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#237 - How To Run & Operate A Small Business
274 Plays4 years ago
TOPCIS:
- Saunders toured 3rd gen machine in Utah.
- John & Erik finished their latest book and are working closer than ever.
- Inventory management.
- Ted Lasso!
- Flood sensors and coolant filling.
- High feed endmills.
- DHL Issues.
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction and Company Growth
00:00:00
Speaker
Good morning and welcome to the business of machine episode of two hundred and thirty seven my name is john saunters and my name is john grims mo john and i talk every friday about what it's like running our small manufacturing companies
00:00:14
Speaker
the successes and the things that we want to keep doing or get better at. They're not feeling so small anymore, I got to say. Every now and then I step back and I'm like, holy cow. It's funny because by definition, I think the small, from the government standpoint where small businesses are still up to like 250 employees or something. That's ridiculous. Yeah.
00:00:40
Speaker
But I know what you mean. By that standard, that's why they say small business makes up the country. Yeah, right. But yeah. We are not solopreneurs. We're not what you call mom and pops.
Challenges of Growth and Management
00:00:53
Speaker
Yeah, it's a huge difference from that, like where we are right now. The one to four employees or whatever the limit is, it's another stage to go beyond that.
00:01:04
Speaker
And now we're probably in the, you know, five to 15 range and after that it gets kind of like, what's your name again? I never want to be there where I don't know people's names, right? So do you have people that are kind of managing others or that kind of soft third tier?
00:01:22
Speaker
our second tier of folks. We're working on it. Angela certainly runs the shop, meaning Pierre and Steven, they run the machine shop. Yeah. And I come in, I work on the Kern and I check in on everything, but I don't...
00:01:39
Speaker
I don't operate anything and I don't manage much. So there's that. And Eric runs the finishing shop. So he's got two and a half guys there. And then the admin side up here, Barry kind of runs that.
00:01:53
Speaker
sales marketing and overseas everything. I guess I do. It's funny how that part of this business was not for us really deliberate whatsoever. It very much happened by necessity and organically in a good way. Ed has really taken over running the shop. It's clear that he's making decisions and doing great at it. It's not
00:02:22
Speaker
And so Grant and Garrett help him but they work together so well that I don't think of it as a management, right? Does that make sense? Like it's very like everyone I think works together quite well there So it's not like I think of like we toured a shop recently that I'd love to talk about Where they have 80 employees where you've got somebody who's managing a whole shift of effectively operators, right? Like that's much more of a
00:02:54
Speaker
I think of it as a proper manager where it's like, hey, I just need to make sure you're meeting these metrics you're reporting in. They can have a great culture. They can be, quote unquote, care about people. But it's just different than, like, we saw three people on that side of things.
00:03:11
Speaker
Yeah, maybe that's the next layer is when you have actual management that doesn't do the hands-on work, but it's their job to manage.
00:03:23
Speaker
Yes. Right. That's a good point in thinking about it. Angelo is still very involved, right? Yep. Still runs several machines, obviously can do almost anything in there. But the goal of growth is to hand those tasks down.
Company Culture and Team Building
00:03:41
Speaker
The current is the only machine I touch anymore. It's kind of cool.
00:03:46
Speaker
Yeah. Well, in building, I think a lot about the McDonald's model of the alleged average employee duration of McDonald's is 40 some days. So you're not in the process of making hamburgers. You're in the process of building workflows that get people up to speak quickly knowing that it's okay. They're only there for 42 days. Don't cry about it. You know this. And I don't think either one of us want to have that kind of company. I don't frankly think I'd be a good leader for a company where it's just like, hey,
00:04:15
Speaker
I just need four operators. If you quit, I don't care. I just need you to come in, do these parts, follow these instructions, look at these machines. But maybe I'm wrong. Maybe that's to some extent inevitable that at some point you're going to have a person who's just running the lapping machine and doesn't really care about grim so nice. That doesn't mean they're a bad person. It's just so incompatible with who you are. I can't even
00:04:40
Speaker
picture what that would look like, like that I would want anything to do with that. But maybe it's a fun thought experiment to go sit alone for half an hour and just kind of like, what if? And then you solidify, either you solidify your position or you open your mind to other ideas and you realize maybe I need to think broader about this.
00:05:00
Speaker
No, I think it's a good example where I'm overthinking it. Just get back to what you need to do today. You've done a good job. You may get there. I don't think we will or nor do I want to get there. No, I don't want to get there either at this point anyway. I want to build a team. I want to build a culture of people who want to be here, who understand the process, who want to provide value and ideally want to stay.
00:05:25
Speaker
I understand it's not for everybody. This job, this company, this
Insights from Third Gen Machine
00:05:31
Speaker
position, the kind of work we do is not for everybody and maybe we'll have people that end up not fitting over time and that's okay. But I do not want to string up people like every 30 days I'm hiring a new operator because you hear about that from machine shops too and I don't know if that's management the way they treat everybody or if they're just hiring the wrong kind of people. I don't know.
