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Business of Machining - Episode 113
245 Plays7 years ago
The Grimsmo Team is headed to a local machine show!
The Joint Open House
Participants include: Elliott Matsuura, SST, Ferro Technique, and DMG Mori.
It will give Grimsmo and his team a chance to ask lots of questions, and learn new things. There’s a lot of small tooling reps there, so it’s a good chance to make new connections as well as build current relationships.
“I’m actually kind of jealous” - Saunders
How to Maintain Tool LIfe
PLUS Learn about automation in tool maintenance!
In Germany, the machine knows when it needs to warm up and runs the warm up program so you don’t have to think about it.
The Johns discuss their trip to Europe
Saunders was there for 2 weeks, and Grimsmo for four days
Look out for the factory tour of Kern and Tornos on YouTube (COMING SOON!!)
Saunders’ takeaways
- Learned about the European perspective in business. Cleanliness and organization is key!
- Saunders noticed that the companies they visited have a more fluid system of working with apprentices, and are connected better with schools
So...how do you inspire young people to get into manufacturing?
If they’re already interested in technology, it’s a breeze! Guess what, Manufacturing IS technology (which makes it sexy)
Keeping track without living to track
It’s SO difficult to keep track of purchasing and what we need
“Purchasing is kicking our butt right now” - Saunders
ProShop is doing a good job at the Grimsmo Shop. He has a list of what he’s waiting to get, and it gets checked off when it arrives.
Grimsmo Book Review
“Getting Things Done” - David Allen
This book isn’t for everyone, but it’s got some great ideas for every entrepreneur or busy person!
Core concept: every thought you have, write it down into a system you have in place.
How do you manage ALL the things you need to get done?
“If most of it doesn’t get done, life still goes on” - Grimsmo
“Ideas are worthless, it’s execution that matters” - Saunders
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction and Humorous Anecdotes
00:00:00
Speaker
Good morning. Welcome to the business of machine episode 113. My name is John Saunders. And my name is John Grimsmough. How are you? I'm fantastic. I'm carrying three knives and a pen today. Three? Okay.
Elliot Metzger Adjoint Open House Overview
00:00:17
Speaker
Today is the annual Elliot Metzger Adjoint Open House, which I've been to... Really? Probably eight times. Eight years.
00:00:25
Speaker
the one that you go between different shops and get machine credit for if you do so, service credit? Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'm highly interested in this. If I visit all five locations, then I get eight hours of free service, you know, maintenance, whatever, for a machine that I bought through any of one of these five. And I have my DMG Mori, which is through this deal. I used the eight hours of service this past year, which was awesome. Nakamura through Elliott Metzor. So like, this is, this is good.
00:00:55
Speaker
Whoa, I'm very jealous. So we're bringing Angelo. Aaron's gonna film. Sky's gonna come. Sky's never been to a machine show before. It's super exciting. And then we're also bringing this guy Paul.
00:01:08
Speaker
who makes, I guess you'd call them firefighter accessories. He's got a shop not too far from us. And we met a few weeks ago and super cool guy like our age and just super smart go getter. He's got like a year 2000 FANUC Robo drill with a palette changer that he bought for super cheap. And he just got it up and running and he's all excited. So it'll be cool to have him come too.
Business Success Through Relationships
00:01:31
Speaker
Awesome. Oh, that's I'm, I'm actually really jealous. Um, Mr. Just came back from two weeks in Europe. No, I know. I know, which I get that, but no, it's this is different because this is your relationships. This is your, like, I'm going to, this is going to sound like some cheesy business little statement, but this is the kind of thing you do to succeed, which is build those foster those relationships with the people that help you do what you do. Right. Um, that's cool.
00:01:56
Speaker
When we got the Nakamura almost two and a half years ago, I would say that Elliott Matsura went out on a limb to make sure we could get that. Looking at our financial statements then versus now. Now it's a no-brainer to finance us.
Logistics and Itinerary of the Open House
00:02:11
Speaker
Then it was like, whoa, thank you guys so much for believing in us. It worked.
