Learning Without Scars
As a third-generation educator, it is easy to say that teaching and training are in the blood for Ron Slee. From his beginnings as a coach, through his time at McGill University, Ron developed a foundation for the work he does today. From working within dealerships, to operating a consulting company, creating a training business and running twenty groups, Ron has been directly involved in this Industry since 1969. Ron has been known as the industry expert for years, and has brought this expertise to bear through his training programs. Today, Ron provides specialized, job function based internet based subject specific classes, job function skills assessments, as well virtual seminars and webinars. These courses are designed for manufacturers and their dealers, as well as independent businesses in the construction equipment, light industrial, on-highway, engine, and agricultural industries through Learning Without Scars (www.LearningWithoutScars.com). This platform is a continuation of the work begun by Quest, Learning Centers which was established in 1996. This training is aimed at improving dealer parts and service operations through qualified people that are knowledgeable in using operational metrics and current market and operational best practice methods.
Learning Without Scars
AI is not your competition—it's your most powerful ally in business.
The artificial intelligence revolution isn't coming—it's already here. For equipment dealerships caught in the crossfire of technological disruption, adaptation isn't just recommended; it's essential for survival.
When Ron Wilson attended a birthday party and learned that two people's children had recently lost their jobs to AI, it spurred him to investigate how these technologies are transforming our industry. What he discovered challenges conventional thinking: rather than competing against AI, success lies in thoughtful integration of these powerful tools.
Throughout our conversation, we explore the real-world implementation of AI across dealership operations. From revolutionizing diagnostics—where machines can now be scanned before a technician arrives—to subscription-based monitoring services that predict failures before they occur, AI is reshaping customer expectations and service delivery. One dealership's monitoring team identified a pattern where an excavator overheated consistently during shift changes when less experienced operators took control, saving the customer significant downtime and troubleshooting costs.
The human element remains irreplaceable, however. Jobs requiring emotional intelligence and customer service skills still require the personal touch that AI cannot replicate. The challenge lies in effectively managing workforce transition—identifying early adopters who can champion new technologies while helping fence-sitters see the value in adaptation. As experienced employees near retirement, preserving institutional knowledge becomes increasingly critical.
Whether you're actively implementing AI solutions or just beginning to explore possibilities, this conversation provides practical insights for navigating the changing landscape. The most important takeaway? Don't wait for OEMs or competitors to lead the way—proactive adaptation is the key to maintaining competitive advantage in an increasingly technology-driven industry. Subscribe to our podcast for more discussions on how equipment dealerships can thrive amidst technological disruption.
Visit us at LearningWithoutScars.org for more training solutions for Equipment Dealerships - Construction, Mining, Agriculture, Cranes, Trucks and Trailers.
We provide comprehensive online learning programs for employees starting with an individualized skills assessment to a personalized employee development program designed for their skill level.
Aloha and welcome to another candid conversation. We're joined today by Ron Wilson and we're going to be covering a subject that Ron has dealt with in pretty deep depth, that we're running as a four-part blog series on artificial intelligence. Everybody's heard about it, Everybody's read about it. Probably many of you have tried it and worked with it. Ron's going to give us some ideas and thoughts as to how he thinks we should proceed, and I think you're going to find this very helpful. So with that, Ron, lead us to the promised land man.
Speaker 2:Thanks. Well, what really piqued my interest is we're Vicki and I were at a birthday party and some of the people there we only see once a year. We're kind of a dispersed group and so kind of working through the room and meeting old friends and talking about the kids and most of that group is in their 60s and 70s. Two people in that group has seen their 60s and 70s. Uh, two people in that group uh talked about their. Their children had recently lost their jobs due to ai. So, wow. So one was in uh oregon. There was a large layoff, the company, and they were more in a film industry type thing. The other was in area and they were doing training material, filming and the recording for different kinds of training.
Speaker 2:So I got to thinking about well, you know, we've all heard about AI. Ai's been in the mail and been in the news a lot lately. So I thought, well, let me just try and ask AI how do we compete against or against AI in the job market? There's a lot of discussion about the number of jobs, the type of jobs that will be replaced by AI. So so just kind of ask AI how to compete with you. And AI came back and said well, it's not about competing with AI, it's about working with AI and utilizing the tools of AI in your individual career. And then I asked AI well, what are the top 10 most likely jobs to be replaced? And it came back with a list and also with a list of jobs that would not be replaced most likely but would be enhanced by AI.
Speaker 2:So trying to apply this to the equipment dealer's world is what do we do in the equipment business and how does AI fit into the overall window? And I have talked to some friends that's still in the industry and some are aggressively looking at it and some are well, we're going to wait and see what the OEM does, and that doesn't usually work very well. You need to kind of be ahead of the curve. But I thought it was just so what AI came back and talked about understanding how AI will work in with a career, careers most likely to be impacted, those most likely to be replaced and most likely to be replaced, and then how to adapt an AI mindset. So what if we're going to move ahead with AI? How do we do that? And I think the last piece of what I pulled together was a self-assessment worksheet to evaluate how we adapt AI into our training and our learning. So that's kind of what was the focus of this.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's really remarkable, ron. Everything we do in Learning Without Scars is with artificial intelligence. We start from Word documents that have been class materials for years, out of textbooks that I've created and other things, and then create film clips, create audio tracks, create subtitles, create quizzes all manner of materials and we're using from our website, wordpress, to our learning management system, moodle. I think we have 17 individual different pieces of software. Moodle I think we have 17 individual different pieces of software, and if I'm a parts guy or a service guy or a salesman and I'm looking at chat TPT, some of them are just using it to enhance their writing skills, so they write stuff down and then put it through and get it corrected. That's not the approach you've looked at, is it?
