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#291 "The only constant is change"
227 Plays3 years ago
Topics:
- "The only constant is change"
- Near fatal car accident for SMW employee and how it affects the company
- Saunders' wife filling in
- perpetual biggest failure?
- can do great things when able to focus, but...
- 4 new employees at SMW in the past 72 hrs
- Tornos update from Grimsmo
- Running machines unattended overnight
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction and Business Reflections
00:00:00
Speaker
Good morning and welcome to the business of machining episode 291. My name is John Grimsmo. My name is John Saunders. This is the podcast where John and John chat every week about our budding businesses and challenges in manufacturing ups and downs. On one hand, all businesses are the same and on the other hand, they're all completely different.
00:00:22
Speaker
And you always want to look at your own and be like, yeah, but mine's different, mine's special, those reels don't apply to me. And then sometimes you go, yeah, they totally do. Right? So, yeah, on that note, I'm reminded of the quote, the only constant is change.
00:00:41
Speaker
And so look, everyone listening, thank you kind of in a cliche, silly way. We love all of you as part of this, you know, manufacturing world community. And we love that we've really done a great job across almost 300 episodes of keeping this podcast very candid. And really the reflection of what John and I had done for years prior to hitting the record button, which is just a private conversation between two entrepreneurs, kind of no holds bar.
Employee Accident and Business Impact
00:01:02
Speaker
You know, John and I know each other well enough to trust each other, but not so well that like, it becomes awkward if we share information you might not normally even share with a friend if that makes sense.
00:01:11
Speaker
Um, the news on my front, which I've known for a few weeks, but it chosen to not share for reasons. I don't know that I could totally put my finger on other than respect and so forth is that, um, our main, I'll call it our main employee who runs all of our shipping logistics, media, et cetera. Um, was in a near fatal car accident, um, approximately three weeks ago. And, um,
00:01:39
Speaker
that person. One of the reasons they want to share it, it's not my news to share and all that, but it's come to the point where it's affected our business so much. And in ways that are just not good, they're bad, they're just affected. But most importantly, that person is alive. And I am hopeful and have reason to hope that that person and their partner will be able to make a strong recovery, hopefully a full recovery, but that's going to take
00:02:06
Speaker
And I don't know if time means weeks, months or years. And there's certainly some unfortunate frustrations to it. I'll double down on anybody who drinks and drives is a terrible person, period. Call a cab driver. Yeah, that was the reason for that. Our employee was not in any which way. Unfortunately, our employee in a very disappointing circumstances was actually parked.
00:02:35
Speaker
in their view. What? Yeah. Anyways, I don't really feel comfortable sharing more about it because it's not sure my news, but so I thought what I do is focus on and I've been able to visit the person in the hospital and do what I can, kind of balancing that small team culture and caring about the person, but also recognizing that I don't know what those boundaries all are.
Operational Challenges and Adaptations
00:02:59
Speaker
I and so many other people I think want to help and sometimes
00:03:05
Speaker
sometimes that's a weird, I don't know what the answer to all that is. Anyway, the reason I can't not bring this up is that it's really just kind of changed everything. So this actually happened just before I left for IMTS. So during IMTS, things honestly went pretty darn, like actually beyond well, they went shockingly well. The team
00:03:29
Speaker
And it was really a testament to Wex and how we use fresh desks and the team's ability to delegate and make stuff happen and know what to make and produce and ship orders.
00:03:42
Speaker
I had almost no stress or need to intervene during the three days I was traveling or four really. So that was a huge win. But there's a difference between kind of being out of the picture for under one week versus now going on three weeks. So things like how we create and schedule are anodizing. I call milk runs. But like in theory, every two
00:04:06
Speaker
Every second Tuesday, we send a crate to the anodizer. That means if you go backward in that chain of events, the last thing that happens is the truck picks it up. Prior to the truck picking up, it's a bill of late and prior to that, it's a purchase order.
00:04:21
Speaker
prior to the purchase order, it was the scheduling within Lex of what needs to be made as a mix of inventory and customer orders for non-inventory stuff. Before that was someone's analysis behind what we now have in this awesome dashboard view in Lex is an inventory screen that highlights
00:04:41
Speaker
outstanding orders, custom orders, and then the ratio of 90 day sales to inventory. If we've sold 10 of something and we have none in stock, that gets the highest priority. If we've sold one or zero 90 days and we have one in stock, it's not even on the screen. That makes sense. It's all working, but nevertheless, we're not a robot. We all have
00:05:06
Speaker
decisions that we need to weigh in on. And this person played a big role in that. So part of me acknowledges the hole that we've had to fill, which is basically largely well, let's say it's largely overtaken my day job.
