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Shop Leases, Floors, Hiring Employees, and Batch VS. One-Piece Workflow - Episode 140
185 Plays6 years ago
COMMERCIAL REAL ESTATE
Finding a space that fits your business but still allows room for growth can be tricky. The mammoth 26,000 sg ft building turns out to be a bust for Grimsmo. However, he's found THE ONE and it's PERFECT--as long as the concrete's deep enough (more on that later).
You don't know what you don't know. Signing leases might seem casual and straightforward especially if you've personally rented an apartment or house. However, there are lease options you aren't aware of that can come back to haunt you.
Check out this basic rental agreement overview to make sure you're on the right track!
GET ON THE FLOOR! Once you've found a great place for your manufacturing business, you gotta check the floors. In the midst of signing paperwork, you might forget how important the thickness of the foundation or substrate is! Some machines require a certain thickness to guarantee a level of rigidity while others may not.
FINDING EMPLOYEES Grimsmo and Saunders share their experiences with hiring employees. They discuss the importance of finding candidates who share the same passion, work ethic, eagerness to learn, and what should be done if the "fit" isn't right.
BATCH WORK VS ONE-PIECE FLOW Grimsmo's honked off at the workflow for the SAGA pens. He's been batching parts up to this point but would prefer the one-piece flow like the knives. Saunders and Grimsmo discuss potential solutions that include staggering production and dedicated machines.
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Transcript
Introduction to CNC Machining and Entrepreneurship
00:00:00
Speaker
Good morning and welcome to the business of machining episode 140. My name is John Grimsmough. My name is John Saunders. Welcome to the podcast where we talk about all things CNC machining and manufacturing entrepreneurship. We're going to work on refining that, but yeah. Yeah. How's it going? Super good. Can I go first?
00:00:21
Speaker
Yeah, just go.
Finding a New Shop Location
00:00:24
Speaker
So much has happened. Everything's clicking. Everything's falling into place. Things are freaking fantastic. We found a shop yesterday. Congrats. Yeah, so good. So I've had my heart set on this big, huge one up on the mountain, but there's a lot of, it's a lot of shop. There's a lot of work to be done. It's been very complicated getting in touch with them, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
00:00:51
Speaker
And then our realtor Barry's been pushing the realtor to try to find some other stuff as a plan B. And there's this place literally across the street and one building over. That's amazing. Oh, wow. Of the 10 shops I've looked at, this is number one head and shoulders.
00:01:09
Speaker
And you hadn't mentioned this before, too, on the podcast? No. Brand new. Okay. Yeah. Wow. I signed it yesterday. Yeah, it's really nice. It's 9,000 square feet, two buildings that combine to be 9,000. They're right next to each other. And it's just, it's clean. It's nice. The offices are all totally renovated. They kept it really, really nice. It's got great floors, good lighting. We know the area commutes the same for everybody.
00:01:37
Speaker
Yes. Done, done, done, done, done. Price is great. Done. Same landlord? No, different landlord approaches. Okay, that's fine. Good. Not to be nosy, but any lessons for other folks on that comment? Oh, good question. Oh, what? The landlord thing? Yeah.
Negotiating with Landlords
00:01:58
Speaker
Landlords are tricky. Ours has been pretty quiet for quite a long time.
00:02:03
Speaker
I think he's got a lot going on in his own life, but it's been getting more difficult lately. Got it. Coincidentally, while we're trying to exit, so it's fine. Yeah. But yeah, it's like with everything else, it's relationship, you know, keep everybody happy, but still kind of get what's fair for you and don't be, you know, stick your foot down, but not too hard and pick your battles, you know?
00:02:29
Speaker
No, totally. And it can be very different if you're dealing with a single individual owner, you're going to be like it or not subject to the whims of where their mood is, their personal life, potentially their portfolio. Whereas if you're dealing with even a small but proper real estate company, then it's going to be a much different experience because they're going to have procedures in place, policies. There's still a relationship element, but there are a lot of individuals out there
00:03:00
Speaker
for good reasons, sometimes for bad reasons, bad reasons, meaning some folks that have come into money and aren't necessarily sophisticated or experienced or
00:03:08
Speaker
really just good people who own real estate and then lease it out. I sympathize if you're dealing with somebody like that who I've heard of issues ranging from the typical divorces or alcoholism or just literally like wasting money away and they look to the real estate as their piggy bank and thus don't want to do improvements because they're out gambling or drinking and it is what it is.
00:03:35
Speaker
Yeah. It can be nice to deal with a real company. Yeah, exactly. Yes. The new space was available for lease? Yeah. We pushed our realtor and he said, I've got a new place that I'm listing next week.
Preparing the New Shop
00:03:53
Speaker
Let's go take a look at it. As a plan B, and I had this in the back of my mind, I'm like, I think it's going to be really, really, really nice inside.
