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Business of Machining - Episode 133
226 Plays6 years ago
In this episode: NEW IDEAS:
“It’s amazing what can happen when you Palletize your life!” - Saunders
Grimsmo’s new love...The BUYER’S Choice System
If you know about Grimsmo Knives, you know about their Maker’s Choice system. This is the way they’ve been selling their knives for YEARS. The title of the Buyer’s Choice System says it all; if your name is picked, you can order a knife specific to your ideal Norseman. Check out the Grimsmo Knives website, and Grimsmo’s Instagram account for more details and to sign up.
“It’s the merger of the digital and physical world that’s so intriguing to me!” - Saunders
The DIGITAL Side of the Business
Saunders and Grimsmo talk ERP systems such as Airtable, ProShop and...Google Sheets??
Learn what you can do with an ERP system, what the benefits are, and when to scrap yours if it’s not working for your company.
“We love google sheets. Our business runs on google sheets” - Grimsmo
‘Nobody should have to count inventory“ - Grimsmo
Bonus tip: Get a scale for your parts
Does EVERYONE need a custom system?
Grimsmo and Saunders discuss if it’s possible to have a system that’s customizable to everyone’s needs. In this day and age, your business runs online.
Saunders’s Flipped the Switch on his NEW project PROVEN CUT!
“We break tools so you don’t have to” - Project Slogan
Learn about what “recipes” you can use with this service
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction and Marketing Reflections
00:00:00
Speaker
Good morning. Welcome to the business of machining episode 133. My name is John Saunders. My name is John Grimsmough, and I'm like holy cow 133 It's cool. It's good. Keep on trucking. Yeah, I think we should I think we should do another spread the word we
00:00:23
Speaker
Because I think we are proud of what we do. And to some extent, I think we should try to make sure we share that. So let's think of, I think last time we did something, it was a review it on whatever platform, I'm talking out loud here, whatever platform you watch on, or something like that. What do you think about that? Like, and then I think the nugget or reward was, I forget swag, or I think it was actually a
00:00:48
Speaker
private call with us. We picked a random winner or something. Did that was so good. And I've heard back from that guy a couple of times and he was really still reeling about the experience. He loved it. Okay. Well, let's think about that and we'll figure out something for next week. But we, uh, for folks that enjoy or appreciate this, um, I was a little, what made me think of it was listening to a couple of other podcasts and, uh, realizing, yeah, there's a little bit of a marketing element, you know, what's the podcast about and, uh, making sure you share it with friends or posts on social, that kind of thing.
Audience Engagement and Feedback
00:01:18
Speaker
One thing I've noticed is a bunch of our buddies started a different podcast, the Machinist Therapy Hotline. I haven't listened to any episodes, but I see a lot of interaction on Instagram because I'm assuming they'll ask a question like show us your toilet paper holder or whatever, and then everybody's posting these pictures. I was wondering if we should do something like that.
00:01:41
Speaker
I like, I don't want to, certainly don't want to copy it. I like, I like the fact that this is more of a conversation between two people. We're not going to change. Um, but I also think there's an element of pulling in. Uh, I've certainly benefited from some folks that have reached out and I probably have some questions today for folks, uh, that I want to kind of hear in from. And I think there's a, even though it's you and me talking, there's a two way street that, uh, I want to make sure, uh, we make use of and give back and all that. Absolutely.
00:02:11
Speaker
So what's been going on?
Personal Moves and Business Developments
00:02:14
Speaker
I took yesterday off because I have like four days to finish clearing out of my old house. Oh, that's funny. There's always that like junk in the garage you haven't touched yet. And yes, I had a big day yesterday of just cleaning and clearing. I always said if we ever moved again, I would just rent a forklift and put everything on pallets. Once you palletize your life, it's amazing.
00:02:40
Speaker
That's a really good idea. Seriously. Yeah. I love it. But yeah, everything's, everything's going awesome here. Good. Swimmingly always trying new stuff. Um, we've got a new top secret ordering system that we've been developing. What do you mean top secret? Like that's all you're going to tell me.
00:03:04
Speaker
Yeah, pretty much. No, so we've had the Maker's Choice for two years now and it's been awesome. So essentially we have a list, a waiting list or an interest list of people and then we make basically whatever knife we want a little bit based on mass customer
00:03:22
Speaker
interest but basically we'll make whatever we want and then we put it up on the website and our custom script kind of picks a name and offers it to that person and then eventually somebody buys it. It works awesome. We're trying to evolve and expand on that by adding a buyer's choice system where now basically same system where a name gets picked but except now that person gets a form.
00:03:46
Speaker
to fill out, I want a honeycomb pattern, I want it blue and I want purple screws and some other stuff.
Automation and Inventory Challenges
00:03:52
Speaker
And it gives the customer much more flexibility of choice so that they don't get picked for like a pink knife and they're like, oh, I don't want a pink knife. Because we noticed a lot of people were passing just purely based on that's not the exact one that I want. And if they pass, they just go back into the list. Yep. Yeah, exactly. Right. Yep.
00:04:12
Speaker
So super excited for this. I've been working on the idea for months now in my head. And then a couple weeks ago, I got Erin on the project and gave her basically full control with my guidance. And then she put a post-op on Upwork. She found a guy. She's been working with him back and forth. I haven't talked to the guy once and just reviewed a couple times a week with Erin.