00:05:54
Speaker
Again, I know I'm predisposed to overthinking, so I tried to, in some respects, kind of shut that, like stop worrying about a problem that isn't a problem. But even like I was talking to John over at Area 419 last week, and they're thinking about, probably I actually shouldn't share this, but they're thinking about growing in a way that would mean more people that you don't necessarily, it's not the same
00:06:19
Speaker
thing where you have a small group of eight people having lunch every day. When we did the tour there, there was low 20s. The tour I wanted to bring up was... Did I talk about this last week? Third Gen Machine in Utah? No. This was awesome. I met Evan who owns and runs Third Gen Machine at... I met him at IMTS, whatever IMTS last happened. I don't even remember at this point.
00:06:47
Speaker
And he asked me a question. He came up to me and recognized and asked me a really good question. I remember thinking, oh, this guy, I like this guy. And so we had a really good conversation. I think we were literally just sitting down on an air conditioning unit over next to the window at the Doosan booth, just randomly gone. And then I coincidentally ran into him again at a DMG event. He's a big DMG customer. And he was like, well, hey, I'm in Logan, Utah. If you're ever out in Logan, Utah, let me know. And well, crazy story.
00:07:14
Speaker
My wife took a job with a nonprofit here in Zanesville that's focused around child advocacy and helping young kids that are victims of sexual and physical abuse. That nonprofit is being supported right now by
00:07:31
Speaker
drumroll, a company based out of Logan, Utah. They had this parent company called Maloof. They're in the mattress and sleepwear industry. Their relationship to the nonprofit is just from their philanthropic arm. They had an event like a family corporate. This is a whole other conversation. Crazy corporate culture, incredible, very much like Silicon Valley and the dot-com world meets manufacturing.
00:07:58
Speaker
blew me away. And so they had this event. So we took the kids out there for a little mini vacation. And I looked through my list of places. I keep a list of like where I'm going. Interesting. And I was like, no kidding. Like here I am an hour and a half outside of Salt Lake City. And this is the same town that Evan is in with 3rd Gen Machine.
00:08:17
Speaker
So I was like, Hey, can we at least grab lunch? And if you're up for it, I'd love to see the shop, maybe film a tour and totally hit it off. Had a great time. Um, I knew they were a legit shop. I didn't realize they are running, I think 10 DMG horizontal's full time, four shifts, like seven days a week.
00:08:37
Speaker
And they are crushing it from a culture standpoint. They're building their own ERP system right now. They're doing this migration. They have all these procedures around. They had an answer for every question I could have constantly had. And they're, again, at 80 people. So we talked a little bit about what that was like when he went from 10 to 40. When do you hire a full-time HR person? When do you hire a controller? These conversations, it was awesome.
00:09:04
Speaker
That's incredible. How long is the video going to be? That's all I care about. We're talking about two hours? No, we probably film for an hour. They're building a building, so we were in their old shop. It was cozy. I'm nervous that I hope the audio is good because it's such ... It's one of the first videos that I've thought as soon as we get that edited, I need to rewatch it because I was
00:09:30
Speaker
I wasn't expecting such a great story about not just end mills and more horizontals, but like, hey, if a machine is down longer than five minutes, it gets logged so that we can track the data behind that.
00:09:45
Speaker
And we have a procedure around that and how they have one person always is like an alternating attendee at another department's meeting. So like every week on a Tuesday, a finishing guy gets assigned to go over to the shipping meeting. And it forces this like cross collaboration in a very deliberate way that helps
Implementing ERP Systems
00:10:06
Speaker
with communication. I guess in an 80 person shop, you just can't have everybody at every meeting. That's incredible.
00:10:14
Speaker
man, there'll be so many points to unpack in a conversation like that. Um, that's, that's so cool. I'm happy that you got to do that. Yeah. So then like, what are the chances you're like, I'm in Utah. Who can I look up? Oh, let me look up this guy. He probably got a small shop. Let me go tour. Yeah, right. I love it. It worked out great.
00:10:35
Speaker
I can just see your wife like, I got to go to Utah. You want to come for a little vacation? Yeah, sure. I'll watch the kids the whole time. By the way, I got to go. Yeah. By the way, I actually can't watch the kids because I'm touring a machine shop. Yep. Yep. Not surprised. That was really cool. How you been? What's going on? Excellent. Been super busy. Let's see what I'm working on.
00:11:00
Speaker
Eric and I finished the traction book. So every week we're gonna have another little every day, we've been having our little book club meetings. Going over what we learned what we read about a lot of things we're going to implement from that book. It's awesome. Eric is totally stepping up in the kind of
00:11:17
Speaker
leadership responsibility role, which is fantastic. It's something I've always wanted for years and now he's finally in a position in his life and in his mental state and responsibility wise to take on anything. So we're running out on that. That's really fun. It's really cool to feel like I'm not alone on this, on the ownership side.