Speaker 2:No, I actually did the reverse. I put the thought in chat GPT first and let it feed me back what it says and then, okay, then take that view of. Okay, how does that apply to my industry of knowledge and me as an individual, how I developed myself in my career? So now you could, I could probably. For example, the document I sent you it wasn't the best written document I mean, you could probably put it back into chat GBT and it would come back with a more polished, properly written document, no doubt, but I used it more.
Speaker 2:To me, chat GBT or AI is not a whole lot different than back in our college days or when you went back and use the, the, the library, and you did through the card decks and looking up your books and you walk to the shelf and try to find the book and it's been mislocated, misfiled somewhere else, and you pull out the information you want out of it and it's really not much different than that, except it's a lot faster, but it's not always.
Speaker 2:I had entered a question on President Trump. I asked him shortly after he became president is what have been the activities within this last week from President Trump's focus? And it came back and said well, he's not the president, well, that's interesting, so, but so there's a time gap there between what, what's really going on and and uh. So you have to use it with a little uh, grain of salt, understanding and interpreting to make sure that it is correct, double checking, uh. But it's a good place to me. It well randled it. It shaves off a lot of time on some of the very basics that have to be gone through on writing something or developing something. So it shaves some time off and provides some insight.
Speaker 1:There's interesting things to this, ron. The economic world says, depending on the industry, between 500 and 5,000 jobs will be created with every billion dollars of investment. So let's just take an easy place and say it's 10 jobs per billion. To get to a trillion from a billion. There's two ways of doing it, but the normal way is just add three zeros, so that's 100,000 jobs. Then the next thing is to go to a trillion. Multiple trillions is the investment that people are putting into America. Right now that has crossed over 15 trillion. Right now that has crossed over 15 trillion. So we're looking for 10 million jobs being added, minimum.
Speaker 1:And Trump's comment is we don't have enough people. And the dilemma we have with that is that we have enough people, perhaps, but we don't have the people that have the skills. So then freeze frame on that for a second, somebody, one of our contributors. I've been saying we've been putting profit over people for a long time. In other words, customer service has been let go, let it drift, and that shows itself in customer retention.
Speaker 1:So, being the idiot that I am, I look back over the last 40 years and found that for every 20 years the number of dealers reduces by 50%. So if we started, let's say, 85 with 1,000 dealers 2,005, there's 500 dealers. 2025, there's 250. And everybody I talk to says, well, things are pretty good, revenue is going up. And I say to them well, of course, revenue is going up, you don't have as many competitors, and they kind of stop because they never really considered that. But all of that going on means that the people that are at work today don't have enough time to do what they need to do, so anything that can save them time is going to be a blessing.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:So here comes AI, and it's like it's put on a platter for us, but nobody's done an evaluation or analysis that I've seen yet, ron, like what you just did. So let's go back over those different categories again and get into the weeds with them as to what you mean and how it affects us.
Speaker 2:Okay. So first, if you take a look at the careers most likely to be impacted and what AI points out, is that what AI is not good at is the human skills, the customer service, for example, dealing directly with the customers. Now we know that I've seen some examples of this. When the grocery stores or the Walmart retail stores are on their self-checkout, they dump all this stuff into a self-checkout with no customer service people to help and it was in many cases a disaster. The theft went up on it.
Speaker 2:The difficulty of trying to self-checkout Sometimes for us technically challenged getting to the self-checkout, it doesn't work right. So then they found out well, wait a minute, we have to add the customer service skills back in there. So then they add a someone to watch several registers at once kind of thing, a self-checkout. But they have to have people with the people skills of working with the customers. That's frustrated, because they've tried to scan the avocado four times and it doesn't scan right.
Speaker 2:Or the friend I talked to last night he went in to buy some sausages at the meat market and went to check out and what he was? Checked out as that he had crabs. So the price was like five times or 25 times what he originally was looking for and the registry guy says, well, no, the label says you have this, until he opened it up and showed the guy that he had hot dogs. So needing the customer service skills to work through those challenges. That's something that ai really struggles with and we struggle with because we we have, even before ai, customer service skills. The dealership has to almost provide training because it's we don't get skilled level people in the dealership now with the proper customer service skills that we need. So that was one of the things that the emotional intelligence piece of it is something that AI does not handle very well at this time.
Speaker 1:So let me interrupt there for a second, because I agree 100% Dealerships. In our experience, yours and mine have used employee development or training as a discretionary expense, Not necessarily something that I'm going to do regularly. Every now and again I might do something, but if push comes to shove and I need money, I kill all of that altogether. Has that been your experience as well?
Speaker 2:In some. If you take the most recent deal, covid when COVID hit and I was in the training department at that time and my worry when COVID hit and we sent all of the trainers, instructors, home and shut down training, my concern was, as in past, is that training would be the first to go. Now I was very fortunate and that didn't happen with us. We got the team together and says where do we add value? And they said when we teach? And we said well, you get two weeks to turn your training into online and I had a great team. They were able to do that. So we can. But but many dealers they did put their training on the back burner during COVID, for example, and you were putting maybe other roles or you may have been furloughed. In some cases they just shut training down. So but yeah, I think many of the dealers, training is not their first. That's one of the first things to go and the last things to add.