00:04:01
Speaker
And lo and behold, it was. Of every place we've looked at, we would have probably dumped at least 20 grand into just doing stuff, paint the floors, and start to make it nice. Whereas here, we'll probably put some paint on the floors, but I think that's literally all that we'll have to do, which is great. It's so nice. And we don't even have to paint the floors. I just want to, because it'll be so much nicer. You just mean like a roll-on regular paint? No epoxy. Oh, epoxy. OK. Got it.
00:04:32
Speaker
Yeah, I'm actually going to put up an Instagram poll later today, polished concrete or epoxy, which would you choose? I've never had polished concrete, but I know some people really like it. So we'll see. Can I share my two cents?
00:04:49
Speaker
Yeah, in a perfect world, snap your fingers. Having the epoxy is great. And we have it. And I don't regret it. But I couldn't justify at the time doing the whole shop. And shops change. And now I really can't do the rest of the shop. The fumes and disruption and all that process. And we're probably going to cut up slabs at some point.
00:05:17
Speaker
it's not that well and look it's just it's expensive relative to what you get out of it or especially on a lease space and
00:05:27
Speaker
It's not, I wouldn't call it a lifestyle creep thing, but, um, you know, it's, it's probably somewhere between two and $5 per square foot, uh, depending on lots of factors, but still that's a, what is that on, if you did all 9,000 square feet, that's, that's a lot of money that could be used for other income producing tools or assets or debt paid out or whatever. Yeah. I guess that's the question. What.
00:05:53
Speaker
To be honest, I don't really remember why we did it other than aesthetics, wear, just pride of the shop. That's an important element, having a clean... People come to our shop, we had a rep come the other day, they say, wow, what you're doing here is really impressive. I think part of that had to do with... But I don't think there's action. A big part of that is explorers, like surprisingly. Yeah. Are there any real benefits?
00:06:18
Speaker
mechanical or physical reasons to do this because here we epoxy to our floors and I love it and it's great. In perfect world, I wish we would have ground it down, gotten rid of all the pits or filled them or something because now the pits just fill with dirt and it looks like crap because there's just black spots everywhere.
00:06:37
Speaker
But I love it. Eric says, when he drops a titanium handle accidentally on the epoxy, it bounces. It doesn't scratch the handle. When he drops it on his metal floor or in the concrete in the other shop, it dents the handle. So he realized that yesterday. He's like, my shop is getting epoxy floor, like my area.
Flooring Options Debate
00:06:59
Speaker
Interesting. So little things like that. And like you said, the cleanliness, the atmosphere, I really like it.
00:07:05
Speaker
But my point is one of the buildings has floors that need something. Um, the other building has really clean, polished concrete. So I'm like, I, I could just leave it, but, or I could put, I don't know yet. Um, it looks decent. So whatever you do, I would, I would encourage you to rec, don't pretend you're going to do more later.
00:07:29
Speaker
Agreed. Agreed. Yeah. Do it now. Well, but I thought, I thought, well, I can add epoxy in that second bay later. Nah, it's really difficult. And frankly, as we look at the main shop, we are going to cut slabs at some point, in which case we won't end up re-epoxying it. It almost looks worse. What would you cut slabs for?
00:07:53
Speaker
either a thicker concrete pad, or just guaranteeing, you know, so we have, per the building specs of this 1991 building, we have five inches, six inches seems to be the magic number. Different machine tool builders
00:08:10
Speaker
have different kind of like requirements around that in terms of guaranteeing it or machining stability and so forth. But if we got a higher end machine at some point and it needs, some don't need, like some don't need the flooring, but some do, I would want to make sure we haven't had the substrate or what do you call it?
00:08:32
Speaker
ground underneath it. Yeah. Yeah. So you would dig it out. You would pour a thicker layer of gravel and then you would probably pour, I don't know, an eight to 12 inch area of concrete. One of the areas of this shop has an overhead crane, like a small bay with an overhead crane. And apparently the current owners talked to the guy who built the building and he said, oh yeah, that section is feet thick.
00:08:59
Speaker
of course. Really? But I still don't think I don't just logistically, I don't think that's where I'd put machines. But I have I bought myself a hammer drill and a concrete drill. So I'm going to and I have permission from the current owners. I'm just going to drill a hole somewhere and see the current thickness. Yeah. Because I do you have a do you have a heavy duty like like 60 pound rolling skate? No.
00:09:28
Speaker
If you can get one, maybe the fab shop or riggers or somebody. So that's what we learned is you can roll one of those like five or six wheeled heavy duty skates. If you roll it over a floor, you'll hear when it rolls over a hollow or unsupported area. Okay. Yeah. Oh, interesting. So you're not looking for thickness. You're looking for variation and hollow spots.