00:04:38
Speaker
And we tested it on Monday two days ago. And oh my gosh, it's literally better than I anticipated it, better than I envisioned it in my head. It's got some extra features that he threw in that are like, how did I not think about that? And it knows if the link has been clicked on, if it's been active, if the form's been filled out, if it's been passed. And it says on the spreadsheet. And I'm like, this is so cool.
00:05:05
Speaker
Awesome. And it automatically prints to our printer. Stop. So an order just comes out. Yep. Within two minutes. Somebody places the order, it ends up on the printer. What software website is actually printing to the printer? Is it a Google Doc?
00:05:23
Speaker
Google spreadsheet with a backend Google script, and then he created a web app to run the whole thing. And I don't know much about web apps, but it's basically a website based on an application that just reads and feeds from the spreadsheet. So something in his web app is formatting the results in a simple way that
00:05:50
Speaker
that is printable, and then we've got a big laser printer. We put that on Google Cloud Print, and then this whole thing kind of just worked. Oh, interesting. Yeah. So it's a laser printer, not a label maker? For now.
00:06:06
Speaker
Yep, yep, which is fine. It's that merger of the physical world and the digital world that is so intriguing to me. Literally, I walked in this morning to start the podcast, and I walked by the printer, and there's a piece of paper there. And I look at it, and it's a custom weirder. And I'm like, oh, this is so cool. Is it live, or is it just, what was that? It's live, as of yesterday morning.
00:06:33
Speaker
Are you serious? Yeah. So you've already started. So you're going to take the list of folks and just split it up? Same list. It reads from the same list. OK, got it. And once somebody is picked, are they purged from the list or do they? They stay on the list. Oh, OK. So there's a chance somebody. OK, interesting.
00:06:54
Speaker
Wow, that's phenomenal. So now the difference is that with Maker's Choice, the person was prompted or proposed to buy the knife and the knife was effectively ready to ship, right? Now it's the opposite. Now it's the opposite. Now you got to make it. Exactly. So it's a front end, not a back end thing, but we get
00:07:16
Speaker
it's going to work so well because we've got really good production flow right now. Like from that piece of paper, as long as they have that handle pattern, like diamond handle pattern in inventory, um, which might be a little sticking point. We'll see, cause they don't always have every pattern in stock, but, um, we'll make sure that happens. But yeah, as long as they have that in stock, um, we'll have it done in like two days.
00:07:40
Speaker
Oh, awesome. Or even two weeks. We'll tell everybody two weeks, but realistically, it'll be much faster. Right. I was going to ask you, is it possible to... How interchangeable, I guess, are Norseman parts? Can you inventory everything and just assemble with fitments? Yep. Okay. That's awesome. Yep. They're all machined extremely well.
00:08:06
Speaker
Yeah, Eric swaps parts around all the time. And we have our adjustable stop pins in one thou increments, which take up any adjustment. So we do have the adjustment built in. Other than that, everything fits together.
00:08:20
Speaker
Awesome. Dude, good for you. I'm stoked about this. This is cool. Will you keep Maker's Choice then? Yes, of course. And that's been the confusion and debate as some people here thought we were going to just move straight to buyer's choice. I'm like, no, no, no. We're going to do both. Let's say I'll do X many buyer's choice a day, and then Eric and Yo can just make
00:08:45
Speaker
more like to their maximum per day and those are maker's choice. You know what I mean? So start small, fill in with maker's choice and then it's going to be epic. And I guess to the customer, like if you were an intriguing buyer and you got picked for either a maker's choice or a buyer's choice, you're probably good with either with the slight preference towards buyer's choice. I would say listen to your audience. My reaction would have been different to that.
00:09:17
Speaker
based on, you don't want the hassle of choosing your own options. No, no, my favorites would have been buyer's choice, mostly. That's what I mean. Right. Okay. I think the bummer would be the disappointment if you got picked as a maker's
Exploring ERP Systems
00:09:34
Speaker
choice and it was like
00:09:36
Speaker
It was, you had an open mind, but this was like polarizing, not what you wanted. To think that you extract, you walk away worse off because you're like, man, there's nothing I can do with that. I guess I could buy the knife and sell it. But that's not what I wanted. Yeah. You're like, that was my one chance. Yeah. And that does happen. And that's been irritating me for a long time. And I do get that feedback from customers and I'm trying to fix that, you know? Right. No, that's awesome.
00:10:05
Speaker
The timing is hilarious because we hit a figurative brick wall last week and it actually got me pretty drained meat.
00:10:18
Speaker
which is figuring out the sim, and it's so, it's such a simple problem to solve. And that just goes to show how like we need to solve it now because it is simple. It should be simple to implement once we pick the solution, but it's inventory of steel fixture plates. These are large objects held in relatively low quantity. So this is not a high stakes, high numbers, you know, hard to track game.
00:10:46
Speaker
And we stink at it. Maybe that's an exaggeration, but I know what you mean. I've started to lay out the process of, OK, so we need to create purchase orders. And everybody needs access to know what is on order. And maybe some extent where it is or some time, maybe at least we can know when the PO was created to buy material that will let everybody know, well, it takes usually x days or weeks to get something.
00:11:14
Speaker
And then what is raw material that we store? So we have like, I don't remember the sizes, five or six different set sizes of material that we have heat treated in ground. And then it's stored here because otherwise it would, we have to have it on hand or. Yep.
00:11:32
Speaker
The business model is kind of a generally, it's like a hybrid just in time. So like Haas VF2 is a common size plate. So we'll usually keep one of those in inventory when it sells. Exactly. Sorry. And then when it sells, we'll just go ahead and replace it. It's been working pretty well, but- I like that.