00:02:18
Speaker
So it's great to be able to go support them, meet everybody, develop these relationships over time. And the things I learned at these events are excellent. And there's lots of small tooling reps, too. So I want to talk to the Regofix guy about that power grip system and all kinds of stuff. So I'm pumped. It's going to be a great day. That's awesome. Oh, have fun. That's really cool. They bust you around, too, or you just drive? They have a limo that goes all around, but we'll just drive. OK. They're not that far. If I recall, like three of them are next to each other or something?
00:02:48
Speaker
Yeah, and then the others are like 20 minutes apart. It's no big deal. So it's going to be a great full day. Awesome. Are you going to run the DMG while you're gone? Throw a pallet on it or no? Speaking of which, I came in this morning.
Machine Maintenance and Issues
00:02:59
Speaker
The mill is supposed to be off, but the fan is spinning like crazy, like the Lang chip clearing fan.
00:03:07
Speaker
Yeah, and like normally that's end of cycle last thing and I'm like, why is it still spinning? The cycle should have finished like six hours ago. What's going on? No, no, the fans been on for probably Eight to ten hours. No. Yeah. Why there was a there was a
00:03:25
Speaker
my tool breakage, my tool life monitoring count. We forgot to update it last night properly. So it finished one pallet, does the fan to blow off the one pallet, and as it's moving to the next, it reads through all the tool life again. And it goes, tool 25 is worn out before the fan could turn off. So it's like, oh man. Wait, so your spindle was turning too. Yeah. I guess not a big deal, but. I didn't look at the RPM, but.
00:03:51
Speaker
5,000 rpm or something like that. I touched the spindle. It wasn't warm or anything, so I'm not worried about it. It's really funny. Just sitting there blowing. The part was clean. Crystal clear. That's hilarious. Yes, I gotta watch that.
00:04:07
Speaker
I feel like I've heard all of these anecdotes from sort of our friends, but then also some of the folks that I was with on this trip about people losing spindles lately. And it has to be a little paranoid because most of them were, many of them were not, you know, crash related. They were just spindle life related. And it's kind of one of those unfriend or unfun reminders that spindles actually are going to, every spindle will fail. Like it's not meant to last forever.
00:04:37
Speaker
It's so weird to think of it as a consumable. Yeah, it is. Mechanical things fail. I don't know about you, but I'm delusional as an entrepreneur or machine owner because I'm like, I'll obviously have the one exception. I'll have the machine that just lasts forever. When you walk in and you see the Okuma from 1972 still banging away on parts or something.
00:05:01
Speaker
So I was actually talking to the guys yesterday about, hey, are we running the spindle warmups? I think Haas says, if you're running the machine every day, you don't necessarily need to do the warmup program that's on the machines every day, but still not a bad idea. And we also generally keep the shop at a decent temperature. I'm not sure how important that is, except for I'm sure if your shop is like in a cold area and not insulated, that thing is more important.
Machine Power Management Solutions
00:05:31
Speaker
You know, the funny thing is I don't know how to, I'm sure I could go look, but could I program the machine to turn on at like five 30 home itself and start the spindle warmup? And I don't know if I can do that because I don't think you can home the machine. Um, I don't think you can home the machine kind of remotely, but then also I'd have to program our, or I have to do something to have our air compressor turn on as well.
00:05:58
Speaker
I'm not sure how to do that. Yeah, I think I've heard of people doing warmups automatically in the middle of the night or in the morning, but I believe you'd have to leave your machine just on.
00:06:09
Speaker
They have a sleep mode though, where the... Really? Yeah. Unless your Z, I don't know, does the Z break? Or does the Z stay under some power consumption? Not that big of a deal. And our compressor we could leave on, I just would want to have an Arduino or IoT style ball valve that shuts off the...
00:06:32
Speaker
because we have every once in a while you'll plug in something that leaks, or I just don't want it to be, you can leave it on, just shut it off at the tank, you'll be okay. Yeah, we leave our compressor on all the time. I don't know how many times it runs throughout the night, but I think we're pretty tight leak-wise. We fix the one. Wait till you move into your new shop and we'll see. Yeah, exactly.
