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#252: When Small Business Growth Outpaces Efficiency
215 Plays3 years ago
TOPICS:
- Small Business Growth & Efficiency
- Staffing Concerns
- Handling Potentially Fraudulent Orders
- Work Culture & Employee Impact
- Eumachs, Power Outages, and New Quenching Plates for Heat Treat
- Automating Processes
- IoT: Operating on "If this, then that"
- Don't Automate for the Sake of It
- Performance Reviews for Employees
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction and Business Growth
00:00:01
Speaker
Good morning and welcome to the Business Unmachining episode 252. My name is John Grimsmough. My name is John Saunders. This is the manufacturing podcast where John and I have talked every week for five plus years about the trials and tribulations of growing our businesses from, I mean, for me at garage shop, you too in New York, you had your garage shop to
00:00:26
Speaker
We're doing okay right now.
Reflecting on Achievements
00:00:29
Speaker
You got to step back sometimes. You got to be like, holy crap. I am really happy with where we are right now. Our shop is beautiful. It's full of amazing tools and amazing people, and we make such a great fantastic product. You're really hard on yourself most of the time, but sometimes you just kind of lean back in my chair and I'm just like, holy crap. If 10 years ago John saw me now,
00:00:55
Speaker
Right. It's not way out. Um, and I get those moments like two times a year. Otherwise I'm hard on myself the whole year, but, uh, it's, it's nice when I have them. Yeah. Agreed. Agreed. And you should be proud. Yep. It's awesome. It is awesome. But you, you were saying, it's funny. I think about this a lot. You're not the kind of guy is on the bad thing. It's you're not the kind of guy that like thinks about the upcoming year reflects. I don't mean to put words in your mouth, but like I have a process. I kind of like think about, Hey, um,
00:01:25
Speaker
Frankly,
Reviewing Goals and Current Struggles
00:01:26
Speaker
to be super candid and blunt, it's because sometimes I don't always stop and appreciate. We're doing fine. We're growing this business. We're being smart. I was telling you right before you hit record, I'm struggling with something right now at the shop. It's good to hit pause and look back on what you wanted to do this year and where you're at and say, no. Because that's the thing about leadership and entrepreneurship is it's lonely in the sense that nobody
00:01:50
Speaker
other than your profit and loss statements, which every entrepreneur I know doesn't. You care about it because it makes it a business and it's important, but you don't care about it and what makes your identity and your definition of success.
Defining Success Beyond Numbers
00:02:03
Speaker
Other than a P&L and orders and so forth,
00:02:07
Speaker
how you feel about your business and the sense of mood and culture and progress to me is what resonates as success. And sometimes when you're the leader, no one's telling you when that's going well, but you are often the one who hears about the small, medium or big fires that you do need to address.
00:02:26
Speaker
Yeah.
Balancing Profits, Culture, and Processes
00:02:28
Speaker
And going forward, it's a conscious effort like do we focus on profits or do we focus on culture or do we focus on process or product or new product development or whatever. And these are things we're talking about more as a company over the coming years. And it's good. I mean, all of it is the answer, all of those things. But
00:02:53
Speaker
It's good to realize that they're all important and that everybody on our team understands that. I think you have something bouncing on your desk. I don't know if it's your Yeti mount or something. Sorry. I just hear these vibrations. I'll take a look here.
00:03:22
Speaker
I think it's your mic mount. Let me take off the windscreen, if that's moving it around. Yeah, I'll make a note and we can cut this part out. Sorry. No, that's fine. Is that better? Do you know if I talk for a second here, do you see in here? Like lean on the table or do something? Yeah, I've got my arms on the table, which could be it. It sounds okay now. Okay. Sorry about that. Yeah, it's okay. Just every time you moved, I hear d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d. It's funny. Interesting.
00:03:53
Speaker
I don't know where we were. Where were we?
Hiring Needs and Economic Concerns
00:03:59
Speaker
Planning for the future. You want to dig into that for the next year? We were all huddling and talking about
00:04:07
Speaker
you know, where we have been, what we've done well this year, where we're at. And everyone's kind of cool. Everybody agrees. We like being busy. There's just a sense of hustle and just a small amount of, I don't want to use the S word like stress, but kind of like, yeah, like we've got stuff to do. I for sure love that. To me, it's just part of an identity, but not,
00:04:32
Speaker
doesn't mean bad stress or uncontrolled, et cetera. What I'm realizing and what I was alluding to that I mentioned, you know, we're kind of struggling with is I thought things would, we are more efficient and we are better in everything, like from how we're manufacturing stuff to organizing, from packing orders, to storing inventory, to ordering, like everything is better, but, and it's a wonderful problem, our growth,
00:04:59
Speaker
has just ever so much continued to outpace how more efficient we are. Basically, we need to hire somebody is the long-winded way of saying it. We're definitely at that point now where it's not like a false reading. I get nervous as a leader about
00:05:16
Speaker
being in the right staffing place if things slow down. I've said this countless times and I'm wrong because I've said it so many times and I've not been right that I'm just wrong. I will admit that, but it's still been a 12-year awesome run for the US global economy, manufacturing, et cetera. It's been really good.