00:11:51
Speaker
Every once in a while, we'll get caught off guard because we'll have extra higher the sales than normal or ordered material will take longer to come. The typical business problems. So the thought was, do we try to move to a full blown ERP solution? It's the kind of the most robust solution. It seems perhaps overkill given that it's a relatively simple problem. And I think if I did an ERP system, it would be
00:12:21
Speaker
everything, it would actually potentially replace Shopify as our
00:12:25
Speaker
Website host doesn't have to but it could it could replace some of them Accounting stuff it could replace inventory purchase orders And this is what I wanted to ask our audience about you know, unfortunately zero the accounting software that we use Is very very poor at inventory. It has an inventory kind of button an area But it's it's seems to be commonly accepted that it's quite poor at it. So that's I guess just not going to be a solution it's also a
00:12:54
Speaker
They have an integration with Shopify for inventory levels, but it seems to be pretty poor as well. And so that's the other issue is right now we basically say no plates are in stock. Some are kept in stock as a verbal description. Let us know if it's a rush order or contact us for status, but it'd be much better to just be able to tell folks, hey, we have one VF2 plate in stock or one Tormach 1100, whatever.
00:13:20
Speaker
So moving to an ERP system is not a small undertaking. So I'm kind of dual tracking it. I've reached out to the friends that we mentioned that have implemented Odoo. I'm pulling up my old notes on Business One and what was the other one? SAP.
00:13:38
Speaker
and Oracle Business 1 and NetSuite maybe. But some of these look like those two from Oracle and SAP, I think maybe like four figures per month, which is not what I'm interested in right now. So I'm thinking, go ahead. Just thinking, do you know how much your Shopify fees are? Well, they also have fees for a merchant processor elsewhere. Sure.
00:14:09
Speaker
Yeah, because we have large Shopify fees and then we have our PayPal fees for, you know, credit transactioning. Our Shopify fees are like two grand a month. Do you know where those are Shopify general? I think we just have payment providers. I'll take a look, but I mean, I don't, I guess you're right. Maybe it's Shopify payments.
00:14:33
Speaker
No, it's not that. It's the transaction fee to sell something on Shopify and to host your website. It's like 3.9% or something like that, or 2.8% or whatever it is. But yeah, we did the math. We added it up and we're like...
00:14:52
Speaker
This is getting really expensive. So then we transitioned to Shopify Plus, which ends up after a certain volume per month of revenue, it ends up being cheaper to pay the fixed two grand a month. What? But I'm thinking, yeah, exactly. We should talk, we should do a screen share. I'll show you our details because my Shopify payments is 2.6% plus 30 cents. Yeah, same as what mine was.
00:15:23
Speaker
Okay. Well, let's huddle up on that and make sure I'm not misunderstanding something on that. Well, I mean, you just take your, take your monthly gross revenue times 2.9%. And like, that's what you're paying Shopify every month to have a website. No, that's, I wouldn't agree with that. That's what I'm paying them, but that's processing credit cards when people purchase. That's different. So that's, that's PayPal for us, right? You don't accept Shopify payments.
00:15:53
Speaker
Maybe that's the issue. On top of that, there should be another payment structure for you to have Shopify as a website, I think, or at least we did. PayPal, interesting. I'll look at that and let you know. Look into that. Sure, sure. It's starting to get me to think about, I'm like, geez, we're spending an insane amount of money. How far do you go? That money goes a long ways towards a fully custom website. Right.
00:16:23
Speaker
Right. So are you, you're paying a PayPal fee plus the Shopify fee? Yeah. Ooh. Okay. Got it. Interesting. Um, well, so the next thing I'm thinking is you could go back to a pretty manual process of something as simple as Excel spreadsheet or even a sauna. Um, and because again, it's relatively low quantity, they're large physical parts.
00:16:51
Speaker
you could just have a daily inventory check. Like literally, I think it would probably take under 10 minutes of a person's labor time each day to go through. But then what I'm thinking was, I want triggers. So literally before I started the podcast, I have, you know, if this, then that searches up on like,
00:17:10
Speaker
What you just said, I like physical triggers of when I create a purchase order, I want a trigger that reminds me to update this new inventory system that doesn't exist yet, if that's what we do as a bridge solution before we do an ERP, if we don't do an ERP now. Or when a plate sells on Shopify,
00:17:34
Speaker
a separate trigger that says, hey, update inventory, make another plate to replace that inventory plate. Does that make sense? And it's funny because we just went through the same thing the past few weeks.
00:17:48
Speaker
we developed our own spreadsheet-based inventory system to track all that stuff. Because we have, there's probably 20 things on that list of parts that we make or need in stock, you know, cases, stickers for cases, shipping boxes, or knife screw, knife pivot, knife spacer, knife handle, water jet handle blanks in inventory. Because we've been bitten too many times with, oh crap, we're out of, you know,
00:18:17
Speaker
And yeah, so it's fairly simple, but it took us a while to develop and I'll be happy to show you a screen share of that. But basically, I mean, already for months now, like many, many, many, many months now,
00:18:31
Speaker
every day Barry comes in and says, okay, how many knives do we do yesterday? X many, and then he'll put it into a certain spot on a spreadsheet. So he's writing down, okay, so many, so many, so many per day, day, day. And then now that number pulls out of our inventory automatically. So we say we have 600 thumb studs in stock. Now we have less. And then every time
00:18:54
Speaker
Now, like as of last week, every time we make parts on the lathe, we'll count how many we made for the day and then Barry gets that number and he updates the spreadsheet. What reminds someone to tell Barry that number?
