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00:00:01
#452 Mammoth Summit
250 Plays34 minutes ago
Topics:
- Chairlift conversations
Recommended
Transcript
Podcast Reunion on a Chairlift
00:00:01
Speaker
All right, good morning and welcome to the Business of Machining episode 452. My name is John Saunders. And my name is John Grimsmo. And where are we, buddy? We are in the great state of California, Mammoth Mountain on some random chairlift. Yeah, we are on a chairlift. So the wind noise is the chairlift. Hopefully it sounds all right.
00:00:17
Speaker
Yeah, so we still wanted to do our podcast. We're together,
Networking at Toolpath Summit
00:00:20
Speaker
which we haven't done in a but but couple years. We are silently joined by Justin Gray on the side here. And the goal here is to, you know, it's like a six or seven minute chairlift. We're just going to get a couple of these together and talk about the past few weeks. This is why, so we're at the toolpath summit at Mammoth, there's 208, how many? 200 and a lot of people. Yeah. it's It's incredible. And I'll just give you the best example. I just rode the little mini gondola up to meet Grimsmoke and I just introduced myself to a guy and he's like, oh yeah, I run the robotics program at RDS Pier 9 and we're integrating and linking out ways robots can work with Fusion. And then I was talking about what we're doing with URs and ends up Grant had already talked to their team. They're all here. and And you just like, this is what it's all about.
Learning from Business Sessions
00:01:05
Speaker
Yep, I was on a chair ledge the other day and and the guy sitting next to me, young guy, he was like, what do you guys do?
00:01:10
Speaker
And it turns out he's in aerospace, he's in flight control navigation software, whatever, and it works at an aerospace company and they just launched their first satellite last week. And I was like, dude, yeah and that's random. And then the 200 plus people here are some of the smartest people I've ever talked to, including this guy. And and I don't know.
00:01:30
Speaker
What are some takeaways? What have you learned so far? Like, are you glad you came? I'm for sure glad I came. I brought my wife, who is actually now, I kind of brought her as the plus one. And then it ends up, know, she's very much a major part of Saunders. And she sat in on Jay Pearson's session on small business. I forget what it was all about.
00:01:47
Speaker
Small business ownership and management. yeah And I realized what how wrong I was. i mean, she should be at that session even without
Understanding ERP and Kanban Systems
00:01:54
Speaker
me. We hadn't had a great takeaways from it. We were making notes on stuff. i was, again, talking to other people. um A big thing for me has been talking to people like try to just in the simplest answers. Don't don't try to impress me. Just tell me how are you using AI like actual things you're doing with it? Because I just want to be a sponge.
00:02:12
Speaker
Yep, absolutely. And I've started asking more pointed questions like like Justin and I had a very deep conversation last night where I asked him point blank. What's what's one of the most valuable aspects of an e ERP system? And that led to the deepest rabbit hole of conversation, which really opened my eyes to as data lovers and spreadsheet lovers, I want all the information so that I can calculate it and see it and and figure it out. And Justin and some other people really, really pushed me to simplify and that Kanban system almost can't be beat.
00:02:41
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. And I had like a four-hour conversation with Uriel from Austere Manufacturing last night. sure And it turns out, as the kids say nowadays, I've been sleeping on Kanban cards. And I didn't actually understand the value and the beauty of Kanban cards. We have like four minutes left. Can you explain that? So...
00:03:03
Speaker
i've I've read books about it, I've seen you know Pearson and Henry Holsters and Uriel for sure and many other people like totally in love with Kanban cards and I've just been kind of ignoring them. i was like, oh cool, it works for you, doesn't work for us and I never questioned why. yeah And the deeper I talked with them and the more I learned, the more it started to realize, of course, this would work ah fantastically for us. And the big takeaway that Justin led to me was i have built a push manufacturing system and Kanban is all about a pull system.
00:03:35
Speaker
And that is one of the core reasons why we are always running out of parts or have too many of another parts because manufacturing is pushing parts to finishing.
