By Pepper Parr
April 7, 2015
BURLINGTON, ON
Our interview with Dave McPhail took a little longer than we expected – McPhail was hunched over his keyboard “developing his relationship” with Cisco in a conference call.
Dave McPhail walking past some of his commercial peers as he prepares to show off the technology his firm markets.
Throughout the conversation phrases like “tribal knowledge” and “the “embedded data dictionary” were tossed around. McPhail talked about “product aggregation” and how he was taking data and information from the shop floor and putting it in front of senior management in real time – when there was a problem, management knew about the problem when it was happening.
Instead of the engineering department in a large manufacturing operation having to wait until reports that got to them the following day or at the end of the shift – they were now able to head out to the shop floor and fix the problem immediately.
Memex, a company that McPhail bought out of receivership and brought in John Rattray as an operating partner along with two silent partners who have since been bought out. They set out to first create a product that didn’t exist before and then market it by establishing partnerships with corporations that had clout and brand recognition which would give Memex a lead that would be hard to catch up to.
Memex isn’t disrupting an existing market – they are creating something that didn’t exist before
McPhail isn’t giving his clients all that much in the way product – what he is doing is giving them tools that allow them to capture data in real time and put it to use immediately.
This says McPhail is a significant cultural shift in manufacturing. McPhail claims to be able to give his clients a return on capital in three to four months – a time frame that astounds many and they don’t take the time to listen to us. The hope for McPhail and the rest of the Memex team is that there are enough early adopters to keep them alive. At some point we will become the standard.
McPhail doesn’t have an MBA, isn’t a university graduate. He earned a diploma from Humber College and set out to do what every entrepreneur does – create wealth.
Memmex president Dave McPhail explains what Merlin, an electronic device can do for manufacturing operations.
The Gazette first met McPhail when he was playing host to MP Mike Wallace who was announcing an $800,000 loan to the company as part of the federal government program.
Memex is a public company traded on the Venture side of the Toronto stock Exchange. Senior management recently issued 1.25 million options to its five member senior management team.
The company refers to the M2M (machine to machine) productivity software they provide as Merlin; it is used by a number of leading manufacturers. The market we are creating is worldwide said McPhail
One of the pleasures for McPhail is the McMaster University DeGroote campus on the south Service Road – a five minute drive from McPhail’s operation on Harvester Road. The plans to create a technological hub on campus where products can be shown to clients is a real plus for McPhail.
We have all kinds of case studies but when someone can see in real time what we do – that’s a big plus and if McMaster can make this idea of theirs work – we are with them.
Memmex announced half a million in sales during the first quarter of 2015 – they have a stock price that ranges between five to twenty cents a share – always well above a dime a share.
Dave McPhail with a version of Merlin in his hands – the device that captures data real time and delivers it to senior management who can make instant decisions.
Memex was founded in 1992 with a vision to improve the way automated machine tools work and connect on the factory floor. McPhail bought it out of receivership and has brought it to the point where they are at least contenders in the market they are working.
The company started manufacturing electronic circuit boards for memory and connectivity and evolved into Memex Automation. The vision has expanded to include the networking of all machine tools so that they can communicate with the computers in the administration office. At some point the network may be extended to the Internet, allowing productivity and other statistics to be emailed to a device, or computer anywhere in the world.
Getting to the point where they can issues stock options to the senior management team was not easy. McPhail gives the Niagara One Angel Investors group a huge thanks for their early support and tells you what every entrepreneur says: Canadians don’t take out their cheque books as easily as Americans – we are a risk adverse country and McPhail thinks we are paying a price for our complacency.
Meanwhile McPhail plugs away at what he loves doing – improving the way manufacturing operations can access and use the data that is sitting out there on the shop floor and put in the hands of people who know what to do with that information.
Machine learning: taking the data that is collected from a machine and running it through an algorithm is the next step in the manufacturing learning curve that McPhail sees as part of the Memex product service offering.
The federal loan is going to allow Memex to hire an additional 16 people. We have very good working relationships with Mohawk College and the University of Waterloo – we bring in students from their co-op program said McPhail – most of them work out very well.
85% of the market Memex is outside Canadian borders – and not just south of the border – this is a worldwide manufacturing opportunity. We intend to own the market before others realize just what we are doing” said McPhail. The words of a committed serial entrepreneur.
