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#236 - What gets measured gets managed
242 Plays4 years ago
TOPICS:
- Spindle Utilization - Both Johns calculate the weekly percentage of working hours for their machines and discuss factors that affected those outcomes.
- Don't let the ERP become the company POS!
- Internal Culture & Branding
- Mori Spindle Time Increase - Grimsmo is tracking spindle time so he can make in-process tweaks to get MORe out of the Mori
- Upcoming Business Videos That Everyone Needs
- Why isn't my business making money!?
- Economic Downturns & How to Protect Your Business
- Warranty Repairs for GK: Is there a good solution?
- WILLEMIN, KEARN, & ESA INSPECTION
- Shipping Errors - Saunders and Grimsmo share recent shipping mistakes and preventative measures to implement.
- Grimsmo Bros Book Club: Erik and John are reading Attraction by Gino Wickman to make big plans for the future of GK. Is this the Grimsmo Finer Things Club!?
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to the Podcast
00:00:00
Speaker
Good morning and welcome to the business of machining episode 236. My name is John Grimsmough. And my name is John Saunders. And this is the manufacturing podcast where Saunders and I talk every Friday for the past years and years about things that are going on in our business. Things are going on in our lives and how we're trying to improve and be the best versions of ourselves. Bingo. How are you doing? Good. How are you? I'm fantastic.
Maximizing Machine Utilization
00:00:30
Speaker
Should we dive in with, uh, with the spindle utilization? Yes. So last week we talked briefly about, you know, how much machines run and how much they've run over the years that we've had them and all that. So both of us, like I went around to all my big machines and I wrote down all the spindle times and they're all listed differently. Like sometimes there's four times like on time program, run time spindle on time.
00:00:58
Speaker
things like that. So I'm not sure what the equalizer is. It doesn't matter because you're going to blow me out of the water regardless. Okay. I'll start. So the interesting one, I've had the current for a year and a half, just over machine on for 6,000 hours program run for 2,888 hours. Okay. Uh, spindle time. Uh,
00:01:25
Speaker
I calculated it last Wednesday, right after the podcast. And again, just now, and I did like the math to see how long it's run in the past week, which is really cool. Um, so as of this morning, it's the spindle time is 1,669 hours, which means in the last week, 168 hours, like week week, uh, it's run for 78 hours.
00:01:48
Speaker
which is 46.4% of the entire week. It didn't run Sunday, but it did run for most of Saturday from when I started on Friday, which was sweet. So yeah, 78 hours of runtime in the last week. Excuse sake. Phenomenal. I thought you might give me a three digit answer there though.
00:02:13
Speaker
I mean, 78, yeah, I could. I think we had a little bit of downtime, like an error or something that caused some holdup. And I've been working on a project that, you know, it waits for me sometimes during the days. So I could hit a three digit week for sure. And I will, I'll get there. But I've never actually seen that like 78 hours in a week. That's kind of awesome.
00:02:40
Speaker
Yeah, and now that I do basic math, I'll tell you it really exemplifies how hard this is because you've mentioned numerous times. Oh, we had an 18 hour runtime, which is incredible. But five day weeks, eight hour runtime.
00:02:56
Speaker
Five times 18 is only 90. You're still 78 hours short. So that just is amazing to think you would need an 18 hour, I mean, you just can't get, like I said, five times 18 is still, 90 is still incredible. Yeah. But there's so much time left. Exactly. Yeah. So that's 48, 46% of the week of the potential week. And you know, that would involve me putting
00:03:23
Speaker
loading more palettes, which involves making the tombstones and the clamps and the fixtures and everything. Making sure my tool life is spot on. Making sure I don't run out of coolant. Making sure little errors don't pop up. We don't have a power surge or something.
Collision Monitoring and Programming Challenges
00:03:38
Speaker
There's so many things. I came in this morning and the machine looked like it was on. The coolant was spinning, but the indicator light that tells it's running was not on. I'm like, what the heck? Two minutes before the podcast, I'm like, what's going on here? I'm doing a motion where the B-axis swivels past 90 degrees. It's getting close to the spindle head and the machine's got dynamic collision monitoring.
00:04:08
Speaker
It was like, hey, you're going to smoosh the airline, which I've removed. It stopped. That's great. The coolant is still praying. It is great, but I've got like an inch of clearance. I'm like, come on. That's just in fusion. I need to tweak my
00:04:26
Speaker
Tilt settings. So it doesn't even get close to there? Yeah, this multi-axis toolpath, which I thought I did and it ran. So I don't know. Is this a complete issue or what's causing the, it's a current Heidenhain limitation right now that's in a good way stopping you? Yes. Yeah. It's a safety that says
00:04:46
Speaker
You're hitting the buffer zone of crash here, of machine hitting itself. So we're just going to stop you right there. And yeah, so in Fusion, I just need to make sure it doesn't tilt that far. It's going closer to upside down, past 90.
