Billy Riggs (00:42)
Welcome everybody to Rewiring the American Edge where we explore automation, innovation and how policy is reshaping the future of work and life in America and around the world. I am Billy Riggs. I'm joined here by Vipul Vyas, my amazing co-host. Today,

I have the honor of, being joined by Parker Huncilman and we're going to talk Midwestern manufacturing and Parker also happens to be my brother-in-law. So we're keeping it all in the family. Really happy to have him as a family member and friend here.

And Vipul joining us from sunny Palo Alto, I know you're eager to meet Parker and talk about, this idea of Midwestern transition. Do you want to start us off just kind of asking Parker about himself?

Vipul Vyas (01:43)
I'm interested to hear what the future manufacturing the US says because it's definitely a topic to sure I have some frustrations as well on that subject. So I'll talk about those in a minute

Parker Huncilman (01:56)
I'll be interested to see if those align with mine.

Billy Riggs (01:59)
Rewiring the American edge is really something we started as professor types earlier this year. And we've been on a journey talking to people about how we can make American enterprise more competitive.

but situating it in the global context. And what we've seen is there's a lot happening in the middle part of the US, but there's a lot of influences globally where we see competition and things happening that we need to be informed by.

There's a lot of knowledge that we need to be aware of and being from middle America, I think it's important that people be aware of that, but also that we be prepared to learn but also to be able to import and export knowledge and information. And so I think what we're talking about is being

Parker Huncilman (02:31)
you

Billy Riggs (02:49)
ready for the knowledge and the information future. And so we focus on

this idea of the AI and the automation future. And that's what Vipul and I have really been focused on and everything I've talked to you about Parker in our social and personal lives has been about preparing your company

for that future and Vipul I don't know, you know, that's why we started this this little podcast, which is a spin off of a center that I started called the Autonomous Vehicles & the City Initiative. Vipul I don't know if you want to add to that vision statement that I just put forward, we've got one loyal really loyal listener, my mother who you know very well Parker.

Parker Huncilman (03:27)
No.

Billy Riggs (03:31)
But Vipul, I don't know if you want to add to my little framing

statement there.

Vipul Vyas (03:36)
No, I'd rather just hear from people who are in the trenches doing things.

Parker Huncilman (03:42)
There you go. Well, just a brief rundown of who I am, what I do, where I'm at in my career. So I'm a fifth generation managing partner and owner of Huncilman Sheet Metal Fabrication. We're a mid-size fabricating company in the Midwestern region, just north of Louisville, Kentucky.

Recently gone through a merger with a company called Nix Industrial. And I'll step back for second. I'm the actual, fifth generation to operate the business. We started in 1896, incorporated in 1913. So we've been in active business since then with the Huncilman family and the Nix family. So Nix Industrial is a family owned company as well, run by two brothers, Adam and Matthew Nix.

They're fifth generations to operate in their business as well, starting around the 1903 timeframe. They are a like kind of business. bring out a lot of things at the table that we don't facilitate in-house from a fabricating standpoint. we fabricate sheet metal and build componentry for OEM manufacturers. And Nix industrial platforms have everything to offer the steel markets from

structural steel assemblies for buildings, heavier industrial platforms, build outs for innards of the building per se. We have high tolerance machining operations in Cincinnati and the Evansville market. So essentially our headquarters now are out of Evansville and we're a satellite location, which we call our Louisville facility. We operate around 70 employees at our facility and we're just north of 200.

company-wide now.

Billy Riggs (05:19)
Hey Parker, just for all the listeners that are around the world that are trying to put a pin on the map. Can you explain where's the, where those cities are? Evansville, some people may not have heard of where that, that city is. So maybe you can put a pin on the map for this.

Parker Huncilman (05:33)
Yeah, sure,

you know, Louisville, Kentucky, south central part of the Midwest Rivertown, Evansville is much like Louisville, just on a much smaller scale. So it would be to the west two hours from us, an hour and half per se. It has regional reach from a sales perspective. You know, we could theoretically they could sell out of Evansville to Louisville market. So we're close in that nature.