00:11:42
Speaker
John, totally. I was doing some reflecting. I have such a sour opinion on partnerships based on strike mark and the complications behind what people want out of lives and how difficult that can be. But on the flip side, having folks to help
00:11:59
Speaker
co-manage and build a business with is actually phenomenal. You just get someone to lean on more and talk. I mean, we have a pretty open culture here. I can talk with most of the guys about various different things, but from a top level, visionary perspective, it's really nice. We've been having super fun with that. What's the essence of Traction? Is it a leadership book? Is it an operations book? Is it a personal self-help-ish?
00:12:29
Speaker
operations mostly structure of the business and building the leadership team more than everything. Like everything else falls into place once the leadership team is solid and can communicate clearly, openly, easily. And some of my favorite parts of the whole book are when he says
00:12:46
Speaker
learn to appreciate healthy friction in a conversation. I'm like, I don't like friction at all. But he's like, it's normal. It's okay if two people argue and you know, just to learn how to talk through it and to manage expectations. And communication, like everything about everything is about communication, whether it's you know, a personal relationship, you know, at home or whatever, or in the business. And I
00:13:14
Speaker
The more I learn about it, the more I see it on a day-to-day basis, and I'm like, that could be improved between those people or between me and somebody else. There's room for improvement here. I'll second that, double down on that. The why of something is so important. It's easy now. You're small enough to where you can have inefficient communication. You can force everybody to just huddle on something. It doesn't work when you're 80 people on multiple shifts, right? Right.
00:13:43
Speaker
And Lex is a communicator for us now. We use that as that sign of letting everybody talk asymmetrically or asynchronously. So it's actually really cool. And the evolution of that, we have work orders being generated by Lex now automatically, which is so cool. I could talk for an hour straight about this, and I will on a video at some point. But we noticed that
00:14:12
Speaker
So right now, if we sell a VF2 plate, and that means we don't have any more in stock, it creates a work order to assemble sub-assemblies of VF2s, which we may have, into a finished good, which is ready to ship to a customer. And that also then updates our website, which is phenomenal because it lets us show real-time accurate inventory on our website. But what happens is that, especially right now where we're phasing into this, is we have a bunch of plates that we'd like to have
00:14:42
Speaker
in inventory, they may be ready to be assembled, which really just means final line, not even final. You see, it really just means putting tea nuts with it. Like it's nothing, but it created all this noise in our work order table because there's things like real work orders, like, Hey, we need to assemble more mod vices. And then there's 25 plates where
00:15:01
Speaker
That's noise. We could get that done immediately and I don't want that mixing up. We have a new guy coming in to help out some and he needs to know what really needs to happen, not 25s. I don't want to call them silly, but trivial tasks. Because when it's on a list, like they say, when everything's important, nothing's important.
00:15:24
Speaker
So if you have a list of 25 things and as you talked about last week, you don't want to constantly filter information. I look at the list and I know these three are important. The other 20 are noise. You don't want that ambiguity. You need like, I don't know, color coded or something or organized into sections or something like critical and when you have time kind of things, but it all has to get done, but not at the same hustle.
00:15:52
Speaker
Yeah, Lex or any good ERP system should not include any form of tribal knowledge. Yeah, that's exactly it. It should simplify and straighten out everything so that you don't need the tribal knowledge. Lex should be the tribal knowledge because it's now public or internal. Yeah, exactly. All the info should be in there.
00:16:18
Speaker
I've actually been thinking a lot about our inventory management and how poor it is and how much we can improve on that. We have Google spreadsheets everywhere. I have many. Barry has many. Fraser has some. Angelo has some. We got to consolidate into at least one Google sheet or eventually put all this into GURP.
00:16:40
Speaker
So I created a new Google sheet, but as sort of a brain dump testing ground for how we want to manage our inventory as a whole, as a company-wide thing so that either we run with the Google sheet or we just play and learn and then put that into GURP.
00:16:57
Speaker
So I've been kind of just writing out little like, what do I want to track? There's raw material. There's work in progress. There's ready to assemble finished parts. And then there's assemblies. There's finished knife kind of thing. And I do want to know where everything is in each stage, how much we have of everything.
00:17:20
Speaker
how many screws are on the shelf that are not a finished knife yet, but they're machined and they're done and they're ready and they're not anodized yet, but each stage of the process.
Inventory Management Strategies
00:17:29
Speaker
So just kind of writing it all out. Sometimes I find it super helpful just to brain dump with an empty notepad document and just be like, just start typing. Clean it up later, but get it out of your head and it really helps me to clear it, just to play with ideas and see.
00:17:49
Speaker
I was making notes this morning. We're going to do a YouTube, like a Wednesday widget video on Lex soon, I think, and I'm going to do it as a live video so that we can kind of walk through real-time, because it's a very candid talk through of why it started, how it started, and the mistakes it made.
00:18:08
Speaker
corrected what it does now, what it doesn't do. And you'll remember me saying explicitly from the beginning, we are not tracking quantities in Lex because having inaccurate quantities is far worse than not having any quantity whatsoever. So instead we're relying on
00:18:26
Speaker
uh, combine cars or physical counts of low quantity stuff and so forth. Well, um, that was, that was a mistake, but a necessary mistake. We had to get it to the point where we get it. And then, uh, and we kind of knew that that would be changed. So the, it was built in a way that allowed it to be changed, but now we have moved.
