Adi Prasad, CEO, Matter, on OEM Decision-Making for New Tech Solutions, Autonomous Factories, Physical AI.

Technological innovation in industrial automation is strong. But technology alone is not enough, especially when looking to scale your solutions at some of the most sophisticated OEMs in the world. As Adi Prasad puts it, manufacturing is a systems problem! With over a decade of OEM wisdom, in the most recent episode of Humans Who Build, Adi answers the most common questions that industrial automation founders have: What mechanisms and stakeholders inside enterprise OEMs evaluate and decide on new automation solutions? How to think about building automation products - around specific processes or broader systems? When does automation actually make things worse in factories? How tightly coupled are tooling and automation - can one be changed without the other? How do manufacturing environments differ across Apple, Tesla, and Rivian? What does Adi think about his former boss, RJ Scaringe's new startup, Mind Robotics? :) Adi has been on the manufacturing teams of some of the most significant OEMs of the world, leading the launch of Tesla’s Model 3 battery-enclosure lines, Apple’s iPhone battery ramp, and three Rivian module lines. He also briefly worked with Travis Kalanick at CloudKitchens. After 2 years at HBS, he co-founded Matter, along with his former colleagues and friends including Charly Mwangi, Aish Varadhan, and Aditya Ranjan. At Matter, they are building America's autonomous manufacturing infrastructure, the software, hardware, and factory network focused on complex electromechanical products. Please enjoy the episode. If you liked it, and want to learn more about the industrial automation space, please like and subscribe. :) #factories #manufacturing #tesla #systems #artificialintelligence