This episode of Over the Edge features another interview between Matt Trifiro and Matthew Steinberg, Co-Founder of Exhibit ‘A’ brewing, and Pierluca Chiodelli,Vice President Engineering Technology & Edge Portfolio Product Management and Customer Operations, Dell Technologies. Matthew and Pierluca’s conversation on Dell Technology’s work with Exhibit ‘A’ brewing continues. They discuss why the partnership is essential, and what makes it work as well as it does.
This episode of Over the Edge features a continuation of our interview between Matt Trifiro and Matthew Steinberg, Co-Founder of Exhibit ‘A’ brewing, and Pierluca Chiodelli, Vice President Engineering Technology & Edge Portfolio Product Management and Customer Operations, Dell Technologies.
Matthew and Pierluca come together to continue their conversation on Dell Technology’s work with Exhibit ‘A’ brewing. They discuss why the partnership is essential, and what makes it work as well as it does.
Matthew describes how tech influences his brewery. Pierluca explains why Dell Technologies works with small businesses to implement edge technology. Together, they’ve built a successful project where Dell works at new scales, and Exhibit ‘A’ produces high quality beer with higher speed.
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Key Quotes:
Matthew:
"We can't just start spending money on technology without having a real ROI. This is just a really amazing opportunity for us to look at a lot of these pain points and challenges that we have as a small business and work with edge technology and Dell to really find the sweet spot to make us the most efficient we can be, creating the best products we can, and adding a value to our business."
Matthew:
"Because we don't fully understand the technology, we rely on Pierluca and his team to share with us what that technology's gonna do for us. I'm not looking for a fit, I'm looking for an add. You know, I want this to improve what we do, not just kind of like status quo. So that's really important for us. And obviously just the straight value that it adds to our small business."
Pierluca:
"Having the connection with Dell that can scale and can breed the technology to all type of people, from a small business, like Exhibit A, to large implementation. And so having an ecosystem, and that ecosystem can run in a platform like we are building, then allow you to bring them to multiple people. Not only to the very large one that they can permit themselves to have an army of people coming there and develop their own solution."
Pierluca:
"That's exactly one of the challenge that we took upon when we decide to go to the edge. And when we decide to go to the edge, not just with the fact that we go in and place the normal compute. It's to understanding, right? And Dell is embarking in this adventure that we start about three years ago with very few people and now we have an entire bu, right, that is looking at this stuff. So what is intriguing is really, that point that, At the edge, you need to understand how you input the things that someone is doing, right? Their core processes, their outcome. Right? It's all about the outcome."
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02:25 How tech fits into the brewing industry
03:22 Measuring the success of implementing edge
05:13 Dell’s goal with Exhibit A
07:19 How small businesses can deploy edge technology
10:46 The tech learning curve
14:04 Scaling technology for everyone
15:37 Weighing cost vs. ROI
17:30 How Matthew manages his cashflow
20:17 Dell’s shifting business model
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Over the Edge is brought to you by Dell Technologies to unlock the potential of your infrastructure with edge solutions. From hardware and software to data and operations, across your entire multi-cloud environment, we’re here to help you simplify your edge so you can generate more value. Learn more by visiting DellTechnologies.com/SimplifyYourEdge for more information or click on the link in the show notes.
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Connect with Matt on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/mtrifiro/
Connect with Matthew on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/matthew-steinberg-26b96ab/
Connect with Pierluca on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/pierluca-chiodelli-3b743a4/
Learn More about Exhibit A - https://www.exhibit-a-brewing.com/
Follow Dell Technologies Edge on social media at
https://www.linkedin.com/company/delltechnologies/posts/?feedView=all
Learn about Dell Technologies edge solutions - https://www.dell.com/en-us/dt/solutions/edge-computing/index.htm#collapse&tab0=0&tab1=0
Learn more about how Dell Technologies is using edge for good - https://www.dell.com/en-us/dt/corporate/about-us/who-we-are.htm#video-overlay=6213824626001
[00:00:00] Narrator 1: Hello and welcome to Over the Edge.