00:19:08
Speaker
process. And we have a piece of paper on every machine now that is your daily tracking sheet to like, I'm making bearings and I made 14 bad ones and 600 good ones.
Inventory Management Strategies
00:19:21
Speaker
And it's good for me. I've been doing that for years now on the mill and I've just started putting it on the lathe and it's super good because then you have this physical visual on the machine
00:19:32
Speaker
historical thing of like, how did last week go? How did two weeks ago go? You mean tracking the bad ones as well? Is that what you're saying? Yeah, that's new, but even tracking what you did. Yeah, got it. Sure, sure.
00:19:46
Speaker
Okay. Um, that's good. Yeah. I'd love to look at your sheet on that because I'm not against some manual. I'm just worried digital alone. Isn't great. Like if we can do digital that ties it with barcodes or something physical that may help. Um, but like the other thought I had that might be face to, you know, when you go to a restaurant and they have the tape, like a wedding and they have table number eight and that's on top of a, uh,
00:20:12
Speaker
table card holder thing that has a weighted base because it's a metal step. I was thinking like, okay, that's a way to track inventory because right now we have plates stocked in the back of the shop by size on a table, either floor or tabletop, and they're labeled what size is where. So you could do a visual inventory, but
00:20:34
Speaker
We've been trying to keep a note on each stack of how many are in it and it just doesn't work because the note gets moved or someone doesn't update it or you're too focused on safely lifting or rigging the plate out that you don't think to do that. And I think, well, hold on, having a tabletop card and on the card holder, you would have a pen on each one or a Sharpie, that way it's easy to update it. As silly as that sounds, I think that could be a step in the right direction.
00:21:04
Speaker
Yeah, and we got to find simple solutions. Like something we realized here is nobody should have to count inventory. Like often, you know what I mean? We should just know what we have on hand. As we make more, we add to the list. As we finish knives, it gets pulled from the list automatically. Nobody should have to sift through and be like, okay, 1234567. Except like on a daily basis for the parts that we make, which is fine.
00:21:29
Speaker
You know what I mean? But especially when we have a thousand screws, although we got a little gram scale that counts inventory, that counts quantity. That's pretty cool. I found a cheap one on Amazon for like 20 bucks and I was like, yes, I need this. You just tell it the weight of 10 of them and then you do the math. Yeah, it's 25, I think. You put 25 screws in and then it tells you the quantity. That's cool.
00:21:52
Speaker
Yeah. And you hit, you know, tear or whatever it is. And then you can put 312 on there and it's really good. It's really accurate. That's awesome. And it tells you 312. Yeah, that's awesome. That's cool. That's how we do our fixture plate plugs. Cause we sell them in batches of a hundred or 500. Nice. It's like, yeah, no one's counting those. Yeah, exactly. But do you know how many fixture plate plugs do you have on hand right now? Nope. That'd be nice to know. Yeah.
00:22:21
Speaker
Yes, it is true. I'm focused though, so that was the other question with like an ERP is that would let us also take over the mighty bite, like the pit bull clamps, the talons, those things. But those things I can all order, they're secondary to the fixture plates in terms of our bread and butter. Like they're important, but they're not the same. They're easy to ship, even if we had to ship them later, not ideal, but, and they're easy to order.
00:22:47
Speaker
And even the fixture plate plugs that are injection molded, it's not that difficult for us to get more of those. And we apply them in huge quantities. It's the, it's the somebody ordered a plate, you know, somebody literally ordered a pair of VF4 plates last week and they're matched pairs on those sizes. And we're now out of that inventory and that makes me nervous. I don't like that.
00:23:12
Speaker
Yeah. When we started doing our ERP pro shop last year, there's a section for vendor contacts. And on first glance, you're like putting in contacts. You're like, I've only got like five or 10 people that I really order from. I must have 50 people in the list at the least. Yeah.
00:23:31
Speaker
Right. And it's the same for that little stuff. You're like, all I really want to do is inventory steel. But really, when it comes down to it, you got shipping boxes, you got those plugs, you've got paper, you've got shipping tape. All of this stuff is part of the system that creates the process for you guys to ship a product. And if you're out of the stupidest little thing, like we were out of
00:23:58
Speaker
Oh, like the oil that we include. And I wouldn't ship a knife without the oil. Eventually, we did because the oil was so backordered. And then we just shipped everybody extra oil later. But I didn't like that at all. So the quantity of everything with minimums, and ideally, those minimums get triggered. So on my spreadsheet now, when everything's below a quantity of, say, 50 knives, that cell turns red so that you know
00:24:28
Speaker
that it's a problem or it's going to be a problem within Google Sheets. Yeah. Are you able to share, because that's one of the things I didn't like about Pro Shop was I started to look at it and they just wouldn't tell you how much it cost and that's just a turn off to me. Do you know what ballpark pricing would be? I don't know if they share that publicly, but basically it's a few grand a year.
00:24:58
Speaker
Yeah. Um, I think it's like four grand a year or something like that. See, that's what's, that's what's weird. Subscription on cloud. It says on the website now minimum contract is 12 months starting at $500 a month. That's six grand a year per employee. Yeah, but that's six grand a year. Okay. And there's a couple of different levels and you do pay per employee, um, with, with a minimum of something would pro shop do what I'm looking for.