00:18:47
Speaker
to how it needs to be, which is that right now, I'm making up a number, we have 783 half by 13 low profile cap screws in inventory period. There's no more Kanban or second bin. And when a plate's sold, and that includes eight of those, it deprecates that value. When it hits 500, it auto generates a reorder. And what it means is there'll have to be some
00:19:11
Speaker
periodic physical inventory check, if you will. And it also is an issue because look, we have had situations where somebody just runs in and grabs one out of the bin, not good. But the reason we needed all that was to have the whole system flow through. Yeah. Otherwise, there's no way of moving. So like, take a
00:19:33
Speaker
a mod vice where you start with multiple different pieces of raw material, multiple washers, multiple lathe parts. They need to get purchased. That material needs to get stored. It needs to get machined. It needs to get QC. It needs to get sub-assembled. And now these work orders include creating a work order for 30 bases. The 30 bases get processed in. And when they get processed in, that quantity flows through the whole system. That makes sense. It does.
00:20:02
Speaker
It's a lot harder than it sounds on the surface of it. You're like, yeah, I'll just track everything. But you're like, yeah, but are you tracking every operation? Are you tracking every scrap? How are you integrating, like how are you inputting this information? When you start 30 bases, you just create a work order for 30 bases and it knows what to do next? Or are you telling the shelf inventory that you just took off 30 pieces of steel?
00:20:27
Speaker
No, so literally right now, we kind of had an initial startup values that we manually did account. So let's say we have 27 mod vices in inventory. And if we sold three today, and 25 was our reorder, well, as soon as it goes from 25 to 24, I don't know, 26, 25, it generates a work order to assemble more mod vices. And actually, I need to check on this now that I'm explaining it.
00:20:55
Speaker
And if the work order to assemble them doesn't have enough subassemblies in quantity, then it generates a work order to machine more of what it's missing. And ultimately, if it's a base that needs made, like let's say that's part A1044, then that job already has a person assigned to it, so Grant probably or Garrett. And then Garrett gets an email or a work order and saying, you need to make these.
00:21:21
Speaker
The key flow that we need to improve on is if he makes 30 bases and they're done and they're good to go, making sure from a workflow standpoint and kind of a training standpoint that they then correctly
00:21:40
Speaker
check those off as a completed work order. And then they get, it's very important that that happens when they get moved into the assembly shelf, because notice it's really easy to just start assembling them or just put them in the bins. So the current thought is to not overthink it is to have a area where we store stuff that's ready to be processed into our assembly room. So it just kind of lives there in purgatory. That way, Garrett can just drop it off. He's done. He needs, he can go back and keep making other parts. And then
00:22:08
Speaker
Julie or me or anybody else can say, oh, I see some parts right there. Okay. Here's the work order ticket. I'll process that in. And when I do that, I'll also add it into the inventory. Yeah. Yeah. The more clarity there is as to if parts get dropped off, like which step has been accomplished, you know, they haven't been updated in Lex yet. Like as long as the next person who picks up the job, um, knows exactly what to do, then that'll work. Um, clarity.
00:22:35
Speaker
Interesting. That's why we needed a unique work order number so that way he doesn't think, well, I just see a note to add 30 to where he's already at it. That seems all now audited through, if you will. That's cool. I like that. I like it too. Also, if you really game it out, there's no other way. Yeah. Interesting. You're starting at the end and you're flowing uphill going, we need 10 assemblies in stock at all times.
00:23:04
Speaker
which means we then need so many sub-assembly parts inventoried, which means we then need so many machine parts kind of inventoried, which means we then need so much material kind of inventoried in order to make everything happy. Therefore, our material shelf should always have 57 pieces on it. And if it doesn't, we order more material.
00:23:23
Speaker
You're ready for the best part? I might have mentioned this. Best part, like an S number is a saleable item. So that like S1132 is a mod vice that's actually ready to be placed into a customer's hand.
00:23:37
Speaker
And then everything downstream is listed in Lex, all the subassemblies and stuff. Lex now integrates with Shopify. It has always integrated with the Shopify API for quantities. We now have Lex looking at trailing sales.
00:23:55
Speaker
real time. So when I pull up an S number in Lex, it tells me how many we've sold over the last 90 days. Yes. Because I need to know when I'm ordering, I just bought new, more raw material for carbide, carbide 3D, nomad, fixture plates. And it was for a certain amount. And I wanted to say, oh, I wonder how much
00:24:14
Speaker
how many weeks or months that gets us of material and the information is right. Which is also great because I actually prefer buying more raw material if anything else because, well, it's counterintuitive and I may not be right
Innovative Sales and Inventory Systems
00:24:34
Speaker
Long-term you can definitely over buy but the nice thing still is that when I buy if I'm debating between But I'm between buying say 20 pieces and 50 pieces If I buy 20 pieces and we reorder when we get down to nine When there's an extra pieces come I now have separate pallets of those raw materials Whereas my order 50 it's basically already shipped impact and stored by the mill and it comes in on fewer pallets that make sense
00:25:03
Speaker
Just easier. I've got more material here. It ties up working capital and there's a risk of downstream product. There's downsides, but I like it because it's just easier. I like that. That's good. I've been thinking about that for a while.