00:06:58
Speaker
We have, I don't know, I think it was 500 feet of line when you start walking along walls and up and down crevices and then all the, I think we did a pretty good job. We did do a pretty good job in hindsight of running the drops where we need them and having access to air, but it just ends up creating
00:07:17
Speaker
You know, so many, we're pretty good. I think we're actually pretty tight at the moment. We had a couple of leaky guns and we did the right thing, not always the easy thing, but the right thing, which was to throw them away and buy ones that don't leak. Yeah, with the warmup, somebody told me that basically if you live in a cold climate, like your shop's cold, last thing you want to do is just crank the machine up to 12,000 RPM.
00:07:46
Speaker
because that will be bad. But it's probably different if you keep your shop at like 70 degrees all the time. And then you wouldn't need as much of a warm up. But still the spindle itself is cold. It's not lubricated evenly and stuff. Or even the grease pack spindles that we've heard so much about. They need to be liquid and flowing as well. I don't know. You know what I mean?
00:08:14
Speaker
I mean, in some respects, we're overthinking it. What I would prefer to do is have the spindle warm up every day, but I don't want it to do it when we're on the clock, when we're sitting there trying to make parts. So you want to have it done before you get in, which should all be easy to do. So I'm 90% sure Haas has a like turn on thing. I'll go search the parameters, which means, yeah, let the machine go to sleep and then have it wake up, fish the air compressor, and then you're done. Boom.
00:08:43
Speaker
Well, like the curtain we were looking at in Germany was after sitting idle for whatever, a couple hours, you start to run a program that goes, oh, sorry, I've got to warm up for three minutes. Just give me a second here. And the machine warms up by itself. It puts in a certain tool, runs for three minutes, and then will continue to your part.
00:09:00
Speaker
I don't even think it was a couple of hours. I think that was 20, 30 minutes. Yeah, it might be. That was like, just so, so fun when they were talking about, you know, this idea that spindles grow, everything grows with, with thermal changes and heat. And they basically, excuse me, map out the spindle growth in Z.
00:09:22
Speaker
and they know, I wanna say that they actually have that in the Heidenhine as a parameter, basically kind of like dynamically offsetting your Z machine position based on the temperature of the spindle, which they said, I'm sure I remember this from the CEO, that that is something that is consistent over the life, which I thought, ooh, I would think you would wanna kind of keep that more, some of you update or check, but I mean, it's crazy.
00:09:52
Speaker
Yeah, I was talking to other people about thermal compensation and heat and growth and stuff. And a lot of people were complaining that thermal comp is like a band-aid and it's not super all-encompassing. Whereas what current is trying to do is they're thermally managing the machine. They're keeping every aspect of the machine at 20 degrees Celsius, except for the spindle, which heats up the quickest. So even their spindle temperatures were going up by 10 degrees or so. But then they have the comp on top of that.
00:10:21
Speaker
Yeah, I think it's very different. I think some people build the machines. For example, if you have a casting that doesn't.
00:10:32
Speaker
what doesn't expand and contract consistently or there's no casting cooling or there's no cooling through the ball screws or so forth. There's all these sort of like weaknesses that they just say, well, we'll solve it with software. That's not really what Kern's doing. Kern's doing all of that stuff and then they're still recognizing there's just micro amounts of change and we're gonna handle that as well. Yeah, the heat's gotta leave, not just be compensated for. Yeah, it's really cool. Yeah, it's super cool. Cool, so how was the rest of your trip?
European Tour and Industry Insights
00:11:01
Speaker
I was good. So we, let's see here. I got what a blur left. Okay. So, so dropped Florence off at the airport on Saturday morning when you were skiing in Austria. It's a tough life. Um, and went up to north of Munich and visited with, uh, Stefan gutters winter, who's kind of a, um, pretty legit machinist on both YouTube and Instagram, as well as in the real world with his day job at a household named, you know,
00:11:29
Speaker
conglomerate company a really nice guy though has a really cool shop did a tour filmed a tour just You know one of those things where kind of lost track of time I think we were there for four or five hours and I all of a sudden I got a run But it was cool. It was just absolutely great makes me Just smile and fun to hang out like-minded people and share and learn and so forth and then the rest of this trip was with NTMA which is
00:11:59
Speaker
Let me look it up. Actually, I want to make sure I get the TMA.org. I think it's the National Tooling and Manufacturers Association, which is in the US. No, excuse me, National Tooling and Machining Association, which is one of maybe the sort of major industry group for machining. I wasn't familiar with it.