This episode features a continuation of our interview between Matt Trifiro and Matthew Steinberg, Co-Founder of Exhibit ‘A’ brewing, and Pierluca Chiodelli,Vice President Engineering Technology & Edge Portfolio Product Management and Customer Operations, Dell Technologies.
Matthew and Pierluca come together to continue their conversation on Dell Technology’s work with Exhibit ‘A’ brewing. They discuss why the partnership is essential, and what makes it work as well as it does.
Matthew describes how tech influences his brewery. Pierluca explains why Dell Technologies works with small businesses to implement edge technology. Together, they’ve built a successful project where Dell works at new scales, and Exhibit ‘A’ produces high quality beer with higher speed.
But before we get into it, here’s a brief word from our sponsors…
[00:00:56] Narrator 2: Over the Edge is brought to you by Dell Technologies to unlock the potential of your infrastructure with edge solutions, from hardware and software to data and operations across your entire multi-cloud environment. We're here to help you simplify your edge so that you can generate more value.
Learn more by visiting dell technologies.com. Slash simplify your edge for more information, or click on the link in the show
[00:01:21] Matt Trifiro: notes. Two years ago when I started the Over the Edge podcast, it was all about edge computing. That's all anybody could talk about. But since then I've realized the edge is part of a much larger revolution.
That's why I'm pretty proud to be one of the founding leaders of a nonprofit organization called the Open Grid Alliance for oga. The OGA is all. Incorporating the best of edge [00:01:40] technologies across the entire spectrum of connectivity. From the centralized data center to the end user devices, the open grid will span the globe and will improve performance and economics of new services like private, 5G and smart retail.
If you want to be part of the open grid movement, I suggest you start@opengridalliance.org where you can download the original open grid manifesto and learn about the organization's recent projects and activities, including the launch of its first innovation zone in Las Vegas, Nevada.
[00:02:06] Narrator 1: And now, please enjoy this interview between Matt Trifiro, Matthew Steinberg, and Pierluca Chiodelli.
[00:02:14] Matt Trifiro: pier, Luca, Matthew, it's great to get the two of you together. Finally, I managed to talk to each of you separately and we're now on the same call, and I want to cover some questions together. So I'd like to start with you, Matthew. One of the things that's interesting to me is, you know, as a.
Person who runs a small business and who is the IT equivalent of someone in the beer industry, meaning you like the science, it's important to you, it helps your business. How are your peers looking at what you're
[00:02:38] Matthew Steinberg: doing? I've had some conversations about this with not just our staff here, of course, but even friends in the brewing industry, friends in other process industries like malting and farming, and it's exciting.
I think that the idea of improved efficiency, Through using technology is one of those things that like small businesses don't generally have a grasp on. We can't just start spending money on technology without having a real roi, and so this is just a really amazing opportunity for us to look at. , a lot of these sort of pain points and challenges that we have as a small business and work with edge technology in Dell to really find the sweet spot to make us the most efficient we can be creating [00:03:20] the best products we can and adding a value to our
[00:03:22] Matt Trifiro: business.
Yeah, and we, we talked a little bit about the goals in implementing these edge systems within the brewery. What are the big things you're looking for from a sense of the return on investment? I mean, both the hard numbers, but also like the other, the other qualitative. How are you gonna measure the
[00:03:36] Matthew Steinberg: success of this?
I mean, I'm gonna measure it with is our beer. First, that's the most important part. And is our quality of life in the brewery as users and processors better? You know, are we working more efficiently? Are we finding better ways to produce the beer in a more consistent manner? Getting the data we need to continue that process?
I think the most exciting part for our staff is that they have the information. I could check temperature by coming in in the morning at two in the morning and being like, oh yeah, here's the pressure, here's the temperature. But I love sleep. I love having a life, and so having the ability to get the data, use it to our advantage to learn how to make our beer best it can be.