00:05:05
Speaker
I remember not feeling like that was easy, and it's been a while since I really dove into simultaneous toolpaths, but you really wish, and maybe I misremember, maybe it is easier.
00:05:17
Speaker
you kind of want to say, hey, oh, no, I do know this is an issue because the UMC could go 135 one way and bless the other and it was giving me an error because it was going to like 135, 001 degrees, which is probably some like tessellation, whatever. And I remember struggling to be like, no, just go to like 133 because if you haven't, if
00:05:39
Speaker
you're listening, you haven't programmed five access parts. A lot of times it's just tipping to that angle to get what it thinks is the best access or angle of the tool, but you could still do it a degree or two less. No problem. It's just going to take everything you'll let it have, but it introduces these quirky issues like so. This is multi-axis contour? I think so. Or flow. No, it wouldn't be that. Maybe flow. Yeah. Yeah.
00:06:08
Speaker
And you're still pushing everything through complete true path? Yes. The new... I actually got to ask Vince if he used it. Vince made a part on the UMC while I was out a couple of weeks ago for Johnny Five. And I believe, is it in beta, the machine simulation? I know they've given some teaser stuff on it, but the fact that some of this is coming into Fusion is amazing. Cool.
00:06:37
Speaker
Okay. So you want to hear my answer? Yeah. So can I give like a bunch of excuses before I give you an answer?
00:06:45
Speaker
Is that acceptable? I'll allow it. There's no reason for excuses. I think if anything, it's a great insight into the honesty of how difficult it is to have a vertical machining center with high spindle utilization. I'll give you the answers first to not make a bunch of excuses. Then I will list out some reasons by it. The machine, for us, it has the highest
00:07:13
Speaker
whatever number you want to use, cycle time, power on time, et cetera, is our VM3. And that's simply because it's our oldest machine. And for quite a while, it was our only machine. It's approximately five years old. Actually, I think it's pretty close to under, but close to five years old. Power on time, 11,300 power on time, cycle start time,
00:07:35
Speaker
of 3,750. And then Haas gives an in the cut time, which I guess the difference between those two is things like tool changes and linking and so forth of 2,400 hours. So I think most people would kind of count the 3,750 as your time. I know it's a higher number, which is sort of advantageous in this scenario. But that's the amount of time that we've had the green button pushed while it's doing work.
00:08:01
Speaker
So, let's see. To compare because my Maury, you got the VM3 before I got my Maury, right? No, after John. Your Maury was the first time I ever pushed cycle start on a VM3. Yeah, I got it summer of 2015. Okay. Yeah. So, I've had it for whatever, six years and we've run it hard. So, the Maury has an operation time of 10,800 hours.
00:08:24
Speaker
cycles. That's the equivalent second start. Yeah, I think so. It's like two to three times. Yeah. Yeah. Two and a half, three times higher. But again, we set it up to do 12 hour runs. Yeah. Right. So that's what I was going to look at here. Uh, round ish numbers, 250 working days in a year, five years old. Again, it's a little bit less. That would be 1250 days. So 1250 days times eight hours, um, would be 10,000 hours. That makes it pretty easy. So 10,000 hours.
00:08:55
Speaker
of working time if it was cycled on 3750. So actually, honestly, that's a little better than I thought. 37% cycle on time. Of like human hours at the shop. Yeah.
Improving Spindle Utilization Strategies
00:09:10
Speaker
Of our working hours. 40 hour working. Right. So that actually is a bit better than I thought.
00:09:17
Speaker
because again, it's not that many old. So here's the excuse. First off, when we first got that machine, it was our only machine. So we were spending the first number of months kind of learning, like figuring it out. We didn't necessarily have what we have today, which is a true dedicated product line and processes. And so we're also not necessarily a shop that focuses, I say this hesitantly, on total spindle utilization time.
00:09:45
Speaker
for a while. In fact, the VM3 was our extra machine that we were doing tool room work on, repair work on, Op2 or Op3 type work on. We've moved some of that over to the VF3 now, and that's one reason why we sold the VM3. It hasn't left our shock yet, but we are cycling through it. It's a great machine. It's funny. It's bittersweet.
00:10:08
Speaker
I looked at our next, I didn't jot it down in the sheet, but our VF2, which is significantly newer, had almost as many hours. Really? And that machine has been dedicated on mod devices for quite some time. Cool. And that's, I think, a lot more representative of
00:10:23
Speaker
okay, we're doing a decent job of getting that machine running. But I'll tell you, I remember reading an article, it's really, really hard. I don't remember the exact percentage, but 50%, 60%, some number like that, spittle the utilization just for working hours. Your number is John, you're crushing it. It is really hard on vertical machine centers, tool changes, part swaps, part changes, or job setups, all that.