00:12:21
Speaker
But a really solid group of folks both from NTMA as well as the kind of corporate sponsor partners of NTMA. And then everyone else except me was obviously an active member of NTMA. So really good group of shops. I think there's probably some correlation of the folks that are either involved in NTMA or on these trips are the kind of folks that are interested in learning and sharing and paying it forward and thinking about.
00:12:47
Speaker
not just their business, but the framework of manufacturing in America and how we, how we make that work. So lots of, lots of multi-generational shops, lots of people that they cared. You know what I mean? Yeah. And in small shops, you know, husband and wife shop out of Sonoma, um, in California, really cool. Just, they're making it work with a few machines to, uh, a shop with 230 spindles with multiple, multiple Makino, uh,
00:13:15
Speaker
multiple Makino cells with up to eight horizontals with a four story FMS system. I mean, like, yeah, like the whole range of backgrounds and shop capabilities and size. So that was like, that was in and of itself amazing. And then the chance to see, I think we talked about height behind last week, but yes, we did. Yeah.
00:13:38
Speaker
See, it was Grove, Blaser, Spironi, and Big Kaiser. So seeing all those factories was phenomenal.
00:13:48
Speaker
Where is Big Kaiser based out of, aren't they? Are they Japanese? The short version is that Kaiser was a Swiss company known for its boring heads and other precision tools. It has been around, see it's kind of a second or third generation. And then some years ago, at least in the US, Kaiser partnered with, I'm going to mispronounce this, Big Diaschoa, something with the Japanese company, quote, unquote, big.
00:14:18
Speaker
Big does tool holders amongst other things, very high quality tool holders. And so now for the US, at least we see them as basically one company, but Switzerland is who does the boring and some of the cutting tools and other stuff. And then Japan has a lot more of the grinding, the college tool holders, that kind of stuff. Got it. Okay. Yeah. But it's funny because you don't always think about the scale and size of these factories. So I did grove.
00:14:48
Speaker
is a awesome machine tool, but not something, not quite a household name, so you don't necessarily know how big they are. They are massive. They have the largest machine building campus in Europe and maybe in the world. I think it was like, I don't know, millions of square feet.
00:15:09
Speaker
outside of Munich. And so a lot of that is because they are a major player in assembly, not assembly lines, but big auto manufacturing lines. So they'll have multiple of their machines with multiple spindles in each machine to do high production car part machining.
00:15:28
Speaker
So they're kind of quote unquote new to the job shop or machine shop world of people buying them like our friend Dennis has. But that was mega corporation when you get there. And then you go to Big Kaiser. And Big Kaiser is, I mean you could hold your breath and drive by it on a quiet road in Switzerland. And it's a beautiful facility and they've got these really cool, they've got these Fehleman machines and DMG Morris.
00:15:54
Speaker
But it's, you know, it's a shot that you could walk through in 20 minutes, you know, maybe seven or eight, 10 different rooms, a couple different floors, but it's small, right? It's intimate. You're going to know every one of you that works there. But they're putting out, I mean, large quantities of probably some of the best boring heads, certainly up there, both the old analog style, and then they've got the digital side, and it's pretty cool.
00:16:22
Speaker
So you've got one of their boring heads, right? Yeah, so that's how I got involved in this whole trip was we were trying to, we were looking for a better way to machine the fixture plate bores. We had a Sandvik boring head. It's a great tool, but the thing I don't like about any analog or regular Vernier style boring head is it's very difficult to adjust backward.
