Texas-based steel manufacturer and retailer Mueller, Inc. is no stranger to evolution. The family-owned company has come a long way since it was established in the 1930s, consistently working with the latest technologies to maintain a high level of efficiency among competitors. With the new frontier of tech focusing heavily on big data and automation, Mark Lack (pictured), manager of strategy analytics and business intelligence at Mueller, is excited at the opportunities cognitive analytics can bring to the company.

“What are the business case scenarios that we can use to use artificial intelligence in a steel building company in Ballinger, Texas? … How could we take a new technology and apply it to our existing business to make a difference?” Lack asked himself after his first foray into the world of big data while attending an early IBM World of Watson event. Years later, Lack is still strategizing around the best way to incorporate data integration into processes at Mueller. He is sure of one thing: that cognitive computing is the company’s future.

Lack spoke with Dave Vellante (@dvellante) and Rebecca Knight (@knightrm), co-hosts of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE’s mobile livestreaming studio, during the IBM Chief Data Officer Summit in Boston, Massachusetts. They discussed Mueller’s path as a tech-forward manufacturer and what businesses in every industry must do from the individual level to stay competitive in an ever-evolving tech landscape. (* Disclosure below.)

What it means to be cognitive ready

Lack has big plans for further leveraging cognitive analytics at Mueller, but he is also well aware of the company’s current limitations in preparedness. His primary reason for attending this year’s CDO Summit was to discover industry leaders’ painpoints around data management and use those learnings to better architect a plan of action to enable Mueller’s cognitive future.

“One of the benefits of cognitive will be the fact that [it] will give answers to questions that were never asked, and so now that this happens, what do we do with it?” Lack said.

As crucial as cognitive is to his plans for Mueller, Lack is equally concerned with ensuring the company is ready to take advantage of the insights it will provide. Chiefly, he sees an opportunity to utilize it in automating the collection, storage and translation of data.

“If we can offload those transactions back to a machine … that can then allow us to interpret the results,” he said. Lack stressed that the value is not in tedious report creating, but in the interpretation of data — a skill machines don’t currently have, he stated.

While AI is not necessarily endemic to the steel industry, Lack has incurred the support of Mueller’s base with his solid arguments for a commitment to data integration. “While we may not always agree as to what the future needs to hold, we all understand that we need to do what’s best for this company for its long-term survival,” he concluded.

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of IBM Chief Data Officer Summit. (* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for the IBM Chief Data Officer Summit. Neither IBM, the event sponsor, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE