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Business of Machining - Episode 72
177 Plays7 years ago
Where in the world is Saunders now? Stockholm, Sweden! And it’s “life-changing”
How could it not be when it's this beautiful?
This episode is a shorty but a goodie as our two favourite John’s talk production and management at the Sandvick Coromant headquarters, and how it relates to their businesses.
Link to Sandvick Coromant: https://www.sandvik.coromant.com/en-gb/pages/default.aspx
Saunders was allowed to film, so keep an eye peeled for a video about his adventure in Sweden. It’ll come out in the net few months on his channel.
Highlights of the tour:
- Sandvick implements lean machining into everything, and the company is always improving (sounds familiar)
- They are hungry for quality and are always pushing themselves
- Focus on skilled labourers
- SO much Emphasis on profitability and the bottom line
Grimsmo is awed by how they’re still doing this on a grand scale...and keeping up with production!
Major themes that Saunders noticed:
They have an “ability to stay focused, and ability to say no” - Saunders
“Having that hyper driven focus of what you do, doesn’t mean you can’t do other things later. It just means you shouldn’t do them now” - Saunders
How to be a “legacy company”
Fun fact: Sandvick started having autonomous forklifts in their company in 1989! That’s been normal to them for the past 30 years!
Get ready for some soul searching in future episodes! Hint: it might happen sooner rather than later because Saunders is coming to Canada to hang out with Grimsmo!
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction from Stockholm
00:00:00
Speaker
Good morning and welcome to the Business and Machining, Episode 72. My name is Jon Rimsmo. My name is Jon Sonders. Now, I'm having a regular working day at my shop here. It's actually 10.30 AM normally we film when nobody's here. But where are you at? I just arrived to Stockholm, Sweden. And if I say just arrived, I've been here for three days, but we were up north
00:00:28
Speaker
touring Sandvik, Coromant's headquarters, and two of their factories, which it's just been life changing for sure. Really? Yeah. What an experience.
00:00:45
Speaker
Yeah, and look, I'll say this on air. Thank you for accommodating. I think we've now started to travel more, both of us and I, we were, John and I were talking offline about like the practicalities of the business of machining. And we wish there was like a way we could do this mobily or like on more dynamic, you know, situations and schedules, because it's actually a bit difficult. You know, he and I have both had meetings and employees and partners and, and breakfast, and it's like,
00:01:16
Speaker
What are the better ways to make this or do it easier and better? Tools to support. Anyway, thanks for accommodating the schedule. Yeah, no problem. No, it's good. Yeah, so if there's background noise on my end, it's just both my machines running hard and Aaron clicking away in the background. Awesome. That's all good. Can I tell you about this? I mean, this is amazing. This whole conversation is yours.
VIP Event Experience
00:01:40
Speaker
So they're letting us film, which is freaking awesome. And we spent yesterday doing training workshops. So they would teach us and lecture, and then we'd go cut parts on machines. And this was at their technology center at their headquarters.
00:01:58
Speaker
Is it you and other people as well? Is this an event with visitors or what? Yeah, so this is their words, a VIP event. I am definitely the only person on this trip who doesn't make parts for F-35s and submarines and stuff.
00:02:16
Speaker
So look, I am a passionate user of Sandvik tools and I have been, regardless of our public presence, it's situations like that where I have no problem on a win-win, where Sandvik says, they didn't say this, I'm inferring it. You're not really the customer profile that normally gets to come on this trip.