00:16:49
Speaker
You know, it's not WYSIWYG. What you see is not what you get. So you basically got to come all the way back and creep back up on your number. Yeah. And when you're trying to do tenths, even with a Vernier that can technically hold subtenths,
00:17:04
Speaker
it is difficult also because even to this day, we've got this recipe nailed down, you have boring bar deflection. It's actually measurable, it's consistent, but you have deflection in the tool. So the digital head still has some deflection. We actually did get a shorter bar and a thicker bar. So that helps, but that was not, that's just the fact that we bought the better tool the second time around.
00:17:30
Speaker
but the digital head is WYSIWYG. It's like a scale on a, it's like a DRO on a bridge port. It doesn't matter what the slop is and the screw. When you go back or forward, you get what you get and then you keep the screen turned on when you lock it down because most of the time when I lock it down,
00:17:51
Speaker
the boring bar moves out by about 50 millionths or half a tenth. So we actually usually set the number we want 50 millionths under and then lock it down with the torque wrench and that bumps it out to the actual nominal that we want, which is awesome. It's really cool. Two questions. What is the scale resolution on the display?
00:18:13
Speaker
It is tenths, ten thousandths of an inch with a last sub digit, which is either 50 millionths or the next level up. So it's not full resolution at the- It's five or zero. Thank you. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So it's like one, it's like a digital mic, right? That'll measure a tenth and then a half under it.
00:18:39
Speaker
Oh, our Bitu Toya Quantum mic, I'm pretty sure, does full millionths. I'm not sure it's that accurate, but it shows it. I think it's five. I think ours is five. Well, I'll have to go look. Anyway. Yeah. That's cool. And then the second cool. How does it measure inside this? Is there like a little glass scale inside? There is not. They use, oh, I knew you were going to ask me this. We did a video on it where we talk about it. It's a term. It's like, it's not anisotropic.
00:19:08
Speaker
but they talked about on the tour because there's a couple of different ways you can do it. And what's interesting about this is it's got to not only be accurate, or excuse me, it's not only got to hold up to the fact that it's rotating and up to thousands of RPMs, but it's a through spindle coolant tool. So you've got to be conscious of what's going on inside of it and so forth. What's through coolant? But I want to say it's magnetic.
00:19:38
Speaker
It's electronic, basically, and it uses current and voltage, but not the same way a digital caliper does. A digital caliper is just, I believe, a variable resistance, a giant variable resistor. As you move it in and out, it measures the change in voltage. This is a whole other level of technology beyond that. That's awesome. So there's batteries inside.
00:20:03
Speaker
Just like a probe? There is, although good grief. I mean, like, I don't know, once a year, once every year and a half, it's like nothing. That's cool. It is cool. Yep. So that was fun.
00:20:20
Speaker
The takeaway that I wanted to share twofold, and number one, I think we talked about this, I may or may not have had a beer or two in the last podcast recording, but number one is just like the European perspective of investment in business.
Business Shifts and Youth Engagement in Manufacturing
00:20:36
Speaker
And it's not, there's always exceptions, but nevertheless, I think it's fun to see other shops anywhere, let alone other cultural shops, like other parts of the world and different ways of thinking and doing business and just looking at that and taking it away. And so one of the first things I did when I came back here was try to finish up that purge, to finish up that, you know, stuff we don't have, we don't need. And we've already run a clean shop, but there's still a lot of,
00:21:06
Speaker
It's a little bit weird. I think it's kind of like two different, two different Johns talking. There's John Saunders, the like nerd hobbyist, like the side stuff. And that's okay. I'm not, I'm not quote unquote killing that person at all. But what I'm doing is I'm, I enjoy the passion of building this business and the framework around it and this tools that we need. And the more that that succeeds, the more that that lets us
00:21:31
Speaker
Participate in the fruits of our labor, which means you know having some fun time to do other side stuff But the reality is you know a couple years ago. I thought I was gonna build Some I don't know fun little silly project. I'm not gonna do that right now. That's okay. I like it don't so That focus and willingness to invest was was something I really respect And the second thing I wanted to mention is we asked the
00:22:00
Speaker
One of the tours, they're all very active in their apprenticeship programs. They clearly have a more fluid system of working with, partnering with schools for co-op style programs where a student is both working and in school.