Balancing Perfection and Practicality
00:03:43
Speaker
as whenever they want pulling them through exactly and then finishing you know runs out of stuff to pull or has too much stuff and that was like transformative for me to to sit on that and think on it and uh it was just fantastic yeah yeah what what else who you talk to um i'm drawing a blank right now i don't know i met uh jim belosek from send and his right hand man in the manufacturing side phil phil awesome dude
00:04:12
Speaker
The number one quote that Jim said to me do you want to be right or do you want to make money? And that hurt me to my core. That was like, that actually like insulted me in a playful way. Whereas like i as a machinist, I want to be right.
00:04:27
Speaker
But I also want to make fun. But it's like, don't let perfection get the way of X-Game. Exactly. You know, on my session they were talking about like, hey, you know, the full Grimsville way would be, this thing goes up automatically. The full Grimsville way may be like, make this beautiful machine 3D printed part and then for like holding camera and a mount to a machine and the other way may be like, this is going to be seductive. It works, we'll improve it later. And I'm not saying anyone's
Effective Manufacturing Systems
00:04:48
Speaker
right. Alright, chairlift one complete.
00:04:54
Speaker
share lift one complete
00:05:00
Speaker
Alright, chairlift round two, back on the slopes. it was perfect, right when we got off the lift, Justin said, no, the phrase you were looking for was? Was, you can't push a rope, and a manufacturing system is very very much like a rope. You can't push a rope, you can only pull a rope. So, is as a concept, just like a four year old can visualize that, a pull system works better. and like I love to reinvent the wheel, but who am I to question Toyota and and what works, right? Like, I want to solve problems that are worth solving and like hard to solve and and affect me directly.
00:05:35
Speaker
Why on earth would I mess with like standard manufacturing practices? And there's a million of them, but... So what's what's the action item like when you actually get back the shop? So the action item and then I had a long chat with Phil Mestenhauser from Meta i yeah on Rob's team and we talked all about this and he's got a lot of experience with that and he said I urge you to start small don't just upend your whole shop and like Kanban everything literally Kanban one thing for like a week and let the team get used to it. And one of the things I love about the Kanban system for us versus the ERP that I've been building where you know my brain says, our QR code scan everything. I want to scan every operation you know coming off the machine, coming off the the buffing wheel, whatever. It's easy, right? Everybody's going to do it. It's so easy.
00:06:21
Speaker
Apparently, um you know my analytical brain says it's so easy, but apparently in a lot of shops that have tried this, it always fails. People forget. yeah Humans are unreliable robots. That's what Justin kept saying.
00:06:33
Speaker
So the Kanban system is literally almost zero change to the way we're currently doing it. So a simple two bin system, you know, say you have 10 parts in one bin and a backup 10 parts in the other. Once you empty the first bin, you pull out the card, you give it to somewhere, you put it somewhere special, And that is the only extra action. yeah And ideally you always have another 10 or whatever the number is as your bonus stock so you never run
Managing Inventory and Production
00:06:55
Speaker
out.
00:06:55
Speaker
So we we've done this and then what we'll just try try to be very candid about where we've failed or struggled because it works for both internal manufacturing but also procurement of commercial off-the-shelf components, yeah is we will do the McMaster bag with blue painter's tape around it. and it's kind of the cheat code where it's like okay somehow something got screwed up maybe we are behind on the williman making parts or maybe msc's back order on this t-nut we can break into that to solve a as your bonus stock like your backup that way you know this isn't the customer's problem but um it also kind of raises the flag like now we need to kind of go nuclear on this and then we have those actually we have those nuclear options documented in lex where we can maybe pay retail for a product to get it in the inventory because again for us it's like hey if someone has bought a four thousand dollar order and they need a couple more t-nuts yeah like if i gotta go pay retail for some t-nuts exactly yeah well there's kind of two similar sides to the kanban car system there's cots your consumer off-the-shelf inventory screws and nuts and things you're like cutting tools and mills and then there's the internal processes so your fixture plates your your your washers, your whatever you're
Insights from Industry Leaders
00:08:02
Speaker
making. And for us, since we make, i don't even know what the total number is, but call it a hundred different components. um And especially a blade of, across three different knives has so many different steps, probably 20 plus steps. And if the current is down or if the surface grinder's down or if Jeff is off sick or something like that,
00:08:20
Speaker
We are constantly running into the situation where somebody is waiting on parts yeah and or there's too much of a different part that we just, it was easy to keep running more because the current especially, it's so easy, or the Swiss, yeah so easy. So the take, one of the takeaways is, i was thinking last night, imagine if every cell always had enough work to do.