00:02:36
Speaker
We like what you're doing and you know, it's not doesn't have to be big customers has to be good customers and we think you're a good customer and so I had to pay my way here but they pick up all the accoutrements and amenities and meals and tours and Transportation and they are taking care of us. It is really nice Yeah, which of course all that stuff is nice but really I want to see the factories and we got to see him and oh man and
Cemented Carbide Manufacturing Insights
00:03:01
Speaker
This morning, we saw the world's largest cemented carbide factory. They literally bring in the powders, the tungsten, the cobalt, the other stuff, and the presses. We literally sat there and watched Sandvik 390 and 245 inserts just get pressed from powder into the ... It's like a pill machine or pill bottle machine that puts out aspirin, except they're
00:03:26
Speaker
cemented carbide and then they go from there into the sintering ovens we walked through and saw all of that and then some are
00:03:35
Speaker
some are able to just go to Cody but many are I should say most or many are ground and that's certainly a big part of their secret sauce and the mojo is taking these inserts and holding them in these very you know it's weird because you think about grinding in the end bill you hold on to the shank and you've got plenty of access from that shank to grind the fruits because that's how you're going to hold in the tool but a little a little lathe insert you know a little uh
00:04:00
Speaker
CNMG or WN, so you don't have that much area to grab it, let alone securely and rigidly to grind all these different angles and rakes and chip breakers and serrations. To say it was cool was an understatement. Oh, it's so cool. They basically press all that powder into a little dye and then they put it in the oven and it shrinks quite a bit, doesn't it?
00:04:22
Speaker
It does anywhere from like 18% to 45%, but they don't care about the shrinkage. There's risks in the process for sure, and there's things that they want to continue to do better, but the shrinking is not one of them. They're like, we know exactly what it's going to do. Yeah. So that's kind of cool.
00:04:42
Speaker
But it's, you would love it. And it's what made the life changing event for me was almost all tertiary to the product. It was the processes behind it.
Industry 4.0 Discussion
00:04:51
Speaker
They are, and I kind of don't like the industry 4.0. It feels very contrived. I didn't even really understand it until somebody finally explained that 4.0 is supposed to mean, and I'm talking fast, it's because I'm freaking excited right now. All good.
00:05:07
Speaker
1.0 is the steam engine. 2.0 is electricity. 3.0 was, I think, computers or the internet or something. And then 4.0 is supposed to be this culmination of big data, IoT, automation. Connectivity and all that. Yeah. And it feels, to me, very forced. But I didn't understand the one, two, three. That makes more sense.
00:05:29
Speaker
Yeah, I literally yeah, I was in the same boat you were until like two months ago when somebody explained it to me and I was like, okay, I'm not I'm actually much less excited because I don't think anybody like when you the other three revolutions, nobody sat around and self-congratulated them before they actually had earned merit. Yeah, industry 4.0. It seems like all the players behind it are patting themselves on the back and it's very much like a TBD. Is this going to last? How do people implement it? Is it useful?
00:05:58
Speaker
Anyway, they are doing really cool stuff on preventative maintenance, on tracking, on implementation of workflows. But I love the folks that we have met, because they're all very honest. They're still using paper runners, and they're like, it really upsets us, but let's talk about why we still are, and how it's a problem, and what our vision is. And they're going through 5S. They started 5S in 2009, and they're only partway through the third S. And I like it because it's not this,
00:06:27
Speaker
sort of BS like pretty fancy. We hired some consultants and in two months we implemented Lean and we're now better smug people. They're like, hey, I don't want to say they're struggling with it because I was darn impressed, but it's always awesome to see the real world implementation. Yeah, and they're openly continuously improving. Right. Yeah.
00:06:50
Speaker
So I've got a couple nuggets I want to keep up my sleeve for the video on what they did that were just light bulb moments where you were thought, Oh my God, I love it. Like I, once you, once you see them, you're going to implement them too, which is what makes me so excited.
00:07:06
Speaker
Wow. So how was it walking in? I mean, it's a giant company. In the industry, it's probably one of the biggest in the manufacturing industry. So how was it culture-wise and feel-wise?
00:07:23
Speaker
walking through this factory is like this is obviously a company that knows what they're doing and does it extremely well and is still trying to get better but obviously has a good stake hold in the industry. You know, you as a tiny shop in comparison walking in there, you know, what kind of stuff did you did you pick up on?
00:07:40
Speaker
There is no arrogance of marketplace. I think Sandvik prides themselves on their quality, and everyone I've talked to has often said that they're expensive, and they're often proved to be worth it, and that says a lot.
00:07:57
Speaker
But what I loved is they're hungry. They are continuously pushing themselves. They're spending 9, 10, 13 years on development chains on some things like some of the more complicated inserts. You can't just press in a typical press that presses in a vertical or one direction. They actually have now
00:08:18
Speaker
multi axis and five axis press machines to press these really complicated cemented carbide inserts that otherwise you either couldn't even press it or you could press it but you could never release it. And that is we weren't allowed to see those because that's super soft stuff. If you've ever seen their Coro turn 300 it's the insert that kind of looks like a weird knuckle and it has eight cutting edges on a single lathe insert.