00:05:36
Speaker
I remind myself to not forget what it was like in the dot-com crisis, which I barely remember as a young adult, but also the 0809 area. Things can get crappy quicker than folks expect. But you can't live life like that. It's not my job as a leader is to make sure we're well positioned for that period. Exactly. You don't want to over leverage yourself with way too much staff or too tight margins or too much debt or anything like that. But on the other hand,
00:06:04
Speaker
we want to grow our company and position ourselves very strong in many different ways. As I'm learning more and more, the deeper I learn about it and the deeper I read and the deeper I become more of a leader in our company, the more I realize how incredibly difficult it is. It's much deeper and
00:06:27
Speaker
more than I thought it was going into it. As we start to hire people like five, six years ago, there's just so much to it and nerves and stress constantly. And it's just, you just kind of worry about everything. And you as the owner of the business and me too, it's
00:06:46
Speaker
There's so much on our mind and so much on our plate that the rest of the staff just doesn't know. They just don't know all the details. And it's not their fault, but they're busy and stressed with their lives and their work too. But we're the same, just we got more.
Company Culture and Leadership Style
00:07:01
Speaker
There's just so much in a business, especially with five to 10 people or more. It's a lot.
00:07:09
Speaker
If there's one thing I'd say though, first off, I think it's probably noteworthy that for folks that work at Crimson Knives or Sandra's Machine Works, the culture and mood is not necessarily what it sounds like on this podcast. This is effectively supposed to be a private conversation where John and I share the realities of what we're thinking about. Look, someone once called me a nervous leader and I'm like, okay, I'm not
00:07:32
Speaker
I'm not necessarily proud of that, but I'm also not going to apologize for that because I'm calculating. Sometimes the best thing you can do as an entrepreneur is recognize what other folks consider your weaknesses. Just think about, okay, don't be denial about it, but recognize why are you that way. I want to improve myself for sure, but I'm also going to like, hey, hop on the train because look where we've come and look where we're going. If anything, have ended the year
00:07:58
Speaker
I hope and think on a much more like, Hey, like this is fun being here. We're good at what we're doing. There's a sense of like pride in it. Not, um, and, and, uh, in a sense, I kind of disagree with what you just said, like, yeah, I have a lot on my mind, but I'm, I couldn't be happier with how. Let me, I will list out every single person, our team, how Julie is doing on the operations and orders and how Ed is doing on R and D and embracing our new Akuma and manufacturing workflows.
00:08:26
Speaker
how Garrett has stepped up in a huge way as a guy who just graduated high school in the machine program and is now
00:08:33
Speaker
basically running the shop because Ed has really stepped into a higher level role of R&D and new machines. Grant just makes fixture plates like a boss. It is absolutely great. Vince is, you know, I don't even, it's weird. I don't really, I mean, I manage these people in the sense that we, I'm their boss and we decide how we're going to do things, but I don't like the, the flows kind of work. Lex kind of tells people what to do. I step in as needed, but it's, it's pretty darn good. It's pretty darn cool. Fantastic. Yeah. Yeah.
00:09:04
Speaker
Yeah, which is one reason why I so most almost am a little removed when we I thought things would slow down. They haven't at the end of the year. Maybe they will in January. We'll see. But it makes me sensitive to hey, let's keep it. Let's figure out when and where we need different resources. It makes sense. Yeah, yeah, whether it's machine tools or people or process or whatever. Yeah, yeah, we're kind of in the.
Impact of Hiring on Team Dynamics
00:09:32
Speaker
in a similar boat, um, everybody's very busy. We're, we're, we have more to do than we have time resources, the staff available to do. Um, so this that question, like, do we hire another person or do we wait or do we find more efficiencies or do we just work harder? Um, and we're trying to figure out that I don't want to jump into hiring another person because it's, you know, cash and time and training. And, uh, but I certainly don't want to wait too late either.