Speaker 1:One of the things that was interesting, ron. We started doing training, specific outside of consulting, in the early 90s and at that time everybody Caterpillar, deere, volvo, komatsu, bobcat, everybody, all the associations stopped altogether Management training. I think you and I talked about that. I spent the summer saying I'd been teaching for a long time anyways, but I built six textbooks over the summer talking to my computer and started into the training business and what seemed to work for people was you don't have to have a trainer, you don't have to have a class, you don't have to have somebody doing the hotels and meals and all that stuff. We'll do that for you and we'll pay you an incentive, a commission or something for the number of people. And we did that. And we did all the parts and service training for the construction equipment industries, parts service selling, marketing for 20 years. Wow.
Speaker 1:And what became interesting from my point of view was a lot of dealers. As you know and you're in the same place, we know a lot of people because we've been around so long. One of the guys said to me Ron, I wish I'd known before I spent money on training for this individual that all they're doing is taking oxygen out of the room. So here comes AI. Is that masking skills at all? All they're doing is taking oxygen out of the room. So here comes AI. Is that masking skills at all? Or are the people that?
Speaker 2:don't have the skills, going to be unable to deal with AI, do you think? Well, I think you have a great question. If you go back and look when laptops were introduced in the service department I was running a field service operation at that time did not have laptops. There were a few of the highly technical guys had the laptop, but otherwise we didn't. When I got into field service operation that year, we added laptops to every technician.
Speaker 2:Now there are some technicians that computers, they just couldn't do it. Very good skilled technicians, but they just they didn't adapt well. So so we did lose some talent. I had to find something else for them, because you don't want them to go away, you want to utilize their skills. But but yet others, they took on the laptop and began to use the tools of the laptop and became a better technician than they were. So so I think it really it's an individualized thing. We've got to encourage the employees to make sure they're not scared of it, not worried about it, not afraid of it, but learn how to help them adapt it into their jobs. But that's key, I think, for this AI adaption.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I agree. I remember back in the 60s and 70s the commercials that were out. There were a machine being a button being pushed and that was going to replace your job. And you know the comment you made about some of the older technician guys. They're not as adaptable. They're awfully good technicians. So we have to find places as coaches, as inspectors, as technical communicators. There's specific jobs. They can perform for a long time and get out of the way. For the young guys, some of the fellows coming out of technical school Osuit is an example, oklahoma State Some of those guys are in field trucks within a year. They're really good technicians but they know the technology, the electronic catalogs, the diagnostics, the sensors, the GPS, all of that. And AI really pulls that all together, doesn't it?
Speaker 2:Yes, it can. Now we have to worry about the younger generation, because it's kind of like when you like Excel, when you ask somebody are you good at Excel? And they may say, yeah, I am, but then you figure out. Well, they know about a level one plus. Then there are those folks that they are really good at Excel. They can make it home. It's the same thing with AI or technology. We have some grandkids. They're really good at playing games on the computer, but do they really know systems and working through systems? They don't, yeah, they don't yeah. Even with the younger generation you have the crossover of the knowledge.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the other thing that I experienced was with word processing, with spreadsheets, with presentations, with all of that stuff. What I tend to do, because it changes so damn much, is only focus on the things that I need to do now. Right, excel, I make it work with spreadsheets, but I'm terrible at pivot tables because I don't have to use them very often. We tend to take the technology only to the place that it affects our job and then we stop. Are you sensing and feeling that too?
Speaker 2:Absolutely. We've got to be able to carve out time to continue learning. What is it that I don't know. So one of the examples I gave in going through this is that I had an opportunity to work in the marketing as a data analytics manager. So this way they took marketing and split it into two groups. We have the data analytics and the marketing traditional marketing manager and then marketing traditional marketing manager, and my job was to bring all the data of the dealership into how to utilize it in our marketing department.
Speaker 2:Then I realized there was a whole bunch of data analytic tools after I didn't know about. I could use Excel and we could do pivot tables, and I had a team that did a lot of that for me. But I took a certificate program to the local university on data analytics to again to spring forward on those tools. Well, that was 10 years ago. Well, now the data analytics has been replaced by the AI part of it. So if I was in the job market now, I would be looking at not only data analytics, but where does AI fit in and how do I learn to use some of those tools and be aware of how to apply those? So it's the ongoing, continual growth that we have to have to look forward to.
Speaker 1:The other thing that comes wrong is that I don't believe we have skills and knowledge standards. We don't have certifications, it's what I call them. And there's a thing in America called IRAPS, which is an industry-related apprentice program standard which is in the United States, not followed by very many people, but certification programs. You have them for nurses, you have them for cooks, you have them for technicians. We don't have them for parts people. We don't have them for sales people. We don't have them for salesmen. There are things out there, but then we come.
Speaker 1:I was talking to a college in Texas, had 300,000 students and all of a sudden became painfully evident. There's privacy issues that we have that are different across the country. So student names, ages, sexes, scores, those types of things. You got to be really careful and protected. Then ISO, the International Standards Organization, comes out and they've got plans on how to do it. All of these folks, they're making it even more complicated for a dealership. Who do you use, how do you use it, it, etc. So I think when, where you carved out the different jobs, let's start with the jobs at a dealership that are at risk. What are they?