That's the core, right? As far as like the hard numbers. I don't even know yet because we haven't really determined all of the projects yet. I know that the next phase of this being on the canning line is gonna be a really big undertaking. It's gonna be exciting to learn about all the little pain points of a canning process, which are numerous from the second the can comes off the pallet.
To the time it gets put into a box, there's a hundred ways that the can can be either destroyed, filled improperly, otherwise not sellable. So we're gonna find all sorts of little spots that we can improve, and at the end, we're gonna get more beer out of every batch. Which means more money, which means a more [00:05:00] satisfied customer and more satisfied staff.
That's
[00:05:02] Matt Trifiro: great. That's great. Now, now Pure Luca, one of the things that you've impressed upon me is just the stark difference between a technology company like Dell and a brewery. How does a technology company view its role in these, these industries that it doesn't necessarily play in in its own, in its own world?
I mean, I guess manufacturing, but you know what I'm saying. There's very different goals and objectives outside this. How does Dell approach. That's
[00:05:27] Pierluca Chiodelli: exactly one of the challenge. Took upon when we decide to go to the edge and when we decide to go to the edge, not just with the fact that we go in and place the normal compute, it's to understanding, right?
And Dell is embarking in this adventure that we start about three years ago with very few people and now we have an entire bu right, that is looking at this stuff. So what is intriguing is really that point that at the edge you need to understand how you. The things that someone is doing, right, their core processes, their outcome, it's all about the outcome.
So we are bringing in our teams people that they understand this thing. Dell is investing in recruiting a lot of talent from industry that they understand this. And I mean, Matthew was working with Warren, one of my guys, Warren, as an extensive iot IT industrial experience. And that's what we need to. You looking for a
[00:06:29] Matt Trifiro: brewer on your, your job board , your second career?
Well, so one of the, the, to me, one of the most interesting parts of our conversation, because I've. In most [00:06:40] of my interviews have come at this from a very technology standpoint. You know, we debated a little bit Pier Luka about Well is on-premises really edge, and I think one of the most interesting things to me was the idea that these environments are different.
That yes, okay, coy it is on the premises, but in traditional IT on-premises you have an IT staff, you have a data center, you have these things that look like computers are normally in. How do you look? Bringing this new technology into a business where I'm pretty sure Matthew does not wanna hire an IOT engineer and an IT person, least not, not team soon.
Tell me how that will work, especially with these small and medium sized businesses that don't have that expertise. I, I think
[00:07:22] Pierluca Chiodelli: this is a great question and allow me to explain what are the, the technology things that we are looking to make this happen. As you explained, I mean, Matt here is not gonna hire someone for.
It, OT stuff? Not today, not tomorrow, not 10 years from now. It's probably gonna be focused in producing more and more best beer that he can. That's his outcome, right? And how you fix the fact that Matthew doesn't have people there and. How you fix the fact that there is no people that they working on the floor, that understand a compute, understand an application.
So how we fix that, we fix that with the software that we are development, that is Project Frontier, that is a horizontal platform that really try to solve the edge. So what we did different, yes. We start from the constraint of the edge. We start from the fact that you are outside of the data [00:08:20] center. We start from the fact that you don't have an IT person.
You need to start with a very small compute and then grow. The ability to grow automatically. You need to be secure. You need to have what we call basically zero it and zero touch. And so in that case, what is gonna happen that I can ship the compute with the application and whatever it needs to map you and it can just plug it in.
and he's coming up and someone will take care automatically to deploy the application that he needs today. Use talent. Device wise, that application will be deployed automatically on the gateway that has, that is outside of a data center. It's actually, if you see the picture, it's in a small, I can call on a wall on a box, right?
That is nothing. Like a rack or stuff like that, and yes, couple of cable there and that's it. And it is exposed to the humidity and all the things that you're doing when you're doing beer, right? It's a different environment, so that's the key. You need to design with the in mind that you come from a different place.