00:10:02
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. It reminds me of what resume with me, which is actually having to do with letting somebody go. And it's kind of like, it's not only about them. It's about the company, the peers, it's a disservice to them. If they're, if it's not the right fit long-term and you're just not willing to deal with the confrontation of, it can extrapolate all of that. But basically you need to be able to get the right people on the bus and the wrong people off the bus. Very similar to.
00:10:28
Speaker
Um, not hiring when you need to get somebody on the team. Like it's not fair to everybody else. I don't want my, I don't, I've refused to have, have my answer ever be. Everyone just needs to work harder. Like smarter. Yeah. And like, it's kind of like, Hey, we're going to plan on getting a automated.
00:10:47
Speaker
how it pulled horizontal in, I'm honestly hoping the first quarter, um, that will be a game changer because of its efficiency during the day. It's potential for efficiency after hours. It's reducing change. Like it's just, there's a lot of gains, but it's a lot. It can be a lot of input work and learning for sure. So anyway, cool. It's good. It's good. It's good.
00:11:09
Speaker
Can I share our fraud order experience? Yes. You've been running Shopify for
Handling Fraud Alerts in Shopify
00:11:16
Speaker
years with literally thousands of orders. In the last few months, I can't remember the two or three high risks, certainly a couple more medium risks. I'm just sharing this more as a PSA. The low and the medium risk alerts from Shopify appear to be
00:11:33
Speaker
things that are more justifiable like the person may be ordered on a work trip or vacation so the IP address doesn't match the shipping address or they accidentally typed in their number wrong once, things like that that it tells you a good detail on and I tend to not worry as much about.
00:11:48
Speaker
The high fraud risk, it doesn't tell you why. It just says we've determined this is a high fraud risk order. One of those we did potentially lose quite a few thousand dollars on, and that stinks. That was the first one. But then there's another one that happened earlier this week, and I spoke to the individual. It all appears to check out quite well. And
00:12:08
Speaker
It'd be difficult to think that a person who's trying to act fraudulently has intimate knowledge of certain machine tools. You know what I mean? Yeah, for sure. It checks out. But it's a lot of money. And ultimately, unfortunately, you've got to play the hand of your delt. And credit card companies have the upper hand, where a customer can basically pick up the phone, say one thing, and have a full refund up to like six months after the order. And so what we chose to do, which
00:12:39
Speaker
I'm comfortable with it for this decision. I don't necessarily love it going forward. But what we chose to do is explain to the customer what happened and say, unfortunately, we can't complete the transaction as is. We're going to refund you. But if you can complete the payment via another means, check, ACH, whatever, and we will throw in something as a sort of thank you for the hassle and so forth. Anyway, I don't know any other way to handle it. And I also wish I knew more why it was happening.
00:13:09
Speaker
Did he ever hear back like what he wants to do? Yeah. I mean, frankly, I, they were, the customer was a little, I felt like a customer was perhaps a little bit skeptical as well, which I kind of don't blame them. Um,
00:13:21
Speaker
And I was happy to kind of share with them a little bit of the information on our side. I feel a little bit bad because it's like telling somebody that they're a fraud. I assure you. And you kind of want to explain, hey, we love what we do. Here's who we are, et cetera, et cetera. And just take care of them in that sense. But it's also just you've got to come up with a process and a recipe because it seems like this isn't the last time it's going to happen. For sure.
00:13:49
Speaker
You have not, you shop, you haven't had this ever? We've had like, if somebody from Russia buys with a credit card, it'll pop up as a low risk fraud or something like that. Just in weird ways. And probably like you said, like address and IPS address don't match or something like that. I honestly haven't watched that kind of stuff in a couple of years now. But I don't think there's been anything that's like been a full charge back. It's like, sorry, we can't do this.
00:14:21
Speaker
You are cutting out, John. You there, John? Yeah. Good. You are cutting out. Yeah. I don't know what that was about. Okay. I'll make a note. I have a question when you're ready to resume. Yeah, we're good. Have you had credit card chargebacks? I don't think so. Okay. I feel like you would know. It's a pretty like,
00:14:50
Speaker
not fun process. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, it's not fun in the sense that the one that we had, we had confirmed delivery of the item and so forth. Oh, yeah, right, right. We've had a couple of PayPal claims, which is similar, I guess. For legitimate goods delivered and so forth. Yeah, somewhat delivered. I mean, we certainly had a couple over the past two years, two or three packages not show up.