Billy Riggs (05:47)
Yeah, yeah, so if

Yeah, so so for all of our European friends or our friends in Asia, that's, know, if you're if you're going on a map about, you know, three or 300 miles south of Earth, you know, 600 kilometers south of Chicago, you know, you take four steps, four steps south of Chicago and two steps west of that and you might end up somewhere, somewhere near Evansville. ⁓

Parker Huncilman (06:20)
Yeah, call

us right of center. How about that?

Billy Riggs (06:25)
Yeah. I think there was a Daniel Day Lewis quote somewhere, somewhere near there in Last of the Mohicans, but, you know, somewhere about Kentucky going, "going west to Kentucky" or, and then, you know, somewhere, somewhere east of St. Louis, but, we'll, we'll leave it at that. don't want to get all James Fenimore Cooper on you. But you know, I think this is, if we were to,

Parker Huncilman (06:33)
Yeah.

Billy Riggs (06:50)
kind of distill this back to what we talk about as a part of this. We talk a lot about the geography of innovation.

And I think, you know, what I just heard from you was a little bit about the history of how Huncilman has really been about, I'll just call it 150 years of having an innovative

business and what Vipul and I have continually talked about is, we're here situated and what people call or have referred to as one of the, the continual innovation centers of the US but I think what we see is with AI and, with kind of new forms of automation, there's an opportunity

to innovate other places and there we're seeing new innovation clusters emerge with a different DNA that may not be about venture capital and new opportunities to see startups arise with that it can address real problems with materials and

that can be about making things. And I that's what I see you as; a real maker. And Vipul I don't know if you want to add to this, because we've really been talking about this idea of the resurgence of using technology to bring back building and you've talking you've talked a little bit about the bringing back shipbuilding to the US and I know if you want to remind listeners about how you you've talked about shipbuilding in the US.

Parker Huncilman (08:12)
Okay.

Well, I'll tell it this is an interesting aside on that on that matter and when I got to know the Nix brothers You know, they they took we were a much larger business from when they were young my they're basically calling three four years older than me and Adam Nix is about my age. So they scaled their business enormously over the last 15-20 years

Vipul Vyas (08:25)
Yeah.

Parker Huncilman (08:47)
We were a much bigger platform when I started, which would have been at their age group. but they've since surpassed us in size, obviously through &A activity. But, one of the interesting stories was when they basically took the keys to their business from their dad as he retired. The first project that they bid was to build a yacht that a gentleman out of Evansville was going to put on the Ohio river. And it was this

gigantic project that they had no clue that they could wrap their hands around, but they bid it and got the job. And essentially that was the kickoff for them to accelerate to where we are today, which I mean, obviously that's not shipbuilding, but it was, it was interesting because as fabricators, it just gives you scale of what we're capable of. But yeah. So as an aside anyways, just tell me about your thoughts on, what you're speaking to there.

Vipul Vyas (09:35)
Yeah, and it's probably a little bit jumbled but I think for me, there's a good bit of frustration. First of all, Billy on your pointer on VC funding and the ecosystem here, you know Northern California.

The model has been rinsed and repeat exported everywhere actually probably started more route 128 in Boston and then came here and because there's less of a... There's more risk taking appetite here culturally. I think it's a very cultural thing it really took off but

You know, with vibe coding and AI, you don't need lots and lots of VC money to actually get a going concern up and running anymore, even in the software space. And I think that we're going to see a lot more. In fact, the threshold to raise money is much higher. You have to have essentially a business already running and really money is now being; capital is used to deploy, is used to scale, not.

test hypotheses as much as it used to be. It used to be you used to have a seed or a series A to see if something had any there there. Now it's like, look, you can bootstrap that and then the money's gonna come in to hit the gas. On the manufacturing side;

and Parker, I apologize. I'm going to speak more to what I see around here is ⁓ there's a lot of prototyping that happens here. But ultimately, the prototypes are then reduced to manufacturing at scale overseas. And my frustration is, I mean, maybe that makes sense to some degree to do that, but I'm not sure. I'm not convinced of that. Because

Parker Huncilman (10:52)
Sure.