00:10:50
Speaker
Well, that shows right there. On the Kern, I've got 78 hours in the last week, and there's 40 working hours in the last week. So I've doubled working hours. 200%. Yeah. That's what an heroic can do. Exactly. Yeah, for sure.
00:11:06
Speaker
That's awesome. Well, I'm glad we did that. Did you track any others? No, I mean- I tracked our two leads. Oh, shoot. Do tell. So both the Nakamura and the Tornos listed runtime. The Tornos runtime is about 2,400 hours and the NAC runtime is 4,700 hours. Wow. Yeah. That's great. Pretty happy with that. That means per day, but that sounds really good.
00:11:33
Speaker
And being an automated machine, the NAC does not have a bar feeder. So we're loading a bar every time, but we've run it a lot, 4,700 hours. Yeah, it doesn't have a bar feeder, but you've never used that like a chuck or lathe where you're putting in one piece of it. No, of course. Yeah. It's got really, it kind of just has a short bar feeder is the way I think about it. It loads bar. You load bar and it runs it. But our parts are so tiny, I can get 200 parts out of a bar.
00:12:02
Speaker
Yeah, right. Sometimes a bar is an eight-hour cycle. Yeah. We'll have to revisit this, because I know our VF2 now is going to just keep cranking. I think it'll be pretty decent numbers. Well, and this gives me a good current baseline. We had a good week last week on the current. I'd say that's normal for us now, and I can improve from there.
00:12:28
Speaker
I love numbers, but it's way easy to overstress about numbers. I want to play that balance, but if you don't see it, you don't know it. What gets measured gets managed. I'm glad I've seen those numbers now. It's cool. It should be a byproduct. The numbers should be a byproduct of the right process, not just the thing to shoot for. Sure. In the crazy scenario, you could have somebody who knowingly hit cycle start even though a tool needs changed or
00:12:57
Speaker
They wanted to fix something because they just know that if they can check a box for eight hours or like ... Like worst thing is you turn the feed rate down to extend the cycle time. Something down like that, right? Yeah. No. That's really bad. Yeah. Although certainly I think anyone who's seen ... Insert example of conflicted worker here of like, oh, just take my time on its delivery and I can ... Yeah. You hear about these scenarios or whatever.
00:13:30
Speaker
question because I was I wanted to ask your opinion which is not possible to get an unbiased opinion but nevertheless I want to ask it which is I had two videos for kind of chip break themed YouTube things and one of them was the kind of clickbait title which is not meant to be clickbait because it's quite genuine is why isn't my business making any money that's
Business Profitability and ERP Systems
00:13:52
Speaker
like perhaps a smidge extreme but
00:13:52
Speaker
Okay, okay, so that's an interesting
00:13:57
Speaker
I don't think it's extreme at all. I think that is 100% on point. I've asked myself that probably 200 times in the past five years. The point isn't necessarily to be alarmist or necessarily mean that it's totally true, but we've gone through a process that I think a lot of small businesses go through, which is if you start with this idea of like, well, I make a product for X, I sell it for Y, but at the end of the month, the numbers don't look anything like that. I started making some notes for this video. I really like it, but that doesn't
00:14:26
Speaker
have any validation that it's, well, I do have enough conviction that it's a good video. You with me? I'm with you. There's obviously a lot of context and everybody will give a different answer if they're making that video themselves. But what we want is your perspective. We want your thought process based on your business and everything you've seen from everybody else around you. That is super valuable to people because
00:14:50
Speaker
The fact of the matter is not a lot of people talk about this kind of stuff, but everybody stresses about it. Those are the kind of valuable videos that you and me and others like us need to start putting out. It's so cool because it ties in our ERP system and productivity. If we buy a bunch of raw material to make my advice top jaws,
00:15:15
Speaker
I pay for that material. And then we spend a bunch of time making extras. Our ERP system right now doesn't naturally show me value of... It could, but it does. Well,
00:15:29
Speaker
To say it could isn't a stretch. We don't necessarily show at the end of the month, like, hey, we paid for this material. We have an asset in the form of the raw material or finished goods. So if those didn't sell, it's interesting how disconnected your financial statements can be from what you spent time doing. Right, because you have value on the shelf, not just in raw material, but you have finished parts on the shelf that have a asset value.
00:15:56
Speaker
But as far as profits going out the door and stuff being sold, it might be a very imbalanced calculation. So you're like, I'm not making any money, but I have $12,000 of inventory on the shelf. And then that's when sales side of things has to get into play. It's good selling those things. So it's a whole balance of a business, which is always super fascinating. Right.
