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32 SMT007 MAGAZINE I FEBRUARY 2022 Stepinski: e neat thing is there are so many online resources for this, you can do it in your spare time. You can take systems engineer- ing courses four hours a week for six months, and then you are pretty well versed in how to design complex systems. Many schools offer this, it's inexpensive, and you can take all the coding overview courses. e key is being able to scope out a project. You don't even need to do it yourself. You need one or two people hands-on in the factory to scope it out. But at the end of the day, you're not necessarily the ones coding it. You just need to commu- nicate to a freelancer. Try freelance.com or remote.com and hire somebody for a couple weeks for a project. ey might even be on the other side of the world and could be extremely inexpensive. Matties: A great way to invest dollars into your company is to invest in people who will learn these skills like systems training and what you're describing. Stepinski: Exactly. Anybody can do it, but if you don't have any coding background, it's going to be a bigger learning curve and you must understand that. My approach would be if I had an existing factory, I would force the experienced people to learn X, Y, and Z, but not too much because they're holding everything together at this point. I would bring on one or two people who have an easier time learn- ing all this information, then you just develop your project scope documents and outsource it for cheap money. It might cost a couple hundred dollars to outsource some of these things. at's it. Matties: For a manager, they don't have to learn all the steps. ey just have to learn what's pos- sible and practical for their application so that they can communicate based on understand- ing what's possible. Stepinski: ere are different levels of magni- tude. Right now, people think, "If you want to have Industry 4.0, you've got to buy a whole new factory." And then some think you just need to buy a few machines. But if you spend a few hours a week reading something, you're going to find that it costs hundreds to low thou- sands of dollars to get the programming done, and you're just going to buy a few sensors for hundreds and low thousands of dollars. You just need to have one or two people who can implement it. at's all. Matties: Was there any one thing, Alex, think- ing back to as early as Whelen or perhaps before or currently, in terms of a book or some- thing that really changed your thinking that someone could go read or any other sources that you would recommend? Stepinski: I would recommend System Archi- tecture: Strategy and Product Development for Complex Systems, by Bruce Cameron, Daniel Selva, and Edward F. Crawley. Another good one is Industry 4.0 for SMEs: Challenges, Opportunities, and Requirements, by Dominik T. Matt, Vladimir Modrak and Helmut Zsio- vits. Matties: Okay, great. ank you. Johnson: is has been very insightful learn- ing how an existing facility can move toward Industry 4.0 while gaining additional control over input costs, all without a lot of expense! SMT007 The neat thing is there are so many online resources for this, you can do it in your spare time.