Episode Transcript
[00:00:03] Speaker A: Welcome to INA Insights, where prominent leaders and influencers shaping the industrial and industrial technology sector discuss topics that are critical for executives, boards and investors. INA Insights is brought to you by AINA AI, a firm focused on working with industrial companies to make them unrivaled segment of ONE leaders. To learn more about INA AI, please visit our website at www.ina.AI.
[00:00:40] Speaker B: So good morning and welcome to another episode of the Titanium Economy podcast by INA AI. Today we are joined by Joanne Pfeiffer, CEO of Oshkosh Corporation, a global leader in specialty vehicles and equipment for the defense, emergency and commercial sectors.
John became CEO of Oshkosh in 2021 after joining as President and COO in 2019 with leadership experience at Brunswick Corporation prior to that.
Founded in 1917, Oshkosh is known for producing high performance vehicles like fire trucks and military vehicles. With a focus on innovation, sustainability and advanced technology, Oshkosh remains a key player in the defense, automotive and construction industries worldwide. We are excited to explore John Pfeiffer's insights into the industry and learn more about Oshkosh innovation and future vision. Welcome John. We're thrilled to have you on our podcast today.
[00:01:31] Speaker C: Yeah, thanks Gaurav. I'm delighted to be here.
[00:01:35] Speaker B: So, John, maybe we start off with a little bit of an overview of Oshkosh. If you could just share with us its mission. The products, services and the markets you serve would be incredibly helpful for our listeners.
[00:01:46] Speaker C: Absolutely. So at Oshkosh Corporation, as you said in your intro, we've been around for more than 100 years.
We are a really purpose driven company and every organization, whether it's for profit or not for profit, has a purpose and a mission. We are the epitome of a purpose driven company and it's what binds our culture together. And that purpose is, we say every day when we come to work that we are serving people in our communities who do the toughest work that there is to do and we have to continue to innovate and design solutions for them. In our case in the form of a specialty vehicle or equipment that helps them be safe and productive to get tough work done. So who am I talking about? Who are these people? I'm talking about. I'm talking about soldiers all over the world. I'm talking about firefighters. I'm talking about people who work on the tarmac of an airport. When you see most of those vehicles out there, we're designing and developing those vehicles. I'm talking about construction workers who have to work 150ft in the air all day long. These are tough jobs, but they're really important jobs to our economy. They're kind of the core of the US economy and the better off those people are.
That's our mission, that's our purpose, to make it better for them.
[00:03:09] Speaker B: Thank you so much John for sharing that. Because I think the more I knew about Oshkosh, I think that binding glue of that mission really came through and made made a lot of sense in terms of what portfolio you built. Maybe talking a little bit about the future.
You talked about how you're integrating emerging technologies like electrification, autonomous systems in your products. That's very atypical for a very traditional industrial company to do. Could you share a little bit of insight around how you got Oshkosh fabric to do that effectively?
[00:03:36] Speaker C: Yeah. So, you know, we have a culture of innovation. We're really, if you looked at every, every company is a little bit different culture. We're probably an engineering centric culture. You know, we've got close to 2,000 engineers that do product design in different areas from you know, four year degree to engineers to PhDs. And we're really that culture of engineering and innovations really strong. So we have been making electric electric vehicles for more than 20 years, probably 25 years. And most of the time we've been doing it in our jlg, that's our construction business. And so we've learned a lot about application of electrification during that long period of time. We've also learned about it a little bit with the Department of Defense because we do sometimes special projects for the Department of Defense to electrify something on a very small or discrete basis. That's taught us a lot. And so we've gained this capability. I think what's changed is that the economics have changed and the acceptability of electric propulsion has changed quite a bit. So for us, we're able to take our knowledge of electrification and how to apply it and put it towards a last mile delivery vehicle like the postal service next generation delivery vehicle, which we're doing. We're in production today. We're able to take a 40,000 pound fire truck and electrify it, which are in the market today. We're able to take an 80,000 pound airport rescue and firefighting vehicle and electrify it. And when you. And it's. It's acceptable today, but it's also economically viable today. If you went back five or 10 years, this wasn't very economically viable. If you can't provide economic viability, you know, it's really going to be hard to make it work. The only place we could provide economic viability prior to this was really within JLG's product line and then the autonomous functionality. We've learned a lot about autonomy in a few of our businesses over the years and we really have the capability, ability to design bespoke autonomy for a specific use case. And these are mostly moments of autonomy where we're making something easier or more productive to operate, where the operator doesn't have to think about something it's done for them and they can think about more important work when they're working. So. But if you look at electrification in general, electrification, when you look at the use of energy to make a vehicle or a machine work, electrification is a more efficient propulsion system. Not only is it more efficient in terms of how much energy it takes gas or diesel versus electric power, it's higher performing. The performance of it is more efficient, it's easier to use, it's more responsive than say, diesel power is. And so the performance of it, I think, also adds to our ability to apply it more and more as we're going forward.