00:05:22
Speaker
but I'll come back to that. But, um, so on the flip side, it's a big, it's a big loss and absence. And I want to process and deal with on the flip side. I'm incredibly proud that honestly it hasn't, you know, we're making it happen. Um, yeah, I'll talk about what I've been doing. I'll talk about my wife's role. I'll talk about new hire interns, but let me pause for a second because I've been hogging all the, uh, no, that's perfect. And, um, what an unfortunate event. I mean,
00:05:49
Speaker
that hits close to home, right? Like somebody you've worked with for many, many years, parked. I didn't know that. Yeah. I did neither for like a week. Right. And then you heard that. Yeah. Yeah. But as we've talked about privately a little bit, like, especially at IMTS, it's like, how does that affect the company? You want to be as compassionate as possible for this person, but
00:06:16
Speaker
At the end of the day, the company has to go on. Do you have to fill that role temporarily, permanently? We don't know what the long-term outcome is. I'm sure your mind is swimming with possibilities and options and how much can you absorb and how much can the other staff members absorb of that role? You figure that out slowly over time, but it can't wait too slowly because otherwise things are going to start dropping.
00:06:42
Speaker
I don't feel bad about how I'm handling that. The reality is the show must go on. So John Saunders as a boss, if you will, can
00:06:54
Speaker
Be compassionate and caring and reaching out. And we've sent her video message updates and so forth on the flip side. John Saunders that runs and owns Saunders Machine Works. The show must go on. And we do so unemotionally in that, hey, well, with pride, I don't mean unemotionally like cold. I just mean like a part of me just keeps coming back to as crummy as this is. We're not attending a funeral. And that's a great place to start from. Wonderful. It really is. So sorry.
00:07:24
Speaker
So, when we were at IMTS hanging out together, you said your wife was showing up at work. How's that been going? As I remember, and I think you've mentioned on the podcast, she's been doing some bookkeeping for the past six months or whatever. Yes, she has. That's totally different. That's truly just like, hey, it's an easy way to outsource some mindless work that kind of anybody could do. It's nice that there's a level of trust because she has access to the accounts that I would be a little bit more concerned with the true third party for.
00:07:54
Speaker
mostly remote. I mean, I know you live four minutes away from work. But that's that didn't involve her coming into work. Like exactly. It was she was never there was only remote basically. And it was a relatively blind like if you work here, you would never necessarily have any idea. Sure. Actually, that's a whole nother conversation. I have done a bit of a 180. So our conversation a month ago on realizing that there
00:08:21
Speaker
Partly because Yvonne has stepped up so much more lately that it's like, wait a minute, I want her to spend less time on bill pay. In a wonderful admission of, hey, John Saunders, sorry, not that I think I'm always right, but as an entrepreneur, inevitably, you have to have some conviction in your processes or else you're not going to go anywhere in life.
Integrating Family into Business
00:08:40
Speaker
You also need to be willing to change. I realize, wait a minute here. Instead of doing all these net 30 bill pays, let's just move some of the stuff over to credit card.
00:08:48
Speaker
And the other byproduct of that is the points aren't the worst thing in the world if you have a use for them. And part of me is thinking, hey, COVID's over, maybe use some of them for travel. And shout out to Blake at the Alchemy Brewery, who for had sending in some really good feedback on how they do that.
00:09:06
Speaker
New Jersey, I'm going to get this wrong, brew pub or brewery that makes pretty ... I wasn't sure how big they were and then he was mentioning how much hops they buy each week or each month and I was like, oh, okay. You're not making a few six-packs, like legit. Sorry, I'm beginning to sidetrack.
00:09:25
Speaker
After we're talking about Yvonne. Yeah, it's your story. So she has started coming in throughout the week to help just help like period from literally like a body count standpoint. But what has been awesome is
00:09:46
Speaker
You know, she has no background or passion for manufacturing, full stop, like doesn't care about it. And that's fine. We're good. This is like that conversation of starting to mix work and life that I've been generally. Yes. It's funny because my wife have been having similar conversations lately, too. Like she has no interest in manufacturing, no passion for it whatsoever. Yeah, exactly. You know, she loves me for it, but whatever.
00:10:17
Speaker
What she's been able to do is step in and two things that have that have really changed how why I think this has succeeded and might continue to work out well. Number one is we have enough momentum around what's happening that plus the systems in place that she's not working for me. And that's important. Right. Yeah, she doesn't want that. And I don't. That's interesting. Fine with that. She's running or helping run
00:10:37
Speaker
Yeah, okay. So I could ramble and I won't.
00:10:44
Speaker
Operations, shipping, logistics. She, like all of us, work for Lex. They work for the process. They work for Shopify or reports or fresh desks. She asks help of me and others because she's learning, but it's not at all. In fact, never once has she been like, John, what should I do next? There's all this up to do. Look, I'm sharing this because I'm hoping other entrepreneurs out there can probably relate.
00:11:07
Speaker
That's a just has to be that way. And I forget, I kind of lost my train of thought, but that's going to. That's a big takeaway because.