00:22:19
Speaker
But that's also happening at companies that have hundreds of apprentices. I suspect some of the major U.S. companies may have that as well. In fact, I know like Hermla has it for the U.S. thing. I know Grove has it for the U.S.
00:22:34
Speaker
It's not something that you or I are ever going to be able to do, right? Grimmsville's not going to work with the local Toronto school system to do a co-op program. Consistently, regularly. You may participate. Yeah. You're not going to create that. No, exactly. Sorry. I'm participating now. Sky is a co-op student. Exactly. He's only got one semester left next year, but I don't see him as a co-op student. I see him as a full-fledged employee of Grimmsville Knives.
00:22:59
Speaker
You know what I mean? Yeah. Do you fill out any sort of paperwork or reviews or ... Okay. We do the same for our local high school that we have people coming in through, which is great. Okay. But what I was ... The takeaway was that
00:23:16
Speaker
I asked the question, do younger people, whether it's sixth graders, seventh graders, high school kids, do they know what machining is in Germany? We're in southern Germany. We're in the machine tool capital of the world. More machines are made here. There's just a tremendous amount of manufacturing.
00:23:33
Speaker
And I'm just thinking, of course, the answer is going to be yes. All these kids are going to... And the answer was no. They're like, we go to kids and they don't know what machining is, but they do want to be in technology. That's kind of the invoke thing. And so I think a lot of those companies have tried to show how manufacturing is a form of technology.
00:23:53
Speaker
which is totally true. That's awesome. JavaScript post-processing, simulations cam, automation robots. I don't think the world perspective of manufacturing understands how incredibly nerdy and fun this industry is that you and I know and how much technology is within it. I mean, I don't know what... That's a good point. I'd be really curious to see what public perception of machining, of manufacturing is. Yeah. Right, exactly.
00:24:23
Speaker
I think an opportunity, but I think it's also, I'm tired of hearing people say, we can't get our young people interested in manufacturing. It's not Zanesville, Ohio. It's not the US. It's not North America. It's everyone in the world is faced with the same issue of something that's probably happened
00:24:45
Speaker
Every generation, I don't necessarily think our problem is unique from a perspective of how do you motivate and how do you instill vision in the younger generation and get them fired up, right? Now that said, your kids might be a little young for this yet, but I know Clara, who's nine now, she's a fiend on YouTube and she loves watching these quote unquote satisfying videos.
00:25:12
Speaker
where it's just clips and clips and clips of whatever, of dough rising or whatever, blah, blah, blah, any kind of thing. But there's an insane amount of manufacturing clips within there. And so I'll watch them sometimes with her and I'm like, oh, look, it's a CNC machine. She's like, yeah, I know, dad, I know. But it's giving her and everybody else who watches these millions of hit videos
00:25:37
Speaker
at least exposure to manufacturing. But if they don't learn anything more about it, then that ends there, right? Right. But it's like, it's all around us. Like, you know, my five year old loves playing with Lego. He's already asking about someone brought him a space camp brochure. God bless whoever did that. Because you know how he's like, how old do you have to be to go to space camp? Like, I'm not that worried about
00:26:01
Speaker
the abilities of people who want to impart some knowledge of what the world is and what there are different opportunities out there for it. That's okay. It will happen. It'll be okay.
00:26:17
Speaker
But good trip. It was, uh, it was fun. Everything went on pretty darn well here at the shop, which was, um, we have a little, uh, we have a post over on the NYC CNC forum with a guy
Shop Autonomy and Inventory Management
00:26:29
Speaker
started. It's awesome idea of like, Hey, let's all keep each other accountable at some quarterly goals. Like throw down three things and let's check back four times a year, which is nice because it's not, um, it's not, you know, something where you've got to be paying attention to it every day or every week. And, uh, and.
