Manufacturing veteran Gary Krus reveals why more robots mean MORE jobs, why 9 out of 10 of his employees still don't use AI every day, and why AI is on pace to be halfway to designing the tools themselves by 2030.
Gary Krus is Vice President of Business Development at HIROTEC America, where he leads the research and development team that takes new products and processes from concept to commercialization. An electrical engineer from Lawrence Technological University, he joined HIROTEC in 1993 as a controls engineer, worked his way through engineering, operations, and business strategy, and served as President of HIROTEC Tooling de Mexico. Today he leads HIROTEC neXt, the company's push to take its automation expertise beyond automotive.
He explains:
🡒 Why putting more robots on the floor has led manufacturers to hire more people, not fewer
🡒 How a 30 second AI prompt replaced a week of work, and why a new intern still called it cheating
🡒 The 15 year kaizen path that got a 40 ton die change down to under a minute
🡒 How HIROTEC turned 28 assembly lines into 3 that can run every single model
🡒 The one part of managing people that none of the books prepared him for
Chapters
00:00 Intro
00:59 From controls engineer to leading R&D
04:25 Building a plant in Mexico from the ground up
08:00 Why the people on the floor know more than you
13:40 Putting AI to work in a real manufacturing business
18:30 The intern who thought AI was cheating
24:57 Do robots actually take jobs?
31:45 The 15 years behind Japan's fastest die change
43:30 Advice for new managers and your 25 year old self
50:55 HIROTEC neXt and the plan for 2035
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