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AI agents and more: How tech DNA powers Piping Technology & Products

CEO Rakesh Agrawal is equal parts technologist and industrialist — and having a blast leading 700 employees at Houston’s stalwart manufacturer

By Bart Taylor

Rakesh Agrawal leads the company his father founded in the mid-1970’s, “growing up in the business on my dad’s knee,” he told me in a recent conversation. 

Rakesh’s dad, Dr. Durga Agrawal, parlayed an interest in designing piping systems to a side hustle while earning a PhD at the University of Houston, becoming a self-taught expert in pipe stress analysis. “He’d go out to Shell Deer Park and other chemical plants along the ship channel and, well, help them solve piping problems,” Agrawal says. “People started asking for more. ‘You’re recommending we put these pipe supports or expansion joints into the piping system. Would you supply those to us?’” he recounts with a smile. “So we eventually started our own manufacturing.”

Good thing for Houston. Today the company boasts a workforce of over 700 employees, 400-plus in manufacturing, in 500,000 square feet of covered shop space with 75,000 more on the way as part of a major expansion. The company is building on its 40-acre site at the junction of Highways 288 and 610 – notable by a colorful GONZO247 mural that drivers see every day.

But it’s also the talent mix at PT&P that’s noteworthy – shaped by its tech DNA. “Everything is engineered to order, built to order,” Agrawal says. “We do what could be called ‘mass customization’, where we make a quantity of product, but all different based on the customer’s application. So half of the work we do is engineering, and the other half we do is manufacturing,” he explains. “We’re a mix of knowledge workers – programmers, engineers, buyers and more – and craftspeople – welders and technicians that operate various CNC machines or forklifts.” All arrayed to design and manufacture products to solve piping system challenges like thermal expansion and contraction, vibration control, and energy containment, in a mass customization model. 

The markets PT&P serves are self-evident – but changing. “I think there was a time when oil and gas was 70 or 80% of our business, but we’ve always been diversified. It’s how we survived the crash in oil and gas in the ‘80s while many did not,” he says. “In the last few years, we’ve expanded to selling to mechanical contractors as we do a great deal more work in data centers, pharmaceuticals, and automotive. Data centers, in particular, are a big driver in our business right now.” 

What’s also noteworthy is how the company is navigating a technology journey that for many, can be a challenge. PT&P is a manufacturer — but also a tech lab, including the use of AI agents.

Agrawal’s background is a catalyst. "I studied mechanical engineering and computer science, and got two degrees at Rice University. Mechanical engineering is where I grew up, right?, the son of an engineer. When we had a flat tire, it was like, ‘oh, we're gonna do a soap and bubble test on the tube’,” he laughs. So I grew up around the practice of mechanical engineering, and computers were my hobby, and I was very lucky to have parents who indulged my curiosity in computers. There was always a new computer at the house,” Agrawal says.

“And even at the business, we were always employing technology. I had just finished college, and my first job was building the company's software systems. We're in a business where traditional ERP doesn't really suit us very well because of the mass customization thing I mentioned. ERP likes it when you're making the same thing over and over again – for example, if you're making a million AirPods and they're all only slightly different from one another,” he says. “But in our business you lose your mind trying to use a traditional ERP. So I hired a few friends from Rice, and we built a custom ERP from scratch – and it became the technology core of the company.”

Agrawal actually left the company for a time to scratch his technology itch. “I started a software company, SnapStream, and, as an investor, I built a portfolio of software. SnapStream enables media companies like New York Times, the Daily Show and Colbert, before they went off the air, to source all their short video clips,” he says. 

But I had called Agrawal to chat about an AI case study I’d read — at Tasklet that featured PT&P — where his team is using AI agents to enhance productivity. “I started a group within the company two years ago to attempt to drive broader usage of AI at the company. We paid for people’s ChatGPT accounts, and there were good ideas and people were inspired by one another. But it kind of ‘hit a wall’ in terms of broader usage,” he says. 

