How to Turn Around a Struggling Shop, Ep #6

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Every shop owner eventually walks into a mess. Maybe you just took over a struggling facility, maybe you stepped into a new role, or maybe the business you’ve run for years just needs a refresh. In this episode, Paul Barnes and I dig into the question we both get asked a lot. When a manufacturing business is on its knees, where do you actually start?

The instinct is usually to buy new machines or clean house and bring in new people. We make the case for almost the opposite. Most of the time you don’t have a capability problem, you have a visibility problem, and the first job is to stop the bleeding and create stability before you try to improve anything. Paul describes it as fixing the plane while it’s still flying, because the business can’t grind to a halt while you sort it out.

From there we walk through the framework we both lean on. Use a survival filter to triage safety, people, quality, delivery, and cost. Attack job readiness and bottlenecks first, because an hour lost at the bottleneck is an hour lost for the whole shop. Stabilize the schedule, build a system to plan the work, and get your metrics out of the office and onto the floor where the team can actually see them.

Then we get into the people side, which is where most turnarounds really live. We talk about the blame culture that creeps in when a business is hurting, how to make it safe for people to tell you what’s broken, and when coaching crosses over into a culture decision you can’t avoid. Paul shares Harry Harbour’s four Ps for reading your team, and I share a couple of stories about keeping good people and letting the wrong attitude go.

We close with what not to fix first, because the fastest way to make an unstable shop worse is to kick off five projects at once. Pick one thing this week, get it right, and build from there. Profits follow stability, and stability gets built one process at a time.

What’s Covered in this Episode

• (0:00) The five Ps: proper preparation prevents poor performance
• (1:14) Walking into a shop that needs fixing, and why you don’t start with new machines or people
• (3:27) It’s a visibility problem: make a grocery list and use the action priority matrix to chase quick wins
• (6:10) Stop the bleeding with the SPQDC survival filter: safety, people, quality, delivery, cost
• (8:30) Why cutting cost first usually makes an unstable shop worse
• (10:09) Job readiness and bottlenecks: one lost hour costs the whole shop
• (12:03) Walk the floor, find the WIP, and line-level from the saw to shipping
• (14:07) IMTS: the largest manufacturing trade show in North America
• (15:00) Is planning the central bottleneck in a machine shop?
• (18:05) Build a system, even if it starts as a shared Excel sheet
• (18:59) Staying flexible when a job goes sideways: the broken-tap story and pallet-changer lights-out runs
• (22:36) Stabilize the schedule, then build standard work the floor will actually follow
• (25:26) Coaching with questions to earn real operator buy-in
• (29:42) Visual management: get the metrics out of the office and onto the floor
• (31:53) How posting scrap numbers changed operator behavior
• (35:42) DN Solutions: high-end machining with the SMX and DVF 5-axis lineup
• (36:50) When to address people and making it safe to surface bad news without fear
• (39:27) The 6am story: moving a strong worker instead of losing them
• (41:30) When coaching isn’t enough: the talented but toxic machinist
• (42:26) Harry Harbour’s four Ps: players, prisoners, passengers, protesters
• (45:23) Factur: building a steady pipeline of sales opportunities
• (46:28) What not to fix first: don’t clean house and rehire
• (48:29) Tackle one thing at a time to avoid creating more chaos
• (50:40) Profits follow stability: pick one thing to fix this week

Resources Mentioned

• IMTS
• DN Solutions
• Factur
• The Action Priority Matrix

Connect with Jason Davis and Paul Barnes

• The Manufacturing Blueprint
• Connect on LinkedIn