00:11:18
Speaker
There'd be a big difference if your wife comes up to you and you're giving orders and directions all of the time. My wife and I have talked about working together over the years and usually we end up with a hard no because that would not work in the dynamic at work. But if the processes are in place, which kudos to you guys for building that system so that Yvonne could come in and clearly see the work that has to get done.
00:11:45
Speaker
learn how to do it either by asking or by reading documentation or whatever and accomplishing the work and knowing what the limits are and how to do it right and all that. It's fantastic.
00:11:56
Speaker
Yeah, I remembered my second point, which is that her former professional career was helping run various different fashion roles in New York and then Ohio, the last of which was running the International Division for Justice, which was a girls clothing company, which has since gone bankrupt. As a result, she lost her job, but she worked with franchise partners in South America, Asia, and the Middle East.
00:12:24
Speaker
that has nothing to do with CNC machine fixture plates. But in a weird way, it's actually pretty overlapping in the sense that she worked with distributors, wholesalers, retailers who had to come on board, who had open to buys and merchandising and shipping and logistics and communications. So when she sees
00:12:47
Speaker
Lex and POs and shipping processes and how to assemble stuff. It's more up her alley in language than one may think. And she's smart. She's sharp. So like it's actually been great to have her say, hey, we've got these assembly cards printed. I think it would be better because I don't know how to do this if you took the last step and showed the final assembly, not just the processes to get right up to it or something like stuff like that, where I'm like, run with it. Rock on. This is awesome. Yeah, yeah.
00:13:15
Speaker
You might not think of it upfront, but she clearly has a lot of experience and knowledge and industry history experience to bring to the role, which is... Yeah. That's cool. Yeah. But then it's funny too because somebody told her that that was scrap and go put in the aluminum scrap bin and she walks over to the Gaylord boxes and is like,
00:13:35
Speaker
One's steel, one's aluminum, I don't know which is which. And it was awesome because Garrett was kind of like, I don't know how he explained it, but they were having a laugh about it. So in an unexpected way, she's actually fitting in and I like it. So it's weird because I do want her, I want to compel her and sell her on spending more of her time helping us for a lot of good reasons. But I want her to come to that conclusion. It's different than two or three years ago when
00:14:05
Speaker
If and when we thought the retail thing may be coming to an end, it was more like, do you want to intentionally leave a career and move over and help grow this business? That's different than now where it's like, hey, we're down, we need some help and or at least help put some processes and systems in place or keep applying those and learning them.
00:14:31
Speaker
and act as a force multiplier for me because even though she's not working to me or asking me what to do per se, it's also the case where if we're not sure how to do something, the fact that she's able to figure stuff out or help means it's helping me be able to stay on, say like the horizontal because we're rolling out some new products, that type of thing. Absolutely. So tell me about Meg. Is she thinking about, or do you want to talk about it?
00:14:59
Speaker
I mean, she's been a stay-at-home mom for the past 12 years and she's bored out of her mind. Because your children are now in middle grade school type things? Yeah, grade four and seven. And she likes being at home, she likes helping with the kids, but she's been itching for something else. And yeah, so we're just talking about that. What skills does she have with marketable skills? University education, she has a huge
00:15:28
Speaker
work experience in the history field, museums, things like that. But short of getting one of those jobs, she's struggling to see like how to apply it elsewhere. You know, and does she want to go somewhere and work 40 hours a week? No, I don't want that either. Yeah, that's a big, that's a big like the pride in me says, no, no, I got this. You know, we can make do, we don't need the money and yada yada. But that's not the whole conversation. It's not the
00:15:56
Speaker
It's not just a money conversation here. It's a her life thing and obviously I want the absolute best for her and I want her to live a fulfilling life not just me and while my life is very fulfilling and very stressful and busy and crazy, I love it and I want her to have her version of that too. So, it's just open discussions we're having all the time.
Health and Stress Management
00:16:24
Speaker
Good. Right before we hit record this morning, John was talking about something. And I was like, do you think you're stressed right now? We're just making small talk. And he paused. And I thought, oh, let me poke the bear here. And so I said, if I gave you $10,000 to come up with a list defending why you're stressed, would you be able to do that? And you just started laughing. Yeah, of course. In that case, yes, I'm stressed because of this and this and this and this.
00:16:53
Speaker
No, because I was telling Saunders that I woke up dizzy this morning and I've been dizzy for the past three hours and that is not normal for me. And your first question was, is it stress? And my first answer was, no, I don't think so. And then you asked the next question. It was a very slow. For sure. And I mean, there are things, many things going on in life and business right now that I don't want to talk about that I am dealing with. So yeah, of course, there's stress going on. But is it more than the normal amount?
00:17:22
Speaker
Maybe, is it maybe a cause of some of the dizziness? I don't know. It's a good thought. I'm trying to figure it out. I feel like I would be remiss to not be able to say publicly to you, if this stays, even throughout the day, you should go to a doctor. Exactly. I can't. I've already had one person close to me in the hospital. I can't have two. For sure.