00:16:21
Speaker
And on that point, so over the weekend, I watched the founder again, the McDonald's movie, because I know we keep talking about it. And I was like, I got to watch that again. So I watched it. And it's one of the best lines is like when the accountant guy is like, Mr. Crock, I don't think you know what business you're in. You're not in the hamburger business. You're in the real estate business because he was not making any money. He had franchises out. They had like, I don't know, 50 restaurants already. And Ray Crock himself, the business of franchising these McDonald's was making no money.
00:16:52
Speaker
Well, I think the quote was you don't build an empire making a nickel or penny and a half off a hamburger. Yep. Yep. Which actually I totally agree with. Yeah, right. Right. But there's a huge amount of power in consistently making a small amount of money when you don't have whatever, but yeah, it's a great wake up call to let's make sure you understand how you make money where you make money and that that's proving true. Yep. Yeah.
00:17:18
Speaker
Because business is complicated, especially growing and having staff and material everywhere and tools everywhere and machines and payments. And it's hard to know if you're making money or not. You have to be on top of this stuff. And I'm fortunate to have Barry to be on top of that stuff so that I can focus on what I need to focus on. But the two of us together going over everything makes sure we're on track.
00:17:43
Speaker
How often do you and him sit down? Less often than we should, I will say. Once a week is our goal at least to go for like a little deep dive. And he has a reporter, processor. Yeah. Whatever. Okay. Yeah. Interesting.
00:18:00
Speaker
Yeah, it's important. And I love that. I used to be confident that we were good at that. And it's not that we aren't good at it, but we're seeing that now making sure, hey, I don't want to miss measure things because with the world, no one could have predicted the world we're in now. So like, hey, we're making sure we have enough material around because there's price changes and availability. And remember how we talked about, as an entrepreneur, sometimes you're just dealing with putting out fires or the stress apart.
00:18:25
Speaker
To flip this all around, I got a text from Scott because I was out the other day. Every single order is caught up. We have inventory. So many things are going actually incredibly well, which is great. I should make more effort to focus on that here as well because that's phenomenal. We turned Lex over to be autonomous with more
00:18:54
Speaker
of its own ability to create additional purchase orders for stuff, material and fasteners and so forth, as well as work orders when we, again, so if you sell a mod vice, it creates everything flows downward, buying new material, buying creative work orders to make parts if they hit trigger quantities. That got a little messy. I haven't actually gotten the full debrief on that, but
00:19:16
Speaker
Short answer is we kind of expected it to have a few things that would be errant, partly because initial inventory levels or trigger levels would be wrong. It got a little bit messier than that, so we've got to spend some time kind of cleaning that up. I don't think anything's broken. But when we do our Friday lunches, I really mentioned guys like I've seen enough companies that have information systems, databases, ERPs where everyone is cynical because, oh, don't listen to that thing. It's always wrong or it's always off. Right, right.
00:19:46
Speaker
want to make sure we put in enough effort to avoid that stereotype because I want it to be right. For instance, we had one thing where it was saying something is overdue. Well, it says it's overdue because we just added a date field so that we could have a due date and it was populated with a default value. It's not really
00:20:09
Speaker
doesn't really matter right now, but it was showing it. And so I was like, hey, we need to remove that because it's going to otherwise become a behavior where everyone just ignores it. Yeah, it's a very good point. It's a phenomenal point. Yeah, you want a system that is trustable, that is accurate, and that reports valuable information.
00:20:27
Speaker
Yes, changing the subject.
Brand Culture and Employee Attire
00:20:29
Speaker
One thing that I'm super happy with, what great was we got some custom, you can see it here, Saunders Machine Works. Oh, that looks nice. It's like a black collared shop polo with an embroidered fancy red logo on it. Yeah.
00:20:43
Speaker
And so we have like four or five different colors and styles. We weren't sure which one we'd like. So we just sort of kind of a mix of them. And I'll tell you, it's awesome. We don't have any sort of a uniform here, like wear what you want. But you know, there we have them for all our employees. And so we all kind of mix and match and wear them. Again, it's not mandatory, because I don't didn't feel right mandatory mandating it. But I wanted something that was nicer than a t shirt. And it's just a little part of the culture. Like it's really
00:21:12
Speaker
I'm proud to wear it. I think the employees are proud to wear it. It looks good. It's not all the same, so we all end up looking a little different. I wanted to do it and I'm glad we did it. I underestimated how much I like having done it. Cool. That's fantastic. Yeah. Yeah, we don't have that. We got these, what do you call it? It's like a shirt, like a shop.
00:21:42
Speaker
Oh, the garage shirt? Yeah, like years ago we got these made with embroidered our name on it, big logo on the back. I haven't worn mine in years actually. We used to wear them quite a bit. We have several t-shirts that we've made over the years and the guys tend to rotate through that.
