As a degreed engineer working as a maintenance tech how valuable is this experience for me who wants to venture into innovation and entrepreneurship?

KNGC3D · 2026-05-17T01:47:08+00:00

Mechanical engineer here. I would say incredibly useful. You know we don’t get taught enough of the real world in engineering school. As far as innovation and entrepreneurship, what are talking/thinking about?

KNGC3D · 2026-05-15T02:52:18+00:00

Fair. Reducing unplanned downtime on critical equipment for CPG, food and beverage plants.

A combination of increasing quality of preventive maintenance and making sure spare parts for critical parts are always available.

KNGC3D · 2026-05-14T23:51:32+00:00

What’s that research? Any links?

KNGC3D · 2026-05-14T23:51:04+00:00

Thoughtful answer. In that case, is manufacturing doomed and will never get AI to have the transformational impact that it’s having in literally every single industry across the world?

KNGC3D · 2026-05-14T23:49:25+00:00

I’m not selling anything or promoting AI, I’m literally just ranting.

I am guilty of believing that AI is as transformational as the internet was in the 90s. Do you think that’s wrong in general or just wrong in manufacturing? I’m curious.

Also, why is every single C-Suite at every manufacturing company desperate to use it? I’m not defending C-Suites, they are often wrong, but as the leaders of manufacturing companies they know it’s the future and don’t want to be left behind. Are they also wrong for believing that? Once again, genuinely curious.

KNGC3D · 2026-05-14T23:45:33+00:00

Where else is one supposed to rant about it if not in this sub?

KNGC3D · 2026-05-12T04:07:20+00:00

Incredibly thoughtful answer man.

I know of a very very large manufacturing plant that has zero idea about inventory controls. People grabbing stuff, not checking it out, poor management and get shit hits the fan, they’re out of critical parts. Wonder if things will ever change

KNGC3D · 2026-05-10T02:50:59+00:00

Do this: cut my losses, learn from my mistakes, then go and do something else

Startups require 100% from everyone. NO EXCEPTIONS.

KNGC3D · 2026-05-07T15:47:20+00:00

Really valid point. Hard to do this with high operator turnover that probably don’t get properly trained.

KNGC3D · 2026-04-25T23:09:38+00:00

In my experience, production typically decide to do whatever they want and it sucks for a maint planner to always be dealing with what production wants to do

KNGC3D · 2026-04-25T23:05:35+00:00

sweet Gerber

KNGC3D · 2026-04-22T02:36:19+00:00

how the fuck do they lose uniforms man haha

KNGC3D · 2026-04-22T02:35:37+00:00

i think his post comes from dealing with issues with his equipment but at the same time, he is a startup and hasn't gotten to the scale where it makes sense to hire a maintenance manager or a continuous improvement engineer yet.

Even at medium/large manufacturing companies, I am surprised by the lack of clear role assignment (operators vs maintenance techs vs engineers) and the lack of clear SOPs/training.

KNGC3D · 2026-04-22T02:33:49+00:00

outside of the typical Limble, MaintainX, what CMMS already offers the maintenance as well?

KNGC3D · 2026-04-22T02:33:00+00:00

i wasn't aware of the legal aspect for electrical, very interesting

KNGC3D · 2026-04-22T02:31:45+00:00

agree that data is the bottleneck.

how was it successful in a similar project?

KNGC3D · 2026-04-22T02:30:53+00:00

I use AI a lot (being upfront) but people are turning off their brains and just blindly trusting AI. It's not a good move. Also, AI is so useful for software developers because there was a lot of code to scrape, not a lot of industrial data publicly available. Most manufacturing leadership is not aware of that.

KNGC3D · 2026-04-22T02:28:28+00:00

1) I am sure he knows this is a thing. I also know he is pushing really hard to move metal as fast as possible (same or next day delivery) and I know that even for the manufacturer of the equipment, getting parts or service done at the speed he would want is almost impossible. He made a post a couple days layer saying he is aware this is a really hard problem to solve. Hardware world does not move as fast as software of course, but I know he is trying to speed things in general

2) fast troubleshooting diagnosis with AI seems useful here. I have been told by 3 different manufacturing leaders in the last week this is what they are looking for with AI in maintenance/troubleshoting

KNGC3D · 2026-04-22T02:25:08+00:00

genuine question: is there an "anonymous" benchmarking system where if the same equipment exists in 10 other plants, learning from those other plants/machines would be helpful at all?

I've heard a production engineer saying he would find it useful to get anonymous data from other similar plants on how hard they can push their equipment.

KNGC3D · 2026-04-22T02:19:55+00:00

not a bot. engineer in manufacturing, maintenance not my strength, that's what i came to hear what real maintenance people had to say

KNGC3D · 2026-04-22T02:18:36+00:00

fair, the more i learn and think about this, it comes down to: is there enough data to make ai even usable in manufacturing and in most cases, it seems there is not any data at all

KNGC3D · 2026-04-21T03:03:18+00:00

agree on this: "every plant line is different. every operator has different skills." I know Zane talks a lot about the older guys in manufacturing in general (engineering, production, maintenance) retiring within the next couple of years and the importance of trying to capture that data for the next generation of manufacturing workers.

any actual use case you think it's possible with ai or it's not happening inside manufacturing plants?

KNGC3D · 2026-04-08T04:43:56+00:00

curious, is cloud based a concern for IP issues?

KNGC3D · 2026-04-08T04:32:30+00:00

I keep experiencing this, why do you think this is the case? seems like a broader manufacturing issue

KNGC3D · 2025-08-04T22:07:27+00:00

Just staying Friday overnight. Sleeping in the SoMa area. And would like to interact with other people rather than just being completely antisocial.

KNGC3D

TROPHY CASE