That's where Dell stretch himself to understand these things, and that's why we love to go to Matthew, because also he's a very small place. Where he has a limited budget and is not thinking of technology as the first thing. But you need to think about doing the best beer that he can for a limited type of audience, that appreciate the quality of the beer, how you maintain the quality, and how doing all of that you need to be able to deploy technology in the easiest ways possible, right?
Like we do in our home. [00:10:00] When we have all these, you know, smart devices.
[00:10:02] Matthew Steinberg: Yeah,
[00:10:02] Matt Trifiro: I, I, you know, it's, it's actually a, a great little heuristic. People who don't think of technology as the first thing, and you're right, it's consumers like, I'm in this business, but like, I just wanna plug my box in and have it work.
I don't have the patience for it. I have other things to do. Yes. , Matthew, you know, one of the things we, we talked about the, the canning line and the canning machine and how you brought that in and all, all that. Like, why do you. The people that make those machines don't build this quality assurance technology into the machine
[00:10:28] Matthew Steinberg: itself.
Wow. That is a very loaded question. I mean, they, a lot of 'em don't even have manuals on how to use the machine. So really, I mean, some, do they send a guy or you guys just have to figure it out? They send a person to help us set it up, and we can hire a consultant to do that, or we can hire from within to do that.
When we installed our canning line, we had a gentleman come and help us set. And then a rep from the company comes in and kind of is there for the first few runs and they're like, you're doing fine. You're good. See you later. There is such a massive learning curve with process packaging equipment. It just is, and there is some technology inside the equipment for sure, in the plc.
Whether it's counting how many cans go through it or pressures that the beer is at and the temperature and flow meters and things like that. But it's limited. I mean, these are small companies too. Wild Goose manufacturing, who makes our canning line, they're in Colorado. They're a small business, they're a successful small business.
They built many, many machines, but they are not a technology business. And I think it would be, I mean, it would be really interesting to bring edge technology or something like it to. This type of process equipment so that it's built to suit. It's like, okay, these are the pain points. These are the challenges that we have.
This is the [00:11:40] equipment. Figuring out the details of that and kind of spitting out that data, it's like, okay, you lost 200 cans on this particular spot. Why? Let's fix that. I think it's kind of a little bit of a trial and error. when it comes to these things. Some of this equipment is built and then like they realize, oh wait, it might work better if we do this.
And that's something that happens constantly.
[00:12:00] Matt Trifiro: Uh, uh, if you look underneath or they're like, you know, jury rig, duct tape and bubble gum, sort of like, we
[00:12:06] Matthew Steinberg: have zip, we have zip ties. We have a couple. We don't have any duct tape, thankfully. Um, we have some zip ties. We have like bag clips, you know, like heavy duty clips that are holding.
Conveyor belt arm so that it diverts a can in a certain direction. Um, but for the most part, this, this, this equipment is really well built. Yeah. It's just really challenging to use and just by nature.
[00:12:28] Matt Trifiro: Now, PI Luka, what about moving upstream? I mean, it sounds like Wild Goose. It was a name. It sounds like a, an amazing opportunity for small business who makes.
Processing equipment to differentiate their equipment, to make it smart, to make it like an Alexa or some other device that you just plug in. Imagine Matthew. Imagine what your life would be like if you just plugged it in and like configured it with a gooey and then it worked. Yeah. So tell, tell me about how Dell might think of embedding in the equipment.
Yeah, I'm sure you've thought about it.
[00:12:55] Pierluca Chiodelli: Yeah, absolutely. So exactly that use case is something that we working on with the partners. Right. I will do an analogy. You have F1 race car, and then you have the car that you produce every day. The analogy is, uh, F1 cars, they always have the best and brightest technology.