00:21:59
Speaker
But also whenever we get shirts, like we have an Okamoto t-shirt they sent us a bunch, other knife makers, a bunch of Kern polos and things like that. So for the most part, everybody in the shop wears a cool, you know, shirt that is industry specific. And it's, it's, it's kind of our uniform, but it's, you know, it's not official. Everybody can wear that, but they want, like you said, but it's kind of cool when like Angelo and Pierre both come in wearing their Kern polo, you know, same shirt. Yeah, I like that.
00:22:30
Speaker
It's good. It's interesting because I do like when you see more so in Europe, everybody has... We saw a grove in Ohio, which is basically a European company that transplanted a culture into Ohio. Everybody has those kind of like... I don't want to say they look like hiking pants, but they're those like work pants. Yeah, pockets and everything. At Kern, they had the same thing and they were embroidered Kern like on the knee or something.
00:22:57
Speaker
Yeah. Look cool. But they're super high quality. And there is a, it's interesting because I don't like, I don't think any of us were like, Oh yeah, I'd love a uniform because it feels kind of like uniform me on the flip side. It's kind of nice to have a brand and culture. And frankly, it's, I don't really like care about thinking about what I wear. I've just like, Hey, I have my line of machinist shirts. I wear more solder stuff and you just go down the line. Just rotate. Yup. Right. Right. So what are you up to?
Optimizing Machine Utilization
00:23:26
Speaker
Well, what I want to do, I track the Maury time, operation time 10,800 hours. I want to track it again today so that I know what the Maury has done for the past week. I think it's embarrassingly low. What I've been working on is how to structure the Maury so that it runs more. What I need to do, what parts are going to go on there.
00:23:49
Speaker
what parts I can take, what operations I can take from the current and put on the Maury, like use the current for what it needs to be used for, quality, consistency, repeatability, things like that, and let the Maury do everything else. So that involves splitting up jobs that I currently do on the current, like all the rask parts are on the current. Well, maybe half of that work can go on the Maury.
00:24:10
Speaker
So I've been working on new fixtures and new plans for how to get that Moria to run 12 hours a day or more. Are you not doing the...
00:24:22
Speaker
Norseman pallets anymore? We're like half that palette is on the current now. So we're poorly utilizing the old palette systems. And there were some inaccuracies and some repeatability issues with those pallets that I want to throw away and replace with something much better. Because the thickness of some of the critical knife parts is variable by a few thou, which affects the way the knife goes together and
00:24:51
Speaker
Yeah, consistency. So at a higher level view, snap your fingers, those pallets are trashed. Some of the parts stay on the Maury, but new fixturing and more work for the Maury, which means less work on the Kern, which means the Kern can run more of what it's really good at, which means you've just bought another machine without buying another machine. Totally. So once I realized that, because in my head over the past year, I'm like, yeah, one day I'll probably get another Kern.
00:25:22
Speaker
Now I'm thinking about it, I'm like, not until that moria is running 18 hours a day. Yes, so to speak. And same for the current. So it's really cool to track these numbers and to see that. So that's the majority of what I've been working on, designing the new fixtures, what I want them to be, learning everything I've learned over the past 10 years in the dozen different fixture designs I've made or more. I'm throwing it all into one system.
00:25:51
Speaker
That's a lot of work. I think that's a lot of work, though, to think about full blown. You almost know too much, right? Yeah, exactly. Yes, you have to choose carefully. Talking to a guy this week, though, and it's so funny, if you didn't love that more, if it wasn't such a good machine, I feel like I would lean on you more to consider selling it because the conversation was what we've been talking about before. It's like, hey, I kind of have product specific
00:26:19
Speaker
Robo trails or whatever speedos and some of them can be automated. I've seen a bunch of people talking about One automation that feeds to Robo drills whether it's robotic part loading or a compact like an aroa power loading And man, I just think that that's there's a lot to that I totally agree if if I could snap my fingers and I had the room and the time and everything like I
00:26:44
Speaker
two speedios with a robot in between, loading pallets, even the tiniest speedios, the little 300s, because you're just loading a six by six pallet. Who cares? That's a very tempting idea. I just saw a picture of one of those phone booth robot drills. It's not like the robot drill we had, the ones that are like 36 inches. They're tiny.
00:27:11
Speaker
And that's all I would need, really. What about this cost? I think it was like 10 grand price break between each one or something, like not crazy different. Yeah. It's cheaper. Sometimes smaller is more expensive. Yeah, yeah.
00:27:28
Speaker
I don't remember if we talked about the Willem in the past few episodes or not. Is it powered on? It has a transformer hooked up to it. It has wiring going to it. We had to get it ESA inspected by Canadian standards, which involves replacing a ton of contactors and switches and relays on the inside. Oh. Yeah. Every machine in Canada basically needs to be rewired. It's not hard. Okay.
