One of my favorite customer lines is, "I need parts, not charts." And that really captures what Datanomix is about: helping manufacturers solve real business problems by clearly showing what's happening on their shop floor.
Driving Performance Improvement on the Shop Floor with Production Data
Q&A with Gabe Maentz, Vice President of Solutions | Datanomix
Tell us about yourself and your role with Datanomix.
As Vice President of Solutions at Datanomix, I work with manufacturers to turn production data into real operational results. My career has always lived at the intersection of operations and infrastructure, helping organizations design, run, and scale their systems effectively. I’m based in Pittsburgh with my wife, Marion, and our four kids, and I’m also a founding member of the vBrisket community. If you like BBQ, beer, and talking shop, we’ll get along just fine.
At Datanomix, I lead solutions and implementation strategy: my day-to-day is working with customers to identify burning business problems and craft outcome-driven solutions. These outcomes span our Production Monitoring Platform, Pilot programs, and full-scale kick-ass rollouts, as well as the integrations and architectures that enable factories to MAKE MORE: MAKE MORE parts, MAKE MORE margin, and MAKE MORE money.
I also partner closely with our Product and Customer Success teams to ensure that what we deliver fits the real-day-to-day rhythm of the shop floor—not the other way around.
How does Datanomix go beyond dashboards to actually drive performance improvement on the shop floor?
One of my favorite customer lines is, “I need parts, not charts.” And that really captures what Datanomix is about: helping manufacturers solve real business problems by clearly showing what’s happening on their shop floor so they can operate more reliably, securely, and efficiently.
Dashboards are part of that story; they’re powerful for visualizing performance, but they’re only one tool in a much larger toolkit aimed at driving meaningful operational results. Manufacturing is inherently complex and full of moving parts (pun absolutely intended), and it can’t be reduced to a handful of metrics. Metrics are signals, not solutions. Real success comes from the people on the floor, the plan they build, and their ability to execute it. Datanomix goes well beyond dashboards; we’re focused on equipping the people who run the shop with the insights, tools, and clarity they need to perform at their best, which ultimately means making more parts.
Manufacturers are busier than ever but short on people. How does Datanomix help teams do more with less without burning out?
The first thing we do is remove “human data collection” from anyone’s job description. That alone frees up a surprising amount of highly skilled time. Instead of walking the floor, writing down run and stop times, or trying to reconcile ERP assumptions with reality in spreadsheets, our Production Monitoring Platform automatically captures all of that from the machines and presents it in a way people can instantly understand. That lets owners, engineers, and supervisors focus on higher-value work: improving processes, raising lights-out hours, tightening changeovers, and working with customers and suppliers.
Just as importantly, the visibility we provide often shows that significant extra capacity exists on current equipment, so shops can increase output without immediately adding machines or headcount. The result is more throughput and more informed decisions, without asking already-stretched teams to work longer hours or endure endless meetings.
We attack both work and the way of working. First, the platform minimizes operator burden with No Operator Input monitoring (we read the program, part counts, and alarms, so people aren’t filling forms). Then we focus teams on a small set of high-value process plays: Common-Waste, labor efficiency metrics, and targeted Continuous Improvement actions. People practices are explicit—role-based coaching from our Kick-Ass Coaching team, morning huddles driven by the Coffee-Cup/Espresso reports, operator notebooks/shift-handoffs, and an “ask for help” flow so shop floor problems get resolved fast.
The Prove-it Pilot brings all of this together: hardware on day one, two days of on-floor data validation and hands-on coaching (data engineer + Customer Success Manager), and a project plan that builds habits so the workload doesn’t fall on a few people; it becomes the team’s operating rhythm. That combination of automation, simple process plays, and frontline coaching is how you get more throughput without burning people out.
Let’s keep manufacturers focused on what they are good at and want to excel at.
Where do you see the biggest untapped opportunity for manufacturers using production data right now?
The biggest untapped opportunity is connecting real machine performance back to the business plan for every part, then using that feedback loop to run the company on offense instead of defense. Most shops still rely on rough assumptions in their ERP: For Example, “this is a 30-minute cut, so we’ll quote 35 minutes,” or “we’ll run at 65% efficiency,” even though the real efficiency might be 30–35%.