00:09:55
Speaker
Yeah, that's my understanding. A solid really good six inches of concrete that has, unfortunately, an inch or two settled below it is worse than four or five inches where it's really compacted and supported. Does the concrete have a spec?
00:10:12
Speaker
It doesn't have a spec. I tried to push them for it. Either they haven't decided on one yet or whatever, but I think they said five to six inches should be fine. The kind of machine doesn't have to be bolted down or anything.
00:10:29
Speaker
But as I've been looking at 10 different shops, everyone's got varying thickness and quality and whatever of concrete. I haven't had too much time since yesterday to really think through this one. But I don't think I'll pour a slab, especially if it ends up being six inches. They talked to the guy who built it back in the day, and he said, oh, it's got to be at least six inches, because we wouldn't have done anything else.
00:10:57
Speaker
So that's good, but I still want to poke a hole and actually see it for myself. Yeah. I think the machines like the Kern, because they're so small and because of the nature of those castings, I don't think that's the issue.
Lease Terms and Agreements
00:11:13
Speaker
I think it's those like the DMG, DMF machines that are 80 inches long in X and are kind of like lathes where if you have different movements or a crossing,
00:11:25
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. I'm not an engineer or a machine tool builder, but remember corporate patterns, his MAZAC, I think he had some issues that related to concrete potentially, or certainly that was getting brought up. That's the kind of a machine where you've got feet on the ground, multiple leveling feet that are pretty far apart. Interesting. Yeah, that's a really good point. I hadn't quite thought of that. Also, the current's not that heavy. I think it's like
00:11:55
Speaker
I don't know, 12,000 pounds or something? Yeah. My Maury is probably the same weight. My Maury is 15. It reminds me of the little drill mills that they have to be bolted down just because the accelerations are so high. It's not because they need to be stable with regard to the thermal or the, yeah. Hermula just put up a picture on Instagram
00:12:20
Speaker
or LinkedIn. This is so cool to me. Somebody in the US bought, I think it was three C22s, 32s, but they're high-end machines. Three of them with the HSFlex automation system, which is that, I think it's a cool one because it's kind of this robot that can do tool changes as well as palette changes and part changes and advice changes and all this. It's kind of the Rolls-Royce option.
00:12:42
Speaker
And for whatever reason, they didn't want that thing going over ocean, whether it was time or other risk. And so they chartered one of the Antonov planes, which are these massive Russian cargo planes that are kind of like very recognizable and pretty darn unique. And the whole shipment was 92 tons, so 180,000 pounds.
00:13:08
Speaker
And it was the only thing on the plane. So that plane flew from Stuttgart to somewhere in the US. And they have some pictures showing the machines getting loaded up into the belly of the cargo plane. That was pretty cool. Yeah. That's crazy.
00:13:24
Speaker
Yeah. We didn't, we didn't get a quote for air freight just because the timing is not necessary. Um, so my Colonel be shipped, I think in about a month, November, early mid November, it'll leave Kern, um, and then make its voyage over here. And assuming all works out, which it looks like it will with this shop. Um, I now have a place to put it. So timelines work out. Great. Yes. Stress about this anymore. Um, which is nice. It's really what's next steps on the shop though.
00:13:56
Speaker
I want to drill that hole before I sign anything and then after that it's just signed stuff and they're still operating their business in and out but they said 16 and 90 days they'll be out of there which timing pretty much is bang on for us. Okay. And then, yeah, finalize, you know, negotiate some price a little bit. I told them we're in and we'll negotiate later but that way he doesn't list it and show other people. But yeah, I think it's great.
00:14:23
Speaker
probably a bit more discussing to do about it, planning for sure. We got to plan what's going where and all that stuff. Keep your cool. You're betrayed. I guess it's your, well, it'll work out. I can't help but say, come on, make sure you don't
00:14:49
Speaker
lay out all your cards. They were desperate. We need the shop. We love the shop. It's the only one out there. Yeah. Well, yeah, like the three of us, Barry and Eric and I, Barry started talking about it with our realtor right there. And I'm like, we're going to think about it. Let's walk back to our shop away from earshot of our good friend, the realtor here, so that we can actually discuss it. And we did. But yeah. What kind of lease term? Five years is what they're asking for.
00:15:18
Speaker
Perfect. Awesome. Yeah. Is it common? Do you know from your broker, for a five-year lease term, will landlords offer any tenant improvement allowance? I don't know. I will ask. I remember you talked to me about that a while ago. Yeah. Yeah. In the US, usually the landlord would be responsible for any commissions, including your broker.
00:15:45
Speaker
I don't know if that's convention there. Then there usually could be a tenant improvement allowance. Then a tenant friendly thing to consider would be renewal options. You may not care about this or you may.