Mm-hmm.

Vipul Vyas (11:14)
labor's not as, I mean, it's always gonna be a significant input. There's no doubt about that. But with robotics and other manufacturing techniques, the 3D printing to some extent, although I think that that was overhyped, a lot of the stuff can be done here. And the barriers to getting stuff done here are not labor costs. It's actually expertise. And...

A robust supply chain of all the little tiny components. I try to get some garment stuff, you know textile which is like most ancient type of manufacturing next to food. I mean if you look restaurants as a factory if you will too, but just getting things sewn and that was a vibrant industry in LA. Not anymore. I mean it's and even in New York for that matter in the southeast, but it just It's just completely dismantled

And I think to reconstitute that is gonna be a conscious effort. I also see, and I'm not speaking to Parker here, but when I've tried to engage US manufacturers, there's just a little lack of hustle because many of them have their customers are kind of set. There's not a level of hunger that would make sense, that I would expect.

Like I said, this is I'm speaking It would love to get partners thoughts on this and I'll shut up here in a second is that I see a lot of mom and pops are more family-owned businesses Many of them are sort of just set they're like, okay, I'm good And then you said they're like I'll put in a request and it'll take like weeks to get a response back versus Something I sent to Southeast Asia will get like they know right away and then they won't stop. They won't leave me alone

Parker Huncilman (12:26)
.

Vipul Vyas (12:54)
And so I noticed that. And then the other thing on the policy side, I'll close with this is from California specifically, and we've talked about this, shipbuilding. The Navy wants to build ships, something bad. And not to make it too simple, but shipbuilding at scale is really putting up a piece of metal, welding it to another piece of metal, and doing that over and over again until you have a ship. And there has been no thirst.

Parker Huncilman (13:06)
Okay.

Vipul Vyas (13:20)
to get that done. Philly secured a South Korean ship manufacturer

to come and put a presence up, but nothing from the policymakers. Daniel Lurie, who's a mayor here in San Francisco, is constantly on social media raving about even the smallest nail salon opening. Yet, at the state level, Dee Dee Meyer, who's supposed to be doing the business or commercial policy for the state, I don't think I've seen a press release from her in the entire time she's been here.

Parker Huncilman (13:36)
Okay.

Vipul Vyas (13:48)
There is not and if you talk about like the Mississippi of the West the Central Valley is impoverished probably

and no

Parker Huncilman (13:55)
Yeah? Yeah. Well, no, you'll probably

be too delighted to hear that what we're doing with our businesses is we're trying to break that mold. So we're in a market that exactly, you hit the nail on the head with. There's a lot of mom and pop shops out there and they're progressing in retirement and they're either folding or they're going into the market to be

basically put into other facets or other larger companies.

Exactly.

And in fact, that is one reason why I'm at where I am with our business because I was very reluctant and was not willing to take our business into the hands of private equity for that matter. So what we're trying to do is we're trying to break that mold to where we can acquire and we can start to operate these businesses and invest in them with technology to be able to get the response times and get the accuracy of what we're building to the market quicker. So, for instance,

Mom and pop fabricators are everywhere. I do business with a lot of them. Some of them are great resources to me just because we've had a long relationship with them. We're gaining new suppliers almost daily where we're weeding out the ones that are good or the ones that are bad. But what we're trying to do is we look at our competition being, per se, the mom and pop threshold of business and saying, okay, if we consume these,

these guys and we make them a part of our business. can't just keep them as a mom and pop operation on the side, know, turning dollars and making some income. We've got to streamline all of all of our our business units to perform at a level to where we can respond quickly. And that's where your AI, you know, conversation comes into play because specifically with estimating estimating is a very difficult and laborious task.

and especially in the metal industry. Yeah. And we are, there's very few days that go by where we don't have the conversation or we're looking at a product or a portal to put into our estimating systems that we're gonna be able to basically take CAD data and dump it into it and get that function right off the gate. Now, outside of that, when they actually, you're putting parts on the floor, you know, they're,

Vipul Vyas (15:43)
It's called drudgery.