Some of that technology will become very interesting, become part of every. That's the kind of things [00:13:20] that we see. Mm-hmm. with Dell, we can just accelerate that because we have a partner ecosystem actually. Uh, one of the things we are working on with the cans is with cognacs. And cognacs does here, is actually down the street here in Massachusetts, very close to Exhibit A there.
Main things is to use, uh, computer vision to understand packaging and machine and understand how the packaging quality and everything. So, Connex, for example, is the main provider of giant distributor, and they can, uh, basically on a conveyor belt, they can scan hundreds of package. With 30 plus camera and see everything that is happening in the microsecond without stopping the converter belt.
The same technology we will use to demonstrate one of the cans, for example, line. So the, my point is having the connection with Dell that can scale and can breed the technology to all type of people from, uh, small business like Exhibit eight to large implementation and having solution that married together will allow.
To really get into the end of, of Matthew as well. So that's just an example. So having an ecosystem, That ecosystem can run in a platform like we build in, then allow you to bring them to multiple people, not only to the very large one that they can permit themselves to have arm enough people come in there and develop their own solution.
[00:14:54] Matt Trifiro: Yeah, so the cost part of, it's really interesting. I was in my dorm room the same years as Michael Dell was in [00:15:00] his dorm room now. He was building computers, and building a multi-billion dollar business. Uh, and I was studying philosophy, so it was very different arc. I realized Dell is a gigantic company and delivers products to all sizes and shapes and.
Price points and all of this, but I think of Dell as the scrappy cost reducing, like that was the place you went when you got like a great computer for a great price through the mail with the custom configuration. Like that was, that was Dell's sweet spot. And I'm wondering that culture, I, I seem to sense a little bit of that culture here in addressing a smaller, medium sized business because Matthew's gonna have to choose between.
Adding some new piece of, of iot automation sensing equipment versus like buying a better canning machine or something like that. So how, how do you think about the cost piece of this?
[00:15:46] Pierluca Chiodelli: I think the cost piece is coming with the roi, right? It's really when you invest X and you can demonstrate also for Matthew, if we can demonstrate that he's very reliable now, it can produce always the quality, then he start to think that maybe 10 to 20% of what he spent today.
It will invest in technology. Right. So I don't think it's about the chip, it's about the fact that you can really change the outcome. Yeah. And, and the quality of the outcome. Right. So there is nobody, I mean, I speak today also large customer, that if you say to them and demonstrate to them that, for example, you can implement a preventive maintenance solution and saving 30% of your productivity, nobody will say, The fact that is inside of that solution, there is a particular technology or other things that is secondary to [00:16:40] Depro.
Right. Let, lemme
[00:16:41] Matt Trifiro: push on that a little bit. Cause I think there's an interesting trend that, that I want to sort of get Matthew's perspective on. So I understand that, and I think that on paper that looks great. Matthew's gotta manage his cash flow, right? And so an upfront investment for a return. That might take years is a very tough decision for a small business.
One of the trends, and Dell is definitely on this trend with like your Apex product line, but one of the trends is for businesses that have traditionally had to buy things as capital investments. Are starting to ask their vendors to offer them as a service 3 cents per can per month, or whatever the, whatever the right, right metric is.
And so I, I sort of want to get both your perspective, Matthew. I wanna get your perspective from like the cashflow and how you'd like to think about purchasing these. And tell me a little bit how, how you think about investing in equipment and how. As a service might or
[00:17:37] Matthew Steinberg: might not change your thinking? I mean, this is something I think a ton about because like for instance, we have a piece of equipment on our canning line that we would like to replace.
It is the PAC Tech applicator. It's what puts the plastic carrier onto the cans at the end of the machine. It is a problem. It's challenge spot. It fails, it shuts down the, the line temporarily. Sometimes it'll break cans. It'll do all sorts of things, including put them on correctly and we're good to go. I have looked at a more ecological, green, sustainable product in place of the plastic Pex, which is a, a, a compostable carrier.