00:16:06
Speaker
You can put in options to renew that aren't obligations, so after five years you have the right to renew, that the landlord can't take that away from you. Now the question is at what rent? Sometimes those can be pre-negotiated, which is quite nice.
00:16:23
Speaker
because they're effectively totally in your favor. Because if the market rents for some reason have fallen, then of course you're not gonna exercise it, and the landlord's still gonna be happy to work with you even at a lower rent. But if rents have risen, you now have not only the option to stay in the space, but to do so at a rent that may be good. And some options to renew are what are called market rate renewals. So you've got the right to stay there. They can't force you out, but
00:16:52
Speaker
you've got to agree on what is currently market rent. Yeah, that could be good. I don't know what the plan is five years from now. I know, but I'm just thinking now's the time to... For sure. That could be a good one, or even just negotiate a pay attention to the holdover provision, which is what they charge when you get charged for rent, when you've stayed past your lease term. Okay.
00:17:16
Speaker
some landlords will default to like 150 or 200%. So basically, yeah, you can stay a few months past your lease expiration, but your rent's double. Wow. And that's normal. And it's fair in the sense that, you know, you should renegotiate a new lease, you mean, or leave?
00:17:33
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. It's a disincentive to attendance. Basically, it's saying to a tenant, behave, like play by the rules. We should be in a lease agreement. And if you have to stay a month or two after, that's not my fault as a landlord. Like I need to plan my own building and rent tenant lists. So all these things sound like, oh, I could just, I could just figure that out later. Like I could, but it's just nice to think about these things as you're negotiating the lease. Yeah, absolutely. That's awesome. What else has been going on?
Hiring New Team Members
00:18:03
Speaker
Well, we said last week that we wanted to talk about hiring and this week.
00:18:12
Speaker
So since talking to you last week, I have agreed to hire one person that I've met since last week. And we are looking at one to two and a half other candidates for various positions, not all of them, but kind of playing them out. Either people we've run across or people we've sought out and
00:18:37
Speaker
trying to plan the near future of what this company is going to be like. It's been fun. It's been exciting. Awesome. How are you finding people right now? Several different ways. I haven't done any marketing to find them, like put out an ad or anything like that. We thought about it and we would have gotten there had we not stumbled across people.
00:19:03
Speaker
One guy, he had a booth at the local farmer's market and he was selling beautiful wooden cutting boards. So I just struck up a conversation and it turned out to be like such an amazing guy that's got his own business. And then later, I was texting him and I'm like,
00:19:19
Speaker
would you ever be interested in a career with us? And he goes, yeah. I'm like, whoa, but you've got your own thing. Interesting. OK. So I don't know if it's going to happen, but that's one of the maybes, the definite maybe. And then another guy was word of mouth, friend of a friend of a friend. And it turned out to be exactly what I'm looking for.
00:19:43
Speaker
Friend of a friend of a friend, but how did any of those friends know you might be looking for a certain, whether it's machining or digital media or what? Absolutely. So I took Lave to a birthday party, a six-year-old's birthday party at a trampoline park, so indoor trampolines. We're all bouncing around having fun. I'm talking to one of the other moms because we've been friends for a couple of years.
00:20:07
Speaker
And, you know, what's going on, blah, blah, blah. And I said, I've got an opening coming up and I'm going to need this person. So we just talked about it, blah, blah. And she goes, okay, I'll think about it. I've got somebody in my head. I can't remember who it is. I'll think about it and I'll get back to you. So then she remembered and I asked that person and he said, no, cause it's not going to work out right now. But how about this other friend? Yeah. Awesome. This other friend was like, met with him on Monday, done, done, done, done. Like I walked away from the meeting. Like, yep, I'm hiring this guy. Awesome.
00:20:36
Speaker
Timing unknown, but he's flexible. It's great. Is he currently employed? Self. Okay. Perfect. Great. Great. Great. Great. Great. Great. Got it. Yeah. Then two other guys, Eric bumped into a guy in a local restaurant and the guy basically recognized Eric or recognized the knife, like the logo on his shirt.
00:21:06
Speaker
Yeah, so it's a lot of these kind of odd, odd happenstance meetings that are hopefully ending up to be working out. And we're trying to be very cautious of not just that the person is excited to work here, but that we are excited to have them on the team, that hopefully there'll be a good culture fit and try to think of these things through from the beginning, not just get all romantic and things are gonna be great. Right.
00:21:34
Speaker
Yeah, it's bringing up a lot. I'm still reading the book, Delivering Happiness. It talks all about culture and it's good, it's good. Yeah, right.
