Is the opportunity in front of you a stepping stone or a cliff? Learn how to tell the difference before you spend years climbing toward a summit with nowhere else to go.

Ashwini Balasubramanian is Vice President of R&D for 3M’s Transportation and Energy business, president of the Automotive Women’s Alliance Foundation, and author of “Map Your Ascent.” She grew up as the first registered student at a brand new school in a small Indian village and built a 24 year career across Bosch, Toyota, ZF, Martinrea, and Harley-Davidson. She was named an Automotive News Rising Star and gave the 2024 commencement address at the University of Michigan-Dearborn, the school where she earned her master’s at night.

In this episode, she explains:

🡒 The Opportunity Filter: The three questions she runs every offer through

🡒 The Raise Trap: Why making pay your only reason to move puts a ceiling on how far you’ll climb.

🡒 The Temporary Situation Rule: What a demanding new boss told her in their first one-on-one after she became a mother, and how it changed the way she leads.

🡒 The Generosity Compound: How a cold LinkedIn message from a struggling intern turned into a chief strategy officer call years later.

🡒 The Crisis Reflex: Why the first move most companies make in a crisis is exactly backwards.

Chapters

00:00 Intro

01:52 The first student in a village school

06:06 Twenty, broke, and getting a master’s at night

14:34 Why she’s swiped so many badges

16:45 The three questions in her opportunity filter

23:23 The offer two grades up

30:54 If you want influence, start with generosity

34:39 Two career inflection points nobody expects

43:56 A cold LinkedIn message that came back years later

53:50 Why the usual crisis playbook is wrong

~~~

This episode is powered by TeamSense

TeamSense is the AI-powered shift intelligence platform that automates attendance, connects every worker, and drives performance across your operation — all through text.

Ready to see how leading manufacturers and logistics teams keep every shift covered?

https://teamsense.com/

Prefer to listen?

https://pod.link/1896826304

When the alarm goes off, do you actually know who’s still inside your building? Learn how real time location tracking finds the people who never made it out and catches the shortcuts that put your whole floor at risk.

Mitch Tucker is a Regional Sales Consultant at HID Global. He helps Midwest manufacturers deploy real time location systems for production visibility, material flow, and worker safety. Before HID, he was VP of Global Professional Services at Ubisense, where he led delivery teams across the Americas and Europe. Earlier in his career he ran a shift of more than 40 people as a production supervisor in automotive manufacturing. He holds a mechanical engineering degree from Kettering University and an MBA from Michigan State’s Eli Broad College of Business, and he’s a certified Lean Manufacturing Champion.

In this episode, he explains:

🡒 Why nobody ever hits an 80% OEE target with someone looking over their shoulder

🡒 Why one line worker’s idea, raised at the very end of a workshop, justified a $1 million system on its own

🡒 Why tracking your people has nothing to do with counting bathroom breaks

🡒 The tornado warning on third shift that showed him how blind a headcount really is

🡒 How a torque gun on the assembly line knows to stop working when an operator jumps to the wrong station

Chapters

00:00 Intro

00:36 From Kettering co-op to the plant floor

11:02 Chasing a live map of the whole plant

15:50 HID beyond the badge scanner

22:43 The tornado warning and the missing headcount

29:45 Why third shift outperforms day shift

33:20 Handing a third shift operator a notepad

36:01 The station hack nobody saw coming

45:10 The line worker behind a $1.4M idea

49:45 Embrace the suck: advice for your 20s

~~~

This episode is powered by TeamSense

TeamSense is the AI-powered shift intelligence platform that automates attendance, connects every worker, and drives performance across your operation — all through text.

Ready to see how leading manufacturers and logistics teams keep every shift covered?

https://teamsense.com/

Prefer to listen?

https://pod.link/1896826304 #Manufacturing #RTLS #WorkplaceSafety #Operations #Industry40

Your plant can track the temperature on a single bearing, so why are you still guessing who shows up to run the line? Learn how one text message gives frontline workers their balances, their answers, and a voice in any language, and gives your supervisors the first hour of the shift back.

Sheila Stafford returns to Talk Real Shift as the cofounder and CEO of TeamSense, the platform connecting manufacturers to their frontline workers by text. She started as a General Motors manufacturing engineer leading about 100 skilled trades on a $25M assembly line conversion, then directed North American refrigeration product development at Whirlpool and led supply chain integration for its $1B Indesit acquisition. She holds a mechanical engineering degree from Duke and an MBA from Notre Dame, and she knows the first hour of a shift because she's lived it.

Sheila explains:

🡒 Why 1 in 38 frontline workers is one point away from termination, and most of them have no idea.

🡒 Why the quality bulletin pinned to your board in English never really reaches your floor.

🡒 Why around 25% of frontline workers change their phone number every quarter, and what that does to your emergency alerts.