[00:06:34] Speaker B: I like how you also mentioned the way it binds with your mission of making these jobs more effective, more productive and safe at the same time. John, you talked about Department of Defense and obviously Oshkosh is a major player in the defense end market. Could you tell us a little bit about how Oshkosh at least differentiates itself from its competition when it comes to serving the military establishment?
[00:06:58] Speaker C: Yeah. So I think when it comes right down to it, we've been in the defense world for a long, long time. And today our business you really look at it's probably about 15% defense. But if you go back 40 years, it was probably nearly 100% defense. We've changed a lot of. That's still a big business for it's still a very, very important business. And I think the real differentiator for us is the focus on the soldier, on the person using the equipment, being intently focused on them and how do we keep them safer and safer and safer, but also making sure that when, when a soldier is in one vehicles, they're not confused.
We're always adding technology to it because the DoD wants, you know, the best technology in these vehicles. But you don't want to conf. Soldiers have tough work to do. They got a lot of things to focus on when they're in dangerous situations. And we don't want them to be confused when they're inside one of our vehicles. I'm not saying we're perfect at it, but we really focus on that. And I think that that focus is one of the reasons we've been very, very successful over the years. If you look at the innovation we've done over the years, you know, our mobility systems, we really started in defense many, many decades ago in mobility systems. We still lead in mobility systems. I mean, our vehicles do things that are not supposed to be able to be done with a wheeled armored vehicle. And it gives. So it gives soldiers all sorts of capabilities when they're in on missions that are very, very unique because of those mobility systems. So we've been able to build on that over time. And then of course, we're doing a lot of other autonomous functionality and different capabilities to keep soldiers safe. And we partner with a lot of technology companies to add capability beyond what we can do to the vehicle. I think all of that comes together and is kind of our differentiator as a company.
[00:08:52] Speaker B: That's terrific. John. John, maybe switching a little bit to how you've internally organized oshkosh. I was looking at oshkosh results over the last few years, and you've delivered consistent growth both in terms of revenue as well as the margin being expanded. And this is during a time when the world was going through supply chain disruptions because of the pandemic and what was happening on geopolitical scale. I think some of those at least changes will persist in the next few years. At least that's what the expectation is. So how has oshkosh dealt with that period where supply chain uncertainties and those things have kind of come to fair where a lot more harder?
[00:09:29] Speaker C: Yeah, well, by the way, we were disrupted quite a bit by supply chain. Any manufacturer was right.