00:21:45
Speaker
It's helpful to know. I think I've got to do some thinking about the outward marketing side. We're ready to pick up somebody, I think, like I alluded to last week. And I know what that job is and need is, and it's much more on the actual machining side, CAM, running the machines, thinking, production, manufacturing, all that stuff. It's a unique position. You want a certain kind of person for that.
00:22:14
Speaker
Yes, agreed. Yeah, this is more than just what I would consider more than just an operator of somebody who just runs the machine after it's set up. So we're thinking, and there's some flexibility, meaning if we hire somebody more junior, maybe they balance some other work while the people here then move up a little. We'll see. Yeah.
00:22:40
Speaker
It's like the one thing with this podcast that we have to be conscious of is obviously there's things you shouldn't share publicly because it's not appropriate in terms of HR and all that. But the one thing I will say is I have more conviction than ever that it's not easy to
00:22:58
Speaker
Excuse me. It's easy for my personality, at least to, to not want to be confrontational when it comes to sticking by what you believe in managing folks in the culture and so forth. And the example that comes to mind is there's two different corporate philosophies. The one is that, you know, we don't believe in firing people. We believe in helping train them and finding them in the right position and the right fit, because ultimately.
00:23:21
Speaker
That's the way we all succeed, that mantra, which I didn't say it there to make fun of it. The exact opposite is there's no pride in saying that you run a company that has never fired somebody because there are people who are not good workers. There's people who are not good fits. There's people who just aren't the right
00:23:37
Speaker
fit culturally or from an actual work standpoint, and you're not doing anybody, yourself, your company, the co-workers, appears the right task by letting them stick around. And I very much vehemently believe that that is the truth.
00:23:54
Speaker
Yes, and I believe in both of those. You can't believe in both of them. You can. No. Well, the first one, you're alluding to saying that I never fire anybody because I want to train them and find the right spot with a caveat that some people just are not a good fit and should not be there.
00:24:15
Speaker
don't do good work, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. But I still believe in working with the people, finding out what the problem is, finding out if there's a way or a position or a task. Because otherwise, you're kind of blindly just looking at someone going, eh, that guy's not going to work out of here. I'm a fan of giving them time and giving them
00:24:34
Speaker
everything that they need to succeed here and everybody be happy, me and them. And if that doesn't work out after a certain period of time, which I don't know what that time is yet, because luckily I haven't had to really do this too much, but as we grow, I'm definitely going to have to
00:24:52
Speaker
both like string people along for a little bit and make sure that we can make this all work. Otherwise it's not. Um, I, I'm, I'm, I think I'm too weak to fire quickly, but it's, I don't know. I would have to fire anybody. So yeah.
00:25:09
Speaker
There's an important nuance, which is that in any work environment, there needs to be feedback and there needs to be direction, and that presupposes that those things are embraced, and that's a given. But what I'm talking about in the latter example are instances where that doesn't work, where
00:25:28
Speaker
culturally the person doesn't fit in. They've got issues or quirks or work habits that aren't going to change. What we've seen now with a couple of different examples, probably two or three people over the last two or three years is that there's examples where
00:25:43
Speaker
They're either not going to change, period, which is kind of what I believe, or we or I don't have the ability to change them. I'm not sure if the difference matters, but what does matter is that this is no longer the right place for them, and you've got to be willing to let them go, period. Yep. It's a weird ... It's hard. It's very hard. Yeah.
00:26:10
Speaker
But that's cool. So I don't know what I'm going to do. My preference has been, yeah, we're ready for somebody. Yeah. Will this be more proven cut side or more?
00:26:24
Speaker
SMW side, or either? There's flexibility, meaning ideally, yes, that's kind of the immediate need, although we are definitely growing some on the Sonder side and could use some help there. But the core focus would be somebody who's able to work with me and Ed, primarily the two of us right now on just, we are proof, the work we're doing with ProvenCAD is just absolutely awesome, the energy, the feedback.
00:26:51
Speaker
the momentum what we're hearing from folks coming like it's just it's absolutely great so taking you know we've got that Robo drill where we finished running power so we've got to hook it up so we've got a lot of recipes to run which is a new machine it's a big plus 30 taper machine I confirmed that thank you to everybody our lathe will ship in about 10 days
00:27:15
Speaker
So we're going to start adding turning recipes. Frankly, we've got a bunch of recipes we want to still do on the Tormachs. We just got that Tormach MX, which also means I need to sell one of our other Tormachs because we don't really, it doesn't make sense for us to keep, you know, we just need a couple of them for what we're doing. And we've got some more materials. It just can't be just like all this energy. It's the first time I've really had a contagious, like self like feedback loop of growth. It's just awesome.