00:08:41
Speaker
Sure. And then, you know, maybe there's situations where they don't need to run that cell because everything's good. But yeah, that's a Jay Pearson thing. Like, it's okay if a spindle's
Focus and Presence in Business
00:08:51
Speaker
not running. Exactly. Right. Yeah.
00:08:53
Speaker
It's a little bit of a jump here, but ah I was able to moderate a, I thought it was a pretty great conversation panel with some different, very qualified perspectives. Carl Bass, the former CEO of Autodesk, Jim Belosick, founder Senkatsen. But honestly, the one I'm going to mention right now, I'll call her the sleeper, if you will. Not a household name like the former two. A woman named Jennifer Clement.
00:09:17
Speaker
Sorry, I just know it's really windy, folks. but she really and it's sort of speaking near and dear to my heart emphasized the need to understand she kept using these big words which i wish she would have explained them to a more manufacturing generic layman's trip but costa county you need to know your materials and your inventory and your skew margin and um i know you and i have talked about that current so it's what you're doing more with gerb in an era of where we may see some pretty big major material price changes um i'm not interested in running a hobby exactly
00:09:48
Speaker
Yep, and I've had people sometimes call this a hobby business for me instead of like a real manufacturing business. And that kind of hurts and maybe it maybe it is that. Maybe it looks like that. i don't know. So yeah, I do want to take things more seriously.
Building Efficient Teams
00:10:00
Speaker
We don't overdo it by calculating way too many things because that's just blunt. But yeah, that's exactly, absolutely. But it's exciting stuff. Really super exciting stuff. All right, lift number two complete.
00:10:15
Speaker
Alright, chairlift number three. So, as much as I love our podcast all the time, this is probably the most fun one we've ever done. yeah We just get a fast run in just the two of us. we were also alert sort of laughing that like it's actually really great to see Grimspone spend time together. It's also like we're not here to... like we gotta yeah new people put yourself out there. We're like 10% here to hang out with friends and 90% here to improve our business and like make connections and learn what we don't know yet.
00:10:39
Speaker
what um We're both so thirsty to learn. What's on your tab for today? For today, I mean, ah definitely want to hit Rob's class later, which is building superhuman teams. They've done a lot at Meta with you know hiring and firing and and building teams to to work fast. They want to ship product as fast as possible. And I've talked to some of their suppliers and some of their manufacturers and and internal team and stuff like that and they move fast. I move slow. I want to move faster without losing the sauce that is Grimmsmo Knives. you know yeah So I'm trying to find that balance and I'm trying to talk to people about what
Strategic Thinking for CEOs
00:11:13
Speaker
that looks like for them. you know
00:11:15
Speaker
I attended Jay Pearson's web panel or condo session yesterday, which was really great. Like, Jay, if you're listening, like really type tip of the hat to you for how much thought you put into preparing that and the discussion points. I'll gather my thoughts maybe more formally when we're back recording normally and maybe share some of that. yeah But he he validated.
00:11:34
Speaker
since last think august i've tried to take every thursday off work and to be honest it is mostly a personal thing ye and it gives me a chance to kind of recharge and not go into a thursday with the laundry list of to-dos whether it's work or personal but um jay had talked about how he's done these wednesday biz dev days where he's off-site home or wherever okay and it you know really gives him the chance to clear his head and think and uh i I'm not sure what I'm going to make of that, whether it means all I'll change up my Thursdays or incorporate that more, but there's no question that, actually to quote another Jay Pearson thing, you know, you don't want to be the, as the CEO or the the leader of a shop, you don't want to be the high paid help desk person where where you're just there to to sort of solve other people's problems. Yeah, exactly. yeah And I think most of that,
00:12:21
Speaker
maybe is behind us for for the most part, but um it's a kind of cliche of like how how clear of a head do you have to be able to think, to really think versus
Importance of Active Listening
00:12:31
Speaker
just doing. No, and and that's why i really value my morning workouts and my evening walks because I use that time by myself to think, to process. I don't listen to music or podcasts or anything like that. Like that is my time to process and and I need that.
