really looking at your manufacturing intelligent platform in the space of operations and how you're going to be able to actually shift and change the dynamic into how work is being done today. So, devin, talk about your company and then let's get into the details of our time today.
Speaker 2:Yeah, would love to. So I'm the founder and CEO of a company called Squint and we make AI software for manufacturing and industrial companies. The kind of the premise of starting this came from wanting to empower operators who are on the floor or you know either the shop floor or warehouse floor, know either the shop floor or warehouse floor, and they're doing work in an environment that contains a high amount of variables. But with that over time, it's become more and more complex to operate in this environment and we're building software that enables them to be more confident and do their job more safely and with higher quality.
Speaker 1:Do their job more safely and with higher quality. Well, I will tell you what you're doing, I think has not been done to the margin that you are focused on in your company, and that's why I think it's really critical for our viewers to really lean in and listen to where you're going to take this whole industry and how you're going to improve this industry. So let's just get into it and let's talk about the first point. We talk about how you want to empower operators with EI.
Speaker 2:So talk about that. Yeah, we're in a period of time where companies are seeing a generational workforce turnover happen on the shop floor and decades of that industrial expertise that has been built up is actually leaving because it's in the brains of operators who are retiring, and so if we don't come up with a plan soon, we're going to lose that window of time that we have to actually save that institutional knowledge. So the kind of question I would ask ourselves is how do we capture the stories and those lived experiences that are in people's minds? Right, and the way that kind of Squint approaches this problem is we use AI to download the minds of operators and the product. The way that it works is it can record a video of an operator doing some complex task and Squint will use AI to watch that video and it'll immediately capture and synthesize the information into a standard operating procedure, and that standard operating procedure will be completely written by AI. It's instantaneous. Operating procedure will be completely written by AI. It's instantaneous.
Speaker 2:And now when someone new comes into the job or maybe is doing a skill that they've not mastered yet, they can perform that maybe the critical inspection that needs to happen annually, and they can use Squint and the AI guide will now watch them perform the work and guide them step-by step through the process using a technology called augmented reality, and the way that that works is basically we use the camera of an iPad or a phone and it looks at what you're looking at and then it overlays things like arrows and interactions that guide you physically through the space to where you're supposed to be, tell you to pull this lever, tell you how to do it, and if you do anything that maybe frays or strays from the correct way of working, it actually can catch that in real time and tell you right away hey, you might've done step seven wrong.
Speaker 2:Here's how to do it instead, and I think, yeah, this is just like kind of one example of how we can quote, unquote, download the minds of operators At the same time. I think we're at the frontier of AI technology today, and there's all sorts of AI agents and new you know new inventions that are being released every day that we can use to start capturing information from more, more like modalities you know, not just video, but also their voice.
Speaker 2:Maybe by watching them you know, perform that that job over and over again. We can learn and get better at it as well. So there's a bunch of things we're working on, but that's kind of the crux of it.
Speaker 1:You know, I think that's incredible and you know, when someone with 20, 30, 40 years of experience leaves and retires and needs to it's time in their life to move on, here's an opportunity to accelerate the training, to accelerate the job satisfaction of someone new coming over. A lot of times there's this long gap of training and you lose productivity. There's a lot of things happening Flustration for a new employee. Sometimes they get frustrated and leave and you have turnover. And so now what you're saying you've done, you're going to speed through, be able to speed through that, that learning for a new employee or someone that's not new but a new role, has a new role in this and help job satisfaction retention all of that, that's incredible.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, exactly, and I think the outcome of this is that we're able to build confidence in those operators in a way that doesn't shame them when something goes wrong. It's a very discreet way of getting help on the job in real time and you don't have to turn around, wave your hands and ask in front of everyone for help because you're stuck. You know in front of everyone that for help because you're stuck. And what this does is it actually increases the adherence to standard work and safety. And for the first time, you know, operators actually have kind of this foolproof way of doing their jobs without looking like they need someone watching over their shoulder, which is, you know, no one wants that.