00:17:49
Speaker
Like I was telling you, I've been keeping personal notes in Trello about my personal health for the past like three, four years. It's actually kind of wonderful.
00:17:58
Speaker
Just so that I have a history so that I can, I searched in Torello for dizzy and in August 2020, two years ago at the same thing lasted about two or three days and then faded away. Hasn't happened in two years. So I know that now, which is like fact, which is really cool. You know, if this happened every month, there'd be a serious like concern, but two years ago, I don't know. So tracking it again. I'll monitor. I'll see what's going on. And what was anything happening two years ago?
00:18:27
Speaker
Uh, summer 2020. Well, just like you're not stressed out right now. Were you also not stressed out, uh, two years ago? Probably similar. I don't know. I can't, uh, but in the notes, I'll try to like write down little things. Like I ate this or I haven't been sleeping or, you know, this happened in my life to try to add some context and explain it. And, uh, as we're, I mean, we're just about 40, both of us. And I don't know.
00:18:57
Speaker
life changes, we get older. I pinched the nerve in my back the other day and I'm walking like a hundred year old man right now. John, that stinks. Yeah. So. Well, so that's a weird. I actually want to come back to something that has probably been my perpetual continued biggest failure. So remind you that. But
00:19:18
Speaker
We had a guy at our training class last week say, hey, I really wanted to mention something to you, which is that this is kind of strange in the left field, but I feel like it's a decent PSA. He developed, I think, varicose veins and the doctor said it had to do with the fact that for like 30 years, he was standing in front of a machine and not moving and exercising.
00:19:38
Speaker
I don't know the details behind the rest of that story, but I will tell you this, or I would encourage everybody, go for a walk. Go for a walk before work, after work, during your lunch break, even walk around the shop a little like
00:19:52
Speaker
Don't be sedentary like it's exercise. It's good in feeling if you're willing or interested to get in shape a little bit. I don't think this is necessarily the most popular thing to say but I quit drinking for weird reasons of just not loving how it made me feel.
00:20:10
Speaker
about a year ago, I'll have like probably six or seven beers a year at this point. Like maybe one every two months. So it's not like a total abstinence, but I don't drink anymore. And I've gotten to the gym. I got in shape mostly just because I got tired of getting hurt. So the combination of those two things, I know Amish kind of feels the same way, although he still drinks.
00:20:33
Speaker
solid stuff. Again, if anyone's looking for a nugget of encouragement, and you've been doing 75 hard like a beast. Yeah, for like three years solid. I pinched my back doing a workout I have been doing every day for three years. That's really terrible. Well, yeah, probably. Maybe it's showing its signs right there. For all intents and purposes, I'm like, why now? Why all of a sudden? I've been doing this all
Task Management and Delegation
00:21:00
Speaker
the time. This is nothing to me.
00:21:03
Speaker
but maybe it shows I got to mix it up more. Got it. So where I continue to fail, and I don't know if I'm ever going to fix myself, is I know I have the ability to be really good, to do really great work and make great things when I'm able to focus on something. And for the last 12 years in this manufacturing journey, I have been unwilling to focus as much as I should. I continue to have
00:21:28
Speaker
Same thing, if you gave me $10,000 to come up with a list of everything on my plate right now, I could start with all the operations and overhead stuff and the handbook and shared resource folder for Saunders as well as planning two more work trips. I'm editing videos a little bit myself now because I have to, although I've hired enough work person to help and then developing three or four new products, the new building, buying two new, the list could go on. Sure.
00:21:55
Speaker
if I could just fire myself in every single other aspect. Yesterday, I was a surgeon. I was on the horizontal rolling out honestly crappy timing because of what happened here with the operation stuff. But we agreed to sell a set of products to an Asian customer who wanted them in metric. And this has been on
00:22:24
Speaker
our plan list. And so we kind of all agreed consensus within the shop, like let's do it. It'll force us to finish a few things up and get these going. And the fixture plates aren't hard. But a couple of the main things aren't hard, but it's all the derivative things where I'm like, Oh, man, we've got to make and the team's been great. But like, we got to make plug jacks and dowel pins and pallet blanks and new modernized washers. And we're actually there, we basically have it all done. But you know, the
00:22:49
Speaker
Making one minor change might mean changing a fixture or an offset or raw material and then reprogramming stuff. And I love doing it. I truly love it, but it's very difficult for me to do that while I'm also trying to do other roles.
00:23:05
Speaker
Yup. It takes a lot of focus and a lot of time to do those things. It's like people have been asking us for 10 years, can you just make a lefty? Oh yeah. That's funny. We did back in 2014. We made 20, 30 of them, something like that. I was willing to take the time to do that, but now there's fixtures, there's programming. It's not just reversing the code.