Speaker 2:well, so if you just look down, it kind of goes down this list and we'll have to, when you read this, see the the job tiles kind of relate back to some of those within a dealership because, for example, data entry clerks okay you have somebody that's entering time cards.
Speaker 2:If you get to enter, somebody that's typing in a service report where the technician gives them their handwritten service report and somebody else inputs it uh, the data entry and the accounting system that's doing debits and credits and telemarketing. I provide a link to a TikTok video where the and I kind of got into the TikTok thing. Now it's kind of cool, there's you can anyway, but this link, you click on the link and this guy that's doing the video, the TikTok thing he said well, I want to share an example of me being a difficult customer with an AI generated salesperson. So he clicks on it and he's talking to this AI person, or whatever you want to call it about. They're trying to sell him and schedule him with a software program on training of some kind of for the company. And this guy said well, I really can't do that, I'm not for the for the company. And this guy says, well, I really can't do that, I'm not the only stakeholder in the company.
Speaker 2:Uh, I really need to talk, talk to my talk to my co co-owner about it. And the AI says, okay, well, Mr Customer, let's go ahead and book the meeting. Give you some time to talk to your co-owner, and if that doesn doesn't work, we'll reschedule it. So and then I get done. A watch said wait a minute. I've been on calls like that, so was that really a person I was talking to or was it ai? I was talking to you?
Speaker 1:yeah, you have these chat bots on websites and basically you, you know it's a nice thought, but it's the same damn thing as voicemail. When voicemail arrived 30, 40, 50 years ago, I know dealerships that actually let the phone ring so that the commercial message would have to be listened to before they would get action from the customer. In other words, you call in to me, it rings three to five times and then I give you a 30-second commercial before I say is there something you'd like to talk to me about? I mean, we lost sight of the whole damn thing, didn't we? We tried to save money and forgot the customer.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, and we added things that thought would be of value, like the commercial you talked about. That nobody cares. That's not what you call, that is not my priority right now.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, so you know. So the other side, that data entry function that takes me up further in the helicopter. We don't have many people in the company operationally or anywhere that are looking at Six Sigma, continuous improvement, industrial engineering type of processes. Do we have that anymore? Some of the dealers do.
Speaker 2:Do we have that anymore? Some of the dealers do. Some are having the project manager certification. Some of those require them as part of the where I was working they had a team of Six Sigma early on, early, early on when they adopted Six Sigma. So some of them are using those and they've actually got project. A Six Sigma person is assigned to a project or list of projects and then linked in with that is the marketing side. So if it's a project going to need marketing, they can pull marketing in when they need it, so that we're closing the loop on the whole thing and not getting into the project and realize, oh yeah, we need marketing, pull that into the business operations so we can one keep it moving ahead, moving along, removing roadblocks, but also meet the needs of the operational area.
Speaker 2:One of the best things I liked were the dealership I worked about. Every six months, maybe quarterly, they would have a Six Sigma project. Meeting was open to the company. Anybody could come in and sit in on it. So the team was to come in review the status of their Six Sigma project and there'd be the executive team reviewing it. But you had an open audience to whoever in the company wanted to sit in and listen to the scope of work and the status of the project and that was really, to me, very impressive on what was going on within the company, the direction we're taking, and kind of an open book on the leadership style of the organization.
Speaker 1:I think that's critical, ron, having community meetings One of the things. Patrick Lencioni, who's an author that I have a lot of respect for. He writes books like fables, so he tells stories, and one of his comments of you know Three Signs of a Miserable Job is one of his books and one of his comments of you know three signs of a miserable job is one of his books, and one of them is anonymity. The employee doesn't feel that anybody knows who the hell they are.
Speaker 1:Then the second piece is irrelevance. Nobody really knows how their job fits into the overall piece. And then the final one is immeasurability it's a word he created because it doesn't exist where when you leave the job, at the end of the day you have no idea whether you did a good job or not. If you're a technician, you do, there's things you fix, there's things you did, there's things you completed. But having a meeting like that, where here comes something we're working on and George in the corner had never heard of that before and has a comment about it, that's to me unbelievably helpful.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:It's kind of like too many men and women as managers are sitting in their office. You've got to get out and walk around. Yes, you've got to touch the employees. You've got to get out and walk around. Yes, you've got to touch the employees. You've got to touch the customers. So, other than data entry and customer service type of things, what other jobs are at risk?
Speaker 2:Well, let's go ahead and talk about some of those that are least likely to be replaced by AI.
Speaker 1:Okay, that's a better, more positive way to look at it.
Speaker 2:Mental health professionals, teachers, educators, skilled trades, electricians, plumbers and carpenter. Now I do want a word of caution on this. When we hear that and we've heard that a lot as well plumbers and electricians and mechanics are not going to get replaced. Well, but they got to learn about AI. But they got to learn about AI, you know they're going to wind up putting on a pair of glasses that's going to walk them through a troubleshooting diagnostics of a parts book or disassemble, reassemble type deal. So their skill set is going to change, requiring them to adapt to AI somehow.