Speaker 2:And I think I was reading I was reading this study that basically looked at happiness in a job and the correlation with how happy we are in our jobs. Between happiness and confidence. It's almost a one-to-one mapping be in the work that you do, the happier you end up being in that role, and so this not only helps with operator engagement but also operator retention, right, and then ultimately, what we've done is we've made every operator an expert at that thing that they're supposed to be doing, and I think the question that we bring this back to, to kind of put a pin in it, is can we eliminate the concept of training altogether, because anyone can do anything with products like like with ai yeah right, wonderful.
Speaker 1:Well, let's move on. One of the things that I think is critical, as as as a company, is quality. You know sometimes when you, when you have to, the gap new training, new employees coming on there could be a gap of quality, and you know that ultimately ends into diminishing the reputation of companies. So talk about your quality, focus with your project focus with your project.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know, quality is kind of at the heart of all performance indicators that are on the factory floor, and so one of the stories I really like is like let's zoom into the quality control process as it stands today. The way that it works is you typically sample, you know X percent of goods from every batch and you manually inspect them before they go out. If they all pass, then you have some Y percent of confidence in the quality of that batch of quality for that good that's being created and your pass rate. You can inspect more or fewer items per batch to get your comfort level of confidence in the goods that you're shipping. So this process is actually called statistical quality control and it was developed by Walter Schuhart at Bell Labs in 1924. And I'll pause with a shout out because Walter, I know, was a fellow University of Illinois alum, which is also where I went to school.
Speaker 2:But the funny thing is about this process it's been around for 100 years now and it statistically works but it requires manual inspection and I think that means it's very labor intensive, which is expensive, and it's also subjective because it depends on the operator doing that inspection for that batch. And if you're inspecting goods like, let's say, baked goods, and the judgment call on the operator is does this look like the right shade of brown? Then you've introduced all these additional variables into something that was actually very statistical at heart, and I think the way we've looked at this is 100 years later, it's time to introduce the new way to do quality control. And so, with products like Squint, what we've done is the AI on the camera actually, or the AI will actually use the camera on the mobile device and it will automatically do that quality check for you and it'll do it quickly, it'll do it objectively and it'll do it consistently, because now you've eliminated that human judgment from it.
Speaker 2:What this does for our customers is it's really it's kind of a game changer, because now, if you go back to the process of why we have statistical quality control, it was because they couldn't afford to inspect every single item with confidence. Right, it was too expensive. But now that it's instantaneous and it's cheap, could we actually inspect every single item in a batch and have 100% quality confidence? And with Squint, you know that now is a possibility. For the first time, you can have that impossible combination of better, faster and cheaper, and for our customers. That's the best way that they can increase their consumer confidence or their customer's confidence in their brand and their product, and I think this is pretty low-hanging fruit now that we have this capability with computer vision and AI.
Speaker 1:Well, every company wants great quality every company and today, with how we communicate, how we share our thoughts on social media, et cetera, we're able to talk about how well our products work, or they don't work, to serve us and our customers. And what you have done, which I've never heard of you're able to achieve 100% confidence in product quality. That is excellent, and I think all customers and potential clients would be very interested in this product. So that's phenomenal. Congratulations on that. That's awesome, awesome. We talked about how operators will be empowered with AI and the way that you have designed AI to help train and facilitate excellence for new employees, or just make other employees more productive and knowledgeable. Now you've also designed a product around 100% quality confidence in quality Now that's exciting. Those are two great exciting points. Confidence and quality Now that's exciting. Those are two great exciting points. Now talk about how your vision is about operators are at the center of this next wave industrial tech. So talk about the next wave now as we move through this wonderful podcast about the operators.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know, I think so when we started this off, I mentioned that the whole ethos of this company was to empower operators, and I think every time I talk to one of our customers, I hear that same kind of statement repeated back to me, which is that the most important thing is that the operators are engaged and feel confident and feel safe, right, and so, if you think about it, operators really should be at the center of the technological revolution that is going through industrials today. But I think what's really interesting is, over the last 30 years, you know, in industry, we've invested in IoT or Internet of Things. We've invested in new machines and new systems, so introduced concepts like the learning management system, the maintenance management system, warehouse management systems, and they've had this huge impact, I think, on improving efficiency, but the operator really was not at the center of that improvement. The operator's actually been kind of forced to adopt these systems that aren't consumer grade and they're not typically user friendly, and so you know some of our customers as I talked to them, they have, you know, a half dozen systems that operators need to switch between to go from, you know, seeing their schedule to gathering information about the thing that they're doing to. I don't know how to perform that task right, and I think the really interesting thing is, with Squint, what we've tried to do is we've tried to make it consumer grade, just like the best apps that we all use at home, and that, apparently, is very different from the approach that has been taken in technology that's been delivered to industrial environments for the last 30 years.