And you know, supply chain's not back to where it was pre pandemic yet. It's still tight in some areas. And I think that the thing that we've really been able to do is we've got great digital technologies capability. So we put our digital technology people, data scientists and advanced analytics people onto our supply chain issues and we started to design analytics that would tell us not just where the problems were at the given moment. You know, it's analytics is about what happened, why did it happen. That's really just business intelligence. Analytics gets into what's going to happen in the future and what can you do about it. And so we got our analytics people on what's not what happened and why did it happen, which we were, I will tell you a lot of People, including us, were in that mode in the beginning of supply chain disruption. But what, what's going to happen and what can we do about it? So in other words, and we've been fairly successful doing that, so we know we've got problems, we know where, but now we're much better at seeing where the problems are going to be. So we can plan our operations around that in advance. That is a huge step forward in our ability to be efficient. In the early days of supply disruption, you know, we would literally have manufacturing plants try to open at 7am on a Monday morning thinking, you know, a variety of parts were going to be there from suppliers and showing up and they weren't there. And then you're in a mode of completely reorganize what you're going to produce that week. And that makes it really inefficient and really hard on people. So I think that those, the analytics of the supply chain have really helped us get a lot better during this period of time. We've also, our digital technologies team also develops a lot of bots and so those bots will go in and do repetitive things that people no longer have to do. So we used to have people that would sift through all sorts of data to find where the late parts were and contact suppliers to get follow up. We have bots do that today. So our people are more productive, our people can focus on more important things. I think those types of things all help us be more productive.
[00:12:02] Speaker B: That's actually fascinating, John, because I think if we look at it from our vantage point, there is a lot of value for analytics and digital industrials. But I can probably count on just one hand how many companies have really made it work. And it seems at least that piece is working very well within Oshkosh in terms of using analytics, using digital technologies.
[00:12:23] Speaker C: We're not perfect at it, but we're always trying to get better.
[00:12:27] Speaker B: Absolutely. But I think just the way you describe it, it feels that you're in a much better place than maybe bulk of the industrial sector. And we've heard reasons around talent, data architecture which have been barriers for them. Any thoughts around how you have kind of come around or at least are trying to solve those issues to get the right set of folks as a part of the corporation to push these initiatives forward?
[00:12:48] Speaker C: Well, I do, I do agree with you. I think that at the heart of supply chain constraint in our economy is people. And in many cases we don't have enough people or the right trained people in the right places. And those Shortages. When you really look into it, you know, there's a, there's, it's a, you know, the manufacturing world's very complicated and there's a whole, there's tier ones, tier twos, tier threes, tier fours. And I think at the root of it is always people. We, you know, we prioritize having exceptionally talented digital technologies people because the world's a digital place today. So we really focus hard on making sure we've got great talent there. And we're always trying to continue to train and develop our own people. And I think we do a pretty good job at that. We're always trying to recruit new people to come into our organization that have core digital technology skills because I think, I mean, we all know that's where the world is. Doesn't matter if you're manufacturing and bending steel or you're a software company, you've got to have digitally savvy people in the operation.
[00:14:04] Speaker B: Super. John, One piece, which I'm sure you deal with every day, given Oshkosh portfolio is around sustainability and reducing carbon footprint of the vehicles you are producing. Any thoughts around how you have marshalled Oshkosh's roadmaps or future initiatives to deliver on that promise?
[00:14:23] Speaker C: Yeah, we do a lot with sustainability. You know, we're really dedicated to continuously building our culture around sustainability so that it can, that it can thrive. You know, we do, I think we see some milestone achievements that tell us we're moving in the right direction. We've earned recognition as one of USA Today's climate leaders in 2024. We've been on the Dow Jones Sustainability Index for Sustainability World Index for about five years. And that's hard to do as an industrial company. There's not very many industrials that are on that Dow Jones Sustainability Index.
So, so we think we're, we're moving in the right direction. We do a lot of work both on our internal operations, you know, scope one, scope two, scope three, and we also do a lot of work on our, the products we serve our customers because our customers care dearly about having sustainable solutions and more and cleaner and cleaner solutions. So, you know, it's an interesting topic. I think it's so important for the world because just in general, some people, you know, everybody has different beliefs about the environment. Some people think it's the most important thing in the world and other people don't, don't think that global warming is a thing and that's okay. I don't. There's no right or wrong here. But I have never met one person who wants to work in a dirty company or who wants to live in a community that has dirty companies that are not very sustainable. I've never, never met one person that wants to do that. And so that's why I think this is so important. So we work hard on the product front and we work hard on our own operations in making them cleaner and cleaner. You know, this is part of the reason we're working so hard on bringing electrified purpose built vehicles to the market. We've got, We've sold over 46,000 electric emission free or hybrid units to date. And we're really just getting started in applying electrification for the end markets that we serve. You know, some will take a long time, some are going to take up to 20 years to fully go electric in their purchases. Others are going to go much faster. You know, the postal Service has said 75% of everything we buy is going to be electric from you going forward. And the orders are in hand that tell us exactly that 75% of the orders. It might go to 100% sooner than later. You know, other industries might take a little bit longer but they're all going to migrate to it for the reasons I mentioned earlier. But our use cases are really interesting because they're all route based use cases.
