October 1, 2025
When people hear my title, Global Director of Product Management & Innovation, they often expect me to talk about technology, new products, emerging trends, or the latest advancements in automation.
But great innovation doesn’t start with technology.
It starts with people. The maintenance teams working to prevent downtime. The plant managers building the next generation of skilled workers. The operators who take pride in every perfect part they produce.
Our role at BizLink is to deeply understand these people and the challenges they face every day. Only then do we design products and services that truly solve those challenges.
This isn’t a slogan or a marketing tagline. It’s the foundation of how we approach innovation. It’s a commitment that has shaped our work for decades and continues to guide how we build solutions for the factories of today and tomorrow.
This belief has never been more important than it is today, because manufacturing itself is changing in ways that directly affect the people on the factory floor.
A Changing Industry
Manufacturing is undergoing one of the most significant shifts in decades. Workforce expertise is disappearing as experienced technicians retire. New employees are entering the field with different expectations and skills. Automation systems are becoming more advanced and complex, while the pressure for uptime, quality, and efficiency grows at every level of production.
Across the industry, these pressures create a constant strain. Maintenance crews work tirelessly to prevent breakdowns, yet still get called in the middle of the night when something fails. Production teams push to hit targets with equipment that does not always fit their workflow. Managers work to balance performance demands with workforce development.
Technology is often presented as the fix. But when solutions are designed in isolation, without fully understanding the people who will use them, they often create more problems than they solve.
We see this when we walk factory floors with our customers. Talented, hardworking teams do remarkable work, often with tools that were not built with their realities in mind.
This is where our approach begins. We work alongside these teams to truly understand their challenges before building solutions.
Turning Listening into Action
Our process always begins with listening. Before a single design is created or a line of code is written, we take time to understand our customers’ challenges and what drives them.
These range from workforce skill gaps and maintenance challenges to the everyday struggles of keeping complex production systems running smoothly.
Once we have a clear understanding of the challenge, we bring together the right mix of people and expertise to explore solutions and create the best path forward. Sometimes that means mechanical, electrical, and controls engineers. Other times, it requires software developers, data scientists, or robotics experts. Often, it takes all of them working side by side.
The technologies that come out of this collaboration are diverse. In recent years, we have built mobile apps, cloud dashboards, edge devices, custom electronics, and advanced software systems. None of these were the starting point. They are the outcome of listening first, then applying technology where it matters most.
You can see this approach reflected in the challenges we have worked to solve with our customers. Some solutions are physical, others digital, but all begin with the same philosophy: understanding the problem first.
- Simplifying maintenance: LSH Delta makes handling dresspacks easier and lighter for maintenance teams.
- Building workforce skills: SMARTT Cells and BizLink Online Training give teams practical ways to train and develop talent without disrupting production.
- Preventing unplanned downtime: careDP identifies issues before they lead to failures and stoppages.
Though these products look very different, they share the same origin: a deep understanding of customer challenges and the expertise to turn that understanding into real solutions.
Our Ongoing Journey
Each product launch is not an ending. It is the start of an ongoing journey we take with our customers. We continue to learn from their experiences, refine our solutions, and adapt as their challenges evolve.
The challenges our customers face tomorrow will not be the same as today. As new technologies emerge and industries evolve, our role is to stay by their side. We are ready to listen, adapt, and keep building solutions together.
This cycle of listening, learning, and improving ensures that our innovation always stays grounded in what matters most: helping people succeed in their work.
Because true innovation does not start with technology. It starts with people, and it never stops.