00:26:45
Speaker
It's cool to see, it seems like a lot of people are really focused on this idea of switching, it's the e-myth thing. It's like being able to be both the manager, but also the entrepreneur, the visionary. So having the systems in place that means you don't have to be there. That's like, I would probably talk about that for a year now, but it's still so important. Yeah, and it's still a relatively new feeling to both of us.
00:27:11
Speaker
Like I went, I missed four shop days when I was in Europe, but the shop ran perfectly without me. You know? Yeah, that's awesome. And it's pleasant to know that going forward, that's only going to get stronger as I purposely work towards something like that. Yeah. Purchasing is killing us. Procurement, purchasing, whatever you want to call it.
00:27:40
Speaker
just who's handling it, how do we track what needs ordered, what has been ordered, but we're waiting on it, how does it get inbounded and processed? We'll figure it out, but boy, it is a lot of work. Absolutely. ProShop does seem to handle that fairly well, but I admit that I still need to
00:28:03
Speaker
do a better job of using it to accomplish that. But yeah, if I order something, not little stuff, but if I order something semi-decent sized, I'll put it in the pro shop and then I have a list of what's coming in, of what's waiting, what we're waiting to get. Then when it comes in, usually me or Sky will check it off and say, oh, this came in at this date, this time, it was all good, it's all here, no back orders, et cetera. Do you use Kanban cards then? I don't.
00:28:34
Speaker
Yeah. Hmm. I can see a system. Actually, I know what the answers are. I just don't have the willingness, energy, or money today to go through and solving it.
00:28:48
Speaker
A digital tool storage system, which is something we're already working on, will allow you to also put in non-tooling stuff. So I could put in raw material and supplies and so forth, even like the people clamps that we order and sell with our mod devices. We can put those into that system. But that would be all digital. I still like a physical thing, I think. Although, I don't know, we'll see.
00:29:16
Speaker
I could see if you had a QR code on wherever we're storing it, if you run low, you could just grab the gun, scan it, and it could either trigger a reorder, which would be fine, or if you, let's say, Ed scans it to trigger a reorder, and that P.O. goes out, but then let's say two hours later, Josh sees that it's low, it hits it again, it could just pop up and say, no need, it was already done this morning. Right, you know what I mean?
00:29:46
Speaker
I'm trying to think what the shortcomings would be though of not having the physical Kanban card. That might work, and that's actually not... I say that's not that hard. The reality is that means I've got to work on that, build that system, which I can do, but I don't want to do it right now. I got other stuff going. No, exactly. Yeah, there's so many little side projects. You're like, that'd be great.
00:30:05
Speaker
Yeah, it all comes down to priorities.
Productivity Methods and Delegation
00:30:07
Speaker
I've been crunching through the book Getting Things Done by David Allen, which I really, really, really like that book. I've had it for about three or four years. I've read a lot of it, but I've never fully read it, and I've never fully enacted what it says to do.
00:30:24
Speaker
But I'm doing that lately and the core super short concept is every thought you have, every decent idea that comes through your brain, write it down into a system. So I'm using Trello for that.
00:30:42
Speaker
I don't know, eating dinner and I'm like, oh, that'd be a great idea. Write it down. Or I have to do that, or this needs to be done, or I gotta order that. All these crazy thoughts that just flicker through your mind and keep your brain busy and full. Write it all down and then review it often and then sort it into categories like project, next action, waiting for, et cetera, et cetera. And now that I'm actually doing what it says,
00:31:07
Speaker
Because I've done the writing thing down part for probably two years. But I haven't done the next step of organizing it and sorting it. So it's only not even half the puzzle. But it's been great. It's been super awesome. So I'm probably two-thirds through the book now and feeling really good about it. So what's interesting is I
00:31:32
Speaker
And just like you, I went doing that for probably two years. We've talked about that. Like I have all these different to-do lists or starred emails or things in place to cause me to revisit something. Um, and the past say six weeks I've completely abandoned it. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, it doesn't make me, doesn't seem to make me more productive and it doesn't seem to make me more.
