53.Closing the Industrial Application Gap with Kristopher Sandoval

In this first episode of a 3-part FlowFuse mini-series on Unplugged: An IIoT Podcast, hosts Phil Seboa and Ed Fuentes sit down with Kristopher Sandoval of FlowFuse to unpack the application gap in industrial operations — the growing distance between how many applications industrial teams need and how fast their developers can build them.

Kristopher explains why so many operational workflows still live in spreadsheets, local scripts and one-off dashboards, and how the Node-RED → FlowFuse → FlowFuse Expert stack is changing the equation. We cover what FlowFuse Expert actually is — an AI co-pilot that builds industrial applications on a Node-RED workspace from a plain-language description — why it's built on MCP (Model Context Protocol) for real industrial context instead of generic LLM guesswork, and how it can compress tasks that once took 10–20 hours down to around an hour, without replacing the operators and OT engineers who know the plant best.

If your team has more ideas than capacity to build them, this episode is about closing that gap.

Chapters

• 0:00 — Intro and guest welcome
• 3:00 — The application gap in industrial operations
• 6:00 — Where workflows live today: spreadsheets, scripts, manual processes
• 10:00 — Who feels this gap most?
• 12:00 — From operational need to working application (OEE dashboard)
• 16:00 — Iterating with Expert and availability
• 0:00 — Intro and guest welcome
• 3:00 — The application gap in industrial operations
• 6:00 — Where workflows live today: spreadsheets, scripts, manual processes
• 10:00 — Who feels this gap most?
• 12:00 — From operational need to working application (OEE dashboard)
• 16:00 — Iterating with Expert and availability

Connect

• Kristopher Sandoval (FlowFuse): https://www.linkedin.com/in/krsando/
• FlowFuse docs: https://flowfuse.com/docs
• Phil Seboa: https://www.linkedin.com/in/phil-seboa/
• Ed Fuentes: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ed-fuentes-2046121a/

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FlowFuse is a proud sponsor of Unplugged: An IIoT Podcast.

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