00:25:27
Speaker
to an extent. I think so because it definitely tracks
00:25:34
Speaker
quantity of everything. Um, it's all work order based, which is one of the, been one of my struggles. So like you create a work order to make 600 bearings and you make 600 bearings and then they automatically go into inventory because it says you made 596 good ones and you track all this throughout the manufacturing process, which is great. Um, it doesn't do so well on the sales side of things. Okay.
00:26:01
Speaker
but I guess you could- So how do you take out an inventory as you build knives? Like that's one of the big things I've seen on ERPs is people talk about how they handle kits. So if you sell one knife, it debits each individual item. It debits two spacers and six screws and all that appropriately.
00:26:23
Speaker
Yes. And I think you would create, I don't know if it'd be a work order or something for a kit like that. And then if we do, you know, six knives yesterday, then we make a work order for six or something. I've been talking with them a lot about how to create those kits and how to automatically debit, you know, all of these things, just like you were saying. And we're just, we're going back and forth trying to find the right solution for us.
00:26:49
Speaker
Because I can see it working beautifully for a job shop. A job comes in, makes 612 of these. You make them, you ship them, you call it done. It's done. Right. The fact that you're doing that Excel thing to me is kind of a red flag that
00:27:04
Speaker
Well, my argument to that is that I have so much control over the Excel or the Google Sheet document and it's easy and there's simple formulas and I can just do it and make it exactly how I want. And that's what I like about it. It gives us like power and it integrates with our current spreadsheets that Barry's doing financial tracking for and everything.
00:27:27
Speaker
We love Google Sheets. Our business runs on Google Sheets. So if you lost ProShop tomorrow, what would you be upset about? What would you miss? What would you have to redo? A lot of, obviously, the vendor contacts, all my tools. My tool tracking inventory is in ProShop, which is excellent. Historical tracking of the work orders that I've done.
00:27:55
Speaker
but yeah, I don't know if I'm that deep into it yet, where I would business business with crumble. You should be at that point to implement it fully, but I'm, I'm like half pregnant with it, you know, that's what I want. I'm willing to hand over my life to the system of like, I want
00:28:12
Speaker
Jared or Ed to be able to just run POs through the system or look at where stuff is. The folks I've looked up to that have implemented systems like this, whether it's a full-blown ERP or some custom solution, it becomes a very integral part. It's something where you're like, if someone said that system was down or lost, you would think you would gasp, right? Yeah, exactly.
00:28:37
Speaker
I think- And that is the purpose of ERP or of Pro Shop or something is to control everything. Right. I'm just not there yet. Yeah. I'm excited because it seems like the fact that all we need to do is track a relatively low quantity, a relatively simple thing across a few stages means we can do this. We will figure this out. Airtable is next on my list this morning to kind of poke through.
00:29:04
Speaker
I may reach back out to the modus folks that are running Odoo that I want to look at and see how they're doing it. Yeah. So I'm very proficient with Google Sheets, which is glorified Excel, cloud-based Excel, basically. Airtable is just a more robust, powerful version of it. No, Airtable is a relational database.
00:29:33
Speaker
When the spreadsheet started, it was just one spreadsheet. Now you have the ability to have multiple tabs within one spreadsheet, so you can change what information is shown on what page. You can even link between sheets, but that is sometimes problematic, perhaps less so in the cloud.
00:29:53
Speaker
That's substantially different than a relational database where you have the ability to create better, basically look up systems so you can have a table that has your customer information and then you can, a sales information, an inventory system. And these would be kind of like having different spreadsheets, but the way they interact with each other, there's much more, better way to build reporting, to build lookups, to build data integrity checks and so forth.
00:30:22
Speaker
Interesting. Because it sounds like from the programmers that I've worked with, they can do all of that through custom web apps and all that stuff. But I wonder if Airtable makes it a lot easier for laymen like us to do it themselves. I think it would. I remember touring a manufacturing plant when I was a kid here in town and they had an Excel system for POs and all that. And it was just they had to move to a database because it doesn't scale. That's the problem. They don't scale well.
00:30:53
Speaker
And Airtable, like even Phil has done some Airtable stuff that I'm actually on my list as well to look at this morning. So I think there's some potential, knock on wood here, to create either if this then that, or is it Zapier, if I'm pronouncing that correctly, that does the paid triggers. So again, when Shopify order meets a certain criteria, then it can trigger Airtable to automatically update. That should be doable.
00:31:23
Speaker
Well, and that's what we're doing to an extent with Google scripts and the programmers because
00:31:30
Speaker
they are linking Shopify and Google Sheets together. So the way the makers choice works is when, when Erin takes pictures and uploads a product, she says quantity one tag is something and then the script sees that tag and then knows there's quantity one and then can email the person a knife. And then when it sells, it goes quantity zero. So it stops picking names. So there is this talking back and forth.