00:25:27
Speaker
You still playing with GURP? Oh, yeah. Okay. Yeah, we've got a new programmer, Sadie, who's making slow progress, but progress nonetheless. Trying to get our buyers and makers choice selling system fully operational. Oh, what's that mean? Through GURP? Through GURP, yeah.
00:25:48
Speaker
Because we've been running it through Google Sheets forever, and we've overextended the functionality of Google Sheets. Got it.
00:25:59
Speaker
Is it broken or just? Yeah, it is. Got it. Yeah, it has been for a while. So unfortunate. But I mean, we have other ways to sell, but that is our ideal way to sell. Got it. You know, Maker's Choice is we make whatever we want and we pick names from our list until somebody buys it. So it works awesome. Buyer's Choice is we send out emails where people can fill out an order form and say, I want blue honeycomb with brown screws and an acid edge blade. And, you know, they get the tactile like I get to be involved in this process.
00:26:29
Speaker
sort of thing, but everybody loves that too. The third option is throw everything into inventory on the website, which works, but it's messy and it's not ideal. Why is it not ideal?
00:26:48
Speaker
Because everybody's rushing at that point. When the inventory goes up, then people freak out. They go to the website, crash the website, don't actually crash it anymore. You want to pace the sales. Yeah, sure.
00:27:04
Speaker
The inventory method rewards speed, not randomness, not our list, not anything else. It's like the same however many people are checking the website all the time. Whereas when we dip into people's emails and we send them an email, we have tons and tons and tons of people on our list. We're hitting random people that don't check our website all the time that are still super fans, that's still super involved in the company.
00:27:33
Speaker
Between those three selling methods, I just want them all to be functional so that we can play in whatever quantities of each we want. With buyer's choice, do you strive to get to a point where
00:27:48
Speaker
in many or all situations when somebody is selected for and submits a buyer's choice, it's just a matter of picking those components out of inventory bins
Leadership Lessons from Ted Lasso
00:27:56
Speaker
and assembling. Pretty much, yeah. Yeah, that's how we used to have it. We'd always have so many honeycomb or starburst pattern or whatever in stock, even just a few. And then if we ran out, then the finishing guys say, okay, we got six orders for crosshatch pattern Norseman, make those next. And by the next day, we're like, yeah, no problem. That's cool.
00:28:17
Speaker
Although I realized on the current especially, I could actually have a buyer's choice order dictate what's machines next. We talked about this. That would be sick. When we did the Herme Latour, they had this insane HSFlex setup where the whole cell, I think it was just one machine tool, but it has a robot that can load both pallets and
00:28:41
Speaker
raw material, and it can load custom tools. So it's kind of like the Rolls Royce of all these different options. And that machine was tied into an ERP system. So sales would just dictate what the machine runs next. Nuts. That's amazing. Yeah. Oh my gosh. Yeah. That is so cool. I want to talk about your birthday.
00:29:06
Speaker
Yeah. Dude. Go for it. You were just on fire last week. Yeah. I posted a lot. That was awesome. Yeah. I was actually exhausted afterwards from sharing so much because I just, you know, you're not used to putting yourself out there, but that's a fairly normal day for me.
00:29:27
Speaker
What do you mean? That's a fairly normal day for you. What I, aside from the act of posting, like, but everything I did in the day. Got it. Yep. That's awesome. Yeah. Looking at a good time. Great time. That's good. Yeah. Can we talk about Ted Lasso? Yes. So Megan, I finished season one. Oh, okay. You're not messing around. Good. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We are hooked. We've been like two, three, four episodes at a time and we're like, we got to go to bed. It's 12 30. Right? Yeah.
00:29:55
Speaker
It was so good. So, so, so good. Yes. Well, it's just funny because there's so many fun takeaways and look, you could just enjoy it. You don't have to like overanalyze it, but there's this weird thing that I can't get over where it's like,
00:30:09
Speaker
His almost naivety of being so happy and so nice and kind and kind of, I don't know what the adjectives are, like non-confrontational, whatever, it almost is like, is he weak? Is he a pushover? Does he not have a backbone? Is he not a good leader? And then you realize- Then you realize he's not. Yeah. Like there were two situations where he had no problem getting up in someone's grill.