00:12:45
Speaker
The business super off topic, but the I think it's the New York Times has a challenge of can you stare at a piece of artwork for 10 minutes and um you know, you're a competitive guy.
00:12:56
Speaker
I don't think you can. Yeah, no like seriously. No, no, nothing else like mental activity or just there's nothing more to it, John. I can look at it and think of other stuff, but. fine yeah but like just be present yeah exactly and and presence and focus is something i value more and more and more as i age and as we're so distracted with phones and kids and everything and i i try really hard to when i'm having a deep conversation with someone even my wife or my kids or whatever i really try to be present and i really try to listen yeah and not be on my phone now yeah yeah i'm listening but i'm on my phone i i don't do that other people around me do it and it drives me crazy yeah and sure do whatever you want but
00:13:36
Speaker
Yeah, no, I, I, again, in the spirit of keeping this a very candid relationship, you know, my wife told me, John Saunders, you're not doing good enough job at listening to John Grimmsville sometimes. And I, it was never meant to be disrespectful. And I think I mentioned it to you offline. I don't even, maybe were being nice, but you didn't seem to notice it. I think some of it may have been sometimes it's such a nice chance for me to have quiet time with you that I end up daydreaming on a it's like actually selfishly great you know what I mean yeah and I mean we're trying to think of what to say next as well while the other person's talking so there's a bit of that yeah but yeah it's there's a connection a deep connection whether it's with your spouse or with your podcast co-host or your employees or what or your kids, whatever.
Success through Automation
00:14:22
Speaker
the guy on the chairlift that you just met. Like, being present, focusing, listening, asking really good questions.
00:14:29
Speaker
I find being here, people love to talk about themselves, and I'm very good at listening. Sometimes it's a useless conversation. yeah And i'm I'm like, I'm here to do business. yeah So I try to like exit myself. yeah But I love hearing what people are doing and I've actually had some really good deep listen sessions from other shop owners yeah that have done incredible things. Like one guy had 20 years in automation and then started his own shop, never been a manufacturer, never like machined anything. yeah But then him and his sister built ah a huge machine shop. They bought a U of Z with a Trinity robot, they bought a RoboDrill with a a gimbal automation like pallet gripper thing. And he's like, we're just printing money. Like it's it's amazing.
00:15:07
Speaker
there there's i'm happy to be here and I'm proud of it. There's part of me that's kind of blown away. and I don't want to say feeling left behind, but like it's pretty crazy
Reflecting on Goals
00:15:15
Speaker
what people are doing. Yes, exactly. And I do feel kind of left behind hearing what people are doing because our business, while we've grown in some ways, we've been fairly flat in other ways. And I want to use this opportunity to fix that. yeah, yeah.
00:15:26
Speaker
I told you i had a quick two runs at the end of the day yeah by myself and I dilly-dally the last run. I was the last man on the mountain. It took me like 30 minutes to do a seven minute run and I used that time to think and process and have some internal reflection and so what am I doing here? Like not here at the show but in life. What what do I want my business to be for me and what do I need to do next? yeah to i actually needed that time alone away from you, away from everybody else i like to like process.
00:15:52
Speaker
Okay lift
Enjoying Work and Life Balance
00:15:53
Speaker
number three complete. We're just gonna start right now actually. Alright, we are going to some classes right now so we're wrapping up podcast 452. Just want to get a nice scenic shot here at the top.
00:16:07
Speaker
We might throw this video together and post it up on one of our channels, I don't know yet, but
00:16:13
Speaker
I uh, who are you talking sorry? I uh, I changed my panel that i moderated was sort of talking about the future of it actually but I knew it was too good an opportunity to pass and I wanted to ask Carl Bass about hey talk to me and you know he's obviously a very accomplished successful individual about stopping to smell the roses and the anecdote he gave about not forgetting to be present for your family and have fun and and actually like like enjoy what you do like we put lot of pressure on ourselves yep um i think it really hit home with a lot of folks in that that was great yep enjoy what you do which we're gonna go to just ski run exactly all right thanks for listening to this podcast and uh might skip next week if i'm traveling oh yeah and then uh we'll be back soon yep all right later see you bye