Speaker 1:Let me, let me interrupt you. Bmw put up on YouTube Vimeo wasn't available then TikTok and all that stuff a film clip of a man with sound walking to the front of a car that had the hood up. His toolbox is on the right-hand side. He picks up a pair of glasses, puts on the glasses and pushes a button on the earpiece and the interior of that engine lit up graphically and it said voice activated first step, and then it showed what they wanted him to do any tools, any parts, all of that stuff, and it was point, point, point, all the way up to conclusion, and that was 1993. That's 32 years ago. If we went around, you and I in a plane today and went to a hundred car dealers, I don't think we'd find 10 that are doing that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think it's coming fast. There was a commercial chevy dealership here in phoenix that has, uh, this, this company had designed this, this tool that laid on the ground and it was for their border patrol or cia to use when a vehicle drove over. It was detecting bombs attached underneath the car. Well, what they found in using that is that oil leaks and things like that were going on. So they took well, wait a minute, there's something else we can use this for. So now they've developed where this at a dealership they have this drive-through device. You take your car through it and it scans underneath it, all around it, and it does a troubleshooting diagnostics of the car.
Speaker 1:Imagine yeah, so within five minutes.
Speaker 2:There's underneath it, all around it, and it does a troubleshooting diagnostics of the car. Yeah, so within five minutes there's a, so like a service advisor haven't gotten rid of them, but their job has just now changed.
Speaker 1:Well, it becomes more communication job, doesn't it?
Speaker 1:yes you know the, the, the, the service work order process. And again, you and I have been doing this a long time. I remember a service manager customer comes in, talks to the service manager, tells him what the complaint is. Manager calls the technician, says George, here has a problem. This is what he says is wrong. Go on out there and fix that for me, will you? And off the technician goes and he hasn't got any more direction than that. And off the technician goes and he hasn't got any more direction than that. Versus today what you just talked about.
Speaker 2:You drive through a device and it tells you diagnostically everything that's potentially wrong with that thing, whatever it is. Yeah, so take that a little further. On a field service Instead, there'll be no drive-through, obviously, but there could be a scanner, so a handheld scanner that the technician scans over whatever part of the machine or whatever it is, for kind of a self-diagnostics. So instead of you know, used in the old days, before you left for the next job you'd look at previous work order and repairs to make sure on that job have we touched this machine for center type themes and pre-ordering of parts, the best you can based off information you have. But now you can sit there at the desk one, the dispatcher, whoever is coordinating service advisor, self-diagnostics of the machine for that particular issue, pre-order the parts for the technician. Now, we've heard about this before. This is not really new, but I think it's really about to become very fast forward on applying some of this technology Very fast.
Speaker 1:Like you said, we've heard this before. There's a lot of smart people in our industry and I remember the storefront in 1990, and you do too where Caterpillar tried to put something forward that every Caterpillar dealer would look exactly the same to everybody for customers, for dealers, for the whole deal. And it bothered me In those days. We had the truck engine parts and there was a deal with Ford and others, so we never got more than 10% of the parts transactions through that storefront and it bothered me. And then we lost the truck engine business and it dropped down to 3%, 4%, 5% and I'm talking to all these dealers and this might relate to you.
Speaker 1:I said why the hell don't we have customers coming in that way? I said, well, I don't know. Well, what price do you charge? Exactly the same price. Well, you go to Walmart, you don't get the same price as Sears. You go to Amazon you don't get the same price as Sears. You go to Amazon, you don't get the same price as a bookstore. If you come online, why the hell are you giving me the same price when I'm doing all the work instead of going to your store? But nobody dropped the price. So there's a price component to this technology that we're missing.
Speaker 1:So let me go a little bit further. You're diagnostic, we have GPS, we have sensors all over the machine, we have life cycle statistics. We have unbelievable data. That's a subscription service. I'll sell you this machine. It's a million bucks and for $25,000 a year I'll scan that machine every hour for you. I'll give you a warning when there's a problem. I'll tell you when it's overheating. I'll tell you when it's idling. That's a new market that we haven't walked through to. It's going to be huge.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. There's an example that, ron, I want to share with you. So this dealership had a room that that was a glass room and in there equipment managers and uh and and there were uh and as, with and with the new machine sold or a pm service sold, there was a subscription model, depending what level you wanted that was available. We had this one customer that he had the premium service. We we had a gather watching the fault codes and upflashed a it was a scrapyard and upflashed an overheat flash code on an excavator. And it was about 3 o'clock in the afternoon this is in Phoenix, it's hot anyway and we realized that every day about the same time, this same overheat issue popped up. So if we'd have sent a technician out, he had gone out there in the morning, no issue May have gone through at noon, no issue May have gone out there at three. Maybe have found the issue.
Speaker 2:Well, come to find out what it was, is that that was also shift change time and the operator that were coming in was a little less experienced and was using the machine in a way that it was causing an over-eat on hydraulics. So by having this subscription we saved that client a whole bunch of downtime and troubleshooting time and cost to the dealership of underutilizing or utilizing technicians in a wrong, in a useless way really, but were able to diagnose and troubleshoot with conversation with the customer and we didn't know there was a shift change. But talk with the customer, what's going on about three o'clock every day? Well, that's shift time. It's a change time for us, but that's a great example where this customer benefited from having that subscription service and so did the dealership.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I think that's the future in so many ways. The other side of that that comes if you're on that subscription service and you're letting me monitor your machine and you're going to follow my instructions, I'll give you a longer warranty. You know, here comes a repair. Fine, I'll give you a one-year warranty on it instead of six months or three or whatever it is. You know, there's so many aspects of it. So the highly technical skills electronic catalogs, fault codes, symptoms, hydraulics, overheating, et cetera all of those things are enhanced with AI. Should we have specific functions that deal with that and the customer? Do we have a different need of skills? Is it more, like you said earlier, communications than technical?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think it will. So we had most dealers do, but we had a technical communicator department and all this. These were very experienced technicians, had done their time in the field, in the shop or whatever it was, and now they've been put in the field, in the shop or whatever it was, and now they've been put in those positions to be the communicator. They didn't do a lot of discussion with the customer, but they did a lot of talking with the mechanics in the field. They helped do the diagnostics and the failure analysis, interpretation Okay, why did the part fail? And all that kind of thing.