00:27:45
Speaker
Oh, keep that going as long as you can. Yeah, absolutely. You need somebody to run recipes. You need somebody who knows enough of what they're doing that they can then learn the finite aspects of what you want on the job. I don't know if the position you're looking for right now is training somebody from ground up. Probably not. We want somebody who's made parts before. They don't have to be a total expert.
00:28:15
Speaker
But, and you know, we could teach them to say fusion cam, or we could teach them a certain machine control, but we need somebody who, who understands, who knows the terms, you know, feed, you know, somebody, it's a typical question of it when it comes to interviewing, which is if you said, Hey, if I had a half inch tool and I was cutting a piece of aluminum, walk me through your logic on setting it up. And there's no right or wrong answer, but if they started saying things like, well, assuming it's carbide, I'm giving you, I'm giving the answers, but I mean, you know,
00:28:44
Speaker
assuming it's carbide and you're running it on a modern machine tool, your surface footage is almost unlimited, but certainly a thousand would work, assuming you don't have an RPM limit on the machine. And depending on your goals for surface finishes or tool life, something like 2,000, anything like that tells me, okay, yeah, I can work with this. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Cool. Well, I had one more thing. Yeah, go for it.
00:29:12
Speaker
We are working on, and I got to give a big shout out to Tom Lipton for the inspiration behind this originally, but one of the things that I've learned is you need to see somebody work, not just hear them talk.
Assessing Practical Skills in Interviews
00:29:27
Speaker
That's difficult to do, especially when you're interviewing somebody where they'd be leaving a job and coming over.
00:29:34
Speaker
what we're working on right now and we'll share the model for the NYC CNC pro members of this in some more detail behind it, but we're working on a couple of parts. So they're not puzzles the wrong word, but kind of like an assembly thing. And then also a part that they kind of quickly QC that has some pretty clear mistakes because
00:29:59
Speaker
We have experienced this and I've heard it from other people where you'll see some folks that seem great culturally and then literally no ability to use their hands or very poor ability to use their hands or very rough on tools, rough on parts. People talk about attention to detail, but
00:30:17
Speaker
just look at a part. It's not a high pressure. You're going to be feeling the pressure because it's an interview and somebody may have a stopwatch out just to intentionally induce some stress, but just look at the part. If this gets set on your desk and there's a print, what jumps out to you? What would you want to check? Are there tools you don't have that you wish you had? I think that's going to be a really good tool.
00:30:42
Speaker
Yeah, when we hired Joe in our interview in a coffee shop, we brought some handles and blades. Some were good, some were bad. And we laid them out. And he'd never really looked closely at a knife before or machined parts or anything. So he didn't know what he was doing. But it could show how good his eyesight was, what he could pick up. And he did quite well. Yes. And he noticed some things that were like, oh, not that. Don't worry about that. But keep looking. Yeah.
00:31:10
Speaker
He would point out some interesting things and that worked fairly well and I could definitely see, especially in your case, if you're structuring a bit more and making an intentionally bad part or something, they could work really well. It's not a trick. I want to be clear. It's not like we're trying to dupe you, but there's some things that are wrong on it or how would you check it? Well, just like you said, in a sit-down interview, it's very difficult to
00:31:40
Speaker
see and understand a person's ability with their hands, with their eyes. You can get some mind ability, but until you put a part in their hands and watch them look at things and analyze it, or even in the shop environment, actually working, moving, seeing how they walk from A to B, how they do this, how they do that, how they're rough with tools or not, if they're delicate, if they throw things down, what their natural default is.
00:32:11
Speaker
Yeah, it's a good thing for sure. And it's great because it's useful. One of the things I'm the most passionate about is seeing entrepreneurs who are hiring that first employee. And maybe they're still in a garage shop or a small shop. That first employee is so nerve wracking. It's so important to get it right. And you often will want to like the person that you may feel
00:32:35
Speaker
How would you say a connection with, but that's maybe not be the person that is necessarily good. And this kind of objective test can help, you know, help show that. Yeah, that's a good question. If you, if you hire for the connection, but the skills not there, your business is not going to grow that much.
00:32:54
Speaker
If you hire for the skill, your business might grow, but if the connection is not there, you're just all going to be mad at each other the whole time. It's this weird balance. I know, but it's this weird balance depending on how you run your business. If you run it very close and friendly or more clinical and get work done and clock in, clock out, a lot of people do it many different ways.
00:33:14
Speaker
Right. You've got to get along. I agree with that, but I'd much prefer, I would much prefer, we don't have to be going to a fishing together and do a barbecue every night after work, but much prefer that the skills there and that we have a shared passion for, Hey, let's make some parts. Let's get work done. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Cool. I'll let you know, I got to think about it. I'm going to try to, I'll reach out to some of the local kind of options.