Parker Huncilman (16:09)
There's very few fabricators that are using offline programming. And I'm well aware of where the industry is going, or at least in my opinion. So what you're going to see is, you're going to see machine manufacturers start to take over as a service for your programming. So literally, you're going to be buying services from your machine manufacturers and putting those on your floor and operating them to whatever scale you can based on whatever.

capital inputs you have to put into those. that's the avenue that we're looking down to be able to try to bridge that gap where we're not trying to form metal by pounding it over an anvil with a hammer. In a sense, that's how lot of the fabricators in the Midwest still operate.

Vipul Vyas (16:50)
I I think it's really heartening that the.

That's the music to my ears. I just have a emergency. I'm going to have to go deal with a burst pipe.

Billy Riggs (17:00)
You need a plumber. You know, and I, our family knows all about the need for plumbers. So that's our that's our second profession in the Huncilman Riggs household. So you go you go deal with that. We will continue I think you know, Parker, I want to

Parker Huncilman (17:04)
Alright.

Vipul Vyas (17:06)
shut off the main to the house actually. I'm gonna be right

Parker Huncilman (17:07)
That's my second.

Vipul Vyas (17:14)
That's be right back

Parker Huncilman (17:14)
Well, it's almost become a hobby.

Billy Riggs (17:21)
kind of scratch the surface a little more on, know, something you were saying, I love the private equity piece as well. You know, one thing you were saying there, with the, AI piece and the machines. I want to talk about what the machines are doing and give people a real visual illustration of what.

is really happening on the factory floor. And of course people can go to Huncilman.com and see graphic illustrations of laser cutting and precision forming and robotic welding. And they can't feel the heat of E coating and painting, but they can maybe see graphically what it looks like.

Parker Huncilman (17:44)
Okay.

Billy Riggs (18:06)
But can you share with us

examples of what some of the products are that that in the future might be you might get a an order or you'd be able to do AI pricing and do some kind of automated based design and things like that for but at the end of the day, there is physical forming and there is machine based

services that have to be done in the factory. So what are those physical products look like that come out of Huncilman and Nix?

Parker Huncilman (18:36)
Yeah, so the easiest way that I've described what and I'll speak to to Huncilman sheet metal fabrication specifically on this but the easiest way to describe it is if you're to walk in a big-box store Lowe's Home Depot and you're gonna buy a sheet of plywood it's gonna come in a size four by eight feet and width and length

We buy sheet in those sizes, which are different sizes, typically 6 by 12 or 4 by 8. And we cut those products. Sometimes we cut them, and that's the only function that goes into them or input. Typically, we try to obviously use all of our resources because you make more margin on the part if you utilize all your machinery. So we're cutting those parts with CNC lasers, fiber optic lasers, and then we're putting them through forming cells, which are called press brakes.

We're using the press bricks to bend the componentry. A lot of the times those components go into welding cells. We've got robotic welders as well as manual welding. And we formulate a part. So then the part is what somebody working in their garage wants to build something out of wood, we build it out of metal. And then what those parts do is we either

E-coat them in-house, which is a primer coat, which is predominantly an automotive coating, and then we sell those parts to our customer that has designed the product for those to essentially bolt onto. So if you look at a lawn mower and you see all the bits and pieces bolted or welded together, those pieces are typically not made by the manufacturer. They're made by manufacturers like us as a second tier or third tier supplier.

Billy Riggs (19:57)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Parker Huncilman (20:14)
essentially

parts and pieces made from a metal sheet is the core of our business. So when you... Go ahead. I was going to say, I don't know if you're asking to say how the inputs of AI and the advancements in machinery can affect that. So a lot of the ideas of how we're going to modify what...

Billy Riggs (20:20)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So... No, it's fine.