Speaker 2:Well, I see that role really changing. Yeah, that role I mean there's. We can do a lot of things to improve that and there were some, some of those TC guys. They were not very nice to their coworkers. You know they were old time field service guys and you get a younger field service guy call in and they'll just rip him, you go. Did you do this and do that? No, I told you to do this, but so they would try not to call the TC group. They. No, I told you to do this, so they would try not to call the TC group. They would try and figure it out themselves and add hours to the job because they didn't want to be chastised when they called in. But I think this role can change a lot by that TC group utilizing AI tools along with people skills to help that field service technician or even the customer themselves with the AI application to troubleshooting diagnostics.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and what you're talking about is the personality profile of a technician isn't exactly the most empathetic person. Yes, yes, they like to work alone. They don't want anybody to tell them what to do. Just leave me alone, go away. And you know my grandson who's in the Navy. He was the ROTC commander in his junior year and I said how are you liking that? He said it's terrible. I said what are you talking about? He said well, I tell people to do something and they don't do it. I said, ah, leadership isn't that fun. So he enlisted rather than go to officer's training. They're trying to get him in officer's training now. Now, I'm not sure he's going to do it. For that reason, now in the military, I go back and forth with those guys. I say that's an officer, you tell somebody in the military to do something, you haven't no doubt that that's going to happen. If they don't, there's a consequence.
Speaker 1:However, in private industry, that doesn't exist exist yeah you know george is kind of just he's having a bad day today. It's, you know, it's it's. So we have this wonderful technology. We have the need to train people is is the training something that's inside the dealership or can we contract with different service companies that train us on AI, on Excel and those types of things Salesforce, for example? Have you found anything like that in your years?
Speaker 2:Well and I think there is, I think dealers they try and do it all in-house themselves and what they wind up doing is spreading their team too thin at spreading their team too thin. So, for example, in our dealership, in our training department we had individuals that had their, we had technician technical trainers, we had people skills instructors. We had MSHA training and me looking at that I said, well, msha, let's contract that out, then I can take those two instructors because they're also experienced as technicians and they can become technical instructors. Forklift training on forklift Well, let's, let's have the forklift guys come in and do the training for forklift. So got out of the community college and they came in and did classes on Excel or customer service skills. So I think it's really the dealership needs to broaden the perspective that we don't need to have all the skills. We need to go over where to find the skills and the services to meet our needs.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm going to go even further than that and ask a question. I don't want to do anything at the dealership other than what my core competency has to be. So, as an example, personnel hiring people why have I got an HR department? Wage and salary administration? There's experts out there doing all of this stuff. Wage and salary administration there's experts out there doing all of this stuff. Outsource whatever you can. Don't get rid of the people. Redeploy them in places that maximize the utilization of the skills you're talking about, like what you mentioned there, where I've got a technical communicator inside to support the technicians. I also have to have a technical communicator outside that does the customer service, communication with the customer, and that's a very different personality.
Speaker 2:Yeah, very different.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, I think, other than technicians pulling wrenches and warehouse people picking parts, I don't know that there's many job functions that are not going to be touched by artificial intelligence or robotics or both.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I think even if you look in the warehouse, for example, a warehouse layout where you move your parts fast-moving, moderate, slow-moving parts through AI and the data that comes from it they'll tell you move that part here, because it's a fast moving part, it's more efficient having it on the inside of the main aisle. So I think we'll be able to use AI to tell us move this, move there, do this, do that. In some warehouses they're doing away with a sign location. The computer lays it out and removes the skid carton and puts it back in a totally different place than last time. So yeah, I, yeah, I think even in the warehouse they'll make them much more efficient. Fewer steps. So it will and I think in many ways will help make that warehouse person more successful because they're not doing all the time that routine, boring kind of job.
Speaker 2:When I was in the warehouse I had uh, I took a look at we had packers and shippers and parts pullers and the parts pullers would bring the parts up and dump them on the packing table and the packers would go through and verify. There was 10 of those and two of those before those. The right partner put in a box, seal it up and it will go to the shipper. Then it will be shipped out. And look, they said well, when they get busy and the intent was the packers would verify we had the right quantity and part number well, when they got busy, they didn't check any of that, they threw it all in the box and moved on. Yep, so I took those packers. So you are now a tour, we will pack your own order.
Speaker 2:So, and this one young man says so, you mean I gotta do it right the first time. Yes, it does mean that he later became a pilot, an airline pilot airline southwest, yes, southwest airlines. So he was early, early, early in his college career and and uh, yeah, very interesting young man, very nice guy, good, good guy. We had him years later as a pilot. I was getting on the plane, he was fine, actually that's wonderful.