00:15:15
Speaker
Like tracking literally says not delivered yet a month later. That's totally different. But still like PayPal, PayPal claims where the customer's like, Oh, it's been five days and the package isn't here yet. I'm going to file a claim without even talking to them first. Like we've got one of those going on right now. And, uh, but yeah, it's been pretty good. You know, there's, there's little headaches pop up, but yeah. Cool. Okay. Just curious.
Mentoring High School Students
00:15:43
Speaker
Just curious, we had a kind of a friend acquaintances, their daughter reach out and ask if if she could come job shadow for, you know, a little bit here. And it was great. I was actually like, more people should do that. They're in high school and want to learn more about what the world is. And I just thought, gosh, like, that's awesome. I, I didn't do that. Like I give that person a lot of credit. And it was
00:16:12
Speaker
interesting to sort of show somebody who isn't necessarily interested in being a machinist, but perhaps an engineer or that whole, I mean, there's so many, it was actually really fun to say like, hey, so what we're doing here is making, you know, pretty basic pins, but it's a very similar to machine that may do medical implants or bio research, you know, actually remember watching the Farinose documentary on Netflix and there was a one shot where it showed they had a bunch of Akumas in their machine shop. And I'm like, that is crazy to think about it. And
00:16:41
Speaker
it got me kind of excited to think about what it's like to be a younger person and have the whole future in front of you to decide what to do, you know? Yep. Yep. And to not know anything about the world really. Yeah. Start digging into all these topics. So did you walk around for like a day or what was it like?
00:17:01
Speaker
Yeah, I didn't think a day was going to be the right thing because I was pretty certain she wasn't interested in actually being a machinist, so it wasn't like, hey, let's go run a machine for a day. So we had lunch, and I answered some questions about
00:17:17
Speaker
what it was like going through college application processes and what you want in college. I feel I am deliberately hesitant to never talk about myself because nobody likes hearing somebody talk about themselves. I was really into computers and I realized I'm going to use computers to help me do what I do, not be what I do. I went to college for business because I thought, I'll learn my hobby stuff or other passions, which ended up being far truer than I expected. I want that business background.
00:17:43
Speaker
And so I kind of shared that perspective. And I sort of said, Hey, look, don't feel like you are going to get pigeonholed into an industry or career because it's your first job out there. I reinvented myself, many others have you you frankly have, John, I mean, you went from all those to web design to
00:18:00
Speaker
manufacturing, knife making. And I just said, hey, I do think it's really good to go work for somebody, save some money, learn what it's like to work on a team, to be led, to be managed, to see what systems processes look like, even if you have this idea later of wanting to have some autonomy or be your boss. Yeah, because figuring all those things out on the job is time consuming and difficult. Yeah. And grown to mistake. Yeah.
00:18:27
Speaker
Yeah, Julia. I think we talked about this. Julia had this idea of like, Hey, do a video on everything you wish someone had told you when you were younger. So I've been chewing on that. Yeah. I mean, you get to be that person to, you know, yeah, give, give that advice a little bit. That's cool. Anyway, that was good. What have you been up to? Um, I was playing on our U-Mac milling machine yesterday.
Challenges with Old Equipment
00:18:50
Speaker
Oh yeah. That was pretty cool. It's, it's old and finicky.
00:18:54
Speaker
You know, you boot it up and it says, you know, you open the door, close it, and then you home the drives like the XYZ. And then it says drives not operational. You're like, what's that mean? Restart it. Same thing. Restart it. It works. And it turns out it popped three of the spindle fuses as well because we had a power surge a week or two ago. So like little things like that. I'm like, why is it doing a spindle warmup? But the spindle is not turning.
00:19:23
Speaker
Hmm. Oh yeah. Interesting. The timer is counting down, but Spindle wasn't doing anything. Okay. It turns out there's no power going to the VFD. Okay. What do you mean by a power surge? Maybe not surge, but a power outage. And that blew things? Yeah, I guess. I mean, we're thinking because Pierre said he ran it shortly before that. That happened a lot. It happened twice that one day, but maybe twice a year.
00:19:52
Speaker
Oh, okay. Just everything in the shops are shut down. Yeah. Yeah. In different stages. I wasn't here, but the guys were saying, the guys were saying like, it went back of the shop to front of the shop. Pretty much the current was the last thing to shut off. Uh, but like circles going to first and then lights and then everybody's like puts their head up. What's going on? And then the NAC and then the tornos and then the Maury and then the current are like, what?
00:20:15
Speaker
It's funny. The little German inside kept pedaling for another second. Yeah, exactly. Thankfully, all the machines were kind of in a safe cut zone, so nothing died in the cut. Even the surface grinder was on a retract or something. So that was good. That's a miracle. Yeah, exactly. So that worked out really well. We have shockingly stable power here, which is great. I think we lost power once in six years. And I remember right when it happened, somebody yelled, we weren't tapping.