00:33:41
Speaker
And I'm kind of curious to see obviously it's, it's, um, we have a big audience here and on YouTube and Instagram. I'm hesitant because I don't want to necessarily, um, have folks look, come to look for the wrong reason, nor necessarily relocate because, you know, we are a big fan of, of kind of test periods and trials and getting to know folks and all that. So, um, but it's also a tool that.
00:34:05
Speaker
You've got this huge audience of people listening right now, Instagram, YouTube. You could find the amazing fit, the amazing person with all the skillset that it's amazing for me to think that somebody else would leave their job and come here, uh, or, or put on pause their entrepreneurial venture and come here. And I'm like, really? Like wouldn't like that's crazy talk, but okay. Um,
00:34:35
Speaker
It's fun. What's going on today? Today, I'm in planning mode. Probably go across the street and drill that hole, measure the concrete, making pen parts on the Swiss, which is epic. Yeah, awesome. That's great.
00:34:55
Speaker
You know what I realized, and it's really pissing me off. With the knives, we have this beautiful one-piece flow. We make parts every day. We finish knives every day. It's great. On the lathe side, we do batch work, the screws, the pivots, the things like that. We'll make a couple hundred at a time. And that works because I don't want to do lathe setups every day.
00:35:17
Speaker
once they're dialed, I want to make a few hundred and then move on. With pens, it's batch work all day long. And it's it's really annoying me because we haven't finished a pen in four or five months. Because we're back like we're busy with the knives, we don't have a lot of time to spend on the pens and I get that. But
00:35:36
Speaker
We'll make 100 of these and then 200 of those. And then we still don't have buttons for the pen, yet we have 100 pens ready to assemble, but we need this button. So the lack of one-piece flow is driving me crazy, and that's my doing. But it makes me realize how much I love one-piece flow and typically don't like batch work. But now we have a part that's all lathe work, which is my batch work mentality. And it's funny. So how do you fix that?
00:36:05
Speaker
How do you fix that? Go forward. Buy six more lathes. One part per lathe. Not exactly. I'm not going to buy more lathes anytime soon, but I want to finish pens essentially every day. I want it to be more of a daily production product.
00:36:25
Speaker
Yet I still like making batches of parts on a lathe, just because it's a high production machine. Like you put a bar in, it takes you a day to dial in the part, and then you just want to make a butt little parts. Are you concerned that your pen tolerances in design will change? Like what's stopping you from making 500 buttons? Good point. Especially that you seem to know that, Swiss. Oh, okay.
00:36:50
Speaker
It's usually like, oh crap, I got to make this part next. So I only have like three days to make this part. So I have a limited time. And that's scheduling. That's on me. We are keeping much better track of our inventory right now, currently via spreadsheet. And I've got a self-organizing list of cells that will put the lowest quantity at the top automatically.
00:37:15
Speaker
So, you know, be like, oh, clearly this part is next. We need to make that next. And then we can look down the list and be like, okay, we're good on all of this stuff for like weeks and weeks. So let's focus on these two things over the next few weeks. And that's, it's, it's well on its way to working really well.
00:37:32
Speaker
But yeah, to your point, like if we made 500 of each part and staggered them, uh, well, then we could finish pens every day, you know, and then we'd run out of this part while we still have lots of those so that we just make the one more. Um, and I'll just have to kind of sit down and make sure that that's a sustainable method.
00:37:52
Speaker
I mean, it seems like with the pen, you don't have particularly high input costs, meaning the raw material is not prohibitively expensive. Right. And we have inventory for like a thousand pens. Oh, of un-machined raw material. Yeah, right. So you just got to run it. I mean, I guess in a world without constraints, if you could afford it right now, it seems like you could justify a second lathe, then that would probably be a second Swiss lathe.
00:38:24
Speaker
Yeah, I would buy another identical machine, maybe, or maybe a stripped down. Or maybe the one size bigger, just to have the size capacity. I don't know. But I'm not at the point yet of running that machine enough to justify that. Oh, yeah. I understand. I'm not trying to. But I'm thinking, what is the right path? And then what's the reality path?
00:38:51
Speaker
Now that you've got your shop identified, you've got your product line stabilizing, you should think about, in my opinion, more dedicated
00:39:02
Speaker
dedicated machines that you should be thinking about buying. For example, maybe you can afford a, or maybe you can order a Swiss lay that is more limited, but dedicated for certain pen parts or certain other parts. And then it just kind of stays that way. And it's okay if it doesn't run. I love this, you know, it's okay if it doesn't necessarily run a lot or every day, but that stays that set up for, you know, say it's either pen parts or maybe it's just like that machine stays set up for all the titanium three eighth inch round bar parts.