Look at a fire truck, it's really route based. It might be a different route every time they go out. But those we, they can predict exactly the length of their routes and, and how long they're going to 95% of the time their whole job takes X period of time. It's usually less than two hours for 95% of the routes. If you look at a refuse and recycling or an environmental vehicle, purely route based postal vehicles are route based. Most of the customers we serve are route based. So we design these vehicles so that they don't have to rely on charging infrastructure. They charge at the base station, whether it's a post office or a base station for environmental vehicles or a fire station. And that they also were also able to provide performance benefit as well as a benefit around economics. And so that's what makes all this work. But these are sustainable solutions even if it's coming from coal generated electricity and that will change over time. You know, there's a lot of problems that have to be solved in the but even if it's coming from coal generated electricity, it still provides sustainability benefits after a fairly short period of use of the vehicle versus diesel powered product. And by the way, we've signed up for science based target initiatives that have been validated by the science based SBTI Group. And that confirms our commitment to really kind of solidifying what our targets are over both the short and the long term targets that we've set. So we really this really an important part of our company and who we are.
[00:18:51] Speaker B: And that's terrific to hear John. Maybe moving a little bit, a little bit to your own personal journey and lessons your peers can glean from that. I was looking at your background. You've obviously worked around multiple industries, but then also in multiple geographies in your life. Prior to taking up this role, could you share a little bit about what are the key lessons you've learned from your past experiences which today help you in your day to day as you lead Oshkosh?
[00:19:14] Speaker C: Yeah, well, I had a fairly, I'll start. I had a fairly formative early part of my career in that, you know, I went to College in the 1980s and I'm a kid from Detroit. So you know, in Detroit in the 1980s, what you saw when I was growing up was that every year the Japanese automotive industry took more market share from gm, Ford and Chrysler. And they seem to have higher quality and lower cost. And so this, this is what I was surrounded with. I went to College in the mid-1980s. So I started, I, I decided that, that I would study, I had to study a language, it was part of the curriculum where I went to school. Decided to study Japanese language. I started, decided to study economics because that's what I was interested in. And I, I had the opportunity to go to Japan when I was a student because I was really interested in what is their secret sauce, why are they lower, higher quality and lower cost. And I didn't, you know, so I took a job with a Japanese auto manufacturer right out of college, went to Tokyo, lived in Japan. I was in Japan for four years. I was working on the plant, you know, in a sourcing job and I was on the plant floor all the time. And I was learning without knowing what it was, what lean manufacturing was all about. Because the automotive industry in Japan is kind of developed the Toyota production system, which as we all know is the lean manufacturing. So at a very young age I was kind of learning what empowerment of the workforce meant and how to use quality circles and just in time, inventory and you know, all those things that we all have as household words today in manufacturing. So that was a really, really good formative way to start my career. And I think it probably helped me out a lot through the years to have that as my base, especially being somebody that's always been in manufacturing. I've always been in manufacturing. But I think what, what really interests me, you have to go into a career where you're interested in what's going on. And I've always been fascinated by the design and development and manufacture of a highly engineered, very sophisticated product, whether it's an automobile or whether it's a marine engine, or whether it's electronic components that I worked in with ITT or whether it is the highly sophisticated products that we make at Oshkosh Corporation. I'm fascinated by the design and development and manufacture of those products so that they work and serve a real purpose. And that's always motivated me. I've, I've always paid attention to the difference between good product development and the process for good product development versus where you can get into trouble if you don't follow. A good product development process is super interesting because manufacturing hardware, designing hardware, very different from designing software and you kind of have to know the difference and style in process between the two. But I had a lot of opportunity to move around the world. I've lived outside the US for 14 years on five different countries and three different continents. And, and those have all been formative periods of time. And you know, the, that's kind of how my career has evolved. And, and I just keep, I just, you know, I believe in working with good people, smart people, people who are transparent and candid and, and trust one another. You know, trust amongst people. You don't trust one another, nothing, nothing really happens in terms of productivity.