Speaker 1:But I started in the consulting world doing designs on warehouses using computers. In those days we had length, width and height and weight of every part number. This is Caterpillar. And so I built a little model and did the railways in Canada exactly what you're talking about. Where do you put the part? Based on the attributes of that part, based on the activity of the part, how many people do you need and where do you do this? And what you're saying? The packer. That became a different job function. The person who picked the parts was responsible to make sure that the quantity they picked was correct and they packed as they went. And then we said, oh well, darn it, there's two kinds of orders here, some that are all people, handlers, but others that require lift trucks. So we had to merge two different orders. And then I'm in Chicago one year and I'm going in, I'm looking at warehouses in Europe and all over the place.
Speaker 1:The owner that I had was very progressive and I go to this distribution center in Chicago and it's humming and it's quiet and there's, you know, no action. And I'm talking to the guys running and they say, well, how does this work? They say, well, every morning, we give every employee eight hours worth of labor. What do you mean? Well, we give them a certain number of part numbers, certain quantities, certain weight and based on that, we know how much time it should take and how long it should go. And so we give them eight hours of labor and we say to them when you're finished, you can go home. And we were running 12 to 15 line items an hour at the Caterpillar dealer and these guys were running 120 to 180. Wow, and I'm saying holy crap. So we came back and we started batching orders and we had, okay, our top priority field service counter right now. Drop everything If it's a branch, yeah every top priority field service counter right now.
Speaker 1:Drop everything If it's a branch. Yeah, every hour. And it was remarkable, we went from 1215 to 40. Yeah, you know, again, using technology, this isn't artificial intelligence, but it's people intelligence, where it's cool that we use the term artificial intelligence, but it's all based on data. Yeah, if you don't have good data, you're dead. So technicians, internal, external communicators, purchasing, inventory management, warehousing, all of these things really are enhanced from a customer service perspective, for the customer. If the dealership uses it, so why don't we use it?
Speaker 2:Yes, I think if the dealership uses it and if the employees will accept it, part of that challenge. I've got a son working in the computer chip manufacturing piece and he's got to do a lot of programming and they're talking about how to use AI and troubleshooting when something isn't going right. But some of that is the employees accepting trying that and making that part of their job. So we really have to. That comes the people skill side of it. How do we get the employee interested in applying AI and interested in changing things for the better so that there's a you know there manages a special skill set as a manager on transitioning into something totally new and different. You can't force it transitioning into something totally new and different. You can't force it. You've got to do an introduction and an acceptance, part of it and and and training with it and trying it again. So, uh, that that can be very difficult because some employees they're not going to.
Speaker 2:There's to me there's in that there are three levels. There are those that will that will, will jump right on and do it. Those are going to sit on the fence and let me wait and see. And those are not going to do it and those are not going to do it. There's not much reason to spend much time with that. But those that are on the fence trying to decide do I or don't I, and those that are willing to do it, those are the ones to take on and give them some leeway and extra training and effort on this new technology and how it applies to their job, because they'll find a way to improve whatever we thought we were going to do. They'll find a better way to do that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. You know, one of the things I usually like to do is somebody's just been on the job six months. I sit down and say, okay, what do we do that you don't think we should do at all? What are your eyes telling you? But the other side of that is I'm going to submit that the number of the dealers that are shrinking and being absorbed and going out of business, they're doing it because they're not adapting, they get stuck in a rut and they don't want to change.
Speaker 1:the penalty is huge, ron it is how do we get leaders sensitized to this? The penalty is huge, ron. How do we get leaders sensitized to this? You know, we can stand in front of a room and we can put a presentation on, we can have a panel, we can have a one-on-one discussion with people. But how do we get people, the normal people, the guys that are out there in the front? They're going to be looking at this, like right now, but 90% of the world doesn't want to change anything. They're busy. How do we get that attention?
Speaker 2:Well, and I think you spend time with individual employees, those that you can identify, that want to and those that don't. There was an employee a parts employee worked for me on a remote location, lived in the community. He was not going anywhere, he was there. That's where his family was, where he grew up. We had a project manager who was new and we rotated project managers out about every three years because family reasons and a rotation. So there was an issue came up where this employee was not getting along with the project manager. So I went to visit the employee and I said what are you doing? I mean, is this really that much of a challenge? He said, well, I don't want to do it and I'll wait him out, because I know in two years, three years, you're going to rotate him out. I'm not going anywhere.
Speaker 2:So here's an example of someone that they were not going to change. They were not going to change. So we again do need to identify those that are willing to change, provide them training, the tools, the time to make that transition of introducing AI, learning about AI and introducing it. So it's just because, after so long, the managers, they'll just give up. All right, we'll just kind of plod along here and keep doing what we're doing, but we have to really understand how to implement change and get and having the employees accept the change I had a guy I was talking to the other day who was executive vice president of a pretty large dealership.
Speaker 1:He also was an executive with a manufacturer and the comment he made to me was I wish the heck I'd known this person was taking nothing but oxygen out of the world room before I spent money on training and developing them. And he said to me isn't there something you can do? So that's what we created our assessments for. So we've got these 90 questions up to 180 questions, multiple choice assessments that we suggest everybody does it once a year. And the recommendation I make is I'd like to have you do it and I'd like to have your boss do it, and then the two of you sit down and discuss what are those things that the company can do to help make your job easier, make you better at what you do? And what I was confronted with in many of these cases was the employees are not trained on doing a performance review. It's checking off a box and we really don't have job standards to the point that the employees understand them. Am I nuts?