Parker Huncilman (20:42)
what we have now and what most of our competition does now is you have to look at it from a sales perspective. So we're trying to find business and bid business that's like kind, so repetitive. ⁓ We're not a heavy stamper. So there's a threshold between press break forming and heavy stamping. Heavy stamping is a high volume game, hundreds of thousands of parts annually. We're thousands of parts. But the machine market

Billy Riggs (20:55)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Parker Huncilman (21:11)
we can find cell technologies where we're actually having robotic arms feed press breaks in repetition. So you can think down that path of advancements and so on and so forth. So repetition and cell type environments where there, know, materials coming from the laser to a cell department and only has to get touched once versus four times and so on.

Billy Riggs (21:32)
I've

been, I've been talking with my, architects and designers, my students in architecture and design quite a bit about this. And on one hand, talking about this theme, to build, is to design.

And how we need not just think about just do producing beautiful designs, but actually designs that can be executed and built. But at the same time, what you're bringing up is is that you're you're almost a Swiss Army knife of sorts that you're you're not just doing one thing you're doing architecture fabrication. And you're basically

doing a whole string of things in house. But I think what I'm also hearing is that you're you're doing a large degree of specialization, as opposed to diversification. Am I hearing you right?

Parker Huncilman (22:20)
Yeah, to a degree.

I would describe it as we, what we say is we're not responsible for the design of the part. When we bid a part, it fits our profile. So we don't do a lot of design engineering. Now what you're speaking to on the, know, the more of the prototyping realm, we don't get into a tremendous amount of prototyping. In fact, we shy away from it. It's just that business model hasn't really been a road we've wanted to go down.

Billy Riggs (22:36)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Parker Huncilman (22:53)
referenced earlier, a lot of that is, you know, in the larger cities where, you know, capital is being put towards developing those products. So, you know, you can afford to build them, right? You can afford to fail. And, you know, we're just not in the business to where we can prototype and afford to fail. Now we do engineering, don't get me wrong. I mean, and a lot of times we'll get to get a design in and recommend engineering changes regularly, but we're not necessarily

Billy Riggs (23:13)
Mm-hmm.

Parker Huncilman (23:21)
or we don't consider ourselves at Huncilman Sheet Metal design fabricators.

Billy Riggs (23:26)
Yeah, yeah. And that's cool. I mean, I think you've you've really found a niche with you. You mentioned, you know, lawnmower parts. And I know you're working with with with many interestingly non U.S. automotive suppliers, which is it's really cool that you're able to I think most people don't realize that you're able to supply parts. You're able to export parts outside of the U.S. So I think when we consider the

Parker Huncilman (23:41)
Mm-hmm.

Billy Riggs (23:53)
the fact that like you have a Midwestern, you know, fifth generation factory that's actually able to supply parts for non us OEMs. It's a really cool, cool story to tell.

Parker Huncilman (24:05)
Yeah, I mean just to give you some examples of that we ship we ship globally the majority of the products that we ship internationally go to Mexico some to Canada Europeans Italy and Switzerland we do since the componentry over there from time to every major automotive company we we have we're touching parts that are going into their assembly plants

Billy Riggs (24:18)
Yeah.

That's

really cool story. And one piece I wanted to talk and I know we're taking parts of your Friday and you have a family so we want to be respectful of that and really grateful for your time. I wanted to, you you spent some time letting, you know, you...

You are situated in the Midwest and labor is an issue. And I think labor is an issue nationwide talent and labor and finding qualified labor. And so I'm curious kind of how, how do you deal with retaining and attracting talent? What are your biggest challenges with kind of talent capital?

culture in the workplace? How do you deal with that as a leader, as a manager? And I'm curious, what are your biggest challenges there and how do you overcome them?

Parker Huncilman (25:16)
So from a cultural standpoint, you know, I've said this many times, you know, when I, when we decided to progress with the business, being my dad, my uncle who were active in it, retiring, you know, we had a

We had a deficit in the culture realm. We just weren't doing a very good job of it. you know, with doing what I did with the business, that was a huge portion of it. So the drive for Nix Industrial, that portion of the business, is enormously driven towards finding talent. So we put a ton of resources into our human resources department. Vocationally, we're active with all the vocational programs in Southern Indiana.