00:08:48
Speaker
And that's a great example if you look at it, you're like, okay, yeah, this could never be made in any traditional, you know, pressing manner. Look it up right now. Oh, yeah. But like, little things like, okay, so you've got that up in front of you, there's gold, and then there's black on that. You see that? Yeah, yeah, I see that. So the black exists below the gold coating. The gold coating is a probably a, it's either a physical or chemical vapor deposition coating, like we all have on tools.
00:09:15
Speaker
they get back to the black with precision shot peening. No way. Yeah. Because I was like, oh, you must mask it when you do some sort of an etch or mask it for some other process or additive or subtractive. And they're like, nope, we don't need to mask it. We have precision blasting technology. Just off the cuff. No big deal. It's just precision. And the automation is, so they're now hiring
00:09:41
Speaker
they're putting such an awesome emphasis on
00:09:45
Speaker
automation in a different way than the cliche like we just want like, like the elegance of explaining it like they were like, you know, people don't want to drive forklifts, people don't want to put inserts on, you know, coat hangers to go into coding machines.
Automation's Impact on Workforce
00:10:01
Speaker
And so they have I forget what the stat was, but, you know, they laid off or excuse me, that was not the correct word. They no longer have something like 200 people in a certain part of that factory, but they have
00:10:13
Speaker
300, they call them not process engineers, they had a different term, but basically skilled labor, white collar jobs, higher paying jobs that are doing programming, automation, process management, quality control. So it was nice because so often in America we hear so much emphasis on profitability and so much emphasis on bottom line and here it was just 100% focused on the process and the quality and the product.
00:10:42
Speaker
I love that, man. And to actually get to see it in a giant scale that's successful and worldwide and obviously- They were so many numbers, it's a little bit of a blur, but I want to say this week they'll do 1.4 million inserts in the factory I was in.
00:11:05
Speaker
Yeah, so they're doing it. I mean, they'll do some of those machines we pulled up. So we had all these stats were right there on all these machines. And so we pulled up a machine and it's like this one little machine was had done 16,000 inserts in the last 60 minutes.
00:11:18
Speaker
What yeah insane in the in the perfection like Like that's what people don't appreciate in my opinion is you talk about a place It's outputting that kind of a quantity and they just don't make mistakes But we were talking with our the rep guy here about like who's been the company for 20 years He's like yeah two times We've we've had a customer who legitimately had a pack of inserts where something was wrong Like an insert was was broken or it was in the wrong box like an actual pretty darn bad mistake
00:11:48
Speaker
Only two times that he knew of. Um, yeah, sure. But that's, it's increased quality with like millions a week or month or whatever it was. Um, yeah.
00:12:00
Speaker
They're replacing so many of their inspection. They do inspection, okay, so much cool stuff. Every department, so I can explain, it's powder to pressing, to grinding, to coating, and every single department, they buy it from the prior department and sell it to the next. And they treat it like that. And so you are buying and selling a product and you own it.
00:12:27
Speaker
And so there's inspection like seeing the operators at the grinding department. They set up their own machines They have their own little CMM room right there they do all first piece inspections themselves and then when they're done they sell it to the next people and They've had tremendous luck. That's a little bit controversial. I think the idea that you're inspecting your own parts But it was really interesting to see that workflow. I Can't reply made that other point originally at the inspection and quality emphasis was was phenomenal
00:12:59
Speaker
That's mind blowing So the the I'll I'll stop sharing it now with I'll leave it with the thought of It makes you and this happens when I see places that inspire me this much, you know Are we doing enough like it makes me think and I've got some free time today's Wednesday I've got some free time Friday and I really want to go like find a park and just sit down for a couple hours because it's like
00:13:26
Speaker
You know, like, have you thought about, do you, what do you want Grimsmode knives to be for the next generation?