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, that's very true, and those are examples where I can help with some of that.
Speaker 1:Long as we get the measurables there, we have to define, yep, what we're measuring yeah, and where the data is coming from, and what the arithmetic is and everything else, yeah, and the other side of that, ron, that also drives me nuts is a lot of this stuff is historical. It's not what we're doing tomorrow, it's what we did last month, last year. So you know what do I do, that I can make a big change on. That'll make an impact on tomorrow, and artificial intelligence, I think, tells us that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. And that's where us, as a dealer, we get so ingrained in only being around dealers our own dealers, or only cat dealers, or only Komatsu dealers. We go to a conference that's got everybody there and they're running their brothers there, but we need to spend time around other areas outside the industry, inside the industry, and really take on and grasp the learning part of it and have an interest in learning. And how does that apply to my business? I think that's to me. It's one of the, to me, the disadvantage that dealers have is that we become so inclusive. We don't want to be around others, we kind of think we know it all and we don't want to share. And I think really open up and learn what's going on, share and and, uh, I think really open up and learn what's going on.
Speaker 2:I mean, years ago, when um onstar first came out, I remember writing a letter to the president of the company and say this is going to be, this is this is going to change how we do business now. Now, look, here we are with autonomous mine haul trucks. I mean it just uh, and that's not that. It it seemed like a long, many years, but I guess it probably really is not overall, but how can we apply those kinds of things early on in our industry from what is going on in the automotive industry or aerospace or whatever it is? How can we take bits and pieces of it and apply it in our business?
Speaker 1:Yeah, there's so many areas and aspects of that. It's kind of scary. Our skill assessments give a really good understanding of the employee and what they know and what they don't know. It's not their personality, it's just skills. And having the boss fill out the same assessment on that employee as the employee does highlights where they have differences of opinion. And in almost every case where I've experienced this, the boss didn't know he had the different opinions. Neither did the employee, but when they talked together they found a solution that was better for both of them. Yeah, yep, and again, ai is what gives us that, that tool.
Speaker 1:I was in Moscow one time with a guy who had an MBA, had three kids, middle-aged man, and you know I I have a series of questions that I'd be asking and I'd go through those what, what, what do you do that you like to do? And blah, blah, blah, blah. And he said no, no, don't do it, you don't understand things here. I said what do you mean? He says don't ask questions like that, just tell me what you want me to do.
Speaker 1:And there's still a lot of men and women as leaders that do exactly that, almost like bullies. And a characteristic of today's society is. We're seeing people stay on the job longer, retiring later, and I'm going to submit that there's a generation delayed transition, maybe by 10 years. So a guy who's the boss at 65 today who should be retiring, he's staying till 75, but the people that are coming up behind that should go into the job, that are being blocked. They're leaving the industry, they're going somewhere else. So now the skills that we're seeing coming into the business are very different than what they used to be 10, 20, 40 years ago. People really don't understand what we do anymore yeah onboarding becomes huge yeah.
Speaker 2:No, your example is, I think, is right on, where we have people staying in their roles longer. So there's a whole generation of people coming up to the ranks that were hoping for a promotion of that role will never get there. They will retire out. And next is the group that comes in, that they don't know what they don't know and unfortunately they the individuals that have all the knowledge and experience in those areas they're leaving. They're going and that's, to me, is a real worry.
Speaker 2:For pick a specific issue of who was the person that walked through that major issue that kept that dealer's doors open. What did they do? How did they do it? We don't. We don't know that. We know that there's an issue there and we went on and but we don't know how they handled it and made that area would be a new product introduction, whether it be a new product introduction or whether it be a mining issue that came up on a product line thing or a profitability. How did they get that company through the challenge that history is leaving and we don't do a good job of collecting the historic successes and what made those case studies? We almost need to have a collection of case studies.
Speaker 2:If you come across this. What a great tool for a new person in a role. I'm faced with this really major problem. Historically, has anything like that been done before in our industry or in our dealership? Well, yeah, ten years ago. Here's so-and-so then. Here is the situation and here's what they did Now. It may not be a perfect answer now, but may open some eyes that may generate some other thoughts to make it more successful implementation.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I agree 100%. Well, I think we've covered a lot of ground here, ron, and I thank you for it and I love the subject. I'd like to follow this up in a couple of weeks when more of the blog has been published, and and and keep on going, because I think this is critical for dealers, it's critical for for business everywhere and employees, if, if you're not having anybody contribute to your skills improvement, you're going to be left behind. Yes, and it's it. I don't mean that in a bad way. I think it's a fact. Am I understanding this properly?
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, I think employees have to take ownership of their career. They have to take ownership of the skill set that's needed, because chances are, if they ask their manager, their manager may not know. Yeah, exactly their manager's not thought about AI. Yeah, so the employee needs to be thinking about what's my next skill set? I need and be working that on their own and hopefully in conjunction with the training department and their supervisor, but they have to take ownership.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think the whole organization has to change. Ron, this has been wonderful. I thank you for your knowledge, experience, your wisdom, and I hope everybody who's listening pays attention to this. I think this is something where we're going and it's already here. It's been here for a long time, but we're rather slow to get off the mark. So thank you for listening, ron, thank you for being here and I look forward to seeing you at your next candidate conversation. Mahalo.