00:20:49
Speaker
That's perfect. Yeah. Although again, if we've used that tap reverse feature on the highs, it works great. Yeah, that's cool. Yeah. I've never tried that. I don't think any of my machines have that as standard. Um,
00:21:01
Speaker
But yeah, on the UMAC, I am making new quenching plates for our heat treating setup. Oh yeah. For the water-cooled arbor press. Uh-huh. So up until now, we made them from 6061 aluminum. But I'm going to try making them from 7075 aluminum, because the yield strength is like twice what 6061 is. And we're denting the 6061 plates from putting too much pressure into it. So I'm like, well, let's put it.
00:21:29
Speaker
It was actually Sky's idea to put a harder aluminum in there. It's got less thermal capacity, like dissipation capacity, by about 23%, which is something. But I think the squishability will be the benefit here.
00:21:45
Speaker
So yeah, I wanted to make them on the UMAC. I've already got the vacuum plate set up on there. So I'm like, hmm, theoretically. So just put a couple tools. I mounted tools in new holders, and I put them in the current to touch them off from tool length. Hilarious. Yep. And then I transferred those tool lengths to the UMAC. And then Pierre and I were running it last night after going through all these, like, replace the fuses, fix the drives. It might be the door interlock switch that's finicky, causing the drives not operational.
00:22:14
Speaker
This is the humac that was working though, not the other one. Yeah, it works. All right. It's always been finicky, but I'm just picking away at it, trying to find out how to make it reliable. I like the machine. It's just finicky and not very set up yet. You know, there's no coolant or anything on it. And there's only three tools in the spindle and the tool changer, but what was it? So we machine face the piece first and then eighth inch end mill comes in. It was going to interpolate some bars.
00:22:43
Speaker
and then it hits a Z-limit alarm, because the tool is really short, really stubby. Oh, that's funny. And I'm like, oh, crap, the machine can't go that low. I need a longer tool holder. OK, fine. I'll fix that tomorrow. So that's kind of on my list today, is just to put that end mill in a longer tool holder, touch it off again, and then it should be fine. Are you able or willing to cut some heat sink-style slots in them and then potentially even add a CPU fan?
00:23:13
Speaker
Well, these are flat plates, about half inch thick, that get mounted to a one inch thick water-cooled plate that does have, you know, cooling channels inside. Okay, got it. So then we have a pump with a bucket of antifreeze.
Cooling System Improvements
00:23:29
Speaker
Yeah. Flowing, cooling through and then through the cycle of taking the heat out of like 10 blades or 8 blades or whatever. Sky says the temperature does rise. The temperature of the tank rises by like 10 or 15 degrees. Wow. So I did actually buy a CPU radiator. It's pretty big like 8 by 8 inch by 3 inch or something. That's got enough spots for 320 millimeter fans.
00:23:55
Speaker
So I bought that and I'm going to put that in line with two big fans on it and that should keep it like cool, cool. And then I also found the sweet temperature gauge on Amazon that has two temperature probes on it and it reads both on the same reading. So in red letters it reads temperature gauge one and on blue letters it reads probe number two. So I'm going to put one in the in for the coolant to the quench plate and then the other probe in the out. So I'm measuring the pressure differential.
00:24:22
Speaker
you know, before and after quenching. That's awesome. So that'll that'll tell us like, because the out water should be a lot hotter than the in water, especially with the radiator and everything like that. And then my thinking is, like you put a blade in there, it's almost 2000 degrees Fahrenheit, you squish it, water goes up a little bit, but then it should equalize pretty quickly, like within 10 or 30 seconds or so, the differential between the two temperatures should normalize and that'll tell you like you're done.
00:24:52
Speaker
Right. You're just running the water into a bucket. Basically, you're using a volume of water to deal with the temp change. Yeah, exactly. You could easily run that water through its own heat exchanger radiator, or you've seen guys run them. They buy a little $100 college dorm room type fridge with a loop through it. If you run the water through a loop inside the fridge, it helps a ton. Interesting.
00:25:20
Speaker
Yeah. The, the point is consistency. Cause I'm realizing that the, between the first blade and the last blade, like that tank temperature is raised, you know? Yes. Yes. You can put a little, little things red or green light, like don't run it until the temperature kicks down to this degree. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So I'm just, I'm having fun digging into all these little improvements. Um, yeah. Cause the other guys don't always have the time to do that. So it's fun.