But we are definitely in a cycle of losing qualified operators. Cross training is a major thing that we've instituted at Huncilman Sheet Metal specifically. But I've seen a bit of a shift, which this is probably the most intriguing thing to me in the last two years that, I was thinking about this before we got on the call, but we're somewhere, I would say 15 to 20 %

of our staff is under the age of 25, which is unheard of in a sheet metal shop right now, and on the good side. you know, we have three operators in our fab division right now that are under the age of 20. And, you know, they're extremely great team members. They take on the technology like nobody's business. So to me, that tells you, okay,

that is the product in itself that you need to invest in is automation and technology because the younger generation just understands it. So the better the equipment gets to be able to facilitate the tech-driven individual, that's where you start to get your employment base from. So that's a critical part of investment.

Billy Riggs (27:10)
That's amazing. Yeah,

that's amazing. That's amazing. And you're at the same time, you're investing in the culture and the future of your company at the same time. And I don't think it takes a Stanford degree to get that. You can invest in your local degree.

Parker Huncilman (27:27)
No, it doesn't.

I mean, the biggest thing with culture is when you say you're going to do something, you better do it. Otherwise, culture will fall immediately. you know, the portion of that and the Nix brothers, I mean, they're hell bent on culture. And if you don't fit, you won't make it. And so that's what we need because, you know, that that's the team aspect that a lot of fabricators don't have. They've got they've got Joe and Jim that have been there for 35 years and they're loyal to them.

but they're not building a product with their business to allow people to want to work there. And that's our number one thing is to try to be a leader in our industry where people are lining up at the door to come work for us. And so culture is a massive drive for us. And it's been difficult for me because I'm transforming a current workforce into that culture. I'm taking the good with the bad because not everybody's gonna wanna transform into that.

And we have had a share of turnover, but it's been on tremendously to the good side.

Billy Riggs (28:29)
Yeah, that's really fascinating. And I mean, I think it sounds like it's an ongoing journey, but one that you have really good teammates in in the Nix brothers with. So, ⁓ yeah, so I just wanted to ask you if you I mean, I think we can kind of begin a wrap up, but, know, do you have any final thoughts for folks who might be listening?

Parker Huncilman (28:43)
Yep, I agree.

Billy Riggs (28:55)
Maybe, you know, sitting somewhere over and we have some folks listening in the Netherlands who are interested in kind of stuff happening scattered across the US about kind of where the next great manufacturing innovation might come from. You know, any any advice from middle America that you might you might have?

Parker Huncilman (29:16)
In my opinion, I think that we're going to see a substantial resurgence and you know, fabricated product, I'll speak to manufacturing in general. I mean, we still have a large footprint in manufacturing. When you really sniff out how much stuff we make in America, it's nothing what it was, but it's still here. So,

If we continue to invest in that, we're going to see a resurgence. you know, I hope to tell them what you're going to see is in the coming years is that we have a higher demand for fabricated product and again, speaking to us specifically, and we have a receding supply base. So the people that are successful with that are going to get good at it. And we're going to find our niche and we're going to continue on. don't think that I don't think we're in a cycle to where you're going to see

a big pullback on American manufacturing. There's a lot of course with the current administration of trying to do that, but I don't think that it's ever necessarily left to a massive degree. I've been in our business for 25 years and actively in management for over 15. I've seen offshoring and I've seen onshoring. And we were able to sustain growth throughout all of that.

So, you know, if we get good at it, which a lot of companies are doing this and a lot of people, lot of organizations are parking themselves right here in the Midwest. I'll speak to one development, River Ridge, where there are billions of dollars being invested with manufacturer data centers, everything, and they're here for a reason. So you're going to see the Midwest, think personally, start to build upon what we really haven't lost entirely.

Billy Riggs (31:02)
Well, you heard it folks. Innovation isn't zip code dependent. The geography of innovation is becoming more diverse. Parker, it's been a joy being on-site with you in the Midwest.

Thanks for sharing everything that you do at Huncilman. Really appreciate it. And thanks to you and all the crew there at the factory. And thanks to everybody that's tuning in. Catch up with us next time.

Parker Huncilman (31:31)
Thanks for letting me join.