00:27:53
Speaker
But so we had the inspector come in last week and he said, OK, this block of, you know, you open the electrical panel and you're like all the contactors and relays and stuff. These ones are all bad because they have little adjuster pot switches or whatever and Canada doesn't allow that. So it's not a big deal for our electricity to fix that. Got it. And he said anything yellow, you know, Fannock is fine. I never worry about anything yellow. Interesting. Oh, so he knew the brand.
00:28:22
Speaker
Yeah, this is what he does, so he knows all the machines. Our electrician is coming back tomorrow to install all those parts. He should have them all by then, and then the inspector will come back shortly thereafter and make sure it's all good, and then we can turn the power on and then get it going.
00:28:42
Speaker
Awesome. Yes, I'm super excited. That's really cool. It sounds expensive. It's not expensive to replace that stuff. Contact with all that? I doubt it. $1,000. I don't know. Okay. Got it. I mean, it's certainly money. Even the ESA inspection is two grand.
00:28:58
Speaker
Oh my gosh. Yeah. And we had to have it on the tornos, had to have it on the Kern, even the Kern like amazing German machine, right? German standards are crazy too, right? Yeah. Tons of contactors and relays had to be replaced and even some wiring because you look at the labeling on the wires and it says, you know, the burn rating is 90 degrees Celsius or whatever. And they're like on Canada, the limit is 95. So all like this, this wire between the, um,
00:29:28
Speaker
The chiller, like a control wire, not a power wire between the chiller and the machine has to be replaced. That's crazy. Yeah. I can't believe, like you said, a European company, you would think that they would just build a higher global standard because the cost is negligible with wire difference. Two of the Kern guys, Tony, who's the president of Kern USA, and one of his applications guys were here
00:29:53
Speaker
when the machine was delivered and the ESI guy came and they had a conversation and they were like, this is nuts. We've sold other machines in Canada. German standards are crazy. So whatever. You got to do what you got to do. Did you have to do this with your Maury or? The sellers do that, like the distributor.
00:30:14
Speaker
The Maury, I never touched because it was a showroom machine. It was already done. The Tournos was imported for us through Ilya Metzora, so they took care of it. But I remember the inspector coming in and looking at everything, but that was all rolled into the financing, I guess. Right.
00:30:31
Speaker
Did you ever get anywhere with customer knives and products being able to be freely shipped back and forth with other countries of the US? No, I don't think we ever really keep talking about it, but there hasn't been some magic solution yet. Got it.
00:30:52
Speaker
I briefly had a conversation with an acquaintance or friend who's a firearms manufacturer or certainly accessories and he was familiar with the Canadian regulations and all that. I just thought, I wonder if that's the right path for you to get registered. That's one of the things we've talked about is if we do get registered as a prohibited weapons manufacturer,
00:31:15
Speaker
will we then be able to legally import weapons? I mean, all we're trying to do is take in warranty work. That's our own product that's legally made in Canada. We're just trying to bring it back to us and then send it right back out. But it's the act of importing a, air quote, prohibited weapon, a knife into Canada that they don't allow. So maybe there is a way that we get exempt from that by getting our certificate or whatever.
00:31:44
Speaker
Can you sell a Norseman to a Canadian? Oh, yeah. Okay. Yeah, there's no... Interesting. Yeah, the only rule here is importing a knife into Canada, a one-handed locking whatever knife into Canada. So you can make it, sell it, ship it within Canada, sell it out of Canada, whatever, but bringing it back in is the weird part. Got it. The other topic
00:32:10
Speaker
Again, this is going against my own. What I've seen for others is really good minimum product validation. If you're actually thinking about something bigger, like for your product to market, don't tell your acquaintance, like, hey, I'm thinking about building this product. Do you like it? Would you buy it? Because you're not going to get good feedback. The better scenario is to casually mention it and see if somebody perks yours up like, oh, that could be an interesting product, right? Like without the bias of what you're doing.
00:32:36
Speaker
But the second video idea that I have that I'm kind of making some notes for because it's very contrarian and I like being a contrarian is preparing your business for a slowdown.
00:32:48
Speaker
Oh, yeah. Because it's 2021. It was a weird year. But we're actually, most people I talk to are still gangbusters, busy, going great. And man, things are cyclical. And I don't want to be a perma-bear, like a permanent person who's always assuming the world is ending at all. But every time there is a downturn, people think, oh, man, if I had only thought to realize stuff like this, cycles are inevitable.
00:33:17
Speaker
Fantastic video idea. Love it. Okay. Yep. Okay. I'll work you on that then.
00:33:24
Speaker
The other question I had for you is, I don't know how involved you are in your shipping process, but I'd love to hear an explanation of your flow of when an order comes in, who and when is notified there's an order, who and when is responsible for printing out a packing list, the label, boxing it up.