00:25:49
Speaker
If anybody listening has any suggestions, we used to use and love if this, then that, and call me a cheapskate, but it's now, you know, they've basically gone away from anything but a
00:25:59
Speaker
pay subscription. It's 60 bucks a year or something, which is not the end of the world. All I want is an automated email or some other mechanism. Email is great to tell me, is it going to snow tomorrow? If this and that is the perfect solution for it, but it just rubs me the wrong way. In this case, it's such a simple request. It's not a complicated multi-app
00:26:23
Speaker
multi trigger api type of thing somebody has a suggestion the reason asking is we bought these. Heat maps i found a great example of social media advertising i saw i was like actually makes a lot of sense it's a one ten plugged in outdoor.
00:26:40
Speaker
doormat that will keep snow from building up in front of the door at the shop. And we have the shop plowed and so forth, but it's still going to be nice, especially if the plowed hasn't come to have the door area clear. But I don't want to leave it plugged in all the time. So I was going to put it on an IoT plug. And that way, anywhere I am, I can turn it on and off at my own discretion or potentially you could link the two if you can get the work as well. But it just reminded me of it because the whole like temperatures and intelligence, the notification type stuff.
00:27:11
Speaker
Yeah. I was thinking about it this morning, like the whole concept of logic. I mean, you and I are getting pretty good at that, both with machining and just projects and things like that. Like it's running your life based on if this, then that, you know, logic, like if the temperature goes too high, then I want to do this. And, you know, whether we program those things or whether we get developers to program them or whatever, it's,
Documenting Processes
00:27:33
Speaker
it's knowing the want and the possibilities. Yes, it's really cool to be able to do that. And I think I'm starting to take it for granted and realizing that a lot of people around me in life and my family and even some of the guys in the shop don't think that way enough. Yes, yes. There's so much cool stuff you can do just to make it happen. Yep. We actually had the same realization with Lex, where we're intentionally
00:28:02
Speaker
not automatically automating processes because we, that's not, it reminds me of the Lockwood quote, like, oh, I assure you robots call in sick. Like in theory it sounds good, but the reality is when you build automated processes, they often themselves, sometimes it works so well that you forget about them and thus when things do change or they do break, you don't even realize it and thus there's consequences. So we realized that a,
00:28:31
Speaker
We have this issue with other fixture plates and it doesn't matter for other reasons, but a VF3YT and a VF5 Haas machine are the exact same table, so the exact same fixture plate. We want to list them though as separate products because we don't want customers to have to think about what I just said. We have an inventory issue of how many we have in inventory. If you sell a VF5, it should
00:28:55
Speaker
produced via three YTs by one as well. We could script that, but that gets scripted and automatically done, creates its own long-term problems in my opinion. So what we're doing is creating a way where we do write a script. We actually might do it in Shopify in Liquid.
00:29:13
Speaker
where when certain things happen, it just creates an email. So if we sell a VF5 plate, it just emails me or Julie and says, literally can just say, hey, we sold a VF5 plate, go ahead and manually adjust VF3 YT inventory. Done, like not a big deal for relatively low volume sales like this. And it's wonderful because I want that alert, I want that manual process, that reminder. Yeah. I would just want to automate that.
00:29:42
Speaker
me too. Yeah, when you break it because of whatever reason or change it. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, part of me is thinking about having a
00:29:53
Speaker
repository in the business, whether we put it into GURP or whatever. But here's all the custom stuff we've ever done and the cliff notes behind it. Because if it breaks, when it breaks, when there's an update and it doesn't work anymore, here's the information, at least the links to find the articles to how to do this or whatever. Because I'm finding it with all my Raspberry Pi projects, with Google scripts, things like that. These things break over time.
00:30:22
Speaker
and they have to be redone. And I'm scrambling trying to remember how I did it. And it's a waste of time. And if in the future I'm not the one that has to fix my problem, the next guy is going to be even more confused. So if I at least had, I want to start tracking things like that because there's all these little custom projects and like, okay, here's the code for that. And here's where I got this thing and use this McMaster part number and just not to overdo it, but just to have somewhere to put everything.