00:23:28
Speaker
And it's like we want the clip to be backwards. We want the handles to be machined opposite. The blade has to change. Everything except for the screws is different to do this. And I'd love to and I know exactly how to do it. It's just the time involved to make that happen and make all the fixtures, prove it out, test it out, yada, yada. So it just happened. And that's just one example. But similar. A lot of things on my plate.
00:23:55
Speaker
my ability to focus on impactful things is what's preventing some growth that I really want.
00:24:06
Speaker
Um, because I can focus like a pit bull on whatever's in front of me, but I have to be very careful what I put in front of me. Cause otherwise I'll put tons of effort into the wrong thing. And usually I only realize it's the wrong thing. Like afterwards at the end. That's why we have these conversations so we don't make more bar feeders. Yeah, exactly. Um, but so yeah, I, I,
00:24:30
Speaker
Spent a lot of time last night, like a solid hour, just thinking about what are the biggest things I need to tackle right now.
00:24:40
Speaker
And the list was pretty easy to make at least 10 things like right off the top. It was like, I could do that, I could do that. And I'm like, do I just need to like write those down and show them to somebody else in the company like Angelo who I trust highly and be like, tell me what to do next. Here's my list. Tell me what I'm doing next. I don't care if it's number one or number 10. I will put the same passion, same effort, same happiness into any of them. Tell me what you need.
00:25:05
Speaker
Well, so that's what I think we need to take this conversation is let's be our own leaders here, which is.
00:25:10
Speaker
It's okay to have a really, really short pity party or commiserate, but then, okay, so what do you do about it? And I don't, I'm okay with the dump lists. I think you are too, but then I realized looking at a list is a terrible thing. You need to, you know, you need, you need to use masking tape to cover up everything but one task and do that task really well. Um, and I don't have the, my biggest problem with a brain dump list is, and I've seen this in myself is I can write down all 10 things, a hundred things, whatever.
00:25:40
Speaker
But getting them out of my brain deletes them from my brain. And then- We'll try with that. That sounds great. It's great, but they never get done. Well, but then, but it's kind of like- Did they have to get done? Yeah, exactly. Like what's the harm? Because I can be a very creative like person with all these ideas and I want to do them all and they're all equally important at first. And then if I write them all down and never do them,
00:26:08
Speaker
How important were they? And then I look back at the list, I'm like, wow, it would be really helpful if we did that. Haven't done it yet.
00:26:15
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I would say this is a conversation more than me telling you what to do, but I have a separate worksheet so that they're out of sight, out of mind most of the time, but I can get to it really quick. So my main to do list is one tab and a Google sheet thing. The second one is has dumpy type stuff. So if you want to be the manager slash entrepreneur once a week or once a month, go look at that. And just if anything jumps out at you, that should get done.
00:26:41
Speaker
then you know it's there. You're not going to have to nag yourself. I think like we all do when you're like, Oh, my man, I have this thing to do. Yeah. Otherwise, just focus on be the person you want to be, which is, you know, you're so good at like, Hey, I'm going to get this five axis toolpath on this pen clip on the current like that's what Sean Grosso is. Yeah. Yeah.
00:27:04
Speaker
The fun fact that you said kind of firing yourself. I don't touch production these days. Yeah. At all, which is great. And I have to like step back and kind of, you know, give myself a little head nod because I'm like, okay, you really have worked yourself out of that job. I have a wonderful team of people that handle day to day production and I don't have to think about it. I don't have to worry about it.
00:27:27
Speaker
I can handle running the company, I can handle doing purchasing, planning, new things, developments, tweaks, upgrades, updates, all that stuff, which is fantastic. But it's still not all getting done. We know it's the problem. I would challenge you to say, you've made it. I've made it there, but now I've put all of the newness on my plate because
Team Growth and Development
00:27:50
Speaker
everybody else is busy doing production.
00:27:54
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I think about that with, you know, there's some things I feel like I'd like to do for products, for marketing, for new companies. And I'm unwilling to recognize, hey, this may never happen in my life. I mean, we're only very kind. It's not like we're, you know, staring at the edge of the cliff. But it's also like, holy cow, you know, I did a I did a purge in my basement at home. And there's stuff that I haven't like,
00:28:19
Speaker
There's stuff that I felt was so valuable to keep it when we moved eight years ago and it hasn't seen the light of day in years. I think we all think that's a human trait that a lot of us have. For sure. Yeah. I don't know. Do you want to talk about what's not getting done, John? Well, Willamyn, for one. Yeah.
00:28:40
Speaker
I've got these new fixtures that I'm making for the Maury as well that have been sort of half done for months, three to six months. Sort of bigger projects like that. Why can't a guy like... So the Willyman, man, look, I love you for it. Holy cow. Why can't somebody like an Angelo do Maury fixtures?
00:29:04
Speaker
Is it literally a skill, a CAD CAM? Part of it. Yeah. He has knowledge, but not a lot of experience and skill at that. Send them to our training class, dude. Tempting. Yeah, two of our guys would absolutely love to do that. We might one day. But it's time and effort, too. He's got a full schedule running the machines that he runs and running the team, leading the team that he does. So I don't have to. And that's wonderful.