[00:22:53] Speaker B: And that's fascinating to hear, John. I think the lessons around true intellectual curiosity, investing in learning, and then as you talked about working with the right set of folks you can trust, I think those are great lessons. I think our listeners could take away from your fascinating story. Thank you. Thank you for sharing.
John. One aspect I was very keen to get your thoughts on was you transitioned from a CEO to a CEO role. I think from a distance, I don't think people appreciate how big a jump or how different the roles might be. I think I'd love to get your, your personal take on how did you take look at that transition and how did you manage that?
[00:23:27] Speaker C: Yeah, it's a, it's a great question. To me, I think it was all adjusting and my time management because anybody, no matter what you do, you have to pay attention to how you spend your time. And I think that's more important now than it ever has been because there's so many Distractions, so many things that can pull you in different directions. And so you got to kind of, I think to be effective you have to understand where should I be spending my time and am I spending my time that way. So for me, going into the CEO role, it was all about shifting my time management. I had to learn it. I didn't like it wasn't intuitive to me. I learned it, but I paid attention to it and tried to learn it as fast as I could. So what I mean is I've always, you know, in the past, I've always been the general manager or the president of a discrete business that's designing and developing something that's very sophisticated and then taking it to market. So in those roles, as a GM of a, of a specific business, I was actively engaged in the product development process. I was actively engaged in manufacturing specific on the ground manufacturing initiatives from Lean Six Sigma and how it was being orchestrated to different things like that. Well, when you go into a CEO role, I want, and I mean, that's what interests me. So I wanted to spend my time there. That's where I was naturally pulled to. But I knew I couldn't because that's why you have business presidents. Those business, if you get involved in doing that, it's very counterproductive and you probably actually create problems. So you. I had to kind of train myself to say as a CEO, where should my time be spent that's most productive? And I, and I realized that the most, the two most important parts of my time are spending it on people. I probably spend 40% of my time on people. Meaning do we have the right people and the right jobs? Are we recruiting the right people? Are we developing, providing the development that we needed? Are we providing the experience for people to continue to perform and then get to the next level. People management, I think is really, really important. For me. There's nothing more important than people in any organization. And the better you pay attention to that, the more successful you'll be. The other area I said there's two is capital deployment. I think as a CEO, you have to focus really hard on where is the organization spending its capital because everybody has limited capital. And so you have to pay attention to, you know, there's, it's, it's opportunity cost. Something might look absolutely brilliant, but it always doesn't always mean it's the right way to spend capital for the company because there's always an opportunity cost. So we spend capital on big manufacturing initiatives, technology and manufacturing or expanding manufacturing capabilities. We spend our capital on new product development programs, of course, which need tooling and capital to support it. And we're an acquisitive company, we make acquisitions. And so I spend a lot of time on how are we focusing the capital of the company in areas that are most productive for our business and our customer. First and foremost, our customers is really going to impact the customer. You know, I spend, you might be surprised for me to tell you I spend very little time on near term results. You know, I spend a little bit of time, but only a little bit of time. So when I say near term results, I'm talking about the current quarter and the current year. Now I know what's going on at all times because every Monday we have a standup meeting and we talk about risks to the forecast. It lasts less than an hour or less every Monday.