Semi-Automating with Verification
00:30:53
Speaker
I think that's one of the key too, is just if you have that information in your head, putting it having a consistent place to put it. So it's not a text file here and an email file there and a fusion comment here. Exactly. And I can have as many Google spreadsheets as I want, but if the next guy doesn't know where to look, it doesn't help. Going back to that Lex thing and you saying you would want that automated and neglected dimension, we actually think we might be able to
00:31:21
Speaker
semi-automated, meaning instead of just a notification email, it could be a clearing page where we go and we review proposed Lex events. And it can say, yesterday, this order was a VFI plate. Lex would like to reduce VFI by one. Do you agree? And then you just hit yes or no. So it's like almost no effort. But it's very similar to how we reconcile our
00:31:48
Speaker
financial statements, our bank statement, every day, our credit card. It's wonderfully simple because it presents you with what it thinks is the correct answer, the path of least resistance, and it's just yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. If it's not, then you can handle it accordingly. It digs into the trust but verify theory, right? Yeah. I like that.
00:32:08
Speaker
And then if you do that for six months and you're like, yeah, I trust it now. It's always good. It's never been a problem. Maybe I'll automate that fully to a point. You could.
00:32:23
Speaker
You could. We have it for now with work orders because we don't want Lex to inadvertently create work orders that aren't important or just are wrong. It could easily automate them, but we have it on a clearing page. Then we can use some human intelligence to confirm what that is. I don't know if we have this functionality built in yet, but we could then turn that off for certain things.
00:32:46
Speaker
But I kind of always want it on because I don't want Lex to actually tell us to make three huge fixture plates just because of a goof. Right, right. But that's the whole thing with any automation. I'm thinking in terms of running machines at night automated. You know, at first, you're like, Okay, I want to be there. I want to listen to it. I want to have my hand on the feed hold. And then you get a little more comfortable and you get a couple runs under your belt. You're like, Yeah, it seems to be working seems to be working. And then
00:33:12
Speaker
a few months of that later and now I'm like, yeah, the current runs nonstop and I'm not here most of the time when it's running. Like the shop is dark for the majority of its run hours and I trust it now. I've put processes into place, checks, tool breakage checks, probing checks for tolerance. It'll reject parts if it doesn't
00:33:37
Speaker
certain things. You put all these checks into place because of the results you've achieved over the years. This tends to happen. This tool tends to break all the time, so I'm going to improve that process so it just doesn't happen. Then you just build trust and confidence in the system. Yes. Speaking of automation, we automated the first thing on our Akuma.
00:34:02
Speaker
What'd you do? It turns on by itself and starts the warmup cycle. I've always wanted that to quirks. Number one, the doors have to be closed. Kind of makes sense. Um, the second is right now we to date have not left our shop air on overnight. Um, we'll need to start doing that if we end up with a horizontal and all that means is I need to spend a few more, uh, whatever hours or time with a squirt bottle looking for some minor air leaks. Um,
00:34:33
Speaker
but that it's super cool. Like I set up a webcam to make sure it really did. It turns out 7am and it just starts running the warmup. But that's, that's exactly it is your, you have a goal of more automation and you have to find all these holes and processes, the holes in your airlines basically. So that you can trust to leave your air compressor on all night so that everything's in place so that the shop is kind of running. It's available by itself so that at 7am there's air, there's power,
00:34:59
Speaker
The machine can do it, the doors are closed, you have this process in place and then that's just going to snowball from there. I'm sure there's ... I mean, you might get to the point where you put on a pallet when you go home at night and then all the checks are in place, all the tool breakages are in place and it runs for another three hours when you're having dinner with your family and then the machine shuts off and then- Oh, we do that almost every night. Do you? Okay, I wasn't sure.
00:35:27
Speaker
Yeah, we run at least one machine, if not two or three, okay. Almost every night. And then a lot of times Vince stays a little later or a lot of time, like last night I just swung back by and turned it off. Cool. Actually the Kua will turn off. It has an auto off button. It will just turn itself off at the end of the cycle. The Hosses don't. I don't think so. I shouldn't say that they, they have a power save mode and I don't really care about leaving the machine on. Cause I do think it goes into a low power mode. Right now it's just been the air compressor.
00:35:59
Speaker
Is your system fully tight? No leaks that you know of? I can't say. I don't care. It's on all the time. I think it's pretty tight because there are times when all the machines are off. We're doing maintenance or it's Sunday or something. I certainly don't hear anything. We wouldn't hear the leaks, but we have a couple.
00:36:22
Speaker
bowls on filter regs and a couple of hand nozzles that we know. That's little stuff. That's just like two hours of your time just walking around finding it all. Yeah, exactly. On the U-Mac, one of the bowls is really leaky. It's like you turn it on and you can hear somebody's blasting an air gun out of that thing. Those specific ones are old out of stock. You can't get that exact thing anymore. We're going to replace the whole regulator assembly. Yeah.