Legacy Business and Growth Strategies
00:13:32
Speaker
Do you want it to become something more? Should it be something more? Do you owe it to yourself in the world to do, like you're such a talented person, John, like is, and I'm not saying, don't please don't ever imply the knives and the products you're making aren't enough, but like. I totally hear what you're saying. And this is, this is absolutely something that's been on my mind for the past few weeks. Okay, good. Yep. Well, go for it. What are you talking, what are you thinking?
00:13:57
Speaker
I don't know if I've made any strides in it, but I'm thinking about it. To make this company a legacy company.
00:14:07
Speaker
is around for, you know, 50 or a hundred years. Just like, what would that look like? Is that even possible? Because I think you and I and most of our friends in the industry, we don't think like that. We're like, yeah, maybe I can, you know, have fun for a decent chunk of my life. And then I don't know what's left after that. And I know so many companies that have basically either not gone out of business, but just kind of stopped when the guy retires because he's done. Right.
00:14:36
Speaker
It's bigger than that. We both have the potential to create something that's deeper and longer lasting and has meaning and can run without us long term. Just the possibility that you have to restructure the way that you think about running every aspect of the business. It's why are you leading this and why are other people on your team? Sandvik is one of those
00:15:05
Speaker
companies I've had probably three of them in my life after today where you think okay I would I would consider I would actually consider probably not Sandvik because I don't I wouldn't be willing to relocate to Europe but
00:15:21
Speaker
I would actually consider an aggressive, we want you on our team offer simply because I want to be part of that story. I don't want to stop doing what I'm doing, so don't misinterpret that. But there's some of those times where it's not about the money and it's not about the pride or title or anything other than we got one chance to do this in our lives. I'm on board. I get what you're doing. Where can you create the biggest impact? Yeah.
00:15:50
Speaker
Yeah, so when those opportunities come up, you have to think hard about them. But I think you have that in your own life and you can continue growing and striving for that, absolutely. Right. It makes it crystal clear to think about product lines I care about.
00:16:09
Speaker
It makes me absolutely love, and to some this is controversial. It's crystal clear to me why I love companies like Tormach. I like Tormach individually, but it's because of what that access to that life of a machine is transformative to the owners that want to embrace it for that. It ties in with avoiding debt, working at home.
00:16:28
Speaker
making parts, proving yourself, and then setting yourself up for that growth. That's who I am. I love it. We physically see it in the hundreds of Tormach owners that we know and have talked to in person and it shows things like that and through email. We see how it's transformed their lives by being able to buy this $5,000, $15,000 machine as it did for us. It's real.
00:16:57
Speaker
And there's a good story. The founder of that company passed away too long ago, three, four, five years ago or something. And the company is still growing and thriving and crushing it. So it's gone legacy past the original owner.
00:17:15
Speaker
Right. And there's a common motive and theme there. And that's not to say there isn't things to be critical of or things they could do better. But it's awesome.
00:17:29
Speaker
Yeah, it's not just one guy with an idea that crushes it for a couple of years, and then it fizzles out. It's continued, and it's grown. It's like, I don't know if there was a Mr. Sandvik, but it was certainly started by somebody way back in the day. And there was an Enzo Ferrari that started Ferrari, and he's, I assume, long dead. And
Personal and Business Financial Goals
00:17:48
Speaker
Ferrari's still kicking butt. And there's all these legacy companies that have created a real impact in the world and still continue to thrive.
00:17:57
Speaker
The problem with today is I am under-investing in capital. I'm under-investing in equipment and capabilities, and that's directly not compatible with my belief of not wanting debt. And so I have a plan, which I
00:18:22
Speaker
I'll probably share more later as things go. I've got a couple personal goals I want to hit this year and then I'm thinking I'll start to rethink all of that because we only get one chance and it's got to be very careful and very controlled. You've got to have the cash flow and the profits to justify it and drive it. There's one thing to be willing to take on growth. It's another thing to grow beyond your means or into unproven markets and so forth. It's something I'm conscious of but I also think
00:18:50
Speaker
I think I've been I've let myself get too affected by those around me who are risk adverse and have done well But scary Yeah, it's not it's not what it's not right I mean when I look at Sandvik, you know invested they started having autonomous forklifts in their factory in 1989 Oh
00:19:09
Speaker
Yeah. So like when we were walking through today, there were just all these forklifts with pallets of steel and parts and holders that would just stop while our two group was there. They'd even bump into people, but it's meant to do that. And then when we would move out of the way, they just resume going to load machines and load robots and 10 parts and move inventory. I mean, just amazing. That's been normal to them for the past 30 years. Yes. I was six when they put that in.