Batch Production vs. One-Piece Flow
00:39:31
Speaker
Exactly. Yep. And it's got all the tools loaded that it needs for all of our 3.8. Yeah, exactly. Around parts. Yeah, I could see that for sure. It's that's what Jay Pearson does, right? Like he's got quite a lot of machines. He's at nine or something. Well, he's happy with that. He went Haas, not not high end. Yeah, exactly. But his point is he's fairly happy with them not running every day because they're ready to be run. Once you flow at the moment, it's very little setup. And
00:40:01
Speaker
Yeah, it's not that delays require a lot of setup, but it seems like we're spending hours just changing over. And even just the mental break of not wanting to do it sometimes is enough to delay. Yeah, it's stupid, but it's real, and you have to kind of step back and analyze that. It's real, and you're not unique there, I think.
00:40:24
Speaker
It's one reason why we're thinking about more capto on the new lathe we're getting, because that's just a key thing. And I would say with Jay as an outside observer, what you said is true, but it's also, he's pretty smart and deliberate about having flexibility, having the ability to swap things around, having the ability to pull different tools in as needed. So it's not like he has machines that are totally idle for days or weeks.
00:40:49
Speaker
until they need a certain product. But it's nice to, I think his mentality is we're still successful in making money if not every spindle is turning.
00:41:02
Speaker
Yeah, us two, yeah, for sure. But yeah, the other thing that I see, bigger shops or different shops that might have one operator per machine or operators that their sole job is just to keep machines running. Right now in the shop, it's me and Angelo running all the machines. And our goal is not to be operators all day long. We have many other things to do here in the business.
00:41:28
Speaker
I could imagine if you just had an operator, they could be happy doing setups all day long, and then make a bunch of parts, and then do more setups, because that's the only thing they're involved in. But Angela and I are involved in so many more things around here that we just can't spend four hours every day doing setups. Yeah, John. And you shouldn't have. It may not be me at this point, but someone's got to get it through your skull to stop doing this. And maybe if you're talking about hiring folks, maybe that.
00:41:56
Speaker
could help with that. But yeah. Yeah. Hiring another machinist role is definitely in our mid to near future. Because we need it. I mean, I've got frigging three more machines coming in in two months. Oh, the UMOCs live again. It's funny. Sure. Yeah. Yeah. There's so much machine to be done.
00:42:24
Speaker
Yeah. And look, if you, yeah, you just gotta do it. Um, yeah, not only should it, uh, yeah, I'm spending too much time machining because I have many other things that are desiring my attention right now, or maybe I just focus on the Swiss, but everything else is taken care of or.
00:42:40
Speaker
You know, you stage your way up and you work yourself out of a job, basically. Yeah, I sure you won't do that. But you're not thinking enough about what it's costing you to do this. Whether it's a lost opportunity or whether, and I hate to say this, or I say this with hesitation, but the first time you, or the next time you crash a machine, especially a new expensive one, because you're spreading yourself too thin. You're trying to do too much. You're not really invested in it. You're tired of doing setups.
00:43:09
Speaker
all that, the first time you have a crash that could pay for a full year of an employee. Yeah, I haven't had a crash that big, but definitely months. Yeah. I got to say, I'm going to Nebraska Sunday night and it is potentially the coolest, it's for sure the shop tour for which I am the most excited ever in my life.
Visit to Metal Quest in Nebraska
00:43:33
Speaker
It's the first... I don't know any shop in Nebraska. I didn't either. It's called Metal Quest. I met these guys on that NTMA trip back in March and first generation shop, they started it about 20 years ago, solid owner, totally saw eye to eye, really grew from a single Akuma lathe to they are a production shop. So they quote parts in the hundreds of thousands or millions, which we've never toured. We did the superb tour, but that was stamping, which is different than
00:44:03
Speaker
actual truly machine stuff. So they've done all their own FANUC robot integration. I've got a solid team, a solid culture. They have this part that they make, which I'm pretty sure we're going to be allowed to film, where the material comes in. It gets machined on multiple machines. It gets moved between machines. It gets QC'd, it gets cleaned, and it gets packaged inside a cardboard box without ever touching a human's hand.
00:44:29
Speaker
it gets packaged by the robots. This is a small shop that didn't exist. It is so cool. So I totally hit it off with them. I said, hey, I cannot wait to come. Some of his employees were big fans of our channel, which is always nice to see that kind of reciprocated passion for the trades. And so I head up there Sunday night, get to see them back Tuesday. I mean, I'm at my kind of limit of how much I like to have on my plate.
00:44:57
Speaker
The MX from Tormach just came. We've got the Robo drill. We've got the lathe coming. Proven cut is growing and rightfully taking up a lot of time. And so I love it. I feel off of it, but it's that balance of not putting too much on your plate. So it's a good time. Yeah. Well, keep me posted on the shop and I'll see you next week. Sounds great. Take care. All right. Have fun. Bye.