00:36:50
Speaker
So that sucks. But for now, we're just dealing with the leak. We'll just turn it off periodically. But speaking of old CNC machines, any update on the Willy on the Willy. We're still waiting on this one little regulator part irregular part to come in. I'll have to bug Wilhelmin seeing make sure it got shipped and see where it is and stuff. Other than that, they're picking away the
00:37:15
Speaker
spindle chiller was pretty big job to replace all the fittings and, uh, get that sealed, but I think it's sealed and I think it's good. And then Pierce has got to put like two more windows in the new Waldman led light and, uh, uh, some other little tiny things, but then, then I can play. Okay. So they're just trying to get it dialed in before the holiday break. And then maybe I'll come in and fiddle with it. Yeah. Over the next week. Um, what are you guys doing for, for,
00:37:44
Speaker
Christmas holidays, like work-wise. Christmas is off, but it's a Saturday, so we're off Friday. Okay. This Friday, like the 24th. The day everyone's listening to this. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, we're doing a half day on the 24th and then taking the whole week off after. Oh, wow. Good for you guys.
00:38:12
Speaker
So then we get, you know, the Christmas weekend, the whole week off, and then the new year's weekend. And then everybody comes back first of the year, uh, rip roaring, ready to go. Hopefully. Cool. Yeah. So the shop is going to be empty and quiet and a few of us are just going to come in and fiddle as we, as we find time. Yeah, totally. What, um, what are you up to today? Um, fiddling with that, you Mark, I've got a dentist appointment, so I got a pretty tight, like only a couple of hours. Um,
00:38:41
Speaker
here at the shop, got to do a one year review for one of our guys. And so Angela and I are going to do that. And that's pretty much it. Cool. Yeah. That's a, that's a good, awkward HR topic that I'd actually love to dive in maybe next week. Yeah, for sure. You know, how do you, how do you do feedback and reviews and let's talk about it. I'm learning a lot about it and I'm finding it
00:39:10
Speaker
I never liked it before because I always just thought of it as a way to pick out all the flaws of somebody. I didn't like that and that's not who I am, but the more I learn about it, I'm reading a really good book right now called High Output Management. It's written by one of the founders and the CEO of Intel back in the day.
00:39:32
Speaker
It's written in the 80s, so it's very 1980s corporate big business mentality, which I've never been a big fan of. But I'm really enjoying this book. And he's got a huge section on performance reviews. Like, why do we even do this? What's the benefit? Well, the short answer is the benefit is to make the employee a better employee, a better person. Not to pick out all of your insecurities and all of your things wrong. It's to make the employee
00:40:01
Speaker
better, more effective at their job, happier, train them, do they need more training, more motivation, things like that. So it's a fantastic book in that regard. The most influential
00:40:17
Speaker
stuff that I've come across is often, you know, what not to do. Like sometimes there's just this, like, because everybody else does it, this is the way it's been done. And if you actually hear somebody say, why, how quite silly that is, that's where I've resonated. So we'll dive into it next week. Cause I'll do things a little different this year. Um, yeah, we'll share back. We'll talk about it. Cool. Cool. What are you up to? Oh, uh, what am I up to? We are, um, we are, I mean, honestly, I'm trying to, um,
00:40:49
Speaker
Garrett, we're cranking, which is awesome. So I've got Garrett focused only on running machines. He's done a great job picking up some other tasks around the shop, like maintenance and stuff. So I'm backstopping some of that because it actually is a good way of realizing it kind of goes back full circle to like, we need one more person here to help out.
00:41:09
Speaker
And then working on some customer service, quoting, getting some final material in, working with a vendor for some more organization, create stuff like that. Like it's just the normal list of house holding. Yeah, it's good. It's good. Awesome. Do you want to talk next week, even though you're off? Oh, yeah. Yeah. Sweet. I'll find time. I might do it at home or I might do it. I might pop into the shop.
00:41:36
Speaker
But yeah, so we got one more for the year, and then new years, 2022. Yeah, Angela reminded me yesterday. He's like, we've got to change all of our engravings to 2022, which the current on the RASK will automatically do that now.
00:41:53
Speaker
It's got logic built in. But for the Norseman and the Saga Pen, I still have to do it manually. That's awesome. That's really cool. And then hopefully, I'll get that Wilhelmin going, and then we can start making pet clips on that thing. That'd be a good way to end the year. Or start the new year, yeah. There you go. Is it one or two years in the shop? That we've had it? No, no. Your current CNC machine shop, the building.
00:42:17
Speaker
two years, two in January. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. It's crazy. Yeah. Cool. All right. Take care. Bye.