00:30:33
Speaker
and talking to them. He yelled at Jamie, whatever, for not wanting to go to practice. And for as nice of a guy that he is, he was not afraid to yell at him and talk down to him when necessary. And he said it in sight. There were so many conversations he had with the players one on one, where it's like,
00:30:57
Speaker
Holy cow, you just, you said all the right things there. Like you parented him to greatness kind of thing. That's right. You know, this is brilliant. It's like, but you know, it's okay. Like first off, it's fiction and you know, so it hits and it's a scripted thing. Yeah. So like every, every perfect joke, you know, in the time you're like, man, why can't I, you know, be quick like that? You know, like obviously it's scripted and it's brilliant and beautiful, but still like,
00:31:25
Speaker
It doesn't mean there aren't good takeaways, but then it's like that's what I'm thinking about is there's elements I really do like about it, but I'm not Ted Lasso on so many levels. But it's a phenomenal reminder of don't worry quite so much about what everybody else thinks about you. Yeah, exactly. Stay the course. Be yourself. Find the best version of yourself.
00:31:50
Speaker
It was really interesting how he tried to get into the heads of his two-star players, like the captain, Roy, and Jamie, the hotshot. And he could have easily gone in many different ways. With the hotshot, he could have been like, you better integrate with the team, or else I'm going to kick you off the team kind of thing. You're not a solo player. But he didn't. He brings them aside, and he goes, you have more talent than any player I've ever seen.
00:32:20
Speaker
If you can just somehow figure out how to cooperate with the rest of the team, the sky's the limit. I know he said it better than that, but it's like he didn't tell him what to do. He just said, you know, if you configure this on your own time, you will reach the moon. You will do whatever you want in life. And he kind of, he walked away like it flattered his ego. So he walked away like happy and confused and like thoughtful. And you know, he started to change over and it was just brilliant.
00:32:50
Speaker
It does tie back to some themes that Tim Grover talks about in Relentless, including how Phil... Actually, you saw it more in The Last Dance, which I actually really want to go rewatch with how Phil Jackson managed the Bulls and Michael Jordan. There's some weird things there. I remember this example of Phil Jackson pulling Michael aside and saying like, Michael, I need you to run the play I asked you to in practice at least once so it looks like I'm in charge and it's
00:33:15
Speaker
He understands that. But like after that, I understand you're going to do whatever you need to do. And I don't know how to think about that because it's kind of like, well, who's, you know, no, Phil, you're the coach. Like you, you, you make the calls and there's elements of Michael Jordan where it's kind of like, like in Relentless, Mike, they talk about being a cleaner and like, nobody do not delegate because you're the only one who's ever going to do everything right. And I'm like, well, that's not, that's actually not a good way to run a team business. Um, but there's also that element of Ted Lasso of, you know, um,
00:33:47
Speaker
not getting caught up in the moment and thinking big picture and that emotional way of connecting with somebody like you just said where it's like you lead them to the answer that needs to be. They come up with the answer. Bingo. It's the same thing with parenting your kids. You can yell at them all you want, but when they have that spark, when they figure it out themselves, that's the only way it's actually true.
00:34:13
Speaker
One of the books I read, I think it was Leaders Eat Last by Simon Sinek, there's a story in there where big business magnate is at a wedding and he sees the father hand the bride off to the son.
00:34:28
Speaker
And it's like father walks down the aisle with the bride and it's like he's entrusting the husband, the groom with his pride and joy, his baby girl. And he says, you're going to take care of her now. It's sort of like a pass off thing. And this businessman kind of had an aha moment and he's like, that's sort of what a good business leader will do. It's his job now to parent these adults into adulthood, into greatness.
00:34:56
Speaker
because their parents aren't around anymore to parent them daily. But it's the business owners and leaders job to make sure that everybody in our company has an excellent home, work environment to go forward. And what a different perspective than profit first and I don't care about you if you want to quit, go ahead. I'll just hire somebody else in 40 days kind of thing.
00:35:24
Speaker
I was Googling a really old, not even a boss, but a guy I used to work kind of indirectly for back in the day and just was like, I wonder what he's up to. And I found an interview with him and he talked about how he really always values. He's now the CEO of a publicly traded company. And he talked about how he still values, you've got to know the details. You've got to know what your business does and what's happening.
00:35:51
Speaker
There's no, of course, you know, it's impractical to know everything. And part of leadership is building the team. You know, we've all heard this before, but I don't have the, I have conviction that I want to have a better answer for this of like, how much do I stay in the know? Cause I love it. It's a passion and it's important. And you know, it's a good thing, but also, you know, I think I would say people would say, I don't micromanage. I tend to, if anything, sometimes
00:36:20
Speaker
be too little involved. And some of that's out of necessity as we've kind of changed things up and grown and people have stepped up and Lex and all that sort of thing. So is it a balance that I want to keep pursuing here? Yeah, I feel like it's
00:36:35
Speaker
You're always wagging the tail like left to right, like between micromanaging and being too loosey goosey and not knowing what the heck's going on. There's obviously an element of trust that you want to build, that you trust the processes are being followed, you trust the parts are getting measured, you trust departments are communicating with each other, but it's like trust but verify. It's one of the greatest phrases ever.
00:36:59
Speaker
because it assumes you are building trust, but every now and then check in or have the system in place where it's like you can't just turn on the lathe and make 500 parts and not verify. It doesn't happen. Oh, I agree. Sure. But you apply that to people and systems and businesses too, like trust but verify. Yeah. Yeah. It's good.