And our senior team updates each other on where are the issues we need to know about, where are the opportunities we need to know about. Other than that, we have one quarterly business review and that's my time on the near term results. And that might sound strange, but we've got incredible business leaders running businesses and they know what to do to manage the day to day, the week to week and the quarter to quarter businesses. They don't need me spending 50% of my time on short term results. That would just be redundant. So I spend a very small amount of my time on that. But anyway, I'm going on perhaps a little too long. To me, the shift to CEO is all about shifting my time and how I spend my time.
[00:28:08] Speaker B: Now I love the recipe you gave us around people as well as capital deployment. And now towards the end, just your focus towards the longer term, which again it's encouraged to hear you say that because it feels that in the public setting it's very tough for somebody in your place to kind of maintain that. So kudos to you, John. John, I think as we wrote Titanium Economy, one of our big thesis was that talent which is coming to the industrial technology sector comes with a very different mindset today. I think folks like the tech industry or the financial service industry can, at least in the minds of people are top of mind compared to where industrial might fit in. So any advice to future leaders who are aspiring for a leadership career in companies like Oshkosh Corporation, where innovation is core, what would you advise them? Maybe what would you advise the younger self for you when you are in the 80s and 90s of what to do?
[00:29:01] Speaker C: Yeah, I think it's three things that I would say are really important And I will say this applies to anybody. You could be working as an engineer, you could be working in a tech field, you could be working in human resources, marketing, you name it. I think this applies to anybody that works anywhere in a business. If you want to continue to focus on the right things and continue to do well, I think, number one, we talked about it right when you started Gaurav is really understanding the purpose or the mission of the company you're working for or the business you're in. And you've got to be able to internalize that. If you don't really get motivated by the purpose or the mission of where you're working.
I mean, I'll be honest, you probably should go find somewhere else to work because you want to work in an organization that really you think is important and its purpose is important. So internalizing that purpose, I think is super important for somebody no matter where you work. I've always thought that that's something that I tried to pay attention to. The second thing is, I think you. And this applies to anybody. You could be working in finance, know the front line of the business, know the customer. Understand how what the company does impacts that customer. And the more you understand how you're impacting the customer, the more effective and more you'll actually enjoy your work a lot more.
Because everybody impacts the customer in some way. And it always helps shape priorities. If you're working on an initiative that the customer is not going to recognize any benefit from or not even know what's going to happen, you might want to say, is this really the most important thing we can work on? So that's the second thing is really understanding the frontline customer. And then the final thing is know the finances. Again, it doesn't matter where you work.
The more you understand the foundational finances of the firm you're in, the more effective you will be. And if you're not a financially trained person, which many of us are not, I would actually encourage you to take a couple of basic finance classes so you understand P and L, the balance sheet and the cash flow statement and how they interact with one another and how they work. Because the more you understand how you impact that, the more effective you're going to be, no matter where you are in an organization. I've always felt that those three were really important for success.
[00:31:46] Speaker B: Thank you so much for sharing that, John. Invaluable advice. Maybe, John, then fixing, changing our focus a little bit towards look, peering into the future. You talked about how Oshkosh has leveraged data analytics and predictive AI in the supply chain disruptions. You talked about how electrification and automation have become more mainstream and how Oshkosh has leveraged those innovations to have a product portfolio and market leadership, which we have today. If you look at Oshkosh Corporation the next decade, what is your vision in terms of where the company goes, its market leadership, its innovation?
[00:32:20] Speaker C: Yeah, so I think that we talk about what we talk about in terms of the vision of the company is accelerated growth through innovation and technology.