“Then I was introduced to this AI agent technology, Tasklet, through a venture fund I’m an investor in – and they had automated their entire backoffice using it,” Agrawal says. 

Tasklet says its “AI command center…takes ownership of work: it sends emails, updates spreadsheets, files tickets, builds apps, and runs recurring processes across your tools. Describe the outcome in plain English, and Tasklet figures out the rest.” Its use cases span the operational spectrum of any business, it seems, including shop-floor employees at PT&P.

For his part, Agrawal uses a personal "Chief of Staff" agent connected to 22 services — Gmail, Google Analytics, Google Chat, calendars, and others. 

It’s a leap of faith I haven’t yet taken. Agrawal can relate, to a degree. “People have old information,” he says. “They read a headline where OpenClaw came out earlier this year and it drained someone’s bank account. The fact is that these agents have guardrails on them. Sure, they can make mistakes — but generally the mistakes are pretty bounded.”

His employees provide much-needed context. “One of the people on my team — shoutout to Fiona — calls these AI agents ‘genius math babies’,” he laughs. “There's this weird dynamic where AI is really good at just, like, ridiculously hard things, but then really dumb when it comes to really easy things. Genius math babies. We need to learn how to use them to get work done accurately, to be effective but not drain our bank accounts!” 

For Agrawal, his people also provide the ‘true north’ for his company’s tech roadmap. “I kind of think about AI agents as a new productivity primitive. It's like a spreadsheet or a word processor, and I want us to hurry up and learn how to use word processors and spreadsheets so we can all be more productive.”  

Agrawal also acknowledges that the technology he’s harnessing may profoundly impact his workforce – every workforce. I get around to asking what impact this technology will have on jobs. “The job’s question is a hot topic when you talk to people in the AI world. Nobel Prize-winning laureates are apart on the issue,” he says. 

“My personal view is that, yes, at some point it's going to be pretty bad and weird, at least before it gets better. And I see it as my job as the CEO of this company to prepare our workforce and our company for whatever’s next, that next level where new jobs will be created — and get in front of it.”

Read PT&P’s Tasklet use-case study here. We’ll also circle back with Rakesh Agrawal and Houston’s powerhouse manufacturer in later editions. There’s a lot more.

Bart Taylor is president of the Greater Houston Manufacturers Association. Reach him at [email protected]. 

How generational leadership and 140 CNCs power Cox Manufacturing

Manufacturing is rich with generational stories, no more so than in Houston, where we’ve reported on standouts like Minco and invited generational leaders like Nubia Perez of Gretna Machine to help guide the GHMA. 

Generations also sustain San Antonio standout and GHMA member-company Cox Manufacturing.

CEO Bill Cox is the third family member to lead the company – his mother Lillian guided operations when William Cox Sr., who founded Cox Manufacturing in the 1950’s, passed away. Today, Bill is passing the torch to his son William after years of sustained success. 

So much so that today, Cox’s sprawling factory in north San Antonio is too small. “We've crammed more machines in here,” Cox laughs. “We're up to 134 primary machines now. And we're running three shifts, six and a half days a week. My son is really pushing to figure out how to squeeze even more utilization out of it. Honestly, it's the skilled techs as much as anything. Extra space, extra machines does make it easier to do things. But we need more (skilled techs),” he says. Cox has been investing in “later technology, multi-spindle CAM machines, built in Switzerland – with six more coming in.” Along with more room: Construction bids for a comprehensive building expansion were due the day we spoke. 

But if generational leadership is common to Gulf operators, so too is an inevitable reckoning with oil and gas. “In 1982, half my workforce had nothing to do,” Cox told me in a 2022 interview. “It was a pretty hard lesson at a young age not to be reliant on one customer, or — even worse — the oil industry.”

I asked Cox about the company’s industry mix today. “Yes, it’s a good healthy mix. We do medical device work, some electronics work. The electrical-connector sector is strong. We’re also involved with data centers. So aerospace, electronic connectors, and data-center cooling systems, those are ones that are really strong for us today,” Cox says. 