00:37:22
Speaker
Our, uh, our, our flood sensors work. Oh, wait.
Practical Problem-Solving in Operations
00:37:27
Speaker
Yeah. Is there a reason? You know, um, we have those ball valves to top off tanks and, um, you know, best of intentions.
00:37:38
Speaker
The policy had been if you open one, you stay with it, period. It's not a conversation. No one's being judged on productivity. You stay with it. It was not monitored because it was thought to be a low tank and they thought the person thought they had some time. They walked away. I'm very disappointed that it happened because I failed as a leader because the point was to tell you, do not walk away, period.
00:38:05
Speaker
end of conversation. It's not a debate. Yeah, if the building's on fire, turn it off and walk away, but do not walk away. It was walked away from, and I don't like that. On the flip side, trust but verify. Put a simple $20 sensor in place, not IoT, not fancy, just a simple buzzer. And sure enough, that buzzer went off, wheel it overlooked, and it was a five-minute mop-up of the world, a couple of gallons nearby the machine.
00:38:32
Speaker
So, we are unfortunately going to switch to dead man's spring valves. So, a ball valve that has a spring return, so it doesn't... Oh, so you have to hold it? Yeah. Yeah. Because the system failed. A while ago, I don't know how many months ago, I created a 10-minute timer solenoid. You push the button, it fills for 10 minutes, and you forget about it completely. It has been flawless. So, it's normally closed, so it's energized to open? Correct.
00:39:01
Speaker
Okay. How's it powered? Wall plug. Yeah. Okay. We could do that. Yeah. It's fantastic. I have it on the Kern. Every time I see Pierre standing by the NAC or the Maury filling it with the hose and just kind of like blowing off 10 or 20 minutes while you're filling it, I just kind of giggled because I'm like, I got to build you one of these because on the Kern, it's like I literally, I turn all the ball valves on because I don't leave the system pressurized always.
00:39:28
Speaker
So you walk around, make sure the system's on, you hit the button and forget about it completely. And then like an hour or two later, you check and be like, yeah, I need a little bit more actually, pop it again. And then how do you, if you only want two minutes worth of water, do you just hit the button again? Um, I have it locked as 10 minutes right now. I can change the settings, um, in the, in the little electronic thingy. Okay. Um, but 10 minutes is fine. And sometimes I'll just hit it two or three times. Yeah. It depends on tank size and hose volume and all that stuff.
00:39:58
Speaker
I'm not there. You may be right. I'm just not there because now you've got electronic device, you've got power, just more. What I would love is a spring return valve that has a 60 second close default, like the airport sinks when you push the handle down. Interesting. It's a mechanical timer. You push the plunger and it's low returns.
00:40:22
Speaker
Yeah. And you could still, I'm assuming, hold it, you could certainly hold it open, like you can hold a sink floss down. And I'm guessing if you were like, oh, whoops, we're full. You could manually close it faster. But ultimately, not flooding a shop is far more important than the, ours feel pretty quick. I mean, worst case, you're sitting there for three or four minutes to fill 30 gallons.
High-Feed Mills for Efficiency
00:40:43
Speaker
So it's not a big deal. Yeah, maybe my hose size, my outlet hose size is only like a quarter inch GIC fitting.
00:40:52
Speaker
Yeah, that's going to be like half an inch or three-quarter. Yeah, my feed lines are three-eighths, I think. Even that's too small. I'm just necking it down, but whatever. Yeah. But yeah. Wow, this food light. What are you up to today? Today, I'm applying some high-feed end mills to Rask handles. Cool. I'm loving high-feed end mills. I'm using them more and more. Big ones, small ones. Why?
00:41:22
Speaker
They're fast. They're not always faster overall because you have to take such light depths of cut, but they last a very long time. All the cutting force seems to go straight up into the spindle. Obviously, you have to go in and finish them with a different tool, but the thing I'm having with the rasp candles is the outside of the material is
00:41:41
Speaker
like hot rolled and sandblasted or something. So it's kind of gross and abrasive. Yeah. And it's it's chipping my like nice fancy end mills far too soon. And we actually just had some scrap because of that. You know, the rougher chipped out and that chipped out the finisher and then we made bad parts and I didn't catch it fast enough. So I'm like, if I if I clean off the skin of the material, you know, the gross, rough, hot rolled ugliness with the high feed, which should
00:42:11
Speaker
it gets much duller and blunter and shouldn't chip and try it out. Then I can save my fancy end mills and have them last, not make scrap. The other thing to consider trying if you want to is go back to a side cut like a traditional swarf or just end mill cut, but do conventional. Yeah.
00:42:35
Speaker
Yeah. To get through the scale, if you think about it, you want to conventional cut it. So you're cutting from underneath where it's not the bad stuff and then coming up through. I never thought about it like that. That's really interesting because my default brain says never conventional cut anything except for foam. Right. But that's really fascinating.