And we noticed that when we can apply technology to our products, our customers get delighted because it's helping them solve a problem or get better. So we just designed and developed a fully integrated purpose built refuse and recycling collection vehicle, zero emission. It has autonomous functionality. It's built for the operator to be productive and comfortable. It has AI functionality. We have a capability to give you an example called cart seeker. So if you envision the vehicle that goes through a residential street, say it's a side loader. So you've got a can in front of your house and it comes and it picks up the can and puts it in the hopper. Got AI technology that now. So picking up the can tend to be a cumbersome operation for the operator of one of those vehicles. It takes a little bit of time to position it and make sure that you've articulated the got a joystick that articulates the arm. But we're using AI to now identify the can versus anything else that might be there. Think about a mailbox, a bush, a bicycle. Anything else it knows through AI and machine learning what is a refuse can versus what is not. It automatically actuates the arm dep pick that can up and put it into the hopper. The driver doesn't have to fumble around anymore. The driver can focus on what we want the driver to focus on, which is the truck and where he's going and making sure the truck is in a safe position. That makes the driver more comfortable, makes it easier for them, and it makes it more productive for the vehicle. Our customers love that type of functionality that we can build into the product. That's one example. So when we talk about accelerated growth through innovation and technology, you know, I think we're really just starting with our ability to apply AI to provide this type of functionality in many, many different use cases in intelligent products capabilities where we're connecting everything that we make today. And I think I see us in the future really pairing that with third party data sets to provide productivity that maybe today we can't even conceive of firefighter or, you know, people in different situations. So it's, it's really exciting. You know, we're, we're trying to marry kind of that industrial age that we are and we're very proud of together with, with what we all hear about today, which is AI and intelligent products capabilities to, to just make it better for people that are doing work.
[00:35:13] Speaker B: That's. I mean, the more I hear about these examples, John, I can't, can't help thinking that I think it's a. Oshkosh corporation in many ways is the great example of what we want to call titanium economy.
[00:35:22] Speaker C: Right.
[00:35:22] Speaker B: We want to take the moniker of rust belt away and talk about the fact that how industrials combined with technology can actually really power the sector or the economy going forward. So given your vantage point, John, maybe the last question for our conversation today. Where do you see the sector going in history, at least when you look at data, it just comes across as it's something which is not appreciated as much. It's undervalued when you look at valuations. I'd say sometimes people also don't understand exactly what we do and the value that the sector brings. So as a leader in the sector itself, what is your crystal ball telling you about where the sector might go in the future?
[00:35:59] Speaker C: Yes. So, you know, I'll start by saying when I was at your conference earlier this year, you and I were together there. One of your. That was a great conference, very thought provoking. One of the sessions I went to was by an economist and he recommended reading a book called how the World really Works. And the author's name is Jaklav Smil. And it's a really, really interesting book. I did read it. I took the advice of the Economist and I read it. And the book basically describes that the four most important building blocks of the mo. Of the economy where we are today.
And it would be interesting if you ask people this question, but he identifies them as cement, steel, plastics, and ammonia. Ammonia might seem strange. Ammonia is where nitrogen comes from. And without nitrogen, you can't get agricultural yields as the population grows. That's why that's important. So it's super important to people like John Deere. Right. But he is talking about without those four things, even today, in 2024, nothing happens. And it was just a really crystallizing book when I read it because that's basically what we do. We use. I mean, we mix concrete. I mean, everything we make is made out of plastic. And so it is. I totally agree with you, the industrial economy is undervalued. It's not going away. It cannot go away. And I think then when you take that industrial economy, which we are part of, and you couple it with advanced technology that everybody hears about and everybody gets excited about it, the software capabilities, the intelligent products capabilities, the AI, the artificial intelligence, you couple that titanium economy, so to speak, with those advanced technologies which we've been talking about, that's really exciting and it's really powerful. But it just, it absolutely underscores that industrials like us are clearly and any industrial really are undervalued versus some others in the economy.
[00:38:09] Speaker B: Super. I sincerely appreciate you taking the time, John. It was a fascinating discussion. I think the more I know about what you do at Oshkosh Corporation, the more intrigued I get in terms of how it's a great example for other companies to follow as we look at the next decade. So sincerely appreciate taking the time and sharing your own personal journey as well.
[00:38:26] Speaker C: It's great to see you again, Gaurav. Thank you.
[00:38:29] Speaker B: Thank you so much for your time, John.
[00:38:36] Speaker A: Thanks for listening to AINA Insights. Please visit INA AI for more podcasts, publications and events on developments shaping the industrial and industrial technology sector.