00:31:55
Speaker
Which you know once you realize this kind of stuff is possible, then it's simply a matter of asking the developer Please
Custom vs. Off-the-Shelf Software
00:32:02
Speaker
do this. I have no idea how it's gonna work and then they're like, okay, that'll be 50 bucks and I'm like, yeah, that's it Do you know how valuable this is to me? Like I
00:32:10
Speaker
And look, I give you a lot of credit because there is definitely subscription nausea from all of these different like, you know, you start buying all these individual apps and add ons, and it's 10 bucks a year, 20 bucks a year, 80 bucks here. And all of a sudden, you're spending hundreds of dollars per month for all these little integration things, whereas you could do a one time custom developer fee to write your own software. I still think
00:32:37
Speaker
I don't have a dog in the fight here. You might want to look at Airtable though over Google Sheets, especially long-term. Google Sheets doesn't handle volume well either. Like you're literally limited on your number of rows. I think it's a thousand. Yeah. Are you? Oh, you can add more. That's what you can do. You'll hit... Okay, for sure.
00:33:00
Speaker
Oh yeah, I've seen tens of thousands. Sorry, it defaults to only a thousand, but you can add more later. That's what it is. Or you can hit add more. Well, then when sheets are automatically populated with my various stuff, then it just adds more to the bottom. It's no big deal.
00:33:20
Speaker
And we do have a lot of sheets linked between each other, which, once I figured that out, I was like, sweet. So I'm creating a dashboard that I want to have a monitor up on the wall that shows the dashboard. It shows all the basic, simple information, our current inventory levels, and what color they are. You know, how many people are on the list? How many people have been picked right now? How many knives are on the shelf in the system?
00:33:48
Speaker
What's the average turnaround time for a sale of a knife, all this like critical stuff that'll be helpful for kind of all of us. This is your ERP. Yeah. But it's like, you should just have, have the developer, right. Move the stuff from pro shop over to this because this is your ERP. You, you love the system. It works for you. You're not, this isn't a stop gap. You're not looking to, to grow out of this from what I'm hearing. I'm not. And you need to have, right.
00:34:17
Speaker
So you need a system that lets you write POs to vendors to get new oil, you know, jugs in and then that time puts them in the system and that's not hard to do. That's like the easy part. Yeah. Yeah. I think I definitely don't want a bad mouth pro shop because it is a great software. It's just, I don't know if it's great for me because
00:34:42
Speaker
It's very centric around, like I said, around work orders. Everything's based around the work order and tracking every step of the job. This took me 10 minutes. Setup is normally four hours. Setup sheets are great in Pro Shop. That's awesome. And we have been using that. So next time we go to run Norseman Pivots, pictures, details, everything is in there. And you can say how long you spend on setup and all that. So it's like the ultimate job shop tool.
00:35:11
Speaker
We're just using it differently. And I have been hesitating and struggling with how to fully integrate it. I was at a wedding two weekends ago and ended up having a conversation with a acquaintance slash friend about business type stuff like this. And what I took away from that was oddly inspiring, which is he had no ambivalence or indifference about getting rid of things when they don't work.
00:35:40
Speaker
Yeah. And I think it literally has, it was, it sounds silly. It was one of those life changing moments where I just realized, stop kidding yourself. Uh, if it's not the right tool, get rid of it. You can find another tool, but just gone purged cut no more solve the problem. Interesting. Yeah.
00:36:02
Speaker
Yeah, I'm with you. I've got nothing to bad mouth on pro shops here, but darn it. It's not, you're not going to, it's August 28th. In May, I would take a side bet that you're not going to be using pro shops substantially different than you are today. You have given me a lot to think about.
00:36:21
Speaker
But here's the funny thing. That's what I loved about this conversation. There wasn't a lot to think about. I'm not thinking about you here. I don't know enough about what your use of pro shops is to actually weigh in with an educated comment. But his decision was simple. Quit overthinking it. You've already answered the question. When you're thinking about this thing and it doesn't work, it doesn't work.
00:36:42
Speaker
If you're going to make it work, then go make it work. And come back to me, tell me you're going to make it work. But I know this is where I do know you well enough, John, that even if you had the time, which you don't, Pro Shops doesn't sound like it's going to be really the right tool because you've already got a better, prettier, more in love system, freaking built. Yeah, certainly the bolts are very powerful. And it's OK. You shouldn't feel bad.
00:37:10
Speaker
In this case too, if you, I don't know if you know the individual people at Pro Shop, but that doesn't, stripping out that social awkwardness of saying, hey, you're a good friend, you've inspired me, I like you. I don't pick on Jay Pearson, Jay Pearson, Jay, love your stuff, we're not using the Pro Palette today. I'm completely fabricating this right now, by the way, this isn't actually true. We're going to sell them or something like that.
00:37:36
Speaker
It's not personal. I'm not going to feel bad that I am no longer just because I know somebody on a personal level. I can't, I guess. And I'm inclined to feel that way. Yeah, if the tool isn't being used, then... Yes, it's okay. So...
00:37:56
Speaker
Good stuff, dude. Yeah, really good. This custom software thing is actually speaking to Jay Pearson. He has some custom software and I don't know if he wants to share more of it because I think to some extent this stuff starts to push into your competitive advantage in the world, but I'd love to see if he's willing to talk more about that process. He's been doing some really good videos lately too on his YouTube channel on stuff like this.
00:38:25
Speaker
Well, it's, I think I should be able to share this. He said in one of our WhatsApp chats that he's in a group with a bunch of local entrepreneurs and like all of them are using custom software to run their businesses. And that's kind of eye opening. I mean, it's sort of sucky from a perspective of business owners because it, or does just everybody want something different?