Speaker 2:So our goal at Squint is actually to make Squint as easy to use for the first time as it was when you unboxed your new iPhone.
Speaker 2:Right, it should be that simple, and I think what we're doing as a result is we're creating this shift in industry, that, as an industry now we're moving towards a period of technology consolidation that is centered around the operator, and so the idea is that Squint is actually that horizontal platform that can sit on top of each of these new vertical systems that we've introduced that I mentioned the LMS, the WMS, the maintenance management system, the ARP, and the way that this solves the existing problem is it actually consolidates them all into a single interface for that operator.
Speaker 2:So now the operator really only interacts with Squint and in the backend, squint deals with all those other systems, and we've simplified that experience for the operators such that they actually want to engage with this technology. Um, and I think the you know the, the it's the best of both worlds for manufacturers because, um, the management team gets to keep their existing operational systems that have achieved this efficiency over the last couple of decades. But they also can make life so much easier and manageable for operators because now they're getting this huge, you know, quality of life improvement in the technology that operators interact with, and so I think you know the outcome of this is that happy operators will do better work, will stay engaged, will stay safer, and this is kind of the.
Speaker 1:I think this is the direction that industry is now going.
Speaker 1:I begin to add some thoughts that Sam Waltham would love to have a conversation with you, because my years at Walmart, sam Waltham spent so much time talking about the importance of the associate or the employee, and the stores and distribution centers and all the jobs at Walmart that we did to serve the customer.
Speaker 1:What you are doing is taking the same philosophy that Sam Walton had and you're applying it to the industry and the operation side, because you're exactly right when you said happy operators do better work and stay engaged. That's exactly what Sam Walton's philosophy was. So congratulations on taking a philosophy that has worked to make one of the largest retail companies in the world to take, but not only the largest, but one of the best, in my opinion, and that's what you're focused on, and I congratulate you and your team on what you're doing. It's outstanding, thank you, and it's exciting. So now, as we began to wrap up, I know we love to talk about stories and in our previous conversation we talked about stories are things we remember. Stories are how we learn. Stories are things we like to tell again. So I think you have a great story to share with us.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I would love to. First of all, I think, going back to your point on, you know Sam Walton and the philosophy behind Walmart, I think the really great thing is this is it's a pretty simple, fundamental belief that we all have right that happy people will do better work. And, um, it seems like over the last couple of decades, if, if you look at the way technology has gone, we've kind of forgotten that in industrial tech, and I'm really glad that it's such a simple thing that you can just remind yourself and now we can kind of pivot back towards that, that employer experience. So, um, yeah, that's awesome. And then, uh, would love to stare, share a story. Um, you know, I'll.
Speaker 2:I'll talk a little bit about one of our customers.
Speaker 2:Um, they are a chemical manufacturer and they started using squint for their operations.
Speaker 2:Um, I think about three weeks after deploying squint to the floor, they actually reached out to us and they said hey, we have a story we'd love to tell you Because you might appreciate this, we thought that our internal issue tracking system was broken Because over the last three weeks we've had zero issues filed and for some background, you know, they were averaging a dozen issues a day and suddenly they dropped to zero for weeks, and so they ran this internal investigation to figure out what was wrong with the tracking system, because something must be wrong.
Speaker 2:Where are the issues? And upon investigation, what they realized was that they had completely eliminated operator mistakes that led to those issues being created and ultimately for them they're able to track that back to downtime reduction right, and I think if you look at the impacts of that, it's really powerful, because now this customer isn't spending time and money fixing issues. They've actually completely eliminated the downtime and the waste that was caused by human mistakes, and this is a better and faster investment, I think, than a lot of the other places that manufacturers could be spending their time and resources to improve operations. And I can talk more about that. I'll pause really quickly if you have any thoughts or questions.