“There are other opportunities out there,” he continues, “because frankly in our industry there's a lot of peers that have been operated by baby boomers that maybe don't have a succession plan, or maybe they get acquired by private equity that messes them up. So we've picked up more than one customer where they had a long-term supplier they were happy with, but have grown unhappy. My son just completed a ‘net promoter’ score (a measure of customer satisfaction). You're probably familiar with these: 21 customers, and our net promoter score was 95. Something as basic as taking care of customers has always been a high priority — and today it’s still the best way we gain grand,” Cox says. 

I come back to Cox’s new equipment – or as Cox corrects me, its “refurbished machines. It's kind of ironic. They have a CNC control on them. When we're importing them, there was a debate whether we should call them CNCs or not. They have a CNC control, but it just controls the camshaft and the spindle speed. But they're very high speed, very precise. Making parts in two seconds is not unusual on those, for very high volume jobs,” he explains. 

Cox’s investments are opening new doors. “We're using those machines for some older, legacy work, so to speak – for example they’re great with automotive. But there's also components related to fiber-optic connectors, driven by the data centers. And there’s defense work that's very high volume that (the machines) are right for,” he says. “Any time we can invest in a platform that serves multiple markets, that's where we get a green light. We’re also phasing out  some of our older machines in markets we're transitioning away from,” Cox adds.

Every manufacturer is on a technology journey of their own; they’re in transition, of sorts. I ask more about Cox’s current path. “Well, we've always been a company that poured energy into our technology side. We actually have a patent on some of our software,” he says.  “Our big priority this quarter, though, is replacing our old ERP system, parts of which are homegrown, something we had done a couple of decades ago. We did a broad assessment of options out there and we landed on Global Shop Solutions out of Houston. We’re plugging in their software and integrating our proprietary piece — something that will also position us to get CMMC level two compliant, which is a high priority for us for the defense market.” 

More opportunity – in a sandbox that for Cox, is already global in scope. “I'm optimistic with everything going on in South Texas, in Central Texas: tech coming out of Boston, some big companies moving into the San Antonio area, Toyota is expanding, Caterpillar. But we still ship most of our stuff outside of Texas. We ship to California, every week. We ship back East as well. We ship into Connecticut. And we have a good customer in Ireland,” Cox says with a smile. 

Two things seem especially satisfying to Bill Cox as he manages a succession plan and contemplates the future. Five years ago, he and I agreed a US manufacturing comeback still hung in the balance. That’s changed. “It’s definitely refreshing to contrast that to my whole career where everyone was scrambling to chase low-cost Asian prices. I fought that — and the erosion of American manufacturing,” he says. “Now people are committed to make it here and they're biased to getting their components, their supply chain, to be regional, to be US-based, and it's refreshing.”

Yet nothing beats watching young people rise to the occasion. “My oldest son joined the business a little over six years ago. And he's really surprised me at how much he's learned about business and about our manufacturing operations. Long story short, I named him president in March,” Cox says. “He's stepped into the chief operating officer role, too, with key functions reporting to him. We've been struggling where sales would go up a few percentage points every year, making money but not setting any records. William has put a lot of energy and strategy behind it — and sales are up 18% and profits more than double. Just doing a lot of the right things,” he says proudly.

“My youngest son also joined the business full time this last year. And he, you know, since the time he was just a little kid, he said he was going to join the business. And, you know, going back to science fair projects that he did when he was in elementary school, he was doing things related to manufacturing. And so it's a delight to have him on the team. Over the years, he's worked in different departments. And, now the two brothers work very closely together — the youngest does estimating and is always looking at new projects, then ways to save money on old projects.” 

William Cox Sr. would be proud of what his family has accomplished. Texas manufacturing certainly is. 

Bart Taylor is president of the Greater Houston Manufacturing Association. Reach him at [email protected].