🡒 How one manufacturer accounted for every employee within four hours of Hurricane Idalia making landfall, after years of phone trees.

🡒 The Moneyball approach that finally gives credit to the crews hitting singles instead of the hero who fixes the breakdown.

Chapters

00:00 Intro

00:50 Why attendance came first

05:20 Workers have been making decisions blind

11:50 Phone numbers, hurricanes, and every language on the floor

19:25 HR answers in seconds, on any shift

24:30 One point away from termination

28:25 Catching problems before people quit

33:45 Everybody has a plan until somebody calls off

38:25 Safety by station and the Moneyball approach

47:25 Shipping every six weeks and what she'd tell 2021 Sheila

~~~

This episode is powered by TeamSense

TeamSense is the AI-powered shift intelligence platform that automates attendance, connects every worker, and drives performance across your operation — all through text.

Ready to see how leading manufacturers and logistics teams keep every shift covered?

https://teamsense.com/

Prefer to listen?

https://pod.link/1896826304

What would you do if 85% of your revenue disappeared one week after you moved your family across the country for the job?

Sheila Stafford is the CEO and co-founder of TeamSense, the text based platform that connects frontline workers to their companies, and a member of the Forbes Business Council. A Duke mechanical engineer with an MBA from Notre Dame, she launched vehicles at General Motors, led the supply chain integration for Whirlpool's $1B acquisition in Italy, ran product development for Whirlpool's North American refrigeration business, and ran the Industrial Imaging business at Fluke. She shares the hard lessons that taught her how to lead when she isn't the expert in the room and how to bet on herself when every instinct said no.

In this episode, she explains:

The Beginner's Advantage

🡒 How asking basic questions let her lead a room full of supply chain experts who knew more than she did.

The Perceived Risk Trap

🡒 The one question from her husband that got her to walk away from a steady salary and start a company.

The Premium Brand

🡒 Why the same dishwasher, off the same line, sells for $299 or $3,200.

The Competitor Play

🡒 Why your biggest rival will sell to you when your business is on fire, and the basic math that makes them say yes.

Chapters

00:00 Intro

00:50 Cans, candy, and scalped tickets at the Bills stadium

07:38 Falling for the factory floor at Ford and GM

12:43 364 days a year on a pickup truck launch

16:21 The medical supply startup she built in business school

19:58 Same dishwasher, $299 or $3,200

22:06 Saying no to Italy, then saying yes

35:51 The call no new general manager wants

45:22 Starting TeamSense and betting on text over apps

50:38 The customer story that changed why she does this

Connect with Sheila

https://www.linkedin.com/in/sheila-stafford-451976b/

https://www.linkedin.com/company/teamsenseapp

~~~

This episode is powered by TeamSense

TeamSense is the AI-powered shift intelligence platform that automates attendance, connects every worker, and drives performance across your operation — all through text.

Ready to see how leading manufacturers and logistics teams keep every shift covered?

https://teamsense.com/

Prefer to listen?

https://pod.link/1896826304

Manufacturing veteran Gary Krus reveals why more robots mean MORE jobs, why 9 out of 10 of his employees still don't use AI every day, and why AI is on pace to be halfway to designing the tools themselves by 2030.

Gary Krus is Vice President of Business Development at HIROTEC America, where he leads the research and development team that takes new products and processes from concept to commercialization. An electrical engineer from Lawrence Technological University, he joined HIROTEC in 1993 as a controls engineer, worked his way through engineering, operations, and business strategy, and served as President of HIROTEC Tooling de Mexico. Today he leads HIROTEC neXt, the company's push to take its automation expertise beyond automotive.

He explains:

🡒 Why putting more robots on the floor has led manufacturers to hire more people, not fewer

🡒 How a 30 second AI prompt replaced a week of work, and why a new intern still called it cheating

🡒 The 15 year kaizen path that got a 40 ton die change down to under a minute

🡒 How HIROTEC turned 28 assembly lines into 3 that can run every single model

🡒 The one part of managing people that none of the books prepared him for

Chapters

00:00 Intro

00:59 From controls engineer to leading R&D

04:25 Building a plant in Mexico from the ground up

08:00 Why the people on the floor know more than you

13:40 Putting AI to work in a real manufacturing business

18:30 The intern who thought AI was cheating

24:57 Do robots actually take jobs?