Production Monitoring data can expose those gaps with brutal clarity, which opens the door to smarter quoting, better job selection, improved scheduling, and more realistic expectations for lights-out and changeover performance.
When you truly understand which parts, machines, and shifts are aligned with your business model and which aren’t, you can decide what to fix, what to run differently, and what not to run at all. That’s a massive lever for profitability and growth that many shops still haven’t fully pulled.
With CMMC compliance becoming a reality, how is Datanomix helping shops prepare for those new cybersecurity standards?
While we’re not a CMMC auditor, we design Datanomix to fit comfortably into a modern, security-minded manufacturing environment and to reduce the risky behaviors that often derail compliance efforts. Instead of spreading critical operational information across thumb drives, shared spreadsheets, and ad-hoc reports, our G-Code Cloud + DNC solution centralizes production data on a controlled platform with proper access controls and auditability.
We work closely with customers’ IT and security teams to connect machines in ways that respect their network segmentation and data-handling policies, and we keep the footprint of what we collect focused on operational signals—not sensitive design data. In practice, that means shops can gain the visibility they need to run better while moving closer to the disciplined, well-documented data practices that CMMC and similar standards are pushing the industry toward.
Can you share a story where Datanomix completely changed how a customer viewed their operations?
One of my favorite examples is at Hastreiter Industries, a family-run shop in the Midwest led by Kylin, who you may have heard us talk about before. When they first turned Datanomix on, one of their best machinists saw his performance score come in around a C-minus and was honestly shocked; he thought he was crushing it. Instead of getting defensive, he dove into the data, quickly realized where time was being lost, and within 48 hours had driven his score up into “A” territory.
At the same time, the shop discovered that by improving how they ran a key machine, they could significantly increase output without immediately buying another one, freeing up capital for other priorities while still growing. That experience fundamentally shifted their mindset: from “we’re busy, so we must be doing well” to “we have hard numbers that show exactly where we win and where we’re leaving money on the table.”
Take a look into the future a few years, how is a company like Datanomix using AI and Production data to vastly improve manufacturing operations?
Looking a few years out, you’ll see AI and production data working together to automate not just reporting, but decision-making and knowledge itself. Instead of dashboards that say, “this machine was 52% utilized,” systems like Datanomix will say, “here are the three specific changes that will get you to 70% on this cell next week,” backed by patterns learned across similar parts, machines, and shops.
AI will help encode tribal knowledge—how your best people choose tools, set feeds and speeds, or sequence operations—and make that instantly available as recommendations at the machine, in quoting, and in scheduling. Combined with broader trends like reshoring, consolidation, and chronic labor shortages, the winners will be the shops that treat AI-driven production intelligence as a core part of their operating system: using it to run more complex, higher-value work with fewer people, more confidently, and with far less guesswork than ever before.
Gabe Maentz is a technology leader known for blending hands-on engineering depth with strategic vision to help organizations modernize, scale, and fully leverage their infrastructure investments. With experience spanning startups to large enterprise environments, he has built a reputation for transforming complex technical challenges into practical, business-driving solutions. Early roles supporting high-availability retail and manufacturing environments shaped his expertise in resilient, scalable systems and paved the way for his current focus on data-driven approaches that help organizations protect, understand, and operationalize their data.
Now serving as a Vice President at Datanomix, Gabe is recognized for his clarity of explanation, customer focus, and ability to bridge gaps between technical teams, business stakeholders, and emerging technologies. Based in Pittsburgh, PA, he balances his professional intensity with life alongside his wife Marion, and their four children. Whether mentoring peers, evaluating new tools, or guiding modernization efforts, Gabe brings authenticity, curiosity, and a thoughtful, steady presence to every conversation.
The content & opinions in this article are the author’s and do not necessarily represent the views of ManufacturingTomorrow
Datanomix
Datanomix empowers manufacturers of all sizes to increase productivity and profitability through its Data-Powered Production™ solutions. Its product portfolio includes Production Monitoring, G-Code Cloud™ + DNC, TMAC AI™, and ToolAnalytix™ - all designed to turn machine data into actionable insights with zero operator input. Headquartered in New Hampshire, Datanomix software analyzes real-time production signals to identify bottlenecks, improve quality, and provide prescriptive coaching to drive continuous improvement. For more information, visit www.datanomix.io.
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