00:19:36
Speaker
I'm hem hauling on things like CMMs and fifth axis and automation and robots and quality control. No. Are you kidding me? You know how it is when a company gets to a point where something becomes so obvious and normal now. For them, why would anybody drive a forklift anymore? Whereas you're still driving a forklift anymore.
00:19:53
Speaker
lift and everybody listening is still driving a forklift, but things become like, why are you still doing that? We stopped doing that ages ago. So when, and you and I have things in our business like that too, like, um, yeah, I can't, but it makes it so crystal clear to me to like, go back and talk to my wife about how I don't care about anything in life
00:20:18
Speaker
that we don't need. In other words, we have to provide for your families and you need a home and we do like to travel. Beyond that, I don't even want to pay myself anymore. I would much rather pour every dollar I can back into buying stuff to keep doing what we're doing and learning to push ourselves, period.
00:20:39
Speaker
I'd rather risk buying a robot. I'm making this up. I'd rather risk buying a robot for $55,000 and learning. And then if it didn't work, selling it for $38,000 used because it didn't work. But don't not ever do it because you think it's irresponsible to buy a robot. And I think I'm in a very similar boat, although slightly earlier on the path.
00:21:06
Speaker
Truth be told, you guys, you have the car, you have the house. You can travel. And Meg and I are not quite there yet. And once we have, like, I keep thinking, what do I want in the world monetarily, like, for stuff? I want a house, I want a cool car, and I want to be able to travel. Other than that, I don't need anything. Everything else goes into the business. So those are my kind of personal long-term goals, or not too long-term. They're not long-term, John. You're going to get there. I know. They're super short. But then after that, it's like, what? I don't need anything else. Right?
00:21:36
Speaker
That's it. Crazy. And I keep thinking about like what areas of Grimmsman Ives need the most improvement. I like, where
Scaling Production at Grimsmode Knives
00:21:46
Speaker
do we struggle the most? And I just keep coming back to like production. We just got to make more parts. We have, we have six people on the team now and we still need to make way more parts. So.
00:21:57
Speaker
We have the demand, we have the capacity, we have the skill and all that. So, you know, there's a big part of me that's like, just go all in, just.
00:22:07
Speaker
What's funny is you don't even appreciate is two years ago or 10 years ago, you wouldn't have even known what to do. You would have known what machine centers to buy, the laughing machines, the real estate, the hiring, the software. You didn't know what you didn't know. Now, you're smart and you're wise and you're very conscious about your money and how you spend it, but you're also
00:22:30
Speaker
able to make those decisions. We've got to make sure we keep each other in check here, but you need to get into that bigger shop. You need to get that second spindle. We've got to do this, bud. I said, we've got to do this. Yeah, absolutely. We do.
00:22:56
Speaker
I got four
Conclusion and Future Plans
00:22:57
Speaker
minutes and we have a structured meet there. I will tell you there, I gave them a respect. They are very stringent on the schedules here. That's pretty cool. All right. Let's wrap up with... What are you up to? Sorry, I've been hogging this conversation. No worries. No worries at all. We're making stuff.
00:23:17
Speaker
stocking up on knife parts on the lathe so I'm making screws and pivots and everything we're out of and getting a good inventory like a thousand pieces of those and then back to pen parts very soon. Angelo and I have to sit down and go over every tolerance of the pens. We took really good notes when we made them last time so we can know what to change and how to change and how everything interacts and it's like you make all the parts and you put it together and you go, oh, those two things interfere. And you know,
00:23:45
Speaker
So the next batch is going to be a lot smoother, hopefully, once we go through all the GD&T of everything. So it's all fine. Somewhat of a silly point, but also not. Sandvik today briefly talked about how they have certain strategies on evacuating certain things in the event of a fire, and how they have certain things off-site, and it just occurred to me
00:24:06
Speaker
That's relevant to you and both of us and perhaps folks listening. I mean, think about making sure you've got a couple of parts or products or files downloaded offsite, you know, master copies of parts that if your facility just ceased to exist, it was leveled by something. Right. That you'll be able to bounce back even if it's a little tough. That's true. That's very wise. Yep. Hmm.