31:45 The 15 years behind Japan's fastest die change

43:30 Advice for new managers and your 25 year old self

50:55 HIROTEC neXt and the plan for 2035

~~~

This episode is powered by TeamSense

TeamSense is the AI-powered shift intelligence platform that automates attendance, connects every worker, and drives performance across your operation — all through text.

Ready to see how leading manufacturers and logistics teams keep every shift covered?

https://teamsense.com/

Prefer to listen?

https://pod.link/1896826304

Ana Kraft spent years as a project engineer before founding Xena Workwear, and she's spent the last seven years learning what most PPE makers never bothered to figure out:

Since women's feet are wider at the ball, narrower at the heel, have higher arches, and have a lower ankle bone, a smaller men's boot in pink solves none of that.

Plus, most companies miss that fit is a safety issue. When PPE actually fits, compliance goes up: nobody runs to the shop floor without gear, and nobody skips the floor entirely because changing shoes takes too long.

She also brought a playbook for building the company itself:

→ How to de-risk the leap: She went hourly with no benefits and paid herself nothing for a year.

→ How to hire on values, and why a candidate needs three out of four before a degree even matters.

→ Why investor money adds pressure, and who should never take it.

→ The quarterly rule she uses now: pick 3 to 5 priorities, because if everything is a priority, nothing is.

Chapters

0:00 Intro to Ana Kraft

1:52 Five pairs of boots under her desk

9:34 Quitting in stages, hourly with no benefits

11:54 From buying the product to joining the company

18:35 Changing shoes, palazzo pants, and dress codes

24:00 The women's event that packed up her boots

26:30 Becoming a mom while running the company

36:45 Burnout and the hotel room meltdown

43:10 Hiring on values and letting people fail

55:41 Advice to 25 year old Ana and the 30 grand answer

~~~

This episode is powered by TeamSense

TeamSense is the AI-powered shift intelligence platform that automates attendance, connects every worker, and drives performance across your operation — all through text.

Ready to see how leading manufacturers and logistics teams keep every shift covered?

https://teamsense.com/

Prefer to listen?

https://pod.link/1896826304

Marley Devergilio knows how to grow an account - twelve years in automotive sales, and the numbers back it up.

She's a sales strategy manager at FORVIA HELLA, a board director for the Automotive Women's Alliance Foundation, and the person who took one operating plan from $50 million to $200 million a year.

Her method isn't complicated:

1) Do the prep work.

2) Come with a recommendation, even an imperfect one.

3) Have uncomfortable conversations before they become expensive ones.

Here’s what else we covered:

→ Walking into cold rooms and advocating for yourself

→ Communicating across global teams and customers

→ Making deposits in people, and why relationships close deals

→ Advice for the quietest person in the room

Thank you, Marley, for opening your home to this industry long before you ever sat down at my table. This one meant a lot.

Chapters

0:00 Intro

1:00 The coat left behind on purpose

3:15 From selling candy to automotive

8:35 Thirty years of AWAF and a level playing field

13:30 Cold rooms and getting comfortable being uncomfortable

15:05 Growing $50M into $200M

20:55 The decision in Austria

22:40 Saying yes, saying no

32:30 The Miami trip

37:15 Making deposits in people

Connect with Marley

https://www.linkedin.com/in/marlanadevergilio/

https://www.linkedin.com/company/forviahella

https://www.instagram.com/forviahella/

~~~

This episode is powered by TeamSense

TeamSense is the AI-powered shift intelligence platform that automates attendance, connects every worker, and drives performance across your operation — all through text.

Ready to see how leading manufacturers and logistics teams keep every shift covered?

https://teamsense.com/

Prefer to listen?

https://pod.link/1896826304

Vinh Tran spent 31 years in automotive, before he became the first employee for an autonomous robotics company.

Vinh shared his story about his boxing career. He trained two nights a week for 6 months, and fought in front of a sold out room at the Grand Hyatt in Tokyo. He learned the importance of being prepared.

That same mindset - prepare for the fight before you ever step in the ring - is what he leaned on when he left a stable executive career to start something from nothing at MyBull Intelligence Machinery, which builds outdoor autonomous mobile robots.

Here’s what we covered on the podcast:

→ Moving his family to Japan and learning the farmer mindset with customers

→ The six month lead up to a charity boxing match

→ Why his wife Liz has been the reason he could take every risk he's taken

→ Building the customer trust process from scratch as employee number one

→ What MyBull is solving with outdoor autonomous mobile robots

Thank you to Vinh for making the time between running MyBull's expansion across and everything else on his plate to come on the show!

Chapters

00:00 Intro

01:00 From Wayne State to CRO of an autonomous robotics company

01:56 23 years at Continental, from project manager to VP

05:09 The calculated risk of moving his family to Japan

06:49 Learning the farmer mindset with customers

12:03 Signing up for Executive Fight Night

15:11 Meeting the kid his fight was for

21:17 Inside the fight night at the Grand Hyatt

33:26 A shoutout to his wife, Liz

38:34 Becoming employee number one at MyBull

~~~

This episode is powered by TeamSense

TeamSense is the AI-powered shift intelligence platform that automates attendance, connects every worker, and drives performance across your operation — all through text.

Ready to see how leading manufacturers and logistics teams keep every shift covered?

https://teamsense.com/

Prefer to listen?

https://pod.link/1896826304