Your Machines Have a Heartbeat: Here’s What It’s Telling You | Ep #48

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What if the most powerful sensor on your shop floor isn’t a camera or a probe or a vibration puck—but a power cord? That’s the premise Lauren Dunford, co-founder and CEO of Guidewheel, brought to the show, and she explained it using a hundred toasters.

Guidewheel clips a current transformer around the cord and reads the electrical heartbeat of a machine. No PLC integration, no open heart surgery, no waiting on a controller vendor. From those tiny fluctuations the platform gets run, idle, and down, then cycle counts, cycle times, early maintenance warnings, and in a lot of cases which SKU is running and where the anomalies are. It works on your CNC equipment, and it works on the compressors, chillers, conveyors, and palletizers that quietly stop your plant.

We also got into the question this show keeps circling. Is monitoring surveillance? Lauren’s answer is that the data has to be used with the team, never on it. She would rather see posters, t-shirts, and a shift competing to win the hour than one manager holding a dashboard nobody else can see. If you have ever suspected your utilization number is fiction, this one is worth your commute.

What’s Covered in this Episode

• (1:30) The most powerful sensor on your floor might be the power cord
• (6:03) Lauren’s origin story: a hairnet, a food plant, and being hooked for life
• (7:36) The parking lot calls to customers that sent her back to Stanford
• (8:34) Rebuilding her product around how the customers used it
• (9:51) Shipping a rough prototype and letting three VPs of Ops tear it apart
• (13:23) What you should never vibe code: PLCs, safety, and data integrity
• (14:24) MakingChips machine giveaway with DN Solutions and Kennametal
• (15:09) Slytek in the cut versus Guidewheel across the whole plant
• (18:58) Heartbeat of everything: From run, idle, and down to part counts and cycle times
• (21:13) Spotting which SKU is running and flagging cycle anomalies for quality
• (21:49) Just because you can doesn’t mean you should
• (24:06) Why we love SMW Autoblok for high-quality workholding
• (24:50) The anomaly alert that caught smoking machines before a fire
• (26:48) 42% to 95% uptime from staggered breaks, on-time starts, and microstops
• (28:39) The opportunity hidden in “unsexy” things in the industry
• (29:45) The rage quit, five waiting on tool events, and a 37 minute payback
• (30:33) Real utilization by industry and the money left on table
• (32:43) Invest in ProShop ERP to invest in your business
• (34:19) The CapEx request for a machine that was actually running at 7%
• (38:16) Building a culture of continuous improvement and growth mindset
• (44:04) Is monitoring surveillance? Using data with the team, not on the team
• (48:01) Lauren’s pitch to a 22 year old considering manufacturing
• (50:20) Three tactics: get good data, turn it into action, and listen to your team

Resources Mentioned

• Guidewheel
• Slytek Machine Intelligence
• MakingChips Machine Giveaway
• IMTS
• SMW Autoblok
• ProShop ERP
• The Goal

Connect with Lauren Dunford

• Guidewheel
• Connect on LinkedIn