00:38:49
Speaker
Yeah, I don't know. I don't have the answers. S&H Machine Shop, we did that video tour there. They use the custom ERP. I think when it's just for you, you're not looking to integrate with third parties. You're not looking for Grimsman Knives ERP to talk daily with
00:39:10
Speaker
true integration with vendors where they have access to your system and vice versa, or you're not looking to build up a company that gets sold, so they need to merge your SQL Server database into their SAP platform, blah, blah, blah. It's just for you. Yeah.
00:39:23
Speaker
And as a bootstrapper still to this day, I realized I really can't shake that. I like the idea of building something that works for us that's not again, subject to the whims of fees. Like one of our zero, one of our subscription fees on zero went from very low amounts to 20 bucks a month. And the $20 a month is completely fair price. I will readily admit that, but man did it tick me off because you have no control over that.
00:39:51
Speaker
These companies shut down. They change. They merge. And frankly, they don't give good support and service. And I thought that's kind of an interesting dichotomy because you're charging more now, but you don't still have any real obligation to provide support or fix things that are broken.
Launch of Provencut Platform
00:40:08
Speaker
Anyway, I could go on. Yeah, it gets scary, especially if a company you rely on so much would go out of business. And then you're like, well, now I'm stuck. What am I going to do? Right.
00:40:21
Speaker
being at the whim. But I mean, businesses now are getting so big and so integrated. And like you were saying earlier about, you know, having these little $5, $10 fees at all these little sites. There's a lot that goes into running an online business nowadays.
00:40:39
Speaker
Yeah, I hear you. So speaking of running online businesses, we have had a lot of fun. It's been talked about for I know months, if not over a year at this point, but we have we have finally turned on the light switch for Provencut.
00:40:55
Speaker
And so cool. Yeah, the idea is very simple and straightforward. Try to turn the industry that's on its head of the way that folks learn speeds and feeds by going with proven recipes. So when you join ProvenCut, you have a filter system so you can search by whatever criteria you want. It can be the brand of machine tool, brand of cutting tool, just the diameter, the number of flutes, the gauge length, the typical stuff that you would want, but you can even search by coolant style.
00:41:25
Speaker
You can sort that list or by the criteria you want. And then the recipe itself is a video of the cut happening. So you get the chance to watch it. You get the chance to listen to it, all of the cutting information. Um, so if it's a 2d adaptive and stainless steel, you can see that you see pictures of the tool, the chips, you know what to expect. Uh, there's a direct link that clicks once and it opens up that whole cam file strategy in fusion 360. So if you're using fusion,
00:41:53
Speaker
It's a way to, and this is something I'm thinking about is are we marketing Provencut wrong? Like, is it not just speeds and feeds? Is it really the pitch should be, we're going to change the way you program parts because rather than trying to go find that face mill recipe for titanium that you did a year ago, if we had that in Provencut, you're just going to say, hey, it's easier to program parts by just going there and hitting one button and it pushes it into diffusion. Yeah. And then you're literally just copying some, your tool path onto
00:42:24
Speaker
the Provencut toolpath onto your part. Yeah, exactly. Yep. So we're live. I will share. I learned a really good lesson and it basically was we've had some help from a local marketing company and I was excited for this and the lesson is
00:42:45
Speaker
is it's good to listen to other people's opinions, but keep your own convictions and opinions. And I'm paraphrasing, but they, they were basically, and I'm exaggerating for the sake of the story. They were basically like push, push, push, you know, let's get it out. Let's get it out. Let's blast it. Let's blast it. And, and that can be an addicting thing to hear and see. And what I ultimately realized is that's not who I am. I may let's, let's get it out. Let's make sure we fix the bugs. Let's build it organically. Let's grow it over time.
00:43:15
Speaker
You know, Provencut needs more recipes. We're adding them regularly. We're building a platform that will let other folks upload recipes as well because that's a key part of its long-term success. But I don't need this, like, everyone needs to know today we're blasting it out. Huge, huge, huge. And maybe that's a mistake because there is some
00:43:34
Speaker
sort of first mover advantage, having confidence, pushing out, but it's just not who I am. I want it to be a very good tool for folks. I want to make sure we are nimble enough to change it as we need to and tweak things, but it is, I am really happy with the system we built, the platform we built, and it's a tool for folks, especially if you're new to machine, you're new to a material, you're new to a new brand or size or capability of machine tool. I am very, very proud of what we've done.
00:44:03
Speaker
That's amazing. Yeah, I got the email yesterday and went to sign up right away. You know, I saw the email, I was like, okay, quick sign up. I happened to be in the bathroom, almost dropped a credit card in the toilet. But yeah, I'm very excited to dig into that and get going. So are you doing, are you going to be doing five axis kind of tool paths as well?
00:44:26
Speaker
Yeah, there's some UMC recipes on there now we'll be adding. So the thought was we built, I don't know, 300 recipes or so before we launched. And now folks that sign up are able to submit requests. So we want to try to balance what we build next with some input from folks that are members now, because it's not all just what we think folks need to see.
00:44:52
Speaker
But we're trying to build a process, a workflow. We have built a process and a workflow. So how do we get the material? How do we get the tools? How do we film? We've got like a photo booth station set up for all that. And that's how we then grow at scale. I love it.
00:45:11
Speaker
But the phrase that we came up with, which I love, one of the few different phrases, we break tools so you don't have to. And that's not to say it's perfect, but part of Provencut is also a form of troubleshooting for the user. If we can do something, we don't push stuff out that we don't have confidence in is proven, period. And that's one reason the video exists.