Order Processing and Quality Control
00:33:42
Speaker
Is there a physical flow of where that material goes? If something is not in stock, does it get printed and stored on a shelf?
00:33:48
Speaker
What's that whole process? Absolutely. The joke of that is, well, I absolutely understand the process and I see it happen. I am basically unaware of any of that, which is fantastic. I don't want to say I'm out of touch, but I have zero involvement with any of that. I don't know when orders come in. I don't know when things get shipped. I just know that it happens.
00:34:09
Speaker
Who does? Is there one person that does that? There are one and a half. Fraser, our media coordinator, he handles that and then now his protege, Ryan, the two of them work together on this, but now Ryan is basically handling
00:34:28
Speaker
all Shopify, all packaging, all shipments, order comes in, it's his job. He takes pictures of the knives, posts them to the website, and then when they sell, he boxes them up.
00:34:40
Speaker
meets up with the Canada Post guy and they go out. Basically, they've got an office. They actually switched offices with me a few months ago. Right. I remember that. They get the bigger office for the both of them, which has worked out fantastic. They have their full photography set up there. They package all the products. They clean all the products there. All the boxes and shipping materials are stored in that room.
00:35:03
Speaker
So they're trying to create a flow where products come into that room and they go out as boxes and then they get lined up on a table downstairs for the shipping guy to come in. Okay. And we've got that scheduled. So he comes in usually like four o'clock, three times a week.
00:35:20
Speaker
Oh, the Canada post. Canada post, yep. So that's scheduled, they knock, and then we let them in, and they grab their stuff and go. They're usually here for 30 seconds. Yeah, yeah. Do you ever send the wrong part to the customer? That did happen yesterday. So it's super rare, but it did accidentally happen yesterday. Yeah. And immediate email to the customer. Years ago. Well, you knew. I was just told about it.
00:35:48
Speaker
Yeah. Do you email the customer before the customer even got the package? Well, in years past, we accidentally shipped two knives to the wrong people. Yeah. I remember one time we just reached out to both guys and we're like, hey, if you just ship it to each other, I'll pay for everything. They're like, yeah, I actually know that guy. That's funny. It was awesome. In this case, I think Ryan found out when the second product
00:36:14
Speaker
like wasn't the right product that the guy bought. So we realized the discrepancy and then they reached out to the first guy and they're just waiting to hear back and finalize. So it's like we have an order for a second guy, but the wrong knife for it, like we don't have his product. But they're in touch with the guys, they're right on top of it. So they'll handle it immediately. We sent, I actually had this question jotted down last week.
00:36:42
Speaker
to ask you regardless, but then since then we had a similar goof and I'll tell you it hasn't happened.
00:36:48
Speaker
It doesn't happen often. It certainly hasn't happened in a long time. We've gotten pretty good from a numbers standpoint at making sure our orders are shipped correctly, especially the big things. We've definitely had some goofs on like, hey, we forgot to include, we included seven washers instead of eight, that sort of thing, which I don't like, but that's a different level of resolution compared to a multi-hundred pound plate, the wrong one.
00:37:19
Speaker
I had a really hard time with it. I'm just being honest with you. As an entrepreneur, you should separate business from personal life, but that just upset me a lot. The customer was upset and yeah, hey, we need to get it fixed and we're getting it fixed for sure. No problem that we will do the right thing. We got him some stuff to make up for it, all that. But it's interesting because it's that feeling of when you look at, we've done a good job, we have inventory now, but then you look at the inventory and you're like,
00:37:39
Speaker
And we did it last week, which
00:37:49
Speaker
something is in a box and that box is mislabeled. It's like the mistake is already been made. The mistake is on our shelf and we don't know where it is and it's only going to come up when the customer finds it. Yeah. You look at that and you go, that's unacceptable somehow. There's something wrong with that. Yeah. Yeah. I agree. That's a good point.
00:38:08
Speaker
Yeah. And so we're going to, um, I don't know that I have conviction in my answer yet because it's not happened very often, but you look, we do rely on folks that, you know, we've had some folks come in through in form of interns or newer folks that, um, may just simply have less experience and may be more likely to mix up a VF two and a DT two plate. Like it's not like they look any different. You know what I mean? Yeah, exactly. So the first thing we're going to do, I think is the obvious answer, which is we're going to put, um, a kind of
00:38:38
Speaker
packed by and checked by. The name accountability is helpful. I don't know that that's necessarily the ultimate desire because we're not the, we're small enough to, I'm not like worried about long-term tracking of who's making mistakes. It's not really like that, but I think the accountability side of making sure person A packed it, and then we need that second just quick check to make sure, oh my gosh, especially if you've got three plates out there, you don't pack the wrong one.