00:43:02
Speaker
Not to discredit high-feed mills, and especially because I've seen some of your instances where you've got like two-inch long stick outs on quarter-inch end mills, and it's like all high-feed for the wind. It works so good. Isn't that insane? Yeah. I ran that tool for so long, and then I broke it. I broke two of them in a row doing weird stuff. I'm thinking of why, but yeah, just dumb things. But for the most part, they sound aggressive, especially that super long stick out one.
00:43:30
Speaker
But yeah, love them. We moved away. We had been using the Sandvik 419 as an insert high-feed mill. And we had some problems. They may have been our own fault. I certainly wouldn't fault anybody else. But if for any reason there's a problem,
00:43:46
Speaker
Insert, screw, material, work holding, just anything. We were cutting like 200 to 300 inches a minute and we, I think, ruined a couple of inserts, a couple of bodies, and it just got too expensive for what it was. But we have, I want to say, tried them again for something else. I have to check. And you're using just little solid carbons, right? Solid carbons, yeah. So they're not that expensive. They're like $30 to $50 or something.
00:44:11
Speaker
And they work. And I've got tiny little 116th, 132nd ones from Seco. That's cool. Yep. I haven't seen the small diameter stuff often. Yeah, they're hard to find. Super hard to find.
00:44:24
Speaker
an end mill that size, a four flute end mill, one 30 seconds to hog out titanium. Like they break or they chip or they wear, right? So I'm like, if I can clear out all the material with a high feed end mill, then the actual end mill that is weaker can just come in and do finishing. And that system is working really, really well. Because I am sick of breaking tools.
00:44:45
Speaker
I never thought about, I mean, there's for sure in my experience, it's absolutely true that the forces are axial. So the stick out is less of an issue, but also you don't have foods cut into the tool. So it's effectively a solid core until the face, which is huge factor in stiffness. Yep. And the chip management, it makes these little tiny curls.
Customer Service and Shipping Challenges
00:45:03
Speaker
They're scoops. They're not these long stringers.
00:45:06
Speaker
There's only two flutes, so there's a chip evacuation access and coolant access, and there's so many things going for it. It's doing such a light depth of cut anywhere from 2,000 to 15,000, depending on the size of the end mill. The chips just disappear. They just fly away. It's like the quarter-inch one. I call it the metal eraser because it just sips it away.
00:45:29
Speaker
It's a good combo with the current too. Yeah, I can really run it fast and hard and the current can actually move that fast and keep up. It's fun. Cool. I've got to throw some shade at DHL and some of this doesn't do any good to get upset or worked up and some of it may be COVID in the sense of people and so forth, but they locked us out of our account
00:45:55
Speaker
on Monday because of a past due invoice and our account is on auto pay. We have a perfect payment record. That invoice was 12 days old, which I'm sorry, you're shutting down our account for a 12 day old invoice. 12 days after net 30 or 12 days after due date.
00:46:13
Speaker
12 days after the date of the invoice, which is ridiculous. And ends up, the reason it wasn't auto-paid and the reason I didn't see it is that it was effectively a fraudulent invoice. Some random company in Nebraska used our DHL account to ship something from, I don't know, Qatar to Nebraska. I don't know what it was.
00:46:35
Speaker
And so Monday morning, when I realized this, I actually paid the invoice because I thought, well, I'll just pay it and deal with it later. And it's now Wednesday. Our account's still not unlocked. Our account rep no longer works there. I've been talking to account reps in Arizona who claim to be trying to help but aren't ultimately fixing it. And I'm sure everybody listening can relate. And
00:47:00
Speaker
I want to practice what I preach, which is like, it doesn't do any good to get rude at people or upset, but I'm also like, I'm asking them to bend the rules. Like some of this, because we have some packages that are ready to get picked up, they have labels and you can't create a pickup without an account and our accounts locked out. And I'm like, I need you to call Columbus and call a favor and just be like, Hey, I need you to go by Saunders and pick those packages up. And the guy's like, well, unfortunately your account's still locked. I'm like, no, no, no. That's not what I'm asking. I need you to like, actually just like function.
00:47:30
Speaker
And.
00:47:33
Speaker
It's one of those things where I told them, I was like, hey, FedEx has been really aggressive trying to take over the international business. One of my things is when we're shipping, I brought this up before, when we're shipping a certain amount, in this case, quite a bit of value, we've got to have somebody that can help us out, especially in the case that our account got locked out by a bogus reason. Yikes. Frustrated.
00:48:02
Speaker
Mm-hmm. Yeah, just stay on them. I guess you need a solution yesterday. Yeah, right. Yep. Especially if you have labels printed in packages, customers waiting, you know? Yeah, I know. I mean, worst case, you just rip off the paid DHL label and put a FedEx label on there and get them out the door. Oh, and it's not about that. Or if you had to. Have you already paid for them?
00:48:26
Speaker
The DHL. We could figure that out. They haven't been picked up. It's an option. That's my goal. The fun challenges of running a business. Awesome. I got to run. I'll see you next week. Take care. Sounds great.