00:24:33
Speaker
Cool. What else are you looking to gain from the rest of your trip? How can you maximize the final few days and make it even better than it already is? I took a bunch. This energy is not something that you can replicate, and that's something I find quite frustrating in life. I won't be able to wake up tomorrow and feel like I do today. I've never re-listened to a bomb, but maybe I'll actually re-listen to this one.
00:24:59
Speaker
And I took some notes on the bust here, and I've got some specific ways I want to kind of apply it. And I think one of the overall themes is also this combination of ability to stay focused and the ability to say no. I mean, I give Sandvik a lot of respect. They have actually vertically integrated a lot of things, but that's happened over time. And so having that hyper-driven focus of what you do doesn't mean you can't do other things
00:25:30
Speaker
later it just means you shouldn't do them now. Does that make sense? Absolutely, yeah, clearly. Yeah, I was listening to some interview about a guy who knows Elon Musk and he was pitching this idea to Elon Musk about what to do when you're on Mars and he's like, I don't want to think about that now. I just need to get to Mars first and then I have the brain space to talk about that. So don't even talk to me right now.
00:25:54
Speaker
Right, right. But no, it was really, I would encourage anyone. I mean, we'll have a video up. It'll probably take us a few months. I think they'll have to review it to make sure we're able to share what we filmed. And so it'll take a while. But I would encourage folks either to watch that, but also
00:26:11
Speaker
The other factory tours we've done or I mean if you can You know tour other tour places when you can't see other shops and meet people. It's funny you and I are identical I don't really I'm super social in the right scene, but otherwise I'm not I'm not the totally but when you have the chance to meet other people
00:26:31
Speaker
in that nature of social sharing. It's magic. Right? Yep. It's absolutely electric. Like when I go to Blade Show, not because it's a knife show per se, but because it's a room full of makers and customers appreciate it. It's amazing. When I go to IMTS and hang out with all you guys, it's epic. It's like you pumped.
00:26:51
Speaker
The guys on that WhatsApp, Lawrence, Rob, Amish, Ken, you know, yeah, I would turn down NBA final tickets in a heartbeat because I really don't care about the NBA to hang out and have a have a beer with any of them. Like good grief. Yes.
00:27:07
Speaker
It's been cool to talk to some of the other shops and people here too. Maybe we can talk more about that next podcast. Excellent. You doing okay? Sorry, I know I'm very much doing. Doing really good. Megan and Clara just have been away for five days, so Lafe and I have been batching it on our own. That's amazing. That's been really fun. Yeah, a big change. I'm not working nearly as much as I usually am when Meg's around to take care of things.
00:27:31
Speaker
Oh, that's hilarious. But it's been awesome. You know, we've spent a lot of time together. It's been really, really wonderful. And we go to pick up Megan Clara tonight. Oh, that's cool. Things are really good there.
00:27:42
Speaker
That's awesome. The shop's going okay. The shop's going great. It's given me a lot of time to just think about what we talked about already, the future, what I can do now, what I need to be doing, what I should be doing. You're certainly allergic to debt and I'm getting there. Yet we're both at a crossroads where it's like, man, we want to grow and we can and it's possible and I don't know what to do.
00:28:08
Speaker
Yeah, I need to do more soul searching. You do. And then we need to come together on this. And I'm happy to do a good portion of it in a public manner here on the podcast. Because my sort of thought is, I've got some building debt. And I want to get out of that. And then it's kind of like, OK, stable business, cash flow, controlled terms, machine financing on very controlled terms, being smart about that. And that's something I'm probably pretty good at, I think, relative to people given what I did.
00:28:37
Speaker
Um, yeah, I think I'm okay with that. Well, you're coming over here in about three weeks or so, right? Yes. Yeah. Let's, you know, we'll obviously be talking a lot about it then. Um, dude, let's do it. All right. I got to run. Yeah. Thanks. But I'll see you have an amazing time.