00:29:32
Speaker
But yeah, it causes me to question, you know, long term, do I hire a rock star, somebody who can do R&D, who can fixture, who can play, who can like design and learn so that I'm not the only one that can do that? Or do I spread out the team a little bit so that our current guys can grow into that role as they need to, but then their jobs have to be done with somebody else as well. Like, I don't know.
00:29:59
Speaker
I had the same thought yesterday when I was having a pity party about being overwhelmed. The other thing is that we've brought on four new employees in the last 72 hours. Kind of an exaggeration, but we have two interns who started from the local community college. One has some machine experience, the other is
00:30:24
Speaker
The other one had like legit background, like had bought a 3D printer, had done two other related things like you're good to go. And they've started here. We had another person that I've known for a while who we've been kind of talking back and forth about him joining in some capacity. He's starting part time now, which has actually been great to help out with the fact that we're a little bit down and shipping and logistics side of things.
00:30:49
Speaker
Actually, Yvonne would be technically another person, but then the other one is an intern who hasn't yet started from a local machining high school program. So, we have these new bodies here, so that sounds bad to say that way, but we've got new people here, but there's some learning curve to that.
00:31:09
Speaker
And that's part of our job. I talked about this. I filmed a hiring video. I'm going to release it, but the video ended up going a different sort of direction than I thought it might. But in the spirit of being candid about.
00:31:21
Speaker
how we hire, where we find people, what we do, what works well. I am going to release it because it's who I want to be even if it doesn't necessarily please the algorithm gods. But getting people in the door and up to speed as quick as possible or be able to add value as quick as possible is really key.
00:31:39
Speaker
It's not difficult. You just have to do it. Sorry. Yeah. It's difficult for me because I don't have a lot of experience doing it. And we've got one new guy starting on Monday. And we're actively looking for one or two more as well. So this whole hiring process the past few months has been huge on my mind. So I'm very much looking forward to hearing your thoughts. I've been reading around, talking to other people, hearing their thoughts. I had a wonderful conversation with Dave Precise.
00:32:07
Speaker
Oh yeah. Because we shared a cab from IMTS back to the airport and we hung out. We had some food at the airport and we spent like four hours together. He's a really cool guy. Yeah. Cool. A lot of good hiring knowledge and stuff and big Silicon Valley perspectives of stuff. Sure. It was just cool. Yeah. Yeah.
00:32:36
Speaker
As much as it's hard to let go, I guess what made me think about that's what I was coming back to is I feel like we're at a hard time in our company's size, except all sizes of a company are hard sizes.
00:32:53
Speaker
When it's one, hiring your second employee is really hard. Two to three is really hard. It just changes. I think I've lost track of your company. I still think we're pretty similar. Our payroll counting interns is between nine and 13 people. Same. Having the loss of a major person was more impactful. I'm not at the point now where I'm able, willing, or can justify
00:33:22
Speaker
what I'd love to have, which is kind of the, I think this is probably the entrepreneur's fallacy, this idea that you just want to hire a clone. Like I know, like that's get over yourself. Like that's not going to happen. Um, um, it really, what it means is you've got to find and hire people that you can let go of stuff and trust them. Um, and that it's hard, but you got to do it. What we really need to do is spread ourselves into different roles and
00:33:50
Speaker
Even some of the employees might, if they rise up to the next level of responsibility and leadership and things like that, the role that they were doing might become two people to spread it out better. Instead of me trying to clone myself or think about hiring somebody else who can do exactly what I do, maybe I just need to spread it out into a programmer, a operations guy, yada, yada, yada.
00:34:17
Speaker
Ed and I were talking about this. He's done such a good job at coming up with fixturing improvements for how we make our fixture plates. It's really a core reason why we're able to do what we do with making this plate so well out of... It's huge. But then part of me has to push him to say,
00:34:41
Speaker
you're continuing to improve a system that's already a huge improvement that already works. We almost need to put that on hold for two reasons. Number one, to give you a break and free up you to go do other things. Also, it's not the most important thing at this point, which is hard to say to somebody.
00:35:02
Speaker
Yeah, but Grant has really stepped in in a way where it's almost like he runs all the production he needs to run on the big mills and on the lathe. And then it's like all of the R&D stuff that we need done or tweaks are made. He just runs with it. And then Garrett, these are like our three shop guys too. Garrett has really gone from being a high school graduate who was good in machine shop to like programming on his own, running more machines on his, like it's been, everyone has stepped up, which is great. Yes.
00:35:32
Speaker
It's great to hear. Yeah. It really is man. It's like the first time I feel like I've talked to you and I don't actually feel better after our talk. I can feel like this is reminding me of like, it's been a lot of the last few weeks. Yup. Yup. A lot on our plate, a lot to do, a lot of decisions to make. Um, and I mean, the last thing we want is to have a pity party for ourselves, but a lot on our plates.