The product itself is great. I love the. Delivering a compostable product alongside our [00:18:20] cans, something that we're big fans of, of being green and, and being sustainable. The product itself, like I said, is fine. It's the applicator that is cost-prohibitive. So I said to the company, I haven't heard a response, just to be clear, Hey, look, how's like a rent to own?
How's a payment plan? How about providing the applicator for us with the agreement that we will sign a contract for your product? Meaning I'll commit to five years of your product. And this is how much I'll buy. And this is what I'll say about it, and this is how we'll present it in a marketing standpoint.
But I don't wanna spend a hundred thousand dollars on an applicator, or more importantly, I cannot spend a hundred thousand dollars on an applicator. It just doesn't work for us. So the question is, is is that company willing to look at their applicator as a service? Yeah. To selling their product line?
And that's something that we've thought a lot about in terms of the technology side with Dell and the Edge. Yeah, I mean, if I can look at here's the efficiencies and improvements that this will, this particular installation will create and make for us. I look at it in very real terms of like, okay, this is our improved efficiency.
This is how much more beer we'll get out of every batch, and this is the quality side. Meaning the beer's on, on point and tastes great, then we end up looking at it and say, okay, ROI is three years, or whatever it might be. It makes sense or it doesn't, you know, and it's a very clean and, and not necessarily a simple choice, but it's definitely one that we look at consistently with all of our types of installations that we've done, whether it's a small.
Several hundred dollars investment to tens of thousands of dollars investment because we don't fully understand the technology. We rely on Pier Luca and his team [00:20:00] to share with us what that technology is gonna do for us and how it's gonna add to our, you know, I'm not looking for a fit, I'm looking for an ad.
You know, I want this to improve what we do, not just kind of like status quo. So, so that's really important for us. And obviously just the straight value that it adds to our small.
[00:20:16] Matt Trifiro: Yeah, per Luca, talk to me about the sort of shifting business models and how you view that. Yeah, absolutely
[00:20:22] Pierluca Chiodelli: Matthew. It's, it's, uh, on point.
We are shifting the entire company to move, move more as a service and also consume on demand things. The edge is not different. We will offer in our software platform, Based on subscription model, because at the end of the day, if you're doing that from a software point of view, but also from an hardware point of view, at some point you can get to that refresh cycle that Matthew and company bigger than Matthew needs.
For example, I was speaking with the retail. Store. Their challenge is, okay, whatever AI choose today as a compute six months from now may be different because we have so much transformation at the edge that it may be possible to buy something for 10 years. So we work out with them and we have a different refresh cycle and they pay as you go.
So it's a financial model that give agility to actually the consumer of that offering. And we are all on that, right? Apex is, uh, is our overarching thing. This is not different. It's gonna be part of that offering in term of financial
[00:21:36] Matthew Steinberg: agility.
[00:21:37] Matt Trifiro: Yeah. One of the things that I think is really neat about this trend [00:21:40] is it's also about.
The suppliers, the vendors sharing the risk and, and I think that really aligns incentives in a way that it hasn't been when it was transactional. And that's, to me, is gonna yield some really exciting things in the future. And Matthew, what I really wanna know is when can I get exhibit A as a service?
[00:21:58] Matthew Steinberg: Yeah, I hear you. Yeah. Yeah.
[00:22:01] Matt Trifiro: That's great. Hey gentlemen, this has been just a. Time together and next time I'm in the, uh, Massachusetts area, we should sit down and, uh, pop a few exhibit a's
[00:22:11] Matthew Steinberg: together. Absolutely. I'm in. Yep, I'm in. Let's do all together. All right, . Great. Thank you. That does it for
[00:22:17] Narrator 2: this episode of Over the Edge.
If you're enjoying the show, please leave a rating in a review and tell a friend Over the Edge is made possible through the Jenna sponsorship of our partners at Dell Technologies. Simplify your edge so you can generate more value. Learn more by visiting dell.com.