00:45:37
Speaker
The reality is there is no perfect world. Nothing we're going to do is necessarily exactly matched to your machine. The coolant might be different. The gauge like the holder, there's some things, at least one thing's going to be different, but that exists regardless of what you're using for speeds and feeds, whether it's other software calculators, books. And I think what we're offering by giving you more information, a couple of more things may be different, but it also empowers the user to do more thinking about, okay, well, is there something wrong with my machine or did I make
00:46:06
Speaker
mistake, or is there a compromise, you know, something else going on?
00:46:15
Speaker
In the ProvenCut system, do you have footage of what it's like to push a tool too far, like of an aluminum end mill totally loading up and just breaking? Great question. We decided not to put out fail recipes because we just didn't for now. One of the questions that we've got is, well, is this the most it can do?
00:46:37
Speaker
And I don't like the idea of pushing recipes that hard because then the slightest little thing can go wrong. And there are still things that are very much user dependent. If your coolant line gets bumped a quarter of an inch, that could have a pretty big impact on chip welding with aluminum or something.
00:46:59
Speaker
And we're not necessarily here to try to, you know, we're not going to change the way Boeing roughs out aluminum. That's not what proven cuts going to do. If you are a very, very seasoned machinist, I don't think proven cuts the right answer for you and a material you already know.
Provencut's Educational Impact
00:47:14
Speaker
But what we can do is show you, hey, even on a Tormach, you probably can push that three eighth inch end mill harder than you thought you were. We can show you that happening, which gives you the confidence to know.
00:47:26
Speaker
And so when you find recipes that you like, you can sort them by material removal rate, by stick out. I forget what the other criteria is off the top of my head. So you could pick something like stainless steel on a Haas and then just show me all the recipes ordered by material removal rate.
00:47:46
Speaker
I love it. I was thinking, especially for the more novice machinists or us many years ago, and especially with your tagline of we break tools that you don't have to, I feel like me five, eight years ago,
00:48:02
Speaker
would love to see you chip weld an aluminum end mill so that I don't have to. You know what I mean? Or if it happens to me that I've already seen you do it, so I'm like, okay, I know why because John told me why. More educational side? I don't know. I'll think about it for sure. I like showing what works, which implicitly means we're not showing what doesn't work.
00:48:30
Speaker
Yeah, I see your point. And there'd be a kind of fine line there of you don't want to be seen as the guys that show what doesn't work. Well, there's an educational aspect. I assure you, we're keeping the footage. So one of the things that we thought about doing is just a bloopers type video when maybe we put out, Hey, here's 10 recipes that failed. And I'll show kind of why. But we can't, you can't
00:48:57
Speaker
give conclusive information that works for every scenario for every reason why it will fail. That's not really possible because everyone could have different reasons, but what we can do is show you what works.
00:49:08
Speaker
Yeah. When I was watching the trailer for Provencut, it's like a minute, minute and a half. And right at the end where you're like, we break tools so you don't have to. There's machining footage in the back and I'm like, break, break, break. We actually had a broken one in there at one point. But like, you know, the Niagara 2.0 stabilizer, that tool is a beast. They're not, they're not
00:49:30
Speaker
They're not horribly expensive, but it's a great value even though it's an expensive tool. It's not a tool I want to break. When you see the recipes that we're doing on adaptive and slotting with that tool, it is mind-blowing. I would have never pushed the tool that hard on my own.
00:49:49
Speaker
And we benefit from when folks come in, any legitimate machine shop can get vendors to come in now, and they may test out tools. But that's a time-consuming process. Not everyone has that advantage. So that's another thing. We're like, hey, let's pay this forward in the form of making sure we can share that information. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.
00:50:11
Speaker
Yep, so it's great. We've got folks from Bantam Tools from Pocket, or not Pocket NC yet. We're working with an owner of a Pocket NC, other sort of hobby grade machines as well. We're doing a lot of the Tormach and Haas recipes. I've got another person who's doing some DMG recipes. And then again, as we, when we are able to finish developing out the system that allow other people to upload, we'll figure out a way of
00:50:37
Speaker
We're thinking about like a peer review process or a advisory type review process that can make sure that other recipes that are uploaded from others are also still what we deem is good recipes for the community. Yeah, yeah, yeah, cool. So yeah, that's what's been going on on our plate. Awesome. That's quite the project.
Conclusion and Future Plans
00:51:00
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I know you've been working on that for at least a year. Yep. Yep.
00:51:05
Speaker
Sweet, we're over 50 minutes. Anything going on today? Making epic bearings on the Swiss. Oh my gosh, they're so good. That's great.
00:51:16
Speaker
These Delrin bearings have been such a hassle on the Nakamura for years. And on the Swiss, it just works. They're so, so, so good. It's great. So I ran it hard on Monday. I think I only made like 18 or something once I got it all set up, but today I should be able to make hundreds. And that's super looking forward to that. Yeah. I'm really happy that that machine's working out. And it's not like walking on you more of the thermal instability or anything. That's great.
00:51:42
Speaker
Nope. Nope. It does grow a little bit in the first hour, but then it's like dead steady. Like I'm doing one 10th adjustments and it's, it's complicated to program and it's complicated to set up. Like everybody says about every Swiss machine effort. Um, but it's worth it for me and the parts are coming off so good. Awesome. So yeah, next phase is just run it hard. Awesome. You know, make lots and lots of parts. Awesome. Cool. Have a good week. I'll see you. I'll see you next Wednesday. Sounds good. Take care.
00:52:35
Speaker
Take care. Bye.