00:31:57
Speaker
I hate to use the word happy, but like what I end up doing is the business of making a to-do list instead of the business of doing a to-do list. So the way I'm handling that now is instead of emailing myself or instead of making my own to-do list, I basically try to immediately send it to somebody else. So the idea of delegating or putting it onto somebody else's plate, which is the right thing to do in many respects. There's still stuff I need to do. So sometimes I'll just try to do it.
00:32:28
Speaker
the proverbial, when the light bulb is burned out, you can either put it on your to-do list or you can just fix it. If I can't fix it and I want to fix it, why can't I fix it? It sounds silly and it's just an example, but it's a real example. Can I not fix it because I'm too busy? Why am I too busy to do something quick like that? Am I really that?
00:32:49
Speaker
Important or that. No, I'm not and it's been it's been great to actually have I wasn't really sure how to talk about this, but I've really slowed down a lot one of the reasons I like I just mentioned not doing the Purchasing system. It's not because I'm scatterbrained and have way too much on my plate and am Treading water to stay afloat. It's the opposite. It's because
00:33:16
Speaker
I've basically started to cut out huge sections of what I did used to do and I'm just not going to worry about it. It's amazing how much the world still continues when you're not doing those things. You know what I mean?
00:33:29
Speaker
Yeah, and it's important. But I'm thinking, you know, I might be able to have Alex take over that not ready to do that today or somebody else. And, you know, it'll, we'll pay a little bit of a price, because it's still sometimes me scrambling, especially like ordering material. But we've delegated some of it I've given other different people here have ways to order stuff online now through MSC and McMaster and
00:33:55
Speaker
and so forth, so that's a band-aid step. It's fine, but it's not good because not everyone's on the same page of who's doing what and when do we order and all that. But okay, so you pay a little bit of price, big deal. But yeah, I think we've double-ordered once, big deal. But it's been probably one of the most proudest things I've reached, gone through in the last year, which is just, we're really slowing down in a very good way.
00:34:27
Speaker
Yeah, that idea it actually It makes me it makes me anxious or anxiety in the bad sense this idea of doing these brain dumps of oh Like right now. I know there was a video. I wanted to do comparing different settings with infusion on stepovers in Three-axis toolpaths here using in a 2d manner. It's gonna be a really cool video and
00:34:52
Speaker
But you know what? I'm not going to put it on a to-do list because that's just going to stress me out. I'm just going to stare at it and I'm going to think, when am I going to find the time to do that? And so it's just, I mean, it sounds bad, but you just kind of ignore it. It's okay. Yeah. Hmm. I like that. Yeah. It's, it is weird track, like writing down and tracking all your thoughts because you look at the list and you realize if most of it doesn't get done, life still goes on.
00:35:20
Speaker
But they're still great ideas. So it's like, do you purposely stress yourself out to try to get them all done? Or do you analyze them and look at them rationally and go, yep, yep, nope, nope, nope, nope? Yeah, that's the difference. Classic comment on entrepreneurship is ideas are worthless. It's execution on them that is what it's all about. And that applies to something as silly as like,
Conclusion and Reflections
00:35:45
Speaker
We are now focused at Saunders. Our training program is autopilot. I have all that set up. The systems are in place. Other people are handling that. My daily involvement in that, even with registrations and questions, is minimal. So I am focused on our production of absolutely top-notch fixture plates, the accessories that go with them. I'm still doing some of the POs and custom stuff, which eventually I'll have to get push off, but that's OK. I'm still doing that now.
00:36:14
Speaker
really working on the new company. What do you do today? Oh, I'm going to go into tours. Okay, well, so are there any I mean, are you going with specifics? You bought the tornos, right? But do you have questions to answer and look for on that? I don't know.
00:36:32
Speaker
I don't have any checklists that I need to accomplish. I mean, I've been to this event so many times. Most of the reps are the same. But I do want to come away with new information. So I'm going to try to make a concerted effort to have meaningful conversations with the people there. But other than that, I'm going to just enjoy myself. OK. Cool. Yeah. Well, I want to wrap up.
00:37:00
Speaker
Sweet. I will talk to you next week. Sounds good. Have a good day, bud. OK, take care. Bye.