Speaker 1:Well, first of all, it says that your system, your processes, work and people. I know they're complex behind the scenes, but they're simple enough for people to be able to embrace them, to learn them and to engage with them. And again, that's one of Sam's philosophies that he would tell us. He said okay, ladies and gentlemen, don't make this so complicated. Keep the complexity behind the wall, but from them executing things on the store floor or the distribution floor. Keep it simple for them, and that's what you've done. You've made it simple for them so they can embrace it. And when they embrace it, they learn it, they're happy because it helps them feel successful in their job. And I think that's what this story is. And look at the outcome. See, the outcome is excellent and that's what you wanted. I love it what this story is. And look at the outcome See, the outcome is excellent and that's what you wanted. I love it. I love the story.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know, I'll add on a little bit to it, which I think is like a personal tidbit that I love, which is not only was there ROI from the manufacturer's perspective, that, hey, they were able to reduce mistakes, but one of the parts of this that I love the most is the customers are now like the actual operators or the users of the application are becoming friends with the Squint co-pilot, right, and so there was this I saw this example in the chat that someone was talking to Squint and they gave it a nickname.
Speaker 2:They started calling it Lil Bro, and I think that's just like a chat that someone was talking to squint and they gave it a nickname. They, they were started calling it little bro. Um, and I think that's just like it speaks to the um, the like amount of engagement that ai is able to have with operators and meet them where they're at in and match kind of their personality and engagement methods. And I think, um, what we're seeing is like huge satisfaction scores from the people actually using the product and I think, with that use, the best of the best outcome you can have with technology is you end up reducing all your mistakes and people feel happier, more confident, more engaged Right, and I think that's like the, the win-win that we're trying to create with squint.
Speaker 1:Well, devin, devon. Um, when we met a few weeks ago, I was so impressed with you, and when you started talking about your products, your systems, your and your team and the more I've gotten to know you, uh, I can't tell you how much I appreciate you, uh, coming back on doing business in bentonville talking about your products. I was telling someone that I was meeting with earlier that I hope you can come back and keep us updated as you advance this technology, as you make changes, as you grow it. I would love for you to come back on and share with us. Let's keep the story going. You've got a great story. Let's continue to share your story with people around the world and I hope people will reach out to you, and we're going to talk about that in just a moment. But you're on to something great here.
Speaker 1:I will say one more quote from Sam Walton, because it applies here. Sam Walton said he would remind us weekly. He said everything we do, we stand on the backs of our employees, our associates. That's exactly what you're doing. What you're doing is the operator focus is you're standing on those backs and you're empowering and helping them do their jobs more successfully. Based on the story, based on the other things you've talked about. So I congratulate you for that focus. It's remarkable, so thank you for that.
Speaker 2:I appreciate that. Yeah, it's. It's great to kind of hear these, these stories and the alignment I had no idea.
Speaker 1:OK, now, devin, we're going to. Of course this is going to be. This is going to be on our website doing business in Bittenville, and and all of our people can go see that. Of course it's going to be in all the social media networks that you have access to. But, devin, talk a bit about how they read. How can people find you? Now, that'll be on our website. We'll have all that there, but, but, if, but, how can we, how can we reach out and find your company? Who do we? How do we do that? What's your website? Tell us about that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. Our website is squintai, so S-Q-U-I-N-Tai, feel free to check it out. I think if you heard something that resonated with you, or if there's a use case that you have in mind for technology like Squint, definitely give us a shout. I'm also on LinkedIn. You can find me and personally connect. I love to hear the different use cases that people come up with for Squint, so I'm really excited to connect with the audience.
Speaker 1:Well, you did an excellent job today. I only wish you the best in your endeavors in the future. Again, let's stay connected. Your endeavors in the future Again, let's stay connected, and I love to, because I'm interested in your story and where you're going to go. I think it's going to be fantastic. I really appreciate you taking time of your busy schedule to be on Doing Business in Bentonville. It's been such a pleasure to visit with you.
Speaker 2:Thanks so much for having me on, Andy. I'm really excited. Hopefully we can do this again.
Speaker 1:Okay, absolutely, and to all of our viewers, thank you for watching and viewing doing business in Bentonville. I guess I said at the top of the show thank you. It means so much to us that you have confidence in our programming and we're going to keep that up in the future. Again, devin best to you, best to your team, and I look forward to seeing you again soon. Thank you, thanks, andy.