00:35:59
Speaker
We've got a sizable company, each of us, that is very important and important to a lot of people, not just ourselves, right? Yeah. And I put a lot of weight on that. And I just want to do the best that I can in everything we do, whether it's our products or whether it's our company itself. I want to build a strong company. I want everybody in it to be as happy as they can be.
00:36:20
Speaker
Here's a funny one. I was two days ago, three days ago, I was having a tough day. Couldn't get focused on the Akuma like I needed to be and was playing whack-a-mole at a level I should never have to do. Again, you've made excuses, but we've gotten some pretty legit curveball thrown at us.
00:36:43
Speaker
First off, I've kind of realized the way to not get overwhelmed is to not get overwhelmed, to just shut up in your own head. Literally sit down and take a deep breath. I think people say that figuratively, but literally sometimes sitting down in a chair, closing your eyes and doing two or three deep breaths can help. And just one step at a time. But I went up to Ed and I was like, hey, I'm not doing great right now.
00:37:09
Speaker
A couple of different things, this, this, that. I was like, how are you doing? And he's like, oh, I'm fine. We're all fine. You aren't even showing it if you're not good. And that's when I kind of realized, great. Because I need to remember that just because first, I don't want to look. I don't want to be in a shop. I don't want to lead by example of looking like I'm the chicken with my head cut off. But the fact that everything else was fine was kind of a reminder of like, OK, that's actually great.
00:37:35
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, whether it gives you the room and the grace to, uh, deal with your brain, you know, and, and just give it a few minutes. Okay. Everybody else is good. I don't have to worry about them. Let me just focus on the, let me be selfish and focus on myself for a few minutes and to figure this out because I mean, you're the head of the spear. You're the leader of the company, the direction, right? If you tumble, everybody
Technical Challenges and Solutions
00:37:57
Speaker
tumbles. So it's a lot of pressure. Hey, what's going on with your Swiss?
00:38:03
Speaker
A couple of things. Did we talk about it last week? It was not good. It was like access alarm and might be got it. So we did end up getting Elliott Metz or a tech to come in. We talked to Tournos US a bunch and they're like, yeah, we somebody's got to come on site and see it. So the young guy come in.
00:38:23
Speaker
who poked around for a couple hours and he was like, I think it's this but I would like a second opinion so I'm going to get my other service guy from Elliott also to come in and they're all pretty local. So within like an hour the next guy was here. Oh, wow. At first they thought the break on the Y axis, that's the up and down on the Swiss was not releasing or something so it was just staying locked.
00:38:46
Speaker
And then eventually another alarm popped up and he was like, so which one's your Y4 axis? And I was like, that would be sub spindle tools up and down. Because that was giving an alarm too. And it turns out, I don't know the cause of it, but certainly the present issue was that Y4 had over traveled by like a quarter inch past the hard limit. So it was like stuck, stuck.
00:39:14
Speaker
And once we figured that out, I don't know how they did it. Did they? I don't know. Somehow they jogged it off of the hard limit and then reset a couple of things and all was happy in the world again. John, that's great. It's great. But I don't know what happened. And that message, if Pierre and I had seen that alarm, we would have figured it out immediately because we're like, oh, it's, you know, something's wrong. And you could look at the numbers too. And it was like negative quarter inch when zero is supposed to be the hard limit kind of thing.
00:39:45
Speaker
Um, but it wasn't giving that alarm. It was giving a different alarm. That was weird. So I'm hesitantly happy because it's totally fixed and it's running again. And it has been since I know.
00:39:55
Speaker
Thursday, Friday. But I don't know the cause of it. Well, so the machine normally shouldn't be able to travel any amount past a hard or soft limit, right? Correct. So if you programmed CAM the wrong way, it wouldn't be a issue. So part of this happened while he was doing a setup and he was changing some tools. And I'm like, maybe if you leaned on the y-axis and it slipped and
00:40:22
Speaker
That's something, I don't know, but I don't know, something happened. How do you feel, John, if I tell you move on? Who cares? You shouldn't have it again. Don't worry about it. Well, I was there until you brought it up again. Thanks.
00:40:38
Speaker
We all want to know because I'm like this machine is the tortoise is not like it's been no exactly a Problem creator and not a solution provider lately. Yeah for other reasons But I was going to feel bad if like somehow you needed a new ball screw or rail correct and I don't think it was anything like that nothing mechanical other than the over travel itself and I don't know so it works and then Pierre said he's still having the oil doesn't foam anymore But the high-pressure pump still alarms out
00:41:07
Speaker
and we'll stop the machine far too often. So I don't know if it's the high pressure pump that's just being dumb or the design is wrong or it is still sucking in a little bit of air. I don't know. But so he told me he had to reprogram a couple of parts to take out the high pressure coolant, which is fine but not ideal. You get less tool life. Yeah. Sometimes wear a surface finish. So I mean, but process reliability is a winner there.
