Lean, AI, and One-Piece Flow: How Henry Holsters Ships Same-Day | Ep. 535

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Most shops treat lean like a poster on the break room wall. Andrew Henry runs it like a competitive weapon. He built Henry Holsters into a company that ships around 55,000 orders a year, most of them the same day they come in, without stacks of work in process piling up on every bench.

We caught up with Andrew at the Summit on the Summit, and the conversation kept circling back to one idea: The waste hiding in your shop usually is not the machine, but everything happening around the machine. He walks us through the custom vacuum former he eventually scrapped for parts, the moment “Two Second Lean” flipped a switch in his head, and the shift to one-piece flow that changed how his team works.

We also dig into how he is putting AI to work right now, not someday. Re-pricing a newly acquired customer’s parts in an afternoon instead of weeks. Scanning thousands of lines of inventory to surface dead stock and ERP errors. Using it as a sparring partner to keep high-stakes customer emails firm but professional. And yes, spending an afternoon fighting with a coding tool just to understand what it can actually do.

There is a bigger theme running underneath all of it. Ten years after a lot of us met at our first IMTS, the shops that keep showing up, keep learning, and keep trying things are the ones still standing. The ones who decided they were too busy to leave the shop are a different story.

If you have ever told yourself you do not have time for a morning meeting, a trade show, or an afternoon with a new tool, this episode is a friendly shove in the other direction.

What’s Covered in this Episode

• (1:26) Meet Andrew Henry of Henry Holsters, a lean guru and Workflow automation fan
• (2:40) Why Andrew bought a Matsuura MX-420 PC10 and what sold him on Hennig’s Workflow
• (3:46) Ten years since our first IMTS: who grew, who is gone, and why
• (5:25) The pace of change, when 5-axis, automation, and AI all hit at once
• (8:06) A gondola conversation on why he cannot afford to skip summits and trade shows
• (9:53) IMTS Industrial AI Conference: reality-based AI for the factory floor
• (10:40) “I do not have time…”and why that thinking is backwards
• (12:47) Using AI to re-price a newly acquired customer’s parts in an afternoon
• (16:31) Turning AI loose on inventory data to find dead stock and ERP errors
• (18:22) Making people show their work with AI as a required thinking partner
• (20:25) AI as a diplomat for high-stakes, antagonistic customer emails
• (24:08) Take your shop to the next level with DN Solutions
• (25:20) Andrew Henry’s accidental path to a CNC shop
• (27:37) Buying a Matsuura for injection mold work and foundational problems to tackle
• (29:26) The dream of closed-loop, self-correcting machining
• (33:03) People should not wait on machines, the chaku-chaku principle
• (33:55) Twin Table Brother cells, vacuum fixtures, and the case against batching
• (38:58) Find manufacturing leaders who actually fit with Hire MFG Leaders
• (39:27) Make-to-stock, make-to-order, and any color as long as it is black
• (40:20) What FastCap taught us and going all in on one-piece flow
• (44:23) Ownership and pride when one person makes the whole part
• (45:47) Triag Swiss Modular and machinists who own their machines
• (46:48) Why you cannot get everyone bought in (and why it’s okay)
• (48:25) How the morning meeting really works, the cobra effect, and why bad incentives break your culture
• (52:41) The eight wastes, and why seeing the problem beats memorizing the acronym
• (54:05) “I can’t” versus “how could we,” closing the gap without hearing no
• (55:53) Andrew’s Lean Built Podcast and the LinkedIn AI slop problem

Resources Mentioned

• Henry Holsters
• Lean Built Podcast
• IMTS Industrial AI Conference
• DN Solutions
• Hire MFG Leaders
• Book: Two Second Lean
• Triag Swiss Modular

Connect with Andrew Henry

• Henry Holsters
• Connect on LinkedIn

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