00:39:03
Speaker
Yep. I think before it's hidden in a box, that final step needs a guarantee check. I'm hiding this now. Let's make 100% sure this is finalized. So we have several checks throughout the process. And sometimes we'll mix up on the authenticity card. We write down the screw color. So I've seen it before where it's written blue, but they're actually bronze screws. So I check that when I check the knives. And then
00:39:32
Speaker
Ryan checks that when he's cleaning it and putting it away and stuff. There's all these checks and balances. Then it's like right before the box gets closed and the knife gets put away, everybody looks at the card and looks at the knife number, makes sure everything matches. There's a sticker on the outside that says 5279, the knife number. It's all going to match.
00:39:53
Speaker
I love that. That's what we were huddled on this morning on it. One of the potential benefits here is instead of just doing a card, we can actually have it be something that's generated as the final QC process, which happens in Lex, which could print out something that not only gives you a field for packing and checking it, but also then ties in the serial number with the QC. It closes the loop instead of being just an appendage QC process.
00:40:21
Speaker
bolted on at the very end. Have you thought about signing those QC reports? Well, they went digital. They were signed for years when they were paper. Now we do it digitally, which I do think is way better for how you store them and enter them. It's for sure good. There's still the name of who does it. I think going physical with a printed out card that lives with the product may even end up getting shipped to the customer, frankly. Yeah, that's cool. Where you'll actually write your name on it. Yeah, I like that.
00:40:50
Speaker
Cause then you can have a more generic QC report that is, you know, you write your name and sign it at the end. Yeah. So anybody can fill it out. Yep. Yeah. I like that. Sweet. What do you have today? I like it. Um, so you know the book, uh, traction by Gino Wickman.
Planning for Future Growth
00:41:10
Speaker
I've read the cliff note, like the summary notes.
00:41:13
Speaker
part of the summary notes on. Fantastic book ride. I read it a while ago last April and kind of blew my mind and it was the kind of thing like if I do everything in this book, it'll change everything. I'm rereading it again with Eric this time. Eric and I are reading it 10 pages a day and like having our little book club and comparing notes together and it's life changing. It's so good to have somebody else
00:41:43
Speaker
to do it with, but also Eric and I own this company and we get to plan for the future and the changes and everything together and it's just phenomenal. So we've been really enjoying that. So every day after our 12 o'clock team meeting, Eric and I kind of linger and chat about this for a while. That's great. Awesome, awesome ideas. Some really good insights have come from that.
00:42:06
Speaker
And you just just read 10 pages. Yep. Yep. Yeah. Love it. And, you know, it gets a little fuzzy sometimes, you know, like those, those half pages, end of chapters, you know, so I'm like, Oh, page on. Okay. One 51. I'm on one 54. Okay. Yeah. Right. But, you know, we both underline and circle sections and we go over, you know, the best parts. And then, uh, it's going to help. We're going to make some big plans for, uh, the future growth of this company. Awesome. That's great. It's amazing. And then,
00:42:35
Speaker
I'm going to take your advice. I'm going to watch Ted Lasso starting tomorrow. Good. Because tomorrow's my birthday and I get to do whatever I want. Happy birthday. So my wife and I are going to get some takeout and we're just going to watch Ted Lasso together. So I'm excited. Good. I'll be curious to see what you think of it. Yeah, yeah. Awesome. You've watched none of it, right? I've seen nothing. No. Okay. Okay. So I'm going to have to get an Apple subscription just to be able to watch that. Good. But it's worth it, of course. Or if it's how you cancel. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Awesome. Yeah. Cool.
00:43:06
Speaker
What about you? Any final thoughts? I am catching up on a couple things. We just hit that transition where we've got interns back at school, Alex is back at school. So we had a couple little hiccups around a different flow now that Alex is
00:43:24
Speaker
he's become really integral in some of the custom orders and coding and process tracking. I'll tell you, man, I'm struggling with freight. We had another issue with a customer who has a freight shipment that's being delayed and excuses are excuses, but man, with COVID and work shortages and shipping shortages and delays, it's a very difficult scenario to manage expectations and do what we need to do to
00:43:54
Speaker
We, in this case, I believe, well exceeded expectations on lead time on our end, but nevertheless, as a custom job, nevertheless,
00:44:03
Speaker
Try to figure out how to get that solved. So putting out some fires there, got to call into our rep. And then I saw CJ posting something on like a camp tool path. And I was like, man, it's been a little while since I like really got in and programmed parts. And I do love that. And so part of me is like, man, let me get back in that a little more. Nice. Yeah. Nice. I've been doing tons of that on the current. Yeah. Like I probably post 10 programs a day. Yeah. That's awesome. That's awesome. Good.
00:44:34
Speaker
Cool. Awesome, man. All right. See you next week. Have a great day. Take it back.