00:41:36
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. It runs though. Okay. Being a bar fed Swiss lathe, you could put 30 bars in it. We don't, we hardly run it overnight anymore. Um, so sometimes I have to step back and I have to think, okay, what are we missing on that lathe to get it to run like 24 seven? Oh yeah. Because my record on it was a 48 hour cycle nonstop. And I don't think we've done that in many months. Um, so what are we missing? You know, like, I don't know.
00:42:05
Speaker
A tool life is limited in these materials. So it's not like we're cutting brass and can cut forever. You just put some bars at it. So there's that. But something, I don't know. Maybe it's a mentality. Maybe I got to work with Pierre closer, not just let him do his thing. He's great, but we could run more.
00:42:28
Speaker
Hey, Grant and I had that exact same conversation. In fairness, I've never pushed the issue at all. But the IMTS guy that runs a shop, a big turning shop up in Rockford, Illinois was like, dude, I mean, get the Wilma if you can get it. Awesome machine, blah, blah, blah. But like the answer to your problem is get better at running the lathe you already have. Like we're not running it after hours much at all. Right. Actually, Grant, that's not true. Grant had started. He was a little timid. And I'm like, look, you got he did a great job programming, some really good break detect things that weren't
00:42:58
Speaker
Haas supports him, but it wasn't working great. He figured that out. So we can do break detect. And so to your point about the marathon, not the sprint, like I'd rather it take multiple break detects throughout a part if it's slower, but it can run for four or five hours. Yeah. Rock on. And I totally understand the tim timidity, the timidness of, um,
00:43:19
Speaker
of running unattended, like when you're not there. And I mean, I'm totally over it with almost all of my machines. I left this video running last night for like a couple hours or probably half an hour after I left. Um, cause I'm like, I know what's going to happen. It's just going to do that thing and be done. But the ultimate goal is to have machines still running when you get in the morning. And that's like when you get in and so the current does that, you know, nine days out of 10, if not more. Um,
00:43:48
Speaker
not including Mondays because of the weekend. Dude, I love you, but you're so far beyond me because here's an exact thought that went through my head. Maybe this is a good note to wrap it up on. Last night when I was leaving the shop, I had a couple of minor changes to some programs on the horizontal and by no means should I have had any rational justification of being concerned about running them. Nevertheless,
00:44:17
Speaker
I usually think differently when I'm posting anything new that's getting run unattended. Again, I'm not sure there's a big difference because if the machine crashes, you're not going to catch it when you're there anyway, and it will arm out and stop. But nevertheless, here was my actual debate in my head. I'd like to run it at 10% rapids versus the normal 50% to 75% because 10% all else equal may mean that the crash is a lot less catastrophic if it happened to do a bump. Especially if that machine is so fast and so heavy,
00:44:44
Speaker
A lot of mass, so 100% rapid is a bad day. For the first time, I actually respect that 10% rapid argument. I've heard people say it all the time and I'm like, I've crashed my mori at 100% rapids too many times. It's fine. It doesn't care.
00:45:06
Speaker
Yeah, but I didn't want to leave it at 10% because I wanted to check the machine on the webcam one last time before I actually went to bed. Obviously, I wanted it to be further along than just what it would be at a 10% rapid rate. Just in case somebody was off, I could go back in and change it. It's kind of that funny debate of how do you run the machine?
Technology Dependence and Solutions
00:45:32
Speaker
I've gotten to the point with the current where I will happily post an updated code from home while it's running and just let it run that new code through the night. That's a good point. It's for a tweak, not for a brand new product. Sure, sure, sure. If I'm just changing a toolpath like, oh, it needs to retract more or add that hole or whatever.
00:45:58
Speaker
99.9% confident like I know what I'm doing at this point, you know? Yeah, right.
00:46:04
Speaker
Oh God, that's funny. Blocking it out. That's one reason why I had such a tough day too. Our darn internet got like the service in the whole area went out for two hours. It was like our next share. I actually figured out how to hotspot people off of cell phones, but then that meant we were hotspotting the internet so we didn't have our shared drives, but it kept fusing up. Anyway, I don't know that there's a bomb dug out of it other than like, man, I feel like I'm getting everything thrown at me.
00:46:32
Speaker
Right. I mean, does Lex work without internet? Yeah, Lex is fine. Oh, sorry. No, no, Lex is new. We got the individual computers back up on the internet by hotspotting them. Okay.
00:46:48
Speaker
But you couldn't print stuff on network printers. You couldn't post to machines over network. Interesting. What else was not right? And it was slow, but whatever. Interesting. Yeah. It just shows how delicate things can be when we rely on technology so much. Right, right. Yeah. Cool. Good. See you next week. Sounds good, man. Take care. All right. Take care. Bye.